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.

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.

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

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.

Chamath: we have embraced open standards, it's the cornerstone of our services, it's allowed us to be trusted.  but before we step into all that, i want us to all understand where we've coming form. We believe there is one social graph int he word, and all these nodes that connect people, and we've been able to map only a small amount of it, and other services are mapping it too, and we believe we have to make our version of it available of it to as many people in ways as possible. we acknowledge we need as many people as possible along the way to make it better.
there was atime you woudl never putyoru first and last name on a webpage. 30% of our uses also put their cell phone number. it's becuase it's trusted and private.

David: it's the same at six apart, assign user to make the decisions about sharing information, and even though it was common practice to show hashed email address and the hashes were used ot link accounts, and we didn't want to assume that folks who didn't want to share emails in any way. LiveJournals audience didn't mind sharing, but Vox's did, so privacy is not homeogenous.

Joseph: people are doing powerful tings with data, and it's important to be able to get your data in and out, it's better when users are in control of their own information. we've been talking about the open social web, and what does that mean? We've put up a bill of rights at opensocialweb.org

Ted: it's important to keep wit simple for the user while givin gthem control fo how their data is displayed

David: it's hard ot know what the problem is. We're int eh silicon vallye and if it wasnt' on techcrunch it doens't matter. don't get me wrong, it's relaly important to give people offerings, like doppler for geeky travelers, but then folks had ot redo their entire social network on doppler... people dont' know what social graph means, nodes and edges, I know I have friends, colleges, relationships... to be able to map offline and online. I'd like a tool for my addressbook so I could pass on phone numbers between trusted friends, the way I'd do in life.

Tantek: how many have you checked your facebook more than once today
Audience: since the session started?
<laughter>
tantek: but is this a geeky perspective.

David: but with facebook, the ability to tag a photo was great, since you don't say you are tagging you just say who is in this photo.

Chamath: the data expires 24 hours later, why does it? We dont' feel we own that, and the pluses and minuses means we have to iterate from somewhere. he's very a sleek speaker

david: so the 24 hours, it's come up with ohter folks, you can't store things you get form the api for more than 24 hours. but as a user, you dont' get teh choice of storing it if it has value.

Chamath: but by refetching you ge hte most up to date, so it's good for the user

Q: anyone thinking about integrating openID and FOAF?
David: we support all that and more
Plaxo: same
Chamath: working on it
Ted: we haven't talked about it much
Plaxo: do you put your money where your mouth is in allowing data in and out?

Q: hippies and open vs platform wars and data lock in?
David: W're see this next year, will there be more platforms? a long tail of platforms?
Chamath: we realize that companies are generating millions in just a few months already...
Tantek: what does it mean to be open?
Joseph: you are open when you give yoru users control of their data and its use
tred: allowing use sot own their data:
David: focuses areound user focus and control. if you want to take your data out, you can?
Chamath: you empower your users how they interact with other people.

Q: Facebook dont' allow access to connection, to protect users form spamming, but that conflicts with open model of data
Chamath: we're three months into something we'll be working on for years. We've got to give users and ap develops more and more control, and be responsible for accounting for those edge cases that create a poor experiences.
David: It's very important. You have to make sure users understand how the data they provide will be used.

Tantek: he asked when openid will be used, but it's good to recall what chamath said about how it's only 3months day, so how many  folks want openid.
Dave: how many uncles, aunts no SV want it?
Plaxo: but maybe they want not the technology but what it makes possible.
 
Chamath: we need to recognize the timescale in what it takes to map this graph.

Q: it's clear others will open their networks to API, such as beebo and LinkedIn. that will be similar to when AOl lost control. What happens when we build on multiple platforms rather than build on facebook?
Chamath: that ability exists today. ti's very powerful, build once run on many. The reality is we are all useing open publishing tools that allow clearspring and companies like that to exist.
Plaxo: it's still hard ot stitch the social networks together, but it's not a fanciful prospect.
David: there was a rumor about orkut.

today I saw that facebook is the new google. in philosophy, at the very least.

This isn't my cup of tea, but we'll see... I can hear Jim typing away, he might be a better bet.

Slide wasn't ready for the scale of facebook engagement. they learned

break down your application

• static content
• application logic.
• data storage

offload static content.

• CDNs (Akami, panther)
• storage solutions (S3, facebook coming)

optimize your application logic (again, myspace is self expression, facebook is sharing, so people will move data around at a rapid pace as the ap grows in adoption)

• pagination
• ajax - we're used to people go through pages. on facebook ppl go to a page then leave. so it can help the user experience.  ajax allows you to have isolated logic you can extend very easily
  
• caching (memcached is your friend) People get mad if you dumb data, you have to keep it around but you dont' want too many data call

simplify data storage

• normalization
• indexing
• Keep is simple

test your application

• listen to your users
• QA, usability, desirability -- go to the forum and someone will tell you how you messed up
• Watch your logs
• create big test accounts
  
• something that works with ten friends breaks at 100, 800, more... don't underestimate friend size _design for scoble_
• Measure activity

And dont' forget to check out Jim

Design

• Think mathmaticlly
• gauge target audience size
  
• guys/girls
• languages
• age
• Model the viral multipliers
• channels
• application name --it is the first thing ppl see, shows up in minfeed, left nav
  
• invite -- think about how it spreads, the you create
  
• notifications
• in page
• superwall
• viral multiplie
• invites
• 1 install
• invite x ppl
• x ppl open it
• x people convert
• x people uninstall
• ending no needs to be greater than 1
• multiplier over time
• user tests
• validate use cases - wil they use it?
• test calls ot action - will they click it
• validate viral models - any broken links?
• development
• instrumental channels
• be able to quantify each viral multiplier
• prepare for a/b testing
• instrument sitestats
• google analytics
• quantcast
• be agile
• develop quickly
• release early
• Launch it!
• phase it out
• make sure it works before promoting it
• when confident, go full blast
• promote on ad networks
• guaranteed performance
• exposure to full demographics
  
• tune your ad!
• Promotion - ad networks
• third party ad neetworks on facebook can radically accerate your adoption
• Tuning
• validate the viral model
• identify the totla multiplier
• wahat's weak
• find new channels
• how do uses use it?
• integrate in other applications - look for synergy with popular aps
  
• tune underlying channels
• targeting
• deliverability
• Monetize
1. Growth
• maintain comfortable growth
• keep tuning
  
2. engagement
• create more depth for application
• multiplayer (myspace widgets are singleplayer, facebook is multiplayer. nice comparison!)
  
