Social Software Explored

Hopefully I can do this justice – because it really does deserve it.

I have been a faithful Trillian user for quite some time – probably pushing 3 years which is an eternity in the software world. I really had no issues with Trillian, it served me well. But as my use of Twitter and Facebook increased I needed to change they way I conducted public and private conversations.

So I have now officially switched to Digsby. And if you do not follow me on Twitter (shame on you) then you don’t know how annoying I have become. One recent post I got was that me “… and Digsby: [should] get a room!“.

Let me start with the features I see as being paramount for Digsby

1.) True integration – I have one client that integrates all of my IM accounts (except Skype =( ), my Gmail account, my Facebook and the two Twitter (and) accounts that I use. One application. Nice

2.) Quick access to Twitter – The Twitter Icon sits in my task bar (1 for each account). Clicking one of the icons displays the recent history in a very nice window with a scroll bar and little images next to the individuals that have made the post.

3) Send Twitter updates quickly – An “update” link is located at the top with my latest update, which allows me to make easy posts to either Twitter account.

4.) Automatic URL inserting – you can easily insert links (it doesn’t use the usual TinyURL but it works just the same) just click on the Insert Link button and away you go…

5.) Pop-Up notification – Twitter is a conversation piece (and a resource hog) – it allows me to follow conversations (when i want to). Even if I just laugh as a funny statement flies by or file it under – “Hmm got to take a look at that later. Really, really nice.

6.) Twitter management features – you also get the normal “Star”, “Reply” and “Trash” features you would get with your web based Twitter application. Each Twitter post by someone you are following appears with their name first which is clickable to their profile page. In addition, you can click on your name to go to the standard Twitter page for your profile. I no longer need quick links in my browser toolbar. In addition at the top of the toolbar I can click on a “tab” to see the different categories of Twitter posts like: Responses, Favorites, Direct Messages etc…

7.) Mini Gmail management – when an email pops up (just like Twitter) I can click on the pop up and it will take me to that e-mail. However, the real nice feature here is that when you click on the Gmail icon you can quickly delete messages that are useless without going to Gmail (which continues to take longer and longer to run lately) – very nice.

8.) All Facebook notifications – pokes, messages, walls, alerts even the news feed is updated. From here you can click and get to your Facebook profile. Again – really nice.

9.) IM Management – so ok yeah – first and foremost this is an IM application. For those that have multiple IM accounts and that have not used applications like Trillian – this will seem like an amazing thing. All of my IM accounts in one place? There are no real advantages over Trillian (and I am sad to say that I have reported a bug in Digsby related to contacts that I think is associated with the fact that I had two MSN accounts and it got a bit confused. However, I relinked those contacts that were missing and I am off and running again.

For those users that have Twitter, Facebook and Gmail accounts (along with the plethora of IM accounts you surely own) – this is a great application. Right now it is in beta and they seem to be putting out consistent releases (I have had 3 updates since I started using this about 2 weeks ago). Each update went off without a hitch.

The developers seem keen on adding in features. I would have to say that my feature list would be:

1.) When adding an update to Twitter and type in “@” – give me a suggestion list of people that I can go to. I cannot remember everyones Twitter account and it gets annoying trying to remember them.

2.) Integrate Search. This would be the killer feature and I think it would then win this software some awards.

3.) Gmail – let me compose an e-mail (and/or reply to an e-mail) directly from the client. It is a pain in the butt to go to Gmail through the web – soooo slow. Even Bill and Karolyn Slowsky think it’s slow.

4.) Oh yeah and for those less fortunate (ProfeC) I would love to see Mac support.

Interesting thought just came to me (which further enhances the fact that we need to have a system here – sort of like the Web archives).

With the conversation moving away from blog posts (maybe not entirely but certainly incresingly more and more) what about the history side of this.  Take something like Twitter.  I have often wondered where will this service be in 5, 10 or even 15 years (holly moly that is a long time).  Certainly it won’t exist the way that it does today but what if didn’t exist at all.  With so much activity going on outside of the traditional web page – how are we going to keep track and record this?

The web pages are easy.  We have the “Way Back Machine” to help us remember what the world looked like 5 years ago.  If someone were to research a topic for say an article – would they be able to capture the essence of the conversation?  Could they grasp the tone of the community and understand what the statements meant at the time?  And what about all of the effort being put into these communities – one would hate to see that get lost.

We need a “Way Back Machine” for Twitter and Shiftr and FriendFeed and whatever other application appears in the next 5 years funded by some fool which ultimately goes out of business.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the “fractured feed reader” which can be summed up as from Dave Winers post here (and since he kind of started this whole thing I think his point of view matters):

This week’s Bitchmeme is about comments on blogs and where they belong, on the blog, or on an aggregator. For example, when this item is viewed through FriendFeed they will allow comments on it over there and I’ll probably miss them unless I go look for them. I will certainly miss the comments on Shyftr which I have never heard of until today and have never used, but from what I hear it does the same thing. Is this a good or bad thing? Well if you like to know what people think it’s bad. If you ask a question in a post, as I often do, you might miss some good info.

While I can understand how someone would prefer conversation about a piece of content they wrote remain in the context of the content (in this case a blog post) I think that there is one fundamental problem. The medium for “conversation” around a blog post is poor.  Mikull and I have been discussing this off line recently and we feel that there is a significant difference in the way people use tools to have a conversation.

He has had a raging battle with his site visitors about the potential removal of his forums.  For various reasons the forums have become a bit too much work and present a road block with future growth for his site.  However, as you can see here they are an important part of many peoples lives.

