Best Practices Not Included

The Long-Tail of Social Networks

I was flying through my Google Reader and this post from Pete Blackshaw over at ConsumerGeneratedMedia caught my attention and I'd like to expand on it. I was surprised when I went to check my facebook friend count I was sitting at 465, and naturally someone one just added me so now I'm at 466, approaching the 500 friend count in essence.  So in adding my two cents, Pete raises a great question in: how much is too much?  Do you believe there is  a point of diminishing returns when it comes to the size of our social networks on sites like facebook, myspace, and others alike.  At what point are conversation and traditional efforts of staying connected being sacrificed by the ease of access to the many aspects of our lives which we are living out and making public on a daily basis? What are the implications are all this information proliferation having on social norms and are ability to communicate at large?  These are important questions to be asking. 

Here's my dilemma, I see  people on campus everyday, people who I've had class with before, or met once or twice at some point over the last 4 years, and sometimes I realize: Hey I'm facebook friends with that person.  Very often nothing ends up happening, we can be sitting across each other in the same computer lab, or go as far as making eye contact but no one speaks.  I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me.  While this might not seem like that big of deal, does the fact that I can't always remember someones name in one of these situations and it's only later that I go home, log onto facebook and confirm that I am friends with person because they just posted new photo's, or are attending this event, or are now dating this person, or wrote on this persons wall (Thanks NewsFeed).

Point being, as all our social networks continue to grow, at some point does it become reasonable to nullify online friendships by canceling friends we haven't talked to in years?  I'm not saying I can't handle 500 online friends, but I think it's reasonable to believe I would still be a member of facebook in 10 years.  At that point, how many friends will I have...a 1000...2000?  Is there any value in viewing newsfeed photo's from someone you knew for a short time but haven't talked to in over a decade?  These are questions we will all surely be asking ourselves at some point.  Last fall I wrote a post on why I came to the decision to cancel my myspace account because I didn't see enough long term value to being a member anymore.  Now, I am in no way saying this will eventually become consensus with facebook, but like Howard Zinn talked about: "you can't be neutral on a moving train".   Or this blogs on theme: change is the only constant.  This reality will be imperative for social networks to understand.

Here's my prediction, as our social networks continue to expand, the overwhelming flood of information available will eventually result in diminishing value.  In general, social networks will need to take on a format in which the information overload can be managed.  User controls will have to be put in place so as to continue filtration.  We've seen facebook adjust their format but what will need to be implemented eventually is the ability to manage and filter are networks in a long-tail sort of way.  I checked some of facebook's newsfeed settings and while a lot can be managed, for those out there who already have more than 1000 friends, it doesn't seem to be enough. 

Lastly, while we've seen even middle aged working professionals embrace platforms like facebook.  The greater question at large remains: how will facebook and other social networks continue to bridge generational gaps as it's original patrons age and pressures to grow force them to attract younger users?  Can many or any of these social networks become  multi-generational brands 10-20-30 years down the road?  One thing is for sure, the choice in segmentation for users will be key moving  forward as our friend counts reach new heights.

Note: the picture at the beginning of this post is a graphical representation of all 466 0f my facebook friends.  This is an application called the friend wheel and is available on facebook.

Goodbye MySpace

I was pensive to do it, but I'm happy to report that I'm no longer a MySpace member.  That's right, I just canceled my MySpace account.  Not sure how I'll feel about it a week from now, but right now it's pretty liberating.  I was on MySpace at least since freshmen year of college.  Actually, I think I joined Facebook and MySpace at about the same time. 

I've always preferred Facebook for it's aesthetics, design, and overall how information is laid out and navigable.  I never really understood MySpace.  You'd think with billions of dollars behind them, they could develop a better overall product.  It's unfortunate that too much customization has taken away from the overall experience.  I've never liked the major inconsistencies from page to page.

Furthermore, not many of my friends use MySpace any more.  Fortunately, most everyone is on Facebook at this point.  The spam is what pushed me over the edge, I must have been receiving at least 10 spam friend invitations per week.  On top of that, there's been the consistent spam posts on the wall.  It's just ridiculous, when I was going through the cancellation steps, the spam issue was addressed on the site, as if they knew that's why I was canceling. 

