louisgray.com

DRM = Doesn't Really Matter

2009-01-05T23:25:00.000-08:00

If one of the biggest items to be delivered at tomorrow's MacWorld Expo is the elimination of DRM from songs on the iTunes store, as is rumored, then we are on the brink of the biggest snoozefests in technology event history. Forget that Mr. Steve Jobs potentially is suffering hot flashes, and is instead being replaced by Cupertino's wild-haired Pillsbury Doughboy, Phil Schiller. This Macworld has got to be the lowest-anticipated in terms of new product debuts that I can ever remember. And when it comes down to it, despite all the online horror and tongue-lashings, I'd venture a bet that the supposed evils of DRM that Apple has wrought on its users haven't really effected but a small percentage. I don't love DRM, but I live with DRM, and it doesn't really matter.

When Apple introduced iTunes and marketed it with the "Rip. Mix. Burn." campaign several years ago, music labels were furious, thinking the Mac-maker was embracing piracy, a second back to back blow to the maligned monopolists following Napster's runaway success. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, and later the iTunes Store in 2003, it had to bend over backwards to gain the cooperation of the labels, restricting who could play what songs when on what computers or iPods, and how many times they could burn playlists to CDs, all in the name of preserving profits.

Over time, some of the DRM rules were relaxed, and the advent of iTunes Plus meant you could some songs from iTunes without rights management, for an additional fee of 30 cents a song. The additional 30 cents, in theory, meant you could do whatever you wanted with the file, just like you can with any hard copy you own, be it cassettes, CDs, etc.

Although I've been an iPod user practically since the first day they were announced, and followed the Apple upgrade path through to my current 16 GB iPhone, and I now own almost 6,000 songs on iTunes, a significant percentage of which were purchased from the iTunes Store, I almost never encounter any issues with DRM. I've upgraded my laptop a few times, moving my data from one computer to the next and authorizing the new machine. I've synchronized new iPods and the iPhone and always been able to play them. My music plays on my Apple TV, and can be streamed from my wife's computer on our same network.

That my music is slathered over with Apple's proprietary DRM is not a big deal, period. I would practically have to go out of my way to find a way that having "suffered" through DRM for the better part of eight years with Apple has negatively affected my music experience. I do know that I certainly am better off than those who chose subscriptions with music companies that have disappeared and gone out of business. I'm better off with my digital music here than in stacks of CDs around the house. In fact, I gave all my CDs away to a co-worker when the babies were born as part of cleaning house!

For eight years, I've wondered if the fact I didn't care about DRM was because I am a hopeless Apple fanboy. Maybe I've fallen under the spell of believing Apple should make the rules for how I use what is ostensibly my music and media. But seriously, the drama of DRM and its limits has been so overhyped I don't even know where to start. If you want to buy your music somewhere else, go for it. There are alternatives. But there's a reason iTunes, iPod and iPhone have been such a success. It's because of what they let you do, not what they don't let you do. It's the best combo on the market, and I don't care one bit about the DRM wars which just might be coming to an end as we know it tomorrow. I never have.

40 Key Elements to Getting Started In Social Media

2009-01-05T14:50:00.000-08:00

By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Getting started with social media, whether for personal or professional use, requires learning the basic fundamentals. Social media is more than just creating a blog or Twitter account. The tools are great and give us big advantages, but they are simply extensions of how we engage and participate in social media, they are not the answers. The social in social media is all about the human element. This post touches upon 40 key elements to aid your success.

Branding, personal or professional starts with your domain:

1) Register your domain name. It's also a good idea to register it for multiple years. If you have extra cash up front, spend it. There is no need to be bothered with yearly domain name renewals, and, in a worst case scenario, risk losing your domain name. It's a good idea to set your domain registration on auto-renewal if you decided to renew yearly. Stay on top of the credit card you have on file as well. Auto-renewal notices, getting marked as spam, combined with an expired credit card is bad news. This happened to a friend, just a word of advice.

2) If you are an individual and your goal is personal branding, use your first and last name for the domain, and preferably a dot com extension as well. The domain spelling should be equivalent to someone typing that keyword or phrase into a search engine. It should be as short as possible and easy to spell. If you are business, be sure to register any variations and extensions of your domain name. The last thing you need to be doing is negotiating with a domain squatter, paying a premium down the road when it would have cost you next to nothing initially.

3) Find a reliable Web host, and do your homework. When you are just starting out, it’s practical and economical to go with the cheap shared hosting plan, i.e. Go Daddy.

4) Expect to upgrade your hosting plan at some point. When you have a steady flow of traffic and people are taking notice, sharing your content, digging it etc, be prepared to spend some extra coin for the next level of hosting. Do not be concerned with getting on the front page ofDigg in the beginning. If it happens, great, but there is no need to spend the extra cash beforehand. If things get really rocking at some point, perhaps you are making some coin off your blog or non blog website, traffic is flowing, server resources are being taxed, you are registering multiple domains, and establishing multiple websites/blogs, then you should look at a basicVPS server. The bigger you get and the faster you grow, the quicker you need to be thinking about moving away from shared web hosting.

5) Familiarize yourself with the basics of web-mastering. If you have not already done so, learn how to use FTP. Learn the basics of HTML, and how to configureDNS for your domain names. Learn how to configure a POP email account, and how to take a screen shot and edit and resize images. The less you have to rely on someone for these basic tasks, the better off you will be and you might even save some out of pocket expenses.

Blogging:

6) There are a number of different blogging platforms available to choose from. They all pretty much do the same thing, but your first obvious choice should be Wordpress . The majority of blogs on the Internet are all powered by Wordpress, and for good reason. It's a stable, proven platform and it's highly customizable. There are also a few thousand readily available themes and plug-ins made for it. There is also a huge developer community behind it, and plenty of resource sites dedicated toWordpress users. This one is a no brainer folks.

7) You should self host your blog on your own server. I would avoid using a web-based blogging platform. There are limitations to what you can and cannot do with these services. If you must use a web-based blogging service, you must be able to mask your blog to a domain name. There is a price to pay for this though, and you should ask yourself, is it really worth it? For the $10.00 priceWordpress charges, add five dollars more and you can buy a domain name and cheap self hosting. I see little value in using a web-based blogging platform, and not masking it to a domain name. Do you want people to remember mikefruchter.wordpress.com ormikefruchter .com? Brand yourself, not the blogging platform. Trust me they are making enough money, why make them richer? Most hosting companies who offer even the cheapest hosting packages offerWordpress installs for FREE. Take advantage of it. You need to be in full control of your blog, starting with owning it on your own server.

8) Keep your blog simple, avoid the clutter at all costs. Clutter equals slow page load times for starters. The more third party widgets you install, the more you are pissing off your readers and potential customers. Only install widgets that instill some value to your blog. Widgets such as MyBlogLog allow for referral stats on the backend, and on the front-end allows for community building. Twitter widgets show your present status updates and or allow people to follow you. This is the value I'm referring to. Keep the junk for your personal blogs, or if you must, put it on an entirely separate page altogether.

