I agree with your article, I feel like a spammer posting to ping.fm, but is it really any different than other services like http://www.tubemogul.com which save users huge amounts of time in distributing their media content? Broken or not this type of service will be here to stay until one "google-like" service kills them all. - Jon-Paul Bussoli
The thing with all these kinds of services, whether they are at the starting ore receiving end, is that once you have plenty of channels to distribute to, you get what I call unintentional sharing. You aren't aware anymore where you are distributing to, since the act is so simple. But the receiver gets it all and then needs to deal with that flow. Intentional sharing simply give more value imo ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
The convseration here is being observed by a lot of people on line, because this network is open,open to your friends's friends and open to the search engines. You are right "Social media makes us all public figures", so we need privacy control and we need private message systems. I remember you said before that large scale conversations will reduce to small and closed circles with your several friends. - K.D.
the more open the topics are, the easier it will be "G"ed - kang
KD the scaling down is one thing that will happen, but the ability to set privacy controls by the user himself will be important too. It will need to be granular, and deal with specific situations. The user should be able to switch easily between different privacy levels at any time or within a specific context. - Alexander van Elsas
I've got a post coming later that picks up on something you say here as well as Louis' post and some comments from Ryan Brymer. There's a lot of good thought going on at present. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I would not temper, set boundaries, or authority on FF! It is great the way it is now! You want privacy go to FB! Do you really get privacy there or your stuff is spread all over the Net behind your back? - Igor The Troll
What about solving the privacy-problem within (existing) social networks? Today in most networks there are not much settings to be made: Either you are in or you are not. In the future it would be good to be able to chose from different layers of privacy which would result in more or less detailed views on profiles and contact possibilities, too. Maybe I should blog about this... - Matthias Schwenk
@Igor, Matthias, NO NO. Privacy is something I want to control as a user. Not FF, not Facebook, not Google. I'm responsible. So I get to decide what happens with my privacy. Facebook or Google aren't there to protect or manage my privacy, they are there to make revenues. let me worry about my privacy, that will work better. Walled Gardens won't be necessary as I control it. - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander just contract a Ninja Assassin Troll and you can sit naked in the middle of the Internet Island! LOL - Igor The Troll
Alex, doesn't Facebook, of all the current socnets, fit the fine grained control the best? You can control to what groups of people (including the public) can see what bits of your profile... It may not let your data out to other services, but in terms of privacy it allows you the most control. Facebook *does* let you worry about your privacy... - felix
Felix, who then is protecting you from Facebook? They help you with your privacy (read " let competitors not have access to your data", but they use it. Privacy can only be your own responsibility. You may want someone else to take care of it with your consent. But that needs to be a trusted party that has only one objective, protect you privacy the way you want it. It can't be a party that takes your data and gives you Beacon for it - Alexander van Elsas
"But unlike in the real world where we are expected to invest time and effort to keep these relationships valuable, there is no such behavior needed online." Once I had kids and job, the work required for most real world friendships went away. The amount required for social media is just right for where I am today. Rejuvenating connections over ideas. And I don't need to share or hear all the various details of our lives. - Hutch Carpenter
Alexander, true, true. :) But at some point your data has to be somewhere and that place is also going to provide functionality to determine prifacy. And if this is going to be widely used, it's most likely going to be controlled by an entity that is going to need to make money. My purpose is not to say that FB is great, far from it, but in terms of privacy it seems to me, they're doing probably the best job of any current big networks. - felix
Felix, I'd pay a trusted party to handle my privacy the way I want it. I'd never let a commercial organisation that isn't there to protect privacy handle that for me - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch you are right. It allows us to have many online connections. I just saw Phil Bauman call his FF friends "idea friends", as the relation is based upon sharing of ideas and conversations (in another fragmented thread ;-) But in real life, we tend to give and expect more in a friend relationship. - Alexander van Elsas
Well written. In my opinion standards are the problem here. Will there be any company break out and really innovate on e-mail? The risk is, that some new features may not work in every context. This would make things more complicated for "normal" users... - Matthias Schwenk
