Google+ First Impressions: My Big Three Takeaways

My thoughts on Google's new social networking platform, Google+, is up over at VentureBeat:

"Google+ first impressions: My big three takeaways" VentureBeat

Also picked up by their syndication partner, The New York Times here.

Digital Tourettes

My friend, Dave, and I were talking about one of our friends who lives in the realm of too much information on his social networks. It's to the point where a person might say:

"Is his wife going to divorce him?"
"What?!?"
"Man, his wife is going to beat his ass."
"Did I really need to know that?"

Dave would classify our friend as having "digital tourettes." This is a syndrome where people uncontrollably cross social boundaries that the vast majority of a society won't cross. It's not simply posting too many details of your life's activities or daily habits, but those activities that people don't need to really know. This involves unnecessary information about bowel movements, flatulence, sexual activities, details about strip club visits, bachelor party escapades, stupid college adventures, etc.

I really hope this doesn't become a growing syndrome due to this new digital era of micro-blogging, 24/7 online presence, and wannabe stardom. Seriously, if you know anyone that might have these symptoms, please conduct an intervention and get him/her some psychiatric help.

Social Media Revolution

One of the better videos that provides an overview, facts and insights into how social media has changed our world.

Portable Social Graphs Imagining Their Potential (FB Connect)

Presents the potential of portable social graphs with Facebook Connect as the primary example. Good presentation by Razorfish's Jesse Pickard.

Portable Social Graphs Imagining Their Potential (FB Connect)

View more documents from Bernard Moon.

CNBC: Power of Social Networking

"Social media is leading the biggest transformation in communication and advertising since e-mail. CNBC's Julia Boorstin takes a look at the power in social networking for companies and individuals." (embed code from their site is off since there is so much space here)

Twitter Spam: 3 Ways Scammers are Filling Twitter With Junk

My op-ed at Mashable is up, "Twitter Spam: 3 Ways Scammers are Filling Twitter With Junk"

My first tech op-ed in 6 months! This correlates with our newborn girls sleeping through the night :) One of my hobbies had to give over these past six months.

Anyway, there were some minor edits to my piece, but one that I was sad that was taken out was my second poke at "joint venture marketing":

(Mashable post)
Do they even realize a joint venture is just a type of partnership a company might form with another company? That it isn’t a concept that deserves a whole category within marketing or corporate development? I was thinking of some equivalents to “joint venture marketing” in other fields. It would be like a chef trying to sell “deep fried cooking” or “charbroiled cooking” in an infomercial.

(original draft)
Do they even realize a joint venture is just a type of partnership a company might form with another company? That it isn’t a concept that deserves a whole category within marketing or corporate development? I was thinking of some equivalents to “joint venture marketing” in other fields. It would be like a chef trying to sell “deep fried cooking” or “charbroiled cooking” in an infomercial. Or claiming a “new” concept such as “foreplay sex.”

:)

Visualizations: Social Networks in the World (June 2009)

Noovo and Plinky... Next Wave of Publishing Tools for Lazy People

I recently got an invite to Noovo, which is an interesting content publishing play. ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus aptly called it "tumblr on steriods." When I first tried it out, I immediately thought "the child of Tumblr and Digg."

I like where Noovo going because it provides a filter for the growing streams of content from the vast digital world along with a publishing platform that you can share with your friends or the general public. It allows for lazy people like me to easily find and share their discoveries from the web or personal content from their blog, Twitter, Flickr and other multimedia services. One way they make it easy is on their "cover" page where you can see a list of articles, choose one that you want to post and share, and then just click to add it to your Noovo profile. For an example, you can view my profile here.

Founded by Slovenian entrepreneurs, it seems they have angel money from Esther Dyson, or she at least sits on their advisory board. Noovo's user interface isn't as simple as Tumblr's and they need a critical mass but are worth tracking.

Another lazy man's publishing tool is Plinky. Founded by Jason Shellen, a former Googler and Blogger guy. Plinky presents questions for you to answer, and then you can share them on Facebook, Twitter or your Plinky profile. They label these questions "prompts" and have a "Prompts" page that presents a new question every day. Again I like where this is going because it helps you generate content.

