Last night's Product Management class covered two important business areas: Business development (Guest lecturer to remain anonymous) and "Tips for success in growing revenues" - Guest Lecturer: Steve Tennant. I'll put up tennant's slides when/if they become available. The BD talk was from an individual from a big company with a lot of paranoia any time any of their people talk, I appreciated the chance to learn.

A couple of metaobservations. In a case study, one observation was that advertisers just won't advertise against user-generated media. There is too much concern over potential porn, infringement and old-fashioned crappiness, making many UGD projects unprofitable, despite guarantees you put in place. Hardly news: i remember randy Farmer mentioning this being a problem back in his palace days. Interesting that with the prevalence of UGC it still hasn't been solved though.

Secondly, it was pointed out that 99% of your end users will watch the work of the 1% who will actually make content with any tool you offer, which means you have got to make certain that you have enough traffic that 1% of that 1% will actually be cool enough to attract an audience (Don't forget Sturgeon's law!), or the whole thing is unprofitable.

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Out of Print in The New Yorker

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's Courant, it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said recently in a speech in London, "At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, 'How are you?,' in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce." Keller's speech appeared on the Web site of its sponsor, the Guardian, under the headline "NOT DEAD YET."

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Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the doors and was readily welcomed into the villagers' houses. They invited her to eat at their tables and warm herself by their fires. -- Jewish Teaching Story

I've been reading a number of books about how to communicate effectively, and one thing they all harp on is the power of story telling. No need to sell me! But it did send me to my bookshelf to fish out a book I had ordered long ago on someone's recommendation. The second chapter opened with the above story, and I found it so compelling I had to share.

Since I am currently enamored of lists, I'll share the author's (Annette Simmons) six key types of stories:
1. "Who Am I" Stories
2. "Why Am I Here" Stories
3. "The Vision" Story
4. "Teaching" Stories
5. "Values-in-Action" Stories
6. "I Know What You Are Thinking" Stories

Each one is designed to establish credibility, create empathy and eventually teach or persuade the listener. I appreciate Simmons continual attention to the end goal of story telling in the context of our work lives, as other books get caught up in the mythology and poetry of our oral history. This is a business book first, and knows it. If you are a disciple of Fray, if you are a student of Joseph Campbell, or looking to write the next American novel I recommend you look elsewhere. Bu if you have to make a presentation to the executive team, this is the perfect book for you. I'm only a third in right now, so I'll probably have more to tell as I work my way through, but so far I'm enjoying the focus and the form.

Here is a short article by her if you'd like to sample her writing style: The Power of Story: Dressing Up the Naked Truth.

The Wired article on Free has an excellent list of ways free can happen; the one I think we are all familiar with is advertising. We also are all aware of how traditional display advertising has lost favor to more accountable approaches such as contextual advertising of the Adsense/Overture model. But not all content lends itself to effective contextual advertising. Rouxbe has found a way to up the awareness and feeling of gratitude shown an advertiser by making them not the sponsor of the site but rather the sponsor of you using the site.

This is a very clever approach, in my opinion. I'd love to know how effective it is.

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies -- the shifting of costs from one product to another -- but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

Easily one of if not the most important thing you'll read this year.

enterprise 2.0

old business processes/tools allow management impose their will on company

enterprise 2.0 is the use of emerging social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.

• wikis


• blogs


• SNs


• predictive markets

Importance of enterprise 2.0
Technology and approaches are novel
Offer more than incremental improvements

• innovation


• collaboration


• knowledge sharing


• collective intelligence


• search and discovery

Who's pursuing 2.0?
google, avenue a/razorfish, mckinsey, lockheed, US intelligence, BT, fidelity, IBM

Underlying Trends
1. social software
2. network effects

3. free and easy platforms for communication
4. Lack of upfront structure
5. mechanisms to let structure emerge

Channels and platforms

• email = channel


• point to point


• invisible to others


• can't be consulted

• website = Platform (old school)
• universal
• visible
• consultable

• blog=free, easy platform
• no $, expertise required
• also wikis, facebook, flickr, youtube

enterprise IT loves structure
how does IT bring structure to work?

• Roles, identity, privileges


• Workflow, process steps


• Dataformats, required content

Why is choosing no structure (or emerging) valuable
Newpedia: tried to do the same thing as wikipedia first, but had a 7 step workflow, as an author you had to be credentialed... Jimmy Wales was afraid to submit. Newpedia got closed down with about 25 articles.

Delicious and tags

Tags were not from a dropdown, not from a controlled vocabularly. Things like enterprise 2,0 show up as well as enterprise 2.0... delicious doesn't try to keep you from screwing up upfront. And users are tolerant.

Mechanisms to let structures emerge.

They used to say, the internet is the biggest library in the world, the problem is all the books are on the floor. Search used to be hard.

Google changed the rules by realized the web had structure, but it was not apparent, it was in the links.

Delicious tags... when you see a tag cloud, you see that others are tagging similarly, and if you can tolerate a little slop (blog and blogs) you get the value of the collective wisdom and the emergent structure.

Flickr clusters allows types of images be collected i.e. boston creates an architecture cluster, a red sox cluster, then boston terrier cluster, and then lousy winter weather cluster


The potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0
A Knowledge worker's benefits

(read strength of weak ties)
Teams with weakties get more done, weak ties get you jobs. etc.

Prototypical tools: strong ties

• Wiki

Benefits

• Productivity, agility, responsiveness

Example: intellepedia: what happened at a crash,

Protypical tools: weak ties

• Social networking software (facebook)

Prototypical tool: potential ties

• Blogosphere

Benefits

• Innovation, serendipity


• Bridging

Idea sharing at Intrawest
They build resorts in northern California and Canada. For some reason, they decided they should have internal blogs. Shown was an example of how to save a 500K on install, and here is a comment on how it can be done.... That blogging tool did not cost 500K to roll out.

Avenue A | razorfish

Used mediawiki
Wiki, blog, but also flickr, dig, and delicious ... tags of AARF get called in to the intranet
(see his blog)
Ppl thought it was intel, but AARF didn't.. they said, it would be a shame if our competitors discovered we like starbucks.

Prototypical tool: no ties

Prediction markets
Benefits

Collective intelligence

Iowa's prediction market is better than any of the professional polls consistently.

Collective and convergence: Hollywood stock exchange
A professional said no one can tell you how well a movie will do, but the crowd does.

Challenges

(prospect theory) we overweight the incumbent by a factor of 3, and underweight the replacement by a factor of 3, so it has to be 10 times better or it'll be a niche technology.

Conclusion

• enterprise 2.0 is going to increase difference between companies




• willingness to embark


• sincerity of effort


• ability to execute




• • these difference will be important




• responsiveness


• knowledge capture and sharing


• collective intelligence




• tools approaches and business models are still in flux, much more innovation to come


• enterprise 2.0 will play out over the next several years

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A rather eloquent if occasionally overwraught essay on what the Kindle stands for on dive into mark opens with the dead-on juxtaposition of two Bezos quotes:

Act I: The act of buying

When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.

Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007

And in this single moment, the entire problem of DRM is laid bare. And we are reminded that what Amazon (and another other business) does is not about causes, not about morals, it's about business.

via huffington post

Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook Inc. has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies.

When you business is humans, it's best to treat them as such.

via Rough Type

To put it a different way, the sharecroppers operate happily in an attention economy while their overseers operate happily in a cash economy.

The essay is a terrific one, and brings up many important questions, but I think it's a mistake to typify these two markets as not having parity, or that it's somehow unfair that some people get money and some "only" get attention. The reality is, there is a healthy exchange system across the two markets as effective as those that change money between two countries' currency. Value is fungible.

The people who can monetize their output do... they host their own blogs, monetize as they see fit (typically adnsense) and they can use the SN's as traffic generators, if they wish. Pretty good trade.

But most folks could never get traffic to their blogs, for a variety of reasons: they don't post often enough, they don't post well enough, they don't post on general enough topics or simply no one knows they are there. For these folks, posting regularly (if not exclusively) on a SN is critical to building an audience that can eventually support advertising or serving an audience they will never monetize: friends and family.

Despite geek love of RSS, it's not really made for ordinary humans. Even the much lauded Google Reader is hard to use. Period. Again: hard to use. Facebook: easy to use. Easy to post, easy to consume. So if you want to get your message about your cat's tenth birthday out to the small group of readers who want to know, they it's a viable way to go.

In return for all that effort, Facebook/MySpace/etc gives them room to post every inane thing that pops into their heads, play scrabble, rate friends likes and dislikes and a million other things that takes up bandwidth and doesn't increase profits. This is barter. The Social Networks are betting that the things they can monetize will outweigh the things that cost them. Users are betting that the fun and potential fame is worth giving up some privacy. We make the same bet when we review something on amazon, rate something on Netflix or blog on Blogger. Everyone is betting that they are getting more than they are giving, or at least it's a wash. When it gets uneven, the users leave or the company goes under.

If you have been following the latest hubbub about Facebook, you know that the scales have been tipped toward corporate yet again as Facebook tries to turn cat fanaticism into financial strategy. Moveon.org, a political organization is trying to mobilize the typically indifferent-to-exhibitionist audience to action, and many of the geekarati are telling them to get back ending the war and leave us alone.

Personally I'm always in the odd place of being in favor of two typically opposing systems: I'm for more government regulation to check corporate greed, and yet I trust our free market to sort most things out without intervention. Typically the market moves faster than government, and so government mostly can ignore matters or pass legislation after the fact (for those who cannot learn form history). But not always. My biggest fear with the free market system is irretrievable damage will be done in the name of profits before it can self-correct, such in the case of global warming. There really are things you can't undo.

The SN privacy question falls on the edge of that question. Once your information is out there, it can't be gotten back. We all know this first hand because of spam. You can't un-enter your email into the wrong form, and once you've made a bad decision that address will forever be full of printer ink and penis enhancement offers.

So what will come first, bottom-line effects from the recent backlash or legislation protecting privacy?

Or maybe I should ask, will they come at all?

Facebook Fanboy panel: Pro vs Con - Michael Arrington TechCrunch (moderator), Robert Scoble Podtech.net, Jason Calacanis Mahalo, Rodney Rumford FaceReviews.com, Dave McClure 500 Hats

Mike: are we supposed to be talking about issues, or just topics and there are two of you that are pro facebook, and two con.. seriously, what are we talking about?
Dave: yeah
Mike: I think it's more subtle than that
Dave: how about starting with monetization?
Mike: let's just go with my notes

who doesn't go to facebook at least once a day? why?
tantek: too many friend requests
audience member: email works better (Mike asks, and how old are you? he says he's 87, but joking, does look over 50)
mike: anyone under 30 not log in every day? just like paper newspapers... there are two interesting stories this year, iphone and facebook. anyone not agree?
jason: yes, all the facebook developers agree
dave: four months ago i didn't know I would run a facebook conference
robert: four months ago I didn't have a friend on facebook and now I have 4k

Mike: advertising & monetization
dave: currently they (Facebook and facebook aps) monetize like crap.
Jason: google is a perfect way to make money, but not fun. facebook is fun but not a good way to make money.
dave: not if I see my friends have a pair of cool new nikes, and I want a pair
jason: they've been talking about this for a long time with amazon, and it hasn't happened
robert: but what if you click on skiing, you see everyone, they can concentrate on capturing intent, and do advertising based on intent, but we haven't seen it yet.

I can't keep up. I can't keep up! BTW, my injections are all in italics

dave: suggests identifying the influencers then advertising to them, instead of advertising across the platform.
Mike: let me throw in some facts. google is clearly moving into SNs, we broke the story. they have most profitable advertising business in the world. clearly they are moving into SNs. we have to pay attention to that. we did once before, it was called orkut and it turned out to be irrelevant
younger folks are the trend leaders, and hot or not brought in keywords and a brand to represent you. your profile is made of brands. that shows some data on where trends are going, a way to monetize.

Robert: what if there was a facebook hotel in Las Vegas? there are 10 single folks in the hotel, it plays your music?
Jason: myspace has done a good job of it (monetizing), like with barat. it will make money, but not proctor and gamble level money. you won't make shampoo your friend. it's nowhere like the level of search.
Dave: points out influencers - sneezers-- are key. Rockyou maps the network of cool via topfriends.
Audience: you have descried how facebook users could monetize themselves
Jason: the top flickr users make nothing, and now the meme is maybe the top people shoudl make money. get paid. systems will have to figure out how to compensate them or they will leave and make their own.