Google is definitely making the moves. They have taken a lot of steps already, integrated Google talk for example, presence, reduced spam (I never get spam in my inbox). But there is so much more to do as I pointed out ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Matthias, I just realised I didn't react to your point of things becoming more complicated. You are right about that. For that reason I never got around using those add ons that make Outlook "social", xobni for example. Outlook itself isn't "simple". Gmail is a very nice platform though. I like it best, even though they still would have along way to got to implement my wish list ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
What I wish is that someone would come up with a way of telling me when I haven't heard from someone in a long time, or the ability to tag an email to a project (or a label) and tell me how many messages I've gotten on that tag, and what the last one was... So that I could better use gmail for contact management and project management. I have a number of smaller projects that tend to fall through the cracks and while I have tried to come up with a number of ways to handle that, it'd be nice to be built in. - Justin Long
Justin nice list of features. If a few creative people would sit down for it, there are so many possible improvements thinkable. Google seems to be at it, but I seem to hear often the team working on it isn't very big (I don't know). But there is a lot to win still. - Alexander van Elsas
Pity that someone can't come up with a Greasemonkey script that could do it... I don't know anything about programming something like that. It ought to be possible because you can access Gmail through IMAP... wonder if an open source webmail project could be created to "extend" gmail? - Justin Long
Some users have come up with their own strategies of handling email which are pretty good. I've covered this in my Blog post "How to handle Email overload" sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/how-to-handle-email-overload/ - Sachendra
To me its not so much a matter of managing email - for which there are any number of good suggestions, I use Zero Inbox - but rather better tools for understanding the social connections and the convergence between projects and specific email addressses; the ability to treat email as data for analysis; the ability to better thread conversations; the ability to better expose email threads to more people while keeping some emails private etc. and more - Justin Long
The problem is that Outlook has too many features and is too big, but Gmail is designed to only have the features that most people use, right? I seem to recall reading that Gmail was mainly features used by, like, the regular users of email (not so much powerusers). I do wish that Gmail was "extendable" - like Firefox's plugins! That would be great - because then you could plugin the functionality that you need while resisting feature creep. - Justin Long
If Gmail was extendable like Firefox that would be great. - Matthias Schwenk
1) The answer is yes. 2) The downside to this is that others would not, and the loss of community would make #1 less rewarding. 3) When one service goes "for pay" another would rise up for free, negating #1. - Louis Gray
Not if there is a good free version like Flickr does it. That's essential. - Janet Tokerud
Flickr's free service is useful only for people who are content to be the audience. Once you start making regular use of it you quickly run into limits that force you to decide if you want to pay or stop playing. - Adewale Oshineye
Possibly, but the cost of services on the net inevitably trend towards zero... - Tanath
When we pay for any service, we also tend to be more demanding. It we paid for Twitter when it was down for 3 days, we would have been much less tolerant. We expect customer service to increase and be more accessible when we pay for services. Now if only the cable companies would learn that. - adventureran
I'll occasionally pay for web services, but there are only so many I can afford to pay for. I'll pay for the ones that matter most to me and that have the greatest impact on my web-sperience. I pay for Flickr because of the community and because it is a back-up of all my photos, a useful service. I don't see another free alternative that does it as well as Flickr does. - Nick Malaguti
Doubtful. It would likely have to lead to my making of money or saving me money somewhere else. I believe the only model for this now involves "Premium" services. - Vince DeGeorge
Yes, but then it should have these things 1) It should save me more money/time than what I am paying for it 2)It should have enough support facilities. - Varun Mahajan
By definition, yes. But a for-fee site doesn't necessarily have a sustainable competitive advantage. Someone like Google could come along and do an ad-supported version. - Mike Reynolds
Yes, I would. For example, I've been using 14dayz.com for a few years now, and paying for it. Great example of a site that provides value and is worth my money. - Raoul Pop
Thx everyone so far for commenting, will use the input for a blog post (hopefully tomorrow). Keep the comments coming ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
BTW Mike, would you use a ad based version instead of a free (non-ads) version? - Alexander van Elsas
yep, I pay for 37signal's backpack (£2.50 a month) - love it. Also marvel comics (£30 a year) - Adrian
