Read the entire report from the A List Apart Web Survey for more amazing factoids.
It's a recursive old world we live in these days, in which ideas are put up on one blog only to be refined and realized by the next several blogs. I've been giving a building community talk that is starting to do what I want it to, i.e. connect theory and practice, and Josh Porter's slides on slideshare had influenced my thinking. Now he reports on my talk, moving the ideas forward further still.
Different views of self We expose different views of self. Our home self, our work self, and services each represent a different view into our lives, different relationships, different interests. Our Facebook profile, for example, shows a different window on us than our LinkedIn profile does.Interesting question: if all of our online profiles were added together, would it be representative of the *real* us?
(this is a very pertinent question given the recent claims that Facebook is trying to map *the* social graph…it’s not clear at all that anybody but a single individual knows the extent of their own social network....)
This reminds me I have not been a good girl and reported on one of the two things I found more revelatory at Graphing Social. Facebook is the next Google (unless they mess up.) When I saw them speak, I was really surprised at their point of view. They are obsessively driven to map the social graph. Your goal very much defines you as a company. Corporate missions are often doublespeak, but if you can take a mission and boil it down a sentence, like "making the world's information findable and useful" then you can create a collective mindset that will move the needle. It must be big enough to be aspirational, small enough to make progress toward.
If Facebook's mission is to map the social graph, they will have a data asset that they can monetize. They do not need to worry about missed opportunities enjoyed by the application makers, they don't have to worry about an unclear ad business. Or at least, they shouldn't (and their valuation certain suggests it's a non-issue.) They will own a core piece of data that is so useful and more important, so novel that their business model should make itself visible as the Social Graph gets built. They are waiting for their adsense. Maybe, like Google, they'll spot a company doing it half-right and because they understand the social graph they can connect the dots. Or maybe once they understand how people connect, a new model will become obvious.
Perhaps there is a very obvious 1:1 relationship between Facebook and Google simply in they are both mappers. What's left then, to map out? It would be a good thing for a start-up to know.
I said one of two things... the second is not so big, but still very interesting. This new generation of developers are radically more user centered than any of those before. Slide, RockYou, and others hammered home over and over in their talks the value of both user testing and A/B testing. I know many larger corporations that can't manage to do qualitative and quantitative research affectively, and here are these tiny companies launching products in a handful of days, and they manage to squeeze it in. As Porter (Michael, not Josh) says, "What gets measured, gets managed." These kids have their eyes clearly on the end goal, and know how to get there: through the good auspices of their users.
I asked on LinkedIn How has writing a book changed your (professional) life? because it's an oft-asked question "Should I write a book?" I received -- as ever-- a ton of great answers.
Everyone agrees that you lose money doing so-- advances are dreadful, and percentages are not good so you never really make money from sales, but publishing does give you authority that translates into career advancement, and that does lead to more money.
One surprise was that many people said it forced them to deeply understand their subject, and after they had a new perspective and a great deal of confidence. I agree completely, but I had rather forgotten about this precious side-affect.
David Shen has a terrific post on the motivators at work in social media design
Over the last few years, social media has really become a popular buzzword. . Rather than talk about social media as a strategy, I wanted to point out some actual detail level things ... I have found the following techniques to be effective at creating and maintaining a vibrant social environment that produces resultsThe then goes on to list them out
The New Yorker's Annals of Technology
“If you used to have to send fifty thousand pieces of spam to get a response, now you have to send a million,’’ John Scarrow, the general manager of anti-spam technologies at Microsoft, told me. (Spammers usually need to send a million e-mails to get fifteen positive responses; for the average direct-mail campaign, the response rate is three thousand per million.) “Spammers just shrug it off and send a million.”
A great overview of spam, with tons of interesting tidbits like the above.
Unfortunately not an article that offers much hope.
Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus - New York Times
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Sometimes the crowd is not so wise. Please pass the ice cream.
anildash "if you went into journalism to get rich, the problem was not the fault of technology"
Facebook Fanboy panel: Pro vs Con - Michael Arrington TechCrunch (moderator), Robert Scoble Podtech.net, Jason Calacanis Mahalo, Rodney Rumford FaceReviews.com, Dave McClure 500 Hats
Mike: are we supposed to be talking about issues, or just topics and there are two of you that are pro facebook, and two con.. seriously, what are we talking about?
Dave: yeah
Mike: I think it's more subtle than that
Dave: how about starting with monetization?
Mike: let's just go with my notes
who doesn't go to facebook at least once a day? why?
tantek: too many friend requests
audience member: email works better (Mike asks, and how old are you? he says he's 87, but joking, does look over 50)
mike: anyone under 30 not log in every day? just like paper newspapers... there are two interesting stories this year, iphone and facebook. anyone not agree?
jason: yes, all the facebook developers agree
dave: four months ago i didn't know I would run a facebook conference
robert: four months ago I didn't have a friend on facebook and now I have 4k
Mike: advertising & monetization
dave: currently they (Facebook and facebook aps) monetize like crap.