Mike: change topic. black hat stuff. facebook changed, rule around who you can spam, how you can show your profile to users and friends. The people who misbehaved were rewarded by not losing their users. they had a built in advantage no one could catch up.
Rodney: it's business, doesn't matter if it's fair, some aps didn't take advantage and didn't leverage all the tools.
robert: the aps who played right didn't do as well, we don't hear about them?
rodney, no they didn't do as well.
dave: points out later installs go to the bottom. a clean up ap that removes/lowers less used ap would help.
Mike: but was it right that rockyou and slide didn't get penalized? If they don't, won't everyone want to game the system?
jason: if you build your business in facebook, you are not in charge of yoru business. they are acting nice, but they haven't said we're an open platform and you can control your users. I recall AOl and the information providers got screwed when the rules changed. When facebook goes public, they'll have a financial obligation to shareholders to play hard. Myspace stayed closed because they were winning, facebook opened because they were losing. that doesn't make facebook a bad company, it makes them smart. If you build your company on facebook, you are an idiot.
Dave: ebay example. I hope yahoo, google, et al does well because they'll keep facebook honest. I hope incumbents don't throw their weight around.
robert: the platform allowed it. those are the playing rules.
Mike: I consider that Questions (the ap) setting you up as having asked a question when you didn't is bad behavior, and should be punished.
dave: in the search world if you are a black hat, I don't mind that, if google resets the algorithm and re-levels the field.

Q: what if the open web platform shows up with openid, FOAF and rss, and like aol lost to the web...
Jason: AOL "lost" but they still make more money than facebook.
Dave: open is not better, better is better.
jason: why do developers put up with facebook setting the rules? Why don't you go on strike and say give me my users?
Mike: game theory says that bonding together is not psychologically possible
robert: how many people are still using the pirate ap? the next gen of aps will unseat the top aps.
Jason: you are all working for free to make facebook millions of dollars? talk about the ultimate pyramid scheme?
dave: i think it's interesting that rockyou and slide were kicking ass on myspace
mike: kicking ass how? revenue
dave, well not so much, installs
mike: zero?
jason: half-mil valuation on widgets is crazy
mike and dave argue about who mixed up revenue and valuation
jason: but facebooks valuation went up 15M
mike asks lee is facebook really worth 100B, less says yes, mike demands mike be removed. "that's what fucked up the party for us in 2000"

lee points out valuation is based on buyer and seller, and zuckerberg refused 1B, 15B, and so....

Jason: I want to say mahalo is worth (drowned out by laughter)
dave: i dont' agree with lee, my number is more like 10-15B
mik: where does that number come from?
robert: thinks 5B
Mike: Where do you get these numbers? At least Lee pretends there is some math involved
rodney: but it has engagement, it has emotional engagement and there has to be a way to monetize it.
dave: if they acquired a search engine, or if they acquired a checkout, or a contextual advertising platform, both of which I think likely... should they be valued on what they have or where they are going?
Audience points out it's a cheap way to get users. why not?
Audience: no one has as much insight into this community than you
whole panel says thank you
you don't think eric smchmitt or ballmer would pay 15B for it?
mike: probably yes. but the reason would be to keep it out of the hands of the competitor.
robert: ballmer didn't buy flickr when I told him to...

later... mike dares dave to say something bad about facebook
dave: too slow, not transparent enough,
robert: they don't let me add more than 5K people
mike you're just silly
mike: keep going
now telling the story about the fbFund, where they solicited applications and the lawyers said delete everything and resend saying they have no rights or else people could sue.
robert: they are going to turn evil like microsoft, they are going to see an ap they like and they are goign to buy, copy, whatever. but if you build like a starfish, and have only one tendon into facebook and hte rest elsewhere, beebo, etc.
Mike: what's the second best platform after facebook?
Dave: SEo is the second best platform after facebook

Funding Facebook Apps panel: Valuation & Metrics - Matt Marshall VentureBeat (moderator), Lee Lorenzen Altura Ventures, George Zachary CRV, Luke Nosek The Founders Fund, Jeff Clavier SoftTechVC
introduced as "money burning a hole in their pockets"

when asked do you want nuts and bolds or higher level discussion of strategy and platform, audience was wildly in favor of the second.

Now for the fashion show.

I feel an obligation to reveal that I was tired and bored and over-sugared, and this is at least 50% fake

lee: we do only facebook aps
george, ho hum, funding again
Luke, we love facebook, they are already making us rich
Jeff: I am french and we don't do facebook aps, why am I here, you silly people?

i am tired. I need about 40 downward dogs to unbend for typing in these chairs. Jeff actually said they invest on folks who have facebook aps as part of the strategy, not entire. and I have never seen him without sunglasses on his head.

Lee sounds like he's going to pass out from fear every time he speaks. He was all kinds of smart sunday, but i think it took him an hour to recover from stage fright, and there were only about 20 of then. Now he's pimping adonomics, which is certainly worth pimping.

George reminds me vaguely of Jeff Weiner for reasons I can't put my finer on. I had a looooong coffee one day in which we geeked out wildly and widely. I really like him, even if CRV didn't fund us. :)

matt marshall, meanwhile, is moderating with a grace and style that could easily have made him a diplomat. he makes you at ease, and then you spill your guts... journalist gold!.

George: I tend to think facebook will be the winner, and the portals are struggling because people don't wake up every morning and say I want to see media, they wake up and want to see friends.

Matt: but myspace is still bigger, and will be opening, and orkut is
George: I'm not a facebook investor and I wish I was. Facebook has the best user experience. There are moments of genius in the UI. I think any SN designed by committee will not work out.
Jeff: theez eez something something eet eez something something. I really have no business making fun of French accents,my husbands family will string me up. apparently he said "One of the first that transitioned into the older demographics"
Lee: Google will have a difficult time in moving users out of facebook.
Luke: tee hee hee I'm rich! I'm rich! or maybe something more like "We are very careful about not becoming something like Microsoft, where trust with developers is lacking"

Lee: if you take the first no, and say you can't get VC funded, you aren't much of an entrepreneur, you wimp. go home and hug your mommy, silly baby!

Matt: you say you just like infrastructure plays, not aps, and you syndicate with other investors.
Jeff: when you have a fund my size, you do 30+ deals a year at 250K. but look at the next size, it's a 1M 1.5M, so as a solo I can move very very fast, i can't bring all the value, but I can syndicate wiht a few funds I like working with very efficiently. On the no application rule, but it doesn't mean I'll never do it. never say never.

Matt: what little guys did you invest in, any why bother with such small fry?
George: social media we seed funded with Jeff, they started with aps and moved up to developer network. we cna't quantify. it's hard to quantify breakout markets, it's all gut feel.

Matt: you are close with slide. why slide owns so much of the space?
Luke: the slide CEo saw the graph as separate, and was ready to think about it as a platform, and they ran with it very quickly. when they first went viral on myspace it was a big fight to keep it going but with facebook it was almost too fast. massive growth from the myspace work (it echoes the advice to experimentation early and understand the space)
Lee, all warmed up now: points out rockyou and slide own half the social graph, tremendous power in a couple spaces. microsoft is trying to keep facebook a googlefree zone. (popfly?) these lessons in platform changes is that when there is a platform change it's a chance to get back in the game. rockyou must be a 1/2B company because of the way they own the social graph, if MS was willing to do 15M for % of facebook. Apple caught up with a platform change and would they now open up itunes, so folks don't have to buy an ipod?
Matt: google?
Luke: they've been a great search company/ad network, but it's a one trick pony. gmail is still at the back of the pack. They could use gmail to build a social graph, if they went that way. but we're blown away by facebook, when they make a mistake they correct it, I'd be very comfortable betting on an ap company that made facebook their primary focus. it's hard to make a better product at this point. It's clear social is more important than search, search just isn't that sticky. There is no lock in. those was will be very interesting when they play out.
Lee: the one play google might do to hurt facebook would be college oriented edu only, to get disgruntled facebook users, and they could pay college students to switch.
Luke: but you'd have to pay people. that's how locked in people are.
Lee: the new groups tool should placate disgruntled facebook users who have found their mom on it.

Matt: rockyou has a combo ap/advertising play. how's that? are ppl afraid of UGC?
George: yeah, CPMs are low because it's a new category. ppl are afraid of using their jobs, putting an ad against something people woudn't find tasteful.
just to jump on the google thing, I don't think they'll be a serious threat. Google is tech centric, not consumer centric. They'll spend a lot of money/time to monetize social networks.
Matt: who could challenge?
George. no one. Myspace is bigger, but they are owned by a media company, and they don't get it. I don't think they'll beat facebook.
Luke; I think myspace will slowly go away. newscorp is just not innovative.
Lee: think about the genius of this move, google when they wanted the best programmers they put out the math problem and offered nice food (to keep talent out of microsoft's hands?) Facebook has 300 ppl and they are committed to what they are doing, no salary overhead...
jason calcanis: Saying myspace is going away is ridiculous. How could you say it?
Luke: I could say it very very slowly.
jasonC: facebook hasn't made any money yet! you say it's going to be as big as google? are you drunk?
_I am quoting accurately now!!!!_
Lee suggests facebook could challenge google on search, jason replies that he just said if google can't learn facebook's business, how could facebook learn google's

wow, i went form making stuff up out of boredom to transcribing the real thing. I can't wait for the next panel..... at least it won't be boring.

Tantek Celik (moderator), David Recordon SixApart, Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook, Joseph Smarr Plaxo, Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited

Joseph: plaxo all about connecting all the places where you data is. a webwide solution. demos pulse. pretty nifty. working on a open source tool

david: fairly famous for the opening social graph paper for example, vox, how do you bootstrap a social network? you already have one, they might not want to bring everyone over, but you don't want to start from scratch either. How can you share value but not have ot give up username/password everywhere they go.

ted: we allow uses to import their profile into satisfaction, if the company supports microformats... such as flickr.

Chamath: we have embraced open standards, it's the cornerstone of our services, it's allowed us to be trusted.  but before we step into all that, i want us to all understand where we've coming form. We believe there is one social graph int he word, and all these nodes that connect people, and we've been able to map only a small amount of it, and other services are mapping it too, and we believe we have to make our version of it available of it to as many people in ways as possible. we acknowledge we need as many people as possible along the way to make it better.
there was atime you woudl never putyoru first and last name on a webpage. 30% of our uses also put their cell phone number. it's becuase it's trusted and private.

David: it's the same at six apart, assign user to make the decisions about sharing information, and even though it was common practice to show hashed email address and the hashes were used ot link accounts, and we didn't want to assume that folks who didn't want to share emails in any way. LiveJournals audience didn't mind sharing, but Vox's did, so privacy is not homeogenous.

Joseph: people are doing powerful tings with data, and it's important to be able to get your data in and out, it's better when users are in control of their own information. we've been talking about the open social web, and what does that mean? We've put up a bill of rights at opensocialweb.org

Ted: it's important to keep wit simple for the user while givin gthem control fo how their data is displayed

David: it's hard ot know what the problem is. We're int eh silicon vallye and if it wasnt' on techcrunch it doens't matter. don't get me wrong, it's relaly important to give people offerings, like doppler for geeky travelers, but then folks had ot redo their entire social network on doppler... people dont' know what social graph means, nodes and edges, I know I have friends, colleges, relationships... to be able to map offline and online. I'd like a tool for my addressbook so I could pass on phone numbers between trusted friends, the way I'd do in life.

Tantek: how many have you checked your facebook more than once today
Audience: since the session started?
<laughter>
tantek: but is this a geeky perspective.

David: but with facebook, the ability to tag a photo was great, since you don't say you are tagging you just say who is in this photo.

Chamath: the data expires 24 hours later, why does it? We dont' feel we own that, and the pluses and minuses means we have to iterate from somewhere. he's very a sleek speaker

david: so the 24 hours, it's come up with ohter folks, you can't store things you get form the api for more than 24 hours. but as a user, you dont' get teh choice of storing it if it has value.

Chamath: but by refetching you ge hte most up to date, so it's good for the user

Q: anyone thinking about integrating openID and FOAF?
David: we support all that and more
Plaxo: same
Chamath: working on it
Ted: we haven't talked about it much
Plaxo: do you put your money where your mouth is in allowing data in and out?

Q: hippies and open vs platform wars and data lock in?
David: W're see this next year, will there be more platforms? a long tail of platforms?
Chamath: we realize that companies are generating millions in just a few months already...
Tantek: what does it mean to be open?
Joseph: you are open when you give yoru users control of their data and its use
tred: allowing use sot own their data:
David: focuses areound user focus and control. if you want to take your data out, you can?
Chamath: you empower your users how they interact with other people.

Q: Facebook dont' allow access to connection, to protect users form spamming, but that conflicts with open model of data
Chamath: we're three months into something we'll be working on for years. We've got to give users and ap develops more and more control, and be responsible for accounting for those edge cases that create a poor experiences.
David: It's very important. You have to make sure users understand how the data they provide will be used.

Tantek: he asked when openid will be used, but it's good to recall what chamath said about how it's only 3months day, so how many  folks want openid.
Dave: how many uncles, aunts no SV want it?
Plaxo: but maybe they want not the technology but what it makes possible.
 
Chamath: we need to recognize the timescale in what it takes to map this graph.

