Quote
"I can’t think of anything that demonstrates the sovereign nature of the self better than a blog.” - Doc Searls
About the Author
Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive,
and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative
and social technologies. His new blog is Message.
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Monthly Archives
June 30, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Wired reports on a suit filed recently against Google, claiming that the source code underlying orket.com is stolen:
Daniel Terdiman [from Wired News: Lawsuit: Google Stole Orkut Code]
Affinity Engines, based in Palo Alto, California, said engineer Orkut Buyukkokten illegally took the code that he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google. Affinity Engines also claimed that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social-network service for Google. Affinity Engines, which filed the claim on May 25 in Santa Clara Superior Court, is seeking unspecified damages and royalties.
In addition to nearly identical text found in similar features in orkut.com and Affinity Engine's social-networking products, the suit cited several identical software problems in each company's service.
[...]
For Google, the suit comes at an awkward time. The company is currently in the process of an initial public offering, which is expected to be one of the biggest ever. But Affinity Engines isn't the only company suing Google. Among others, the company faces a patent-infringement suit from Overture regarding auctioning placement in search-engine results.
Hmmmm. I wonder if anyone has done a social network analysis of the litigation in Silicon Valley?
I am not a fan of Orkut, but no one has really seriously argued that it should be evaluated relative to what it does in this first incarnation. The real impact has always been considered as futurescape -- how things might be in the future with an integration of social tools into search.
This is likely to be a real fly in the ointment for Google's realization of that future. Although, they certainly could simply turn around and buy Affinity -- or any thrre or four other SNA startups -- to get to that market first.
Which is why I predict a speedy out-of-court settlement, or outright acquisition.
[pointer from Marc Canter]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I wish I had gone to INBOX. Seems like Steve Gillmor was singing my song: Steve Gillmor [from As E-Mail Hassles Pile Up, RSS Is the Elephant in the Room]
[relatively far along in the spiel -- all of which I like]
Similarly, lack of IM interoperability has diluted the value of each IM platform. A kind of de facto platform has emerged, in which social networks and their directories become the routing infrastructure for point-to-point communications.
The winners will likely emerge from the IM components, when presence, awareness and role-based routing to devices are encapsulated in an API set.
And finally, the elephant in the room: RSS. While INBOX wrestles with the intractable problems of blurred international boundaries, too-complex authentication solutions and too-expensive computational and payment schemes, more and more of us are routing around e-mail for all but the most basic services.
IM for supply-chain communications, social networks for collaboration spaces, and RSS as the glue that ties these data points together.
Exactly!
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
A recent series of postings from Peter St Andre on the theme of Email Blows. Looks like Peter is going to try to give it up. I will keep a close eye on his trials and travails, and hope he filnds some combination of tools and tricks that will show me how to do it.
Peter St Andre [from Email Delenda Est!]
Wherein I begin to wean myself off email.
Cato the Elder ended all of his speeches in the Roman Senate with the phrase "Carthago delenda est" -- Carthage must be destroyed. I feel about email as Cato felt about Carthage, but with much better reason. Carthage was home to a thriving and largely peaceful commercial culture; email is home to junk, porn, viruses, and spam. Truly, email is a slum [Doc Searles] and I've decided to do something about it by striving to live email-free. If people contact me via email about Jabber-related matters, I tell them to use Jabber. I have converted my subscriptions to every possible email list from email to "nomail" by reading the messages in Pan via the wonderful Gmane service ("mail to news and back again"). I have asked the good people at Gmane to add a number of other open lists that I follow. I'm using Jabber chatrooms for communication (all logged for future reference). I'm investigating ways to build news-like messaging services on top of the XMPP publish-subscribe extension. I'm cheering on those who are developing reliable SMTP gateways ("from mail to Jabber and back again", anyone?). I'm blogging more about Jabber and will try hard to publish the Jabber Journal more often. I'm doing everything I can to eliminate the scourge of email, at least in my own life.
Email delenda est! 
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I am baffled by the dozens of comments I got over the past few weeks basically just announcing the new email service by G-yoo-know-whogle. I avoiding spelling the name of the service because I am afraid that I will get another 200 blog spams. I was amazed that so many people believed I had something to do with the not-to-be-named email service, and that I could get them accounts.