• statistics/data
• enagement channels
• minifeed events
• notifications

QUESTIONS
Q: when you follow facebook's look&feel, when do you break?
A: facebook provides a lot of material on their look and feel. Don't worry about copying, but avoid departing. stick with simple html wihtin the framework, and you won't have issues

Q: what is the range in viral multiplier
A: the multiplier changes as facebook changes and as the ap picks up use. what we've seen on successful on 5-10, failures  are at 1 or less.

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"-

• free
• client side file hosting
• works with open source ajaz frameworks
•  better tool support coming
•  400+ "blocks" like facebook, digg, google earth
•  share your aps everywhere in iframes
•  full control of 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

• we are a technology company, we build software, we build a social utility
• intense growth curve, 43M active users , 225K new users every day. 3X users every day than his hometown in helena
• Doubling every six months
• new uses
  
• over 25
• high school users
• international (cananda, UK, australia, norway, south africa -- english speakign countries)
• age distribution in growth internationally reflects internet population as a whole, unlike US where it reflects college origens)
• over 50% of uses return daily (!)
• 60 billion pages every day. 1500 pages per users a month, 15 pages a day, one of most trafficked site on the web.

Social Graph

• we are tryign to map the social graph i the most efficiant way possible.
  
• ours is not better, we're just trying to do the best job we can
• the social graph is the network of connections that exist in the world between people.
• We focus on how people cna represent their identity int eh most effective and efficiant manner
• we focus on letting peole communicate in the most efficiant manner
• we focus on letting you reach out to as many people as possible
• Overtime, facebook gets better and better
• shows how social networks hit tipping point
• example: photos application. it's not the best, but it's the most trafficked photo application on the internet, more than all web aps combined.
• events was from a hackathon, idea that in 8 hours you can get something done. IT is vastly larger than evite-- not because of quality, but utility created by social graph.
  

facebook platform

• three aspects

1. deep integration
2. mass distribution
3. new oppurtunity

• why aren't you more open? We ask ourselves, We have an obligation to users, we may need to allow users to take their data but also need to protect.
  
• three parts of ap

1. profile
1. profile actions
2. add a box to the profile (events doens't even have a
   
2. canvas pages
1. ads
2. newfeeds
1. requests
2. notifications
3. newsfeed stories
   
3. homepage

Photos best practices

• newsfeed shows highly contextual photos, you can see and understand well
• on the main canvas page, it's important to think about the context, here we show friends photos. many aps don't leverage this page. it shows whats going on through the lens of your friends, it stays up to date and very very interesting.
  
• enable people to engage around your content, i.e. a wall with every photo
• mass distribution: power of social graph
• all aps let you add to your profile
• the minifeed as a way to distribute new forms of content
• people are underusing.
• notifications
• requests

new opportunity

• growth
• engagement
  
• monetization

we hope we've offered a way for you to grow, using the all the best practices, social graph for engagement, and ways to make money to get away form the man _yeah, or sell to him_

fbFund as a way to kick off folks

how are things going? My stats aren't as good as tim's, which is funny...
90,000+ developers
create things we'd never think of, and our users are adopting them and it's growing! applicaiotns create utility and grow users base and engagement.

Q: is plan for facebook to move form a level 1 platform to a level 2 platofrm (see andreensen) to avoid scale issues
A: we're focused on the technology we've already created, making it stable and consistent

Q: what were the surprises?
A: We spent a lot of time making sure the platform was easy to understand but developers and users, what data was going where. it's not as easy as it sounds.

Q: what are you looking for in a fbFund applicant
A: we're not an invester per se, more of giving grants. but still  great teams, great ideas, great business models.

Q: is it a problem the skewed tail?
A: we're going to try to find a way for developers to get their aps out, even playing field, more people can get in that  space.

Q: is it a pure numbers game, llet all aps come and let uses decide whats useful? or vett out some quality to reduce overhead on users?
A: We want to let the market flourish, and get information out, helping users choose via evolving the product directory. We're a young company, we're figuring it out.

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

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

• clickthrough
• links "democratic nature of the web"
• pagerank
• anchor text, actual words in the text
• then people began overtly manipulating links, thinking about votes, campaigning for votes (miserable failure), even buying votes

3rd gen?

• vertical search
• focus on a particular topic, such as news
• personalized and social search
• reshape based on what you are doing
• what your friends are doing
• what groups are doing
• http://searchengineland.com/070827-121805.php
  
• Google personalized search
• ranking is reorganized based on whats deemed to be your personal preferences
• Changes are subtle, but will likely change over time
• personalize influencers
• google homepage
• google bookmarks
• search history
• web history
• social search
• eurekster experimented with friends clicks reshaping results in 2004
• Yahoo My Web promised to let us tag and use a network to reshape results
• Neither really has suceeded
• the promise & reality of mixing the social graph with search engines
• eurekster says "swikis" are much better
• yahoo dropped many feautres quietly
• but what about facebook.
• Social graph (ugh) social network data potentially useful
• watch what others are searching on
• monitor clicks in a more closed environment - harder to spam, identity is persistant
  
• reshape results based on what your friends seem to like
• but WHO are your friends?
• www.dumpfolder.net/?p=193
• friend pollution
• do you really want to go through and pick out friends you trust enough to influence search results
• what about unfriending, privacy, and what you want to share?
• tagging? search basically works, and sharing queries is undesirable/unnecessary
  
• Does facebook instead work on a aggregate level? use networks, for example.
  
