One of my favourite tools on the web is StumbleUpon. In short, SU is a toolbar which allows you to easily give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to any site on the web. As long as it has a web address, you can give it your approval. These lists of your favourite sites/movies/mp3s are aggregated into a page at the StumbleUpon.com website, where you can share with 4,493,158 other websurfers, according to the SU site.  I believe that SU’s structure as an entertainment-driven social network may enable it to compete with traditional Social Networks in the years to come.

The basic elements of SU aren’t exactly revolutionary for the web (see Digg or Del.ico.us). However, what really separates StumbleUpon from the bunch is its “Stumble!” button, which, based on your likes and dislikes, presents you with a targeted-but-random web page from its massive archives of over 12 million pages.  Looking through your preferred categories, ‘liked’ sites, and combining that with user-based content tags and reviews, SU provides you with something you probably like: an mp3, a blog, a mainstream news article or a short video.  And it often hits the right note.  It seems as if the algorithm is very sensitive to your tastes, and also looks to your friends to detect their tastes too.

The idea may or may not be intriguing on paper, but it’s in that moment of boredom where this tool comes to life. Instead of hanging around my favourite blogs for the 15th time today, Stumble! takes me to the University of East Tennesse’s Philosophy Games club, where I can engage in their newest hit, battleground God.  I believe that the market of people seeking this brand of alternative entertainment will grow wildly in the coming years, as a new generation of young folk grow up completely ensconced in web culture. These users may prefer a social network which focuses on its open collection of “fun stuff”.

SU is growing.  StumbleUpon has had a steady growth from 600,000 users in 2005 to 4.5 million users today.  According to Phil Butler, its slowly mounting success is due to “the methodology and ease with which content is collected and displayed”. This, I feel is the essential long-term benefit of SU over traditional social networks:

As opposed to Facebook or MySpace, where we connect to our friends, SU is a site which prioritizes our friends’ interests above their relationship to us.

So while it may still be a bit clunky for people to get used to the interface, eventually, SU holds a database of what people have enjoyed the most on the web, and a fantastic way of delivering that content for small hits of fun. And by connecting people together based on that information, SU has the potential to bloom into a social network that will facilitate conversations of the most pertinent entertainment to people, and this could make a big impact on social networking and perhaps, social living.

–

Ramblings:

The image to my left is SU’s initial forays into friend recommendations, and I found that a few of these people had interests so similar to me, we could likely talk for hours.

This isn’t unlike what Last.FM ventures to do, or what Facebook does when it tries to match you with content, but the point I’m really making,  is that it isn’t the interface or number of users that’s really going to determine our social future, but rather, an algorithm that can understand us.

Another point is that if there is a social networking shakeup, and an OpenID begins to surface, the entire web will become social (see Tim’s pontifications on Web 3.0).  At that point, people will need a strong reason to devote their social time to a given site.  Free, plentiful entertainment is always a good reason.

Miguel Helft from the New York Times referred to SU’s activity as “channel-surfing the Internet”, and the guys at SU label this paradigm of web interaction as “Web Discovery”.

Tags: Applications, Facebook, Social Network, Usability, stumbleupon // Add Comment »

I just ran across one of the most interesting blog posts I’ve read lately speculating on Web 3.0 over at Master of 500 Hats.

Not to steal Dave’s thunder, but there are a couple points I want to highlight.  The Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo is primarily to shore up it’s dominance in the Email/Instant Messaging online sectors.  Sure there are side benefits like buying up Yahoo’s advertising, search and traffic, but the winner of the Internet will be he who controls the user.

But with the battle to own the user comes the battle to own the user’s social graph, currently controlled by Facebook/MySpace/Bebo/hi5/could continue to list ad nauseum.  I keep referring to it, but all future web advertising will be contextually driven by your social graph, where brands are providing social relevance to users.  Ie. “Your friend Katie just saw (insert cookie-cutter Will Ferrell movie) and rated it 5 stars!” (ok I kid, it will be impossible for a Will Ferrell movie to be rated as excellent again… the days of Old School and Anchorman are over).