...continue reading.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Marc Eisenstadt recently suggested that I go international with the "Just Say "NO!" To Email" campaign:
[from Nice Idea]
Nice idea... I've added your little blog sticker 'Just say no to email' to my blog gutter, with a link to this story and a rollover tag line crediting you... incidentally, for the international audience, you might wanna have 'IM SI, EMAIL NO!' or something like that ('blows' is pretty culture-specific... perhaps even misunderstandibly rude in some quarters); anyway, just a thought...
What? Me, rude?
I like the idea that people are adding the blockstickers (made at www.blogstickers.com, by the way) to their blog gutters.
 In the interest of making Marc happy (if such a thing is possible) here's an internationalized and de-fanged version of the blogsticker.
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June 29, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Corante is a media sponsor of the upcoming BlogOn conference, and we are focusing on "defining social media" (see BlogOn 2004 ). The event takes place July 22-23 at UC Berkeley's Haas Business School.
We don't have the ad banners up yet, but I am am happy to participate, and to have been singled out as one of the roster of speakers:
- Robert Scoble, Microsoft's technical evangelist of the US.NET platform strategy and one of the blogging world's best-known personalities;
- Christopher Locke, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the book that first defined marketing as conversations;
- Mark Kvamme, a partner in Sequoia Capital, one of the most active investors in social media start ups;
- Ross Settles, vice president of strategic marketing for Knight Ridder Digital, the online arm of the traditional publishing giant;
- Jim Spohrer, director of the Services Research Group at IBM's Almaden Laboratory, whose focus has been on social network computing within the context of how business and technology are evolving together;
- Rich Gordon, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University;
- James Currier, CEO of Tickle.com, the leading interpersonal social media company, recently acquired by Monster.com;
- Jamie Riehle, global product manager of Web Publishing for Terra Lycos, a global Internet group;
- Jerry Michalski, CEO of Sociate, and a frequent writer, consultant and speaker;
- Stowe Boyd, managing director of Corante Research, a service that tracks, analyzes and explains emerging technologies and their impact on business and society;
- Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of BlogAds, a new form of advertising;
- Steve Gillmor, eWEEK's OpEd columnist and contributing editor;
- Rafat Ali, CEO of paidContent.org a marketer of content to digital media including online, wireless, desktop and off-desktop applications, products and services;
- David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, the leader in blog searches and indexing;
- Shripriya Mashesh, eBay's senior director of product strategy is not only eBay's key person on blogging and social networking, she's also expert in reputation market issues;
- Chris DiBona, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Damage Studios, a California based game studio developing large-scale multiplayer games; and
- Mark Finnern, collaboration manager for the SAP Developer Network.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Kimberly Yeo, of Singapore, thumbed 26 words in 43.24 seconds into her phone, besting the existing world record of 67 seconds for the same words set by a Briton last September.
The text included upper and lower case letters, and is destined to be the 'quick brown fox' of our time: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."
[Pointer from Boing Boing]
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June 28, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
The furor about the stupidity of the Induce Act continues to mount. I point your attention to the fantastically (obsessively) annotated transcript of the act over at The Importance of.... Note that the CNet piece is entitled "Senate Bill Bans P2P Networks".
The act is really dumb (as Ernest Miller proves in his interlinear commentary), but may have the impact of making all P2P technology illegal, since it could act as an inducement to the little children, who would potentially break copyright and various moral laws as well. This is the most egregious example of prior restraint, ever.
Today, in the Lenz Blog, I saw a few really dumb comments about the act.
K Lenz [from A Balanced View of the INSANE Act Proposal]
If the proposal can come up with an answer to these questions, possibly requiring adding some language to restrict its application to Internet P2P software that is specifically designed to resist enforcement attempts by copyright holders, it might be better than the Japanese approach of just arresting creators and sort out later if it was actually illegal what they did. Sinking this proposal would not change any risk under existing rules of secondary liability for copyright infringement.
And anyway, it's not that big a deal. Even if development in the P2P area gets shut down in America, there are still some free countries around where research won't be stopped. The result of that research will flow back to the U.S. over the Internet, leaving the legislation without any measurable effect on the availability of P2P software there.
I'm sorry, but unless this is incredibly tongue-in-cheek it *IS* a big deal.
Potentially every IM system is impacted (to the degree that it can be argued that they are P2P), and a wide variety of useful tools like Groove, Shinkuro, WiredReach, and thousands of others, leaving aside the targets of the Act, like Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. This is a sledgehammer approach to hitting a pesky mosquito -- don't get me wrong, the mosquito is carrying malaria, but this is not the way to fight it.