Jason: google is a perfect way to make money, but not fun. facebook is fun but not a good way to make money.
dave: not if I see my friends have a pair of cool new nikes, and I want a pair
jason: they've been talking about this for a long time with amazon, and it hasn't happened
robert: but what if you click on skiing, you see everyone, they can concentrate on capturing intent, and do advertising based on intent, but we haven't seen it yet.
I can't keep up. I can't keep up! BTW, my injections are all in italics
dave: suggests identifying the influencers then advertising to them, instead of advertising across the platform.
Mike: let me throw in some facts. google is clearly moving into SNs, we broke the story. they have most profitable advertising business in the world. clearly they are moving into SNs. we have to pay attention to that. we did once before, it was called orkut and it turned out to be irrelevant
younger folks are the trend leaders, and hot or not brought in keywords and a brand to represent you. your profile is made of brands. that shows some data on where trends are going, a way to monetize.
Robert: what if there was a facebook hotel in Las Vegas? there are 10 single folks in the hotel, it plays your music?
Jason: myspace has done a good job of it (monetizing), like with barat. it will make money, but not proctor and gamble level money. you won't make shampoo your friend. it's nowhere like the level of search.
Dave: points out influencers - sneezers-- are key. Rockyou maps the network of cool via topfriends.
Audience: you have descried how facebook users could monetize themselves
Jason: the top flickr users make nothing, and now the meme is maybe the top people shoudl make money. get paid. systems will have to figure out how to compensate them or they will leave and make their own.
Mike: change topic. black hat stuff. facebook changed, rule around who you can spam, how you can show your profile to users and friends. The people who misbehaved were rewarded by not losing their users. they had a built in advantage no one could catch up.
Rodney: it's business, doesn't matter if it's fair, some aps didn't take advantage and didn't leverage all the tools.
robert: the aps who played right didn't do as well, we don't hear about them?
rodney, no they didn't do as well.
dave: points out later installs go to the bottom. a clean up ap that removes/lowers less used ap would help.
Mike: but was it right that rockyou and slide didn't get penalized? If they don't, won't everyone want to game the system?
jason: if you build your business in facebook, you are not in charge of yoru business. they are acting nice, but they haven't said we're an open platform and you can control your users. I recall AOl and the information providers got screwed when the rules changed. When facebook goes public, they'll have a financial obligation to shareholders to play hard. Myspace stayed closed because they were winning, facebook opened because they were losing. that doesn't make facebook a bad company, it makes them smart. If you build your company on facebook, you are an idiot.
Dave: ebay example. I hope yahoo, google, et al does well because they'll keep facebook honest. I hope incumbents don't throw their weight around.
robert: the platform allowed it. those are the playing rules.
Mike: I consider that Questions (the ap) setting you up as having asked a question when you didn't is bad behavior, and should be punished.
dave: in the search world if you are a black hat, I don't mind that, if google resets the algorithm and re-levels the field.
Q: what if the open web platform shows up with openid, FOAF and rss, and like aol lost to the web...
Jason: AOL "lost" but they still make more money than facebook.
Dave: open is not better, better is better.
jason: why do developers put up with facebook setting the rules? Why don't you go on strike and say give me my users?
Mike: game theory says that bonding together is not psychologically possible
robert: how many people are still using the pirate ap? the next gen of aps will unseat the top aps.
Jason: you are all working for free to make facebook millions of dollars? talk about the ultimate pyramid scheme?
dave: i think it's interesting that rockyou and slide were kicking ass on myspace
mike: kicking ass how? revenue
dave, well not so much, installs
mike: zero?
jason: half-mil valuation on widgets is crazy
mike and dave argue about who mixed up revenue and valuation
jason: but facebooks valuation went up 15M
mike asks lee is facebook really worth 100B, less says yes, mike demands mike be removed. "that's what fucked up the party for us in 2000"
lee points out valuation is based on buyer and seller, and zuckerberg refused 1B, 15B, and so....
Jason: I want to say mahalo is worth (drowned out by laughter)
dave: i dont' agree with lee, my number is more like 10-15B
mik: where does that number come from?
robert: thinks 5B
Mike: Where do you get these numbers? At least Lee pretends there is some math involved
rodney: but it has engagement, it has emotional engagement and there has to be a way to monetize it.
dave: if they acquired a search engine, or if they acquired a checkout, or a contextual advertising platform, both of which I think likely... should they be valued on what they have or where they are going?
Audience points out it's a cheap way to get users. why not?