Q: it's clear others will open their networks to API, such as beebo and LinkedIn. that will be similar to when AOl lost control. What happens when we build on multiple platforms rather than build on facebook?
Chamath: that ability exists today. ti's very powerful, build once run on many. The reality is we are all useing open publishing tools that allow clearspring and companies like that to exist.
Plaxo: it's still hard ot stitch the social networks together, but it's not a fanciful prospect.
David: there was a rumor about orkut.

today I saw that facebook is the new google. in philosophy, at the very least.

Justin Smith, InsideFacebook (moderator), Blake Commagere Mogads / Zombies, Jason Beckerman TeachThePeople.com / Lotto, Jia Shen RockYou, Tim O’Shaughnessy Hungry Machine

a two minute history
since may 25 366M aps in the first 20 weeks
14M unique ap users in august

Invitations: originally no rules on invitations
no volume limited
starting to target
no built in stats
now need social incentives for invites

News and minifeeds introduced sept 2006
broadcasts your activity
worries about privacy

feeds: you can optimize
but selection algorythm is not published, depends on individuals, no built in stats
>only friends with the ap see your feed items

notifications
friends of logged in user or anyone with the ap
rules have not been well articulated, some people are abusing and getting blocked as too spamming
can get shut down.

Blake: facebook is getting better about letting you know what changes are coming. my focus was optimizing invites, and I've been using the standard invite interface provided. people have tried different stuff, but instead I've focused on how would this new invite control work vs. the old one. it's worth doing A/B testing.
For notifications, as a mechanism for viral spread, I didn't really use it, and i tried once and i went and played frisbee and my ap was blocked. my users were too eager to bite people.

Tim: good or bad, we lost the massive growth provided by invite process. it's not that invites are not important, but if you look at what we've called up there is a decision point and they can choose skip. Notifcations, it can show up without being marked as spam.

Jia: form looking at all the different channels, invites, minifeeds, minifeeds is the only way to grow it outside fo the users. form an invite perspective we've spent time to make sure the selection process is fairly easy. Most people call it an invite process, but it's really a way to spread the application. if it's an event it's invite, but if its zombies, its a bite, or a gift a gift...
minifeeds, we've tried changing the graphics that accompany and has a big corollary on how often people click through. tuning the images will improve your throughput by far.
People who have 3-20 wallposts are more likely to accept invites, people with real relatoinships accept, just data to support the theory everyone has put in your head.

Jason: bonus functionality works, when you invite more people you get tickets for the daily jackpot. they designed for daily engagement, the jackpot goes up every day, it's good facebook measures engagement for them.

they'd like rollup messages, rarer than having every single activity in the feed.

insert lunch drowsies. notes getting thinner....

again I'm blown away by how these folks study and tweak. they put major corporations to shame. a/b testing, user research and more.

Jason: if you could message your users, that'd help, even if it was only one or two times a week.

Justin: do you know what the future of analytics is on facebooks? what are you doing?
Blake: I'm grateful everytime they add anything, such as recently on pageviews. Some of these issues are a bit opaque because you are going through facebook to the user. I need metrics where I can measure activity so I can learn what features will engage. I don't do as much a/b testing as I should. I know you should do it like on invites where it's the biggest bang for the buck.
Jason: we just built out stats, because we want to understand where our invites are going, is it core users who really want bonus tickets, ro invites that never got used. it's been really cool to have that data.
Jia: dont' go and overdesign a anayltics sytem. we still do real time mysql system, eventually we'll do somethign more but raw numbers speak for themselves. make sure you collect that information properly.
Tim: there are raw numbers we dont' want to relay on facebook for, but then there are things facebook will build and we dont' want to waste money building it.
Blake: dont' spend a ton of time making something beautiful and complex since they (facebook) know what our pain is and will get it to us, what if you spent a month on analytics and you didn't need to.
Jason: we focus on the data facebook will never be able to tell us.

Justin: spam...
Blake: We'd all like to know what the algorithm is for whats spam, but I understand they don't want us toeing the line between spamminess. I odn't think that algorithm will ever be shared, but we all have insight into ti, # of installed users or engaged, then number of notificaitons, then how many get marked as spam. you shoudl think carefully about notifications and think about if yoru toeing the line. I limit it even if the uses are crazy active, thinking I know that would annoy me...
Jia: we've gone through a lot of tuning and focused on only notifying when there is something useful, and blake and play frisbee together and we've gotten blocked and you have ot sit on your computer to see if your ap has gotten blocked, you don't want to sit on your computer and watch it.
Blake: sometimes you are sending out only a few notifications and you see your spamometer going up, a few users can really shift the tide, facebook users have a low tolerance
Jia: when we launch a new ap we don't use notifications.

Justin: what if you could show to non-installed users in the newsfeed
Blake: don't underestimate the power of the newsfeed. if you had a clear argument for the ap on teh newsfeed it's change things
Jason: we wouldn't have to do invites, if people saw their friends winning money
Jia: I really couldn't see us change our call to action in the minifeeds, I don't think it'd change our strategy.
Tim: I think we'd see it as another kind fo invitation, we wouldn't' change strategy much.

Q: how far can these go with non-viral applicaitons? werewolves are naturally viral, BUT...
blake: aps that are not inherently viral can't be made viral by optimizing the heck out of it. is there a reason for someone to want their friends to use it? is it so cool you get street cred for finding it? sharing photos, sharing music, because uses have a direct benefit fom it. You can't make an indea viral, but it can make the difference between seeing a a good idea flounder.
Jason: I don't know if it has to start as being viral if there is a value proposition, it can become viral.
Jia: that addresses the question of when will aps become utilities? they just won't grow as fast, but they could still growth. opening up the minifeed could help utilities.
Tim: you can't dress up a pig. but at least you can fail fast and cheaply. you can try the methods, but if the idea isn't solid, no amount fo virality will help you.

Q; do you know what the drop off is with inviting ten or installing aps
Jason: we require it so we dont' have a good number on that. but the growth is showing that people are using it.
jia: unfortuantely in the previous world, people just clicked hte next button. but people are getting more savvy. limiting to ten has been a good ting, because people are less pissed off and ignore everything.
Tim: look at the growth rates after the limit, it dropped dramatically.
Jia: if you have other incentives, then it's good to have the invite at the top. but for things like events, where people want to use it over time, it just annoys people.

q: how many gets uninstall?
Blake: vampires gets the highest uninstall of all my aps, and its 13%, which is a good number.
jia: exposing the install rate is interesting to brand advertisers, but better would be how long to users keep the ap. it'll end up being like total uniques, etc. those are the stats that really matter.

Finally, facebook in the house!

facebook update

• we are a technology company, we build software, we build a social utility
• intense growth curve, 43M active users , 225K new users every day. 3X users every day than his hometown in helena
• Doubling every six months
• new uses
  
• over 25
• high school users
• international (cananda, UK, australia, norway, south africa -- english speakign countries)
• age distribution in growth internationally reflects internet population as a whole, unlike US where it reflects college origens)
• over 50% of uses return daily (!)
• 60 billion pages every day. 1500 pages per users a month, 15 pages a day, one of most trafficked site on the web.

Social Graph

• we are tryign to map the social graph i the most efficiant way possible.
  
• ours is not better, we're just trying to do the best job we can
• the social graph is the network of connections that exist in the world between people.
• We focus on how people cna represent their identity int eh most effective and efficiant manner
• we focus on letting peole communicate in the most efficiant manner
• we focus on letting you reach out to as many people as possible
• Overtime, facebook gets better and better
• shows how social networks hit tipping point
• example: photos application. it's not the best, but it's the most trafficked photo application on the internet, more than all web aps combined.
• events was from a hackathon, idea that in 8 hours you can get something done. IT is vastly larger than evite-- not because of quality, but utility created by social graph.
  

facebook platform

• three aspects

1. deep integration
2. mass distribution
3. new oppurtunity

• why aren't you more open? We ask ourselves, We have an obligation to users, we may need to allow users to take their data but also need to protect.
  
• three parts of ap

1. profile
1. profile actions
2. add a box to the profile (events doens't even have a
   
2. canvas pages
1. ads
2. newfeeds
1. requests
2. notifications
3. newsfeed stories
   
3. homepage

Photos best practices

• newsfeed shows highly contextual photos, you can see and understand well
• on the main canvas page, it's important to think about the context, here we show friends photos. many aps don't leverage this page. it shows whats going on through the lens of your friends, it stays up to date and very very interesting.
  
• enable people to engage around your content, i.e. a wall with every photo
• mass distribution: power of social graph
• all aps let you add to your profile
• the minifeed as a way to distribute new forms of content
• people are underusing.
• notifications
• requests

new opportunity

• growth
• engagement
  
• monetization

we hope we've offered a way for you to grow, using the all the best practices, social graph for engagement, and ways to make money to get away form the man _yeah, or sell to him_

fbFund as a way to kick off folks

how are things going? My stats aren't as good as tim's, which is funny...
90,000+ developers
create things we'd never think of, and our users are adopting them and it's growing! applicaiotns create utility and grow users base and engagement.

Q: is plan for facebook to move form a level 1 platform to a level 2 platofrm (see andreensen) to avoid scale issues
A: we're focused on the technology we've already created, making it stable and consistent

Q: what were the surprises?
A: We spent a lot of time making sure the platform was easy to understand but developers and users, what data was going where. it's not as easy as it sounds.

Q: what are you looking for in a fbFund applicant
A: we're not an invester per se, more of giving grants. but still  great teams, great ideas, great business models.

Q: is it a problem the skewed tail?
A: we're going to try to find a way for developers to get their aps out, even playing field, more people can get in that  space.

Q: is it a pure numbers game, llet all aps come and let uses decide whats useful? or vett out some quality to reduce overhead on users?
A: We want to let the market flourish, and get information out, helping users choose via evolving the product directory. We're a young company, we're figuring it out.

watch the alpha geeks
- new tech moves through hackers, then entrepreneurs then platform players
examples include screen scraping and the peddle powered internet presaging data platforms and interest in alternative fuels

On Facebook (they have a new report coming out)
facebook is growing 1.14% a day
aps are growing 2% a day
87% of usage goes to 2% of aps
top 50 developers by usage looks like a more traditional long tail, but all 5K and the tail is way long
compares it to chris anderson's research, including book sales.but facebooks long tail is essentially useless right now.
the power law is skewed, that may change, but thats the bad news.
many applications competing for the same users. dating aps have the best uptake, then messaging and chat, just for fun as a category isn't strong.
the most successful category with active users is sports then gaming, chat, fashion, just for fun)
most active categories (what are people building) just for fun, then messaging, then gaming, then video (multiple categories, so may not be fully accurate)
aps with over 100,00 users messaging, dating, gaming, video, just for fun, (sports weaker here)
top 40- top friends, funwall, superwall, superpoke, video, x me, ilike, movies, graffiti -- top aps seem to be topping out, growth slowing.

a web 2.0 refresher
the more users, the more value
building a collective database
* building on top of open source, yahoo pays people to extend
* learning from open source, wikipedia uses volunteers
* p2p sharing users build song swapping tools as a byproduct of their own self interest
* google works this way, and to some extent facebook too

key concept: harnessing collective intelligence. ajax doesn't matter, what matters is value grows wiht userbase.
a network-effect-driven data lock-in, with accelerating returns. red-shift companies

Yahoo started with user generated content, and picked and chose best. google figured out how to automatically extract meaning from activity. They coudl automate what yahoo was doing.
page rank as true start of web 2.0
wesabe uses it too, with fan scores, recommendations, and data information being gathered and used for advice.
facebook is picking up data but you don't have much control over it, there is not much intelligence in the data.
for example, a list of facebook invites
* geni.com knows sean is my brother
* my company directory knows I work at oreilly
* google knows I worked with Danese
* amazon knows who's written books for me
- why should I confirm? can't facebook learn to use databases?

How ridiculous is this? my phone company knows everyone I ever called, but my phone only knows the last ten. Phone companies suffer from churn-- data could create lock in.

"are you my friend" anyone with email, phone, IM already knows who my friends are (Yahoo, are you listening???)
xobni is extracting data such as phone numbers and email, click to call, statistics on how often you communicate, let you know when you haven't talked to someone in a while.