The Induce Act has got to be fought. Write your Senators and Congressional representatives, and tell them to block passage of this act,
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
After the affairs of the past few days, I have decided to push my ambivalence about email to a new extreme. Therefore, I am launching my Just Say "No" To Email campaign.
Here's a cool blog sticker I made: 
And another: 
In the spirit of rejecting email, I am posting these links, which will add me to your AIM and Yahoo buddylists. (If anyone has similar scripts for MSN and Jabber, let me know.)
Add boydstowe to your AIM buddylist
Add stoweboyd to your Yahoo! Messenger buddylist
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Facetime recently announced free migration to its IM Auditor product for existing clients of AIM Enterprise Gateway (see FaceTime Communications | IM Applications for Business).
But more interesting is the email I received from FaceTime's PR folks, attacking IMlogic's being the chosen partner of AOL to service existing clients: [by email]
Following AOL's discontinuation of its enterprise IM product AIM Enterprise Gateway (AIM-EG), IMLogic announced it had been endorsed by AOL as a migration option for the AIM-EG customers. Not only did IMLogic pay AOL several thousands of dollars for this endorsement, this endorsement does not guarantee the company a single AIM-EG customer.
In response to yesterday's news, FaceTime is offering both AIM-EG users and current IMLogic customers a free transition to IM Auditor 5.0, the industry standard in IM security and compliance. FaceTime is now in the best position to service the AIM-EG "free agents." Because AIM-EG was powered by FaceTime technology with added support from FaceTime staff, FaceTime expects to strike new deals with most of the AIM-EG customers, who already rely on FaceTime's IM expertise and will undoubtedly opt for the easier migration from one FaceTime platform to another.
Well... I don't think that the "thousands of dollars" was a major factor in AOL's selection of IMlogic, somehow. And, if it hinged on a few thousand dollars, why didn't FaceTime pay it, or up it? The market has to be worth a tiny investment, right?
And while its true that FaceTime had a long-term technology and business deal with AOL, the relationship has been rocky. We will just have to see if FaceTime can in fact convert "most" of the existing AOL users to FaceTime customers.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Over at Many2Many, cousin danah blogs on the floundering Friendster, which is testing email as a means to recoup the dwindling participation of the disaffected target user:
danah boyd [from Many-to-Many]
The tone of these messages is desperate, begging for attention of the original early adopters - the ones that Abrams told me were ruining his system. One focuses on Burning Man types; one mocks the old Power Point COO; one charges non-users with harming children; one is a desperate love poem. They're hyper American-centric, SF-centric, white collar, wannabee hipster, intentionally attempting sarcasm (and clarifying that below) and complete with 80s references.
Empty social networking is briefly fun, and then is obviously pointless. Social networks have to do something, perform some sort of work (in the physics sense) to be worthy of attention. Otherwise, its just a pet rock.
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June 25, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Here's a link to one of the postings from Supernova on the panel The future of RSS and IM?. I don't know the author's name, but will find out.
So I'll be the first to admit that I have my biases, but when the Stowe Boyd, the moderator of "The Future of Email" panel argued that...
- Email is bad because you can send it to anyone
- Email is bad because it's asynchronous
I started to worry that I had slipped into some alternate universe where email isn't the killer app, and where those weren't the two primary benefits of the medium.
Well, that's sorta what I said. I said (see Email Blows) that email is not particularly good at many of the things we use it for, and that it is a lowest common denominator approach. I think the IM model is better in many ways, and believe that email will have to adopt much or all of what IM does.
By the way, Esther Dyson made a number of great points from the floor. She pointed out that we need to break out the various communications capabilities -- like RSS reading and publishing, synchronous and asynchronous communications, calendaring -- that currently are lumped into the email inbox. People should be able to mix and match these independently of each other, and just pushing everything into one big mess in Outlook or a portal is not a "solution" to the email problem, as several of the panelists seemed to argue.
Now me, I want to burn the email inbox down, but that's exactly the kind of anti-social behavior that got me into trouble yesterday.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I chaired a panel at Supernova yesterday, entitled "Spam and the Future of Email" and really got a lot of the greybeards assembled shaking their heads.
My thesis, in case you missed the sidechat, is that email blows:
Email sucks, and all the nice things about it (universal addressability, universal standards, etc.) add up to the reasons that it has become unusable. It sucks.