The main focus here is that the blog is just not a good way to follow a conversation.  Additionally, it is difficult to find a blog that doesn’t turn into a flame war fairly quickly.  That is why places like Twitter and FriendFeed are so important.  It is where the conversation is happening.  It has become the new medium and it makes sense.

If I read a post on a blog that I think is important and I want my friends and I to have a discussion about this – I don’t post a response to the blog.  First I can’t guarantee that my friends will go there and follow me in the discussion and Second – who sits on a blog page all day hitting refresh waiting for someone to make a new post.  At least with the message board I can get an e-mail notification when there is an update.

With twitter I can post the link – make my short and concise comments (who has time to read fifty 400 line responses to a blog) and then let twitter notify me when my friends have something to say.  The difficult part of this (and where I feel there is a tremendous amount of opportunity) – and why I think Eric Berlin may be irked is how do we capture this conversation.  We can’t force the conversation to remain on the blog site simply because that is the easiset way to “archive” the conversation.  We need a meta-sphere application that follows the conversation or connects the dots.

Any python developers out there =)

Hopefully you have had the opportunity to see the video floating around the Internet about BigDog.  The robot prototype that Boston Dynamics has put together which is absolutely amazing.   (Follow this link to see a few that have wound up on YouTube).

Boston Dynamics is the same company that built the AIBO series robot dogs distributed by SONY a few years ago (always wanted one of those).  A few of the articles that I read about the prototype was that it was built from a grant from DARPA (the same organization that gave us TCP/IP and eventually the Internet – thanks).

My question is this:

With the ever increasing concerns about the economy, are we better off investing $50 million dollars in Slide so they can build applications for the Facebook (and other) social networking site or, can we continue to revolutionize the robotics industry and build some robots that actually do something.

BigDog is amazing and while I am sure that it did not take the full $10 million DARPA gave Boston Dynamics to build it, I am sure that there is no plant waiting to mass produce them.  And I am sure that even if they do, there may not be a market outside of the government which can sustain the costs of one of these machines – but – we will never get to the Matrix if we don’t start soon.

(um…yeah… a bit overboard – but – still).

I know it is scary to think about this but I believe that the potential for an application like Facebook is larger than advertising.  Think of it this way:

1.) 34+ million users (in best Dr. Evil impression) – yeah the statistics will tell you that the site growth is capping off and that only a percentage of those users actually log in – but they still “touch” a ton of people.

2.) Communication is changing on the web (talked about this before).  Thing about it is, no one really knows where it is all going.  Clearly E-Mail is not going to be the main channel for all communications 10 years from now.

3.) People are getting tired of all the applications out there – there has to be a shakedown.  Companies that are in endless beta will eventually give up.  Since all they want is Facebook fame not truly affecting the flow of information.

4.) Facebook has something that no one else has – the API.  Call it silly – call it dumb – say it will never support business to business – but don’t deny the fact that there is something tangible here.  Slide – the company behind a few of the most popular Facebook applications (which coincidently did not exist before Facebook) just secured 50 million dollars in funding (yes – in my best Dr. Evil impression).  Even with a horrible burn rate of 5 million dollars a year, you are still looking at 10 years of comfortable opportunity.

5.) The web is changing and so is communication.  Teens and college age users are done with E-mail.  They use IM, Twitter, SMS etc… to keep up with everyone and they are huge on ‘networking’.  Go find a teenager that doesn’t have 100+ contacts in their list.  In the past those types of contact lists were reserved for Stock Brokers and Insurance Salesman.  There is a real network growing here and kids are learning how to connect quicker then ever.

So where does that leave us:

Doing nearly everything on Facebook.  Think of this as your “portal” to the rest of the world and anyone that you give two hoots about.  I am not a kool-aid drinker here but there are some astounding opportunities for this site which not a lot of people are aware of.

Take some common tasks:

- Buying music – with iLike I can not only keep tabs on all my favorite artists, with my network of people I can see what else is out there.  If trust you to be in my network, I probably trust you to recommend some music.  With everything from concert updates to record releases (and links to shopping) you can do it all – without having to leave Facebook.

- Renting movies – my Blockbuster online account is now integrated with Facebook.  I can actually add movies to my queue from Facebook without ever leaving the site.  On top of that, I get recommendations from my friends…

Ok, let’s stop there!

Take Blockbuster for example.  Let’s look at what they have done.  Instead of building their own social networking architecture (Friends, Comments, Ratings, Recommendations etc…) they just tie into Facebooks framework.  Cut development time in half.  Cut maintenance time in half, and to top it all off, they don’t have to go and find a marketing channel.  When I logged into Blockbuster they popped up a window “Hey, do you have an account with Facebook – we integrate …”.  On top of that – they can send broad messages to Facebook informing people that the service is there.  Why would Blockbuster want to compete??  Search for Netflix – they have done the same thing.  Why not?

I could go on with all of the general actions you take on a daily basis which require recommendation – buying a car, getting a loan, renting a house etc… Why not connect with other people.  Thinking about moving, look in your friends networks, anyone live in an area that you are interested in – connect with them.  Find out what the housing market is like, the places to look and the places to stay away from.  Six degrees of separation times 10 (or like 100).

Want proof: “Facebook Taps Blood Donor”

That same story has certainly come out of Forums and other web based communication channels but that was in the past.  This is the now.  You might be asking me to tip my cup back down and stop or I will get a head rush.  You may be right.  But I don’t think you can deny the potential.

Is it really that bad that you would log into Facebook every day – at least once?  I haven’t even mentioned things like dating, sharing photos, having fun…