Category: Uncategorized

Watch This Space: The Next Generation of “Social Networks” Won’t Look Like Facebook.

Lately in talks and private conversations, I've been thinking out loud about the role of Facebook in our lives. It's an extraordinary service (and company), and deserves its extraordinary valuation. But its approach to our "social graph" is limiting, as I and others have pointed out quite a bit. While…

Lately in talks and private conversations, I’ve been thinking out loud about the role of Facebook in our lives. It’s an extraordinary service (and company), and deserves its extraordinary valuation. But its approach to our “social graph” is limiting, as I and others have pointed out quite a bit.

While in Mexico I had the chance to sit with a couple of entrepreneurs who have an idea I feel is deeply *right* about social networking, and it couldn’t be further from how Facebook works today. I can’t outline what the idea was, but I can say that it hit the same nerve, that we are on the precipice of entirely new ways of thinking about our relationship to others as leveraged over digital platforms, and while Facebook may well be the oxygen or the landmass of this ecosystem, it won’t be the entire ecosystem itself.

To that end, this piece in TNW hits on some parts of what I’m on about. In it, the author writes:

Read More
10 Comments on Watch This Space: The Next Generation of “Social Networks” Won’t Look Like Facebook.

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Guy’s Enchantment

I'm a Guy Kawasaki fan, so this isn't really a "review" as much as an appreciation for his new book Enchantment. I read it over this weekend, it's the kind of book you could skim in an hour, or spend a lot of time with. I fell somewhere in…

41J09v722AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I’m a Guy Kawasaki fan, so this isn’t really a “review” as much as an appreciation for his new book Enchantment. I read it over this weekend, it’s the kind of book you could skim in an hour, or spend a lot of time with. I fell somewhere in the middle, stopping every so often to consider his advice and apply it to situations I find myself in all the time. (Disclosure: Guy works with my company FM in various ways, but I’m writing this mainly because Guy, in his enchanting way, asked me to blog my thoughts here.)

Enchantment is, in essence, a book of simple advice for succeeding in business, and I found myself agreeing with most of it. Guy is a folksy writer and he loves simple anecdotes, the book is full of them. I rolled my eyes when he encouraged us to “make a checklist,” or to smile when meeting someone, and smile with integrity at that. But he’s right, and I realized that every time I see Guy, or see pictures of him, he’s got the real deal smile working, and it really does work to put whoever he’s meeting into an open frame of mind.

Read More
2 Comments on Guy’s Enchantment

Google “Head End” Search Results: Ads as Content, Or…Just Ads?

Today I spoke at Sony HQ in front of some Pretty Important Folks, so I wanted to be smart about Sony's offerings lest anything obviously uninformed slip out of my mouth. To prepare I did a bunch of Google searches around Sony and its various products. Many of these…

GoogHeadEndSearchAdEditRatioBattelleMedia.png

Today I spoke at Sony HQ in front of some Pretty Important Folks, so I wanted to be smart about Sony’s offerings lest anything obviously uninformed slip out of my mouth. To prepare I did a bunch of Google searches around Sony and its various products.

Many of these searches are what I call “head end” searches – a lot of folks are searching for the terms I put in, and they are doubly important to Google (and its advertising partners) because they are also very commercial in nature (not in my case, but in general.) Usually folks searching for “Sony Tablets” have some intent to purchase tablets in the near future, or at the very least are somewhere in what’s called the “purchase funnel.”

Read More
14 Comments on Google “Head End” Search Results: Ads as Content, Or…Just Ads?

+1: Google Figures Out a Way To Leverage Search.

Google today did something smart in social – they offered a human way to do something they had already offered – the ability to indicate your approval of a search result. Previously, you could push a result up or down, but that action was not social in nature. Now…

201103301504.jpg

Google today did something smart in social – they offered a human way to do something they had already offered – the ability to indicate your approval of a search result. Previously, you could push a result up or down, but that action was not social in nature. Now you can “+1” a search result, so as to indicate the result was good and/or valuable to you. That recommendation is then translated to others in your social graph.

Cool! But I sure wish it integrated with Twitter, at the very least. And man, it’d sure be powerful if it worked with Facebook. Wouldn’t it, now?! But from what I can tell, that will NEVER happen.

Read More
6 Comments on +1: Google Figures Out a Way To Leverage Search.