Interactive TV in the 90's was all about "lazy interactivity" because they discovered people (at least U.S. consumers) are lazy asses who didn't want too much complexity in their viewing choices or feature sets. Not many people really wanted to shop while they watched TV, pause, click on an actor's sweater, and then order it. You can still have a thousand channels and keep things simple. With a good filter and clean user interface, choices can be easily made and you can have a happy, lazy customer.

So Noovo and Plinky brings Web 2.0 back to this "lazy interactivity" model of consumer behavior since it syncs with the majority of web users and not the ten percent of users that like to work at their content creation.

Cool.Asia... Finding and Reviewing What's Cool in Asia

Randomly got emailed about Cool.Asia, which seems to be gunning to become the "Yelp of Asia." It's a review site that needs some UI work and a better design, but it definitely fills a gap needed in the market.

I'm a fan of Yelp and have been hoping they would expand to cities outside of the U.S. sooner than later. TripAdvisor's review feature is the primary destination for such reviews and it's decent but an alternative would be nice.

GoingOn Networks New Launches... Brocato, In Search of Rastafari, Forbes

My old social media company I co-founded, GoingOn Networks, had some new client launches over the past few months:

Brocato, a national online community for hair styling professionals.


In Search of Rastafari: A Soul’s Journey, a community site for a movie.

I posted about Forbes CEO Network before, but David Popler, GoingOn's CEO, reminded me of a couple other executive communities they did for Forbes. The Small Business Exchange community and the Forbes Life Executive Women community.


If you're seeking a social media solution to deliver a platform for socializing the business internet that low cost, easy-to-implement, and professional grade just visit GoingOn here.

Facecard... Debit Card Plus Social Networking

Facecard is a new product by MasterCard combines a debit card with profiling. You can build an online profile that allows you to set preferences and managing it through any Internet device.


Their description:
Facecard is a prepaid card, gift card, and cash all rolled into one (kinda like your favorite burrito).

* Put money directly onto your card. Spend that money anywhere, anytime. Use your card anywhere MasterCard® debit cards are accepted.

* Enjoy Prewards™. Get cash from your favorite retailers put on your card. Create a customizable profile to receive better Prewards.

* Give money. Give or receive money with ease. Use your card to pay back friends, send gifts, or make a loan.

* Manage it from anywhere. Get text notifications of Prewards and check your balance online. Use your card to get cash from ATMs worldwide.

* Link your card to a charity. Easily donate to your charity of choice.

New Forbes CEO Network Launched!

The new Forbes CEO Network is finally up. Very cool and congratulations to the Forbes.com and GoingOn team! This was built on my old software company's social media platform. If you're a C-level executive, check it out here.

Yahoo oneConnect, Fidgt and others

Yahoo! announced their oneConnect service that the World Mobile Congress yesterday. Similar to various other players, they are aggregating your email and social network contacts into one application on the mobile phone.

This is exactly like Fidgt, a startup I've been advising for the past few years. Eduardo, the founder & CEO, is definitely visionary and forward-thinking in the mobile space. Here are some screenshots of Fidgt's mobile app that Eduardo developed in 2005:





Screenshot of Yahoo!'s oneConnect:

Anyway, Fidgt will have some exciting news in the months to come :)

"Society for New Communications Research Announces 2008 Fellows"

Congratulations to Adrian Chan! The Society for New Communications Research announced their 2008 Fellows. 11 Fellows and 7 Senior Fellows enjoyed this honor, and Adrian was one of the Senior Fellows.

"The Society for New Communications Research, a global, nonprofit think tank focused on the latest developments in media and communications, today announced its 2008 Fellows. These new Fellows join the Society’s existing group of business leaders, scholars, professional communicators, members of the media, futurists and technologists from around the globe. The Society’s Fellows collaborate on original research and educational programs focused on the advanced study of emerging trends and developments in media and communications, and their effect on business, professional communications, media and society..."

Adrian and I worked closely together at GoingOn for almost two years. My pain was his pain at times :)

Anyway, he is a wellspring of creativity and excellent thinking in the web2.0 space and online human interaction. He blogged about this announcement and his research focus here.

I also know that he's open to speaking with various social networks if you're interested in participating in his possible research project on social analytics. If so, just ping him!

