The Inquisitr » social networks

Deconstructing the LEGO Internet

Steven Hodson — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:57:26 +0000

Earlier this week Jesse Stay, the man behind the Twitter service SocialToo, wrote a rather interesting post suggesting that in order to move the web forward to that mystical 3.0 version we need to start looking at as a bunch of building blocks. His feeling is that in order to move beyond the current web as a platform idea we should be getting the foundation of the building block web stabilized.

For Jesse it is a matter of taking the foundations being but together by services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google off in new directions by adding new blocks that build off of those foundation blocks.

When I think building blocks I think Lego bricks. Each one has its own unique size and shape, and when you take the basic lego bricks you can add your own, making something unique and powerful. The web, as a whole, is evolving towards this state. We see Twitter, with its open platform enabling others to share in ways they were never able to share before in their own applications. We see Facebook and Facebook Connect enabling businesses to incorporate Facebook activity, relationships, and more right in the bounds of their own brand (Jeremiah Owyang suggested we might call this “farming”). Recently, we saw Google Wave producing ways for users to collaborate in ways they were never able to before, and embed these in new ways into external environments.

Shortly after Jesse’s post another smart blogger picked up on the thought with a post of his own. In The Lego Internet Dan Morrill at TechWag says that the idea might make a lot of sense except that potential ramifications of building out the new web based on what is hoped to be stable services provided by the foundation.

The idea makes a lot of sense when it comes right down to it, but with all the problems with back end data providers lately and how this is taking a toll on the public perception of cloud computing (no matter what the issue is, the popular press keeps on pinging cloud computing for this) and the worry that all that hard worked data is going to suddenly get vaporized is going to slow down the adoption of any building block internet.

Dan goes on to point out the underlying problem that we experience even today that could slow, or kill off any chance of a building block web.

Which brings us to the one thing that will kill the Lego building block internet; it will be all about service and how service is perceived by the end user. Would anyone have trusted Facebook Connect four years ago and would anyone trust a MySpace connect now? If a service provider (and if you are providing a widget or an API, you are a service provider) fails, then it becomes a problem for the entire ecosystem that is build around that service. If the service becomes unreliable, then people will flee the ecosystem. Even a hint that a service provider is not reliable will cause adoption issues.

The biggest problem behind this idea of a building block web can be evidenced even today with the widespread outage experienced by Twitter. It was an outage that lasted for most of the morning during which time any services that relied on Twitter were basically toast. You can’t build a longterm stable business on top of that kind of thing but it is only the most recent of many examples of cloud based systems taking a crap all over the place (Microsoft/Danger/Sidekick anyone?).

When even a company like Amazon can experience an outage as they did when their S3 cloud went down in February or Google’s Gmail can cause havoc every time it goes down for even an hour for whatever reason how can we say we have a solid foundation to build on.

Even beyond those big service providers what happens when even individual bloggers decide at some point that they want to try some new service on their blog only to have it come back and bite them on the ass. A good example of this is the idea of 3rd party comment platform providers like Disqus, Intense Debate, and JS-Kit that are all the rage.

Here we have the idea of a building block web in a microcosm in that we the bloggers provide the foundation for them to build their service on in return for being able to keep the conversation happening around the post regardless of where comments might be made in the wild. We install these platforms thinking that they are the answer for a possible problem we have been led to think exists.

What happens though when we decide that either we want to use one of the other systems or return to the built-in commenting systems of our blogging platform. Sure we’re told that we can export and then import all those stored comments that have been made on these other platforms but can we really?

Well if the experience that my good friend Mark Hopkins is going through we might want to think twice

Something that’s been particularly irritating – the fact that all the third party comment systems (from JS-Kit to Disqus (especially Disqus) to Intense Debate) make it all but impossible to transfer comments from one system to the other.

I know myself I have had problems with comment platforms on my one blog when moving from Disqus to JS-Kit. Whatever comments I had before even though they were suppose to be there were gone. This doesn’t bode well for me when it comes to thinking about going back to stock comments at Shooting at Bubbles.

My point here is that if we can’t rely on the commonality in the most basic thing like blog comments how can we expect blocks built on top of other services to be stable enough to invest our time in – especially consider that most of them are only looking for exit strategies … then what?

Even among the foundation companies and yes at this point Twitter can be included one has to wonder if they are stable enough both in service and vision. Twitter has bragged about their vision but their service has yet to be proven in my opinion. When it comes to a company like Google there is no question about the stability of their service but what about their vision?

Jesse makes the following point about Google in his post as evidence of their vision for a building block web build around sociality

Now look at Google. Google understands this well. They are providing Friend Connect, OpenSocial, Android, Wave (on 3 different levels!), and letting Developers decide what to do with them. Google is adding to this new platform giving developers new building blocks to play with and create cool things with.

Unfortunately I disagree with Jesse and point to exactly the same things as a reason why Google doesn’t have a solid enough vision of what a social web is in order to create building blocks off of. How can one possibly plan to build anything let alone intricate social applications if you don’t know where your foundation is going never mind knowing where it is in the first place.

As nice as the idea of a LEGO style idea of the web might be I don’t believe we are anywhere close enough to building one that we can trust to be there the next day or until the next great idea comes along.

image credits: google lego / human lego figure / corner lego art

Social Media: The military to go where the Washington Post fears to tread

Steven Hodson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:57:57 +0000

It is interesting that during all the hoopla surrounding the memo the brass of the Washington post sent to their troops about the use of Twitter and other social media services the US military has a draft memo circulating that would free up US troops use of the medium. While there were rumors a while back that the military was looking to clamp down hard on service people using things like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook it turns out this may not be the case.