• And what's the underlying platform? They'll probably partner with someone else (Facebook unlikely to build a search engine from scratch, it's not easy)

What shall they do?

• Go vertical? People search?
• plenty in space, spock et al
• searchengineland.com/lands/peoplesearch

Search vs discovery

• search is an on demand thing, have particular need to fulfill activity
• Discovery is related but less specific in what you want
• stumbleupon, digg
• iGoogle related magic tabs

QUESTIONS
Q: Maholo?
A: I like it, i think it could help. Google says, we won't touch it we'll fix the algorythm but hey, fix it now! But maholo is starting to morph into a wikipedia. SInce it's made by an editor, it's more of an about than a social search engine.

Q: don't people already want to separate top friends, professional friends, etc?
A: if you are a heavy user, then yes, but most people that's too much overhead. have to be a poweruser.

Q: don't you think people search is fundamentally different than web search?
A: absolutely, you are looking for a page with bio, contact info, etc. But the problem is where are they? myspace, facebook, etc? Easier to go to google or a people search.



Favorite quote
speaker "google will say we've got iran, and we've got brazil and we're coming for you"
audience "the axis of orkut"

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

• rise of internet agencies
• first brand sites (duracell.com)
• early advertising expiraments (dilbert steals Yahoo's Y)

1998 display advertising

• evmergence of IAB
• standard ad models

2000 contextual rising

• intiated by overture, dominated by google

2002 contextual ruling

• adsense
• kanoodle

2004 advertising exchanges

• right media
• advertising.com

2005 lead generators

• lowermybills
• adteractive
• nexlag

2006 behavioral advertising

• tacoda
• bluelithium
• revenue science

2008- Social Advertising?

• Dave Morin "always include the social context"
• benefits
• users- less annoying, more relevent
• advertisers: more targeted, hihger ROI, ability to reach "influencers"
• developers: higher eCPM, less wasted inventory, ability to keep users engaged on app

Case Study: FoodFight

many aps: the throw aps. taking poke and wrapping it wiht something more specific. thowing cavier at one thing, and a chicken head at another expresses yourself better
You throw things to earn more "lunch money" to get more things to throw at people- self promoting. you can create things to be thrown to make "money"
cross promotion on other aps

Social ads: send flowers. you can suggest flowers for a specific person in your graph. you know birthdays,, can suggest gifts from red envelope. feels less sneaky, since all information is up front.

Flufffriends, et al, have virtual currencies, which drives benefits. video game behaviors engineered into aps. allows for leveling up.

market research is a huge opportunity on facebook, especially if it can be fed back into ads.

QUESTIONS
Q: they are collecting lots of data, what are security/privacy
A: collected directly, help privately. But what shocked me about the facebook audience is how willing they are to share information, e.g. early on they added "pile of poop" to things you could throw. it cost $20 to throw... people were wildly willing to give information about themselves just to throw poop. you can't always protect people form themselves, you can only make it clear what you are doing with the information.

Q: at what point will advertisers be able to target datapoints?
A: later in the year.  we realized early on there are only a few folks who can dominate, but we can help the little guys.

Q: do you see a merging of virtual currencies?
A: that's a great idea. easy to say, hard to do. we may be able to provide a back office to help, you set the metaphors, we can feed in the questions, surveys, offers to earn money.

Q: what are the dangers of building a company entirely on one site-- facebook
A: I like to think we are build on the front not the back of facebook, and there is a virtuous circle right now where everyone is helping each other. facebook could shut down, go closed, but i hope philosophically they have been walking the walk, and B other networks -- google, mysace, tagged, yahoo and others-- are now responding by trying to compete in the openness game. as soon as one guy opens up, before facebook closes up, openness wins and the game is over.

Q: What happens if facebook creates its own ad netowrk
A: there is no such thing as one ad network. if and when they come out with an ad network, it won't put people out of business, they need all the various companies to have a flourishing ecosystem. they may choose to tax developers. that would be a good thing, you'd know where you stood.  

Q: somethign about valuation
A: appsaholic offers ability to see the bids, the questions, the CPM for aps. Setting value abstractly on aps is silly, the value of an ap is what someone will pay for.

Q: is selling poop a stable business model
A:   I prefer selling clicks and answers. People want to do things they can't do in real life, but can't. everyone wants to throw food at each other. boozmail. college kids can't send drinks, they are underage.. is it sustainable? I'm not goign to do that, but kids in school, there is a rhyme and reason why they are using the aps. it doesn't look like viacom. it doens't look at a real media company, it looks silly. but engagement levels are out of control.



it's pretty clear video game knowledge is going to be very applicable.

I missed the second talk, see http://www.geekdaily.org for jim's write up. also, slides:

Now, Lance; Rock you are the smarted developers on Facebook, there is pretty much no question

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

• aps support engagement with friends
• aps are more viral
• third party distribution is allowed - on MS you get blocked
  
• facebook even allows you to create ad network within

brand distribution on facebook

• building superwall

• CONCEPT FRIDAY 6/15
  
• DESIGN FRIDAY
• IMPLEMENTATION 3 DAYS
• ADVERTSING 6/18
• VIRAL GROWTH 3 WEEKS
• caplock off
  

• 2 million users!
• all about social graph

150K without graph, 1M with.  radically better platform to build on.
without API horoscope 300K creations. with api, horoscopes 2M in 30 days. 7x more
Adoption is hard.. it's a short head, and a long tail and their is very little value in the tail.

• compensate via traditional means
• showing the Yahoo graph again: music video was flat, then they went to RockYou for distribution, about half the pick up (800K - 2M in a few days) was distribution by Rockyou installed aps, the other was viral tuning (see earlier blog post about Ro)
• you can all virally tune, but otherwise promotion and integration with major aps requires buy in
• facebook has the best distribution platform
• 7x better than myspace
• distribution is still hard
• only 1% succeed
• third party distribution ensures success
• not possible on myspace

QUESTIONS

• amazon's a3 service great for bandwidth/server issues with facebook, but facebook hosts most so it's not too bad, mostly database scaling problems.
  