CLEANING UP MY FACEBOOK CONTACTS

My initial activity on Facebook lent me to accept some random invite requests or random invites being sent out from my gmail contacts. So I decided to clean my "friends list" a bit and clear out the randoms and professional contacts I would prefer to limit to my Linkedin account (i.e. recruiters, headhunters).

For me there isn't an exact criteria since I do believe Facebook is useful for some professional contacts, and keeping in touch with acquaintances. I've been eye-balling my "friends" directory, thinking about how I know someone (or don't know), and then removing those I would prefer to know through Linkedin or email. I've removed over 40 so far.

Hopefully this will keep my small world a little more manageable.

GOINGON'S NEW HOMEPAGE

Very cool. GoingOn, the company I co-founded, has launched a new homepage. Jon, our new CMO, did a great job.

Also this was done in a low budget manner, which was one of approaches I was advocating before I left several weeks ago. Another executive team member wanted to hire a design shop and spend $150,000 - $250,000 while others thought a few thousand would be good enough for the resources we had. I think I few thousand did a good job :)



Anyway, check it out and learn more about GoingOn here, especially if you're looking for a private-label social media (online community) platform.

BUSINESSWEEK'S BEST OF THE WEB: SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS... GOINGON NETWORKS

Even though we're the slowest moving startup in Silicon Valley, we got a little recognition from BusinessWeek's Best of the Web list for "Social Networking Tools" (slide 18 of 26):

Scaling the Social Web
Move over, MySpace. Online players from media giant Viacom to auctioneer eBay are adding networking features for their users


Anyway, I can only hope that we get a real product development person soon since I was just filler until this point. Business development people don't always make the best temporary product heads :)

Forget the Long Tail!

Some of you might not know, but I have a column at AlwaysOn covering the blogging, social networking, and overall Web 2.0 space. I'm suppose to be a part-time columnist (every 2-3 weeks), but I think I should be called a "one-time columnist" since the last time I wrote a piece was almost 5 months ago.

Yeah, I'm pretty lame. I missed the opportunity to write at least 3 good articles I had brewing in my head but didn't due to my day job. Anyway, I had fun with this piece and my initial rush job was tweaked several times to have more focus since I could have written about several issues I see within the video and entertainment industry. Rich, the managing editor at AlwaysOn, was the primary source of guidance, which I appreciated. He even thought of the title (thanks, rich!). Of course, Jill, my editor, helped in the normal editing process she goes through... once a year :)

Forget the Long Tail!
For video, it will be the big and mid-size players that win in the end.

A little over a year ago, I predicted that the PC would become an entertainment epicenter for U.S. consumers, much as it has in South Korea, where more than 70% of the residents cite the PC (over TV) as their preferred source of entertainment. (See "Where Technology Is Ubiquitous, Opportunity Abounds," January 2005.) Little did I realize how quickly my prediction could become a reality. A year later, my wife and I are watching episodes of "Lost" on my laptop's 15.4-inch screen. And when we're not doing that we're marveling over the perfectly visible beads of sweat on Kobe Bryant's face, thanks to our 50-inch plasma TV and a subscription to Comcast HDTV. Like the rest of America, our viewing habits are changing based on convenience and advancements in picture technology—and the ramifications of this for content producers could be monumental.

With their distribution channels disrupted and user-generated content on the rise, the lords of big media and entertainment are looking over their shoulders. And well they should: Thanks to new players like video-sharing services vSocial and Ourmedia, online editing and publishing service VideoEgg, and distribution platform Brightcove, just about anyone can create, edit, distribute, and even receive widespread recognition for his or her creative work today without the help of a major studio. But this isn't a story of the long tail; the hit makers will get richer. Instead, it's a story of the wide range of new revenue opportunities that are available to established and mid-size players in this evolving media landscape.

High-end picture and sound quality versus convenient access represent overlapping but not competing desires for consumers. As witnessed by the growing popularity of Slingmedia's Slingbox (which lets you access your TV from anywhere through your PC) and iTunes, a large segment of the consumer market has come to value the convenience of PCs. Others love their ESPN and HBO in high definition. In this new digital landscape, it's not simply about content but rather type of content and how it's distributed. And it's the companies that are able to look at content in new ways -- both repurposing existing content and creating new formats to suit the changing mediums -- that will come out the winners.

