Category — social media

As a preface, the guys who started Twitter are brilliant, they created a service which no one realized they wanted, and turned it into hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and created an entire ecosystem based around sharing links, emotions, and whats happening right now. They have built a cultural phenomenon, I just don’t believe it will last, at least in its current form.

Twitter has been aggravating me of late.  It seems to be full of self-promoting and self aggrandizing on a scale never seen before. The annoying part is that almost none of the “social media experts” on Twitter are even slightly aware of their actions, and seem to be completely oblivious that their “buy from me” spewing is just a new form of spam.

Yes there are many people sharing useful information and generally contributing to the society that exists within Twitter, but they are getting fewer and farther between. What really bothers me about Twitter is not its populous, but its Soapbox promotion of these experts. That soapbox has people yelling very loud, and as PT Barnum learned, if you yell loud enough some people will listen.  See trending hashtag of the #shooturself - these people are not adding anything.

Twitter holds in itself what Twitter seems to believe to be a new version of Alexander Bell’s telephone. Only they don’t own the lines, or the devices, or even the technology that it runs on. It is just a set of protocols, basically serving as a communal text messaging platform. That observation isn’t news, but what I’m getting at here is that Twitter’s use as a business to its owners and investors is purely as a utility. If it tries to be a media company, it will fail, because it is a fad. A fad that didn’t even truly go mainstream yet, it just caught on with the people *trying* to be cool. Twitter is like the person who used to operate the local switchboard for the telephone companies, as soon as the telecoms figured out how to automate that process, those people were no longer needed. As soon as we figure out that real time sharing of information doesn’t have to all go through the same service, Twitter is toast. What I’m doing right now has nothing to do with Twitter.

There is significant value in the positive information that I garner from my daily perusing of Twitter. Links are great, and the people that I’m interested in the techworld share useful and valuable information daily. But all of that is information I could easily get from RSS feeds, friendfeed, facebook, or a multitude of other options (new services are appearing everyday - like Google Buzz). Right now Twitter holds the illusion of control over that data exchange, but in reality, Twitter is simply the latest iteration of information exchange via the web. First came email, then the http protocol, then instant messaging.  All of those are utility-type services that you can get for free and as soon as another service comes up and reveals that Twitters “control” is merely an illusion, users will shift, and along with them, Twitters value will - from ~$1 billion to zero.

Twitter is as much a business as email is a business. Making email better might be a business, and all of the great auxiliary companies built on Twitter are great businesses, but providing the protocols to send a message across the web is not a business. Well, maybe it was in 1997, but I believe we’ve moved on from that.

Sharing information that is valuable to me, is an important part of our open society, and I believe that Twitter has value, just as email and instant messaging have value - those services are still around today - and flourishing. Those services are not being monetized however, and are corollary parts tied into more extensive offerings.  Twitter has the ability to make it as a large company, but I don’t think its heading down the right path. Right now its walking down that path like its the cock of the walk, and I certainly doesn’t deserve that posture.

I just read an interesting post on Search Engine Land that got me thinking Its titled, Local Search, A Solved Consumer Problem. It takes an interesting perspective on local search, but Mr. Berk is right, from a consumer standpoint, local search is largely solved. But writing a blog post on that, is like writing a blog post announcing that email had taken over snail mail. Local search has been solved ever since the Yellow Pages first began to evolve 40 years ago.

If I want to find “Cantina Restaurant in Saratoga Springs” and I type in “Cantina Restaurant in Saratoga Springs” well, lets just say that Google isn’t in its infancy. When you search for the business you are looking for, you can be pretty damn sure that you will find the name address and phone number in Google (or Bing!) Thats not the issue, and there shouldn’t be a professional related to local search that finds this information enlightening. The issue in local search is finding information about local places, the businesses there, things happening, and what people are talking about. In other words, what are people talking about, what are they doing, and where are they doing it?

