More Emerging Technologies

Last week, I posted my conclusion that Justin.TV was more relevant to businesses than Twitter.

Reader Ryan Hupfer left a very intelligent comment about the ways that “lifecasting” — as Justin calls his experiment in 24/7 online visibility — could be applied to business interests:

imagine if Pepsi had a contest to send to ‘lifecasters’ down to SXSW, or Coke sponsors a ‘lifecaster’ for each Final Four team in order to give a true experience to an audience.

Mario Sundar of Marketing Nirvana followed up with the question, “Do you see any other applications for ‘lifecasting’?”

This got my wheels turning. If a client came to me and said, “we want to do something really cutting edge,” I’d definitely take lifecasting into account. I’d like to see a company like Toyota — which makes environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles — empower one of their most passionate environmentalist customers to lifecast about saving the planet. Even if that environmentalist demonstrated how to hack their hybrid to plug into a traditional wall outlet, and even though taking such action voids the manufacturer’s warranty.

I’d like to see a White House staffer close to the President lifecasting. Obviously this couldn’t be a person with high level security clearance or we’d be putting national security at risk. But it would be an amazing step toward creating political transparency.

And who knows, maybe a very special CEO out there might consider a lifecast. This would have to be someone who embraces transparency wholeheartedly but doesn’t have the time or inclination to blog on a daily basis.

Do you guys have any other good ideas for intersections between lifecasting and business?

Ooh, and let’s start discussing best practices. How does business lifecasting differ from what Justin is doing? Do we really need to hear a CEO use the bathroom?

The ever Web-savvy Dallas Mavericks — owner Mark Cuban has a blog — have launched Friends.Mavs.com, a social network for Mavericks fans. They’re calling it “the first professional sports social network and video hosting site.”

Evidently, they’ve never heard of NHL Connect, the social networking site the NHL launched last year to connect hockey fans.

So far, the site only appears to have just over 1,000 members. (I calculated this with a quick glance at the list members page. There were twenty members to a page and 52 pages. 20*52=1,040.) It’s built with Ning, which has some open source features but retains the right to feature its own advertising.

I think the Mavs are cool to be so low-key about this and go with an existing service rather than building a Wal-Mart style command and control social network. But I’m not sure the value add is really there for them. Ning doesn’t even allow those who build networks with their software to access their users’ e-mail addresses, although it does allow them to message all the users within the system.

As with any blogging or social networking platform, the user’s needs take precedence. Ning works very well for a company whose end goal is to facilitate community for community’s sake. But forget about analyzing the behavior of that community in any kind of detail.

On the upside, they seem extremely committed to helping social network builders develop an attractive product for the end user. I like their Ning tricks feature on the blog, which features tips and tricks for getting the most out of your social network. They allow backup and export of the network’s underlying data, so companies could conceivably move to a network of their own making at a later date. They also earn points for rapid scalability.

Only time will tell whether the Mavs were smart to choose Ning for their platform. But I think it’s wonderful that they’re getting into the game.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about the newest phenomena in the online scene: the “lifecast” Justin.TV and the “microblogging” service Twitter. Both provide an unbroken stream of constant content. The questions, “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” have never been answered more fully.

Both sites have generated a lot of buzz in the blogosphere, and both have been called gimmicky. But then, so was blogging when it started out. Come to think of it, so was the Internet itself. It’s like my boss Steve Broback says, “all exotic technologies eventually become boring commodities.” The Internet became a boring commodity, and eventually so will database driven websites (a.k.a. “blogs”), Twitter, Justin.TV and whatever else comes along next.

But as everything moves faster and faster, the issue of information overload becomes all the more relevant. It’s a problem for anyone who has any connectedness with media. And when you throw the burgeoning and fast-paced social Web into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for a headache. And the pace just stepped up again.

For businesses, this translates to a new loss of control. If you’re in business, chances are that just subscribing to a few RSS feeds and monitoring the Web for what people are saying about your company is more than enough to take in. But as more and more content flies onto the Web at ever faster speeds, how can you possibly pay attention to everything you need to?

