Archive for Social Platforms
by Kevin Werbach
April 1, 2008 at 8:22 pm · Filed under
Social Platforms, Supernova08
Dave McClure’s rant on Web 3.0 as Hailstorm 2.0 is a great read for anyone interested in the future of the Web. It ties together many topics we cover at Supernova, including social platforms, identity, and the evolving online business ecosystem, not to mention Microsoft-Yahoo, Google vs. Microsoft, online payment systems, advertising, and more. At the end, though, Dave makes a shockingly dull-sounding observation:
“Web 3.0″ is the condition which exists when someone is always “logged in” on the web, and can move from site to site without ever having to re-enter a username/password.
That’s it? No semantic web? No 3D avatars? No free doughnuts? It sounds so… boring. I mean, c’mon, single sign-on?
Sometimes, though, the most important changes are the ones that seem too small to mention. To a great extent, the explosion of activity, innovation, and monetization on the Web since 2002 happened because most of us are now on broadband connections. And what makes broadband so valuable in daily life isn’t the speed… it’s the fact that it’s always on. Even something as basic as a search engine query isn’t so convenient when you have to make a dial-up connection to your ISP every time you start a session.
Dial-up made using the Internet a conscious choice, an activity delimited in time and space. Broadband makes it something you assume is always there, whenever you need it. It may not seem like a big difference, but psychologically, it’s huge. It’s the same phenomenon as Josh Kopelman’s penny gap — a little bit of effort changes the dynamics of the market.
Site log-ins are similar. If you have to remember a username and password for all sites you visit, you’re constantly reminded that they are separate islands. Equally important, the lack of ubiquitous identity and sign-on infrastructures means that your usage data and other personal information doesn’t flow freely across those sites. We’ve overcome the limitations of the Web as a series of static “pages,” but not the limitations of the Web as a series of discrete “sites.”
If you’ll recall from my Ten Challenges post, one of the key questions for the Network Age is the interplay of aggregation and fragmentation. Networked businesses tend to have massive economies of scale, not just in their physical infrastructure, but in their information infrastructure. At the same time, there is increasing value in hyperspecialization. Either way, though, the overhead of log-ins makes a difference. The more hyper-focused niche players I want to interact with, the harder it is to manage passwords and go to the trouble of connecting and personalizing each service.
Now of course, this leaves some big questions un-answered. Like, Will There Only Be One? Or Two? We may want a ubiquitous identity infrastructure that removes the scourge of log-ins, but do we want that controlled by Microsoft, or Microsoft and Google? How do the significant players — including those two as well as Facebook, MySpace, AOL, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc. — think differently about these questions? Or should we own our own identity though some user-centric ID model? Will change happen top-down, or bottom-up? And what about those pesky bugaboos of privacy and security?
I guess we have a lot to talk about this year at Supernova….
by Isabel Hilborn
April 1, 2008 at 3:11 am · Filed under
Social Platforms, Supernova08
Just came across this interesting post by Max Freier looking at different patterns in linking behavior from users of top social sites. What does it mean that Jaiku is among the top 15 most linked-to sites by Twitter users? Just that they’re cross-posting on both and the links are automatic, or that they’re so addicted that they tweet in multiple places? Interested in your take.
by Isabel Hilborn
March 28, 2008 at 4:55 am · Filed under
Law and Policy, Social Platforms, Society and Culture, Supernova08
In the one-girl’s-trash-is-another-girl’s-treasure category, Microsoft announced a deal to allow LinkedIn, Facebook and some other lesser-known social networks to scrape Hotmail address books to look for friends.
Some for-profit industry commentators went along with Microsoft’s PR hype, like OnlineMedia Daily. Others, like ZDNet’s Steve O’Hear, were more skeptical.
In other news, Google is bringing the issue of protecting human rights at the cost of the company’s market share to a shareholder vote - adequately reported by Joseph Hunkins at WebGuild. The two proposals up for a vote are that Google would strictly control censorship and data sharing to protect human rights, and that Google would establish a Human Rights Committee to monitor these issues. Google recommends no to both proposals, and they’ll be able to point to the fact that their shareholders voted these proposals down as an excuse for not doing them.
The approach is an attempt to justify Google’s capitulation to anti-democratic policy from countries like China - behavior that they’ve been called to task for engaging in because of their “do no evil” mantra. The sad thing, to me, is that giving a question like this to shareholders: “Should we do the right thing even though it means making less money?” is giving it to the wrong party to decide. Shareholders don’t say no to profits.