Audience: no one has as much insight into this community than you
whole panel says thank you
you don't think eric smchmitt or ballmer would pay 15B for it?
mike: probably yes. but the reason would be to keep it out of the hands of the competitor.
robert: ballmer didn't buy flickr when I told him to...
later... mike dares dave to say something bad about facebook
dave: too slow, not transparent enough,
robert: they don't let me add more than 5K people
mike you're just silly
mike: keep going
now telling the story about the fbFund, where they solicited applications and the lawyers said delete everything and resend saying they have no rights or else people could sue.
robert: they are going to turn evil like microsoft, they are going to see an ap they like and they are goign to buy, copy, whatever. but if you build like a starfish, and have only one tendon into facebook and hte rest elsewhere, beebo, etc.
Mike: what's the second best platform after facebook?
Dave: SEo is the second best platform after facebook
Funding Facebook Apps panel: Valuation & Metrics - Matt Marshall VentureBeat (moderator), Lee Lorenzen Altura Ventures, George Zachary CRV, Luke Nosek The Founders Fund, Jeff Clavier SoftTechVC
introduced as "money burning a hole in their pockets"
when asked do you want nuts and bolds or higher level discussion of strategy and platform, audience was wildly in favor of the second.
Now for the fashion show.
I feel an obligation to reveal that I was tired and bored and over-sugared, and this is at least 50% fake
lee: we do only facebook aps
george, ho hum, funding again
Luke, we love facebook, they are already making us rich
Jeff: I am french and we don't do facebook aps, why am I here, you silly people?
i am tired. I need about 40 downward dogs to unbend for typing in these chairs. Jeff actually said they invest on folks who have facebook aps as part of the strategy, not entire. and I have never seen him without sunglasses on his head.
Lee sounds like he's going to pass out from fear every time he speaks. He was all kinds of smart sunday, but i think it took him an hour to recover from stage fright, and there were only about 20 of then. Now he's pimping adonomics, which is certainly worth pimping.
George reminds me vaguely of Jeff Weiner for reasons I can't put my finer on. I had a looooong coffee one day in which we geeked out wildly and widely. I really like him, even if CRV didn't fund us. :)
matt marshall, meanwhile, is moderating with a grace and style that could easily have made him a diplomat. he makes you at ease, and then you spill your guts... journalist gold!.
George: I tend to think facebook will be the winner, and the portals are struggling because people don't wake up every morning and say I want to see media, they wake up and want to see friends.
Matt: but myspace is still bigger, and will be opening, and orkut is
George: I'm not a facebook investor and I wish I was. Facebook has the best user experience. There are moments of genius in the UI. I think any SN designed by committee will not work out.
Jeff: theez eez something something eet eez something something. I really have no business making fun of French accents,my husbands family will string me up. apparently he said "One of the first that transitioned into the older demographics"
Lee: Google will have a difficult time in moving users out of facebook.
Luke: tee hee hee I'm rich! I'm rich! or maybe something more like "We are very careful about not becoming something like Microsoft, where trust with developers is lacking"
Lee: if you take the first no, and say you can't get VC funded, you aren't much of an entrepreneur, you wimp. go home and hug your mommy, silly baby!
Matt: you say you just like infrastructure plays, not aps, and you syndicate with other investors.
Jeff: when you have a fund my size, you do 30+ deals a year at 250K. but look at the next size, it's a 1M 1.5M, so as a solo I can move very very fast, i can't bring all the value, but I can syndicate wiht a few funds I like working with very efficiently. On the no application rule, but it doesn't mean I'll never do it. never say never.
Matt: what little guys did you invest in, any why bother with such small fry?
George: social media we seed funded with Jeff, they started with aps and moved up to developer network. we cna't quantify. it's hard to quantify breakout markets, it's all gut feel.
Matt: you are close with slide. why slide owns so much of the space?
Luke: the slide CEo saw the graph as separate, and was ready to think about it as a platform, and they ran with it very quickly. when they first went viral on myspace it was a big fight to keep it going but with facebook it was almost too fast. massive growth from the myspace work (it echoes the advice to experimentation early and understand the space)
Lee, all warmed up now: points out rockyou and slide own half the social graph, tremendous power in a couple spaces. microsoft is trying to keep facebook a googlefree zone. (popfly?) these lessons in platform changes is that when there is a platform change it's a chance to get back in the game. rockyou must be a 1/2B company because of the way they own the social graph, if MS was willing to do 15M for % of facebook. Apple caught up with a platform change and would they now open up itunes, so folks don't have to buy an ipod?
Matt: google?
Luke: they've been a great search company/ad network, but it's a one trick pony. gmail is still at the back of the pack. They could use gmail to build a social graph, if they went that way. but we're blown away by facebook, when they make a mistake they correct it, I'd be very comfortable betting on an ap company that made facebook their primary focus. it's hard to make a better product at this point. It's clear social is more important than search, search just isn't that sticky. There is no lock in. those was will be very interesting when they play out.