In two different posts on Wired: Danger Room blogger Noah Shachtman let’s us in on a new draft memo that had been obtained by Nextgov that outlines a policy meant to clear up previous confusion around overlapping policies for using sites like Twitter. The new policy according to the memo “addresses important changes in the way the Department of Defense communicates and shares information on the Internet,” writes Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn. “This policy recognizes that emerging Internet-based capabilities offer both opportunities and risks that need to be balanced in ways that provide an information advantage for our people and mission partners.”

This re-evaluation of policy came from Defense Secretary Robert Gates following the confusion during the summer that saw the Marine Corp totally banning access to social media services while at the same time the Army ordered all US bases to provide access to those same services.

The new policy still has to be okayed by the Pentagon leadership but if it does the new guidelines would allow service members to use the Defense Department’s unclassified networks to visit everything from social networking sites to personal or corporate or subject-specific blogs.

According to the memo, troops can Facebook or YouTube or Flickr all they want — it doesn’t have to be work-related. The servicemembers just can’t claim to be officially representing the military or “have an online presence that could be viewed as representing the Department of Defense (e.g., may not use official title, military rank, military identifiers (i.e., e-mail address), or post imagery with their military uniform).” Of course, the servicememebers would also have to comply with pre-existing regulations “regarding responsible and effective use of Internet-based capabilities,” too.

image: US Army

Is Social Media ruining the good old heated debate

Steven Hodson — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:03:02 +0000

I was reading a post by Ryan Tate over at Valleywag this morning which lead in to posts by Edward Boches and Bob Knorpp where the common thread between them all being that we are all becoming a bunch of agreeable wishy washy Charlie Brown types.

Now to clarify the parameters here; we are not talking about the perpetual idiots who do nothing more than try to destroy people verbally. We are not talking about the area of blogging that deals with hot button subjects like politics or other editorial slash news types of blogs.

What we are talking about is the Social Media arena where services like Twitter and Facebook are the face of social media networks. We are talking about those bloggers who deal with the whole social media ecosphere. We are talking about the marketers, PR people and other promoters of the whole idea of Social Media.

Of the three posts I think that Bob Knorpp did an excellent job of breaking down the reasons why services like Twitter, Facebook and social media related blogs are geared more to the old clap on the back “great post” type of response. It all boils down to the very way that they are structured, after all we are encouraged to follow “friends” not “people you disagree with”. At the heart of social media the idea is that we should all be striving to “get along” rather than to intelligently challenge ideas and concepts being proposed.

Bob puts it this way

While debate does happen among friends, by their very design the social networks are predisposed toward forming circles of like-minded people. Same with personal blogs. It’s unlikely you’re going to waste time reading the opinions of an individual you don’t agree with. So finding spirited disagreement in such circles is simply not the norm. Which raises the question of whether such environments are healthy if not matched to at least some mainstream engagement.

Even looking through the comments to Edward’s post it is easy to see that there is is some confusion when it comes to how people perceive what is being discussed. The one’s that disagreed with Edward more often than not seemed to be missing the thrust of his point. Where Edward was trying to make the point in relation to social media the commenter’s where defending their points of view by using examples that have nothing to do with social media.

As commenter Ben Kunz, who called Edward’s points “absolutely wrong” said

But the broader the audience, the sharper the response. Adweek columns draw a bit of hostility. When I’ve written pointed opinions for BusinessWeek to a very diverse readership, damn, all hell breaks loose. I thought the Widget Association Whatever was going to lynch me when I called animated boxes on web pages a passing fad.

Excuse me but none of those examples have anything to do with social media or the other examples that Edward was using.

Some of the underlying themes as to why we see this type of “can’t we just all get along” mentality appear to be along the following lines

Time: in order to be able to craft a well reasoned and thought out objection to some-one’s ideas or thoughts takes time and people don’t want to spend the time needed to respond. As well I would add it takes a willingness to defend one’s own points of view when it comes to the subject being discussed.
Attention Span: with all the information constantly coming our way becoming involved with long drawn out discussions that require a larger portion of our attention than pithy one-line responses before skipping on to the next tidbit of information isn’t something that a lot of people want to do.
Fear: as the emotions around discussions can increase the more likelihood that tempers will get heated and out will come the dreaded “troll” word. No-one wants to be labeled as such a person so we either hold back honest opinion or we don’t get involved at all.
Closed Circle: because we only have so much time in a day that we can spend being involved in online discussions or reading it is human nature to gravitate to those who match our own “world-view”. This type of closed circle of reading and involvement very rarely leads to heated discussions where we are pushed to defend points of view and at the same time learn from each other.

This idea that Social Media is all about “goodness and light” can be seen in the popularity and reader, follower/friends, numbers. Take a look on Twitter and the Social Media leader board there and you will see that the “always positive” contingent has follower numbers that are through the roof, whereas those that like to push the limits, those that question the ‘status quo’ have a lot less followers e.g.: @1938media. When it comes to blogs it is people like Chris Brogan, Louis Gray and others who find their readership grow by leaps and bounds. Those on the other hand who constantly question the “social media party line” often find themselves relegated to the blogging hinterland.

In the Social Media realm there seems to be this need to put on a face of everything is positive and those nasty little negative people are only an aberration. The primary reason for this of course is because Social Media is the current golden child of the Internet and there are a lot of people investing their futures in it which means having to paint a pretty picture in order to make it palatable for companies because we all know this is where the money is when it comes to making a living.

The problem is that all this warm and fuzzy can make things very boring and eventually drain the life out of Social Media. As Ryan said in his post

It’s so hard to start a good fight on Twitter. Praise someone effusively, it gets "re-tweeted" endlessly, while nice juicy feuds get smothered in the crib. Every Twitter user is president of his own fraternity. How stale!

Stale indeed.

Is McDonald’s playing the race card for profit with site for black people?