Obviously, you can pay a consultant (like us) that specializes in this kind of monitoring to keep all the balls in the air. But that doesn’t solve the problem of which streams are truly relevant to your business.

Take Twitter for example. Each individual status message that is posted by someone using the service is searchable, and is indexed by Google. That matters because if someone says something about your company on Twitter, not only is it broadcast to whoever is listening to that particular user, but it also lives forever as a discreet chunk of content with a permanent URL.

But unlike the blogosphere, where permalinked blog posts can quickly make it to the top of a search engine results page, Twitter status updates are not frequently linked to. At least not yet. Until that happens, what happens on Twitter will likely not have anywhere near the same impact as a few aptly titled blog posts.

As for Justin.TV, the content exists in multiple formats. You can watch the live stream (which is actually time-delayed by 30 seconds), or you can go through Justin’s blog to view discreet chunks of past content in video form.

Because Justin organizes his “lifecast” around a searchable, text-based schedule, those chunks of content are more easily digested, linked to, and forwarded. They exist on a blogging platform, rather than a stream of mini-posts, so people are more used to the architecture. And because the videos are embeddable, they can be more easily distributed throughout the blogosphere.

If you’re interested in these newest forms of communication as a platform to make contact with people who are key to your business, then I’d put my money on Justin.TV. And I’m not saying that just because Justin and I grew up together. In their current forms, these two media sites offer very compelling content, but Justin’s is still the more impactful format.

What a week it’s been! I thought we were going to be live with this blog by Friday, but a number of unanticipated issues cropped up. We’re now fully propagated and live again.

I’ll be spending a lot of today re-building the tag cloud and tying up loose ends with the site migration. Right now, I’m sitting here with Steve and Kim working on yet another (!) proposal and discussing the editorial for our upcoming conference.

The big new kid on the scene while we’ve been out of commission is Justin.TV. Justin Kan — who happens to be a childhood friend of mine — walks around with a camera on his head. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. He says he’s going to do it, “until it stops being fun.” I would have reached that point about five days ago, but it’s been nine days and Justin’s still going strong.

The pace of social media has really picked up of late. I posted about this on my personal blog. Basically, between Twitter and Justin’s project, the streams of content are coming at us faster than ever before.

I’ll be spending a lot of the remaining week delving into the relevance of these emerging online phenomena to our business audience.

I was pretty excited to read on the Facebook blog about a new plugin they’ve developed that lets users upload and tag photos directly from iPhoto.

One of my biggest problems with Facebook has always been that uploading photos is a ponderous, tedious, multi-step process. Next to the Flickr Uploadr Facebook’s little java-based app is kind of pathetic.

The only reason I use Facebook’s photo sharing feature is that it gives you the ability to tag people’s faces in photos and link those photos to the person’s profile. When you go to the profile, you can see “more pictures of so-and-so.” This is tremendously fun and also good for researching job applicants.

Now that I don’t have to worry about the annoying uploader any more, I’m even more excited about photo sharing on Facebook!

Business Week, ever the leader in covering the intersection between emerging media and business has an interesting (and aptly titled) article about the rise of the corporate wiki.

One thing that I found particularly interesting is that corporate wikis need “shapers” as much as they need individual contributors. A “shaper” is someone with a passion for organization who keeps the information within the wiki well structured:

Over time, as wikis begin to get a critical mass of information, they tend to sprawl and become unwieldy…You need some kind of person who sees the long-term consequences of not organizing. Most often, individual contributors are not the people who will restructure existing content. Instead, that task is left to…an employee who is willing to take time synthesizing information so it’s easy to read. Executives need to encourage shapers as much as individual contributors. Otherwise, the wiki can become so unwieldy that nobody will use it.

Michael Turk over at techPresident has a recommendation for Republican presidential contender John McCain, “create something online that lives beyond the moment.”

McCain is busy inviting supporters to his Online Idea Exchange tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. EST.