The Internet Operating system

the subsystems will not be devices, they will be data subsystems. facebook describes itself as a platform, it's really a subsystem platform, not a platform yet. if you study history, a platform beats an application every time. lotus 123 to excel... wordperfect gets beat by MS word.

two types of platform
* one ring to rule them all
* small pieces loosely joined
facebook can't do it all. hopes they will help open it up to a small pieces model
=> thoughts on the social graph read it!

questions you should be asking
* am I doing everything i can to build applications that learn form my users?
* Does my applications get better with more users, or just more busy and crowded
** consider filtering, smart filtering
* if ""data is the intel inside":http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/data_is_the_int.html" of web 2.0, what adata do I own?
* what user facing services can I build against it?
* does my platform give me and my users control, or take it away form us?
** you have to create more value than you capture

Random thoughts about what I want form the social grpah
* I want social networks to reflect my real social network
* I want it to help me manage those contacts (how to reach them, updated status)
* I want it to manage my groups of people
** I need to put java people together, or facebook people, if I know them or not.
** people I know, people I don't know, people I regret knowing
* I want it to recognize asymmetry in relationships
** how can I reach out to superstars in a field I don't yet know
** I don't want to just manage my friends. In fact, the closer they are, the less I need to manage.
* I want fine grained control over what I see and what I ignore
** some people I just want flickr feeds, other ones I want everything. I want to see this persons blogs, but not their tweets.
* I want to discover interesting people
is Tim normal? Probably not, but good ideas here.

geni.com .. mothers maiden name no longer a good security question ;)
I can't recall if he had a point, except smart understanding of relationships

facebook doesn't fit my relationships -- steve case: i sold him a company, what am I going to say, we hooked up? might be accurate.. yes, that was a quote.
FOWA, should look at different tie describers
what do people want to say about themselves? What do I want to say about them? What if I could adjust my view of the people. How do I want to see them? could I rearrange modules to shape how I want to be updated?

jaiku has done great things, and just got acquired by google. takes idea of smart presence to mobile. your phone knows where you are. your phone should tell you if a friend is in berlin and you are going to wake them up. Or if a friend ins town, you cna ping them. I do this with twitter, but obviously not as effective. But do I want my movements tracked?
I'm and inventor. I because interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which is finished, not the world in which ist is started." ray kurzwell
think far along the curve, think about new platforms, think about future of applications, think about taking the platform forward so we can say, wasn't that platform quaint?

QUESTIONS

Q: criteria in companies distribution channel?
A: one of my fundamental beliefs about web 2.0 - it's distribution, creating interfaces with your customers. The best use all channels, web facebook, etc. They want as much contact as possible. The need to understand each of those channels, and there may not be much overlap-- ilike says only 4% overlap between web and facebook uses, they tend to choose. thinking of twitter, everyone has a favored interface the uses is the asset, and the services you can offer to them, and you can figure out how to offer that.

Q: If Facebook will dominate, won't they fight to keep their uses to themselves? Even if everyone wants it?
A: I'm ont sure, there are a couple answers. If you become truly domainate, no need ot share- facebook isnt there. Google is a good example. they own a lot of data they don't share BUT they also share a lot as well. They spider the same sites as yahoo and ms. you can share and still dominate. if large graphs cooperate, say geni and facebook cooperate both sites become more valuable. There is value in openness, if you focus on building services for users, then you choose ... it ultimately depends on the services and applications you build. Right now there is way more for facebook to gain by being open, as they try to crack open these deep mines of data. For now and for many years to come, all the trends say openness is good for you.

Dave McClure is useing fun movies ot intro folks. this was at the end of Tim's talks

haiku introductions
(I'm too slow to get it. they were funny.)

I'm pooped after that last round of live blogging. I'm going just note interesting points here...

adbrite: a facebook ad network is just like a regular one, it's just a bit more limiting. channel specific ad networks like glam for womens, it's just a matter of focus

another elephant in the room. hype! they've gotten a lot of people working on this problem of monetization. crowdsourced problem solving!

didn't know that the 30 boxes guy (Narenda) started a facebook ad and promtional network and is making silly money now. he smiles shyly and shrugs, what's a boy to do?

Ro Choy, of rock you, is all kinda of articulate. I'd pluck him for a conference.

adbrite: it's still early to tell, but the budgets can be sizable for facebook advertising, for like a movie release. other folks are smaller for say a guy seeking his soulmate.

videoegg: most of the business CPM is for brand exposure, say movies, tv shows, music. a video ad has greater value.

we sell a lot to big advertisers because they recut their tv ads to videos for facebook. it's measureable now, we can tell them not only numbers viewed, but how much of the video has been viewed. We provide richer data.

good question on proportion of big advertisers vs little guys. Ro says it's direct response, so it's developers themselves. they've done big guys, but 90/10 little to big. Adbrite says its 75/25. narenda says similar, but videoegg goes more big guys.

moderator: facebook is losing it's beauty and whitespace with ap madness.
narenda says lots to cheer about, any tie there is a new market there is a lot fo excitement that can get in teh way of judgement. this community could consider long term business, benefit from long term thinkgin. apple wouldn't build it that way, flickr wouldn't' build it that way.. companies that focus on the user experience... you can con a 18yr old from Ontario, many folks are very trusting, and many aps get handed a lot of private data , i'm not sure we fully understand the repercussions of that. It's in everyone's interest to think a bit more long term, rather than short term exploitation.

Ro notes that many companies are learning to change their focus form thousands of users to thousands of ACTIVE users. the value is still being understood, it's only six months old.

narenda says they are taking a hard line about video, noise, rude ads.. an ap that respects user will succeed. Joe, of video egg, points out video is very engaging, but his is user-initiated.

Adbrite points out the creepy factor in contextual advertising (seen in gmail) but opportunity is high also, can understand genre preferences, etc. reminds me of old wired article on "yuck factor" of new technology.

remember altavista, and when you first started using google, you felt guilty? for abandoning altavista?

1st gen search engines: search engines "crawl" links to pages, they make a copy in something called a index, they find pages you are looking through, originally via term frequency. this was too spammable, because control was in the hands of the webmaster.

2nd gen search engines: use factors off the page that wemaster can't easily influence

• clickthrough
• links "democratic nature of the web"
• pagerank
• anchor text, actual words in the text
• then people began overtly manipulating links, thinking about votes, campaigning for votes (miserable failure), even buying votes

3rd gen?

• vertical search
• focus on a particular topic, such as news
• personalized and social search
• reshape based on what you are doing
• what your friends are doing
• what groups are doing
• http://searchengineland.com/070827-121805.php
  
• Google personalized search
• ranking is reorganized based on whats deemed to be your personal preferences
• Changes are subtle, but will likely change over time
• personalize influencers
• google homepage
• google bookmarks
• search history
• web history
• social search
• eurekster experimented with friends clicks reshaping results in 2004
• Yahoo My Web promised to let us tag and use a network to reshape results
• Neither really has suceeded
• the promise & reality of mixing the social graph with search engines
• eurekster says "swikis" are much better
• yahoo dropped many feautres quietly
• but what about facebook.
• Social graph (ugh) social network data potentially useful
• watch what others are searching on
• monitor clicks in a more closed environment - harder to spam, identity is persistant
  
• reshape results based on what your friends seem to like
• but WHO are your friends?
• www.dumpfolder.net/?p=193
• friend pollution
• do you really want to go through and pick out friends you trust enough to influence search results
• what about unfriending, privacy, and what you want to share?
• tagging? search basically works, and sharing queries is undesirable/unnecessary
  
• Does facebook instead work on a aggregate level? use networks, for example.
  
• And what's the underlying platform? They'll probably partner with someone else (Facebook unlikely to build a search engine from scratch, it's not easy)

What shall they do?

• Go vertical? People search?
• plenty in space, spock et al
• searchengineland.com/lands/peoplesearch

Search vs discovery

• search is an on demand thing, have particular need to fulfill activity
• Discovery is related but less specific in what you want
• stumbleupon, digg
• iGoogle related magic tabs

QUESTIONS
Q: Maholo?
A: I like it, i think it could help. Google says, we won't touch it we'll fix the algorythm but hey, fix it now! But maholo is starting to morph into a wikipedia. SInce it's made by an editor, it's more of an about than a social search engine.

Q: don't people already want to separate top friends, professional friends, etc?
A: if you are a heavy user, then yes, but most people that's too much overhead. have to be a poweruser.

Q: don't you think people search is fundamentally different than web search?
A: absolutely, you are looking for a page with bio, contact info, etc. But the problem is where are they? myspace, facebook, etc? Easier to go to google or a people search.



Favorite quote
speaker "google will say we've got iran, and we've got brazil and we're coming for you"
audience "the axis of orkut"

SocialMedia.com is an app network

apsaholic allows you to track the success of yoru ap vs. your peers

evolution of online advertising

1997 websites

• rise of internet agencies
• first brand sites (duracell.com)
• early advertising expiraments (dilbert steals Yahoo's Y)

1998 display advertising

• evmergence of IAB
• standard ad models

2000 contextual rising

• intiated by overture, dominated by google

2002 contextual ruling

• adsense
• kanoodle

2004 advertising exchanges

• right media
• advertising.com

2005 lead generators

• lowermybills
• adteractive
• nexlag

2006 behavioral advertising

• tacoda
• bluelithium
• revenue science

2008- Social Advertising?

• Dave Morin "always include the social context"
• benefits
• users- less annoying, more relevent
• advertisers: more targeted, hihger ROI, ability to reach "influencers"
• developers: higher eCPM, less wasted inventory, ability to keep users engaged on app

Case Study: FoodFight

many aps: the throw aps. taking poke and wrapping it wiht something more specific. thowing cavier at one thing, and a chicken head at another expresses yourself better
You throw things to earn more "lunch money" to get more things to throw at people- self promoting. you can create things to be thrown to make "money"
cross promotion on other aps

Social ads: send flowers. you can suggest flowers for a specific person in your graph. you know birthdays,, can suggest gifts from red envelope. feels less sneaky, since all information is up front.

Flufffriends, et al, have virtual currencies, which drives benefits. video game behaviors engineered into aps. allows for leveling up.

market research is a huge opportunity on facebook, especially if it can be fed back into ads.

QUESTIONS
Q: they are collecting lots of data, what are security/privacy
A: collected directly, help privately. But what shocked me about the facebook audience is how willing they are to share information, e.g. early on they added "pile of poop" to things you could throw. it cost $20 to throw... people were wildly willing to give information about themselves just to throw poop. you can't always protect people form themselves, you can only make it clear what you are doing with the information.

Q: at what point will advertisers be able to target datapoints?
A: later in the year.  we realized early on there are only a few folks who can dominate, but we can help the little guys.

Q: do you see a merging of virtual currencies?
A: that's a great idea. easy to say, hard to do. we may be able to provide a back office to help, you set the metaphors, we can feed in the questions, surveys, offers to earn money.

Q: what are the dangers of building a company entirely on one site-- facebook
A: I like to think we are build on the front not the back of facebook, and there is a virtuous circle right now where everyone is helping each other. facebook could shut down, go closed, but i hope philosophically they have been walking the walk, and B other networks -- google, mysace, tagged, yahoo and others-- are now responding by trying to compete in the openness game. as soon as one guy opens up, before facebook closes up, openness wins and the game is over.

Q: What happens if facebook creates its own ad netowrk
A: there is no such thing as one ad network. if and when they come out with an ad network, it won't put people out of business, they need all the various companies to have a flourishing ecosystem. they may choose to tax developers. that would be a good thing, you'd know where you stood.  

Q: somethign about valuation
A: appsaholic offers ability to see the bids, the questions, the CPM for aps. Setting value abstractly on aps is silly, the value of an ap is what someone will pay for.

Q: is selling poop a stable business model
A:   I prefer selling clicks and answers. People want to do things they can't do in real life, but can't. everyone wants to throw food at each other. boozmail. college kids can't send drinks, they are underage.. is it sustainable? I'm not goign to do that, but kids in school, there is a rhyme and reason why they are using the aps. it doesn't look like viacom. it doens't look at a real media company, it looks silly. but engagement levels are out of control.



it's pretty clear video game knowledge is going to be very applicable.

I missed the second talk, see http://www.geekdaily.org for jim's write up. also, slides:

Now, Lance; Rock you are the smarted developers on Facebook, there is pretty much no question

first a anatomy of a facebook ap
first to give ap developers access ot social graph and demographics
you get a splash, a spot on the profile and an icon in the ap list

difference between facebook ap and myspace widget? FB is viral and itneractive, myspace is all aobut self expression

• aps support engagement with friends
• aps are more viral
• third party distribution is allowed - on MS you get blocked
  
• facebook even allows you to create ad network within

brand distribution on facebook

• building superwall

• CONCEPT FRIDAY 6/15
  
• DESIGN FRIDAY
• IMPLEMENTATION 3 DAYS
• ADVERTSING 6/18
• VIRAL GROWTH 3 WEEKS
• caplock off
  

• 2 million users!
• all about social graph

150K without graph, 1M with.  radically better platform to build on.
without API horoscope 300K creations. with api, horoscopes 2M in 30 days. 7x more
Adoption is hard.. it's a short head, and a long tail and their is very little value in the tail.

• compensate via traditional means
• showing the Yahoo graph again: music video was flat, then they went to RockYou for distribution, about half the pick up (800K - 2M in a few days) was distribution by Rockyou installed aps, the other was viral tuning (see earlier blog post about Ro)
• you can all virally tune, but otherwise promotion and integration with major aps requires buy in
• facebook has the best distribution platform
• 7x better than myspace
• distribution is still hard
• only 1% succeed
• third party distribution ensures success
• not possible on myspace

QUESTIONS

• amazon's a3 service great for bandwidth/server issues with facebook, but facebook hosts most so it's not too bad, mostly database scaling problems.
  