Mike Sorry, I meant to say would you pay for a non-ads version? (guess teh answer is yes, but what if the services are the same? - Alexander van Elsas
@erwblo (Twitter) wants to know what type of services and why people are willing to pay for? - Alexander van Elsas
Yes, if it's easy to pay for, easy to cancel (if it's a recurring subscription), and provides personalization that's better than the one-size-fits-all big guys. - Ginger Makela
I would pay for a web service if it provided a valuable to service to me, picture storage, email, data backup etc. - Mike Fruchter
I would only pay for a 'Premium' service, and only if it provided good value. Twitter and FF are essentially information services, and the price of information on the web is approaching zero, so those premium services would need to aso provide unique functionality. Perhaps a better model is free (or ad supported) to consumers, a Premium offering, and also leverage the technology into an Enterprise offering. - via FriendFeedMachine - Scott Goldie
I'd only pay if it offered a substantial increase in value/functionality over other similar offers. (And you'd better believe there would be other free/ad-supported offers) This is especially true for "simple" services like twitter. - Daniel Bruce
would you pay for a service that was free for most people but charged the power users who presumable get the most use and benefit from it? in a sense, that is how web hosting works. you pay more if you get more traffic. could web 2.0 services work the same way? - mike
i pay for food, shelter, good tools, more rarely for information, very rarely for entertainment, even more rarely for diversion ... which is most of the crap on the web, including tech blogs - gregory lent
"To me it seems that having instant access to information makes the information itself less important. We don’t need to remember things, we can simply query it. The information itself becomes less valuable because the transaction costs to obtain it have dropped to zero." Disagree. The value of information isn't the cost to get it. It's what you can do with it. - Hutch Carpenter
@hutch - agree! the easier the more valuable, the more flexible, the more you can expose yourself to...all of which equal greater learning - Julian Baldwin
Ha Ha Hutch, but there you are falling into my little trap. Although there isn't a single good definition of knowledge I would say that doing something with information adds to knowledge. Information sitting somewhere isn't valuable. Acting on it provides us knowledge. A simple example would be that I could easily Google 10 (or maybe a 1000) tips to start up a business. But that information in itself does not make me a great entrepreneur. Instant access to information is ok, but not that important! - Alexander van Elsas
It is what we can do with that information, having been there before, having earlier experiences or deep knowledge on the matter what separates the great entrepreneur from the one that can Google the right answers.I bet a great investor doesn''t look for the right answers, he looks for an entrepreneur that has been there before. That is way more valuable. And you can't Google that - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch - You should copyright the last sentence! - Charlie Anzman
Steven Hodson has produced yet another cliffhanger based upon this post, wondering what is going on in that cranky brain of his ;-) : http://tinyurl.com/69veqc - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander - Just because it's easy to find doesn't make information worthless. Just because you have to spend a lot of time or money doesn't make the information valuable. Your statement in the post is too sweeping. An example of an experienced entrepreneur is nice, but one of about a zillion examples of mining information, good or bad. - Hutch Carpenter
Well I didn't say worthless. I meant that if the act to obtain info becomes futile, the info itself will lose value. In my mind human behavior often works like that. If something is difficult at first (obtaining info) it becomes valuable to be able to obtain. But once we solve that, the value doesn't lie in the obtaining, it lies in the processing. You and I are saying the same thing. I decided to make people and knowledge more important than info, but that doesn't make me right. It's just a thought ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Well, I'm still not sure about your angle on this one: "act to obtain info becomes futile". Futile? Not sure I understand that. But the processing part is right on. Peer review, in a looser sense than academia, is a great way to separate the good information from the bad. As is the author's reputation and previous work. Those are important aspects in the processing of information. - Hutch Carpenter
You decided to make people and knowledge more important than info. As if that was your decision. :-) BTW, by that logic MySpace, Facebook and Digg(and in that order) are much more important (since that's what "the people" are using). If you want to be an expert instead of an arrogant pontificator, you'll have to use those services more so that you can be "the man of the people" you espouse to being. - Robert Seidman