Lee: the one play google might do to hurt facebook would be college oriented edu only, to get disgruntled facebook users, and they could pay college students to switch.
Luke: but you'd have to pay people. that's how locked in people are.
Lee: the new groups tool should placate disgruntled facebook users who have found their mom on it.
Matt: rockyou has a combo ap/advertising play. how's that? are ppl afraid of UGC?
George: yeah, CPMs are low because it's a new category. ppl are afraid of using their jobs, putting an ad against something people woudn't find tasteful.
just to jump on the google thing, I don't think they'll be a serious threat. Google is tech centric, not consumer centric. They'll spend a lot of money/time to monetize social networks.
Matt: who could challenge?
George. no one. Myspace is bigger, but they are owned by a media company, and they don't get it. I don't think they'll beat facebook.
Luke; I think myspace will slowly go away. newscorp is just not innovative.
Lee: think about the genius of this move, google when they wanted the best programmers they put out the math problem and offered nice food (to keep talent out of microsoft's hands?) Facebook has 300 ppl and they are committed to what they are doing, no salary overhead...
jason calcanis: Saying myspace is going away is ridiculous. How could you say it?
Luke: I could say it very very slowly.
jasonC: facebook hasn't made any money yet! you say it's going to be as big as google? are you drunk?
_I am quoting accurately now!!!!_
Lee suggests facebook could challenge google on search, jason replies that he just said if google can't learn facebook's business, how could facebook learn google's
wow, i went form making stuff up out of boredom to transcribing the real thing. I can't wait for the next panel..... at least it won't be boring.
Bill Grosso Engage.com (moderator), David Young Joyent, Jeff Barr Amazon, Patrick Harr Nirvanix
Again, energy lagging. let's see what I can do. this looks like the grown-up panel.
Amazon: cool ideas to successful product is "the muck" hardware, software, costs, load balancing, viral growth, bandwidth management. we have services so you can ignore that.
Tantek Celik (moderator), David Recordon SixApart, Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook, Joseph Smarr Plaxo, Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited
Joseph: plaxo all about connecting all the places where you data is. a webwide solution. demos pulse. pretty nifty. working on a open source tool
david: fairly famous for the opening social graph paper for example, vox, how do you bootstrap a social network? you already have one, they might not want to bring everyone over, but you don't want to start from scratch either. How can you share value but not have ot give up username/password everywhere they go.
ted: we allow uses to import their profile into satisfaction, if the company supports microformats... such as flickr.Justin Smith, InsideFacebook (moderator), Blake Commagere Mogads / Zombies, Jason Beckerman TeachThePeople.com / Lotto, Jia Shen RockYou, Tim O’Shaughnessy Hungry Machine
a two minute history
since may 25 366M aps in the first 20 weeks
14M unique ap users in august
Invitations: originally no rules on invitations
no volume limited
starting to target
no built in stats
now need social incentives for invites
News and minifeeds introduced sept 2006
broadcasts your activity
worries about privacy
feeds: you can optimize
but selection algorythm is not published, depends on individuals, no built in stats
>only friends with the ap see your feed items
notifications
friends of logged in user or anyone with the ap
rules have not been well articulated, some people are abusing and getting blocked as too spamming
can get shut down.
Blake: facebook is getting better about letting you know what changes are coming. my focus was optimizing invites, and I've been using the standard invite interface provided. people have tried different stuff, but instead I've focused on how would this new invite control work vs. the old one. it's worth doing A/B testing.
For notifications, as a mechanism for viral spread, I didn't really use it, and i tried once and i went and played frisbee and my ap was blocked. my users were too eager to bite people.
Tim: good or bad, we lost the massive growth provided by invite process. it's not that invites are not important, but if you look at what we've called up there is a decision point and they can choose skip. Notifcations, it can show up without being marked as spam.
Jia: form looking at all the different channels, invites, minifeeds, minifeeds is the only way to grow it outside fo the users. form an invite perspective we've spent time to make sure the selection process is fairly easy. Most people call it an invite process, but it's really a way to spread the application. if it's an event it's invite, but if its zombies, its a bite, or a gift a gift...
minifeeds, we've tried changing the graphics that accompany and has a big corollary on how often people click through. tuning the images will improve your throughput by far.
People who have 3-20 wallposts are more likely to accept invites, people with real relatoinships accept, just data to support the theory everyone has put in your head.
Jason: bonus functionality works, when you invite more people you get tickets for the daily jackpot. they designed for daily engagement, the jackpot goes up every day, it's good facebook measures engagement for them.
they'd like rollup messages, rarer than having every single activity in the feed.
insert lunch drowsies. notes getting thinner....
again I'm blown away by how these folks study and tweak. they put major corporations to shame. a/b testing, user research and more.
Jason: if you could message your users, that'd help, even if it was only one or two times a week.