Writes Turk:

I like the “Exchange of Ideas” thematic, but it’s in New York. Why not have some fun with the branding and make it the New York Idea Exchange and play off the NYSE? With a little bit of work, you could actually make this a user interactive thing and create an “ideas exchange” and your users could trade futures in McCain’s ideas. It would give you feedback on which of your campaign messages play better.

Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis has some advice for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. He wants to know what Obama stands for, and he wants Obama to take the time to tell him in video form.

Jarvis holds up Hillary Clintons (now embeddable!) “Hillcasts” as a great example of using video media to share views. And I would agree if only Clinton didn’t sound so scripted.

Obama does a better job of being off the cuff in his videos, even if he isn’t really saying anything yet.

I think it’s great that Edwards features links to social media sites throughout his website. He continues to lead the pack of Democratic contenders for the 2008 presidential nod in leveraging social media. Thomas Hawk pointed out that he’s joined Twitter.

Hawk also nominated Robert Scoble to be Edwards’ Internet Communications Director if he gets elected.

According to Future Majority– my new favorite blog for all things at the intersection of Web “2.0″ and politics — 69% of American women and 56% of American men ages 17-25 rate Facebook over MySpace and YouTube as their favorite social network.

I’m a big fan of Facebook because the interface is clean, the privacy controls are spectacular, the photo sharing tool is fun and the sharing feature is great for “spitting” content along to people who will find it interesting. I am in the females 17-25 demographic and I visit Facebook at least 10 times a day on the average day.

The ever exciting world of social network APIs took a giant leap forward over the weekend with the announcement of Facebook’s FQL, which stands for “Facebook Query Language.”

Basically, this allows developers to string together scripts that can query the Facebook databases for all kinds of information. Here are a few ways the language could be used within Facebook:

• Play Yente. Find out if any of your single friends share interests. Then fix them up.
• Suggest Media. Find out which of your friends you have the most in common with when it comes to movies, music and books. Then rely on their other preferences when deciding which media to consume.
• Stalk Rivals. Think your current S.O. might still carry a torch for a former flame? Keep track of her relationship status and pay attention if he starts acting weird when she breaks up with her boyfriend. ::inserts tongue in cheek::

Those are just a few ideas that come readily to mind, based on what I know of the language. Although I think that last one might be a little farfetched. But there’s already a script that will tell you which of your friends are in relationships.

I don’t need to tell you that the more cool little functions like this a social network has, the more of a draw it becomes for users. These features also empower exisiting users to talk about your products in completely new ways. If you’re in any facet of media right now, you want to be especially aware of how this could play out because Facebook’s profile features focus heavily on media preferences.

And if you’re a politico of any stripe, you want to be paying special attention to the election features that Facebook implemeted before last year’s midterm. The query language could be a way to identify and court potential supporters on a large scale based on who they supported last time around.

A big group of geeks was sitting around in Chris and Ponzi Pirillo’s new basement last night talking about social media and why businesses should care.

Robert said that bloggers are “spitters” who spray pieces of information to lots of other people when we open our mouths. And just like spitting in public is a great way to spread disease, virtual “spitting” is a great way to spread information.

And of course social networks like Facebook and MySpace make it easier to “spit” information with sharing features and bulletins. You don’t even have to be a blogger anymore to spit.

And of course, the next wave of this whole phenomenon is the interoperability phenomenon. Even your non-blogging customers will have giant megaphones to address the world without starting their own blogs.

More disintermediation in the works!

That’s a big topic. Frankly, it’s a billion dollar question and if I had all the answers to it, I’d be a billionaire.

What I do know is that your outreach has to be about more than just selling your product. You have to genuinely want to get in touch with the people that care about your company. And you have to relate to them on their terms.

I get a lot of invitations on MySpace to clubs that I would never go to. I’ve been “friended” by a lot of bands that I have no interest in listening to. That’s why I made my profile private and made it impossible for people to friend me unless they know my REAL name. I know that people are just trying to self-promote, and I do understand. But if the marketers in question had taken the time to read my profile, they would have seen that I really don’t want to listen to their Metallica rip-off band. So pay attention to people’s interests before you contact them.