I think it’s also highly important to note the fact that we as users on the Internet now have hundreds of logins/passwords for every individual site on the net.  This is a problem that needs to be solved, and while attempts have been made (Microsoft Passport or the community driven OpenID), nothing will happen until one company owns enough of the user’s Internet life to make it beneficial for the user (really, what’s the difference in consolidating your logins from 60 to 50?).  Alternatively, if the smaller communities can build enough momentum around the OpenID concept, it could be viable, but whether that is a possibility remains to be seen.

The final piece of the puzzle are the e-commerce/payment conglomerates.  Look for the Microsoft/Google duopoly to put pressure on eBay (and their very valuable PayPal) and Amazon for merger/acquisitions in the next few years.

Where do the small players stand in this heated battle?  Well, I sort of compare it to the open source community who has not only weathered giants like Microsoft’s attempts to push them out, but actually blossomed in the modern Internet era.  If the small guys can provide real value to users, by churning out innovations while being completely flexible to quickly capitalize on new ideas, they will have a direct line to sink their (small) teeth into the necks of Google and Microsoft.  And instead of a one-sided parasitic relationship, Microsoft and Google will leverage these small-time players to come up with new innovations and either partner or swallow them up for big money when it makes sense.  And sometimes these guys will have such momentum that they will swim past these sharks to potentially become a shark themselves (could Facebook be this shark?  That question requires an entirely new post) (and one more side point – I’m not sure whether I should perhaps be calling Microsoft and Google ‘whales’ instead).

The Internet and Web 2.0 is a playground for innovation due to the extremely low barriers to entry and it’s massive channel to instantly reach all users around the globe.  It’s an exciting time to see all the fish in the sea battle (and work symbiotically) to control the Internet.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Google, Marketing, MySpace, Social Network // 1 Comment »

I was responding to one of my many application invites when I noticed something new in my invitation to Mob Wars: A new option labeled “Stop These Invites”.

It seems that with every upgrade and iteration, Facebook is moving to slowly optimize the user’s Application experience. A big part of this is eliminating these spam-like invites, but another big part is emphasizing Application quality. Facebook has been moving with that initiative by assigning each Application an invitation quality rating, which either increases or decreases based on how many people respond positively to the invitation. This allows Applications with legitimate content to proliferate faster, and thereby increase the overall quality of the popular Application pool.

Furthermore, with the upcoming profile upheaval, we’ll see less room for Applications. This is certainly going to encourage developers to increase the aesthetic and functional appeal of their Applications, because real-estate will be at a premium. This also means that fewer applications will have the chance to become popular, and developers with multiple failed Applications will have no reason to jump in and create “Kiss Me Part VII”.

Eventually, the new profile page will facilitate Applications in a more organized way, with tabs enabling users to have precise control over groups of applications they’d like to display. This way, the most popular applications will reside in a tab right beside Photos, and to stay there, they’ll need to be as useful and usable as Photos itself.

I paint a somewhat ideal picture, and there will be a lot of bumps before Applications can jump to that level, but I do believe that eventually, Facebook will enable intelligent and creative third-party developers to generate software that is truly useful to the whole of Facebook.

[Edit: It's off-topic, but great reading relating to the business of Social Networks as mentioned in Tim's previous post.  This one is about the Profitability of Asian Social Networks vs. Facebook. ]

Tags: Social Network // 1 Comment »

According to the Newspaper Association of America and referenced over at Editor&Publisher and TechCrunch,  Newspaper revenues fell 9.4% to $42 billion in the past year compared to 2006 in the US.  For reference, online ad revenues grew 19% to $3.2 billion over 2006.  What does this signal?  Well, for starters, the looming US recession has and will continue to have a definite impact on advertising revenues, as one of the first things to be cut during tight times are marketing budgets.  But is there more to it?

It’s no secret that traditional print media like newspapers are falling on hard times.  Marketing executives are being given more options with where to spend their marketing dollars, and while I don’t believe that Internet ad revenues have totally lived up to their potential, innovations in the online space are arriving that will present credible options for said Marketing execs when they determine how to optimally allocate their ad budgets.

First of all, the static ad banner on the side of every web page is starting to be replaced with interactive and engaging multimedia.  Online video ads and flash-based multimedia are becoming more and more common, attracting the user’s attention and creating a much more solid impression over and above the typical static classmates.com banner you traditionally see.

But more importantly, online ads are beginning to take advantage of demographics and eventually will leverage individual user preferences, as I alluded to earlier this month, to provide much more relevant and contextual ads that are targeted to every individual.

