Evolving Web

The Three Stages of Data Maturity and Social Networking

Three Stages of Data Maturity:

1. Data exists

2. Data is integrated

3. Integrated data is exposed to useful applications.

Currently, Social networking is firmly in stage 2 development.  Facebook, Plaxo, and even thinner applications like Twitter allow some amounts of data integration.  Most notably, we are able to take our e-mail lists and mine them for rapid social-network inclusion.

As Twitter lets us know, this is "Wicked Awesome" when compared to the much less wicked awesome option of not being able to do this at all.   I would never say that this is not one of the best things to happen ever.

So that is the most common instance of data integration.

The next instance is of data integration is mere aggregation.  This is another instance of step 2, and should not be confused with a useful application.  This is being done sometimes with and sometimes without your consent on applications like Plaxo (with) and Facebook (not-so-with).

Plaxo's new Pulse feature lets you aggregate your little social fanny right off with all these services:

 This is pretty nifty when it's all up and running.  But, in the end, its just another aggregator presented in a less-than-stunning way.

Our data is linearly presented in a non-searchable, non-archiveable, non-contextual, ultimately non-useful data stream that you need to baby sit in order to get value from.

Where have we seen this before?  Yes, on Facebook:

Are Facebook and Plaxo evil or worthless?  Heck no.  I use them every day.  But are they actually social software?  Only on a very limited, basic level.

This is seriously the 16k VisiCalc spreadsheet era of social networking and social media. You can see in the image to the right that the idea of what a powerful spreadsheet is certainly there in VisiCalc.  But the screen resolution, color choices (green, green or green), and the functionality just weren't there yet.

This is what we are dealing with today -- rudimentary blunt-object approaches like Facebook.  I'm glad I can find out quickly what Laurel Papworth and Sean Liu are doing on the other side of the Pacific, what Toby and Sue are doing in the UK, and what's going on in the Bay Area all from one page on my desk in Seattle.  But it's merely a step in social computing's maturation.

We have fully achieved two milestones.  We have catalogued and visualized our social networks.  We've seen that a mere 168 of our closest friends can yield a 3-degree network of 3,451,100 (or so).  We've seen that we can do some nice things and do some stupid things.

But we haven't really been able to do useful things.  And that's the real next step.  Exposing the social networks we have built to useful applications that actually do something.

Imagine if Word or Google Docs or Zoho could directly tap into your Facebook network or your LinkedIn Network.  Then you would immediately have power.  Your network would become part of your creative process for real.

Why has this not happened?  Because the social network you have built on Facebook or on LinkedIn is the only asset they have.  You and I have built their value proposition.  But in order to maintain its value for them, they must squander its value for you.

Therefore, we are currently in a state of arrested development.  Social networking web site providers gain value through step two and are threatened by step three.  Step three is when we mature beyond throwing chickens and get into the real value of social networking and social media.

Technorati Tags: visicalc, social networking, social media, microsoft, google, google docs, zoho, facebook, laurel papworth

Knowing It Will, Waiting for When

Last month while in Beijing I had the good fortune to have a nice plate of Wikipedia.  Of course, I blogged about it.  There was some initial attention but, honestly, I'd fallen off (still haven't fully climbed back on) the blogging wagon and my pageviews showed it.

But I figured that one day, someone would notice the Wikipedia post and it would go crazy.  It was just too good and the pictures Pockey took were excellent.

So today, a cascade of sites picked up the Wikipedia post and my pageviews, which were seriously depressed, did this:

Now I feel like Thomas Dolby Robertson - I have this huge back catalog of really great work and all people are going to remember are my novelty posts.

Of course, this is largely my own fault.  When I was posting regularly my daily traffic would hover at better levels.

What's also interesting about this though is that the instigating site was, apparently, a food site, then spread to kottke, geek press, and Waxy (Nov 28th).  And from there to a host of other sites, like this much appreciated summarization by Dan Bruno.

