Running With Foxes

So, Google Friend Connect went live on Orli Yankul’s blog recently (link). Like I’ve said on SocialMedia’s blog, I think it’s an important trend to watch.

Applications on webpages will be distinctly different from apps on social networks. On social networks it’s like you’re setting up shop in a mall. All the plumbing is there and foot traffic is nearby, people just need something interesting to look at or buy. Apps “in the wild” will be different. Websites are cleared land that have interesting topography, but not of the essential utilities for healthy social living. But while Google does provide some management tools, they won’t come up with every sensible utility for a website.

I see a greater opportunity for utility based applications to do something interesting with the user data pulled into the website. Invite applications, mailing lists, and messaging services will help web masters manage their user base.

As I’ve noted before, I’m working with Dave McClure on a series of high value meetups targeted at venture capitalists, and novice and experienced entrepreneurs. The events feature a presentation from top talent with moderated discussions at each table. The first event was in Palo Alto and featured a talk on speed by Mike Cassidy. Venturebeat has some great coverage of the event.

Mike Cassidy gave the keynote at our last Startup2Startup event. Mike preached speed as an integral part in creating over three quarters of a billion dollars in value from the three startups he’s founded (Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation). The next event will feature a talk by Chad Hurley.

To keep the quality of discussion up, the events are invite only, and I’ve been charged with corralling some top young entrepreneur talent. In order not to keep tapping the same pools of talent, I figured I’d reach out and find some new entrepreneurs with interesting opinions and ideas to the table, literally. So if you’re a first time entrepreneur (all ages) with a product and a desire to learn, let me know at nick. at. socialmedia.com.

Twitter’s negative press has got to be the envy of every other startup. Every complaint over downtime or downright incompetence just shows how vital the startup is for the services most vocal users.

Now Ustream just posted an online petition to make the service even more transparent than live blogging their recovery. Lets just hope they have more luck than Zooomr’s experiment in live coverage.

In my mind Yahoo is missing a huge opportunity to wield influence over the blogosphere. Yahoo’s front page generates hundreds of thousands of clicks a second. When Buzz was on the front page, it would push some of those clicks off to third party sites that earned their way to the top. Now it sounds like a brilliant way to suck traffic from Yahoo and push on to blogs, but that’s because Yahoo doesn’t make any money once the user leaves. That’s because Yahoo isn’t advertising on those sites.

Yahoo could fix the problem by leveraging their existing ad network into the blogosphere with the added carrot of Yahoo’s home page traffic. Worried about getting those users back? Well, similar to the way Yahoo pushes users to their news property, Yahoo could “suggest” blogs use MyBlogLog to enhance their community. The MyBlogLog widget could link back to other Yahoo related content or suggested links from MBL friends.

In a way, Yahoo could create a “platform” of sorts for content creators, that would reward top content producers with traffic, money, and engagement. At the same time bloggers remain free agents with a strong incentive to grow their businesses.

While I don’t have exact stats on the size of the market, Federated Media raised $50 milion on a $200 million post. They also did $23 million in business last year with $60 million in rev slated for this year. Certainly those kinds of revenues coming from a relatively short list of blogs are enough to motivate a new business.

Conferences are a great place to do business development or get a high level introduction. This works for essentially two groups of people: hallway networkers, and new comers. Anyone looking to take home some real action items is left out. That’s why I’ve gotten involved in two new conferences: Social Media Business School and Startup2Startup.

Instead of multi-day mega-conferences, these two events are aimed at getting a select group of individuals into a room for a deep dive on a topic. Startup 2 Startup focuses on connecting seasoned entrepreneurs, rookies, and venture capitalists. Over dinner attendees listen to a talk on a specific business of technical topic to frame a moderated discussion at each table. Serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy spoke at the last event, but the best part was that it’s invite only.

Social Media Business School brings some of the same philosophy to the social application development and advertising space. It’s just a day long and does a deep dive on the topics of analytics, marketing, hosting providers, advertising, and business plans.

Both conferences are priced to break even and cost around $70, which is a steal compared to multi-day conferences.

The next Startup2Startup event is in a month, but Social Media Business School is coming to L.A. on June 5th. (best deal on tickets)

I hope to see more people run events like these.

I just tried to message a friend and even look at his profile when I was greeted with two errors: an inability to message, and a complete meltdown of CSS on their page.

Facebook previewed their new design recently, featuring a new feed interface and tabbed pages. It’s all looking strikingly more like a portal start page I imagined before.

The app page has essentially become a version of Netvibes within Facebook. Users can add/remove applications to a separate page in the same way Netvibes adds widgets (in fact you could add Facebook to Netvibes). There are minor details, such as the web page needs to expand to fill a users larger browser window.

It all strikes me as Facebook becoming a lot more like My Yahoo than Google. The big difference is that Facebook has a social context. One of the hardest problems with start pages can be getting new users to invest in building their own page. Facebook’s viral loops make it a collaborative effort (friends suggest apps).

Facebook also doesn’t incorporate web search, but that’s because they don’t want you to leave.

The other shoe that I’m waiting to see drop will be the “Google - like” strategy out of Facebook when they start finally leveraging data outside of the network.

Co-Founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanion is not only hilarious, he’s charitable. For the second time, he’s auctioning off a laptop for charity (link). This time it’s an OLPC XO laptop (last time it was their Reddit laptops for curing cancer).

The XO laptop (pictured) is up for auction on eBay and is signed by notable attendees of ROFLcon (Tron guy, Xkcd, etc., list here). It expires on May 23rd and 100% of the auction goes to the OLPC.

I think Facebook has finally hit the nail on the head with their new form of integration through Facebook Connect. On the SocialMedia blog I called it a “Really Big Deal” because it seems to be the Goldie Locks of their platforms. It’s early, but it looks like the platform will enable the deep integration and portability offered by the two previous platforms.

This is a great development for a couple of key reasons:

Websites are more sophisticated - Facebook applications can only stuff so much into that little profile
Portability - I can now import my friend list into another website - big win for FB and users, not so good for third party services trying to bridge this gap. Not threatening OpenID yet.
Ubiquitous Social Computing - the future of the web will be closely tied to applications with a social relevance. Akin to how the internet multiplied the utility of desktop computers, social computing and platforms will do the same, but also include the mobile web.