Steven Hodson — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:41:47 +0000

I gotta say right off the bat here that this has to be they fucking dumbest idea I have heard of yet. It is one thing for an entertainment network like Black Entertainment Television to gear their site content towards black people but the epitome of lily white corporate culture McDonald’s having a specific site aimed that the African-American segment of society is just plain stupid.

I mean, really, what were they thinking that when someone said hey I have a great idea … let’s show how in tune we are with cultural diversity and launch a black only website everyone looked around and said Wow! what a great idea – go for it. Seriously folks please explain to me how this is anywhere near being a good idea.

And what is with the name of this?

Who really thought that 365Black.com was a good idea?

Seriously – who?

I’m with Zee from TheNextWeb.com blog when he says

Pardon my french, but lets not bullshit around, this is of course merely a way to target racial minorities. Companies do it the world over. But couldn’t the website have just been a diversity website saying they support all different kinds of cultures, races, charities and organizations?

Dumb McDonald’s.

Just dumb.

Here’s McDonald’s explanation of what the site is all about

WHAT IS 365BLACK?

At McDonald’s^®, we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year — not just during Black History Month. That’s the idea behind 365Black.com. It’s a place where you can learn more about education, employment, career advancement and entrepreneurship opportunities, and meet real people whose lives have been touched by McDonald’s. Plus, you can also have a chance to win exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. So make sure you visit often — you just might get inspired.

And everyone gave Motrin all that flack over attempting to engage women in social media – makes me wonder where the outrage is over this. Oh wait, that’s right … the majority of bloggers and social media mavens are white.

Sorry but this is just all shades of wrong and McDonald’s need to be told so.

Digsby steps into the real-time web

Steven Hodson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:17:53 +0000

Digsby, a multiprotocol IM client as well as a social media client announced this evening a new version of their client that adds some new features to their already impressive list of supported protocols and networks.

Among the new services being added is access to your MySpace Activity Stream, status updates and t he ability to browse photos. They have also partnered with OneRiot to enable real-time search of the web from your desktop.

Additionally Digsby now has Global Status, with built-in spell checking, that lets you select which of the supported social networks and IM accounts you want your status updates to be broadcasted to. With this release the Digsby crew has also released their own URL shortener for users of Digsby.

On the cosmetic front Digsby is sporting a custom new look for Digsby users who are running Windows 7.

You can grab your copy of the new 3.5 release by heading over to the Digsby site and hitting the download button.

Helen Thomas calls Obama administration out on social media smokescreen

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:53:11 +0000

Chip Reid and Helen Thomas gave White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs a four-minute chunk of grief over trying to “control the press” in a way Thomas said was worse than even Richard Nixon.

Thomas, who has been covering White House press briefings I think since Taft was in office, has had a bit of internet fame due to her part in Stephen Colbert’s epicly awesome GWB send-up during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in 2006. If you recall, Thomas chased a terrified Colbert around in his fantasy of being the White House Press Secretary, badgering Colbert about the reasons behind invading Iraq.

Thomas proved that her biting critique showed no partisan leanings yesterday when she and Reid laid into Gibbs for ridiculous executive branch policies that actually use social media to limit and “tightly control” the content of Townhall meetings and press briefings. The debate begins when Gibbs insists that Reid submit questions via Facebook and Twitter to be answered “tomorrow” rather than just opening the forum to on-the-spot questions.

Gibbs plays dopey, telling Reid to “get on his e-mail address” while Reid tries to explain how refusal to answer questions isn’t open or transparent. Gibbs giggles throughout the exchange in a way that makes you want to slap him, and really only proves the two annoyed reporters right by dancing around answering questions.

Two minutes in Thomas brings it, saying, ”I’m amazed… I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency,” and cites a pattern of “controlling the press.” She tells Gibbs that the Obama administration’s “formal engagements are prepackaged,” and says that “calling reporters the night before, telling them they’re going to be called on- that’s shocking.” When asked if she sent in a question, she goes all grandma-don’t-play-that by snapping, “I don’t have to email it- I can tell you right now!”

Indeed, the exchange raises some interesting questions about the role of social networking and new media in the Obama administration. With all the Obama love being spread thickly and freely around the blogosphere, we kind of took it for granted that this presidency would use the technologies we all embrace- Facebook, Twitter, e-mail- to advance communication between press and the executive branch, or even your average dude and the White House. I’ll go a step further- we were lead to believe that. Obama sends me Facebook updates more than my best friend.

But is the Obama administration now using our “friend status” to filter valid questions and create an illusion of rapport with the press and by extension, the people? Bill Maher called Obama out early on for mocking the most popular question at one of the first Townhall meetings he had as president. In the meeting, Obama laughed at “the internet” for wanting to know if he had plans to consider legalizing and taxing marijuana to create jobs and create some desperately needed capital. Maher fumed:

“For Obama to mock, ‘I don’t know what’s going on the Internet,’ well excuse me…the Internet is America now. That sounded like John McCain.”

Well yeah, I want to know to- do they not know what’s going on on “the internet” or do they not care?

Who will be the John Lennon of Social Media?

Steven Hodson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:46:45 +0000

Openness.

Transparency.

Bringing about a sense of change and responsibility.

For my generation these ideals where embodied in people. People like John Lennon who typified all the good thing, all the good ideals in our society. Peace, love and human compassion for others were his rallying call.

To today’s Web generation these are some of the things that are being attributed to the potential of social media and all the tools and services that are a part of it. It’s a nice idea to think that such a change could happen just because of something we have created using the wonder that is the Web. Like all nice ideas though not everything is positive or warm and fuzzy.

As with human nature, and anything we touch, there is always a negative side, the dirty side of the story that no-one likes to talk about or admit to. The same applies to Social Media and we see it rear its ugly with every case of Internet flash mobs of hate and recrimination.

