29 posts tagged Tech

Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook, wrote a thoughtful piece about the future of social networks in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook.  He has a unique outlook on the future of social networks and the various forms they take.  Presently, the dominant form is the stream.  Facebook pioneered it with their News Feed and Twitter capitalized on its simplistic presentation and ease of use.  There’s no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are the 800 pound gorillas in the room, but I think there’s more space to innovate than Cook acknowledges.  In his article, he comes to the following conclusion:

There are at least two ways forward for social media in a stream world – even in a stream world dominated today by Facebook and Twitter. You can dedicate yourself to creating applications that play well in the stream, or you can try to come up with a new way to shape the stream itself.

I agree that one way forward is focusing on applications that “play well in the stream.” Zynga is the quintessential example of a company focused on creating applications that successfully leverage the social stream.  Others like Playfish and Playdom have also followed suit.

However, I disagree with Cook’s claim that you need to find a new way to shape the stream itself.  The stream is here to stay.  It’s not going anywhere over the course of the immediate future.  It’s by no means a permanent fixture in the world of social networks, but it’s proven to be a successful model for delivering and consuming information.  Revolutionizing or reshaping the stream in its entirety is a lofty goal, and I don’t think it’s necessary right now.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

There’s plenty of room for innovation when it comes to the stream.  Facebook is compromised by the fact that the stream is really a flood.  There’s too much information from too many people on the fringe of my social graph.  I just don’t care about 80% of the information I see in my News Feed.  It’s overwhelming and irrelevant a majority of the time. That’s not to say that everyone feels this way.  175 million people log into Facebook everyday.  That’s a huge number or people who derive utility from their News Feed or other stream applications on a daily basis.  However, Facebook’s stream is primarily focused on providing updates in the form of text and photos for your immediate social graph.  They’ve left plenty of wide open spaces to play around and innovate.

Twitter’s stream is much different.  They’ve proven that a model focused on brevity (140 characters) and an open following system (versus Facebook’s mandatory reciprocated following system) can scale.  With Twitter, I can better control the information in my stream by selectively following content providers I find interesting. This helps to provide a much more useful and personally relevant source of data.

Twitter is just one successful iteration of the stream.  Tumblr is doing something unique in the space as well by leveraging the open follow system while creating a platform focused on the curation of mixed media. (Disclaimer: I work for Tumblr.)  It allows for a different type of interactive experience, more engaging on an emotional, aesthetic, sensory, and personal level.  The Tumblr stream, or Dashboard, has become a place for people to socially curate and consume the things they love.

There are plenty of other ways to leverage the stream.  Hot Potato is successfully providing a platform for creating social streams around live events.  Foursqare is focusing on personal activities.  Plancast is trying to do the same thing for future plans.  There’s a rapidly growing segment of emerging startups focused on taking streams and using them to leverage different verticals.  There’s also a handful working on rearranging the presentation, functionality, and applications used to interact in a stream.  The immediate future and growth of the social stream is not about revolutionizing its functionality or interface, but on leveraging niches that provide value to an engaged user base.  As Facebook surpasses 400 million users, it grows increasingly difficult to target and leverage verticals within its ecosystem.  People will gradually move towards streams they find personally appealing and consist of peers who share a common interest (Facebook recognizes this and has brilliantly fostered Facebook Connect as a mechanism to stay relevant and connected).  What’s really interesting is thinking about the unique economies, diverse monetization opportunities, and interactive mechanisms for these streams, but I’ll save that for another post.  It’s an exciting time for the emergence of social platforms, especially those focused on providing unique and relevant utility.

Twitter recently introduced Local Trending Topics to tap into the pulse of your city.  It’s a step in the right direction for curating and displaying information that’s relevant on a local scale.  However, if you browse through the different local options, you’ll notice that the trending topics don’t change much.  They also don’t provide much insight or relevancy to their respective cities. For instance, the New York City trending topics don’t really tell me anything unique about NYC, and they’re remarkably similar to those of San Francisco and Chicago.  (Obviously Apple’s iPad announcement yesterday is helping drive these similarities - #itampon appears in every local trending topic.)

Twitter does a great job on tapping the pulse of the nation, but it’s difficult to tap the pulse of a specific geographic region.  Right now all trending topics are national and global issues: Haiti, the iPad, State of the Union, celebrity deaths, etc.  When there are enough tweets to create a trending topic, chances are they’re focused on a larger-than-local topic.

I think there are several actions Twitter can take to help local trending topics become useful:

• Achieve greater scale (duh) and focus on its active user base - the more information the better
• Local curation - it wouldn’t hurt to add an editorial and curated component to help organize local trending topics
• Better algorithms that skim off the popular national and global trending topics and hone in on local-specific data

Local has presented itself as the internet’s next frontier.  There’s a gradual shift from focusing on the general “What’s happening” to the more relevant “What’s happening that’s important to me.”  Twitter has proven to be valuable for breaking news, but they clearly have work to do in breaking local news. They’ve got the momentum and they’re clearly thinking about it.  I think it’s only a matter of time and effort before they figure out the right equation.

Do I need it?  No.  But I’m going to get it and I’ll use it everyday.  Here’s why:

• It’s affordable.  $499-$829 with or without a 3G data plan is an astonishingly low price point.  I was worried about a $999+ price range.
• Reading - I need a device I can read on the subway everyday.  I like to read the WSJ and NY Times in the morning and I can now do that with the iPad.  I won’t be using this as a conventional eReader like the Kindle.  For me, nothing will replace the feel of a real book.  It’s just my personal preference.
• Travel - I can hop on a plane with and iPad and leave my laptop and iPod at home. From what I can tell, this is the quintessential traveler’s device.
• Entertainment & Gaming - I’m not an iPhone user (I refuse to use AT&T), but I do use my iPod touch for entertainment.  My only gripe with the iPod is the small screen size.  iPad solves that.
• Web-browsing on the couch, in bed, and everywhere else - I bet 1.5 pounds feels a lot better than a hot laptop sitting on my lap.

That’s it.  If I can do all of these things on a slick device and interface for $499-$829, then I’m sold.  This won’t be my primary email or work device, but it will enable me to consume content to my hearts delight.  And that’s all I want from it.