Unlike many other web brands that I associate with (Flickr, Technorati, Typepad, Ebay, Facebook, and of course Forums...Forums...Forums), I finally realized that for me, there is no long term value to remaining a MySpace member.  Here’s my reasoning:

• It’s hard to do most anything
• All the services MySpace provides are available elsewhere (e.g. Facebook)
• I don’t need to be a member to take advantage of their media (i.e. music)
• Almost all the friends in my network I can communicate with using other means

So I guess that's it. Goodbye MySpace, its been fun, I just wish it could have been more.

Joost: At First Glance

Back in March I wrote a post about a new video service called Joost, a free ad-supported online TV service.  Initially, I was very excited to learn that dreams of internet TV were coming a reality.  So after months of private beta testing that caused the biggest invite demand since Gmail, Joost is as of last week now open to the public.  Again anyone can now try Joost out without an invite.  Just follow the link at the beginning of this post and you can get in on the action.  The official notice can be found here on the Joost blog.

Initially known as the Venice Project, Joost has garnered a lot of attention for being a very usable and well-designed product.  After playing around with the platform.  I can attest that the dashboard is very well put together, aesthetically I love it.  Overall the design could have been make or break, and the guys at Joost hit a home run in my opinion.

Now to the bad news, Joost received so much hype and after a few failed attempts at getting invite tokens, I put getting a hold of it on the backburner for the Summer.  So when I first heard that Joost went live last week, I couldn't wait to use it and after messing around with it for a few hours, I have to say I'm optomistically disappointed (if that isn't an oxymoron, I don't know what is).  Joost has a few major flaws in my opinion.

First off, I'm not sure how excited I am about having it run through a standalone application.  Matt Dickman over at TechnoMarketer was musing about this last Spring in his first review here.  Since I am a full time student with a laptop that might as well not be portable (it weighs like 9 pounds), this is a big inconvenience for me since I find myself in the computer labs on campus killing time between classes and studying, and I can't download and launch any applications from the school owned computers.  This sucks, as much as I dislike YouTube for various reasons, if they solved this problem, why couldn't Joost?  In this day and age, it does seem crazy that I have to run all these different applications.  Let's take Second Life for example, as I'm writing this, I'm remembering that I havn't used SL in months even though the application icon is right on my desktop stareing me in the face.

Furthermore, Joost has been proactively signing deals with various content providers, and believe me, there's a lot of content.  15,000 TV shows and 250 something channels to be exact.  The video quality is not the greatest but it will surely improve over time. But Joost needs to be careful they are not just becoming another distribution point.  I'd like to see them continue to think about formulating their strategy to survive in this time of incredible media proliferation.  Granted, content is still king and out of all the other players, Joost has by and far the most premium content.

Something you initially notice is the lack of user generated content.  Many reviewers seem concerned about this but I think Joost was smart to not try and compete with YouTube for the UGC.  Many have said that Joost should come up with a way to filter out the crap content and let premium user generated content be viewed through it's platform, but in the situation they're currently in, this could sacrifice user experience and there are to many other options out there right now.  Joost should stick with their PGC (Professional Generated Content) niche.  After the storm is over and the dust has settled, then Joost could experiment with this.  But again, right now, don't try and be all things to all people.

Lastly, when I think about the idea of TV, it brings a certain stigma, mostly a negative one to my mind.  And after watching some content on Joost, I felt like I was doing just that, watching TV.  Is this a good or a bad thing? Well in my opinion, if Internet is supposed to be about change and doing things differently, whether that be: reading, writing, banking, shopping etc. then Joost has some issues, because from what I can see, Joost is operating to great extent in the way of traditional television models.  It's no secret these models have issues, and if we want to save TV, what we'll need is innovation through some creative thinking.  Since when has innovation been reduced to a repackaging of what's already been seen?

On the surface, Joost might look different but I'm afraid to say that when it comes down to it, the living room is not dead yet.  Since Joost is relying on traditional ad models by placing 15 and 30 second spots in front of content clips, what's their value proposition?  Why would I want to switch from one broken model to the other?  Because if I have a choice, I will chose to watch content on my big screen from the comfort of my coach.  I wonder if anyone over at Joost has read Life After The 30 Second Spot?  How is Joost possibly going to compete against the coach?