For the longest time we like to blame all the bad things that happened in everything from the old USENET newsgroups to the more modern social networks on those nasty people who hide behind anonymous nicknames. They are painted as cowards who unleashed their venom against people via their keyboards just because they can.

Then as we moved into this new open world of Social Media and people started coming out from behind those nicknames many claimed that the day of mob mentality would fade into the past like a bad dream. After all the thinking has always been that it is a lot harder to mean and cruel to other people when they know your name or know where you live. The only problem is that we have forgotten a key part of human nature – not everyone is nice.

Sure it was easier when there only existed anonymous nicknames but even in this day of openness and accountability something haven’t changed. People can still be thoughtless, cruel and fall easily into that mindless mob mentality that can act without taking to the time to make sure what they are doing is right.

Up until recently this kind of mob formation still took time to form as the Web is only as fast as someone hitting the refresh key. While it might not seem like much of a delay it has been a long enough one that it would give people enough time to calm down or maybe double check their information. that is changing though as we move faster and faster to a real-time Web.

No longer is there time to take a deep breath and think things through. Now we are dealing with raw emotions that don’t have a chance to cool off before – often in seconds – they get re-enforced by a new flood of heated emotions. What were once flash mobs are now becoming real-time mobs that can strike faster than a cobra and be even more poisonous.

Michael Arrington wrote today, in his usual link grabbing and in your face way, about how he considers Friendfeed to be one of the primary feeding grounds for this kind of real-time mob mentality. The section of interest for me is this:

Some people say it’s not appropriate to pick on FriendFeed. Other services like Twitter, which are much bigger, have similar problems. But the conversations on Twitter aren’t centralized. It’s hard to see it when a mob forms unless it’s something massive like the almost-revolution in Iran. But on FriendFeed all the comments are aggregated on one page, and everyone participating sees it all. It’s much more likely to break out into a mob. And even niche topics, like mobile phones, can lead to death threats.

He uses his recent experience with Leo Laporte and the blow up that happen as one of his illustrative points and it does quite rightly prove his point. I remember this because I was reading at least two separate threads on Friendfeed where he was being hauled over the coals, and not nicely either. At the same time though I was also watching the follow-up podcast/videocast that he and Leo did to sort out what was nothing more than a misunderstanding.

But this escaped the people locked into the real-time threads because they were too busy feeding off of the emotional cesspool that had been created around the incident. No-one took the time to find out what – if anything – was going on from Arrington’s or Laporte’s point of view.

While I have decided recently to take a holiday from Friendfeed I must say that during my time using the service I have seen this mob mentality rear its ugly head more than a few times. Some, like the incident that caused Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins to leave during the American election, were before Friendfeed switched to the real-time display but the speed at which they form has increased since that switch.

This is only the tip of the problem when it comes to the idea behind the real-time Web. As we increasingly advertise our whereabouts and voice our opinions there is going to be somebody out there who isn’t going to be satisfied with just spewing their venom from behind a keyboard. For them this avenue is no longer good enough regardless how real-time it is and they now have all the tools at their disposal to make this truly personal.

It is true that when it comes to our social media world there is no-one that is of the larger public stature that John Lennon was for that earlier generation but that doesn’t preclude that the same result couldn’t happen. The only thing that is a big question mark is who is it going to be.

For all the good that Social Media can bring to our society there is that negative aspect of human nature egged on by the immediacy of the real-time web that is the great unknown. One thing that isn’t unknown though after seeing the depths of anger and hate that can be exacerbated by the real-time web is that some-one will be the John Lennon of the Web Generation. It’s just a matter of who will be our Chapman.

Montana city backs off of requiring Facebook passwords as job requirement

Steven Hodson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:35:00 +0000

Remember a couple days ago when I passed along the news about Bozeman, Montana, requiring job applicants to had over their usernames and passwords as part of their job application?

Well according to a post on Ars Technica by Jacqui Cheng the city fathers of Bozeman have backed down from that requirement. The city announced (pdf) in a meeting at the beginning of the week that as of June 19th that it would stop the practice and the city web site would be updated with the information regarding this within 30 days.

GOING FORWARD: We will no longer be looking at password‐protected internet information for job candidates. With the assistance of our recently hired City Attorney, we recommend scheduling a Policy Meeting (within 30 days) for an update on city hiring procedures. This will include a discussion regarding the appropriate level of screening for public safety pre‐employment background checks.

This was an honest mistake. Human Resources, our Police and Fire Departments were doing something they believed was consistent with our core values. I take full responsibility for this decision and we will work hard to regain the trust and confidence of the City Commission and our community.

Source: PDF file of city meeting

As stupid as the idea was in the first place it is good to see that this in charge stepped back and re-thought the situation.

Montana city treading some dangerous ground

Steven Hodson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:05:15 +0000

I would bet that we’ve all heard more times than we care to count the old warning about being careful about what you post on the Internet because it could come back to haunt you. Companies are making social media searches an almost required part of any hiring practice in order to see what kind of person you are away from the glare of a job interview. Our online profiles are becoming a part of our real life persona.

As much as we might like to believe that what we say and do online won’t have an impact on our jobs, current and future, this isn’t always the case. Therefore it was only a matter of time before our online personas became a integral part of any company’s interest in us as possible employees. However being made to provide our log-in information to any of the many social media service we might belong to as a part of a job application is something new.

Such is the case if you ever decide to apply for a job for the City of Bozeman, Montana, as they have made it a requirement on any job application with the city that you must provide any an all log-in information, including your passwords, for social network sites that you are a part of. This is part of a larger waiver that you have to sign giving the city permission to conduct a background investigation.