I think that IM is a better model -- so much better that email will have to adopt the definining characteristics of IM to survive:
- Gated community -- IM are networks, and th emembers must log in to enter. Once in, the members must follow certain protocols of interaction (either directly or indirectly enforced) or they are booted out. This could prohibit sales intrusion, sex advances, etc., depending on the network's arrangement.
- Communication with the Known -- while IM networks may allow strangers to contact us, we can opt to shut them off. In essence, we can limit communication to those that are known to us.
- Conversation, not Communique -- email is not conversational, really, unless you believe that sending letters through surface mail is conversational. Conversation is generally better than dueling essays, which is the communication style that email engenders.
Well. We will see, but email -- because of the fundamental flaws in the system --is falling down. What made it useful in an earlier world is dooming it in this one.
We should just switch to IM-based communication, and treat email like fax or surface mail.
Despite the generation evidence -- danah boyd pointed out in a session on connected work that young people prefer other media to email -- and the spam invasion, people are so comfortable with their email inbox that they can't really contemplate moving onto a different footing.
I pointed out that earlier 'indispensible' communication media, like the telegraph, fax, jungle drums, smoke signals, and surface mail, have been relegated to the trash heap.
Oh well. I guess I hadn't expected people to ask where they could sign up to join my "just say no to email" movement, but I didn't expect that the Supernova crowd would be boiling the tar and plcking the chickens getting ready to tar and feather me.
I maintain that one of the key aspects of the future of email is that it will decrease in use relative to other media, especially instant messaging based technologies and blog/RSS collaboration tools.
Some of my panelists maintain that email is fine, and just needs to be fixed up a little -- clean out the spam -- and then everything can go back to normal. Personally, I think email is not particulary good for the things we try to use it to do, despite the fact that we are used to it, and it is universal.
After the panel, various folks tried to reason with me. "Don't you understand," several of them said, "everything connects through email, and its so easy to use." Yeah, yeah. Fine.
Personally I am interested in the issues surrounding communicating with those known to me, or known in the context of some social group. And for those situations, email blows. I refuse to agree that we should settle for a lowest-common denominator approach for what is most important, really, which is collaborating with my closest contacts.
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June 24, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
We've heard lots about the Mail Wars, as they were, and now there's another army entering with big guns. Hotmail has announced that they will now boost the storage limits to 250MB for the free accounts and 2GB for the $19.95 annual subscribers. This sneaks by Yahoo! with their 100MB for free offer. Similar hikes are soon to come from AskJeeves as well.
One interesting observation made in a News.com article:
[from News.com, "Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage"]
Indeed, Google's initial steps into storage increases countered the industry's trend to charge extra for more memory. Over the past few years, Yahoo and Hotmail have both taken steps to decrease memory in hopes of convincing free users to become paying subscribers.
Amazing what a little disruptive force applied at the epicenter can cause in an industry as a whole. This is, really, no different than what we say in the Web Hosting Wars when more and more space was provided to users that needed to host their 300K of web site files in their 2GB buckets. At least e-mail continues to accumulate.
This raises one important question: could GMail have trouble getting off the ground once invites start free-flowing? Consider the forces at work. GMail sports this new mail interface, which in many respects breaks the "rules" of e-mail (yes they are rules since everyone is used to the way mail used to work) and required adjustment to a new interface paradigm. GMail has this potentially scary, privacy-issue-ripe advertising supported model that's already raised flags, eyebrows, and even litigation. Competitors have had the power of hindsight to react appropriately without adding the specter of big brother (aside from the one's that were there before).
Let's wait and see.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
For what must be years now, I have avidly used and recommended Trillian as my IM client of choice. For anyone that does not know, Trillian is a meta-chat client that provided many interesting and useful functions. For the most part, users were attracted since it allows a single client that connects to all of the major chat systems. Other key features included secure communications between Trillian users and automatic chat logging.
Unfortunately, the infighting that exists between the major IM clients has made remaining committed to Trillian tedious at times. Originally, there were many instances where AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! would intentionally alter their connection protocols to block Trillian (and sometimes other meta-chat tools).
Quite some time ago, MSN officially shut the door and forced most users to return to the Microsoft client to connect to their Messenger accounts. The latest blow came today as Yahoo! drops the hammer and shut out Trillian once again.
[from News.com, "Yahoo to Trillian: Talk to the hand"]
Beginning at about 6 p.m. Wednesday, Yahoo changed its instant messaging language to prevent third-party services, such as Trillian, from accessing its service. Like previous statements, the company said the block is meant as a pre-emptive measure against spammers from its Yahoo Messenger service.