We are making a distinction between the information itself and the "understanding and application" of it. The information is important but I would agree that the importance has been reduced because of the webs ability to dilute it. We can all obtain information now but to truly understand that information is key. Knowledge is power as the saying goes. This is why people are more important - not in a numbers context, but because of the ability to process the information we can obtain and use it effectively. Information is still important but the importance of having the information has diminished as (for the most part) we can all access it. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin - give me an example of the web's ability to dilute information. Not following that. - Hutch Carpenter
Robert, I meant to say that when writing my post, I decided for myself that I found people and knowledge more important. I didn't write that down right in the comment above here.The rest of your comment I don't get. If you feel I'm an arrogant pontificator that's fine. I don't see myself at all as the man of the people. I'm just another dude writing out his thoughts. You may like them or you may not. That's not up to me to decide. - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch, the futile was aimed at the ability to Google almost anything. It takes a few seconds to get to information now, where it could take much longer before search engines and indexing. hence the term "Futile" ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch - previously, information would be predominantly held by its creators or in paper (yes, paper) publications meaning we had limited access, limited ability to re-publish and generally single, authoritative sources. Now, information is posted, re-posted, edited, summarised, quoted and otherwise used in ways not within the intended context of the information author all in the name of 'fair use'. While the ease of access has improved it is harder to identify 'quality' information and sort the wheat from the chaff. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin, that is an excellent remark. I thought about the massive amounts of information combined with indexing and search that lead me to people and knowledge, but this dilution you describe leads to a difficulty to find quality. I like that aspect ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
@Colin I'm not sure it's very easy to find quality information in a library either. I think it's easier on the Internet for good stuff to bubble up to more people. - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell - but in traditional paper form there is less to wade through and you are normally going direct to the source rather than second, third, fourth hand information with no guarantee of accuracy. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Ever wade through a really _big_ library? I remember going through the Harvard Widener stacks and seeing an entire row (1,000s-10,000s of books) of just children's books from the 1800s-1900s. It was awesome! I'm not sure there was less to wade through. I still go to the 12-floor library at Kent State University (Kent, OH) and it's massive. I can go to one floor and just sit forever looking through books. Books don't guarantee accuracy either. There's a lot of 2nd-3rd-4th hand info. - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell that is where a great librarian would come in handy wouldn't it. Unique expertise to help you find what you need ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Just what I was going to say Alexander (work getting in the way again) - Colin Walker via fftogo
...and on the Internet, people might need a librarian/guide also, likle a tour guide through the wilderness. I was thinking about starting an InternetTourGuides.com service at one point. - Mitchell Tsai
Good idea. We also have the idea of collaborative filtering to assist with the process of getting the decent information so maybe in a couple of years we may be getting somewhere. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I think we're already doing an ok job. Definitely can improve, but Wikipedia, FlyerTalk, Flickr, FriendFeed, YouTube, Google News, Google Search, TechMeme/TechCrunch, Slashdot are a start... (Haven't tried Technorati much so can't vouch for it). - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell these are are all aggregation type sites. They definitely serve a purpose, but only until a certain point. We can index or aggregate anything we want, but we might have an increasing need to find knowledgeable, experienced people. It also ties in with my feeling that we will see smaller, much more focused communities become more valuable to us as well. ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Darn Colin, I got such a nice compliment of you, but Akismet thought it was spam, yet again. Don't know how to de-spam your profile over there. But thanks, you made my day :-) - Alexander van Elsas
Way back in the original social media, the printing press, weren't scurrilous pamphlets produced, full of slander? Newspapers distributed without regard to facts? Online media benefits from many eyes on it and that vastly improves its quality and integrity. Yet this sort of instant access is damned as undermining the credibility of said information. - Hutch Carpenter
Hutch, you are right that the very sae things happened before social media. I think (but maybe Colin should be answering this) that Colin was referring to another phenomenon. In the days of printed paper and books it might have been more clear if something originated from an authoritative source (for example a book written by a well known author/philosopher). On the web, in social media, there are now many sources, making it difficult to find out where something came from or who wrote it. - Alexander van Elsas
