Deliberate Ambiguity

What I learned from the Social Networking Toolkit

One must approach an alleged "geek" breakfast taking place before 10:00 am with a hearty dose of skepticism.  Especially at a "world famous" diner in Union Square (tourists will buy anything).  Nonetheless, I trudged over to Union Square with Julie Crabill of SHIFT at 8:30 a.m. this morning for a Social Media Club Breakfast.  Was actually a bit fun, though the pancakes were unremarkable.  The crowd consisted of a strong faction of PR peeps, flanked by hi-tech marketing slaves, and social media wonks.  However, my favorite part outside of the excellent chatter was certainly the Social Networking Toolkit, thanks to Mr. Jeff Pulver.

The SNT contains a pen, two Hello tags (for one's username/message and one's bio), stickers for "tags," and Post-It Notes for a "wall." This simple formula schooled me in social media:

• To find out if a person is interesting, talking to them is quicker than reading all of their stickers.
• Those with the most stickers were usually the ones that gave the most stickers.
• A corollary to the above is: the more stickers on you, the more you're expected to stick other people.
• Attractive people attract other attractive people; but loud people get the most attention.
• Birds of a feather tend to flock and form cliques.
• People tagged me with words that would only be helpful to that person.
• At least 50% of the total stickers were written by their owners.
• The more tags you have on you, the more you look like a MySpace page.
• Usernames are ridiculous and conceal your identity.
• I mostly talked to the people I knew.
• And, most importantly: it takes an offline metaphor about stickers to teach me the fundamentals of social media.

Sincerely,
philosophygeek (photos @ Flickr)

tags technorati : blogpost markjohnson smc socialmediaclub breakfast thingsilearned socialnetworkingtoolkit snt jeffpulver cliques bymarkjohnson thispagehasalotoftags

Expanded Groundswell Continuum

Whenever I see a linear scale, I'm reminded of the liberal/conservative dichotomy promoted by the Democrats and Republicans.  Socially liberal, fiscally conservative citizens like yours truly have to turn to the second dimension to get our views included, cf. the Nolan Chart.

Because of my bias towards a diversity of opinions, when I saw Josh Bernoff's description of the Purist-Corporatist scale and Shel Israel's complaints that he's not a pure purist, I tried to conceive of a more inclusive graph.  My guess is that the misunderstanding between these two fine social media theorists is disagreement about the classification system, not a disagreement about the fundamentals.

First, my interpretation of Josh's original scale. 

After reading Shel's commentary on being labeled as a purist, I sensed two forces at work here: the influence of users and the effect of the marketing department.  My expanded version of the scale has two axes.  The x-axis is defines who in the corporation should control the message; the y-axis describes the impact of users through social media.

I took a stab at defining the quadrants:

• Purists believe that users are/will be extremely influential and that marketing departments should be abolished.  The message will grow organically from the conversation between the individuals within the corporation and the users.
• Corporatists believe that the marketing department just needs to spend more dollars to control the effect of the groundswell and that, in the end, their message will prevail.
• Grounswellists are in the middle: they believe that there's a place for the the structure of the marketing department and the authenticity of individual conversations.
• I jokingly referred to quadrant 1, where social media and traditional marketing both rule, as the land of PR Flacks proclaiming to be experts in social media (not my PR firm, of course).
• Quadrant 3 is also somewhat of a joke, in that engineers hate both marketers and suggestions from users.  Am I a funny guy or what?

My definition of the axes here surely isn't the only one.  Did I pick the right axes?  Is there a better way to describe the groundswell vs. corporate marketing?

The Beautiful and the Damned

Croc, Wine, and Hoof
Originally uploaded by philosophygeek

Croc, Wine, and Hoof. Meeker is the best winery. Ever.

Using Hadoop with Kids

I got a hit to my blog referred through the Google search "how to use hadoop with kfs."  The spelling correction is funny.  Anyone have kids playing with Hadoop?

(This highlights a problem with purely statistical approaches: "kids" appears more frequently in documents than "kfs," because it's a more common word; but documents that have "kfs" and "hadoop" are more likely what you want.)