The golden triangle (coined from Fred Wilson) is in the answer to the who what where and why questions. If I already know where I want to go, the business I am seeking shouldn’t have to pay or jump through some elaborate hoop to get my business - they’ve already earned it. That problem doesn’t need to be solved. What is interesting to me, and what alot of people I know are working on, is how do I find out what is going on and where to go when I want to try something NEW, or find something I didn’t already know about. If I’m a local business and I’m having to spend time, money and effort reaching the people who already know about me and are looking for me, I’m in trouble. I want to reach the people who know about me but aren’t thinking about me, or the people who are thinking about what I offer but don’t know about me. In other words, I want to reach the consumers that AREN’T actively searching for me (obviously I still want to do business with those seeking me, but that should be inherently solved, and as Matthew pointed out generally has been solved).

There are a lot of potential solutions to this problem coming out. Foursquare,  Loopt, and others let me know where my friends are right now, maybe someplace I love, maybe someplace I’ve never been, but Gary’s there so I might want to check it out. UpNext, and Buzzd are all telling me what is happening near where I am based on my location - right now. Thrillist, FlavorPill, etc tell me where to go this weekend. There are lots of options out there, but there is no ubiquitous brand to seek out when looking for who, what and where locally. That problem is still yet to be solved.

Declaring a problem to be solved is often a silly thing, especially if it is not the incredible invention you just patented that solved said problem. Most of the time, the real innovations don’t solve a problem we even knew we had, they leap right over the prognosticators and create something nobody else even thought of. I didn’t know I had a search problem before I found Google, and that problem is solved (well Bing maybe doesn’t think so). There will always be better ways to organize information, and right now Google is the gatekeeper of information. Google created the solution to organize information, and make it easy to find when I am looking for something specifically. What hasn’t been solved yet, is a way to deliver me what I’m looking for before I even think about what exactly it is I’m looking for. The solution to that problem would be something worth writing about. What you don’t know might not be able to hurt you, but it could be really cool.

Maybe that Tarot Card lady outside my apartment is on to something

The power of your competing with your friends for trophies has been a force since man first evovled from ape. Whoever killed the biggest animal fed the most people, and gained fame throughout the land. Today there are many trophies, many competitions and most of us have a bunch of friends. In today’s world of hyper connectivity, we can stay in touch with friends and acquaintances just as if they lived across the hall. This leads us to follow our innate competitive instincts and make a bunch of stuff over which we can compete peacefully. In this hyer-connected world, we have many examples of how games and trophies become popular, sought after and create successful businesses. The NFL is based on competition, Major League Baseball, UEFA,  The Olympics, all multi-billion dollar businesses built around the peaceful exploitation of competition.

But there are other levels of competition, ranging from who has the nicest car, to who has the most followers on Twitter. Us crazy people spend hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars and massive resources to win the imaginary trophies that the world offers to us. But alot of these games are fun, meaningless ways to interact with your friends and associates. Zombie Toss on Facebook, ReTweeting and now the ultimate example - Foursquare.

Foursquare captures all the potential of Twitter, and makes a fun game around who can go to more places and “check in” You can become the mayor of your favorite coffee shop, win badges for hitting multiple spots in a night, and show off your badges to all of your hermit friends. The intriguing game of checking in and badges is only the front of what could become a brilliant business idea, and I believe will capture the potential value of twitter to many of the small businesses staring aimlessly at a little baby-blue bird.

What Twitter first started out as, and what got me intrigued was the ability to broadcast where I am, to the people who cared. Now Twitter has become much more than that, but Foursquare takes that fundamental use-case, and makes a fun game out of it. It tracks and records where I go, how often I go, and withwhom I go (of course, only when I tell it). This information is absolutely invaluable to small businesses. Deli’s can learn their customers favorite sandwiches, discover problems in their offerings, and find out who their best customers really are. Then they could be able to send out offers to those customers who “checked in” They could build an email database to lure those customers back in. There are so many business applications to Foursquare, so many more obvious ones than for Twitter itself, I would buy Foursquare if I were Twitter - like tomorrow.