It’s the users who should be asked, and the users who can decide to abandon the Google ship if they see objectionable, hypocritical behavior. Insofar as a choice to deny human rights may alienate Google users, the stock prices could fall on a “no” vote — but most of the time issues like human rights in far-away countries can’t compete with great technology and brand. An effective boycott is unlikely, a yes vote is unlikely. Perhaps “do no evil” and “make money in China” are fundamentally incompatible. Perhaps a mantra change to “do no evil except in countries led by repressive dictators” is in order?
by Isabel Hilborn
March 11, 2008 at 9:20 am · Filed under
Marketing and Relationships, Monetization, Social Platforms, Society and Culture, Supernova08
An article in today’s New York Times ends by saying that 85% of California adults think sites should not track around-the-web behavior for the purpose of ad targeting. The rest of the article describes how many of the major commercial web companies do just that.
There’s a comScore graphic that shows how many times a month companies collect user data: Yahoo collects twice as often as Fox, which collects twice as often as AOL. Google (not including DoubleClick) comes up 4th.
This data, however, doesn’t include information entered on MySpace’s social network pages, and the article doesn’t cover Facebook. Even if web companies aren’t putting two and two together yet, they will be soon.
If we’re not already, we’ll be seeing ads that come to us thanks to a delectable combination of which causes we join on Facebook, which people we befriend on MySpace, which keywords we use on search sites, and what products we buy online… combined of course with our offline data: which magazines we subscribe to, what we buy at the grocery store, and what we put on our credit cards. Is this OK?
Many a social network user’s holy grail is to see social networks aggregated - to quote Jeremiah Owyang,
A movement has been started to allow these relationships to be transplanted from one social network to another. The goal? reduce inefficient adding of relationships, improving the accuracy of the network, and providing users with control and management of their relationship data.
I spent some time several years ago working at Sxip pursuing one aspect of this dream. Kaliya Hamlin of Open ID, the folks who started FOAF, and many others (feel free to help me out by listing in comments) have continued the crusade.
Here’s my question: Is the fight to look at this problem from the user’s perspective a losing battle? When it happens, perhaps it will be the provider’s profit motive that drives it, and the advertisers that benefit. Jeremiah suggests that the benefit to the social network is “increase their number of users”. But isn’t the real benefit “finally make real money by selling user data to the highest bidder to make more targeted ads”?
Can users really retain control of their data, or has the horse already left the barn? Maybe we want to keep our social networks separate after all.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
by Isabel Hilborn
March 10, 2008 at 2:50 am · Filed under
Marketing and Relationships, Mixers, Monetization, Social Platforms, Supernova08
Silicon Valley social media entrepreneur Elliot Ng posted at length on Friday about the San Francisco Supernova mixer. He includes some nice crowd shots and more good breakdown of Owyang’s conversation about the Social Graph. Here are some of the insights he picked up on:
- Social Networks will be like air (Charlene Li) - ubiquitous and not locking people in to any distinct provider
- Therefore it may be hard to monetize them (Joi Ito) - the way AOL had to relinquish email “ownership” as it became a ubiquitous service
- Mobile devices will play a large role in the spread of social technology
- Characteristics of social networks in the future (check Ng’s post for his take on this part of the discussion; it’s interesting.)
Other posts about the mixer event from Susan Mernit, insights from Ted Shelton, a cross-post on Brian Solis’ bub.blicio.us, a bit of humor from David Spark, and last but not least, for the heck of it I’ll include Chris Carfi’s tweet.
Here’s the full suite of photos Brian Solis took that night as well.
by Isabel Hilborn
March 9, 2008 at 8:08 pm · Filed under
Mixers, Monetization, Social Platforms, Supernova Announcements, Supernova08
I just wanted to point out several great posts that are out there after last Thursday’s Supernova mixer at Wharton West in San Francisco.
Jeremiah Owyang, web strategist, was a featured discussion leader and posted at length about the evening, including photos. Jeremiah led the audience in a discussion about the Social Graph.
He lists some points that were made by the audience during the discussion, including:
- how to attract and keep participants (good user experience, limit spam, encourage the niche, improve the infrastructure with standards and APIs);
- how social networks can monetize (ads, downloading, subscription, ecommerce, market research);
- and the future of social networks (a few big players and lots of niches, teens drive adoption, mobile, aggregation).
It strikes me that many of these points about social networks are really the same points we could make (and probably have) about websites generally. Plus ca change…
Renee Blodgett posted her thoughts about the other discussion session, led by Internet guru Jerry Michalski, on new business and ad models. Some of the points she picked up on include:
- it’s all about virality or “what catches on”
- catchy jingles that grab the public’s attention rely on everyone watching the same three TV channels and are going the way of the dinosaur
- buying behavior is changing
- future lies in innovation, experimentation, listening, relationships, delivering on your promises
- strongest consumer is women over 30 but funded ideas are coming from men under 25 (Mary Hodder)
Renee then posted some portrait photos she took at the event. My personal favorite is one she didn’t take (because she’s in it). There’s cool-as-a-cucumber Renee looking for all the world like one of the Ramones and Rohit Khare with a skeptical little grin on his face. What was the photographer saying to get this reaction from these two?
I’ll cover some more mixer posts in my next update.