• best success is viral tuning, doing things like color of button, label of button (best is continue -->)
  

Social networks and platforms

• discussion started in 2003, when it was around friendster
• things have changed significantly
• question was "is htis somethign new" or a feature like friendster is just match.com with a feaure of adding friends.
• temporal history
• the ability to hack in and add widgets
• it wasn't a design feature, it was a flaw in the system, the inability to turn off javascript
• ning: a different conception-- platform for building any kind of social network
• facebook- first platform with a broad social graph
• why are social networks platforms?
• social networks have key data that is useful to use in applications
• friendster as dating tool
• despite WoW, most people care about the life they have here
• enables richness on applicaoitns people care about

note: 10 min in, and he hasn't mentioned linkedin once!

• myspace and facebook
• integrates includes of widgets
• something like a graph of linages
• no access to a real state of relationships
• and no access to key data
• no platform access
• no access ot communicatoin or newsfeeds
• facebook and ning
• ning:program your own social network
• control of policy, set up features
• facebook: build on your massive social graph
• aquire customers
• leverage key relationships
• leverage existing communication scheme
• facebook and linkedin: different use cases
• search: on facebook you see their picture and what networks they belong to, linkedin shows a professional bio (controlled by user)
• answers: very different kinds of questions, facebook are a way to be witty and fun, LI more about knowledge
  
• they appear farther into the graph,
  
• you get broader answers
• answers show up on the profile, so questions tend to be longer, better
  
• messaging
• brokerage vs. general sharing
• where is there interesting overlap
• public profile presence
  
• potential business applications on the social graph
• ONE GRAPH TO RULE THEM ALL?
• will there be one social grpah platform?
• is htere one social graph? is there one graph that can handle multiple relationship types?
• Reid thinks there will be multiple graphs
• multiple social graphs, the semantics of the connection
• odd population of graphs, such as 1out of ever 7 people in brazil are on orkut
• one graph that includes all the relationships is a blogger dream, too much overhead and a tech vision not a human one
• it may be important to have different rules for different relationships: freinds, professional, family, religeous...
• a massive platform does not require the truth of one graph

facebook platform possibilities

• currently many communication tools
• i,e, many walls, many variations of poking, many gifts, mail
• games
• comparing people (how well do you know yoru friends, who's a movie star)
• music and movies

futre possibilities

• iterations off current use cases
• interesting to see how friending aps work
• honesty box

what's new?

• theory of platforms is enable tons of creativity
• 90% of everything is crap
  
• then, what other aps might be useful in 1:1, 1:X
• are there limits to how many aps a user will have?
• rising above the noise
• why facebook has changed to metric of active users rather than installed
• how do you create something sustainable, monetizable
  
• areas that haven't worked so far
• business
• politics
• money
• the challenge of the second act (.e. jibjab, 1st act only)

economics

• today, parallels to the internet gold rush
• CPI installs
• run of site ad inventory
• ad network agregation
• challenges today (much built on hope)
  
• interuptive advertising
• incented installations
• future possibilities
• target ads
• virtual currencies
• platform innovation?
• developers - will care a lot about having economics evolve
  
• facebook - need to have sustainable businesses on it
• what will be the case
• low cost aps with sufficiant sustaining appeal
• applications that fit the facebook use case
• evolution of key use cases dang he's obsessed with use cases
• what is still up in the air
• establishment of substantially new use cases
• major applications
• massive competition a la the web
• someone will try to give away something you charge for
• at least three people will copy anything that works
• competition from companies and individuals

facebook and the web

• new patterns of email and communication
• new cycle of communication: the genius of facebooks photosharing
• tagging is open to anyone, so you can be tagged as being on a photo you didn't take, and your friends will be updated
• success in many to many power like this
  
• look forward to application the replicate that genius
  

• future of discovery on the web?

• discover through friends
• certainly discovery of people's social lives

• applicaitons and ht epaltform
• can one website be everything? (remember when AOl tried ot be the web)

summery

many interesting new entrepreneurs out of college will build on facebook
interesting ecosystem between websites and facebook applications

• ilike, flixter
• websites establishing their position, i.e. yahoo hiring rockyou for Ymusic

economics will be a real issue- keep costs low!
constant newness will be important for entertainment

QUESTIONS
note: all paraphrased! I'm not a transcriber...

Q: why no linkedin facebook ap to merge our informaiton? Also craigs list - fear, or lack of interest?
R: we have a lightweight one, that has almost no traction like most biz aps, but their bumpersticker aps does have it because its a social ap. The question is degree of interest. for example, no one wants search bars that aren't Y or G. You can't just build whatever and it'll work. it's ROI. rules: big companies can only two or three things a year, and that's true for small companies, and it provides niches for startups.
We will do something if it proves useful to our goal of making people's business lives better.

Q: no idea, confusing
R: in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. in theory there will be social commerce, and it'll be social sharing. But people change, markets change, so ... water tends ot flow wher eit most easily goes, and hte interesting popular aps follow walls, poking, etc... you'll likely see more of that. However, there could be a interesting game that bridges that gap. Thus far it's a long time

Q: I'm curious about yrou unique postion as an angel invester and helpign companies move throughthis unique space. Should some companies focus on facebook vs web presence
R: I'm a bit nerveous about the aps on their today will get to the depth that will lead to VC-- that's a 1M company, meanging facebook AND web. there will be angel things that will ge tfinanced and get traction. VC general partners will do 3 things a year, so they want big returns. so generally thinking is web, but some folks will gamble since thats part of VC. in the valley some gamble because that's how hte game works, but for VC my advice is web still.

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

• leverage your aps to build audience for other aps

key takeaways for viral growth

• Viewer focus:
  
• problem with user-focus, leads too many features. viewer focus instead-- the receiver form a invite is critical.
• mistake of one flow- landing page has five options, it's too much to think about. viewer shouldn't think, just add.
• you don't want a new user to have to be creative. just add.
  