"Spammers are being aided by entities that are abusing our systems, where they effortlessly gain knowledge of pathways and back-alley access to send spam," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.
Of course, there are some issues that really are important to note here:
...continue reading.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
Blue-ing is growing in popularity, though in very small disparate systems across the globe. Adding another straw to the camel's back, we have BEDD. BEDD is a living, functioning system that is slowly starting to take shape in Singapore that works very similarly to the Mobule system.
[from CNN.com, "Wanted: New friend, must have Bluetooth"]
The software automatically searches for and exchanges profiles with other phones that come within a 20-metre (65 ft) radius. Matched users are given each other's contact details.
"I've become close with people that I've never known before, built up a close clique of friends whom I chill out with, sleep over at their homes and go for late suppers with," said Lim, 19.
Joe McCarthy adds some more insight to this phenomena by digging up a more detailed comment about the service:
Joe McCarthy
[from Gumption, "BEDD: Multidimensional Social Software for Bluetooth Phones"]
For the end-users, BEDD costs only S$0.98 per month and offers a full menu of BEDD-functions: BEDDmates - searches automatically for friendship or dating; BEDDbay - searches automatically for items to buy, sell and trade; BEDDtalk - allows users to send free SMS with Bluetooth range either person to person or broadcast to a group simultaneously; BEDDbuddies - alerts users when their buddies or family are close by; BEDDshare - superdistribution of the software where users can share with each other; and BEDDfish - allows users to send Bluetooth messages to any Bluetooth enabled phone.
I'm most intrigued not by the technology per se, as it's really not reached anything close to a wide enough base to be useful (in a meaningful manner), but moreso in the philosophy that drives this product. There are two difference that I think worthy of note:
Autonomy - Unlike Mobule and many of the other services, the BEDD service uses a local application to provide its processing and filtering. This has some pros and some cons, of course. There will be inherently different kinds of filtering that are allowed since there is less processing power and data available, generally, on these portable devices than on server farms. Of course, this is almost not an issue when the context is considered. It's important to note that we are connecting passing parties, people in motion with minimal contact. This creates a need for efficiency, the kind that passes as little as possible between devices. Application - While the majority of the mobile social networking systems are focused on forming social relationships, the BEDD system has some early applications that encourage/enable financial relationships (the sale or barter of things). Is this a potential expansion point for things like EBay?
Peter Caputa asks a very good question: "BUT, DOES ANYONE USE THESE FANCY SERVICES?". I think until we see the interfaces for cellular phones improved to the point that there is easy utilization of these devices, widespread deployment of Bluetooth components to mobile, pocket, and related devices, and standardization of a Bluetooth protocol (there are many formats and security issues to consider), we're still going to see pre-dominantly small communities for the near future.
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June 23, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I had the chance to catch Dudley Carr of 2Entwine, and interviewed him via IM about his plans for Gush, the IM client I have blogged about a number of times. I finally got around to using the Flash SWF stuff that they developed so that I can post IM interviews saved from Gush IM sessions. I plan to make this a regular feature, here.
As Dudley makes clear in the interview, he and his brother, Wes, continue the innovation boil over at 2Entwine.
I personally have hectored them for features, like file transfer, multi-user chat, interactive backgrounds. You'd almost think I am a paying customer insted of a pain in the ass freeloader type. I'm sure that other will be most interested in the planned next release's sharing features, like shared photos.
By the way, anyone who wants to try Gush can download it at www.2entwine.com, and my handle is 'stoweboyd@2entwine.net'.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
 A Dodgeball like geography-based social networking solution, WhoAt offers support for PDA, mobile phone, or PDA (see WhoAt). Up and running in NYC and SF.
Too bad its not up in LA, since I will be there over the weekend, and hoping to connect with people. I guess I will try Dodgeball there, although I don't like the texting interface on the cell.
[Pointer from Smartmobs]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Joe Bartling chimes in on the 'its all converging' theme:
Joe Bartling [from Familiar Strangers and Location-Aware Social Networking]
It’s curious to me that, due to rapid technological advancements, our capacity for social networking is expanding beyond our space and time limitations. Joe McCarthy in his recent post entitled Familiar Strangers in India, reflects on a story he heard on NPR Sunday Edition called, Life in India: Dawn on Parsee Gulli.