Foursquare is a fun application that takes human nature’s desire to see their friends and show off their trophies and turns it into a desire to go out more, tell the world where they are and win some meaningless badges. But all that adds up to great data for small businesses, great marketing opportunities for those businesses and a whole bunch more percieved immediate value than simple twitter feeds (to small businesses). Instead of trolling through twitter searches, I can just go to my business page on Foursquare and see what people are saying - and who’s coming.

I have several great takeaways from Foursquare’s app, but really its fun and it makes me want to go out more so I can check in again. Who doesn’t like badges?

A lot of people wonder how Twitter is going to make money. They certainly have alot of options considering the mass of loyal users they have, but choosing the right one will be key to them transistioning from a cool tool, to a useful and sustainable product. I believe that Twitter will have to charge its users to use it, at least business users (companies) and that Twitter will grow into more of a utility than an application. Just like telephone lines.

Roughly 134 years ago, Bell and Watson struck a chord across some wires and invented the first practical use of the telephone. It would revolutionize the way people communicate, making the world smaller, in an instant you could speak to someone on the other side of the earth. (of course they still had to build that network..) But here we have twitter, and it provides the same type of utility that phone lines do, or email. It is revolutionizing the way people are communicating with each other, only this time - the network (the internet) is already built.

In creating their new Twitter 101 guide to using twitter for businesses (http://business.twitter.com/), twitter is taking its first step in the direction of charging businesses to send specials and deals out to their followers/customers. And that makes sense, particularly if they begin to implement freemium upgrades, additional features, and perhaps guidance and service upgrades for small companies.

The freemium model has worked online for years now, and many of the most successful companies use it to lower their customer acquisition cost to near zero. Its an interesting idea for Twitter, I’m looking forward to seeing how they execute. I know for a fact that, and I’ve seen it first hand across several dozen small businesses - Twitter offers a great service to gain and bring back your customers quick and easy. And thats something worth paying for.

I am spending my first trip to San Francisco working and taking in the culture. I’ve been attending SMX West, getting some great knowledge, meeting some really interesting people and really exploring the power of Twitter. I installed tweetdeck so I could monitor the conversations happening in other sessions. I made some new friends through the online conversation, then I met them offline after the sessions. The world of SEO is a funny one and there are some pretty clear thought leaders in the field. Its exciting to be meeting and learning from them out here.

The real takeaway I’m getting from this was accentuated by a second post from Fred Wilson I just read with my morning coffee. Its about Status (facebook/twitter status) and how it is quickly becoming integrated into our social fabric. In a way it is sort of becoming our social fabric. I explained to my girlfriend why Twitter is interesti by relating it to Facebook Status, or Gmail/AIM away messages. In college I would put real thought into my away message when I went to class/lunch/out. Some people would be “boring” and put “class” up, and others would say things like “enduring another endless rant form my crazed finance professor” - Thats interesting, and its not a need to know, but it can make me laugh and it can make me want to meet someone I might only know through class or passing in the hall.

As more and more people are using Twitter and more and more functionality becomes available through their API, its only going to get cooler. And the potential to integrate a single update to your Twitter account and your Faceboook is really exciting! We are working on a solution to this right now, and its going to be live in a few weeks (focused on getting small businesses involved). Twitter is just so freakin cool, there’s no reason anyone should be afraid to jump in.

Fred’s posts are typically very inteligent and this Status post (read along with Truth) is certainly no exception. But today I feel extra energized to be involved, even in just a tiny way as a user, in this media revolution thats occuring. Its happening right now and i fantastic! Maybe its the atmosphere out here, maybe its just this week immersed in my geek side of life, but I think its all of those things and just a general feeling that better things are coming.