• best success is viral tuning, doing things like color of button, label of button (best is continue -->)
  

Social networks and platforms

• discussion started in 2003, when it was around friendster
• things have changed significantly
• question was "is htis somethign new" or a feature like friendster is just match.com with a feaure of adding friends.
• temporal history
• the ability to hack in and add widgets
• it wasn't a design feature, it was a flaw in the system, the inability to turn off javascript
• ning: a different conception-- platform for building any kind of social network
• facebook- first platform with a broad social graph
• why are social networks platforms?
• social networks have key data that is useful to use in applications
• friendster as dating tool
• despite WoW, most people care about the life they have here
• enables richness on applicaoitns people care about

note: 10 min in, and he hasn't mentioned linkedin once!

• myspace and facebook
• integrates includes of widgets
• something like a graph of linages
• no access to a real state of relationships
• and no access to key data
• no platform access
• no access ot communicatoin or newsfeeds
• facebook and ning
• ning:program your own social network
• control of policy, set up features
• facebook: build on your massive social graph
• aquire customers
• leverage key relationships
• leverage existing communication scheme
• facebook and linkedin: different use cases
• search: on facebook you see their picture and what networks they belong to, linkedin shows a professional bio (controlled by user)
• answers: very different kinds of questions, facebook are a way to be witty and fun, LI more about knowledge
  
• they appear farther into the graph,
  
• you get broader answers
• answers show up on the profile, so questions tend to be longer, better
  
• messaging
• brokerage vs. general sharing
• where is there interesting overlap
• public profile presence
  
• potential business applications on the social graph
• ONE GRAPH TO RULE THEM ALL?
• will there be one social grpah platform?
• is htere one social graph? is there one graph that can handle multiple relationship types?
• Reid thinks there will be multiple graphs
• multiple social graphs, the semantics of the connection
• odd population of graphs, such as 1out of ever 7 people in brazil are on orkut
• one graph that includes all the relationships is a blogger dream, too much overhead and a tech vision not a human one
• it may be important to have different rules for different relationships: freinds, professional, family, religeous...
• a massive platform does not require the truth of one graph

facebook platform possibilities

• currently many communication tools
• i,e, many walls, many variations of poking, many gifts, mail
• games
• comparing people (how well do you know yoru friends, who's a movie star)
• music and movies

futre possibilities

• iterations off current use cases
• interesting to see how friending aps work
• honesty box

what's new?

• theory of platforms is enable tons of creativity
• 90% of everything is crap
  
• then, what other aps might be useful in 1:1, 1:X
• are there limits to how many aps a user will have?
• rising above the noise
• why facebook has changed to metric of active users rather than installed
• how do you create something sustainable, monetizable
  
• areas that haven't worked so far
• business
• politics
• money
• the challenge of the second act (.e. jibjab, 1st act only)

economics

• today, parallels to the internet gold rush
• CPI installs
• run of site ad inventory
• ad network agregation
• challenges today (much built on hope)
  
• interuptive advertising
• incented installations
• future possibilities
• target ads
• virtual currencies
• platform innovation?
• developers - will care a lot about having economics evolve
  
• facebook - need to have sustainable businesses on it
• what will be the case
• low cost aps with sufficiant sustaining appeal
• applications that fit the facebook use case
• evolution of key use cases dang he's obsessed with use cases
• what is still up in the air
• establishment of substantially new use cases
• major applications
• massive competition a la the web
• someone will try to give away something you charge for
• at least three people will copy anything that works
• competition from companies and individuals

facebook and the web

• new patterns of email and communication
• new cycle of communication: the genius of facebooks photosharing
• tagging is open to anyone, so you can be tagged as being on a photo you didn't take, and your friends will be updated
• success in many to many power like this
  
• look forward to application the replicate that genius
  

• future of discovery on the web?

• discover through friends
• certainly discovery of people's social lives

• applicaitons and ht epaltform
• can one website be everything? (remember when AOl tried ot be the web)

summery

many interesting new entrepreneurs out of college will build on facebook
interesting ecosystem between websites and facebook applications

• ilike, flixter
• websites establishing their position, i.e. yahoo hiring rockyou for Ymusic

economics will be a real issue- keep costs low!
constant newness will be important for entertainment

QUESTIONS
note: all paraphrased! I'm not a transcriber...

Q: why no linkedin facebook ap to merge our informaiton? Also craigs list - fear, or lack of interest?
R: we have a lightweight one, that has almost no traction like most biz aps, but their bumpersticker aps does have it because its a social ap. The question is degree of interest. for example, no one wants search bars that aren't Y or G. You can't just build whatever and it'll work. it's ROI. rules: big companies can only two or three things a year, and that's true for small companies, and it provides niches for startups.
We will do something if it proves useful to our goal of making people's business lives better.

Q: no idea, confusing
R: in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. in theory there will be social commerce, and it'll be social sharing. But people change, markets change, so ... water tends ot flow wher eit most easily goes, and hte interesting popular aps follow walls, poking, etc... you'll likely see more of that. However, there could be a interesting game that bridges that gap. Thus far it's a long time

Q: I'm curious about yrou unique postion as an angel invester and helpign companies move throughthis unique space. Should some companies focus on facebook vs web presence
R: I'm a bit nerveous about the aps on their today will get to the depth that will lead to VC-- that's a 1M company, meanging facebook AND web. there will be angel things that will ge tfinanced and get traction. VC general partners will do 3 things a year, so they want big returns. so generally thinking is web, but some folks will gamble since thats part of VC. in the valley some gamble because that's how hte game works, but for VC my advice is web still.

Ro Choy from Rockyou

lot of questions on value of facebook-- lack of long tail, what's value, how relevant to business

most money spent on google and yahoo for internet spend. why social networks? relevancy via search and relevancy via social network. Sn's showing radical growth. get in now to understand for tomorrow

social web on the rise with open Sns.

move destination sites-- like service master-- creates opportunity to thrive.

rockyou is a widget provider, 700k widgets embedded daily (WTF? what a world we live in) built on putting widgets on myspace to drive traffic to parent sites. tells story of rock you's growth and strategy. Starting to feel like a salescall...

aps that focus on engagement (access to friends) rather than self-expression perform 7x better.

one key component of virality is simplicity. the easier it is, the more viral. every single extra step takes away from virality.

rockyou has 15 facebooks apos with 40M live installs and 10 of top 40 aps: superwall, xme, likenss, zombies/werewolves/vampires, horoscopes, slideshows, emoter

• leverage your aps to build audience for other aps

key takeaways for viral growth

• Viewer focus:
  
• problem with user-focus, leads too many features. viewer focus instead-- the receiver form a invite is critical.
• mistake of one flow- landing page has five options, it's too much to think about. viewer shouldn't think, just add.
• you don't want a new user to have to be creative. just add.
  
• because you can only send to ten users, you need to land all ten
  
• Simplicity
• fewer features to start
  
• Novelty
• first time ap with viral nature in a space wins the space.
  
• First mover advantage
• there is a attention space to be owned. Once someone has an ap, they won't change to another look alike.
  
• Their horoscope is much worse yet has 6M to a 1/2M by the next competitor. viral tuning.
  
• universal applicability
• the more universally human, the longer the adoption curve
• appealing to 1%, 10% or more of the population
• rockyou.com essentially abandoned, because facebook so much more effective
• dogbook has 4 times users than dogster.

Building viral engagement

1. new users ->build clean flows
• you loose 30% with registration
2. direct friends-->deliver clear value prop
• as soon as someone links to ap, link to invite flow.
  
• superlatives, as soon as you add it asks you "who is most likely to go to jail" then invite flow.
• one sentence: no one reads
• example: for an event ap, who are your drinking buddies? then gets you to invite and set up a meet up
• boring messaging: big john joined water balloon, want to add it?, instead Big John hit you with a water balloon, want to hit him back?
  
3. indirect friends-> focus on messagingh
• engaging notifications
  
4. interesting parties-> allow universal use

ad networks on facebook

• rockyou
• socialmedia
• cubics
• appfuel

things to consider

• total potential throughput of ad network
• quality of ads
• ad copy-> makeit actionable
• viral tuning is still key

takeaways for growth

• self-expression vs engagement
• cross promotion is key
• integration is good proxy
• first mover advantage
• build with new users in mind
• engagement can generate virality

Rodney Rumford up. "The user perspective" I'm doing a much worse job due to food in my stomach. :\

• part of top friends success was a full time community manager/customer care person who answered every question, fixed every bug.
• email notification apparently going away. facebook is throttling back to avoid spamminess
• minifeed, newsfeed-- optimize messaging, optimize images
• preselected 20
  
• find a way to get your ap into the wall "hung on the wall"
• Get something to measure behavior... need analytics
• consider setting up a group for your product/service even before the ap's live. Private or public. Public gives you more ops to promote
• "all things D" by mosberg does videos
• videos jump off the page, can be shared, commented. videos get shared more.
  
• you can open up photos and videos to membership.
  
• understand and use richness of groups, e.g. phototagging
• example Yahoo Music Videos uses group&ap, fluff freinds
  
• Allow users ways to express themselves within the ap, for example in food fight they can chose and even suggest food to be thrown.

Marketing opportunities: using facebook to extend your brand.
Great example: the bob dylan ap.

• lead generation
• brand extension
• commerce - facebook is not good at this yet.
  
• customer engagement
  
• traffic
• brand loyalty
• frictionless WOMA
• groups
• applications
• adverting

8 steps to facebook engagement

1. start at the end
   
• get it live fast so you can learn from users fast
  
2. business opportunities and objectives
• know why you are building it
  
3. compelling and engaging application 10K foot
   
• measure the users reactions, quant and qual
4. application strategy 1K foot
• make sure you engage the way facebook users want
  
5. application build
• make sure it looks like facebook.
  
6. nurturing of users
• core is self expressions and
• sharing
• Know your audience and nurture that passion
  
7. continual improvement and measurement

updates come tuesday night at midnight
register as a developer so you can access the network, IRC, forums.. its a great community
do not tell anyone when you are working on an ap. when you release it, release only to other developers first.  it's very very easy to steal aps.
no one will tell you when your ap is approved and gone live, but they will notify you if it's rejected.
clever hippo is a great ap search tool, better than the bad facebook one. 

 

At Graphing Social, a facebook conference. I'm doing the biz track, Jim the tech track. Lee Lorenzen is talking now on facebook 101 and user perspectives.

I'll try to pull out interesting points

• because it was closed to only .edu addys, facebook has a high level of authenticity (and/or expectation of)
• Altura expects facebook to be the winning social platform, as windows was the winning OS
• a known problem is because it started as a college network, profiles aren't appropriate for parents, bosses, etc
• new ap coming out will allow you to group your friends (assumed is it'll also limit access by group)
• He sees that as a nail in the coffin for LinkedIn
• as business people come on to facebook, LinkedIn loses traction
  
• the nature of social networks is they tend to own a country (orkut on brazil and india, friendster owns Philippians) Facebook is looking to own US, canada
• created a profile, and designed his top friends list to prove his reputation
  
• Facebook employees are forbidden to friend you unless they know you fairly well.  They can't be a collector.
  
• "I am hungry" ap sold for 20K, though originally on ebay was only 2K valued. Facebook ap to allow you to find out which of your friends are hungry so you can grab lunch together.
  
• part of value is potential to advertisers, i.e. macdonals, outback steakhouse can get a jumpstart on a userroup
• gross! he says you could buy and rebrand an ap, for example mcDs could buy I am Hungry, and one day a profile would suddenly have I am hungry replaced with I'm loving it, find a mcD's near you. So much for authenticity.
• Do not put up a ap that is only useful for a single person (i.e. dolphin bumpersticker) but is better with people, such as waterfight. What made it even more viral was getting access to locked items as you use it more. e.g. if you throw X times, you get access to a watergun, then a hose, then...
  
• it's trivial to create a facebook ap-- really only profile page and canvas page. the profile page needs to not be too dynamic. the canvas page is where you have fun. 
  
• better if things are standard; facebook has helped with that such as standard invite page
• you can use the standard ad networks that are on facebook
• cost-per-install advertising (like the first wave of miners selling the next wave their shovels)
• CPI (40-60 cents)
  
• You almost need to buy installs to get your ap critical mass. (Duh, of course if you build it they won't come)
• You have to measure metrics. almost every ap will get 200-300 users immediately. the point is to get to tipping when numbers start to double.
  
• he suggests even using facebook as a test arena. you can get feedback, development cost is lower.
• critical to have a great graphic for your application.
  
• Flyers
• CPM ones don't work, expensive
  
• flyers pro are targeted, look hopeful. tested with waterfight, and much better. you only pay for clicks. Allows for testing different environments.
  
• The problem with ads is that they are always in the same place, so they suffer from banner blindness. (women in bikinis worked. wonder why?)
• Flyers don't affect much as viral nature. better a good ap than advertising.
  