Joe points to similarities in the story on a project he worked on at Intel, Familiar Strangers, which was based on ground-breaking work on the subject by Stanley Milgram in 1972. In Intel's project, they designed a wearable, wireless radio beacon to capture and extend the "familiar stranger" relationships, based on the MicaDot2 Mote, a predecessor to Smart Dust. Though there are lots of privacy concerns using this technology, it's just a matter of time before these types of devices become commonplace.
The integration of "location-aware" and short-range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, and online, real-time access to information about one's social network (like LinkedIn or Orkut) and familiar strangers, will enable all kinds of interaction between people, from entertainment, such as digital street game, to impromptu business meetings. Intel's Jabberwocky software for MIDP 2.0-compatible phones with Java J2ME support, enables familiar strangers to recognize each other when chance encounters occur. Services such as Dodgeball allows for your current location to be announced to your "friends" and "friends of friends" that happen to be nearby, as long as you live in the 10 cities currently supported by Dodgeball.
Sean Savage writes about his project, Encounter Bubbles, which aims to graphical visualize one's encounters with people and places over time.
All of these ideas and projects are converging, adding new social, spatial and time dimensions to how conversations occur and relationships develop.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Interesting turn of phrase from Chris Nolan -- Stand-Alone Journalism -- as a way to denote the difference between blogging and traditional media outlets:
Chris Nolan [from Politics from Left to Right: It's Not Just Blogging Anymore]
For a while I, and many others have been dissatisfied with the term “web logging.” That focuses on the technology, not on what the technology produces. So, after a little thought, I’m calling what I and others do Stand-Alone Journalism. Why Stand-Alone Journalism? Well, it’s accurate. A journalist – or a small group of reporters – can work on the web to produce what they want as they find it appropriate. And readers are equally free to read the work of individual journalist as they see fit, on their time, not on schedules set by TV networks or the newspapers.
But I don't think that standalone jounalists (let's lose the hyphen, ok) need to beg, asking readers to drop a nickel in the paypal jar. If you have attracted even a small number of targeted readers, someone will pay to advertise to them. Or alternatively, sell those same readers some higher value information or service. For example, Chris Nolan should definitely be running a seminar on how to become a successful standalone journalist ('blogger'), although heshe would need someone else to do the section on advertising.
Here, at Get Real, and Corante I envision a technology platform to support a better reader experience, one that readers would willingly pay a dollar a month for. Which is enough, since we are just lowly, lowly standalone journalists after all.
[Note: Thanks to Joanne Kisling who straightened me out on Chris' gender.]
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June 21, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Turns out that I will be roaming the European landmass next month, with Greg Narain, like a very small band of Vandals.
- London - I am speaking at the Symposium on Social Tools in the Enterprise, 12 July, a get-together I have blogged on a few times already.
- I will be speaking somewhere in Amsterdam on
13 July 14 July: Social Tools: Get Connected in the Post-Everything Economy. My buddy, George Witteveen is the organizer, if you are interested in learning about time/locale. [Note: George also was the one who told me I screwed up on the dates, which will be on 14 July, somewhere in Amsterdam.]
- 15-16 July, I will be in Nice, at the iDate conference, talking about the 'Third Space' that online community provides.
I look forward to meeting with Get Real readers in these cities. Contact me if you have any questions about these events.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Following close on the heels of the recent announcements from Yahoo regarding a retreat from enterprise IM, AOL is making similar moves. A press announcement with IMlogic (see America Online and IMlogic to Migrate AIM® Enterprise Gateway Customers to IMlogic Solutions), clearly indicates AOL is withdrawing from the niche:
"Our agreement to migrate the AIM Enterprise Gateway customers to IMlogic's AIM certified solutions reflects the evolution of the enterprise instant messaging market," said Edmund Fish, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Desktop Messaging, America Online, Inc. "Going forward, we will deliver AIM® Business Services directly to tens of millions of 'at work' AIM users while working with certified software partners like IMlogic to extend our reach in the enterprise IM market and meet the real-time communication needs of companies large and small."
As announced on June 10, 2004, America Online is delivering presence-enabled AIM Business Services (http://www.aimatwork.com) directly to the 'at work' AIM user through the AOL Instant Messenger client. The company is partnering with leading providers like IMlogic to support enterprise messaging applications and to weave 'presence' and the AIM Network into the applications that workers use every day.