Finally, combine these new contextual online ads with a solid metrics and reporting system that can track every user’s interaction with the ad, and you can create an objective sales presentation to the aforementioned Marketing executive, giving him or her direct insight into how each penny spent online translates into brand impressions/interactions, and eventually, sales.  This gives the online ad realm a tremendous advantage over traditional media, because the feedback reporting mechanisms can objectively indicate the success rate of an online marketing campaign .  A complete return-on-investment can be calculated along with with every reportable stat you can imagine, so that the Marketing exec can easily gauge how to optimally allocate their online marketing spending.

Newspaper and traditional media are a one-way street.  You can get indirect feedback based on general sales lift, but nothing near what can be done through online metrics.  This gives online advertising the advantage, and with innovations still to come to provide even more creative as well as socially relevant ads to users, it appears as though online advertising is destined for continued growth.

On another note – Duncan Riley at TechCrunch wrote an interesting post last November about the need for consolidation in the Newspaper industry to improve their chances of survival in the face of increased competition for advertising dollars.

Tags: Advertising, Facebook, Marketing // 1 Comment »

Having seen an old friend’s news pass along my Facebook news feed today, I decided to find out more about what he was up to. Naturally, I Googled him.

I was surprised to find his LinkedIn profile as the first entry, with the second, indented entry related to his entry in the LinkedIn directory.  See the image to the left.

This spiked my curiousity, and I searched myself and found the same result.

I then searched for Michael Arrington (the famous TechCrunch blogger) and found that his LinkedIn was on the second page, and in fact was ahead of Facebook as well, although his Twitter actually appeared on the first page.

Does anyone have any insight into how/why LinkedIn is ranked so highly in Google searches?

Tags: Social Network // Add Comment »

Gary Vaynerchuk posted an interesting video blog raising the question of whether Twitter has the potential to become even bigger than Facebook. It’s definitely an interesting opinion that I’d recommend watching so I don’t want to paraphrase too much, but his main point is that with Twitter’s simplicity and update speed (nearly instantaneous compared to Facebook’s 15-minute News-Feed update), it has the power to potentially become the social tool of choice for being socially connected to the global social scene at any moment.

That Twitter is gaining massive hype lately is no lie – SXSW confirmed that it has become mainstream for the tech geeks. However, I’d argue Gary’s main point solely on the fact that the mass majority of Facebook users are not part of the uber-tech geek crowd that would leverage Twitter’s instantaeous connections and social dynamics. In this day and age, most users are content to logon to Facebook, check their messages, browse their friends’ profiles, view some pictures, and possibly check out some applications. It remains to be seen whether the mainstream Facebook user will see value in an app like Twitter. But as history has shown, the social web is evolving at light speed, so it will be interesting to see how the mainstream evolves with new social media applications.

Tags: Facebook, Social Network, Twitter // Add Comment »

A great interview with the founder of SocialThing!, one of two competing “lifestreaming” services. In short, services that collect and interact with information on all the different services available to you on the web.

Check it out here.

With recent moves by FriendFeed to open up its API, it’s clear that the application, developed by former Google programmers, is taking a direct shot to become an integral social tool for the web.  This threatens Facebook, MySpace and even the traditional concept of a social network.

Eventually, we may see a feed oriented web supplanted by either OpenID or perhaps a Google sign-in first.  Only time will tell how FF and Twitter progress.

Tags: Facebook, Google, MySpace, Social Network, Usability // Add Comment »

It seems that Microsoft is chasing after its own tail these days.  Only months after investing a healthy quarter billion into Facebook, their Spaces division is attempting to leverage its own friend network by introducing a friend-feed to display your Live Messenger friends’ latest actions (see screenshot).  Are they competing with Facebook?

With MySpace having jumped on the ‘friend-feed’ idea in their revamped profile and web applications such as FriendFeed and Twitter popping up, it’s quickly becoming apparent that the feed is the essential backbone of any good social network.  That must have been what Microsoft was thinking when they made this move, but the current incarnation is hardly providing me with enough relevant information to constitute a “social network” (see screenshot).  Most of my friends have never even set up their Live Spaces profile, even though it’s been around for years, and so I’m left with entries like

Judging by the latest Nielson ratings on Social Networks (see image), Live Spaces is about to lose its long hold on the fourth place.  I don’t see anything particularily wrong with the technology, but the botched release of Spaces and the consequent pillaging of the once simple-yet-effective MSN Messenger convince me that we won’t see users flocking to Spaces anytime soon.