Because despite the friend-gathering behavior you sometimes see on Web-based social networks, it’s important to remember that quality of relationships is a lot more important than quantity of “friends.” Especially when you’re promoting your organization.

Why is this true? Because you and the group of contacts you develop are only the starting point for the message you are trying to send. If people truly enjoy interacting with you, they will talk to their contacts about you. If they have an inkling that one of their friends might enjoy your product, they’ll be more likely to mention it if they don’t think you’re a tool for pinging them with corporate jargon that’s irrelevant to their lives.

So once you have contacted them, don’t just send them a form e-mail. Pay attention to what you, a unique individual, have in common with them, another unique individual. Don’t go into a sales spiel. Focus on making a connection.

I once explained social network marketing to Steve as being like randomly sitting down at a nightclub with a group of people who all know each other well. You have to be able to connect with them as more than just a marketer, or they’ll think of you as a pest. This happened to me in Puerto Vallarta when the owner of the Collage Nightclub sat down with my cousin and I while we were out at another club. We knew he was promoting his nightclub, but he was a cool guy and he was more interested in talking about good music and the town itself.

That’s how you have to be when you’re trying to engage with online social networks.

There’s an article in the LA Times today about a 13-year old girl in Texas, whose parents recently sued Myspace for the alleged sexual assault she experienced:

Whose fault is it that 13-year-old “Julie Doe” lied about her age, met a guy on MySpace.com and was allegedly sexually assaulted by him in a Texas parking lot?

Not MySpace’s, a federal judge said in a decision released Wednesday. The ruling appears to be the first time a federal court has extended to social-networking sites the same broad free-speech protections granted to Internet service providers.

The only thing I know about this case is what I read in this article, but I think the Judge made the only sensible ruling possible. MySpace, like any message board host or “content enabler” cannot and should not be held liable for content that they do not create–just like bloggers should not be held liable for the comments other people leave on their blogs.

I know that sounds a little harsh, and I’m sorry that things like this really do happen, but the burden is still on parents and individuals to treat the internet with the caution it warrants.

According to Business Week, when Friendster opened their technological kimono to a dozen select developers, their unique visitors jumped 17. 76%. “This is our biggest [month-over-month] growth since launch,” Friendster marketing director Jeff Roberto told BizWeek.

Public or semi-public API’s seem to be all the rage in social networking this year. As we saw with Friendster, more flexibility, community involvement and innovation in social networking means more people coming on board. In 2007, businesses will need to start paying attention to social networks the way that they’ve been paying more and more attention to blogs.

This is not only true because more people will be using social networks. Yes, the increase in the number of users is important. But the real story here is about ease of dissemination. As users are able to add their own functions to popular sites, we’ll see a second-wave steroid effect on user-generated content. As we’ve seen in the past, increased interoperability and potential for customization in social media means that what your customers are saying about your products and services will go further, last longer and speak louder than it does already. That means even more loss of control of your traditional messaging.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it yet (where have you been?), LonelyGirl15 is the saga of a cute, vulnerable teenage girl by the name of Bree. Bree video blogs earnestly from her bedroom and belongs to a strange cult that wants her to go through some kind of creepy ritual. She posts her videos to YouTube and gains a huge following. Drama ensues.

Bree is played by actress Jessica Rose, of whom Wired says, “there’s something about [her] that the webcam loves. Her distractingly large eyebrows and small, round face are bent and stretched by the fish-eye lens into a morsel of beauty that fits perfectly in a pop-up window.”

The recent Wired article also details the attempts of Lonelygirl creators Miles Beckett, Mes Flinders and Greg Goodfried to engage with mainstream Hollywood:

Their first sit-down with a major broadcaster was, Goodfried says, an “exercise in futility.” Beckett tried to explain to the executive that the central theme of online entertainment was interactivity, as opposed to the passivity of television. He wanted to create shows in which the line between reality and fiction is blurred, where viewers can correspond with the characters and actually become involved in the story by posting their own videos. The exec responded by walking them through his fall lineup and pointing out that the network’s Web site had great supplemental video material for the season’s upcoming shows.