For now, I’m going to keep living my life 140 charachters at a time and I’m going to get as many people I can to start doing that too. Because the more people who are contributing the better the interaction will be, the better the content will be and the better off we all will be. If I can get my girlfriend to twitter, I can get you too…

The holidays are a time of traveling, eating gift giving and spending time with Family. I turned off the blackberry for a few days and tried to avoid any lcd screens (other than my tv, because I crush James Bond during breaks). It was brilliant. I feel refreshed and ready to get back to work, of which I have plenty.

Of course it didn’t work entirely. My mom and brother got new iPods. My dad got a new all in one charging dock and in place  of Christmas cards, we sent hundreds of photos out digitally to the extended family. I was needed for all of these actions and had to troubleshoot a Picasa issue that was not letting my Dad share photos properly.

The point of this post is to layout some predictions for 2009. I have been way to immersed in my own technology recently and I really don’t know enough about emerging technologies to comment on which ones will be the most famous next December. But I do know that digital is going to be it. Everyone is going to realize that the cost-effective power of the internet is actually something to take advantage of - not just to talk about how “neat” or “cool” it is.

Heads of businesses are going to adapt or get passed by leaner more efficient companies. Layers of Presidents and Vice Presidents that clog the business process are going to be gone. Large excessive manufacturing is going to begin to disappear. Newspapers will realize that spending millions of dollars printing papers is not cost effective and actually do something about it.

The power of the internet will become mainstream in 2009.

Yes today the internet is mainstream, everyone uses it from time to time. Most everyone uses email frequently and people can find things they need with Google. But everyday people are going to realize all the great benefits of the internet. The communication mediums that it has created (blogs, facebook, twitter, etc) and not just look at them and say “wow, this technology is really cool. look how many people use it!” but they will sit down and actually use it themselves to make something worthwhile and relevant. Average users will take advantage of the really cool tools the “web 2.0″ world has made us. They will make their business process more efficient. To gain new customers. To make new “real” friends. Even to buy real world virtual goods.

I’m not in tune enough to tell you whos going to be behind all the great apps and widgets. I just feel very strongly that it will be 2009 that makes it all mainstream.

Peter Schwartz things Web 2.0 is dead. I left this comment on his article in the Huffington Post today -
Facebook’s Face Plant: The Poverty of Social Networks and the Death of Web 2.0:

You did not do very good research when writing this article:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/06/facebook-users-up-89-over-last-year-demographic-shift/
http://www.quantcast.com/facebook.com

A) The largest demographic chunk of users is 24-35,
B) Facebook reportedly operates on about $80 million/yr , meaning that $300 million in Revenue WOULD make them profitable.
C) Could you do with out your Outlook contact list? If so fine, if not then look at whats coming and see that Facebook is an excellent way to keep in touch with people you can’t see very often.

Web 2.0 isn’t dead, people who report on its death are simply on a melting iceberg looking for some more ships to sink before they go under themselves. Why do you think you guys just got $25 Million? Irony is shining here…

This guy wrote an article for a website that has comments and all types of “web 2.0″ content about the death of “web 2.0″

Get a clue. I like the Huffington Post, but its a bit early to be predicting the doom of a set of tools hundreds of millions of people use every day.

I totally agree that user generated content is not a sustainable business model for many (not all) businesses. But there are many businesses out there that are enjoying heaping rewards for allowing their users, visitors and customers to share their stories and comments online. UGC is not the end all be all of the web, but it has made the world a better place if you ask me, and its not going anywhere.

I love Pandora. It has added some amazing new features and I’ve discovered some old ones as well. I haven’t written anything in a while, and something I saw on Pandora just got me motivated. For those of you who don’t know Pandora, here’s the Wikipedia: “Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections.”

I use it all the time, when I have a long bought of work to accomplish I get a station going and I take full advantage of the thumbs up, thumbs down. Just now I noticed that when you click the thumbs up button, not only does it remember this and adjust the playlist accordingly, but it leaves a giant thumbs up in the background of the current song tile! So silly, but I loved it and it made me think about the devil in the details pitch I always try to give myself.

