Being Digitally Close

There is an article in the NY Times a few weeks ago called “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” and i think it’s one of the best pieces i’ve read in a long time at explaining why Facebook Status, News Feed, Twitter and other new digital platforms are useful and popular.

The online area that the article talks about is “incessant online contact” or as some call it, “ambient awareness.” In the offline world people pick up on moods by little things like body language, sighs, little comments, etc..  In the online world this is being done by microblogging tools like Twitter (140 character updates), Dopplr (where are you traveling?), Tumblr (what web items do you like), and Facebook’s Status Feed.  The article asks the question that i get asked all the time, Who cares?:

For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your Image representing Twitter as depicted in CrunchBaseblow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb? The growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme — the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world.

This is indeed how many people view it.  But the genius of the article is how it explains the subtle usefulness of the information:

Each day, Haley logged on to his account, and his friends’ updates would appear as a long page of one- or two-line notes. The updates were indeed pretty banal. One friend would post about starting to feel sick; one posted random thoughts like “I really hate it when people clip their nails on the bus”; another Twittered whenever she made a sandwich — and she made a sandwich every day. Each so-called tweet was so brief as to be virtually meaningless.

But as the days went by, something changed. Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

This is exactly how it works.  Now, i don’t have ESP through this but i do enjoy the knowledge of how my friends’ lives are progressing. These tools have enabled that to happen and it has certainly enhanced my relationships with them.

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Google's Shot Across the Bow

It’s been a while since there’s been a major power play by someone in Silicon Valley.  A big “take over the world” type of action.  I think Google’s latest Chrome is that – reminiscent of the old days of Netscape, Sun and others who were all trying to take over the world.  

Fred Wilson does a good job of describing how their 3 latest projects: Chrome, Android, and Cloud/Gears are positioning them to be the OS of the future.  Saying

 

 

  1. They are building a modern browser, Chrome, that resembles an operating system as much as a browser.  It’s not that Google wants to build a better version of Internet Explorer or Firefox. They want to build a better environment for running web apps.
  2. They are building a mobile operating system, Android, that is also designed for running web apps in a mobile environment. I think in time, Google’s Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was to the Mac. The iPhone laid out many of the killer mobile device innovations, but its a closed device, a closed carrier relationship, and even a closed application store. Android will take all of those good ideas and put them on every device, with every carrier, and in partnership with every app developer
  3. Google is all about the cloud. They have developed all of their apps in what goes for the cloud these days. They’ve build a great cloud computing platform in App Engine. 
These three things ensure that Google will be a major player.  With other launches of OpenSocial and such don’t display the raw power of Google but here it is.  I love it and believe they will be the biggest and most powerful company standing – over facebook, Microsoft and others – when the dust settles. 

Twitter the most pure social network

Some social network thoughts…..

I’ve been using Twitter more and more lately and i have to say that i’m really enjoying it.  I love the simplicity and ease of use.  The fact that they limit the characters, is only text and is just a list of your friends thoughts makes it always interesting.  Of course, Facebook used to be like that for me too.  I’m not sure if it will ever catch on for the masses.  The fact that only a subsection of my friends use it makes it more useful for me so i don’t get too many updates.  I’m not sure if it’s fun enough for everyone just yet.  I do think the mobile aspect of it could tip it over the edge. I wasn’t that into Twitter until i started doing it on my iPhone and then it became a must-have app.  I still don’t see much difference between the AIM away-message, the facebook status message and Twitter other than the mobile/cell-ness of Twitter and the simplicity.

More and more i think facebook will develop into a utility instead of a place of expression.  I think it will be like the yellow pages – where is a tool people use to look up people, find out about friends of friends and find phone numbers, emails, etc.  It’s a social address and people directory. It’s a tool

MySpace continues to be about self-expression and i think that’s a good differentiator as they could never beat facebook at their game.  However, i do believe self-expression can be done even better.  Something like Uber or Virb or something could be better – if it had more of Tumblr-type experience int it.  We did some focus groups the other day and everyone used both Facebook and MySpace.  They liked Myspace b/c it really represented them – it was a good badge but they hated the sketchiness about it.  “Too many old weird guys” they said.  They had facebook b/c everyone had it and it was easy to connect but it didn’t seem like it was fun to them.  It was interesting.

What are your thoughts

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Phoenix is rising

My favorite band of the past few years, Phoenix, is coming out with a new album and have posted the first track on Facebook of all places.  Go check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phoenix/19227674432

Facebook let's you add to your mini-feed

Lots of folks do stuff around the web that is outside of Facebook. For instance, i post lots of Flickr photos and i save web sites to delicious. I’ve always loved the Facebook News Feed as it does a good job of letting me know what my friends are up to. Today it got even better because Facebook now allows me to add Flickr, delicious, Yelp and Picassa actions into my mini-feed. Nice

This is great for a variety of reasons. First, it shows that facebook isn’t the walled garden that AOL was. Facebook is a walled garden, but only for certain things (social graph, photos, social messaging, etc.). For everything else, they are willing to open up and reciprocate. They made a platform to allow users to interact with their assets (people) and have a messaging feature so emails can come in and out but not replace. If they were a basketball team, they may not go around the country and play everyone but at least now they’ll let other come to their court and play a game.

Second, it shows they aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. It could be very easy for Facebook to believe that they can build better products than everyone else and try to compete. This is what AOL did for email, video, destination sites (Sports, News), communities, photos, maps, music, etc – and they lost big. Facebook is clearly maintaining its focus on social activities and even recognizes the difference between their photo app (social photo sharing, not for storage) and Flickr’s (photo blogging, archival) and embraces that. Kudos to them.