As an example. If you would read a book by Aristotle you would probably have a sense of quality. Reading a post of some guy called Alexander van Elsas doesn't have that same "quality" ring to it. Some even think he is just an arrogant dude ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander - this is where I go back to Mitchell's comments. Aristotle is definitely a known entity. He brings authority. But the infinite amount of knowledge in the world could not be written about and digested by him. So we have many, many authors out there. This issue of whether someone actually knows a subject applies for the billions of tomes out there, not just what Aristotle produced. And magazine articles. And newspapers. And research papers. Ya know, I ought to blog this... - Hutch Carpenter
Regarding Trend 4: This is occurring already with things like hastags in twitter. This feature is the only reason that I use twitter at all. Following other twitter users in my area regardless of whether I know them or not has been is working towards increasing the amount of social capital in my community and enhancing my interactions with the "physical world". BTW to message users in Calgary, Canada tweet with #yyc hashtag. - Jon-Paul Bussoli
Here is a feed you probably haven't found often on Friendfeed. Rolf Skyberg, disruptive innovator at eBay is one of the very few people I know that can create 400 (!) slide long presentations and let the audience be fascinated through every single one of them. I dare you to take the time and click through all of them. And I am sure you will like it. One of my favorite web 2.0 philosophers, enjoy! - Alexander van Elsas
I couldn't agree more. Great content and awesome presentation! He could write a bestseller on how to do presentations the right way, - Mia
What, only two have dared to attempt this so far, c'mone people give it a shot, it's well worth it ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
I have added Rolf's feed to my Google Reader. Will read the full 400-pager at leisure. - Atul Arora
I have found that the best way to go through his long presentations is to click through them at a pace of about 1 slide per 1-2 seconds. Works really well. But his regular posts are really good too. Always a good read :-) - Alexander van Elsas
“Hmm my "me" page shows that the ast activity on Ff was 10 hours ago. But I did some other things after that. Have they finally erased me for not being on the fan club every day ;-)”
I think it is the Google shared items that aren't showing. they la behind a little as does the search functionality. Maybe "scaling" issues ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Soooooo, anyone got anything interesting to say about the post itself, or should we keep making these Louis Gray jokes (Sorry Louis) ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander, you always write very thought-provoking posts. I will re-read it again in the morning and maybe I can pull together something halfway intelligent. - J. Phil
@Alexander - going to re-read in the morning with coffee .. operating on 3hrs sleep is starting to catch up on me. - Steven Hodson
The whole concept of "lifestreaming" is not really accurate. I'm not streaming my life when I use aggregation services. All I'm doing is having them track my behavior on some sites that friends and peers may find interesting.
Lifestreaming things like meals, bodily functions, and the mundane are completely not interesting.
But the idea of "always on" doesn't mean "broadcast everything". I like being always on. It's not just being on, it's being connected and engaged. - Louis Gray
re: trend 1, prediction: "homepage" will be dead in 10 years. A big company like Google will control a semantically connected device that is always online (maybe attached to you) that you can communicate with. That will be the destination. - Hao Chen
@Steven, good night. Louis, I probably should have used a different term, but when you combine services like Twitter, Dopplr, Beacon (-like services), I'm thinking these streams are depicting more of our actions in life (hence life-stream). - Alexander van Elsas
Louis, what interests me in the "always on" thing isn't just the streaming part. It is also interesting to think what will happen if your kids grow up, and there comes a clash between "always on" and events happening in real life. i suspect that when more people are reaching a state of "always on" there will be more interferences with physical life. It would be interesting to see what happens then. My feeling is that people will disconnect on purpose, to make a clear distinction again between on and off. - Alexander van Elsas
Hao, sounds like something I wouldn't trust Google or anyone else with ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander, true about the need for a destination but then web sites have been fighting to be our home page ever since the birth of the browser. The ideals of a user-centric web are great but - in reality - how many people want the levels of data portability that the campaigns demand? We already have cross service IM but, as far as social networks go, many join a particular service as that's where their friends are and have little (or even no) need to climb the walls of those gardens. Perhaps behaviour will alter but until social media becomes more prevalent we will not have a true picture of peoples behaviour in this area. - Colin Walker via fftogo