• because you can only send to ten users, you need to land all ten
  
• Simplicity
• fewer features to start
  
• Novelty
• first time ap with viral nature in a space wins the space.
  
• First mover advantage
• there is a attention space to be owned. Once someone has an ap, they won't change to another look alike.
  
• Their horoscope is much worse yet has 6M to a 1/2M by the next competitor. viral tuning.
  
• universal applicability
• the more universally human, the longer the adoption curve
• appealing to 1%, 10% or more of the population
• rockyou.com essentially abandoned, because facebook so much more effective
• dogbook has 4 times users than dogster.

Building viral engagement

1. new users ->build clean flows
• you loose 30% with registration
2. direct friends-->deliver clear value prop
• as soon as someone links to ap, link to invite flow.
  
• superlatives, as soon as you add it asks you "who is most likely to go to jail" then invite flow.
• one sentence: no one reads
• example: for an event ap, who are your drinking buddies? then gets you to invite and set up a meet up
• boring messaging: big john joined water balloon, want to add it?, instead Big John hit you with a water balloon, want to hit him back?
  
3. indirect friends-> focus on messagingh
• engaging notifications
  
4. interesting parties-> allow universal use

ad networks on facebook

• rockyou
• socialmedia
• cubics
• appfuel

things to consider

• total potential throughput of ad network
• quality of ads
• ad copy-> makeit actionable
• viral tuning is still key

takeaways for growth

• self-expression vs engagement
• cross promotion is key
• integration is good proxy
• first mover advantage
• build with new users in mind
• engagement can generate virality

Rodney Rumford up. "The user perspective" I'm doing a much worse job due to food in my stomach. :\

• part of top friends success was a full time community manager/customer care person who answered every question, fixed every bug.
• email notification apparently going away. facebook is throttling back to avoid spamminess
• minifeed, newsfeed-- optimize messaging, optimize images
• preselected 20
  
• find a way to get your ap into the wall "hung on the wall"
• Get something to measure behavior... need analytics
• consider setting up a group for your product/service even before the ap's live. Private or public. Public gives you more ops to promote
• "all things D" by mosberg does videos
• videos jump off the page, can be shared, commented. videos get shared more.
  
• you can open up photos and videos to membership.
  
• understand and use richness of groups, e.g. phototagging
• example Yahoo Music Videos uses group&ap, fluff freinds
  
• Allow users ways to express themselves within the ap, for example in food fight they can chose and even suggest food to be thrown.

Marketing opportunities: using facebook to extend your brand.
Great example: the bob dylan ap.

• lead generation
• brand extension
• commerce - facebook is not good at this yet.
  
• customer engagement
  
• traffic
• brand loyalty
• frictionless WOMA
• groups
• applications
• adverting

8 steps to facebook engagement

1. start at the end
   
• get it live fast so you can learn from users fast
  
2. business opportunities and objectives
• know why you are building it
  
3. compelling and engaging application 10K foot
   
• measure the users reactions, quant and qual
4. application strategy 1K foot
• make sure you engage the way facebook users want
  
5. application build
• make sure it looks like facebook.
  
6. nurturing of users
• core is self expressions and
• sharing
• Know your audience and nurture that passion
  
7. continual improvement and measurement

updates come tuesday night at midnight
register as a developer so you can access the network, IRC, forums.. its a great community
do not tell anyone when you are working on an ap. when you release it, release only to other developers first.  it's very very easy to steal aps.
no one will tell you when your ap is approved and gone live, but they will notify you if it's rejected.
clever hippo is a great ap search tool, better than the bad facebook one. 

 

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

• because it was closed to only .edu addys, facebook has a high level of authenticity (and/or expectation of)
• Altura expects facebook to be the winning social platform, as windows was the winning OS
• a known problem is because it started as a college network, profiles aren't appropriate for parents, bosses, etc
• new ap coming out will allow you to group your friends (assumed is it'll also limit access by group)
• He sees that as a nail in the coffin for LinkedIn
• as business people come on to facebook, LinkedIn loses traction
  
• the nature of social networks is they tend to own a country (orkut on brazil and india, friendster owns Philippians) Facebook is looking to own US, canada
• created a profile, and designed his top friends list to prove his reputation
  
• Facebook employees are forbidden to friend you unless they know you fairly well.  They can't be a collector.
  
• "I am hungry" ap sold for 20K, though originally on ebay was only 2K valued. Facebook ap to allow you to find out which of your friends are hungry so you can grab lunch together.
  
• part of value is potential to advertisers, i.e. macdonals, outback steakhouse can get a jumpstart on a userroup
• gross! he says you could buy and rebrand an ap, for example mcDs could buy I am Hungry, and one day a profile would suddenly have I am hungry replaced with I'm loving it, find a mcD's near you. So much for authenticity.
• Do not put up a ap that is only useful for a single person (i.e. dolphin bumpersticker) but is better with people, such as waterfight. What made it even more viral was getting access to locked items as you use it more. e.g. if you throw X times, you get access to a watergun, then a hose, then...
  
• it's trivial to create a facebook ap-- really only profile page and canvas page. the profile page needs to not be too dynamic. the canvas page is where you have fun. 
  
• better if things are standard; facebook has helped with that such as standard invite page
• you can use the standard ad networks that are on facebook
• cost-per-install advertising (like the first wave of miners selling the next wave their shovels)
• CPI (40-60 cents)
  
• You almost need to buy installs to get your ap critical mass. (Duh, of course if you build it they won't come)
• You have to measure metrics. almost every ap will get 200-300 users immediately. the point is to get to tipping when numbers start to double.
  
• he suggests even using facebook as a test arena. you can get feedback, development cost is lower.
• critical to have a great graphic for your application.
  
• Flyers
• CPM ones don't work, expensive
  
• flyers pro are targeted, look hopeful. tested with waterfight, and much better. you only pay for clicks. Allows for testing different environments.
  