So this further confirms a few things I've long expected:

(1) Geeks are actually migrating away from Jolt and Chips to fully embracing food culture.  In many instances, my food posts have raised as many comments as my better tech posts

(2) Write it and they will come.  In England they are warning kids that Blogging is Forever.  Two edged sword obviously.  But, if you leave nice nuggets up, people come back to them.  I've been watching this fairly closely as I've been writing less.  When I was getting around 200 or 300 pageviews a day, much of that was coming to new content.  When there was no new content, my pageviews fell to half that.

(3) Network effects extend naturally outside of predictable network paths.  They are not linear.  LinkedIn and other social networking sites currently do not recognize this.  Facebook allows you to be a member of a variety of Networks, but only one of them can be geographic.  What is up with that?  I belong to three geographic networks:  Seattle, The Bay Area, and Beijing.  Who is Facebook to cordon me off to merely one?

Two final interesting things about (2) above:

(A) New subscribers kept coming even when I wasn't posting (I suspect because going directly to the site was no longer rewarding)

(B) Certain articles started gaining in stature as I was dealing more and more with natural search traffic.  The clear winner in those?  Aggregation pages. 

I'll blog more about my natural search observations later.  But, now that I've firmly profited from my own "Blinded Me with Science", I need to quickly go write up my "Hyperactive!"  

Technorati Tags: wikipedia, kottke, seriouseats, dan bruno, geek press, waxy, natural search, blogging, thomas dolby

Recommendation Engines and Action

Today Yelp was nice enough to note that Dan (left) was similar to me.  Eleven percent similar to me, to be precise.  It would be hard for someone to be more similar on Yelp (presumably this is figured by like places reviewed).  My Yelp reviews cover Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and the Washington Coast.  It would be surprising to overlap much more that 11%.

The funny thing is, my friend David Anderson has been telling me I need to meet Dan for the last three years.  I think we may have briefly met at a party once, but still hadn't actually sat down for a conversation.

So, David, very central to my social network, didn't spur action to meeting Dan.  But Yelp, a tool I'm playing around with, caused immediate action.  Again, it's that barrier to action issue.  Yelp's level of action was this:

1.  Is that Really the same Dan?

2. SMS David for verification.

2a. Receive verification.

3. Pop off a quick private message in Yelp to Dan.

The barrier to entry into Danland was almost infinitesimal.  Often the response to this is that now social ties mean less because they are so easy to instantiate.  However, what I have now is a tie to Dan that is tangible and shared between both parties.  David has advocated I meet Dan for some time, but time and distance have hindered that.  Dan and I can now use asynchronous and thin types of conversation (email, yelp messages, etc) to chat a bit before we actually meet for lunch or something.

You can read Jim Benson's yelp reviews here.

Technorati Tags: yelp, social media, social networking, david anderson, communication, asynchronous communication, barriers to entry

I'm Living In My Tabset

I noticed today that Windows XP pretty much confirms that I no longer use desktop applications like I used to.  The Microsoft Suite, coupled with a variety of Macromedia tools always dominated my oft-used applications list.

Now We see PowerPoint in there pretty much alone - and that's simply because I've received about 30 powerpoints to view over the last few weeks.  Below that is word, which Windows defaults to for documents.

Other than that it's all communication (Snitter, Second Life) and management tools (iTunes, Picassa).

My previous need for applications has greatly abated by the growing options in communication and collaboration.  Documents that previously would have been written in Microsoft Word are now blog posts, wiki entries, or shared documents on Zoho or Google.

This relates to recent conversations on the net about such things as the death of e-mail, the failure of search, and the ability of Microsoft to anticipate and change with a chaotic computer world.

The browser likely isn't the future of this new world - it is too limited.  Web-assumptive platforms like Adobe Air or Microsoft's WPF / Silverlight are.  Google raises the ante by moving it seamlessly to wireless.