Justin: do you know what the future of analytics is on facebooks? what are you doing?
Blake: I'm grateful everytime they add anything, such as recently on pageviews. Some of these issues are a bit opaque because you are going through facebook to the user. I need metrics where I can measure activity so I can learn what features will engage. I don't do as much a/b testing as I should. I know you should do it like on invites where it's the biggest bang for the buck.
Jason: we just built out stats, because we want to understand where our invites are going, is it core users who really want bonus tickets, ro invites that never got used. it's been really cool to have that data.
Jia: dont' go and overdesign a anayltics sytem. we still do real time mysql system, eventually we'll do somethign more but raw numbers speak for themselves. make sure you collect that information properly.
Tim: there are raw numbers we dont' want to relay on facebook for, but then there are things facebook will build and we dont' want to waste money building it.
Blake: dont' spend a ton of time making something beautiful and complex since they (facebook) know what our pain is and will get it to us, what if you spent a month on analytics and you didn't need to.
Jason: we focus on the data facebook will never be able to tell us.
Justin: spam...
Blake: We'd all like to know what the algorithm is for whats spam, but I understand they don't want us toeing the line between spamminess. I odn't think that algorithm will ever be shared, but we all have insight into ti, # of installed users or engaged, then number of notificaitons, then how many get marked as spam. you shoudl think carefully about notifications and think about if yoru toeing the line. I limit it even if the uses are crazy active, thinking I know that would annoy me...
Jia: we've gone through a lot of tuning and focused on only notifying when there is something useful, and blake and play frisbee together and we've gotten blocked and you have ot sit on your computer to see if your ap has gotten blocked, you don't want to sit on your computer and watch it.
Blake: sometimes you are sending out only a few notifications and you see your spamometer going up, a few users can really shift the tide, facebook users have a low tolerance
Jia: when we launch a new ap we don't use notifications.
Justin: what if you could show to non-installed users in the newsfeed
Blake: don't underestimate the power of the newsfeed. if you had a clear argument for the ap on teh newsfeed it's change things
Jason: we wouldn't have to do invites, if people saw their friends winning money
Jia: I really couldn't see us change our call to action in the minifeeds, I don't think it'd change our strategy.
Tim: I think we'd see it as another kind fo invitation, we wouldn't' change strategy much.
Q: how far can these go with non-viral applicaitons? werewolves are naturally viral, BUT...
blake: aps that are not inherently viral can't be made viral by optimizing the heck out of it. is there a reason for someone to want their friends to use it? is it so cool you get street cred for finding it? sharing photos, sharing music, because uses have a direct benefit fom it. You can't make an indea viral, but it can make the difference between seeing a a good idea flounder.
Jason: I don't know if it has to start as being viral if there is a value proposition, it can become viral.
Jia: that addresses the question of when will aps become utilities? they just won't grow as fast, but they could still growth. opening up the minifeed could help utilities.
Tim: you can't dress up a pig. but at least you can fail fast and cheaply. you can try the methods, but if the idea isn't solid, no amount fo virality will help you.
Q; do you know what the drop off is with inviting ten or installing aps
Jason: we require it so we dont' have a good number on that. but the growth is showing that people are using it.
jia: unfortuantely in the previous world, people just clicked hte next button. but people are getting more savvy. limiting to ten has been a good ting, because people are less pissed off and ignore everything.
Tim: look at the growth rates after the limit, it dropped dramatically.
Jia: if you have other incentives, then it's good to have the invite at the top. but for things like events, where people want to use it over time, it just annoys people.
q: how many gets uninstall?
Blake: vampires gets the highest uninstall of all my aps, and its 13%, which is a good number.
jia: exposing the install rate is interesting to brand advertisers, but better would be how long to users keep the ap. it'll end up being like total uniques, etc. those are the stats that really matter.
And dont' forget to check out Jim
Design
Getting tired again, moving to commentary mode.
people want to be creative, but can't write code. many non-pro coders also. 107M nonpros. reaching out to garage coders. xbox released a tool for noncoders that let them make their own games, and built community around it.
Users are the stars... like Digg, treat them like rockstars, take good care and feeding of them.
Your software should embrace self expression-- if someone wants a duck thats magenta, let them.
You've got to let people entertain themselves, other: example the faceook ap that lets folks throw virtual poop at each other.
sometimes i despair for the human race
Popfly lets you build mash-ups, like pipes, but easier user interface.
for the "I dont' write code"-
built on silverlight i assume someone knows what that means
the only "whoa" from the audience came when he resized the browser and it resized perfectly. heee, we are such geeks!!!
great funny quote: "I'll just show it in the gratuitous 3d view"
he just mashed up facebook and asteroids. you can shoot at your friends. it could even fit on your profile, because of the good resizing. pointless and awesome.
each node has modifiers, for example technorati you can get bits of data like search summary and you can give it parameters.
jim says this interface is what visual effects developers have been using for ever and are considering moving away from.
now he's showing how users add to profile. I'm tuning out....
and I never came back.
