Michael Gracie

Facebook and MySpace are yesterday - Movable Type and Wordpress are today? The next question is: how many bloggers are going to take on the task of trying to build and manage a base of social network constituents? Maintaining an audience is hard enough - getting them to consistently engage at disparate locations (based on their disparate interests) and manage that engagement is going to require a staff (or a more lucrative business model for bloggers than mere advertising). Nevertheless, it seems the technology is on it’s way.

I have little experience with Movable Type (at least in the last couple of years - was once a licensee), but I played with Wordpress MU on several different occasions, and not too long ago. The development community was a bit lighter than the single user install base, but there were plenty of interesting things going on there, including OpenID, user profile management, etc. And I found the ease of use paralleled regular Wordpress (with just a few more kinks).

Further refinement and branding of the technologies should attract some favor, and I suspect there will be a ton of folks tinkering around with the first clean release. However, Drupal has had social capabilities for some time, although I think part of the problem with adoption there was the complexity of the platform (i.e. working around that byzantine API). Nevertheless, whether anyone can build a competitive brand with companies like Ning around is just going to require less hacking and more marketing.

End note: social networking and blogging process seems to be converging and diverging simultaneously. On one hand you have the developments above, yet at the same time you have ABC-list bloggers happily moving their conversations to places like Friendfeed and Twitter (and tiring of that too - funny how actual work can get in the way). And they’ve been allowing “second party” platforms such as Disqus and Intense Debate to collaborate from within on discussion.

At once too many players vying to control over a very limited core audience? Not sure. But I am fairly certain that the incremental benefit of using the myriad of tools (or is that toys?) is far smaller than the amount of time everyone spends on them. Unless you own the platform…or get very very lucky.

Tidbits are small, until they grow up

• Roubini on bank losses: “If people were not spending their rebate checks in June, what will happen when there are no more checks?” Yep…retail is next.
• Trout are unwelcome in South Africa. Check for whirling disease, and then send ‘em on over?
• You mean subprime lending wasn’t the only problem? No, “Subprime was the tip of the iceberg.”
• Caricatures having sex in purportedly sexless virtual world. Nature finds a way?
• Apple will soon release yet another phone without a keyboard. Or a keypad.

and

• Big social networks are failing in Japan. Maybe it’s just because everyone is already too close together.

UPDATE (8/13/08): A week later Roubini is right.

VCs are doing it. Should you?

It’s pretty obvious by looking at these pages that I don’t have much taste for widgets. Now, it seems, at least one blogging venture capitalist is taking widgets to task - cleaning them out because they slow down page loading time. While I’d like to say I’m a trendsetter, alas it’s really just a matter of having no time and/or patience to find useful, easy to use widgets to slap on the site. The ones I have found that are useful simply take too much time to create and/or maintain.

I would have commented on Mr. Wilson’s blog - maybe snarkily offering the New York venture capitalist my stylesheet - but the comment section didn’t load. I’m now wondering if it too is a widget of some sort.

I’ve cursorily seen a trend towards cleaner blog pages, and web pages in general. Even one of Mr. Wilson’s own investments, Tumblr, is built on the idea of clean, easy to read pages full of content originating from the owner. Yet, widgets seem to be growing and thriving in places like MySpace and Facebook (and yes, I know all the junk on Facebook pages are called “apps” - sorry, but they look like widgets to me).

Is there a shift in the midst - widgets coming off of personal/independent pages…finally finding their rightful place in social networks? Or are widgets beginning to join the ranks of the homeless?

UPDATE: If social network widgets can’t start producing real revenue, extinction may be the foregone conclusion.

Quick answers and not-so-quick speculation.

Barron’s: Google points out it isn’t doing so hot.

Alley Insider: Alas, the social network side of things is not up to par.

ZDNet: Not good, and Google is disappointed with the MySpace deal.

Techdirt: Cutting to the chase - it sucks.

And…Facebook isn’t looking like the grand saviour either.

Meanwhile…some folks are optimistic - Lookery is chasing the same kind of deals with social networks, while the GOOG says they’ve seen no impact from the economic downturn.

I’m on the fence. Click fraud is up, and the internet advertising king’s growth is slowing significantly - if they can’t make it all work, who’s going to? Microsoft may be buying Yahoo!, but Yahoo! has only ancillary properties representing social networking success while Microsoft seems to have significantly overpaid for what they have on the plate already.

I’m betting an upstart will hit the street with something truly unique in the way of monetization, and it will charge up this space the way the GOOG did with search. The incumbents should be looking over their shoulder frequently, as there are no barriers to exiting their networks.

Web-based communication channels are burgeoning - people are being inundated by information, and are inundating each other with it. It’s consuming time, we humans’ most precious resource. There’s organization, disorganization, and a never ending stream of new venues to choose from.

Recent thoughts around the web

Nothing new, but…

What I’m waiting for is reality to set in. We’ve already heard plenty of folks complain about being pummeled by email, getting behind to the point where they “declared bankruptcy” by purging their inboxes and kindly requesting that people resend. Now it’s happening with network invitations. People’s Facebook profiles are getting clogged with requests for friendships and notices of new applications. They are publicly announcing they are going to follow fewer people on Twitter. These “troubled” folks are the core user base - the fans, the founders, and the venture capitalists providing the funding.

Reason and quandary

It’s become literally impossible to adhere to Dunbar’s number in the virtual world. Some are taking action because they realize the quality of their communication is what matters, not the quantity. Meanwhile, breaking basic sociological maxims are a requirement of all these networks - they either grow exponentially or die - quality does not matter. The very people these networks need to spread the word are the ones “losing clock” trying to keep up.

Something will give.

Now if we can figure out where the user fits in.

Who, What, Why

After Facebook’s spring pronouncement that applications “get in but they don’t get out,” chatter about ubiquitous usernames and friends lists in a brown paper sack took on new meaning. Almost immediately, the talk on the web (including here) was OpenID this, social network portability that. The fight to pick vine ripe tomatoes from the walled garden was taking shape. But Google just showed up with a wrecking ball and a reaper. They’ve decided to chase the social graph (or social network…whatever). Maybe “chase” is too mild a term - according to some, they already have the components - all they are doing now is providing tools to release the information into the wild.

There was a lot of chatter over the weekend about this. I’ll highlight…

Conclusions? No.

It’s obvious there’s going to be a lot more talk about this. Anyone drawing conclusions now is drawing them prematurely. I suggest waiting (and listening) before you decide to export all your Gmail.