Now let’s stop for a second and think about this. Regardless of whether it is a web forum, Facebook, Twitter or some IRC chat room you are being made as part of a job interview to give up information that makes your online doings an open book. It doesn’t matter if you have made your Twitter feed a private feed, or that your Facebook account is marked as private. In this case the City of Bozeman’s rights trumps your right to privacy.

City Attorney for Bozeman defends the action this way

The City takes privacy rights very seriously, but this request balances those rights with the City’s need to ensure employees will protect the public trust, according to city attorney Greg Sullivan.

"So, we have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity for those positions, all the way down to the lifeguards and the folks that work in city hall here. So we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the City," Sullivan said.

Source: Montana News Station

I can totally understand the City’s desire to protect the integrity of its employees but this kind of invasion is no different than them asking for the keys to your home and coming in whenever they feel like it. Sure it’s plausible to defend this requirement for any public social media accounts – but then they wouldn’t need the passwords – however when it comes to any accounts that we have made private they have no business asking for this information, let alone making it a requirement for a job.

Facebook grasping at API straws

Steven Hodson — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:00:14 +0000

I’ve been reading much of what has been written today concerning Facebook’s announcement about opening up the new Facebook Open Stream API. From that reading; including the official blog post by Ray C. He on the Facebook Developer Blog, I’m left with a whole bunch of little questions as well as one big one.

What is Facebook?

Sure we all know it’s the hottest social network on the planet at the moment but what are they trying to achieve? For as much flack as Facebook might have gotten during its rise to the top it was well understood that it was a closed environment. You wanted to interact with your friends you went to Facebook and logged in. You played games, traded messages and used Facebook apps while fighting off Zombies; but it was always inside of Facebook.

As far as brands go, Facebook has to rank right up there with Google, Microsoft and Apple. Chances are your corner barber or hairstylist is on Facebook right along side your mother and father. Even though Facebook has continually done things to alienate their user base the membership keeps climbing. Also climbing is the associated cost of that increasing membership. The problem is that the majority of the user base is non U.S. and as a result the those costs aren’t being offset by any advertising revenue that is more U.S. centric.

So to try and reverse that revenue loss Facebook has increasingly turned to services like Twitter and Friendfeed and duplicated many of those service’s features into Facebook in the hope that this would pull US centric members into the service. Now today they totally swallowed the Twitter and Friendfeed API ideology in the hope that this will encourage developers to build interfaces to Facebook that would be more receptive to users.

The problem is that this does nothing to alleviate their most pressing problem – increasing revenues in order to offset the cost of the user base and produce profits to justify their $15 billion valuation. By making the current Open Stream API; with more to come if the comment on ReadWriteWeb by Facebook’s Blake Ross is any indication, available they have one less drawing card to profitability. Sure the social media mavens and gurus are heralding this as a great move but there is no proof yet that this idea of API driven businesses are even a viable business model.

The idea that web companies can even make enough money to justify their various valuations by letting developers run rampant is still to be seen. Twitter is probably the most notable in this area as it was really the first one to show real popularity due to its API but even after all this time it still exists because of venture capital – not because it has a serious revenue profit making revenue stream. Now though we have the hottest social network with a valuation of $15 billion deciding that this is the same road that they want to travel.

The other thing that this whole API thing strikes me as being is yet another grasping at straws. Ever since their Beacon advertising project proved to be an abject failure Facebook has seemed to be running from idea to idea, copycat feature to copycat feature. It almost leaves one wondering if Facebook even knows what it wants to be when it grows up. Does it want to be a full featured Twitter or how about yet another Friendfeed?

I just don’t see how this embracing of the API business model is going to do anything to help Facebook. Sure it will make developers happy but given the type of users on Facebook and how they have already been resistant to attempts to Twitterize the social network I don’t really see it having any long lasting positive effect.

The one thing that is becoming apparent though is that Facebook is running out of straws to grasp and when that happens one has to wonder what they will do next.

[picture courtesy of Top Tech News]

MySpace Gets Silverlight, Facebook Gets Flash. Winner: Facebook.

JR — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:54:24 +0000

MySpace and Facebook have both announced new partnerships for rich media content within their networks. MySpace is teaming up with Microsoft to bring Silverlight functionality to its developer platform, while Facebook is introducing expanded Flash support for its developers. The announcements were, coincidentally enough, revealed on the same day.

MySpace and Silverlight

In unveiling its new deal, MySpace showed off a handful of new Silverlight-powered applications already available, including an animated friend list utility that can be added onto any profile.

“Silverlight empowers MySpace developers with more freedom and flexibility to design OpenSocial applications that provide streaming video, graphics and audio to a variety of platforms and devices,” the announcement says.

“Silverlight and the MySpace Open Platform will enable developers to rapidly create and deliver sophisticated MySpace applications with a custom look and feel through the flexible skinning of controls and data.”

Facebook and Flash

Facebook, on the other hand, is working with Adobe to broaden its support for Flash-based applications. While Flash was already available for Facebook developers, the site is now adding “official support” for the full ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform.

“With this client library, developers building rich Flash experiences will be able to easily access the social features of Facebook Platform from external websites using Facebook Connect, from applications on Facebook, or from desktop applications,” the announcement says.

“New ideas may include the next generation of social games, seeing friends sharing and commenting on video or music streamed through Flash, or manipulating photos of yourself and your friends.”

Weighing the Two

Despite some people’s strong feelings for Silverlight, the fact remains that the majority of Web users have no idea what it is — and, when prompted to download it to run any MySpace Silverlight application, may or may not even understand the request. Flash, on the other hand, is close to a standard as there is (even without the iPhone on-board). Most computer users already have it installed — about 99 percent, according to some recent stats published in The New York Times.

Despite Microsoft’s attempt to use last year’s Olympics as a launching ground for Silverlight, the platform is still dwarfed by the ubiquity of Flash. Combine that with the ongoing trend of Facebook gaining ground and MySpace losing market share, and it seems the Facebook-Flash pairing is the clear winner all around.