Finally, facebook in the house!
facebook update
- deep integration
- mass distribution
- new oppurtunity
watch the alpha geeks
- new tech moves through hackers, then entrepreneurs then platform players
examples include screen scraping and the peddle powered internet presaging data platforms and interest in alternative fuels
On Facebook (they have a new report coming out)
facebook is growing 1.14% a day
aps are growing 2% a day
87% of usage goes to 2% of aps
top 50 developers by usage looks like a more traditional long tail, but all 5K and the tail is way long
compares it to chris anderson's research, including book sales.but facebooks long tail is essentially useless right now.
the power law is skewed, that may change, but thats the bad news.
many applications competing for the same users. dating aps have the best uptake, then messaging and chat, just for fun as a category isn't strong.
the most successful category with active users is sports then gaming, chat, fashion, just for fun)
most active categories (what are people building) just for fun, then messaging, then gaming, then video (multiple categories, so may not be fully accurate)
aps with over 100,00 users messaging, dating, gaming, video, just for fun, (sports weaker here)
top 40- top friends, funwall, superwall, superpoke, video, x me, ilike, movies, graffiti -- top aps seem to be topping out, growth slowing.
a web 2.0 refresher
the more users, the more value
building a collective database
* building on top of open source, yahoo pays people to extend
* learning from open source, wikipedia uses volunteers
* p2p sharing users build song swapping tools as a byproduct of their own self interest
* google works this way, and to some extent facebook too
key concept: harnessing collective intelligence. ajax doesn't matter, what matters is value grows wiht userbase.
a network-effect-driven data lock-in, with accelerating returns. red-shift companies
Yahoo started with user generated content, and picked and chose best. google figured out how to automatically extract meaning from activity. They coudl automate what yahoo was doing.
page rank as true start of web 2.0
wesabe uses it too, with fan scores, recommendations, and data information being gathered and used for advice.
facebook is picking up data but you don't have much control over it, there is not much intelligence in the data.
for example, a list of facebook invites
* geni.com knows sean is my brother
* my company directory knows I work at oreilly
* google knows I worked with Danese
* amazon knows who's written books for me
- why should I confirm? can't facebook learn to use databases?
How ridiculous is this? my phone company knows everyone I ever called, but my phone only knows the last ten. Phone companies suffer from churn-- data could create lock in.
"are you my friend" anyone with email, phone, IM already knows who my friends are (Yahoo, are you listening???)
xobni is extracting data such as phone numbers and email, click to call, statistics on how often you communicate, let you know when you haven't talked to someone in a while.
The Internet Operating system
the subsystems will not be devices, they will be data subsystems. facebook describes itself as a platform, it's really a subsystem platform, not a platform yet. if you study history, a platform beats an application every time. lotus 123 to excel... wordperfect gets beat by MS word.
two types of platform
* one ring to rule them all
* small pieces loosely joined
facebook can't do it all. hopes they will help open it up to a small pieces model
=> thoughts on the social graph read it!
questions you should be asking
* am I doing everything i can to build applications that learn form my users?
* Does my applications get better with more users, or just more busy and crowded
** consider filtering, smart filtering
* if ""data is the intel inside":http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/data_is_the_int.html" of web 2.0, what adata do I own?
* what user facing services can I build against it?
* does my platform give me and my users control, or take it away form us?
** you have to create more value than you capture
Random thoughts about what I want form the social grpah
* I want social networks to reflect my real social network
* I want it to help me manage those contacts (how to reach them, updated status)
* I want it to manage my groups of people
** I need to put java people together, or facebook people, if I know them or not.
** people I know, people I don't know, people I regret knowing
* I want it to recognize asymmetry in relationships
** how can I reach out to superstars in a field I don't yet know
** I don't want to just manage my friends. In fact, the closer they are, the less I need to manage.
* I want fine grained control over what I see and what I ignore
** some people I just want flickr feeds, other ones I want everything. I want to see this persons blogs, but not their tweets.
* I want to discover interesting people
is Tim normal? Probably not, but good ideas here.
geni.com .. mothers maiden name no longer a good security question ;)
I can't recall if he had a point, except smart understanding of relationships
facebook doesn't fit my relationships -- steve case: i sold him a company, what am I going to say, we hooked up? might be accurate.. yes, that was a quote.
FOWA, should look at different tie describers
what do people want to say about themselves? What do I want to say about them? What if I could adjust my view of the people. How do I want to see them? could I rearrange modules to shape how I want to be updated?
jaiku has done great things, and just got acquired by google. takes idea of smart presence to mobile. your phone knows where you are. your phone should tell you if a friend is in berlin and you are going to wake them up. Or if a friend ins town, you cna ping them. I do this with twitter, but obviously not as effective. But do I want my movements tracked?