• There is a spammometer, that measures if you are behaving too spammy, and if you hit 4 green dots, you are shut down. nice!
  

From wired

Under the radar, Appfuel -- a five-person startup in San Francisco -- has been developing an application that fulfills what everyone knows to be the real opportunity: If a company can mine your Facebook profile to know who you are and what you like, it can show you targeted ads. Without storing any user data, says co-founder Sundeep Ahuja, Appfuel can scan a user's profile and deliver a targeted ad in under a second. For example, if you fancy The Fray, Appfuel's system will know the group is playing a concert near you tonight and will offer a link to buy tickets.

Ahuja does, however, acknowledge the elephant in the room: Facebook is likely preparing to do the same thing, as the Wall Street Journal reported in August (subscription required). Facebook says it already targets ads based on profiles. But so far, advertisements on the site do not appear to be closely matched with either users' profiles or the widgets they've installed.

From Harvard Business Online's Marshall Goldsmith

1. List the names of the key groups of people that impact your life -- both at work and at home (customers, co-workers, friends, family members, etc.).
2. Write down the names of the people in each group.
3. Post your list in a place you can't miss seeing regularly.
4. Twice a week -- once on Wednesday, once on Friday -- review the list and ask yourself, “Did anyone on this list do something that I should recognize?”
5. If someone did, stop by to say "thank you," make a quick phone call, leave a voice mail, send an email, or jot down a note.
6. Don’t do anything that takes up too much time. This process needs to be time-efficient or you won’t stick with it.
7. If no one on the list did anything that you believe should be recognized, don’t say anything. You don’t want to be a hypocrite or a phony. No recognition is better than recognition that you don’t really mean.
8. Stick with the process. You won’t see much impact in a week - but you will see a huge difference in a year.

Nothing will improve every aspect of your life than regularly saying thank you to the people in it.

 Rosenfeld Media recently did an analysis of user experience mentions in prominent Business Magazines. What they discovered is quite fascinating.

• The Harvard Business Review dramatically differs from its peers in its information focus. Knowledge management (26.7%) and information management (61.7%) combined to account for 88.4% of its results, while the average for all of our business publications is 28.2% (8.5% + 19.7%). Of course, HBR is the most academic publication on our list. If this is the explanation, does that suggest that the research and academic side of the business community is more focused on information management issues? If so, why?


• The Economist is quite focused—at the expense of all other UX topics—on branding: 96.7% of its results, versus a 42.4% average among all analysts. Of all the terms on our list, branding has been in use perhaps the longest. Does The Economist see newer topics as flighty and not worth deeper coverage?


• Conversely, Business Week seems to have the most balanced coverage, with six terms accounting for at least 5% of the results each (branding, content management, industrial design, information management, knowledge management, and user experience).

This is what getting Dugg looks like. I've seen other graphs-- getting Dugg appears to be more pain than value, unless you are monetized out the wazoo on CPM advertising. You are a a content site, everyone comes to look at that one bit of content, then leaves never to return. Two weeks later, the large scary hosting bill comes.

Meanwhile, you pick up a handful of new readers, but the needle doesn't really move. There have been a number of articles about how StumbleUpon delivers the goods over time far better than Digg, but not often they point out that StumbleUpon, unlike Digg doesn't usually cost you money because the increased traffic is spread out over time, so server boost required. I suppose your could make a viable business out of it if you could get Dugg regualrly, thus the "digg this" widgets. I wonder how often that works for folks who aren't the New York Times.

That said, we've come up with a policy at PublicSquare where we don't charge you for getting Dugg -- a one day spike doesn't change your costs. No one should have to suffer just because they get popular for a day.

On a morning bike ride, I was pondering pricing. I often ponder pricing. It strikes me as a bit of a black art. But it's easy to understand on a grad scale. The larger the market the lower the price. I noticed this with books. A book Philippe might buy on X-Ray diffraction is $150; meanwhile I just bought a detective novel for $5.99. Everyone who does something in business is aiming to make enough money to make the effort profitable; preferably very profitable. Therefore you have a formula that is something like $x=effort/#sold.

For example, a designer writes a whitepaper and it takes him him 3 weeks. He charges 100 dollars an hour. That means he needs to make $12000K to break even (considering most tech books give you a 10K advance, take 9 months + to write and never make over the advance, one should never write books to make money. you make money by double your rates as soon as your published; but that's another story.)

Now he has to figure out how much to sell the whitepaper. So now it gets tricky-- how big is the market for this whitepaper? How much of that market can he capture? Let's say it's a paper on some advanced taxonomy thingie. He does the homework and discovers there are 20,000 IA's out there. But his paper is advanced-- maybe only 10% are interested. 2000 might buy it, so he needs to charge 6 bucks a pop to break even. But what if that market is even smaller-- some IA's don't speak English, some he can't reach effectively since he has no marketing chops. What if it's realistically more like 1%? Now the report is $60 to break event. and he wants to make a profit of course. Now the white paper is $120 bucks. And that (as I turn around and begin to bicycle down hill) explains one mystery in my life (why whitepapers are so darn expensive).

Next I start thinking about products, in particular CMS's. Now, leaving out other factors you can see why Vignette is (if you have to ask you can't afford it) and why typepad is 5 bucks a month. But I started to wonder why Vignette and friends are so darn hard to use, and why typepad is dead easy. And then the obvious sprang up and bit me on the nose; typepad has to be dead easy or else they are dead. Their entire pricing model is based on hundreds of thousands of users using it. Meanwhile the giants of ECM continue to lumber along the sales cycle, and sell to a company something for thousands of dollars afterward everyone trots off to training. There is no reason the big ECM has to be unusable, but then again there is no reason for them to be usable either. It's a small market, they do what has to be done, and with an investment that large training doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Anyhow, if you think about it, there does seem to be a inverse relationship of price to usability I find intriguing, and I'm pretty sure is tied to adoption. Now I'm off to work on my pricing worksheet (from the marvelous Four Steps to the Epiphany) and looking forward to any insights you-all might have.

Cheers!

Sometimes you dive into a pool, and you are going down down down and it's deep and you aren't sure you can hold your breath that long and so you want to swim up but you have so much momentum going down, and then you hit bottom.

Guess what: you can push up when you hit the bottom. It's actually a lovely lovely feeling.

Why's My Free eBook For Sale On Amazon? | WebProNews

Well-known marketing author, Seth Godin, doesn't want you to buy his new book for sale on Amazon. First off, it's not new. Godin published it in 2005. Second, he published it as an e-book and offered it for free download on his website.

Ask the Wizard says

The hire fast, fire fast approach basically can be boiled down to "it's really almost impossible to understand whether a person is going to be a killer A match before they start working with you day to day, so best to find somebody that seems close enough, and then remove them quickly if they don't work out."

He goes on to talk about why hire/fire fast is harder with some types of emplyees than others, but what he doesn't talk about is how hard firing is for a manager.

In a big company, it's extremely hard due to performance monitoring to avoid lawsuits -- a fire will take 90 days most of the time. But in big and small companies it's hard to fire because --no matter how tough you or your employees think you are-- you really really do not want to have that firing conversation. And it gets put off longer and longer and when it happens it leaves you-- and sometimes your team even if they hated the guy-- feeling rather wretched.

I prefer to use consultants/contractors/agencies to start the team, and hire slow and smart. I do fire fast if necessary, but it always always has a huge price, and it's silly to whitewash that over.

Amazon has done it again-- on the page for Amazon.com: Omnivore's Dilemma: Books they have placed an interview with the author, Michael Pollan. Teetering on the edge of buying yet another food book, the engaging arguments in the video tip me over.

If you are feeling a bit suspicious of the food industry, or more importantly, if you feel good about yourself becuase you eat organic, read New Yorker article Paradise Sold, which mercifully is still up on the site.

Buy this, read this. I'll say more about why later.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

How to Be Silicon Valley

"I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds.

Chris Baum's "Arc of the Organization" is a excellent riff on the trend of small entrapreneurs taking apart large corporations' living. I've seen it as well as newspapers loose revenue streams to dedicated services such as craig's list and ebay.

It's about mobility, and the question is, can a large organization ever get mobile enough to stay competitive, or is the nature of size simply slowness?

Every company is (should be) driven by a vision of what they are, who they are and what is important to being that thing. Typically that vision is shaped at the highest level, by a CEO who either collates or creates that vision, often out of a combination of gut and research.

Start-ups in particular are often born out of a single gut feeling from one person, and that idea is then relentlessly pursued. We have the classic story from the president of Oxo about his arthritic wife, and how that led to a singular vision of tools for people of impaired mobility. And of course, Netflix, born of Reed Hasting's hatred of late fees.

Later, companies frequently form tightly coherent cultures that hold the vision collectively-- think of "the HP way" for instance, or the sometimes cultish Google with their relentless passion for search. Who else would have seen mail as a information retrieval problem?

B2B's naturally form vision in a different way, designing it to please their customers, either from a massive cash-cow, or from a powerful market. Small design shops have sometimes nearly been ruined by their relationships with one big company that feeds them... and tells them who they are.

Recently I've noticed a new way of shaping a vision-- a web 2.0 way, if you wish-- that many start-ups are embracing. Emergent Vision. At a recent SDForum event, I heard the CEO of SocialText speak about his company-- how they launched the technology and let the customers tell them what it was for. This closely echoed words I'd hear at Gel a couple years back form the CEO of Meetup... they put up tools to help people meet not really knowing why people would meet. They didn't predict the political role they played, but they certainly embraced it.

Smart companies have long adapted their course based on customer research. But I think only now we are seeing more companies launching new technologies not really know what they are for, but trusting that someone will. I did a quick 2x2 to illustrate my thinking.. please feel free to add additional companies or ideas in comments and I will incorporate...

I've seen a lot of blah blah blah on how to hire, who to hire, and etc, and it tends to run the same way, hire better than yourself, hire experience not resumes, hire team players. So I was happy with I saw these gems from Tom Evslin which expound beyond Bernard Moon's often obvious advice (then again, should I criticize? Is there anything more rare than common sense?)

Tom says

"I disagree with Bernard's math when he says "One A-grade hire equals 10 C-grade hires." A C-grade hire is a negative -- especially for a startup. Better to leave the position unfilled. No matter what you multiply a negative by, you still get a negative.

Bernard says to hire team players. You need to hire people you can work with but NOT necessarily team players. Team players won't tell you when you're dead wrong; they won't be the only dissenting voice even when they're right and everybody else is wrong. Startups need a team but I think a CEO can mold a team, has to mold a team, from very strong individuals."

Both very true, and not just for start-ups. I especially appreciate his understanding that people come and go, and a hire for today may not be a hire for ten years down the line and that's fine, even desirable. It's part of larger mental model problem most people suffer from, which is a lack of understanding that many decision are contextual in time.

I saw Dan Pink Speak at IDEO recently. It was quite a good talk and clear he is enamored with both IDEO and the idea of design's potential as anyone in the business press. It was mostly taken from his book, I understand, so if the ideas are interesting I recommend you check it out. These notes are really notes, and were taken on my treo, however, so let me know if anything is particularly obtuse.

He begun with some good advice on speaking...

Good speech has
brevity
levity
repetition

then spoke on the fact that right brain thinking is increasingly important to competitive survivial, but that most left brain thinkers resist it. there for arguments for this shift had to be explained in a left-brain fashion. (if you dont' know it, right brain is considered verbal, synthetic, creative, left-brain analytical, mathmatical)

three ways to explain rise of right brain.
Abundance (arms race of design toilet brush. How to sell? features no longer matter) (demoncratized pursuit of meaning and joy. Fogel)
Asia (outsourcing - left brain work goes first)
Automation (john henry, kasparov, completecase.com, uslegalforms.com, yourdiagonosis.com- or indian cpa, turbo tax)
change
agricultural age to industrial age to info age to conceptual age
frombacks to left to right brain

Threee questions you must ask if you are in business today:

1. can some overseas do it cheaper?
   
2. can computer do it faster?
   
3. is what your selling in demand in the age of abundance?

It's not just function but design

robert lutz... "I see us in the art business. Art, entertainment, and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation."
roger martin.."Businesspeople don't just need to understand designers better -- they need to become designers."
bizweek... Mba applicants are mia.

Butterfly ballot is sputnik-- the thing that tells us we are in danger because we cannot desing, just like spunik told us we were in danger because we didn't know math and science. A president was elected with bad design.

For a business to suceed, you need

• not just argument but also story
  story as product differentiator
  example: the wine, big tatoo red (also target, apple, wholefoods... All stuff at wf has a backstory)

• not just focus but symphony
  big picture thinking, wholistic thinking. Selfmade millioners are 4 times more likely to be dyslexic
  
• not just logic but empathy
  
• not just seriousness but play
  "got game" failure is required for success
  laughter clubs
  
• not just accumulation but meaning
  what matters with pay? Internal and external equity. after that, money is not a motivator. meaning is.

design symphony story play empathy meaning

www.danpink.com

I attended Art of the Start conference yesterday, much of which was taken from the book you see here. It was a fun day, although I had to wonder what was motivating Garage to hold the conference. Certainly not money, the conference is peanuts compared to their usual money making exploits. I suspect maybe trying to reduce headaches from bad pitches... or perhaps it was one of their constant themes, pay back the world for your good fortune. Anyhow, good stuff, and the book is highly regarded!
My notes from the first session follow.