MySpace

Facebook

MySpace Introduces Integrated Photo Editing Tool

JR — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:35:26 +0000

MySpace has introduced a new option to let users edit photos from right within the social network. The built-in tool comes as part of a partnership with FotoFlexer, a Web-based image editing service.

The newly integrated MySpace photo editor offers options for all basic image manipulation — resizing, rotating, cropping, and the likes — as well as for more advanced effects such as retouching, color modifications, border additions, and distortion filters.

The FotoFlexer system allows you to either overwrite your original photo, or opt to have the changes saved as a new, secondary image.

While I’m typically more of a Facebook fan these days, this addition is a smart choice for MySpace that’ll bring a nice added functionality for its userbase — particularly to those who are less technologically inclined and might not have (or know how to effectively use) photo editing software of their own. The question, of course, is how long it’ll take for Facebook to unveil a similar option of its own.

FotoFlexer says the partnership, combined with an existing Photobucket collaboration, makes it the “most widely used image editing solution on the planet.”

MySpace

FotoFlexer

TweetDeck Adds Facebook Integration

JR — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:47:24 +0000

TweetDeck, the Adobe Air desktop Twitter management application, has released a beta version of its 0.24 release with added support for Facebook services.

The TweetDeck 0.24 pre-release fully integrates Facebook functionality into the program in a few ways: You can monitor Facebook status updates directly within the utility, even creating a new column dedicated exclusively to those. You can also send outgoing messages to Facebook exclusively, or to Twitter and Facebook concurrently, eliminating the need for Facebook’s Twitter app (and also giving you a little more control compared to the options it had provided). Finally, you can see a Facebook user’s status, and — if he’s online — open a Facebook chat window with him right within the TweetDeck program.

TweetDeck 0.24 will even let you pull content from one service into the other. For example, you can take a Facebook update and retweet it via Twitter. As Mashable’s Adam Ostrow points out, this raises some interesting questions over privacy, since Facebook status updates aren’t necessarily intended for public broadcast.

The TweetDeck team indicates, too, that more options are on the way.

“This is the first step in integrated Facebook into TweetDeck and there’s a huge amount more to come,” the official blog announcement says.

TweetDeck 0.24 pre-release is available here. Its creators stress, however, that it is still a beta program under testing and should only be used at one’s own risk.

As a recent Twitter and TweetDeck adopter myself (@jr_raphael — come say hello), this is certainly an intriguing new twist. The need to login to multiple social services is always a pain, and being able to keep tabs on my Facebook account while watching Twitter is a pretty convenient integration. Plus, the ability to easily pick and choose which updates go to which network (and which updates go to both) is a great addition for me.

I do agree with Adam, however, about the potential privacy implications: While in actuality, I probably wouldn’t care, I’m not sure I like the idea of someone within my limited Facebook network tweeting out something I send there when it comes to the principle of it. Of course, someone could do that anytime — this just makes it an easier click-and-go option. In the end, it’s probably just a good reminder to us all that things we send on social networks, even ones that appear to be semiprivate, should always be considered public.

Looking forward to seeing what else TweetDeck has in store for the future. So far, I’m quite pleased with it and encouraged by the forward-thinking progress its creators are showing.

TweetDeck

Twitter

The Social Graph and the value of Like

Steven Hodson — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:28:41 +0000

As we move further into a social media world where unlike anytime in the past friends can have a much larger and far ranging impact than before. This isn’t your father’s type of friendship as many of the people we call friends in this social media world are people we most likely haven’t met nor in a lot of case will ever meet in the traditional face-to-face manner. Yet they are becoming an increasingly important influence in our lives.

This effect is especially apparent when it comes to what is referred to as your personal and public social graph. Brad Fitzpatrick in an excellent post outlines what is meant by the term social graph thusly – “the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related” and while Wikipedia doesn’t have a specific Social Graph page they do combine it with social networks in which they state

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike,conflict or trade.

On it’s own a person’s social graph is pretty well a static entity that only changes as you add or subtract contacts from it. On the surface there is really no way to be able to tell if anyone within your networks has gained in ‘value’ within your social graph. By value I mean that a person has found things you have shared or done of value and in some way acknowledged that value you have given them. This acknowledgement in return also raises your value to the people of other networks you might be a part of. The question is how do we show this acknowledgment of value?

When I was checking out a new service called Likaholix the other day something started niggling at the back of my brain about this whole thing of Like and liking things. it wasn’t until the next day that I was able to really get my thinking on it straightened out and what I came up with can be best summed up in something I said to Hutch Carpenter in a comment thread about Brian Solis’ post I Like You! The Emerging Culture of Micro Appreciation

‘Like’ will become the basis for a value added social graph

The thing about social graphs is that they are basically flat – everyone within your social graph is on a level field which makes it very hard to be able to pinpoint those who add value to your graph and those who just hang around. As well right now your value within someone else’s social graph is just as static as those people in your social graph with the only differentiation coming from the number of followers / friends you might have. this kind of value system is too easily gamed to be any real indicator of one’s ability to add value to a social graph.

This changes though if we look at the idea of Likes being a value indicator that increases your value within a social graph. The idea being that as information you have shared whether it be on FriendFeed, Twitter or Facebook is liked by others within those social media circles your overall value to others is increased. You in effect bubble up through other people’s social graphs as a value added friend and in turn make their social graph more valuable.

So rather than Like being just a casual thing we do as a way to bookmark something we are in fact indicating to others that we think this person is a valuable part of their social graph. Like has become a value indicator – a digg marker of your social graph so to speak. This in turns turns that flat 2D social graph into a vibrant living three dimensional entity and a whole new dimension to what Social Media and our social graphs are and their effects on our lives.