9) Find and install the necessary plugins that will benefit your blog, such as SEO plugins. Installing a caching-system plugin is also a good idea. You need to optimize not only just for search engines, but also page loading time. Find a simple theme and build around it. KISS is always a good rule of thumb. Appearance is everything, and your blog is no different. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

10) Change your blog permalink structure immediately. By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them. This will severely limit the amount of traffic you will see from search engines. You need to be thinking SEO at all times, and this is the first step you should take with your blog. Your permalink structure should look something like this, www.myblogontechnology/this-should-be-your-permalink-structure. Do you see what we did here? We inserted the relevant keywords into the url. This is crucial in terms of optimizing for search traffic. With the practices of some additional SEO basics, there is a good chance we could achieve higher rankings for the keyword phrase of (this-should-be-your-permalink-structure.)

11) Tell people what your blog is about, and most importantly what you’re about. Create an about page. When I find a blog I like, and want to know more about the author, the first thing I will look for is an about page. A big turn off for most people is finding a great blog and not knowing anything about the person behind it. This can also lead to wasted business opportunities. The about page is just another extension to sell yourself, your credentials, your affiliations, your experiences and so forth. Show your readers you are just like them. Show them your personal side. This is what social media is all about.

12) Show your human side by using visuals. Add a real picture of yourself on your blog and on all of your social networking profiles. The picture should be of you and not of some silly cartoon character. As with real life, image is everything. The same rule applies to social media. A clearheadshot of yourself is all that you need. Choose one where you are feeling confident and perhaps smiling. Take it a step further if you really want a polished image, and use a picture of yourself in a business suit or some type of professional attire. If you are going to establish yourself as a leader, you need to play the part.

13) Blog only when you have something to say that is of importance, and that is useful, resourceful, and relevant to others. Why blog otherwise? If you want to rant about the latest meme, or blog about what you had for dinner, do it on a personal blog or message board. This is why I don't blog everyday, or blog about regurgitated new stories. This is not my style and should not be yours. If it's going to be your style, let people know beforehand or create a separate entity for it altogether. It all comes down to quality NOT quantity.

14) Your blog does many things for you, but the number one thing it does is establish authority. Establish yourself as an expert on a particular subject matter, after all this is the reason for blogging. Blog about your expertise, your passions, what you and only you do best. Your audience will find you eventually, and that is who you should be catering to. Focus and be consistent with your blogging. Don't be all across the board. You will learn in time, by trial and error, what works and what doesn't work.

15) Leave the introverted mentality at the door. That's not social media, that's ~~just media,~~ plain old ignorance. Ask for help when needed, be verbal, speak up and ask questions. We all were newbies at some point in time. Educate yourself first and foremost, read, read and read. When blogging always link out to others, credit fact sources when applicable. Make it a practice to link out in every blog post you write, and do it positively. Bloggers succeed only with the help of other bloggers, and the relevant communities they are catering to and participating in.

16) Find the top 25 blogs in your space, and subscribe to their RSS feeds in Google Reader. Consistently be on the lookout for new blogs, and the voices behind them. This also helps with the creative workflow and process. It also gives you linking out opportunities, build your brand awareness and most of all helps build authority. Don't expect recognition right away, and don't get discouraged if no one notices your efforts right away. You must first establish the foundation before you can build on it.

17) Quality content speaks for itself, and is recognized. Your content defines you and the message you are trying to convey. Quality gets noticed above anything else. Let others promote your content and you should only promote your best work. It may take days, weeks or even months to establish a close network of friends. When I mean friends, ones that you have a genuine relationship with.These are not simple quick click followers who you have no intention on having any level of communication with. Your true friends will be the ones promoting your content and helping you get the word out there. The old saying is true, patience overcomes perseverance.

18) The content that you create should be something that people want to share. For the most part, it should be relevant to your networks’ interests. Create newsworthy, thoughtful, intelligent content that has immediate usefulness. Don't expect a home-run all the time, and do not be disappointed if certain posts do not get enough coverage. It's the nature of the beast. It often takes time for things to get picked up.

19) Leave thoughtful and constructive comments on other blogs. This promotes good practices in social media. It also gives you an opportunity for more exposure and additional places for people and fellow bloggers to discover your blog. This can lead into new networking opportunities, and potential new friendships and networking opportunities. The best way to reward a fellow blogger for their hard work is by leaving comments. This will also get you on their radar screen a lot faster. There are no negatives to this, only positives.

20) Never fly blind. You must know where your traffic is coming from. Install analytic software, such as Google Analytics. It’s a good idea to have at least two stats packages installed and running. All analytic software is not created equal. They all have the same purpose, but vary in their reporting and tracking methods. Results will vary to an extent, and comparison of multiple data sources is vital.

21) You have linked out to many bloggers, some are noticing and linking back. But how do you know? The answer is simple, set up Google Alerts to track mentions of your blog. This is a requirement not an option. Blogging software such as Wordpress will track inbound links, but it's not always accurate and lots of inbound links are missed. In addition to alerts, you need to be doing Google Blog searches and Twitter searches. These are the first tools you should be using, but there are plenty more listed here, and they are all free. Wouldn't you hate to miss a moment of recognition? Put yourself in the other blogger shoes. They might get the wrong impression with no acknowledgement back, these things need to be avoided at all costs. You can't please everyone all the time, but at least make the effort to no matter how big or small.

22) Promote others, even more than you promote yourself. Retweet good content, Stumble it, Digg it, share it and so forth. The "others" first and foremost should be your network's content. Everyone else comes after that, plain and simple. Your online network is family and need to be treated as such. Sharing, self promotion is always a two-way street.

23) I'm going against the grain on this one, but it's something I still practice to this day. Ask for link exchanges, the worst that will happen is that you will get declined or you wont get an answer at all. I'm not saying to stick links on your site to every blog out there. Look for quality link exchanges from blogs that focus on your subject matter. The real benefit from this is purely from a search engine perspective. A link from a blog with a higher pagerank could be very beneficial to you, in turn boosting your pagerank in the process. It's also a nice way of showing support and appreciation for a blogger as well.

24) Interaction with your readers is crucial for long term success. Encouraging commenting is very important if you are seeking sustained long term repeat traffic. Ask questions in your post. Ask the readers for additional tips or thoughts on the story subject. Do not require registration. Make commenting easy and not a chore. Make time to reply to comments that require an answer. It's not feasible to reply back to every single comment, but at least put forth the effort.

25) There are two types of bloggers. One way bloggers and two-way bloggers. You need to strive, and pride yourself on becoming a two-way blogger.

26) Establish a Feedburner account. Provide easy visibility for new RSS subscribers, use text links in addition to graphics to promote your RSS feed You can also add an email subscription form on your site for people who do not use RSS. You should also give people the tools to promote your content. Add to your blog and postings promotional tools such as social sharing and bookmark services. Addthis.com is a good starting point. It's a few simple lines of code and your done. You should also take full advantage of Feedburners Feedflare.

Twitter:

27) Establish a Twitter account and learn how to make it beneficial not only for you, but for others. There is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. There is one wrong way, which I will highlight next. Twitter is a powerful tool for listening and more importantly broadcasting. You may not spend countless hours on it, but the time you do spend on it, use it effectively.