Says the Wall Street Journal:

A Google spokesman said .... "Our goal is to make sure that American consumers have more choices in an open and competitive wireless world," ...

The company has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions. That's one impetus behind the Android software for mobile phones that Google announced Nov. 5, alongside a group of industry partners including Taiwan's HTC Corp., a handset maker, and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile, a wireless carrier.

Regardless of any business or monetization strategies by Google, the upshot here is clear.  Google is preparing for a world of ubiquitous computing, which means mobile devices.  Mobile devices means greater reliance on hosted applications and storage.  Mobile devices, being primarily also communication devices (as opposed to computing devices), will be more logical for the extension of social networks.

Social networking's extension into this discussion greatly changes the adoption strategies for users.  An open platform is the only alternative here.  Any stovepiping by handset makers or service providers greatly limits the network for Google and, ultimately, consumers. 

While I am admittedly an early adopter, my morning tabset in Firefox looks like this:

My suite has nearly completely migrated away from bulky applications like Word and Outlook.  Gmail, Google Calendar, TypePad, Zoho, Facebook, Twitter, Platial, Quickbooks Online, SocialText and Yelp are what greet me every morning. 

If my computer explodes or is stolen, I am annoyed but no longer destroyed.  And that is liberating.

But it is not nearly the main issue.  The social networking power of the online tools represented is astounding.  With the social networks represented underneath each of those tabs, I seriously have tens of thousands of colleagues with whom near-instantaneous rich communication is possible.  And this doesn't even include my second-tier applications like LinkedIn, other wikis (esp. Wikipedia), Mindmeister, del.icio.us and so on.

All available to me anywhere, any time, from any computer.

Yesterday, Ed Vielmetti Twittered:

And I responded:

And we had a conversation.

Ed pinged his network with a quick question. And his network responded almost immediately.  It was a crowdsourced decision making tool.  As if Ed Vielmetti has a room of fully 377 people who are just waiting for him to come out on stage and shout a question at them.

My reply took almost no time whatsoever.  But in our exchange, which ended in Ed suggesting a map as a logical bridge between social networking theory and everyone else on earth and my reply that this was a great idea, we and the group ended up with a little nugget of an idea to play with in the future.

When the hell did Word ever do that for you?

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, social media, social networking, applications, microsoft, google, twitter, collaboration, communication, group decision making

Epiphanies, Gathering and Energy

6 am, eyes open.

Music engine in brain is playing Pink Floyd on endless loop:

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.

I've written before on the role of epiphany in management.  How groups coalesce around an activity, goal, or vision.  How people as individuals suddenly become a focused group.

What we also see, is how people almost get it.  They catch a fleeting glimpse of that coalescence and then lose it.  Something doesn't quite gel.

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, my friend Sean Liu landed in San Francisco.  Sean is Seattle raised, living in Beijing, but still has a place in Palo Alto.  For about a week, he was in Seattle.

He sent me a text upon landing:

I can feel the energy down here

What he was feeling was the group - the energy of focus.  In this case, the focus of the Bay Area.  Weeks before, Sean and I noticed very different but very noticeable energy in Shanghai.

When that energy is there, it enlivens you. 

Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat is often misinterpreted to mean that no specialization or no willful segregation takes place.  It obviously does.  The world now is flattened in interesting ways: industry can open anywhere, outsourcing is commonplace, specialization is key to a focused business, niche markets are vital.

However, niche markets rely on the shared energy of an industry.  Companies today that focus on products without participating in their professional communities are quickly isolated and deemed irrelevant.  Money is made, business are successful because of the energy of focus.  What made John Hagel say the World was "spiky".

Silicon Valley has its energy because of its focus.  The focus of gathering. An enduring epiphany, or perhaps a set of rolling epiphanies that are shared and keep the energy of the area alive.  Other books, like Frans Johansson's Medici Effect, cover this phenomenon.  People gather in places to exchange not only goods and services, but also ideas and inspiration.