• The problem with ads is that they are always in the same place, so they suffer from banner blindness. (women in bikinis worked. wonder why?)
• Flyers don't affect much as viral nature. better a good ap than advertising.
  
• There is a spammometer, that measures if you are behaving too spammy, and if you hit 4 green dots, you are shut down. nice!
  

From a hilarious David Pogue column (read the whole thing for more funny anecdotes)

We reviewers aren't supposed to divulge our official opinions until the article appears in print. But years ago, Benjy, a P.M., asked me what I thought of his product, a database, while the review was still in progress. I said cautiously, "Well, I need to keep working with it."

But Benjy continued to prod. "Any ideas for our next version?"

"Well," I shrugged, "a list view would be nice."

Forty-eight hours later, a FedEx man appeared at the door, bearing a new copy of the program: version 1.1. It was identical to the version I'd been testing -- except now it had a list view. Some programmer had had a very busy weekend.

Benjy called. He thanked me for the list-view idea and asked if there was anything else I'd like to see in the program. I hedged; he prodded.

"O.K., well," I managed, "it'd be nice if you could mark and print subsets of your cards."

You guessed it: within two days, version 1.1.1 arrived, complete with mark-and-print features.

This loony cycle went around a few more times, the little company writing the software to accommodate the review. I knew this wasn't quite the way the reviewer-vendor relationship was supposed to work -- but I really thought the software was getting better. At last the review deadline came, and Benjy stopped adding new features. That program was probably the only version 1.1.1.1.1 ever sold.

Another brilliant use of crowdsourcing: reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books

Joining the Republic of Yahoo

Yahoo is doing something that is almost impossible for a company over a thousand—innovating from within. And they’re doing it like a start-up—throwing a half-baked idea with insufficient documentation and not enough server support out into the world. I think we should stand up and applaud. It takes balls.

Okay, admittedly I'm stirring the pot here, but I was just thinking: why do we care so much about RSS?

• The vast majority of folks can't use it
• A large majority of those who can, set it up then ignore it
• It doesn't filter, it just puts all the crap in one place
• It kills a content provider's ability to survive, if they provide full feeds
• It annoys customers if it only provides teasers
• Adding feeds is typically a painful, annoying process, even with myyahoo, feedburner, etc

According to Alexa, moving B&A to the PublicSquare platform bumped up it's traffic significantly and it has maintained the higher number. I'm curious if anyone has theories about why. Before we were on Movabletype...

I'm surprised how often I see the word "versus" in email. Photoshop vs. illustrator, personas vs. ethnography, email address vs. username, and blogtools vs. CMS. When I was a freshman in art school, I learned a useful word: dichotomy. It was years later I learned phrase "false dichotomy" and I'm wondering how many people have yet to learn it. In particular, I'm thinking of those working in new media/participatory media/social media.

I keep reading how blogs will make traditional publishing irrelevant. I also read how traditional publishing already provides a reliability and consistency that will show blogs to be merely a fad; the geocities of our time. And just over a year ago (I know because my domain registration notice just came) I sat down with friend Lars and added the word false to that particular dichotomy by thinking up PublicSquare.

A dichotomy is defined as "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities."

1. Almost everybody talks about blogs and big media (usually thinking about New York Times or Fox news, depending on who has annoyed you most recently). But publishing is currently taking the form of a continuum, from blogs to big media, with wikis, jotspot, writerly, writeboards, scoop and many others filling in the space between one maverick vomiting up ideas to a group refining raw facts into something palatable.

2. Mutually exclusive: Bloggers are adding editors, Om Malik for example, and newspapers are adding-- nay, forcing-- reporters to blog. Drupal has blog modules and articles modules and the difference is slight.

3. Contradictory. um. yeah. How contradictory are these two writing forms? When I was looking at them recently, they both depended on one thing for success: a person who can consistently write, and write well. Of course someone who writes every day, but only on their cat's antics and their hair challenges is an aspect of the blog, but is this person really making Arthur Schultzberger tremble in his shoes? A journalist and a (successful) blogger are much of a muchness, except one gets fact checked and edited.

Where revolution is truly happening in my opinion is in the birth of collaborative publishing tools that enable new behaviors in writing, often children of the wiki family. Where blogger and other blog platforms were simply (though certainly impactfully) ways to make writing significantly easier, and came form a long line of tools form the printing press to the electric typewriter to microsoft word. They are all technology to get technology out of the way.

But wikis, writerboard, slashdot and scoop are all trying to get groups to be smart together, to write together and they give birth to a new kind of writing *and* giving voice to one-hit-wonders of authorship.

More on this coming soon... .

Last night, I went to see John Markoff talk about his new book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer.

It was an oddly rambling talk for a New York Times reporter, and he was a bit cowed by the audience, packed with the who's who of software and personal computing of whom he had written (as groucho marx quipped, "Is this an audience or a lynch mob?"). But he did have an interesting thesis, suggesting that the revolution of software was one of many great revolutions of the sixties, of equal importance and effect to the political upheaval and drug experimentation. The idea was nicely upheld by the following talk, a panel of luminaries discussing their memories of the changes that occurred before the two steves hunkered down in their famous garage.

It reminded me of something I had read by Kurt Vonnegut, I think it was in Cat's Cradle. He wrote that there were two revolutions in the sixties. The first one tried to change the world politically through demonstrations and activism. The second happened when the first one failed; people gave up on the external word and turned to drugs to change their internal word instead. This one, he reported, also failed.

I couldn't help thinking about this idea as I listened. These amazing young men in aging bodies talked about the fire, the excitement, the possibilities that were there as they built the first personal computers, networks, virtual societies the world had ever seen. They were all visionaries, working in a limited media but with their eyes firmly fixed twenty years in the future.