I'm and inventor. I because interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which is finished, not the world in which ist is started." ray kurzwell
think far along the curve, think about new platforms, think about future of applications, think about taking the platform forward so we can say, wasn't that platform quaint?
QUESTIONS
Q: criteria in companies distribution channel?
A: one of my fundamental beliefs about web 2.0 - it's distribution, creating interfaces with your customers. The best use all channels, web facebook, etc. They want as much contact as possible. The need to understand each of those channels, and there may not be much overlap-- ilike says only 4% overlap between web and facebook uses, they tend to choose. thinking of twitter, everyone has a favored interface the uses is the asset, and the services you can offer to them, and you can figure out how to offer that.
Q: If Facebook will dominate, won't they fight to keep their uses to themselves? Even if everyone wants it?
A: I'm ont sure, there are a couple answers. If you become truly domainate, no need ot share- facebook isnt there. Google is a good example. they own a lot of data they don't share BUT they also share a lot as well. They spider the same sites as yahoo and ms. you can share and still dominate. if large graphs cooperate, say geni and facebook cooperate both sites become more valuable. There is value in openness, if you focus on building services for users, then you choose ... it ultimately depends on the services and applications you build. Right now there is way more for facebook to gain by being open, as they try to crack open these deep mines of data. For now and for many years to come, all the trends say openness is good for you.
Dave McClure is useing fun movies ot intro folks. this was at the end of Tim's talks
haiku introductions
(I'm too slow to get it. they were funny.)
I'm pooped after that last round of live blogging. I'm going just note interesting points here...
adbrite: a facebook ad network is just like a regular one, it's just a bit more limiting. channel specific ad networks like glam for womens, it's just a matter of focus
another elephant in the room. hype! they've gotten a lot of people working on this problem of monetization. crowdsourced problem solving!
didn't know that the 30 boxes guy (Narenda) started a facebook ad and promtional network and is making silly money now. he smiles shyly and shrugs, what's a boy to do?
Ro Choy, of rock you, is all kinda of articulate. I'd pluck him for a conference.
adbrite: it's still early to tell, but the budgets can be sizable for facebook advertising, for like a movie release. other folks are smaller for say a guy seeking his soulmate.
videoegg: most of the business CPM is for brand exposure, say movies, tv shows, music. a video ad has greater value.
we sell a lot to big advertisers because they recut their tv ads to videos for facebook. it's measureable now, we can tell them not only numbers viewed, but how much of the video has been viewed. We provide richer data.
good question on proportion of big advertisers vs little guys. Ro says it's direct response, so it's developers themselves. they've done big guys, but 90/10 little to big. Adbrite says its 75/25. narenda says similar, but videoegg goes more big guys.
moderator: facebook is losing it's beauty and whitespace with ap madness.
narenda says lots to cheer about, any tie there is a new market there is a lot fo excitement that can get in teh way of judgement. this community could consider long term business, benefit from long term thinkgin. apple wouldn't build it that way, flickr wouldn't' build it that way.. companies that focus on the user experience... you can con a 18yr old from Ontario, many folks are very trusting, and many aps get handed a lot of private data , i'm not sure we fully understand the repercussions of that. It's in everyone's interest to think a bit more long term, rather than short term exploitation.
Ro notes that many companies are learning to change their focus form thousands of users to thousands of ACTIVE users. the value is still being understood, it's only six months old.
narenda says they are taking a hard line about video, noise, rude ads.. an ap that respects user will succeed. Joe, of video egg, points out video is very engaging, but his is user-initiated.
Adbrite points out the creepy factor in contextual advertising (seen in gmail) but opportunity is high also, can understand genre preferences, etc. reminds me of old wired article on "yuck factor" of new technology.
What company and how do you help?
remember altavista, and when you first started using google, you felt guilty? for abandoning altavista?
1st gen search engines: search engines "crawl" links to pages, they make a copy in something called a index, they find pages you are looking through, originally via term frequency. this was too spammable, because control was in the hands of the webmaster.
2nd gen search engines: use factors off the page that wemaster can't easily influence
SocialMedia.com is an app network
apsaholic allows you to track the success of yoru ap vs. your peers
evolution of online advertising
1997 websites
I missed the second talk, see http://www.geekdaily.org for jim's write up. also, slides:
first a anatomy of a facebook ap
first to give ap developers access ot social graph and demographics
you get a splash, a spot on the profile and an icon in the ap list
difference between facebook ap and myspace widget? FB is viral and itneractive, myspace is all aobut self expression
- CONCEPT FRIDAY 6/15
- DESIGN FRIDAY
- IMPLEMENTATION 3 DAYS
- ADVERTSING 6/18
- VIRAL GROWTH 3 WEEKS
- caplock off
- discover through friends
- certainly discovery of people's social lives
many interesting new entrepreneurs out of college will build on facebookQUESTIONS
interesting ecosystem between websites and facebook applicationseconomics will be a real issue- keep costs low!