When this energy subsides or is squelched, that is when one becomes Comfortably Numb.  That is when the energy doesn't move you.  It's when you watch activity from the corner of your eye, rather then relishing it.

A challenge for Friedman's flat world, is to keep the flatness as meaning "few geological or social barriers", as in a flat driving surface where ideas flow and not flat as in flat soda or a flat tire.

Technorati Tags: world is flat, energy, epiphany, inspiration, world is spiky, thomas friedman, john hagel, frans johansson

The Physics of Attention

So I says:

And Bill Anderson Says:

And then I ... somewhat ineptly says:

So ... attention is it a thing or a process?  A particle or a wave? 

It's the grail of entertainment, media, and our relationships.  We all want attention.  We crave it.  We monetize it.  Eyeballs are only valuable if they are actively registering something.

The only time the unconscious or the dead count is in Chicago elections.

So as we think, live and love we are paying attention.  Paying is two-edged verb.  The thing (attention) must exist to pay attention.  But paying attention is a process.

So perhaps attention is a commodity of immediate decay.  Of an infinitely small conversion cycle.  A near-zero half life. 

Alas, Bill is probably right, I cannot hoard my attention.  I cannot keep it in a box.  I cannot retrieve it for later use.  All I'd have are the empty husks of attention, devoid of their sweet fruit.

Ahh, sweet attention.

Technorati Tags: attention economy, bill anderson, facebook, musing, stream of consciousness

Twitter is making us stup

[14:41] OurFounder: I'm annoyed that Snitter has made me Twitter regularly
[14:41] imjayf: is Snitter a desktop app?
[14:41] OurFounder: yes
[14:41] OurFounder: Done in Adobe Air
[14:41] imjayf: There's twitterific on the Mac--Anastasia has it--it's neat, though the free version shows ads in between twits
[14:42] imjayf: but, my twitter strategy is wholly dependent on twitter being unreliable and inconsistent for me
[14:42] OurFounder: Snitter works quite well and is unobtrusive
[14:43] imjayf: unobtrusive is good--but I like my twitter to be barely functional
[14:43] imjayf: I haven
[14:43] OurFounder: lol 

[14:43] imjayf: I haven't added any new twitter friends since the first week--I still have 10 or something--also part of the strategy
[14:44] OurFounder: yeah, that's how I was too.
[14:44] OurFounder: Until the dark times came
[14:44] OurFounder: and it was useful
[14:44] OurFounder: sick and twisted
[14:44] OurFounder: ectoplasm oozing from its fingers through my skin
[14:44] OurFounder: grasping at my heart
[14:44] OurFounder: and making me communicate in under 140 characters
[14:44] OurFounder: as if human understanding has a ceiling
[14:45] imjayf: I lost you after 140 characters--that's my attention span

Social Capital is Not a Fixed Investment

Do you hate someone who likes you?  Have you felt snubbed or insulted by someone you trusted?  Has someone who is an utter bastard made you feel bad or self-conscious by saying cruel things?

Or

Have you met someone and really gotten along quickly?  Have you taken a previously contentious relationship and made it work well?  Has a kind word from a stranger made the whole day seem better?

A lot of this may be due to Social Capital.

When we as human beings interact, we quickly establish rules for that interaction.  Human beings also operate under systems of gaming.   We like to know that we are doing a good job.  We want to be successful.

The end measure of that success needs to be determined, however.  How is it determined?  Who determines it?  Since it's largely subjective, who is the keeper of the metrics.

For some people, the social capital may be "How much money can I make by exploiting Jim Benson?"  For other people it may be "How much money can I make by cooperating with Jim Benson?"  Others may just want to steal my money outright.

Replace money with love, jelly bellies, or anything else and you have the true issue of social capital.

The market, if you will, of trading this capital is established by the participants, silently negotiated, and then adhered to until someone / everyone wins / loses or until someone pulls out of the game.