Speaking of handing out kudos, you should watch this video (below) of Andrew Bogut’s high fives after his free throws. Not everyone is that eager to congratulate someone.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc11PUnFgkQ]

Bebo for $850 million. Now Hi5?

This is an interesting graph which shows Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and Hi5. Clearly one of them is stuggling.

However, what Bebo has that Hi5 does not is a English speaking user base which is able to be monetized. AOL has a slew of Advertising companies that must be just itching to get their hands on the Bebo inventory. I’m sure there was plenty of analysis done such that AOL’s pretty sure they’ll earn that $850 back and more

Facebook is a combination of web 2.0 companies

Facebook is a combination of Web 2.0 companies. That’s one way to look at it. The flip side – and more accurate – is to say that there are many Web 2.0 companies that are taking a piece or feature of Facebook and making an entire service out of it. Not the most original strategy, but it does seem to work (at least for some).

Obviously the core pieces of Facebook have been companies already and are very common features around the web. Features such as:

  • Facebook Mail: this feature is exactly like regular mail applications and the FB version of mail is becoming more like traditional email every day. You can send mail to anyone (even if they’re not on FB) and soon be able to receive mail there too.
  • Photos: Facebook has the largest photo service on the web and deservedly so as they took the traditional album upload sites like Snapfish/oPhoto and made them social.
  • Events: They made a much better and easier to use Evite service.

These features have been around for a while, so it’s nothing new that they’ve also been standalone companies. The new services are the interesting ones. What i’m thinking of in particular is:

  • Facebook Share: This is a feature that let’s people post items they see around the web on to their facebook profile. New services such as Tumblr let you repost things very easily too. Don’t call it a blog b/c it’s much more lightweight but it is really more or a repost feature with comments – like the Share.
  • Facebook Status: What are you doing right now? This feature has been around on FB for a long time and now the company Twitter has taken that made it more mainstream, with an API and with other features. In fact, i’ve already blogged about how the two are the same.
  • News Feed: The Facebook News Feed is essentially an RSS reader of your friend’s activity. This concept is not lost on everyone else and a few companies are focusing directly on that. Specifically Plaxo & FriendFeed. They allow you to enter in sites that capture your activity and then they repost it to your friends.
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Whether these services can survive as standalone applications, i’m not sure. I’m somewhat doubtful that there is a business there, but if you can get an audience doing these things, you should be able to monetize it.

Obviously, Facebook is not going to build a feature better than a standalone service can (although they often do), but they are able to integrate it into everything they offer. Items like Events work well on Facebook because they are easily shared and posted around FB. This “threading” is crucial for their success. Ultimately Facebook won’t win in trying to be everything to everybody, but they at least have to try to be most of the core services all in one place – and in this respect FB does a great job.

The short head is human, middle fat is social and long tail is algorithmic

This was a quote i found on Chris Anderson’s  – the author of The Long Tail – and it refers to how search will be done in the future.  The short popular stuff will be pre-loaded results by humans, the medium will be populated by friends and the obscure long tail is found by algorithms.  The quote from the blog post is:

“The short head will be human, the fat middle social and the long tail algorithmic” Still, that single sentence is worth another book. I won’t write it, but I’ll bet someone else does.

It is an interesting way to think about it.  Of course, it is all ad-supported and it does make a good case for Mahalo.

Levels of Blogging – where have my blogging friends gone?

Over the past year, I have seen some of my friends (Toby, Kathryn, Sarah, Drew) drop off the blogging scene. Some of them have switched blogs, but some have just switched the way they share information. With the growth of other online tools, it’s becoming much easier to express yourself (sharing ideas, links, and messages) in ways that are easier than blogging.

Because of this trend, this post by Fred Wilson and image really stuck a chord in me:

You can see how facebook and MySpace and the ease of use there is going to take people away from glogging. I know a few of my friends have been casualties.

Personally, i like blogging still as it allows me to fully explain my thoughts and ideas whereas the other mechanisms are smaller chunks and just single thoughts. I do them too. But with facebook there is no nuance. Of course, not everyone has the time to explain themselves – at least that’s the number 1 excuse. To which i’ll reply, if you have time to debate a topic for hours – which all of you do – then you have time to stick it on your blog. Get off your ass

MySpace vs. FB & the Top Social Network Sites

As with most people, i’m obsessed with Facebook these days.  But is it the best?

From a numbers perspective, MySpace is still the big dog. I read an article yesterday from danah about how Facebook is attracting more affluent, middle-class users whereas MySpace indexes higher for less privileged users.  It’s a good read (article is here)

I also read today that Friendster is still hanging around.  The top social networks in the world are:

  1. MySpace
  2. Facebook
  3. Hi5
  4. Friendster
  5. Bebo

Hi5 is a huge social network in Europe.  I’ve heard from my Romanian friends that this is the go-to place for them.  From what i can tell, it’s a pretty standard site.   Bebo is a UK site that focuses on music, similar to how MySpace does. I think they’re a little more sophisticated in terms of functionality but they definitely haven’t hit it out of the park the way facebook has.

Friendster is a strange one though. It’s functionality is nothing special but it has been around for a long time and has lots of users.  The problem is that it doesn’t have anything unique or special about it and there’s no reason to go back every day.  It is less sketchy than MySpace but less cool than facebook.  It rides somewhere in the middle.  Social networking is such a large phenomenon that there is probably room for a player like this.

What do you think?  What has been your experience with these sites?