28) Do not use Twitter for spamming. This is a perfect example of how NOT to use Twitter. If your intent is to spam and add no value whatsoever, consider going back to the basics, email-spam. Don't waste your time and others with this crap.

29) If you are going to use auto-replies for new followers, do NOT include any self-promotional text and or affiliate marketing links. You wouldn't do this in real life with people you first meet, the same rule applies here. It's a waste of time, it does not work, and it pisses people off. If you are going to use auto-replies, there is nothing wrong with sending a friendly thank you for following note.

30) There is nothing wrong with announcing a new Blog post on Twitter. Do it in a tasteful and respectful manner. If this is all you are going to be using Twitter for, you won't see much results. Contribute to Twitter first before you use it solely for self promotion. A good way of adding value and contributing is re-tweeting your followers tweets. When you come across quality content, promote it to others by broadcasting a link to it on Twitter. You should also practice being resourceful and helpful as much as possible on Twitter.

31) Take full advantage of Summize, Twitters built in search function. This is a great resource for research, and keeping track of who mentions your content. This is the perfect tool for performing blogger ego searches.

You need to be where it counts. Establish and build power ~~passports~~, profiles.

32) Passports are the social profiles that we create on other social networking sites and platforms. You need to have Omnipresence in social media. Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google profile are all passports. More importantly, they are all sources that generate search engine traffic. It's very important that you maintain a recognizable, uniform presence across all social networks, professional and personal.

33) Consistency needs to be practiced and applied to every area of your involvement in social media. All of your online profiles should share the same information. Make sure to use the same user names. If possible, use the same profile pictures (if applicable), logos and contact info.

33) Be consistent with blog posts. Try to establish and maintain a schedule for posts and stick with it. Be consistent with tagging your images, bookmarks and blog postings. Be consistent with commenting on other blogs, as well as with comments left on your own blog.

34) Stay consistent with the latest trends and technologies. Think about how they can impact or improve your successes online. Things are quickly changing on the Internet. Failure to adapt with the times has consequences.

35) Experiment with new mediums. Try your hand at creating videos, of course this depends on what your objectives are. People love visual aids. if you are selling a product, create a short video about it. Video tutorials, screen casts and so forth are priceless. You could also ask your users for video testimonials. Bandwidth is not an issue for most people nowadays, take full advantage of it when and where you can. Here is an idea, create a short video for your about page on your blog. When you find good videos that are relevant to your subject matter, embed them on your blog posts.

Friends, followers and family, without them you are a rowboat without a paddle.

36) Hopefully friends to you are people you have some level of engagement and conversation with. Friends in social media or for that matter in social networking are not equal to what we classify as friends in real life. Friends in social media are followers who take the next step, which then evolves into some level of general interaction. Friends in time will morph into members of your core network. Choose your friends wisely, this is the army you will need for the battle you are about to embark on. While you have the option to friend people back, it's all about your objectives using social media. If you want a mass audience, then friend everyone who friends you back, but if you have no intention of ever having any level or engagement, then you are just fooling yourself, and all your doing it list building. You need to be receptive with friends who are trying to engage you positively. It's impossible to interact with hundreds or even thousands of friends, but the ones who reach out to you, by commenting on your blog posts, sharing your content, tweeting your content and so forth, you can not neglect.

37) Followers are your audience, always remember that. Without them you are a rowboat without a paddle. Never lose sight of this. As I mentioned before, followers evolve into friends, be cognizant of that fact. Never take them for granted.

38) Family is your core network. Your core network is your power, your network is connections. These are the people that will be there time and time again. They are your support through good and bad times. These are relationships that are built up over time. These are genuine relationships. Never lose sight of this, and do what you can for them at all times when applicable. This goes beyond just sharing or promoting their content. You are only as good as the network you align yourself with, make sense?

39) Always give the little guy a platform and a chance to shine. Your followers, and friends may also run blogs. When the chance presents itself, offer guest postings on your site. Link out to them when possible. You can also leave them recommendations on LinkedIn if you know them well or can vouch for their work ethics. Look for opportunities to expose others in a positive light, no matter how big or small.

40) Whether your goals and objectives in using social media are for professional or personal reasons, the outcome will still be the same. The outcome depends on what you put into it. Be prepared to commit a lot of time, devotion, patience, and understanding. You must crawl before you can walk, it's that simple. Be passionate about your initiatives. Have fun and always show your human side. Contribute and give more than you ask for in return, at least in the very beginning. Do onto others as they do onto you. These best practices will reflect on you, and in the long term will come back tenfold. This is what social media is about, now roll up your sleeves and start laying the foundation.

Image by Ricardo under Creative Commons License.

Read more by Mike Fruchter at MichaelFruchter.com.

Hey Twitter, It's Not Just a Worm, It's an App

2009-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

There's no doubt that the worm making its rounds on Twitter is a nuisance and a huge problem for all. The fact of the matter is, somebody has collected your usernames and passwords, and many of your accounts are now Zombies, spamming each friend on your friends list through direct message, turning more unsuspecting accounts into zombies, and spreading like wildfire. Louis has talked about the worm which has surfaced on Twitter, and the urgency of the situation and potential implications for OAuth and security for Microblogging.

I suggested plain text passwords could be to blame - after all, any application out there that collects your usernames and passwords could theoretically use those passwords to start such a worm, in order to gain access to people with similar bank account passwords and more. That would be the fastest way over, say, a single user trying to amass friends to dm. We're already seeing several of those compromised accounts sending iphone-related spam, so it would appear the worm developers could now be monetizing this, through your friends. At the same time, I keep seeing others criticizing the possibility that OAuth could have prevented this. I'd like to share my thoughts why.

Disclaimer

First of all, let me preface this with the fact that I am not a security expert. I have been developing software since I was 10 (I am now 31), and have plenty of real-world experience writing secure software. I've worked in health organizations requiring software to respect privacy around your health data, with e-commerce protecting your money, and I've written APIs. I understand what it takes to keep software safe. I also run my own business in which I also have to protect my users' data. I also understand that nothing's perfect. While security has not been my sole focus, I hope I can at least make some sense of the matter.

First Things First - This is an App

Let's set things straight here. Now, I could be wrong, but all evidence seems to suggest that this "worm" is actually an application, or possibly multiple applications, running on multiple servers around the world (the IP range also suggests that the same developers have targeted YouTube and Bebo in the past). After all, the only other way to log in on behalf of users and DM others would be to screen-scrape Twitter, simulating a user actually logging in via the Twitter.com interface. This is possible, but I would imagine we would see Twitter very quickly implementing some form of Captcha to slow it down. We haven't seen this yet so the most logical conclusion is that someone has written an App somewhere, which is taking advantage of the fact that you can login via plain text usernames and passwords. The same application is taking those usernames and passwords, and programmatically logging in on behalf of each compromised user and direct messaging their friends to collect more usernames and passwords.

Currently, the Twitter API makes it completely possible for anyone with your username and password to log in on your behalf, programmatically. Essentially, Twitter has given developers the key, and all keys open up the same lock. The only way to shut this down would be to kill the lock, which would shut off all developers. This is why the topic of OAuth continues to be brought up - to start off, OAuth forces any developer to use a protected key or token in order to log in on behalf of the user. The developer never has the user's username or password. The user himself keeps their own keys to Twitter without having to give a copy of those keys to developers.