A return to silos – the big Web 2.0 joke

Steven Hodson — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:12:21 +0000

As we have moved along the timeline of what we refer to as Web 2.0 and social media one of the big standbys of the movement has been that of openness and transparency. At the same time under the cover of this apparent new way of doing things we have services like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and any number of other so-called social networks gaining users at a huge rate. You literally can’t turn anywhere without hearing someone talking about being on Facebook.

Proponents of Facebook and social networks like them are quick to point out how they have opened up over the past year. Facebook mimics Twitter and allows sharing of status messages between the two. The thinking being that you can’t accuse someone of being a closed system if that services allows outside services to interact with it. That might be true when you are talking about a very small segment of the overall user base – otherwise known as the early adopters. However when you finally cross over from being an early adopter play toy things change.

Rex Dixon had an interesting post on SiliconAngle (congrats to John Furrier on the new blog) where he talks about the fact that MySpace has created their own webmail service. He points out that while this idea might be so 2006 for the early users of MySpace; many who have moved onto other – newer – services, it is in fact a great idea for all those new members who are signing up daily (emphasis mine)

The point is, while many of the tech crowd are so over MySpace like back in 2006, there are many first timers that are just signing up in late 2008 and early 2009 for their first MySpace account. Many average citizens still use MySpace daily. I know, this sounds like science fiction to some of you readers, even a bit archaic. Truth being told, it really is not. While many of you that are reading this have grasped the simple social networks and media tools such as twitter easily, there are many in the mainstream that are just getting on board.

Why is this webmail on MySpace a good thing? Since there are many first timers being introduced to social networking, they will want things to be easy and familiar. Webmail is likely one of those familiarities and something they have been introduced too as well as understand. Personally speaking, I seem to benefit from being able to look at this objectively from both sides.

I would add that it is also a hook to make sure that once snagged the user they don’t have any reason to go elsewhere. do you really think that Facebook copied Twitter and allows traffic between the two out of the kindness of its heart? I seriously doubt it, rather it is a case of “hey we let you send to Twitter from Facebook so you don’t need to go to their service anymore – you can stay right here”.

It doesn’t behove any of these services to have interoperability – not really. But it does make them look good to appear to do so because it keeps the early adopters off their backs and gives the new members even less reason to leave. As I said on Twitter earlier

why does it seem that the more we talk about Myspace, Facebook et al we seem to be returning to days of AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, MSN 32 minutes ago from blu

On the one hand these social networks are all trying to give the appearance of being open and sharing with everyone else in the social media world but at the same time every move they make only seems to be building up the silo walls a little higher.

Facebook proves how lame it is – steals from Twitter and FriendFeed

Steven Hodson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:28:25 +0000

Before we go any further I should make something clear – just in case you haven’t figured it out by now – I am not a fan of Facebook. I don’t agree with its terms of service which gives them total ownership over anything I do while I am there. I don’t like some of the moves that they have; or are rumoured to be looking at, to monetize the social media behemoth. Unfortunately though in my line of work Facebook is a necessary evil but one I use as little as possible.

That said I am really beginning to think that this behemoth could be in trouble. How else does that explain its recent moves to open up its status API in order to compete against Twitter and then the announcement that they were adding a direct rip-off of FriendFeed’s ‘Like’ feature. Years into a business and Facebook still has to figure out how it is going to make the serious money it needs in order to live up to the bullshit valuation figure that the VC market says it is worth. Its one foray into advertising using the Beacon program proved to be a dismal failure and it is still chewing through money with no idea of how to live up to expectations.

So what do they do?

They go hunting for the features that are making Twitter and FriendFeed popular and copy them. Some might like to suggest that mimicry is the next best thing to flattery but in this case I think it smacks more of desperation as Facebook is trying to do whatever it can to maim potential rivals for any part of its services. Sure Facebook might have the numbers of users on their side but each and everyone of those users is costing them money – money that they don’t seem to be able to figure out how to capitalize on.

Stealing ideas though is no way to do it though – it only shows how lame you are.

[hat tip - belatedly - to Kyle Brady ]

SocialMedia Networks Snags $6 Million

JR — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:28:39 +0000

Social media advertising firm SocialMedia Networks has secured $6 million in fresh funding this Friday. The Series B dough comes from IDG Ventures SF and Charles River Ventures.

SocialMedia Networks serves ads in about 5,000 different applications on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. It claims to be the Internet’s largest independent social media advertising network.

The new funding will go toward expanding the company’s Chicago, New York, and international sales teams.

SocialMedia Networks has been around since 2007.

SocialMedia Networks

The new cool – Facebook parents

Steven Hodson — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:24:11 +0000

Back when I was nearing the end of my high school years; what isn’t surrounded in a fog anyway, the big psychological pabulum of the day was that the really cool parents where those that acted like their kids were their very best friends. This went over well with the kids because the worst punishment your best friend would give you for doing something wrong was a time-out. Sure there was that really icky feeling in the pit of your stomach when your real friends dropped by and saw your parents behaving like idiotic teenagers while trying to be friends of your friends.

Fast forward to today and we suddenly find ourselves in our parent’s shoes only now we have a whole new set of boundaries that we are having to figure out. We have become the social network parenting generation and where once we might have cringed at how our cool parents acting like post adolescents our children cringe as they see friend notifications on Facebook from us, their parents. Even worse we are lead to believe that if our children ignore us on these social networks then we are doing something wrong; or even worse our children are doing something wrong.

Linda M Furrier in a post on Furrier.org suggested that this is a new parenting frontier for us as parents.