In closing, Joost is still very much an experiment as the need to improve overall user experience is evident.  Right now, Joost has been smart to seek out and aggregate premium content, it's an important niche for web-based television that has been previously unfulfilled.  Bottom line, I might describe Joost as a two-step-forward one-step-back kind of deal.  Although, it's clear we will need to see far more out-of-the-box thinking to avoid a one-step-forward two-step-back kind of reality. Hope some of you reading this give Joost a shot and let me know what you think?

If you build it...they might not come

I'm pretty pissed off right now, I just spent over an hour typing a long post on social networking. I was doing some formatting when I hit a link in my post and it was gone, everything was gone. This happened to Fred a few months ago and at least now if it ever happens to him again I can tell him that I know how he feels. Typepad needs to implement some sort of automated saving feature within their software. This sucks, I'm drained and unmotivated to redo everything. But I guess I'll write the gist of what I wanted to share.

I ran across some interesting statistics on web traffic for social networking sites. According to Hitwise, market share in the U.S. for Internet traffic on the top 20 social networking sites grew 11.5 percent from January to February 2007. In addition, this accounted for around 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007. What's amazing is how dominant MySpace, with it's 80% share is to it's competitors. On paper, even Facebook's 10% seems amateur when it comes to MySpace. 

 

Market    Share of US Internet Visits to Top 20 Social Networking Sites February 2007*
Rank	Name	Domain	Market Share
1	MySpace	www.myspace.com	80.74%
2	Facebook	www.facebook.com	10.32%
3	Bebo	www.bebo.com	1.18%
4	BlackPlanet.com	www.blackplanet.com	0.88%
5	Xanga	www.xanga.com	0.87%
6	iMeem	www.imeem.com	0.73%
7	Yahoo! 360	360.yahoo.com	0.72%
8	Classmates	www.classmates.com	0.72%
9	hi5	www.hi5.com	0.69%
10	Tagged	www.tagged.com	0.67%
11	LiveJournal	www.livejournal.com	0.49%
12	Gaiaonline.com	www.gaiaonline.com	0.48%
13	Friendster	www.friendster.com	0.34%
14	Orkut	www.orkut.com	0.26%
15	Live Spaces	spaces.live.com	0.18%
16	HoverSpot	www.hoverspot.com	0.18%
17	Buzznet	www.buzznet.com	0.18%
18	Sconex	www.sconex.com	0.14%
19	MiGente.com	www.migente.com	0.11%
20	myYearbook	www.myyearbook.com	0.11%
Note    - data is based on custom category of 20 of the leading social networking    websites ranked by market share of visits, which is the percentage of    traffic to the site, based on Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet    users. The percentages represent the market share of visits among the    websites within the custom category.
Source:    Hitwise

MySpace's success would at this point seem to have little to do with the sites features and overall usability. Let's face it, the site itself is crap. From spam, to hacking, and of course how could we forget that ad clutter. These are all huge reasons why I never spend any time on the site. None the less, MySpace seems to transcend it's reputation for poor user experience. There's a plethora of alternative social networking sites out:

As a platform for social networking, it wouldn't be hard to offer features, tools, and settings better than the those available on MySpace. Your overall level of usability might result in a better user experience than that offered by MySpace, but at the end of the day, social networking is about the network. The reality is that most people won't join a network that their friends are not a part of. For example, I'm a member on Virb. I think it's one of the better designed social networking sites out there. But I almost never spend any time on Virb because I hardly know anyone who networks there. It just goes to show you that social networking will always be about the people. You can have all the tricks and trinkets in the business, but that doesn't mean people will show up. Facilitating the interaction is hard enough. But even though MySpace is sitting pretty right now, as they continually show that they have little taste for user experience, their market share will eventually start declining. It's inevitable, MySpace will lose favor over time!   

Microhoo!