It's not that simple though.

Why They're Saying OAuth Wouldn't Have Fixed the Problem

Assuming Twitter had implemented OAuth, let's assume no developer has your username or password and your information now feels secure. There is still nothing stopping those users from using those tokens to log in on your behalf. Essentially, while the developer couldn't screen scrape your data to log you in through Twitter with such a key, they could still use the API, just as these current Phishers are probably doing, to continue to send DMs and messages on your behalf. An OAuth token is just like another username and password essentially, intended just for API use.

The other criticism they're giving OAuth is that it still doesn't stop the Phishing. When the end-user authenticates through an OAuth-enabled website, they are taken back to a page on the originating site that, if they aren't logged in, asks them to log in, and that site in turn returns them back to the third party site with an OAuth token that can be used for access. Nice and simple, right? Well, the problem (which I've only seen theorized, but it is definitely possible) is that any third-party developer could create an app that redirects the user back to a page that just looks like the originating site (like Twitter.com, for instance), and pretends the user isn't logged in. The site could then collect the username and passwords of unsuspecting users, just as the current phishing scheme is doing now. The potential is still there to collect usernames and passwords, just as before.

The Advantage People Keep Forgetting

Let's ignore the last paragraph and just focus on the one before it. Even though an application can easily login on behalf of the user via the API, with OAuth, a site like Twitter now has full control over each and every application that runs on the API. OAuth has controls which allow API providers like Twitter to cut off any application using the API. So, assuming Twitter sets up some sort of manual approval process similar to Facebook's (I suggested this to Ev and Biz in the interview I attended with Scoble last year (end of the article), and they said they were working on this) to weed out the sketchy applications, it becomes much easier to just cut off the offending application. They now have record of the exact application sending these DMs, and can cut it off immediately. Currently, they're stuck chasing IP addresses, and trying to block various IP ranges, which are tough to block and easy to switch.

Back to the Problem

So, let's assume Twitter had implemented OAuth. We now have two possible scenarios: Scenario 1, said Phisher signs up to have an app on the API (or buys an app like Twply), and sends out DMs on behalf of users. (Note that the Phisher couldn't start as an individual and collect usernames and passwords in the manner this Phisher did in the current scenario because they couldn't send plain-text usernames and passwords via the API) The Phisher gets users' friends to login via OAuth, he collects the tokens to send out DMs on behalf of other users. Twitter's in-house alarms go off of such activity. Twitter shuts down said Phisher in a matter of minutes, and only a few people even see the worm.

Scenario 2 is a little more difficult, but less motivational for a Phisher on a site like Twitter. In this scenario, a Phisher creates a fake 3rd party app, accumulates a lot of followers somehow, and gets users to somehow think they are going to Twitter to login, and they collect the users plain-text usernames and passwords. The said Phisher can't do anything through the API, because it doesn't allow plain-text usernames and passwords. All they can do with it is screen-scrape Twitter, login on behalf of the user, and go about it that way. They also have to accumulate a decent sized following.

First, let's face it, there's not a ton of information that's not already public a Phisher can gather on such a site as Twitter, other than their username and password, which could also be used on other sites like banking sites. I really think most of these Phishers are more interested in spamming you, trying to make a quick buck off the unsuspecting sending spam to their friends (like the iPhone example above) - selling the data to spammers I'm certain is big bucks (at least $1,200, according to the sale of Twtply). Second, Twitter could easily implement a captcha system in such a case, and by that means they could at least slow down the Phisher or spammer. At that point, if the Phisher or Spammer is still diligent enough to get through, they have a much more controlled system, and they can then play the IP blocking game. Let's face it though - this isn't a banking site, usernames and passwords only go for a meager $1,200 from what we know, so most spammers ought to give up at that point. It's much less of a problem, and much easier of a problem to deal with than what Twitter is seeing now.

The Purpose of Security is to Make it Harder

As I said earlier, no security plan is a perfect plan, but the harder it is for a perpetrator to get through a system, the more secure that system is. Currently, there is no barrier between Twitter and those than can potentially misuse your usernames and passwords, other than you. As I said earlier, Twitter has only one lock for each user, and each developer you share your information with has the same key to that lock as you do.

However, despite the continued risk for phishing OAuth poses, as Lachlan Hardy suggests at the end of his piece here, it is still a step in the right direction, and I think would have prevented this particular worm. OAuth would have given Twitter the capability to revoke the keys of the offending phishers, enabling them to shut the worm down when it happened. After all, this isn't just a worm, it's an app, using the API, like any other developer, but in this case to spread malicious websites. I want to suggest that Twitter stop skirting around this issue, stop pretending OAuth wouldn't have solved the problem, and just implement something, quick.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Geek Leading Fantasy Football League During Playoff Push

2009-01-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

At the end of August, I told you how I manage to take what should be an enjoyable, brainless, activity like fantasy football, and still 'nerd it up', reverting to laptops, Excel spreadsheets and Web-based databases. (See: The Even Geekier Approach to Fantasy Football) Now more than four full months later, the NFL regular season has ended, as have most fantasy football teams, who wrap things up before the playoffs begin. But not the one I'm in. The top four teams in the 12-team league completely start over, redrafting from the playoff rosters, and battle it out in a prolonged contest that lasts through the Super Bowl.

I thought I'd catch you up.

As I mentioned back in August, one of the benefits of not having a favorite team is that I can put my biases aside and pick who I think will do the best, not just who I wanted to do the best. Luckily for me, this led to a quick start, where I scored more than 100 points in 3 of the first 4 games, and at one point had a 10-2 record, having won seven straight head to head contests.

Despite a late-season fade that saw me finish 11-5 overall, a full game behind the league's first-place finisher, I won the division, and was among four teams that got to participate in the playoffs, which started yesterday.

Unlike Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and other online leagues, which use the regular seasons' last weeks as the playoffs, we completely reset and start from zero - adding a new level of strategy, where which teams you pick are just as important as the players. Picking players from teams that get eliminated in the first week means you lose them from your roster, and there are no pickups - so choose wisely...

As a two time winner, having collected trophies in the 2001-02 season and 2005-06 season, I took on this week's draft hoping my experience would have an advantage. (See: Three And Out Takes Fantasy Football Title from February of 2006) But, after taking two full years off from the game, there was always concern I'd had my head so deep in playing tech blogger that I'd forgotten how to do it right. (See: An NFL Season Without Real Fantasy Football?)

Luckily, so far, things look good.