Biding my Twine

Damn it, I want in!  I haven't found a good program to manage all my life's text 'cause I'm too lazy, e.g. my anemic del.icio.us account.  My 'puter should just know why I tagged a page.  I sure as hell shouldn't be the one picking a word to place the article on the correct branch of my "folksonomy," because that graph is going to be an unholy orgy of Familienähnlichkeit.

Chatter about the Semantic Web will hopefully increase (Google trends indicates a decrease) as more companies, like Powerset and Radar, launch cool, useful applications.  Once users realize what's possible, they'll demand more from those indolent hunks of silicon sitting on their laps.

The Ask Lesson: Don't Go Head-to-Head with Google

Ask.com Seeks Makeover as Woman's Site is the real title of an article and the real strategy of a public company.  Wow!  Talk about a shift in focus!

To me, this move indicates that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (GYM) have complete market domination.  The capex of building a search engine is too high, not to mention the marketing problem of getting users to change their internet front door.  If IAC-backed Ask couldn't compete with innovative features, comparable result quality, and a big marketing campaign, then cash-strapped startups aren't going to fare much better.

I'm certainly not suggesting that Google will reign forever, considering I'm now at my second search startup (Kosmix, then Powerset).  Rather, I now realize that going head-to-head with Google in search is as ill-fated going head-to-head with Microsoft in operating systems.

What are then the conditions for success?  I obviously don't have the answer, but here are some lessons I've gathered from my experience.

• All of the core components to build a search engine are readily available.  Only a radical shift in technology built on top of this that will drive a significantly different user experience.  Just creating a better SERP based on the same technologies won't be noticeable to user and is easy for GYM to copy.  But, who knows what will herald this Kuhnian shift?

• Users won't remember your vertical focus.  Consumers have trouble remembering Kayak for travel, Trulia for Real Estate, Indeed for Jobs, and dozens of other engines.  The default is to type a problem into GYM. Therefore, use search to drive traffic.  GYM owns front door traffic to the Web.  Don't fight, play along in the ecosystem.  If you can get some repeat users along the way, then good for you.

• Plan a series of interim products.  A Google index is probably hundreds, if not thousands of times as large as the biggest startup index.  Oh, and it's lightning fast.   And it never stops working.  Only after years will all of your components to congeal into a final product.  Better be prepared with a long runway and some good interim steps

 

I suspect most search startups will find their niche in something related to search, much like software companies began playing in the Microsoft ecosystem instead of building competing operating systems.  For example, Kosmix  is using its technology to build a homepage for every page on the Web.  There are definitely still holdouts like Hakia and Mahalo.  Hakia is headed for a battle against the big boys: their experience still isn't even equivalent to Google.  Maholo might be able to market its user-generated pages in Google, but then it's sounding like a Squidoo. 

Ask?  Sounds like they're quitting the search engine business and turn into a social network/content play.  Oh well.  Glad that things didn't work out when I interviewed there last year.

Where have all my statements gone?

I hate getting voice mail.  And regular mail.  That's why I try to cancel paper bills, when possible; and if I do get one in the mail, I'll sometimes open it before sending it to the dump.  Usually not.  My working premise is that the records I have with my credit cards, bank, and utilities will be accessible online as long as I have the mark of the beast.

Alas!  American Express, that venerable financial institution renowned for its customer service, only shows my online statements back until August 2007.  To get statements prior to that time, I have to request a pdf of the statement, which shows up in my account after 24 hours.  I've been checking my balance and paying my Amex online since my credit limit was only four significant digits, so I know that they have the data.  I can't even imagine why they would archive statements in a static format instead of giving me the ability to download everything into Excel.  All the more reason to get a Black Card, I suppose.

And it's not just Amex.  Why can't I search my cell phone bills?  Why does my bank only show statements going back to March 2007 (especially since I might need those statements for 2007 taxes)? 

My guess is that the IT departments aren't focusing on the new possibilities created by having a database of all my transactions and interactions with a vendor.  The interfaces are a reflection of the outdated mode of "statements" and "archives."  I want a searchable, downloadable, scannable transaction index.  It sucks when an interface reflects the data instead of solving the larger user problems.

Old school companies are so good at creating real world products; when will they learn that their online arm needs the same kind of creativity and user experience expertise?  (Probably when customers stop visiting their Web sites because of companies like Mint and Intuit!)