Beckett is clearly frustrated. “The Web isn’t just a support system for hit TV shows,” he says. “It’s a new medium. It requires new storytelling techniques. The way the networks look at the Internet now is like the early days of TV, when announcers would just read radio scripts on camera. It was boring in the same way all this supplemental material is boring.”

The LG15 crew has a different vision. They want to create entertainment that fans can touch through interactive role-playing and video blogs of their own.

When Business Week wrote, that blogs are “going to shake up just about every business — including yours,” this is what they were talking about. The question is, do you want to be remembered for doing your industry’s equivalent of reading radio scripts on camera while your competitors discover the TV drama?

The girls over at Best. Lesbian-ish. Day. Ever. have a great post up about the American Idol-style writing competition being hosted at Gather.com. Folks submit the first chapter of their manuscripts and the audience votes. Then the next round, the surviving writers submit their second chapters. And so on, and so forth.

The winner gets a publishing contract from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster and a $5,000 prize from Gather.com.

I’m impressed with the way that these publishers are learning to leverage the blogosphere and social networks. This is exactly the way to build grassroots interest in an author before her book is even published.

Not to sound like a hanger-on or a fangirl, but I really like the Scobles. They always seem to be laughing about something and having a general good time. That’s why I like watching their video podcast. When you’re reading a blog, it doesn’t really matter whether you like the blogger or not. But on a video segment, personality matters so much more.

Two of my favorite recent ScobleShow segments are Maryam’s interview with BBS speaker Liz Lawley and Robert getting a demo of enterprise social software Blogtronix from CEO Vasil Mladjov.

Technorati Tags: Liz Lawley, Maryam Scoble, Robert Scoble, Vasil Mladjov, Blogtronix, Social software, BBS06

I’ve never been a big fan of MySpace. The interface is counterintuitive, the flashing ads are an eyesore and the code is a mess. The news that the site is over the proverbial hill doesn’t come as any shock.

Social networks are very helpful for people that want to reach hip, tech-savvy young folks. But eventually, the walled-garden model will fall by the wayside entirely. In its place will be a set of easy-to-install widgets that attach to a server like add-ons attach to Firefox. These widgets will allow folks to blog, share and tag photos, respond to messages, generate feeds, network personally and professionally, or whatever else they want to do. Social networks as we know them will meld seamlessly with the other functions of the Web.

So where does that leave musicians, record labels, clubs and other organizations that want to use MySpace, Facebook and other social networks to promote themselves? Back at square one: hosting their own blog.

I couldn’t agree more with Flick of Puddlegum when he writes, “I’d rather focus my energies developing my own traffic than nursing off of a corporate monster.” Organizations should build out their own websites, host their own blogs and make social networks an offshoot. Building your own hub of information about yourself is always a better solution than scattering your information to the winds and hoping that your fan base will continue to frequent whichever site you’ve spent the most time and energy building a presence on.

Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social networks, widgets, blogs

I couldn’t agree more with my colleague Jason Preston’s assessment that Facebook stands to take a big gust of wind out of Del.icio.us’ sails with its’ new “share” feature.

I particularly like the feature because it allows users to upload a video to YouTube and then import it into Facebook, allowing them to stay within Facebook’s walled garden while enjoying awesome YouTube content. The “share” feature also allows users to add videos privately, which means that I can upload and import slightly incriminating videos of college debauchery to share with my scattered group of friends without jeopardizing my future credibility as the President of the United States.
I still use del.icio.us for research, and to generate our cool list o’ links page. But for sharing information with my friends, Facebook has become my one-stop hub.

I’d like to see them improve the service even more by allowing users to tag friends in the content that’s relevant to them, the way you already can with photos. Obviously that has broader implications for privacy and control of personal information, but with the proper privacy controls, it could be a big hit.

Chalk one up for the Facebook crowd. And while you’re at it, chalk one up for for Jason. He’s pretty smart for an Oxy kid.