MORE...

Many designers desire to go into management because they think that it will allow them to finally "make the call," give the orders they so often chafe under, and give them instant respect. But even CEOs have to learn it isn't quite that simple.

from HBS Working Knowledge: Leadership: The New CEO's Wrong Message

"The CEO is undoubtedly the most powerful person in any organization. Yet any CEO who tries to use this power to unilaterally issue orders or summarily reject proposals that have come up through the organization will pay a stiff price. Giving orders can trigger resentment and defensiveness in colleagues and subordinates. Second-guessing a senior manager can demoralize and demotivate not only that person but others around him, while eroding his authority and confidence."

A9/Amazon is sporting a new Yellow Pages feature, whose claim to fame is its use of photos...

Palo Alto-based A9 said it compiled the index by covering tens of thousands of miles in trucks equipped with digital cameras and global positioning system, or GPS, receivers.

Pretty amazing... if... okay, I know it is still in beta, but as far as I can tell not a single image I can recognize is right.

Bistro Elan is exactly the kind of business you would want photos for. They have no conspicuous sign, and are nearly hidden by vines. But a search on Palo Alto showed "Bistro Elan" as a listing, and when I clicked it I got this.

Can you imagine showing up at these people's house?

"Hi, reservation for six!"

The real Bistro Elan, shown here (I took pictures up and down California Avenue to kill time while Philippe made copies in Kinko's.) Have fun comparing the real photos with the ones Amazon is currently showing. I'm sure this is a temporary issue, but it's been temporarily wrong all weekend. And with the extensive news coverage, I'm sure I'm not the only one to spot issues. Is this really how they want to launch a ground-breaking feature that introduces their customers to a new body of competency? Hopefully no one is really using it yet.

As an aside, Bistro Elan is a terrific place to eat. One of the best in Palo Alto, IMO.

Blake over at AA-RF sent me this article How Companies Turn Customers' Big Ideas into Innovations and there is a ton to chew on here... first comment:

"Specifically, 48 percent were unhappy with their company's ratio of innovation hits to misses, and 51 percent were dissatisfied with how their company identifies new service and product categories."

The first statistic suggests there is a general lack of understanding about how innovation comes about. A ratio is not a good way to measure innovation success. If not only because success is so hard to measure, and failures are often successes, or at least critical to learning. Over and over again failure is a benchmark for innovation-- companies have to fail early, fail often and fail cheaply. Only through multiple rapid failures that teach (and teach something other than don't fail in front of upper management) can innovation occur. This is one of the reasons so much innovation comes from small companies, who have less to loose and fewer managers who are afraid to be caught failing... The Innovator's Dilemma is required reading, if by some chance you haven't gotten to it yet. Despite the book's bestseller status and the insane number of business articles stating more or less the same thing (fail! fail often! fail small, but fail!) seeing this statistic makes me wonder. Of course it's possible that executives are complaining in a way that allows for failure-- what, .02% success? I want to see that ratio up to .04% by next quarter!-- I rather doubt it.

It's hard though, for a company to be comfortable with low success rates-- especially public companies who are expected to show quantifiable success every quarter, and for whom revenue per employee can be a success-measure. This drives companies to do more with less, and get productivity up. But productivity suggests a taylor-esque approach to work. The assembly line is rarely a home for innovation -- as you squeeze each second for efficiency, idle thinking is abandoned and no opportunity to explore alternatives (and fail at them!) is possible.

A common solution is the creation of a R&D team. But this is problematic on many levels-- innovation is done for its own sake apart from the main work, so it is not always easy to understand how to apply new ideas to existing business. Plus it creates innovation ghettos where the "blessed few" of a company can innovate and outside ideas are left to flounder. Programs like Googles 20% provide an intriguing alternative, but posts like this one do raise questions about its effectiveness.

In my experience, innovation comes out of the unfettered pursuit of excellence... and that provides the clues to managing innovation. It's not something you do, but rather how you do everything you do. And that is the beginning....

Excerpt from Comic Wars, a book on Marvel Comic's near bankruptcy and uncanny recovery:

"[Jim] Shooter had a huge impact during his nine-year run as editor. He pushed Marvel's corporate owners to introduce good medical insurance and a system of royalties, sharing the wealth if a comic book sold more than one hundred thousand copies. The quality of the books noticeably improved, as did sales. Marvel commanded 70 percent of the marketplace, and some of the writers and artists were earning over half a million dollars per year.

Shooter said that the old way, simply paying a set fee per page, discouraged anyone from taking more time and care to produce a terrific page "I started finding ways to get people more money, to find better creative people and hold on to them. Because the problem is that an artist started to get good but he couldn't make enough money in comics, so he'd go off into the advertising business. And you'd loose them."

Why should a designer or IA learn about business? I can hardly think of a better example than the one described above. Without an understanding of business practices, a terrific creative (like Jim Shooter's predecessor Stan Lee) can't make meaningful change in the quality of a product.

Making good work isn't just about loving what you do; it's also about feeding your family while you do it. Stress about health insurance, making rent, paying your bills can drive even a fierce comic fan into a new line of work. What is so impressive about Shooter's model is it not only rewarded good work, but created a star system which fed the dreams of young artists, encouraging them to starve awhile until they could make it big. The promise of a big payoff is critical to a talent-based line of work.

How are people motivated to do excellent work in your company?

Are they?

Is excellence rewarded or reliable mediocrity?

Victor explains our new company extremely well in While you were out: changes in the global design industry

"Victor Lombardi, a consultant in New York, resigned his fulltime design management job to co-found The Management Innovation Group, a new breed of management consulting firm. "My partners and I view design as a way of thinking which is applicable far beyond the design of products" he explained. "Our clients want to explore innovative business strategies, ways of collaborating, and ultimately to develop their own innovation capabilities." So while Lombardi's firm thinks like designers, they work with executives to help them explore the options a more creative approach can offer. "It's not easy for people to stretch their thinking to encompass both business- and customer-centric points of view, but ultimately this is what we need to do to create innovative, human-centered organizations." "

Watch for more, slowly but steadily....

President of AIfIA and my clever partner Victor Lombardi has published a call to IAs and desingers in hisAIFIA | Editorial: The Best Sourcing of Information Architecture. Wake up people, it's not "if my job moves to India," it's "when my job moves to India (or china, or Russia)" what wil I do? And when your job moves, do you know what your next job will be? Or are you assuming it can never move? Because you are wrong. Moreover protectionism doesn't work; it's better that people learn to continually grow into the next oppurtunity.

There was an excellent article in the October HBR on why we will not only lose jobs to the emerging countries, but we won't be thinking up good new ones in America's Looming Creativity Crisis ($$).

Description:
The strength of the American economy does not rest on its manufacturing prowess, its natural resources, or the size of its market. It turns on one factor--the country's openness to new ideas, which has allowed it to attract the brightest minds from around the world and harness their creative energies. But the United States is on the verge of losing that competitive edge. As the nation tightens its borders to students and scientists and subjects federal research funding to ideological and religious litmus tests, many other countries are stepping in to lure that creative capital away. Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and others are spending more on research and development and shoring up their universities in an effort to attract the world's best--including Americans. If even a few of these nations draw away just a small percentage of the creative workers from the United States, the effect on its economy will be enormous. In this article, the author introduces a quantitative measure of the migration of creative capital called the Global Creative-Class Index. It shows that, far from leading the world, the United States doesn't even rank in the Top 10 in the percentage of its workforce engaged in creative occupations. What's more, the baby boomers will soon retire. And data showing large drops in foreign-student applications to U.S. universities and in the number of visas issued to knowledge workers, along with concomitant increases in immigration in other countries, suggest that the erosion of talent from the United States will only intensify. To defend the U.S. economy, the business community must take the lead in ensuring that global talent can move efficiently across borders, that education and research are funded at radically higher levels, and that we tap into the creative potential of more and more workers. Because wherever creativity goes, economic growth is sure to follow.

from Harvard Gazette: Overworked interns prone to medical errors

"On the traditional schedule, interns were on duty an average of 85 hours per week, including two extended shifts lasting 30 consecutive hours or more. Then they switched to so-called intervention schedules, where they enjoyed 20 hours a week less work, about six hours a week more sleep, and continuous shifts of "only" 16 hours.

The result was dramatic.

"Interns made 36 percent more serious medical errors during a traditional work schedule than during an intervention schedule that eliminated extended work shifts," notes Charles Czeisler, Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine. "These included 21 percent more serious medication errors and 5.6 times as many serious diagnostic errors.""

Including an intern trying to put a tube in the wrong lung. What the heck? Why does this ridiculous practice continue? What coudl be dumber... wait, I know. an ex-start-up thinking it's employees need to continue working 16 hour days despite the fact their workforce is reaching parenthood age, and retention is at an all-time low. hmmm.

Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives
It's too late to order this and get it before the election-- and honestly, it wouldn't matter if you could. Tuesday is too soon to change much. But you should still buy this book right now and read it, because the conversations you have over the next four years could shape the next one.

George Lakoff has been talking about framing since '96, but only now has it started taking hold in the progressive imagination as a way to take back American values -- liberty, equality, freedom-- from the conservative stronghold that distorts those values into liberty to invade anyone who we don't like, equality for the rich to manipulate the system to get richer and avoid responsibility to the very system that provides the infrastructure that allowed them to become rich, and freedom to destroy the future of the country by endangering American industry through an uneducated workforce by providing education only to those who can pay for it.

The mind is full of shortcuts that normally make us more efficient in our daily lives, but can be also exploited: one example is frames. Frames are short phrases that stand for a body of thinking. Conservatives use them them when they speak of "tort reform" "tax relief" "voter revolt." It's all about language-- when "tax evasion" is reframed by conservatives as "tax relief" there is no way a progressive can argue against "relief." But we can talk about responsibility, we can talk about repaying our debts, we can talk about fairness. We can talk about the fact that thriving companies thrive on what taxes have bought for them. Lakoff writes:

Corporations, businessmen, and investors benefit from taxpayer investments most of all. Taxpayers have paid for our financial institutions: the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, our national banks, and the courts, 90 percent of which are used for corporate law. If you want to start a business, you don't have to build highways, invent computer science, construct the Internet, train your scientists, build a banking system, build and maintain a court system. The taxpayers have done all that for you.

You see, there are no self-made men. If you make a bundle in business, it was made possible by taxpayer investments. The rich have gotten more dividends; they should pay for the investments that make their businesses possible. It's only fair.

If we can talk about our values in a way that is open, honest and clear with frames that evoke our values, we can begin to help people shape a vision of a better America in which every citizen is a citizen, entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I know that sounds old, but really that is the basis of American values. And if one citizen is deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because we have failed to make sure people are earning a living wage, have healthcare and education, and have opportunities to work, earn and grow into productive citizens we have failed not only America but ourselves.

I used to be afraid to blog on politics, because I was afraid of the debate. I'd feel so angry and so helpless. But now I know why it was so hard to argue-- I didn't have the right language, and I was making the same mistakes many progressives make: I was arguing within conservatives' frames. But now it's time for me to stand up for what I believe with not only the conviction of those beliefs, but the language of them.
Read an excerpt

From ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet

"Although ROI methodology can be a useful tool for prioritizing possible Web development projects, by itself measuring ROI is not the path to a greater competence in user experience design."

very smart article.

What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works should go into your carry-on next time you fly. It's the "Don't Make Me Think" for business, one of those wonderful thin books that you can read on a cross-country flight (twice, I suspect) and leaves you looking at everything you do a bit differently.

The author starts slow and easy, explaining why cash is critical, and how even the mailroom guy can affect the stock price. He uses the street vendors from his native India to explain the critical factors in a business's health, and guides you steadily to the point where you can actually do some financial modeling. If you are a designer, or another professional who missed out on business 101 (shut up and draw!) this is required reading. If you are lucky enough to have gotten good business fundamentals, this is the book to give to others.

From an interesting article on consulting:

"One of the gurus of management consulting, Tom Peters, made his name with a book co-written with Robert Waterman called "In Search of Excellence."
Of the companies he cited as examples of excellence, two-thirds were to run into trouble. With his theory soundly disproved by reality Peters remarked: "My principles have survived intact, it's just that the companies haven't." "

heh.

Joel on Software - Getting Your Résumé Read is just right on. Very smart article on how to actually get to the interview. And very true for the hiring I'm working on at Yahoo! You would not believe what a short time we spend on each resume-- there are just too many of them. So it is critical to make the resume look perfect for the job you are applying for.