Tags: Advertising, Applications, Facebook, Social Network // 2 Comments »

Instead of diving into my usual rhetoric, I’m just going to tell you about my experience with Audible.com.  It’s not Facebook related, but if someone at Audible reads this, they can let somebody in their company know how not to launch their eventual social networking application.

8:30pm: I’m keen to get this fantastic audio book, recommended to me wholeheartedly by my girlfriend.  It’s like a Coles note for introductory Macroeconomics.  I want to burn it for our two-hour late-night drive.

8:45pm: After a Google search for “Audible.com free offer”, I find a 14-day free trial offer.  I sign up and am asked to download some software.

8:50pm: The installation asks me what device I use to play music.  I want to burn a CD, but I also use an iPod.  Their options have “iPod” and “I want to burn CDs” as separate options.  I’m not sure which one to pick so I pick the second one.

9:00pm: I install the software, and in addition to looking *vaguely similar* to iTunes (see screenshot below), it presents me with two empty databases: library and trash.

9:02pm:  After realizing there’s no way to actually download or buy anything from within the software, I head back to Audible.com, and find the audio book I like.  I check it out, and buy it.  The system recognizes I have a free trial, and I proceed to order and purchase the book at no cost.

9:10pm: I am forwarded to a download page, where strangely, all 20 chapters of the book are individually listed, with no button for download all.  I click download on the first link, and a pop-up appears: “You do not have the Audible.com download software.”  …  “Yes, I do” I mutter, feeling the way no usability designer ever hopes their users would.

9:15pm: I eventually find a link explaining I need to restart Mozilla for changes to take effect.  I do.  I still get the same error message.  I see a small checkbox indicating that I have to click the checkbox if my computer uses cookies and is not properly registering the software.  Finally, it downloads.

9:30pm: I have now downloaded my 20 chapters, one by one, and now want to burn it to a CD.  I launch the Audible software, drag and drop the files, and click “burn”.  Audible software indicates I must install Nero 7.

9:50pm: Nero 7 trial version is now on my computer (all 512 Mb worth).  I see an option for “burn Audible.com audiobook”.  I choose it and drag and drop the files in.  Nero asks me for my Audible username and password.  I enter them.  Nero smiles mischievously: “You can not burn these files.”

9:53pm: I head back to the Audible.com software, drag and drop the chapters into the software, and click “Burn using Nero 7″. I then received this notice.

10:00pm: We merrily start our trip, listening to Ricky Gervais podcasts and the Flight of the Conchords radio show.  I crash.

Tags: Marketing, Other, Usability // 6 Comments »

I recently jumped on the insider bandwagon and installed FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com).

My first thoughts:

The interface is absolutely simple.  It’s not necessarily elegant, but the cleanliness helps navigate this functionality-heavy site.  I’m sure it will get sleeker and Googler with time.

I can’t believe how many of these services I already had accounts to: Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, Google Reader, my Blog.  It felt really good to consolidate all the content into one place.

The seamless integration into Facebook is genius.  It points you to the Application without you knowing you’ve even left the site, then redirects you right back, before you know it, your Facebook is now hooked up to FriendFeed.

My second thoughts:

Every single activity I’ve ever done on any site is now completely visible to all my friends.  Wow, I completely don’t see the need for it at all.

Perhaps we really will move into utility based social networks.  Facebook for friendship and (see my last post) chat, LinkedIn for your profesional lives, and FriendFeed for finding good information and entertainment content.  I can see FriendFeed overlapping with Facebook, but I can also see this sort of model propagate and settle over the next few years.  I think the general consumer will enjoy it and slowly get used to having the multiple accounts and multiple points of usage.

Am I wrong?  Will all services assemble into one, with filters and options separating the network?  Facebook is trying to do it, with their recently announced privacy controls, they’re trying to be your work site and your private site.  I have my reservations about whether people will be able to sort out the complex controls.  I imagine people will try, and then just appreciate LinkedIn for what it is, a separate area where you can manage your ‘business’ side.

Tags: Applications, Google, Social Network // Add Comment »