Pandora does it, they have all the details and they are loved by their users - over 40,000 new listeners everyday. It is a shame that the music industry is pushing them towards closing their doors soon.. (I can’t imagine that actually happens, its such a great service). I know alot of people are fans of last.fm, but I’ve never been to the site. No reason why not, just fell in love with pandora and stuck.

The devil is in the details and so is the the beauty. Keep goin Pandora, I’m pulling for you!

You can view my profile on pandora here

The world of old media is degrading faster than ever. Newspapers have been suffering more than ever before, and are losing necessary traction in local markets. TV is beginning to embrace digital media as an alternative source of media, but as a new member of media is a step above print in the food chain.

So where does this lead us? How do the old guys (read newspapers, but include old TV guys), compete on a level playing field where consumers are more and more determining their place and time to consumer their media. (A great discussion of this topic can be found at Screenwerk)The rise of the internet, and mobile specifically should be seen by these players as bountiful opportunities. They have strong brand presence in their market, established goodwill and existing relationships in their respective communities. Except there is one thing missing from them: awareness of the opportunity vs rather than observation of the threat.

I had a meeting recently with some “old guys” interested in reaching a more engaged, younger audience via a partnership through with local search. They were smart, experienced and were using a pretty good model and having success with it. But 10 minutes into the meeting, I could tell they didn’t get it. They knew what I was talking about, but they didn’t get how the differentness of what we were discussing made it better. A classic “old way of doing something with new technology, vs new way of doing something” issue. And it wasn’t the first time I saw it.

Newspapers are still in trouble and now seem to be past “denial” of the threat the web poses to them, but they remain stubborn in embracing it. Local content should be celebrated and contributions should be encouraged, however the model of user generated content and social collaboration that has made so many online organizations successful continues to be rejected. Until Web 2.0 is embraced by old media, newspapers in particular, they will continue to falter.

Newspapers more than any other medium are most well positioned to capture value out of their local markets with the web. The lack of their expansion into other verticals is a prime example of their stubbornness. They would have to sack it up and realize that there is potential revenue through a different medium. Hundreds of other companies have realized this and have capitalized on these gaps. Yelp, every version of the yellow pages and all local directories are in existence today because the big players (newspapers) failed to act.

Now what is the next space that the new, big players will fail to act in?

After posting about the growing amount of information and its consequential devaluation, I received a chance to use and review a new service - NewsCred - All the world’s credible news, in one place, a new aggregator that allows registered users to vote on articles and choose to “Credit” the author or article, or “Discredit” the author or article. It is actually similar to my iGoogle homepage in that I can select the news sources and blogs that I want to follow, and track the creditability of. They are out to filter the “Signal to Noise” ratio…

One of the really cool things about the service is that they allow anyone to rank the credibility of an article, an author, or a source (newpaper, blog, etc) based on credibility, quality, transparency and accuracy. The voting process is compiled using their “credibility waterfall algorithm” which although, I don’t like the name (is that a technical term), is a neat concept. It allows the creditability ranking of a specific article to affect the creditability ranking of the author, which in turn affects the creditability ranking of the article’s source. Overall this will theoretically serve you the highest quality and credible news from all across the web. It seems to do a pretty good job of that.

One thing I feel the site needs to really become successful is the proliferation of a “digg” style badge. The relatively new plethora of sharing sites across the internet need a way to tout their creditability, and if the NewsCred “Creditability” ranking badge could furnish this demand, then NewsCred could truly have something remarkable on their hands.

The two largest threats I see for the site are one, reaching a critical mass where they have enough users to rank and “credit” articles which I might read or be interested in; and second, someone else doing that sooner. If the site never really catches on, I don’t really see it becoming anything special, that may go without saying, but here is another 2.0 player in need of user volume.

Its definitely a cool site, one worth checking out. They clearly have a good vision of where they want to be, and how they want to do it and I think it can be successful.

Thanks to the guys at NewsCred for working on something that might actually improve the quality of news out there.