Recent Signals

I've fallen down in my promise to RSS readers out there (all 250K+ of you). I told you I'd post summaries of my Signal work each week, and it's been more like each month. Well, here's an attempt to rectify my failure, below, the past seven Signals. I'll try…

FMsignal-sidebar.gif

I’ve fallen down in my promise to RSS readers out there (all 250K+ of you). I told you I’d post summaries of my Signal work each week, and it’s been more like each month. Well, here’s an attempt to rectify my failure, below, the past seven Signals. I’ll try to do this more often.

Monday Signal: The Moral Corporation?

Read More
Leave a comment on Recent Signals

Everbody Forgets About the Power of Intentional Declaration

I love that Facebook is testing real time conversational advertising. In short, the idea is that the right ad shows up on someone's Facebook page when they declare some intention. As the Ad Age coverage puts it: Users who update their status with "Mmm, I could go for some pizza…

I love that Facebook is testing real time conversational advertising. In short, the idea is that the right ad shows up on someone’s Facebook page when they declare some intention. As the Ad Age coverage puts it:

Users who update their status with “Mmm, I could go for some pizza tonight,” could get an ad or a coupon from Domino’s, Papa John’s or Pizza Hut….With real-time delivery, the mere mention of having a baby, running a marathon, buying a power drill or wearing high-heeled shoes is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through “likes” or user profiles.

Sounds great, but hollow – kind of like a 4/4 beat missing a bass drum. And what’s the bass? It’s the consumer, of course.

Read More
15 Comments on Everbody Forgets About the Power of Intentional Declaration

Why Color Matters: Augmented Reality And Nuanced Social Graphs May Finally Come of Age

I read with interest about Color, a new social photo app that was much in the news today. The main angle of coverage was the size of the pre-revenue company's funding – $41 million from Sequoia and Bain. Hell, the company isn't just pre-revenue, it's pre-product….at least for now….

Color.png

I read with interest about Color, a new social photo app that was much in the news today. The main angle of coverage was the size of the pre-revenue company’s funding – $41 million from Sequoia and Bain. Hell, the company isn’t just pre-revenue, it’s pre-product….at least for now. Tomorrow the actual product launches.

If it works as advertised, it may well be the first truly execution of augmented reality that truly scales.

Read More
43 Comments on Why Color Matters: Augmented Reality And Nuanced Social Graphs May Finally Come of Age

The Battles Continue

Look at these two headlines coming off my IWantMedia feed this morning. Sheesh. Talk about Points of Control…. we forgot to put the lawyers' offices on the map…….

Screen shot 2011-03-22 at 8.53.02 AM.png

Look at these two headlines coming off my IWantMedia feed this morning. Sheesh. Talk about Points of Control…. we forgot to put the lawyers’ offices on the map….

1 Comment on The Battles Continue

Intel’s Visual Life Contest

I've agreed to be a judge in Intel's Visual Life contest, the details of which can be found here. Intel has been a partner and supporter of both my work as well as Federated's for as long as I can remember, and I was honored to join my former…

Screen shot 2011-03-20 at 8.46.48 PM.png

I’ve agreed to be a judge in Intel’s Visual Life contest, the details of which can be found here. Intel has been a partner and supporter of both my work as well as Federated’s for as long as I can remember, and I was honored to join my former partner Chas Edwards, among many others, as a judge of the content.

The contest invites folks to upload visuals of their life – either photos or videos – and will have HP prizes in multiple countries for four different categories. I’m looking forward to reviewing them all. The full rules can be found here. I’m a bit late to the game, entries are due in just a few days, so get on it!

1 Comment on Intel’s Visual Life Contest

A Report Card on Web 2 and the App Economy

As I noted earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to speak at a GM conference today. I was asked to peer into the future of the "app world," and deliver any divinations I might discover. I like a challenge like this, as it forces me to weave any…

As I noted earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to speak at a GM conference today. I was asked to peer into the future of the “app world,” and deliver any divinations I might discover.

I like a challenge like this, as it forces me to weave any number of slender threads of my current thinking into a more robust and compact narrative.

Below is an updated version of a slide I presented today. As I thought through why I have a negative gut reaction to the world of apps as they currently stand, I realized it’s because they violate most of the original principles of what makes the web so great. And when I thought about what those principles are, I realized that a list already existed – in the opening presentation Tim O’Reilly and I gave at the first ever Web 2 Summit, in 2004.

Read More
16 Comments on A Report Card on Web 2 and the App Economy