Which revolutionary philosophy were they part of, activism or escapism? Much of the computer work was looked to as a way to change the external world, to help support community activism. It was seen as a tool to replace 3x5 cards and pamphlets. But it becomes clear as you listen to them talk that the computers were also a second world, much like the second world that LSD opened doors to. The computers were bridges to a new country that the computers were building. And the men themselves (and they were and are apparently mostly men) straddle escapism with active involvement in the world of here and now.

One could argue that the computer revolution was both the only successful revolution of the sixties as well as the one that has changed world society the most. It's technology that reveals political agendas these days, with hackers and bloggers leaving nothing sacred, and supports activism through meetups and political commentary; but it is also technology that allows escapist "trips" via movie special effects and gameworlds like Second Life. These trips leave the body unraveged and the mind aching to create a new better world. Technology is only a tool, but it is a tool like LSD or birth control that is capable of changing who we are singularly and collectively.

Computer scientists of the sixties like Captain Crunch were as happy crunching code as they were riding elephants in India. They lived life and they created it. The myth of the pale programmer walled behind a stack of diet coke cans faded for me in the face of this history, and the potential of a human who both invents and changes the world was made clear. I woke this morning joyful to have one foot in cyperspace, and one foot firmly in the mud of earth, and knowing I needn't pick between them and, in fact, the world is better if none of us ever do.

A9/Amazon is sporting a new Yellow Pages feature, whose claim to fame is its use of photos...

Palo Alto-based A9 said it compiled the index by covering tens of thousands of miles in trucks equipped with digital cameras and global positioning system, or GPS, receivers.

Pretty amazing... if... okay, I know it is still in beta, but as far as I can tell not a single image I can recognize is right.

Bistro Elan is exactly the kind of business you would want photos for. They have no conspicuous sign, and are nearly hidden by vines. But a search on Palo Alto showed "Bistro Elan" as a listing, and when I clicked it I got this.

Can you imagine showing up at these people's house?

"Hi, reservation for six!"

The real Bistro Elan, shown here (I took pictures up and down California Avenue to kill time while Philippe made copies in Kinko's.) Have fun comparing the real photos with the ones Amazon is currently showing. I'm sure this is a temporary issue, but it's been temporarily wrong all weekend. And with the extensive news coverage, I'm sure I'm not the only one to spot issues. Is this really how they want to launch a ground-breaking feature that introduces their customers to a new body of competency? Hopefully no one is really using it yet.

As an aside, Bistro Elan is a terrific place to eat. One of the best in Palo Alto, IMO.

In the Denmark theme, I was clued into this awesome tool by Lars the GMail Drive shell extension. Basically gmail can now be protable storage.

Matt writes "So what are your top 10 features for blog software?"

It depends what you mean by that. The top ten are the minimum you need to blog:

1. create an entry
   
2. edit an entry
   
3. delete an entry
   
4. add picture or file to entry
   
5. archive
   
6. customize look and feel (skinning)
   
7. categorize by topic
   
8. syndicate
   
9. search (for readers of blog)
   
10. comments
    

(I may have missed some, as it's easy to forget as one becomes acclimated to a system)

I suppose if you built this, you have a blogging system.
But next up is where it gets trickier. I'd list

1. "blog this" functionality, via bookmarklette, toolbar or right click. (I'd love to see it included in snagit, but I might be alone in my interest)
   
2. Search and replace
   
3. Backup (i.e. import/export)
   
4. Metadata editing (date, author, etc)
   
5. Publish in future/set publishing dates
   
6. Full design control over look/feel/items (including what does or doesn't show up, and in what order it shows up, and in what groupings)
   
7. Taxonomy management, including faceted and multi-hierarchal classification, as well as "easy" classifications like alpha-numeric. Descriptions, reparenting
   
8. Photo albums
   
   1. upload full directory
      
   2. name album
      
   3. delete multiple
      
   4. rotate multiple
      
   5. caption multiple
      
   6. keyword/categorize multiple
      
   7. manage layout (row#, col#)
      
   8. ordering of pictures (#1, #2, etc)
      
   9. blog a single linked to album, or single
      
   10. choose "cover"
       
   11. Password protect albums on an album by album basis
       
   12. editing pictures (least important)
       
       1. crop
          
       2. B/w
          
       3. red-eye
          
       4. darken/lighten
       obviously I'm thinking about albums a lot lately. most people don't realize how managing multiples is critical.
   
   
9. Workflow for zines (this would be longer than the photo-album subset. I'll hold off for now in describing)
   
10. Community moderation & reputation management
    

Boom, i'm out. There are so many things I could think of though

1. design wizard (i'll design it, if someone out there wants to build it)
   
2. permissions on entries
   
3. faceted filtering for search results
   
4. mini subblogs for embedding in main blog, for music/booklist/blogroll
   
5. easy installer with permission setting, etc
   

and more.

But these really depend on who the audience is... baby bloggers might be better off with easy install/design wizard than fancy taxonomy management and workflow. Zines can't live without them.

So what are *yours*?

drupal is not easy. Reading the forums reveals I am not alone. Reading this write up explains why.

BUT if many of you who need the AMAZING range of featuers Drupal offers go off and work on installing it, and make helpful recommendations on how it could be fixed, we could have something here folks.

btw, very little posting from me while I wrastle with Drupal. Except occasional cursing, and that mostly here

from the facinating essay :: phpPatterns() - Templates and Template Engines

"So your web designer decided for you that the "username" variable will be 25 characters max? Isn't that your job? "

no.

Aside form that, i feel like drupal is drawing me into a strange new world, in which web designers do the code, but can't actually design a usable interface. huh.

I'm installing drupal on widgetopia to prepare for a more group-blog experience. some weirdness may occur. nothing to do with MT's pricing (mefi says it better than I can) a lot to do with taxonomy control, reputation managers, comment spam...

A friend recommends Browser Cam :: Browser screen captures in any browser, any version, any operating system.

I'm hurting with spam. I'm looking for help.

I foudnthis facinating descriptio fo how one tool works: SpamBayes: Bayesian anti-spam classifier written in Python.