I filled my 13-person roster with three Carolina Panthers, including the red-hot De'Angelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, three Arizona Cardinals, including the veteran Kurt Warner at QB, and a handful of players with huge upside, including the San Diego Chargers' Darren Sproles, who could score points for me as a rusher, receiver and kick returner, the Eagles' Brian Westbrook and the Falcons' Michael Turner at running back. (See: Roster with Scoring History)

Saturday and Sunday's games played out practically as I would have liked. San Diego staved off the favored Indianapolis Colts. The Cardinals beat out Atlanta. And the Eagles defeated the Vikings at home in Minnesota. As our league playoffs progress, this means I've lost a bare minimum of players after the first weekend, as my opponents lost some key talent. And as most sports fans know, Darren Sproles had an amazing game, garnering 42 points (in fantasy land). Warner contributed 18, Westbrook 17, and Larry Fitzgerald a solid 16. This helped propel my team to 129 points in the first weekend, with none of the other three teams breaking 100. (See: Standings)

My previous years in the league tell me that an early lead is good, but not enough. In order for me to sustain the momentum, I'll have to see my players stay active. If next week is a disaster, and is as bad as this weekend was good, it could be over in a matter of hours. But the start is good.

If you played fantasy football this year, how did you do? How did your league handle the playoffs?

See: Kiss of Death League Reloaded Playoffs

Twitter's OAuth Target Slipping Amid Increased Security Pressures

2009-01-04T18:30:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, more than one exploit, sent by way of Twitter's Direct Message feature, has made it around the Web. As Twitter's growth has continued, the microblogging service looks to be a new domain for scammers and spammers, previously contained to traditional e-mail. And as the shenanigans gain in momentum, so too does the call for Twitter to implement OAuth, the open protocol that allows for secure API authorization, which has become popular among many Web tools in use today. But Twitter employees' postings in the service's development group, and their own notifications on the site, show a shifting roadmap, while they also try to divert criticsm by separating the need for OAuth from the weekend's incidents.

An example of one Twitter phishing attempt.
Twitter's success has seen a groundswell of applications being developed that require users to enter their user name and password on third party sites. Given Twitter's lack of OAuth support, Twitter users have grown used to posting their data whenever they are asked, and in the rare case a site has been found to malicious, it forces them to once again change their passwords to protect their account.

The OAuth Web site spells out the reason behind the project's development, saying: "If you're storing protected data on your users' behalf, they shouldn't be spreading their passwords around the web to get access to it."

The weekend's activity featured a mock Twitter login page, where users were prompted to enter their credentials. (See: CNet: Twitter phishing scam may be spreading) While this specific attack would not have been solved by OAuth, but instead by users simply paying attention to where they were logging in, you can see Twitter's attitude on the current process.

Alex Payne, a lead developer of Twitter told one user on Saturday: "Right now, you can't see which apps are using your requests. You can change your password, though.", and later told another user, "We're trying to discourage against clicking on the link." Pretty basic stuff.

When pressed on whether Twitter was going to implement OAuth, and reduce users' growing too comfortable with posting their passwords everywhere, Alex said, "OAuth isn't a panacea against phishing and other web security issues. We're still going to support it," and following on, echoed the OAuth site by saying, "A main benefit is that OAuth limits the scope of activities that can be done with a user's credentials," while also linking to a post from April of 2008 that showed how phishing scams could not be stopped by OAuth. See: Phishing Fools?

So, we get that the phishing problem won't get solved through adding OAuth, but we do see more and more applications getting your password. As the New Year came in, Twply managed to get many passwords, and then was sold the same day. (See: Scobleizer: Twitter spam, effective or idiotic?)

Alex mentioned Twitter is going to support OAuth. But when?

In the Twitter Development Talk forum, you can see the target continues to move.

Alex, on November 24th of last year, wrote: "We're currently waiting on our User Experience team to put the final touches on a BETA release of our OAuth support. It's going to have bugs, to be sure, but we should have it out there soon. "

On November 26th, after being pressed for a date, he said, "As I don't know the entire schedule of our UX team, I can't. I would say less than a month and closer to a week by far, but please don't hold me to that."

On December 8th, Alex gave more specific timing: "It won't be available for testing this week, but should be available before the end of the month. I'd definitely encourage you not to launch on it, though, as it will be a beta."

Now more than a month from the first comment, amidst more developer pressure, Alex says the next major version of the API will be OAuth-only, but deflects some of the criticism by pointing fingers at other services that have not yet jumped on the OAuth bandwagon.

This afternoon, January 4th, Alex said:

"Of course, once we offer OAuth, it would be nice to see the same community pressure that's been applied to us put towards companies like Amazon. The Amazon.com iPhone app collects my username and password, and that account is actually tied to my credit card information. Where are the blog posts about their anti-patterns?"

Now, there's no question I'm no security expert. Don't forget that on November 12th, I once wrote, Twitterank Can Have My Password, No Questions Asked, and Alex looks to be feeling the strain of other non-experts, like me, pushing the team to get more robust. He commented on Twitter this evening, "It doesn't help that web folks generally have next to zero security/crypto education," a bucket I'm no doubt in.

The groundswell of demand on Twitter to improve its security measures, to get to OAuth as quickly as possible has no doubt reached a crescendo in the wake of this week's exploits - both those solvable by the project and those that are merely phishing scams. But it looks like Twitter developers' confidence has been shaken by so many promises being out there, and the deadline continuing to move.

Are We Too Connected to Social Media?

2009-01-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Do you ever feel like you are too wired? Do you find yourself using a password manager to keep up with passwords to the dozens of social media and web sites to which you have subscribed? Dan Keldsen posted a very interesting piece that really got me thinking on linking all of these various social media types together to form multi-dimensional and very personal points-of-presence (POP’s) for every individual.

Dan writes:

They are a meta-meta-aggregator in the sense that they are aggregating (collecting) information from multiple sources, and that their underlying data sources can also be aggregating information from multiple sources (such as ZoomInfo). This extends the reach and richness of the information that they are able to pull back on behalf of users of their system, in a similar fashion to the functionality of federated search or universal search in more traditional enterprise search.

In an ideal world, or at least with the smarter salespeople and marketers, such information will help to weed out who the appropriate people are to engage in more targeted discussions, and to engage in informed conversations of the "2.0 age" rather than in continuing to hammer out cold-calls and blanket, un-personalized (or badly personalized) mass-marketing.

Though Dan's article is referring specifically to a product called SalesView by InsideView (a CRM mash-up that aggregates social media information about potential clients), I can't help but notice we seem to be drowning in a sea of social media outlets. For instance, Twitter is interesting and a social medium to which many people subscribe. However, it begs a question in the context of its underlying purpose, “What is the end-game for this type of social experiment?”

[Dan contends] social networking is not purely about person-to-person connections, or in providing a virtual watercooler (or virtual voyeur perhaps) view into your "friends" (peers, co-workers, etc.) but also for the ability of participants IN the network to use the data within that network to become smarter in the ways that they interact with the people in that network.

Bluntly put, information about people abounds through many different channels, all of which were never before captured outside of family photo albums or epitaphs. Now that all of this information exists in a connected world, it is becoming a very relevant question to ask, “What can be done with all of this information about you? Is your information usable or abusable in its new formats?”

All of this latent "social information" is buried in the heap of individual silos both inside and outside of the control of any one [corporation], even deeper ... than "normal" electronic information is.

InsideView has a few ideas, according to Dan, albeit a bit Minority Report-ish. However, let's assume we all have the best intentions of using this information to the benefit of mankind; it makes me wonder whether this medium will connect us in ways never before dreamed or allow us to conduct plastic surgery at-will to our public persona? And just who decides someone, or some organization, should be granted access to a given network of POP's?
For now, everyone is having fun, and rightly so. By all accounts, this is a golden age of connectedness not seen in centuries past. Even as we marvel at our own magnificence, I can't help but step back, take a breath and ask if we are all just a little too connected?