Well, it looks like it's going to be another post related to Microsoft. They've definetly been in the news lately with all the rumors swirling around about the buyout and merger with Yahoo. I must say that just a couple of days ago, I actually cashed out my positions in Microsoft. I think I got a little antsy with all of the merger talk and I wanted to protect my healthy gains going back to last August. Tech stocks have never faired well for me in the Summer months. The potential buyout numbers that reports were throwing out were said to be around $50 billion. This deal would be ridiculous because it was something like an 18% premium on Yahoo share prices. But aside from the financials behind this deal. The real question I would like to ask is: why? This merger doesn't make sense to me on many levels. Lets start with the clashing cultures of the two companies, or how about the fact that both companies still have unclear strategies at how to take on the Google powerhouse. This is the true root of both companies worries. It's amazing that only a couple of years ago, yes in 2005, Yahoo was still the number one search engine on the web. But, the brand has lost some luster to say the least. I've been a loyal Yahoo user since the mid 1990's and I'm afraid to say it but I'm slowly becoming a Google convert. Yahoo is still my homepage, but as I've been using more Google apps, I've been thinking about making Google my home, especially since I just started using Google Reader to aggregate all the blogs I read. As for Microsoft and Yahoo, both companies are obviously shitting themselves. They are now realizing that they need to act fast and do something. This of course is easier said then done but I think both companies need to go back to the drawing board (if it even still exist). Why do so many people love Google? It's simple: Google makes peoples lives easier! Google's main business might be advertising, but their apps: Gmail, Gcal, Google Reader, Google Docs etc. are the true secrets behind the company's success. I can't even begin to tell you how much time I can save every day by using Google to aggregate all my online content. It's turning into my one stop internet portal. These tools and apps have only extended the Google brand and at the end of the day, they provide a value to users, one that's surely unmatched by Microsoft or Yahoo! Another one of Google's  major successes has been keeping it simple! There are big differences between the Google homepage when compared to Yahoo's and MSN's. Check out these snapshots:

      

It's clear that just by looking at the homepages, Yahoo and Microsoft are trying to be media companies. Now, that is a big part of their business. But, the Google default homepage is focused solely on search. And as media proliferation, social media, and consumer generated content only continue to become more prominent, Microsoft and Yahoo will have to adapt or die to their old ways.

The MicroHoo mashup slogan was created by David Armano

I Hope This Finally Kills Conventional Television

Say hello to Joost (pronounced 'juiced'). I've been reading some great reviews about the software supporting user controls and interaction. Developed by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, Joost is essentially a piece of software that supports an interactive television service allowing for the distribution of TV shows and other forms of video content over the Internet via a peer to peer technology. A few weeks ago Viacom (MTV, BET, Paramount Pictures etc.) entered into an agreement to provide their content through Joost and more agreements with big time content producers will surely follow. Joost has been in beta testing mode since December but it should be available to everyone sometime this Summer. I'm super jealous after reading many of the reviews beta testers have been putting out about the software. Despite the complaints about the current content, some of the user controls include: channel chat, integration with Google Talk and user ratings/reviews. But, my favorite talked about feature has to be the ability in allowing users to search for shows and create personalized channels only involving specific content they are interested in. Advertising for Joost is currently set to be a traditional style which I'm skeptical about being that it's probably my biggest beef with tv right now. We'll have to wait and see how that pans out. All in all, this seems like it could be a hit a here's why. YouTube has been a great success, no 1.65 billion questions about it, but the reality is that traditional broadcast is not going away and it rightfully shouldn't. Giving your audience total control like YouTube has done, still results in limitations. I can't tell you how many times of had my cursor blinking in the YouTube search bar trying to think of something to watch and look up. User controls, accessibility and on demand are the attributes that make YouTube so great.  At the end of the day, a television audience still wants to be entertained, sometimes that can mean interaction, but millions of Americans come home every night, kick their feet up and instead of "tune in" they want to "tune out". Joost will no doubt capitalize on the choice factor. If you want to "tune in" and even interact, the option is there. Lets be honest, the last time we as consumers were given choice when it came to television was with the advent of the remote control. It's about time we were finally empowered thank you very much. In the long run, it's this integration that will set Joost apart from other traditional platforms. If someone can get me in on beta testing for Joost, please drop me a line.