And, with regards to your second trend - you already know where I stand on the need to disconnect from time to time ;) - Colin Walker via fftogo
Alex: Viewing all these Flickr photos is really keeping me motivated to travel more (not less)! Although now it's strange to take 1-3 hrs/day when traveling to blog/e-mail/FriendFeed/call-friends... - Mitchell Tsai
Colin, I'm thinking about a destination that is mine, that I can truly call " home" . I am not sure what it would look like exactly, but it would have to be a user-centric place. What I mean by that is that I dictate what that home looks like, but more importantly, I get to dictate the underlying business model. I might pay for it, or allow advertisement, or whatever. But it wouldn't be something that forces a business model upon me (like Facebook does). This topic would justify another post ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Sachendra says in a response on the post " When the novelty wears off, we’ll see the similar types of human behaviors as we have now." I think he is right up to a point. I responded "@Sachendra, that’s a bit what I am thinking. But I do think human behavior is a bit affected by the new uses of technology. So it will be more ” balancing out”. Technology will and has been leaving it's trace on our lives. - Alexander van Elsas
Now if all this socialization will make us unplug and meet in person that would be best! ;-) - Igor The Troll
Igor LOL. But honestly, I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing to be socializing on the web. Being able to connect overcoming place, time, and distance is great. But it's just a matter of finding the right balance really. As more people will start using social media I think the novelty of "always on" will wear down and people will find balance once more ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
I think you are right. Looking forward to bumping into you in Thamel Nepal or Varanasi. Just please do not Stalk me, I know Kung Fu! LMAO - Igor The Troll
Given that no one service can do everything that we would want, the "home" you want could end up being just a personalized homepage like iGoogle or Netvibes. If you put the right widgets on your page it definitely could be your "home". The problem is finding the right combination of services that suit your needs. - Rob Diana
Rob , maybe, I'm not sure. the problem with the examples is that they aren't really mine are they. There are business models over there that don't fit my need. I was thinking more along the lines of a private space. It needs to be a place where I can save the important stuff, where I can grant people access to parts whenever I want. I envision it to be the web version of a real home. That should be mine, not Google's ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
So, maybe we are looking at our own hosted site but do we host it remotely (say with our ISP), our own webspace or even at home (such as Windows Home Server). One way or another someone is going to have to write the platform that we all tweak to our needs wherever it is hosted. - Colin Walker via fftogo
We should host it in Sweden so it is neutral. lol - Igor The Troll
@Alexander, I was not recommending iGoogle or Netvibes I was just using them as examples of today's personalized homepage. In the future, I am assuming that the personalized homepage will change, and most likely existing ones will change as well. I know some service has the concept of private/public pieces, I cannot remember which it was though. There is also the problem of push vs pull (again). - Rob Diana
Colin, it could be something running on your own computer (or in Sweden for that matter HA HA), but where it runs isn't nearly as important as who is in control. I need to be in control. That ensures a business model is used that fits my own needs. That could be a subscription or an advertisement based version or whatever. - Alexander van Elsas
Trend 1 - wouldn’t your home on the Web naturally be the place where your master data resides?
Trend 2 - agree - Mark Dykeman
@Mark, thx for your response. Let me point out that I'm not so concerned if I'm right, it is merely a thought exercise to help me understand the present ;-) But in response to your question. Your data currently resides with Facebook (figuratively speaking), do you want them to provide you with a home, or would you like a more user-centric home? Wrt to the second trend. It is interesting to explore the disconnect thing. How would it work, or in other words, how would we find balance? - Alexander van Elsas
And here is excellent advice from Sarah Perez "I love social media, but I love the “real world” too. Real human interaction is not achieved behind a keyboard, so as great as social media is…and it is great…I feel strongly that people need to find balance in their life when it comes to this. Take time away from the computer. Go for a walk, ride your bike, swim in the ocean, play with your dog, read a book, play a game, fall in love, have coffee with a friend and just talk. These things are important too, and you don’t need to tweet them to make the worthwhile. - Alexander van Elsas
And that's what I'll do for tonight. If I have enough time the followup on this will appear tomorrow, else the day after (so much to say, so little time) ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
