Category: The Conversation Economy

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:

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+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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Signal Austin Conversation: Best Buy CTO and Geek Squad Founder Robert Stephens

It was fun to open last week's event with Robert Stephens, who has grown Geek Squad from 2 people to more than 20,000 in the past 15 years. Highlights include his view of advertising ("a tax for poor products") and his confirmation that yes, every Best Buy employee will, in…

It was fun to open last week’s event with Robert Stephens, who has grown Geek Squad from 2 people to more than 20,000 in the past 15 years. Highlights include his view of advertising (“a tax for poor products”) and his confirmation that yes, every Best Buy employee will, in fact, get a tablet sometime soon.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

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Signal Austin Conversation: Matt Mullenweg

I posted earlier about my conversation with Matt, from that post: When WordPress.com was split off into the for-profit company, many were concerned it would quickly become clogged with ads, but Mullenweg and his partners have been extremely careful in how they've introduced marketing into the community. Experiments include FoodPress,…

I posted earlier about my conversation with Matt, from that post:

When WordPress.com was split off into the for-profit company, many were concerned it would quickly become clogged with ads, but Mullenweg and his partners have been extremely careful in how they’ve introduced marketing into the community. Experiments include FoodPress, EcoPressed, and others in partnership with my company, Federated Media, as well as one-off sponsorships with Microsoft around IE9, and some clever use of Google’s AdWords and other ad networks. Clearly media is a business WordPress will get into more, especially with the traffic and uniques it attracts (see chart at bottom).

Instead of advertising, so far WordPress has focused on tools – including a “freemium” model for key plug ins such as backup, polling, and spam protection. But as the platform has grown, it has taken a considerable amount of investment capital, and those investors will at some point demand a significant return. Furthermore, WordPress has earned the dubious honor of being large enough to become a target for hackers with less than honorable intentions (not to mention ongoing battles with black hat spammers).


Below is the conversation I had with Matt at Signal Austin.



http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

3 Comments on Signal Austin Conversation: Matt Mullenweg

The Signal Austin Livestream

I'm a bit late posting this, but the rest of the day is great, so here you go! Video clips at Ustream Enjoy!…

I’m a bit late posting this, but the rest of the day is great, so here you go!

http://www.ustream.tv/flash/viewer.swf
Video clips at Ustream

Enjoy!

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Signal and SXSW: What Should I Ask WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg?

On Thursday at Signal Austin, and then again on Friday at SXSWi, I'll be having an onstage conversation with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, who continues to be the driver of the Wordpress community. WordPress is a unique platform – Matt works for Automattic, a for profit company that owns the…

Screen shot 2011-03-08 at 6.34.10 PM.pngOn Thursday at Signal Austin, and then again on Friday at SXSWi, I’ll be having an onstage conversation with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, who continues to be the driver of the WordPress community. WordPress is a unique platform – Matt works for Automattic, a for profit company that owns the rights to the hosted version of WordPress, at wordpress.com. There’s also WordPress.org, which is an open source, not-for-profit foundation that boasts a vibrant community of developers and hackers who merrily create hacks, plugins, and any number of patches to the WordPress code.

When WordPress.com was split off into the for-profit company, many were concerned it would quickly become clogged with ads, but Mullenweg and his partners have been extremely careful in how they’ve introduced marketing into the community. Experiments include FoodPress, EcoPressed, and others in partnership with my company, Federated Media, as well as one-off sponsorships with Microsoft around IE9, and some clever use of Google’s AdWords and other ad networks. Clearly media is a business WordPress will get into more, especially with the traffic and uniques it attracts (see chart at bottom).

Instead of advertising, so far WordPress has focused on tools – including a “freemium” model for key plug ins such as backup, polling, and spam protection. But as the platform has grown, it has taken a considerable amount of investment capital, and those investors will at some point demand a significant return. Furthermore, WordPress has earned the dubious honor of being large enough to become a target for hackers with less than honorable intentions (not to mention ongoing battles with black hat spammers).

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Austin Signal: The Program

(cross posted from the FM Blog) In just a few days I'll be welcoming 200 or so digital marketers to Signal Austin, the second edition of FM's Signal conference series – regional, "mini" versions of our highly-acclaimed annual New York event. Our first Signal – based in LA -…

SignalAustin_LogoSmall.jpg

(cross posted from the FM Blog) In just a few days I’ll be welcoming 200 or so digital marketers to Signal Austin, the second edition of FM’s Signal conference series – regional, “mini” versions of our highly-acclaimed annual New York event. Our first Signal – based in LA – focused on content marketing. I’m proud to say it was both oversold and very well received.

This week’s Signal in Austin will focus on the impact of location in marketing. Given that Austin – home to the legendary SXSW conference – is where Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla all broke out, I’m expecting quite a program. To that end, I wanted to give readers a bit of a “curtain raiser” on what to expect for the day. As with all our shows, the conference is limited in attendance (we thought we’d cap it at 150, but nearly 200 are already registered) but we’ll be livestreaming it and putting the audio online as well.

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