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Armchair Quarterbacking and Why I Talk to Companies Using the Blog

2009-01-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

Whether it's due to the fact it's another 'slow news' weekend, or due to the fact I was more bare in my recommendations for how FriendFeed, a service I am constantly using and like a lot, could improve in yesterday's post than I usually am, there was quite a bit of feedback from around the Web, which both echoed the comments I had made, and questioned the reason for my making them in the first place. Interestingly enough to me, despite a full year or so of being called a FriendFeed addict, apologist, or what have you for my consistent favoring of the service, several people tried to construe my direct suggestions as somehow interpreting the site would fail - which I don't believe I ever came close to saying. But what they missed was I have a history of offering suggestions to companies, both new and established. Sometimes, I can do this 1-1 with the developers, but often I use the blog.

A person's blog can be whatever they want it to be. It can be your brand. It can be a megaphone that allows you to speak to many at once. It can be a personal diary. I've chosen to make mine about services I find interesting, and to a lesser extent, about me. The posts I make are about services I encounter and usually care about. I tell you how I feel or what I saw, and make it personal. And when I give feedback about companies, it comes from my thoughts and usually is spat out top to bottom as I was thinking about it, with little organization - just raw.

And given the blog's relative obscurity in 2007 and 2006, it's likely few saw my original set of feedback I offered FriendFeed more than a year ago - and how it mirrored other occasions where I've done similar posts for other services.

For example:

February 18, 2007:How to Make LinkedIn Even Better
March 3, 2007: 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader
March 12, 2007: 10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn
August 27, 2007: What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?
December 30, 2007: 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed
March 9, 2008: 10 Suggestions for Google Reader, One Year Later
August 27, 2008: 10 Suggestions To Improve FriendFeed's Beta

And I haven't always been nice. See: Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close. and After Monkeying Around, I'm Not Going Bananas for Chi.mp, for example.

On August 29th of 2007, I wrote that you should Use Your Blog To Talk To Companies, and I've been doing that. I do it because as consumers we are often the silent party in the buyer and seller relationship. The company controls the product, the message, the delivery method, and tells you how you should use it. As a consumer, you can buy it, and you can be satisfied, or not. I tend to believe that as a consumer, I may have some ideas that the company either didn't think about, or didn't think were as important as other items. By using the blog, I can make my opinion clear, and also act as a sounding board for other people who might have shared the same opinions, but didn't know where to start, or thought they were alone.

Just look at some of the comments I saw on Twitter following yesterday's post:

@elizabethsosnow: "I am one of the stale accounts."
@spinko: "Louis Gray talks about friendfeed and how it's not intuitive for new users like myself. Amen, I still don't get FF."
@maryhodder: "just read the Louis Gray article myself.. agree. FF is overwrought and makes me feel like i'm drowning."
@jayrosen_nyu: '"Simply put, people aren't getting it." Louis Gray on FriendFeed's barriers to intuitive use. I'm one of those people.'

Sarah Lacy said she is one of those people I described in yesterday's post who pipes their data in and gets a lot of followers, but doesn't participate. For whatever reason, FriendFeed hasn't won her over, and she says the company didn't try to engage her inactive account (one of the suggestions I had yesterday).

I mention these not to pile on, but to show the post started a discussion of people who weren't thinking about the issue, and might possibly have extended the visibility of the issue to others who thought everything was "just fine". As Duncan Riley of the Inquisitr said, FriendFeed Isn’t Dying, and I never said it was.

What I chose to do with yesterday's post, and the many before it was to speak up where the above examples had chosen to be silent. Mark Trapp called it 'Armchair Entrepreneuring' and said I could collect more flies with honey than vinegar, adding, "Offering feedback is one thing: but the sheer hubris of tech bloggers that they know how to run a company better than the ones actually running it is entirely different." But I wasn't aiming for hubris, nor was I aiming for linkbait, as my cranky Canadian friend, Steven Hodson, suggested I might be. What I was doing was sharing my candid thoughts about a service I really like and one I want to get better and better.

I use the blog because it is public. It is searchable and others with similar issues can find it. I use the blog to talk to companies because very often, they listen. Many of the suggestions I've given to LinkedIn, to Google Reader, to FriendFeed and others have happened. I'm not naive enough to think it was because I recommended they would, but it tells me I occasionally am on the right track.

I will armchair quarterback and keep talking to companies, as Dave Winer says, to help them, not to hurt them, and to help others. And sometimes, companies really do value the feedback. That's part of why I'm working with ReadBurner, SocialToo and engaging with others informally. It's about pushing people who make products to make them even better than they are now, and potentially, being part of that process.

Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

2009-01-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

In the past few weeks, the 'blog search engines are bad' complaint has resurfaced. This seems to reappear every few months, and for good reason. Blog search is not really changing. I complained a few months ago that blog search was broken and a month later reiterated my feelings when Technorati went down and nobody cared.

This time, Steve Rubel complains that blog search is in a pitiful state. His lament seems to be that the blog search engines are not returning real links to his blog posts. I could be wrong in my summary, but this is the real point of trackbacks, which most blog platforms still support, I thought. I am not saying that I disagree with Steve, I do believe that blog search is in terrible shape. Mark Evans questions whether blog search is just too hard a problem:

Maybe the blogosphere is simply too difficult to track given it changes so quickly and there’s so much to spider. Or maybe Google believes there are bigger opportunities elsewhere.

Mark even asked for a better blog search (and a few other things) from Google for Christmas. Part of the problem that people are mentioning is that Technorati and Google Blog Search are returning links from blog rolls and not just links from within posts. Google Blog Search is actually asking for help if you see this problem.

However, I think the conversation regarding "finding links" is missing something. What do we really want in blog searching? Are we only searching for links to our posts? Are we searching for blogs that are talking about a specific topic? Are we just searching for new blogs to read? Are we really just trying to find out where our blog ranks, like Technorati's authority?

Part of the problem is that we are focusing on one issue with blog search. Basic link searching will probably always suck because of the problem with spam blogs. They will add links to some sites and detract from others. Spam is just a hard problem to fight, so we probably will have to live with some of those problems. The other questions are much more interesting, but I am not sure that people really want those types of features. Do we want to use something like Technorati to find new blogs? Or are we now using FriendFeed and Google Reader shared items to find new things?

My thinking is that beyond Technorati Authority, people have left blog search behind. Because of this, blog search is not going to be seeing innovation by itself. If you look at Compete and compare traffic of Technorati, Google Blog Search, IceRocket and BlogPulse, you will see that the combined traffic has decreased over the past year. My estimates put the decline in traffic from Technorati and Google Blog Search at 30%. Obviously, there is little traffic or revenue to be had. As you can see, there is no real reason for anyone to try to compete with Technorati. It would be a competition for a dying space.