Over the past year, user-generated content has gotten a lot of buzz, becoming the primary driver in the growth of the blogosphere. With sites like Slashdot.org and Instapundit receiving more traffic than most of the online newspaper dailies, and sites like MySpace creating followings for previously unknown bands and artists, we've seen an explosion of amateur video on the web. The sons of Bob Saget are proliferating, and the web is flooded with home videos that may or may not be America's funniest.

Whether in the service of journalism, entertainment, or art, user-generated content is here to stay -- but don't expect the video space to play out in the same way that written text and photos have. You need more than just good writing skills and precision with a camera to produce good video. And there are only so many stupid human tricks, wild college parties, and horrible accident clips a person can watch. All of which is to say, video sites will rise and fall during this novelty stage of online video development, but the ones that stick around will be those with the best content.

Thus, while this may seem like a story of the long tail, it's not. Instead, it's the story of how online distribution channels will allow big media and entertainment to capture even more revenue -- just as the creation of the video rental market allowed them to do in the 1980s. Think about all of that content residing across the globe in the basements of companies like Time Warner and the BBC -- and then think about all the money that could be made from extending the revenue lifecycles of those content libraries into infinity.

I have thought about this, which is why I was disappointed when Yahoo announced last week that it's moving away from creating original content for the web. I thought Yahoo was moving in the right long-term direction by becoming not only an aggregator of content but also a creator of original programming -- perfectly poised as it is to open up new online distribution channels and increase the public's appetite for quality content. If Yahoo chose to pursue this tack, it could easily become the new studio on the block within the next decade.

Yahoo cousin Google, on the other hand, has applied excellent strategy to its moves in the video space. By signing the NBA, the National Archives, and CBS, the search giant has positioned its service well for the long term. Now, it's just needs to take care of its pricing: $1.99 for TV shows and $3.95 for NBA games are too much. If Google (or its content partners) can get those charges down to $1 or less (and provide round-the-clock access), expect to watch its usage and revenues grow. And although advertising models will no doubt evolve as the online video landscape matures, there's no reason that ad-free and ad-supported content can't co-exist for online video.

Just as the big boys can expect to profit from this changed video landscape, so too can the mid-size production groups that are able to develop content to fill the gap between big Hollywood productions and homemade video. Not all shows need to be multimillion-dollar productions -- especially when they're going to be viewed on cellphones -- but viewers are looking for something more than car crashes and practical jokes. Companies like ManiaTV (which creates broadcast channels for its online TV network) and MobuzzTV (which creates shorter clips geared for mobile devices) can profit from this gulf with productions that cost thousands rather than millions of dollars.

Expect, too, to witness the emergence of more filmmakers in the mode of Robert Rodriguez -- the producer and director of such films as "El Mariachi" and "Spy Kids" -- as the market for low-budget quality content for companies like Google Video and YouTube continues to grow. Again, what I'm talking about is a middle market in the video and movie industry where sustainable companies can and are being created.

So where does it all end? Over the next decade, I expect we'll continue to see the growth and development of these middle-market players, who will command more and more influence in the video and entertainment industries. Sharing in (but not controlling) the wealth will be the big studios, which can expect to see their revenues grow even as their stranglehold on the industry loosens. Most importantly, consumers will have instant access to more quality programming than ever before through a variety of mediums. (Twilight Zone and Star Trek whenever we want? Awesome!) I can't wait for the day when I can watch my favorite NBA games in high definition on my Sony PSP (for 50 cents each).


UPDATE: David Beisel, a VC at Masthead Ventures, has a response to my post, "Go Medium or Go Home?"


UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm leaving my copy here.

No Social Networking Site Is An Island

My column went up yesterday without my knowing. I had a break in the schedule from the OhMyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul since I didn't want to attend a visit of Samsung Electronics. Just got back to the hotel room and catching up on some work and a bit of blogging.

Jill, my editor, came up big with a great header and subheader since I couldn't come up with one in the rush of things before I took off for Seoul. Anyway, check it out!

No Social Networking Site Is an Island
But they can and will become key components of a host of next-generation web offerings in which content is king and the way users interact with it is paramount.


UPDATE: This article was lost during the horrible transition from AlwaysOn's old site to the new site. The AO people didn't back up their files before the transfer. Yeah, pretty dumb.