Successful people understand that success is relative to the situation and to the participants.  They will actively determine the social capital being traded and the victory conditions of the interaction.  Unsuccessful people allow others to define the social capital and the victory conditions for them.  Cooperative people will daylight these transactions; usurious people will obfuscate them.

Within Social Networking, Social Capital is understood on a certain level, but it has never been fully incorporated.  Social Networking sites are lackluster because of this.

LinkedIn completely defined the level of interaction, the type of relationships, and the social capital traded.  You are business associates, the degrees of separation are more important that the quality of relationship, recommendations are nice gestures but nothing more.

Facebook lets us throw pigs at each other and invite people to parties or turn them into Zombies. 

eBay lets us buy and sell, build trusted vendor networks, and acknowledge trustworthy behavior.

They are all systems that dictate the level of human interaction acceptable in that forum.  Such systems deny the value of social capital.  They are the social networking equivalent of planned economies.

With Facebook, we see perhaps Perestroika. We see the beginnings of the acknowledgement that Zombies are not the end result of Social Networking.  But we see that platform put forth by a planned economy state.  Are we freer now with the Facebook platform?  Yes.  Does it let us select the new social currencies?  No.

Open Social stands to unlock the true power of Social Capital, by removing the value of the buddy-lists from the bottom line of specific corporations.  By migrating the value of Social Networks from the number of warm bodies you've piled up to the strength, quality and type of connections.

It just needs to stay Open.

Social Networks want to be free.  People have always negotiated the value of their relationships.  It's time to take control of our friends and associations back.

Technorati Tags: mini-manifesto, social media, social networking, facebook, ebay, linkedin, open social, opensocial, social capital

Missing Ingredient: Intent

Intent has its own intensity.  When you are with other people and you show intent, momentum is escalated.  People notice intent.  They said, "Wow, that person's really serious about this."

Many times in business and in life, we downplay the importance of emotions.  We mistake detachment for maturity.  Aloofness for being seasoned.

In reality, I've found most situations appreciate candor, directness, emotions and intent.  It's almost liberating.  In a business context, I've been quite animated, excited and press hard for results because, well, I'm really serious about this.

Intent carries with it a lot of subtext.  You do want this.  Therefore, you believe in it.  You have a desired outcome.  You are invested in creating that desired outcome.  More important than profit, the desired outcome will be fulfilling for you.

Intent also cuts corners.  Properly implied intent can supercharge negotiations by rapidly communicating your drive for a desired outcome.  Does it make you weak because your hand is tipped?  No.  Because your desired outcome is what you are negotiating towards.

In an Agile enterprise, Intent of the group is expressed daily through scrums or stand-up meetings, through feature set prioritization, and through the drive of the group to achieve goals.  Intent of the individuals make up the voices of this chorus.  In order to achieve harmony, a work group does not have to all have the same voice, they just have to be in key.  In fact, harmony demands baritones, tenors, sopranos and so forth.

Properly applied intent is honesty.   If you make your intent known, you free the other person to react to actual input, not to a guess at what your motivations are. 

Intent is a gamble.  With the expression of intent, you give up some control in exchange for greater returns in the future.  Intent gives you a bit of vulnerability in exchange for an honest and streamlined process.  People will react to this by either appreciating it and working with you happily.  Or they will try to take advantage of you by taking your intent and not revealing their own.  Fortunately, these people are usually fairly easy to spot.

Hiding intent is gaining power by hoarding information.  Information hoarding is the single most deadly activity in a relationship.  Lies of omission are often met with harsher criticism than actual lies.  Gathering power by hiding intent creates a trust vacuum.

Intent requires understanding.  Intent is not something you might do or something you might think.  It's something you absolutely will do and think.  Every stray thought that comes into your head is not your intent.

So, properly apply intent in your life.  Don't hide from it.  Let it get you worked up.  Share it.  Let it grow.

Technorati Tags: management, stream of consciousness, intent, harmony, negotiations