If you are trying to find who is talking about your post, blog links are only a small part anymore. Social media has changed where the conversation is occurring. The conversation is still happening on other blogs and in the blog comments, but there are other sites included as well. Social news sites like Digg, Mixx and Reddit have comments from various people. Other social media sites like Twitter and FriendFeed also promote comments on their sites. It is time to stop complaining about blog search. It is time to start looking at the bigger picture, find the conversations and join them.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

2009-01-02T16:30:00.000-08:00

That I like FriendFeed and so does Robert Scoble and so do a few thousand other Web-addicted Silicon Valley-centric people doesn't matter very much. That thousands more have signed up to the service and imported their data doesn't matter very much either. That the service has a ton of bells and whistles and some smart people behind it and manages to have some great uptime, compared to other services, also won't make it successful. Because what I'm seeing, and continue to hear, is that the site is too busy. It's too intimidating for new users, and some who have even stepped up to give it the old college try are asking for help (See: Om Malik of GigaOM).

Why? Because as great as I believe the service is, the learning curve is sharp. People aren't getting its utility right away. They aren't finding friends right away, or understanding why they should spend time to participate. Others are intimidated by the sheer volume of updates coming from people seemingly embedded in the Web, be they Robert, myself or many others.

In December, Robert wrote a piece, "10 Reasons why Twitter is for you and FriendFeed is not", where he outlined some of the top-level differences between the two services. And while he was jokingly saying Twitter's lack of features made it a better option for some people than FriendFeed, there was truth to it.

Given FriendFeed is relying largely on word of mouth from users, and press from bloggers and other tech publications to help raise awareness, and hasn't yet invested in a Marketing department or a more official outreach strategy, they can consider this abbreviated Marketing Requirements Document to be pro bono:

FriendFeed Must Have a Lite Version for New Users

New users signing up to FriendFeed, by default, see all updates from all friends who they are following, as well as updates from friends of a friend. This means that even if you start out following only a few dozen people, be they those automatically synchronized with your Facebook account, or recommended well-known Silicon Valley digerati, you can be flooded with updates from Twitter, Blogs, bookmarking sites, external commenting sites, BrightKite location notices, photos from Flickr and other sites, videos from YouTube, and even items from Amazon.com wish lists. And not only do you have to see all this from the people you know, but you'll even have to see updates from friends of those you know, if your friends have made an action on their updates.

What needs to happen is that FriendFeed must tier their offering, for "small", "medium" and "large" consumption. The Lite version would probably start out with blog postings, Flickr photos, and native FriendFeed entries. The default behavior should be that you would need to "opt in" to see a service, rather than be forced to opt out or hide every single one of them as FriendFeed adds them. FriendFeed already supports more than 50 different services, but the excitement this may bring to power users is just overwhelming to new folks.

The data should still be available in a tab that says "Show Me More" or "What You're Missing", etc., but you have got to not aim the firehose at those who aren't ready.

FriendFeed Should Help You Find Your Real Friends Better

If you weren't referred to FriendFeed from an existing user, you're starting off from scratch in the friends department. FriendFeed helpfully offers you an array of popular users, based on other subscribers' activity, but it's highly unlikely you're on a first name basis with all of them, and they're probably not "really" your friends.

Assuming you register your Facebook account with FriendFeed, it will check your existing friend base and see if they are registered with FriendFeed, and automatically add them to the people you follow. You also can find your friends by importing your address book from GMail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. But as many found when Google Reader assumed those you e-mailed most out of GMail were your real friends, that doesn't exactly solve it either.

FriendFeed should do a few things here. First, they should enable you to cross-reference those people you follow on Twitter (which is a noisy option). Second, you should be able to synchronize those you follow on LinkedIn as easily as you do your friends on Facebook. If you're linked on LinkedIn, maybe you should have the option to follow them on FriendFeed, getting you connected with colleagues. Third, and most importantly, FriendFeed should have content-based intelligence. You should be able to list your interests, much as Facebook does, and get recommendations for who discusses those topics. Fourth, you should be able to add details to a profile, including hometown, schooling background, etc, and get friend recommendations very similar to Facebook's often spot-on "People You May Know" feature.

You would also have the option to get weekly e-mails with updates on "People You May Know", much like LinkedIn shows you that new colleagues and classmates have started to use the service.

FriendFeed Must Be Doing Outreach and Communication With Inactive Users

Having always been active, I wouldn't have encountered the team's doing this, but I have seen a significant number of people who have had very little activity on the service following initial registration. They may not have had comments or "liked" anything in months. But they sure do count when it comes to total users, and their data is quietly pouring into the service!

FriendFeed should be actively courting these stale, abandoned accounts, and updating them on new features, or highlighting site usage case studies. It's practically a pastime on the Web to register for new sites, but it's not doing the FriendFeed community any good to be browsing and acting on the items of digital ghosts.

FriendFeed Should Help to Get New Users Engaged More Quickly

Long-time users have a distinct advantage over new users in terms of feeling engaged on the site. As with high school, or any other forum on the Web, you have regulars who get in a state of comfort, communicating with the same people who interact in small social circles. New users who join the site do so invisibly until they start acting on other people's items. New users who understand the service and register their feeds may see almost no activity as they are not added or even seen by other users at first, and the comparative silence on their own feeds is sometimes enough for people to feel ignored and leave.

FriendFeed could, instead, choose to have an area dedicated to new users who have joined the service over the last 1, 7 or 30 days (as they do with top items), and assuming you can fill out any identifiable data, as mentioned above, around hometowns, school, and interests, these new users could be grouped. (e.g. 25 new users within 30 miles of 94086 joined in the last 7 days)

FriendFeed Should Deliver A Desktop Application and iPhone App

The introduction of TweetDeck has changed the way many people use Twitter. It takes all the different options of Twitter and put them in a highly-customizable app, incorporating DMs, Replies, Groups, and Search. I've heard people say they won't use FriendFeed until it gets integrated into TweetDeck, and the current third-party apps for FriendFeed pale in comparison to the Web offering. The iPhone offering is good as well, but doesn't feel as polished, and lacks options one would expect in an app written for the device.

FriendFeed Needs to Better Define What It Is and How People Use It

Scoble (yes him again) recently posted a video on how you can be a power user of FriendFeed, showing 20 things it's useful for. (video link)

But it took him almost half an hour! No offense to Robert, but the service has got to become a lot more simple than 30 minutes worth of explanation to get new users engaged. All sorts of companies, from consumer to enterprise, utilize case studies and customer demo videos to explain aspects of the service and benefits, and they should be done in segments as small as 30 seconds to no longer than 5 minutes.

You can see FriendFeed's early efforts to answer questions from users on their lengthy one-page FAQ. They also have a FriendFeed Feedback room on the site, which augments the service's now largely stale Google Groups forum. But "how to" videos are either non-existent or made incredibly hard to find. The "why" to use FriendFeed and how power users or more mainstream users use FriendFeed case studies are missing altogether.

FriendFeed Must Have a Sense of Urgency

2009 does not look like it is going to be friendly to companies that are long on hope and short on revenue or momentum. The team can innovate better than any other that I have seen, per capita, but the appearance is that the service is doing so in a relaxed, jovial way. Questions about a business model seem theoretical and eventual, rather than immediate. And no clear visible activity is happening that makes me think the team is working on a more aggressive way to increase awareness and adoptability of the service - all while many curious adopters are turning away from the noise.