- ilike, flixter
- websites establishing their position, i.e. yahoo hiring rockyou for Ymusic
constant newness will be important for entertainment
Ro Choy from Rockyou
lot of questions on value of facebook-- lack of long tail, what's value, how relevant to business
most money spent on google and yahoo for internet spend. why social networks? relevancy via search and relevancy via social network. Sn's showing radical growth. get in now to understand for tomorrow
social web on the rise with open Sns.
move destination sites-- like service master-- creates opportunity to thrive.
rockyou is a widget provider, 700k widgets embedded daily (WTF? what a world we live in) built on putting widgets on myspace to drive traffic to parent sites. tells story of rock you's growth and strategy. Starting to feel like a salescall...
aps that focus on engagement (access to friends) rather than self-expression perform 7x better.
one key component of virality is simplicity. the easier it is, the more viral. every single extra step takes away from virality.
rockyou has 15 facebooks apos with 40M live installs and 10 of top 40 aps: superwall, xme, likenss, zombies/werewolves/vampires, horoscopes, slideshows, emoter
Rodney Rumford up. "The user perspective" I'm doing a much worse job due to food in my stomach. :\
At Graphing Social, a facebook conference. I'm doing the biz track, Jim the tech track. Lee Lorenzen is talking now on facebook 101 and user perspectives.
I'll try to pull out interesting points
Some days I can't help but pick the scab. When I first saw The 25 Most Influential People on the Web I thought, jeez, here we are again. I've tweaked the graphic here, so you can see my point.
But then Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership showed up in my inbox, and I thought, world, you are saying something.
That there is a problem is not in doubt. Despite years of progress by women in the workforce (they now occupy more than 40% of all managerial positions in the United States), within the C-suite they remain as rare as hens’ teeth. Consider the most highly paid executives of Fortune 500 companies—those with titles such as chairman, president, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer. Of this group, only 6% are women. Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women.
I'd like to comment. But my mouth is full of bile, and my arms ache from pushing, and my back from bending and so I'll just say, come on. It's not Businessweek's fault, they had to stretch to get 3. Something big and bad and ambient and pervasive is at work. Don't believe me?
Look at the picture.
Because I can't anymore.
A bit more, from the HBR article (well worth reading, btw, even if you have to pony up for it.)
The GAO researchers tested whether individuals’ total wages could be predicted by sex and other characteristics. They included part-time and full-time employees in the surveys and took into account all the factors that they could estimate and that might affect earnings, such as education and work experience. Without controls for these variables, the data showed that women earned about 44% less than men, averaged over the entire period from 1983 to 2000. With these controls in place, the gap was only about half as large, but still substantial. The control factors that reduced the wage gap most were the different employment patterns of men and women: Men undertook more hours of paid labor per year than women and had more years of job experience.Although most variables affected the wages of men and women similarly, there were exceptions. Marriage and parenthood, for instance, were associated with higher wages for men but not for women. In contrast, other characteristics, especially years of education, had a more positive effect on women’s wages than on men’s. Even after adjusting wages for all of the ways men and women differ, the GAO study, like similar studies, showed that women’s wages remained lower than men’s. The unexplained gender gap is consistent with the presence of wage discrimination.
Similar methods have been applied to the question of whether discrimination affects promotions. Evidently it does. Promotions come more slowly for women than for men with equivalent qualifications. One illustrative national study followed workers from 1980 to 1992 and found that white men were more likely to attain managerial positions than white women, black men, and black women. Controlling for other characteristics, such as education and hours worked per year, the study showed that white men were ahead of the other groups when entering the labor market and that their advantage in attaining managerial positions grew throughout their careers. Other research has underscored these findings. Even in culturally feminine settings such as nursing, librarianship, elementary education, and social work (all specifically studied by sociologist Christine Williams), men ascend to supervisory and administrative positions more quickly than women.
From wired
Under the radar, Appfuel -- a five-person startup in San Francisco -- has been developing an application that fulfills what everyone knows to be the real opportunity: If a company can mine your Facebook profile to know who you are and what you like, it can show you targeted ads. Without storing any user data, says co-founder Sundeep Ahuja, Appfuel can scan a user's profile and deliver a targeted ad in under a second. For example, if you fancy The Fray, Appfuel's system will know the group is playing a concert near you tonight and will offer a link to buy tickets.Ahuja does, however, acknowledge the elephant in the room: Facebook is likely preparing to do the same thing, as the Wall Street Journal reported in August (subscription required). Facebook says it already targets ads based on profiles. But so far, advertisements on the site do not appear to be closely matched with either users' profiles or the widgets they've installed.