On the other hand, unlike Joel, I don't mind if you ask if I Yahoo!

From Best Practices and Case Studies: Be Very Afraid

"This story reminds me of a warning I received when I was young -- your parents probably said something like this to you, too (after you did something stupid with friends) -- If Johnny jumped off a cliff, does that mean you should too?

That idea is not too different from that of best practices and the case studies of other companies’ successes. In fact, something might have worked well for one of your competitors or another company. But does that mean you should do the same, and will you get the same results? Following in the footsteps of other companies is called mimicry, and while it might be flattering, it is often very dangerous. "

It's a good article, tailor-made for forwarding to those who want to play it safe by copying.

For some times now I've been saying information wants to be free, but people like to be paid. Print VersionThe Seven Deadly Sins of Free Content: Spears & Daggers is one of the most passionate arguments against free content.

Boxes and Arrows is still free. I suppose our sin is pride, so we ignore our costs and keep spitting the dang thing out.

Speaking of free content, how have I missed blogcritics for so long. I dig it.

What Should I Do With My Life? is a wonderful little article-- occasionally overwrought, but that might be artifact of being in Fast Company... Po Bronson's look at how life and work intertwine to an inseparable degree is fascinating.

"The relevant question in looking at a job is not What will I do? but Who will I become? What belief system will you adopt, and what will take on heightened importance in your life? Because once you're rooted in a particular system -- whether it's medicine, New York City, Microsoft, or a startup -- it's often agonizingly difficult to unravel yourself from its values, practices, and rewards."

matt jones shares knowledge again. in a world of NDAs where it's hard to learn from each other, these tiny very naughty moments are to be treasured.

ahoy, matt.

Ad-Free Site From the Masters of the Web Hard Sell

"It was bound to happen. Someone would introduce an Internet portal where people could check their e-mail, read news, look up stock quotes and such without the bustle of big moving, flashing advertisements that make using a site like Yahoo like walking through Times Square. "

Is it enough to be "Yahoo! without ads"

And how close can their design be before someone sues?

Go read Strategy Letter V, and find out why Bill Gates can buy Sweden and you can't.

Chris MacGregor's inspired response to Don Norman's intellegent explaination of the flash turn around issue should be required reading for anyone in web development. Especially consultants.

(reread Flash 99% bad, if you don't know what I'm talking about. esp. the ammendment)

My little site often goes after usability blunders like a dog on a hambone, and I know as I've begun job hunting I've been restraining myself-- slightly.

But is this a good idea? On one hand, I'm not a professional critic and I don't get paid to be objective. On the other hand, how can I expect you to ever trust me if I don't keep my nose clean (or get it dirty-- not sure -- damn metaphors). At least you should be able to trust me to be opinionated.

The ammendment on the 99% bad alertbox reads more than a little like a backpedal. What does that do to the alertbox's trustworthyness? It makes you wonder what are the stories that don't get told at NNG. And other consultant companies.

It also reveals the price of being bombastic and absolute. If that orginal column had claimed merely that Flash was being misused, the current alliance would go down easier with the community(s). But the attention grabbing "99% bad" that got people to the site, and probably caught Macromedia's attention, is also the reason this job is going down so badly.

What can NNG do? Here is a chance to make real change. I don't blame them for making what is the right decision: to try to help what they view as a troubled product. But they are also going to have to live with the skeptiscm and catcalls.

That's the price of guruhood.

I'm still sorting out how to handle the newsletter. But today's glean is below...

MORE...

Welcome to NoPayPal, where you will learn the evil behind their system! is a cautionary tale for companies who think their unhappy customer crawl off in a corner to cry when something isn't right.

Of course the downside is libel...

I was reminded of this book the other day at lunch, when a peer spoke of ways to manipulate charts to make a point. It's a playful book, full of cartoons and wink-wink you-would-never-do-this moments teaching you how to lie or spot lies built of data.

Always late to the party, it seems, I've only now discovered the fascinating site, The End of Free. What we are seeing folks, is a moment in web evolution marked by a site. I'd say this website is much like fuckedcompany.com was, chronicling a radical change in the growth of the web.

Any guesses to what will evolve? micropayments, at last? subscription models, like the gretings card sites? contribution begging, like the blogger server fund? shareware websites?

In other news, no idea why my spellcheck still works. but trying not to ask too many questions....

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age

"We discuss our ethnographic research on personal social networks in the workplace, arguing that traditional institutional resources are being replaced by resources that workers mine from their own networks. Social networks are key sources of labor and information in a rapidly transforming economy characterized by less institutional stability and fewer reliable corporate resources. The personal social network is fast becoming the only sensible alternative to the traditional "org chart" for many everyday transactions in today's economy."

Websense: Personal Web use costing businesses

"Personal use of the Internet by workers in the office is costing UK businesses billions of pounds every year, according to Websense.

Reuters:Consumers not paying for online music

"A new report from GartnerG2 says that most consumers are not yet ready to purchase and download music from the Internet."

Inside the Revolution: Smart Mover, Dumb Mover (Fortune) -- "Think the first-mover advantage is a myth? You're wrong: Most pioneering dot-coms failed not because they were first but because they were dumb."

via webword.com

Industry Standard to suspend publication

"Sinking along with the Internet economy that it covered, the Industry Standard will suspend publication next week and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection"

i liked that magazine.

Marnie sent me this survey

and it's interesting for two reasons: how many people are surfing at 56k and below, and how much more broadband folks surf. It's that wacky old 80-20 rule again... your most valuable customer may be broadband and huge downloads may be acceptable for some sites. Once again we are reminded that "the rules" are different for each site. Sadly, unlike OS or browser, your log files can't help you here....

feel free to argue, of course.

from Accept responsibility to make your online project work

"Business managers can make online projects by accepting the responsibility for their design - or court disaster by letting technologists shape them."

This is an intriguing look at what happens to a project from conception to reality. The trouble comes when the project is handed over to implementers. "...they hire people and firms who have built software and systems. 'Those people and firms have their own interests', Thomas points out, 'and those interests won't necessarily align with the aims of your outfit. The outsiders want to bolster their list of stated achievements - their CVs, their corporate brag sheets. The individual developers want to work with bleeding-edge technology. The more pragmatic firms want to re-apply previous solutions.'"

As Sartre said, "hell is other people"

Guess what the recommended cure is? Something remarkably similar to an aspect of IA-- interaction design. The article recommends that managers "define in precise detail what users of the system can do - a tough, confronting task which takes place before a single line of code is written, and which requires managers with at least a small measure of technical savvy and a great deal of determination."

The article's key failing is not recognizing that business folks are no more trained to design a humane system than engineers. There are three part of success... what is technologically feasible, what is business necessary and what is user desirable/acceptable. Pay too much attention to one of elements, and the project's likelihood of failing shoots through the roof.

The Case for Micropayments

Jakob's first promoted micropayments in '98.

Will P2P finally make them happen? Clay Shirky doesn't think so.

The Case Against Micropayments

"Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea. Furthermore, since their weakness is systemic, they will continue to fail in the future."

and Scott McCloud thinks they will

What do you think?

Busy, busy, busy.

When I joined Carbon IQ I had certain ideas about what I would do: I would do things my way. I would create schedules that made sense. I would do unstintingly quality work. I would speak honestly and openly with my coworkers, and politics and game-playing would not exist and above all I would remember that we are all human begins, and a business is there to support the humans who work for it, not the other way around.

Everything I thought about owning your own business is true-- you get to do the quality of work you want to do, you can take off at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday to catch a matinee and finish the work on a Sunday without people looking at your strangely for either, and you learn all the time. What I didn't know I'd do was all the support jobs, from office manager to bill collector. You pick up envelopes, you call a client to inform them they are three weeks late in payment, you scan news groups trying to figure out why they heck PDF's won't print.... The big advantage however, of a small business over freelancing is you aren't completely alone. I called the client because Noel didn't want to deal with it anymore, and Noel edited a proposal I was writing when I couldn't see straight anymore. Gabe coaxes the printer to print just when I'm willing to pour coke on it, and I tweak the JavaScript rollovers that are trying to make Gabe insane. We are all there for each other, in a pragmatic unsentimental and immensely comforting way. There are no politics, there are no games and the business is the human beings who work there. period.

A small company is the hardest work I have ever done in my life, and I have never learned so much either-- I have no question I'm a better IA for it, as I understand business issues viscerally. My empathy for a businesses need to survive is at an all time high...

I wouldn't trade this opportunity for anything in the world. It's been scary, frustrating and awakening. These have the best six months of my professional life. I look forward to the future. Thanks, Noel and Gabe!

Scott McCloud talks-- err-- illustrates aout micropayments

talk about it here

OPENING THANG

Well, I don't know about you, but it has been a crazy week for me. Very busy at IQHQ. Which, in these tumultuous times is not something I'm going to complain about. I snuck in a couple of hours to get greymatter running for gleanings, and I think you'll like the results.

{{you are already here, so link removed}}

Also in a strange mood around 1 am I suddenly changed the look of the front page. If I could decide I liked it, I might propagate it through the site. But I'm puzzled-- I just broke my own process Tell me what you think about that, if you have a minute.

redesign

DESIGN MATTERS

Interesting article about back-biting on ALA

read article

Happily misspent some time downloading fonts from the lovely büro destruct . Be sure to check out the book pages.

read article

A recent post on chi web set off a great exchange of sites with innovative

navigation (and unfortunately some rather snide commentary. everyone is so cranky

these days)

read article

USABILITY MATTERS

Noel deconstructs an online bank on the CLog

read article

and Peter attacks Style

read article

NEWS

My sister (stylewithsubstance.com) sent me this article proclaiming the web is the best thing since sliced bread for small business.

Three e-business myths debunked

read article

Dylan Tweney: Open secrets. (via tomalak.org)

These technical and market forces combine on the Internet to create an environment where information of the most private nature can quickly be disseminated worldwide, in seconds. In other words, "Information wants to be public."

twenty things

and even if it doesn't want to be...

3 Charged With Giving Lucent Secrets to China

read article

(Registration required.)

ebay is following Yahoo's lead in banning all hate-related memorabilia

Ebay to Ban All Hate-Related Items

"The online auction site extends its policy as it makes an aggressive
push into international markets."

read article

Razorfish Founders Quit Top Management Positions

"Mr. Maheu, who once oversaw North American operations and corporate development at Razorfish, called Mr. Dachis and Mr. Kanarick "industry pioneers and visionaries" and said the company's goal was to "return to profitable operations and positive cash flow while successfully serving the expectations of our clients, shareholders and employees."

read article

my commentary
http://www.eleganthack.com/blog/archives/00000038.html

Why I'll never use Blogger (via webword.com)
"For those unfamiliar with security, the FTP protocol transmits usernames and passwords in clear text modes which, means anyone on the Blogger network can easily sniff out a username and password to log into your webserver, plain and simple. I'm not saying anyone at Blogger would do so, at least I would hope not, but who's to say that someone won't compromise Blogger's network in the future? Are you willing to take that chance?"
read article

I've heard similar things about greymatter....

APROPOS OF NOTHING

I've decided I don't care if this is an urban legend or not.

"Oh my !!! Nice Kitty!!"

Put simply, Snowball is no ordinary cat, she measures 69 inches from nose to tail and weighs in at 87 lbs.

see cat

MORE...

they get it: quite a while on the Jupiter site, there was a terrific article on relanches and the dangers that lie with them (such as massive user bailout at the horror of trying to learn something new, no matter how much "better" it was) One of the ways to mitigate this was to inform user of an upcoming redesign and solicit feedback on it. Amazon did it for their new navigation. Alta vista does it here

redesigns are in the air: adobe.com
from newmedia.com "BROADBAND Walkthrough: Adobe.com
(Thursday, 3 August 00) Adobe completely sheds its old corporate image
with a dramatic redesign of its Web site. Aimed at fostering a sense
of community, the site features expert QuickTime tutorials, interviews
with noteworthy designers, online galleries, forums, and a free
virtual portfolio area. By Jeff Burger."

Speaking of Jupiter, and their research compatriots, I'm reading "how to lie with statistics" that appears to have been written in the 30s and makes quite entertaining light reading.

also found this

Salon: From September 2, 1999; Jupiter shoots for the moon

and

Boston Globe: Fortunetelling.
Ideas, visibility, and marketing drive that image. Forrester's researchers are
paid based on a complicated formula that considers their involvement in
closing sales and appearances in the media.

lately the CHI-WEB list has been talking about exercises in pointlessness (sites that are pure marketing tools and provide no value to user)
included were
http://www.eu.levi.com/LEJ/
http://www.myautogarage.com

here is a resource to make your life saner: standard banner sizes

I've heard a lot of good things about the founders of carbon IQ. But I'm going to guess the rest of the world hasn't. So why doesn't their site say more about who they are and what they've done? it doesn't even have a title in the head tag.... did someone knock this out over the weekend in dreamweaver?