Lacking This, What Is Happening?

Simply put, people aren't getting it. I understand the team's Google-born mentality of "build it and they will come", and the hope that if the user experience is so good, people will gravitate to it over time, or that word of mouth will be all the marketing they ever need, but usage growth has stagnated compared to other faster-growing services, like Facebook and Twitter. (See Quantcast or Compete, who both agree on the flat to downward trend.)

As one of the more visible, more active users, I tend to have a lot of activity on my feed. It's a factor of participating, having been visible early and consistently championing the service. But even the most active items rarely approach a few dozen actions, be they comments, or likes. And this number has not grown much over the last several months. Assuming FriendFeed were growing and doubling in size consistently, I should be seeing a great article, picture or update getting hundreds of actions, as the user base grows, but they're not. Popular items get 20 to 30 likes, and top ones approach 100, about the same amount of actions as the number of comments on a single TechCrunch post, even though simply "liking" an item takes much less time.

I recently ran a third party tool that compared those people I was connected to on Twitter and FriendFeed, letting me match up my lists. I was surprised to see how many people I knew on Twitter who were also using FriendFeed, or at least had registered, but had not been active. Account after account after account had seen no activity in weeks.

While I have a core of very active users who I see every day and can expect to engage with, I see those initial quiet signups as a lost opportunity, for both them and for FriendFeed, and before the problem gets worse, I think the team should make the revitalization of these abandoned accounts a priority, along with easing the transition of new accounts, reducing the dramatic potential for noise, and starting to market themselves. There's a reason I keep getting asked by people for help on getting up to speed on FriendFeed. I get it because I've been embedded for more than a year, and it really shouldn't take so much work.

Twitter Venn Shows How Frequently Words are Tweeted and Related

2009-01-02T01:25:00.000-08:00

Remember those old Venn Diagrams from high school or junior high? Jeff Clark of Neoformix continues to roll out interesting tools to graphically display information we are brushing up against every day online. One of his latest creations is a fun tool called "Twitter Venn", which mines Twitter for tweets with keywords you select, shows the frequency at which they are mentioned, compares that to other words you are searching, shows overlap, and other related words. The result is a fun tool that gives insight into how frequently words are paired or otherwise combined.

For example, if you were to poll the terms "fantasy", "football", and "college", you would see there is a lot of discussion around "fantasy football" and "college football", but unfortunately, not too much discussion of a "college fantasy", and even fewer about "fantasy college football".

In fact, the terms "fantasy" + "college" + "football" are combined in a tweet just under once a day, contrasted with more than 300 tweets a day for "college" + "football" and 36 tweets a day for both "fantasy" and "football", a number I'd have guessed ran higher.

You can combine simple word pairs, like "chocolate" and "bacon" and find while both words are popular on Twitter, the combination of "chocolate" + "bacon" is much less frequently tweeted. While chocolate musters more than 1,100 tweets a day, combining it with bacon drops down to just over 30.

Twitter Venn lets you click on any segment of the resulting diagram to show other words that are in the tweets that generated the positive results. Clicking on "bacon" + "chocolate" for example shows that the words "cookies", "eggs", "food" and more show up. You can even see the individual tweets that were discovered.

Twitter Venn graphically shows what simple queries to Twitter Search would be unable to find. How much more frequently is iPhone tweeted than Apple? Almost 4 times to 1. And the combination of "Apple" + "iPhone" exceeds "Apple" + "iTunes" by a 7 to 1 margin.

Neoformix even rolled out an update before the New Year that let you search for terms that contained the same keyword, so if you wanted to search for Obama and both "lower taxes" and "raise taxes", you could do it.

Click this URL to see: http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php?q=Obama,raise+taxes,lower+taxes

I previously highlighed Neoformix back in June as a blog to watch. Luckily, I've kept Neoformix in my RSS reader because the site continues to introduce some very interesting tools. If you don't mind taking a few seconds for your browser to poll Twitter and find your results, you'll like Twitter Venn.

iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile… Oh My!

2009-01-01T14:15:00.000-08:00

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

No one cares about the platform, they care about the experience – right?

In days gone by, there was (and probably still is) a lot of talk about the platform itself. However, gone are the days where you should care about the platform. We have moved from a society stuck in our love-hate relationship with the platform to that of desire for seamless delivery of a solution – we are looking for results.

InformationWeek predicts 2009 as “The Year of the Mobile Apps” in their December 22 issue. With Apple stepping onto the scene with the App Store, Apple has moved more than 300 million mobile apps from the store right to your hand. The experience is easy and painless: we get what we want, when we want it, right in our hand – now!

The numbers don’t lie. Apple has successfully captured 23 percent of the market according to a ChangeWave report in December, with Palm and Motorola suffering losses of almost half of their respective market share: Palm suffered a drop from 18 to 9 percent, while Motorola shed 3 percent to crash land at 4 percent.

Windows Mobile slid precipitously, allowing Apple to overtake it in worldwide sales, and oddly enough, there were no numbers released for Smartphones running the new Google Android OS. However estimates released by HTC put initial sales at approximately 1 million units sold as of December 31, 2008.

RIM Still On Top

Still on top however is Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the recently released BlackBerry Storm. The recent launch of its new platform helped RIM edge up 3 percent to perch at a rocky 43 percent market share. This positive number was only shadowed by the fact that Apple continues to gain on it’s rival by leaps and bounds.

RIM took notice, and architected a $19 million deal to by Chalk Media. Chalk Media, perhaps best known for its Mobile Chalkboard application, is seen as a vehicle for helping RIM deliver rich media to perspective business and government clients. What’s the attraction, you ask?

RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) allows organizations, large and small, to effectively manage mobile devices across the organization. Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone only have rudimentary controls for the most simplistic of data needs… and no centralized controls from which application deployment can be administered. This is a big drawback for companies wishing to actually manage how their information is accessed.

Oracle and Information Builders have built “enterprise app interfaces” for the iPhone, in the hope this will allow subscribing enterprises to effectively deploy applications via this console, but many companies cite difficulties in working with Apple to deploy software via the App Store.

The Take Away

So the takeaway is that Apple and RIM appear to have the greatest lead in this game for US based sales. Apple demonstrated that a solid, dependable platform with an intuitive interface to purchase apps is a solid combination, but is still truly lacking in enterprise-rich features it needs to gain true acceptance. While RIM maintains a strong lead because of its stance on security and centralized management, figures indicate that only 33 percent of Storm users were “very satisfied” with their experience of the device, as opposed to 77 percent of purchasers of the original iPhone.

These numbers clearly indicate RIM’s BlackBerry has a long way to go before it can consider itself a sure-thing, but it is making plays to remain viable in both the business and consumer markets by latching onto the concept of mobile application development and delivery in hopes of staving off Apple’s momentum.

10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

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Following on to last year's 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech and the recent results: My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close.

1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites

In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO

While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple's vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider

Mike Arrington's tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009

While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google's Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates

Google's mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009

Despite Twitter's recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

8) Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009

The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site

America's political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won't be back to the table.