"The system then uses these clues to examine new messages.
For instance, the word "Nigeria" appears often in spam, so you could use a spam filter which identifies anything with that word in it as spam. But what if your business involves writing a guidebook on Nigerian Wildlife Conservation? Clearly a more flexible approach is necessary. Additionally spammers will adapt their content over time and will no longer use the word "Nigeria" (or the words "Lose Weight Fast", or any number of other common lines). Ideally the software will be able to adapt as the spam changes.
So, that is what SpamBayes does. It compares the spam and the ham and calculates probabilities. "

From Yahoo! News - The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever

"What distinguishes a simply bad product from the truly awful? Sometimes it's a dreadful user interface. Other times it's a product that successfully addresses a particularly daunting problem - yet one shared by relatively few people. And often competitive or financial pressure forces new products to market before they're ready - full of bugs and horribly unusable. Still other times, the products arrive too early. Eventually they become a success, but often after the founding company has been ruined. "

MT Extensions: MT-Medic 1.34

for those of you who don't follow all the Mt activity that closely, do look at this extension: a nifty little script that overcomes one of Mt's flaws-- password retrieval and resetting.

Looks like I complained too soon... movabletype.org: News announces that 3.0 will feature "Comment registration. As a response to both comment spam and to the increased usage of Movable Type on large community sites, we'll be adding the option to restrict comments to registered users. "

the question of whether the underlying architecture is stable and scalable is still an open one, but at least this accursed spam might be stopped.

From Yahoo! News - What, You Don't Have Broadband Yet? "I've got a buddy who's equally into high-tech gadgets, and he's crawling around the Web with a pokey dial-up modem. The funny thing is, he doesn't seem to mind--except on days when I send him hefty Adobe Acrobat files. You know why? Because he watches video on his TV and listens to music on his stereo--not on his PC, as broadband providers might wish."

A recent study by Strategy Analytics surveying 525 broadband households who upgraded to broadband found out that people upgrade for pragmatic rather than gee-whiz reasons, including:

Freeing up a phone line
A constant connection
You can share it (via a network)
Helps with dealing with Spam
Faster downloads of files (PPT, etc.)
Keeps your PC up-to-date (downloading software updates)

interesting study, interesting story....

If you don't have MT, or if you have MT but do't have comments emailed to you or some other notfication device, you may have missed three rather insideous effords. one is a comment spammer, who writes what apprear to be moderately pleasent comments that have links from the author but the author's name links to a porn site. Less sneaky is an indivdual who simple sticks the same annoying email spam on viagra etc in your comments feild. Most subtle of all are a number of folk who are commenting in a way that suggests a lack of interest in the topics but an interest in getting a google page rank up. Jay Allen has an excellent hack to handle the first two: Killing Comment Spam for Dummies (i've linked to the ADD write up, for people like me).

The third is with us as long as Google relies heavily on blogs for ranking, and people want to beat the system.

I'd like to request MT build spam blocking techniques into the tools (such as incorproating Jay's hack and maybe also allowing you to turn off author links, or auto-populate them. )

And maybe Google should learn to not harvest comment URL's.

I'm not sure why someone isn't suing Lindows.com.

Despite the incredibly derivative UI, I suspect they are on to something. Click and run makes sense.

I'd like to try it out. I hear Kmart is selling computers for a couple hundred bucks with it installed....

I'm wondering which RSS Reader I should adopt.

ieSpell - Spell Checker add-on for Internet Explorer

"ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage."

Don Norman on CHI-WEB

"NOTE: bio-identifiers are still primitive. They don't work for everyone. And several people have managed surprisingly simple ways of spoofing them (the schemes range from photos, to recordings, to clever ways of lifting latent prints to breathing lightly across the fingerprint pad thereby re-enabling the fingerprints of the last previous user!)"

Chris Macgregor's Running from Bears Suggests that "with the release of Flash MX, Flash Remoting and the Flash Communications Server we can offer users:
an experience that is better than HTML
an experience that is faster than HTML
an experience that is cheaper than HTML "

It's an interesting article, and pretty controversial, I'd say, being from the school of context (a.k.a. "it depends") but interesting.

My own thoughts were pretty off topic... flash and html aside, what is the price at Walmart? How is Walmart "fast, good, and cheap" Perhaps by bad labor practices and shoddy goods? Walmartwatch's news clippings show the other side of Walmart, with their "Wal of shame" being particularly illuminating. There is always a price.

the question du jour in the cube farm was how to do Dial Up Modem Simulation.

Enjoy!

I've always admired the brilliant ladies of otivo. Sitesleuth looks like another fine product from those fertile minds.

"Have you always wanted to know how multiple versions of Netscape or MSIE or AOL or WebTV react to your HTML/JavaScript/DHTML? Sitesleuth will answer all of those questions and more about Web browser behavior."

Much like my homepage, Audi Redesigned uses information modules that rearrange themselves upon browser sizing. James asks if this will make a difference to usability. I wonder.

Personally I think this is a difficult but effective way to use screen real estate. Why difficult? It makes designing into a game of tetris...

I know inept hacks read this site (at least, until they realize it's irrelevent...)
This paper shows how bad design beguiles users into sharing their entire hard drive.

Tip of the hat to Ziya.

In this mornings email, a lovely link to this MT trick: Works in Progress - Blogdata.

But I will say that the icons are a bit dismaying. They are not intuitable, and one is a misuse of a known icon for "new document." Unlabeled non-standard teensy icons seem like potential trouble to me. But to each, his/her own!

From parc history "In 1970, Xerox Corporation gathered together a team of world-class researchers and gave them the mission of creating "the architecture of information." "

Jakob's been mourning the big research labs and looking at the list Parc complishments, I can see why Parc's quiet (and confusing) passing/mutating might be alarming. Will the new Parc be as innovative as the old? I hope so. It's always been my fantasy to work there, even though I know I have a deficit of letters after my name. I'd like it to continue on the hill to fuel those dreams, though.

... then don't do that.

"An Anti Pattern is a pattern that tells how to go from a problem to a bad solution"