My take: This is a new parenting frontier – an opportunity. We are two steps behind our kids, even if we think we know what they are doing online. It is a parent’s responsibility to discipline (Latin root = teach) our children how to protect themselves. Many kids balk at the idea of sharing their online communications with parents. Until my children are 18, I am the authority. We need to set expectations for our kids & walk them through this uncharted territory with guidelines. Parents: require your children to share passwords with you. Set time aside to see what your children are doing online. Invite them to browse through their accounts with you. Ask questions and really listen.

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins in his post about this wrote

The drum that’s usually beat here is that education is key – if you educate your children about the dangers online, they’ll learn to avoid them. Certainly that’s important, but just as important is adult and parent education. Parents need to learn what tools and sites their kids are using, and how to regulate and monitor them as well.

While both Linda and Mark make some excellent points they both seem to be forgetting Rule #1 of Childhood – kids lie and they will always lie when they are doing something they know they shouldn’t be doing. It is no different when it comes to the Internet and social networks. Just as the last thing any boy of my generation wanted was for his parent to find out he knew where Dad’s stash of Playboy and Penthouse was, the kids of both genders today don’t want their parent to know what they are doing on Facebook. Even more important they don’t want to know what their parents are doing on there either. Their reaction to that is probably no different than not wanting to know what is going on behind their parent’s bedroom door. Neither of those things are cool as far as your kids are concerned.

As Mark noted also in his post there is the usual over-protectiveness that comes with the territory of being a parent but try as you might there is nothing that you can do to change Rule #2 of Childhood – that being that there is no concept of a future where what they do today will come back to bite them on the ass. Just as girls in the past use to sneak out with a change of clothing that could get them grounded girls today see MySpace and Facebook as just another place to wear that change of clothing and hot new lipstick.

We’ve all read the stories of famous people who later in life become haunted when photos show up of them being less that proper. Well in this day and age kids don’t care where pictures of their improper behaviour show up even if that behaviour is illegal in the eyes of the law; because for the most part their morals are not the one’s we grew up with and tried in turn to teach to them. I agree that parents do need to have control over what their children are doing on the Internet because it can be a big dangerous place. I don’t agree though that we need to get all warm and fuzzy with them about it.

I agree that parents do need to take more control of what their children are doing online but remember these are the same kids that we willingly handed over things like cell phones to before they reached puberty. If we expect to be able to know what is going on in their online time; whether it be something as simple as texting 1,000’s of messages a month through to posting questionable pictures on Facebook, well .. good luck with that plan.

Could social media implode from too many friends?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:01:51 +0000

First came Web 2.0, which begot social networking, which morphed into a much easier term to hype called Social Media. While Web 2.0 is considered to be more of an umbrella term for a new philosophy for how things like development and selling – or not selling depending on your feelings about freenomics – on the web. This movement was born out of the collapse of the dotcom boom of the late 90’s and was suppose to embody all that is good and transparent about ourselves on the web. Everyone feel the love just flowing out of the whole idea of Web 2.0?

Well actually now it is all the hot air that was holding it up that is flowing outward but that is another post for another day.

Even with that though, there is still this thought that Social Media is the bigger result of this latest boom and bust period of the web. After all everyone and their brother wants to jump on the bandwagon now and in the typical self-fulfilling prophesy those that haven’t yet are hiring social media consultants to tell them how they can save their asses. This of course is guaranteed to have these newly minted consultants proclaim that everyone must grab their piece of the social media wagon as it goes by.

But grab a piece of what? After all, social media is just a term that means having conversations with as many people as possible, as transparently as possible and if you can make them your friend. Social Media boils down to nothing more than having as many friends as possible on as many of the different social media services as you can possibly belong to; and if you can’t belong to them all join one of the services that lets you broadcast like a megaphone to everyone from one place.

At what point though does this become just a pointless exercise in sending out following notifications ad nauseam. At what point does having all these friends become just ridiculous bullshit because we really don’t know who these people are and for the most part we don’t care just as long as they follow us back. Do we know if their belief systems meshes with ours, or will something we say at some point spark a royal flamefest that everyone jumps in on if for no other reason that they can. Just because our contact lists on various services are suffering from a bad Viagra overdose does that really make our time spent online any more valuable or does it just give us bragging rights on how popular we are.

A good friend of mine; and not just because we connected on some silly ass service, recently posted about his quitting FriendFeed. I can totally understand why Mark did this given his penchant for talking about and sharing political oriented stuff. The problem is that he harboured the false belief that just because they were friends on FriendFeed people would be reasonable and thoughtful and would enjoy intelligent discourse over the things he was sharing. That unfortunately was his first mistake because no matter how many people you have in the same room – or in the case of social media services – the same friend list none of them will share exactly the same ideals. Under normal social; not online social nonsense but real life social there are two definite things people don’t talk about unless they are itching for a fight and that is politics and religion.

Now Rob Diana; guest posting on Louis Gray’s blog, quite rightly pointed out that this is a perfect example of how our real life social filters have not made the transition to our online social circles. As true as this might be I also believe it is because we have too many friends online and that is blinding us to the fact that there are times we need to just shut up. This incident that Mark experienced and caused to him to sign out of FriendFeed for good is something I believe we will start seeing more of. People by their very nature have close circles of friends that they are comfortable with. They know what can or cannot be discussed because those are boundaries we have learned over the time it has taken to get to know them as friends.

In our rush though to be a part of this new thing called social media; which we are all being told we must be a part of, we have forgotten that friendship doesn’t happen overnight or by the click of a submit button on some service join up form. Because it is our nature to have small groups of friends this pressure to expand those groups to enormous numbers builds up a sense of pressure to moderate out own feelings so we can belong to this larger transparent group. As with all things under any kind of pressure there comes a point of explosion or implosion and I wonder if with this suggested need to be friends with as many people as we can on all these social media services there won’t come a point when soical media collapses in on itself from the pressure of too many friendships that in most cases don’t mean a damn thing.