"As instant messaging has become a mission-critical business tool, customers need an infrastructure solution that is enterprise-class for management, security and integration," said Francis deSouza, President and CEO of IMlogic. "We are extremely pleased to offer AIM Enterprise Gateway customers the opportunity to adopt our best-of-breed products as well as migration services to ensure a smooth transition."
So, on one hand, AOL will be offering 'AIM® Business Services' -- such as the web conferencing partnership with WebEx -- but disentangling itself from the enterprise software business.
In a nutshell, AOL is going back to being the network provider, and leaving the value-added services that make sense in a business context to be largely delivered by others, such as IMlogic and WebEx.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
There seems to be a great deal of discussion lately about the highly exaggerated death of e-mail as the RSS camp starts to make a case for moving to an RSS-centric model for individual communications.
Ross Mayfield has a rather lengthy look at the higher-level issues which tend to revolve around the different paradigms used in mail (push) versus RSS (pull). Here's some of those thoughts for background:
Ross Mayfield
[from Many 2 Many, "Re-ID"]
Push Models have higher transaction costs because risks and costs are not evenly distributed. It costs nearly nothing to compose and send a message and costs practically nothing to send an additional copy to someone. Costs are borne by readers, something well known and the cause for spam, the burden of processing messages coming to you without your control. Risks are borne by the Receiver for having an address alone. The real costs are incurred when the Receiver tries usurp control over costs.
[...]
Contrast this with Pull Models. The difference is the Reader chooses and can control whom they want to subscribe to and when they want to be interrupted. Risk is borne by the Sender with every message they put out and the quality, albeit with a low bar and informal culture, they are consistent with. Costs are controlled by the Receiver. They choose what to subscribe to and more importantly unsubscribe from, on average less than 150 feeds, an expected group size.
...continue reading.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Back in April, I had some glimmerings of the impending demise of the Yahoo Business Messenger group (see Yahoo Business Messenger Rumors). I never heard back from the officially designated PR contacts then, and who knows what will come from my pinging my contacts there, now.
But I thought I would take a few minutes and reflect on the meaning of business IM, vis-a-vis Yahoo's shuttering that group.
First off, many people are happy with the so-called public, free clients, such as that provided by Yahoo. (Yahoo is leading in the poll I have been running on the blog the past week or so, by the way (see the results to the right).) These have hundreds of millions of other users, are extremely reliable, and support a range of sophisticated options, such as voice, video, file transfer, and many others.
Some of the frenzy around 'enterprise' IM never made any sense to me. Who really needs encryption, anyway? I guess in some settings, encrypting your message traffic makes sense or is necessary, but for the average person discussing the progress of some project with an outsourcing manager in New Delhi, or a client in Oslo, its overkill. Other enterprise IM types of features are also questionable, even logging of IM. Some people just don't care or specifically don't want it.
Ultimately, money talks. I personally believed that Yahoo could offer very right IM contexts for business using their 'IMvironments' but they never seemed to pursue that, aside from the obvious stuff around movies and entertainment wallpaper.
I will try to dig into this, but I have little hope after the last few episodes where no one seemed to want to talk about their enterprise plans, or lack of them.
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June 18, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
Yahoo! has finally crumbled and is shuttering its Enterprise IM operations. There is hardly cause for alarm, however. For the most part, the writing was on the walls from the beginning. News.com notes:
[from News.com, "Yahoo scraps enterprise IM"]
In an informal interview earlier this week, Yahoo's Chief Information Officer Lars Rabbe said the enterprise instant messenger was shelved, because Yahoo is largely a consumer company and not structured to take on the kind of support tasks and other responsibilities that come with selling corporate software.
The move will consolidate Yahoo's consumer and enterprise products into one product package.
Business IM is still alive and kicking. In many ways, it serves the industry better to have solutions designed from the bottom up for their industry than to try and retrofit a widely deployed system to a narrow focus. Ironically, all the convergence makes it hard to tell just yet what form of IM will dominate, the one that currently rules, or some new enterprise-class version.
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June 17, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I read a press release about an enigmatic product -- Dotomi Direct Advertising -- that debuted at the recent Ad:tech conference. Take a look:
Boston, MA - May 24, 2004 - Dotomi, an online customer retention leader in one-to-one messaging between marketers and consumers, announced today that President and CEO John Federman will present Dotomi Direct Messaging™ at the AD:TECH conference in San Francisco on Monday, May 24, 2004. The presentation will be part of the "Slow Balls and Fast Pitches" session, a showcase for the industry's most innovative companies to introduce their solutions to the marketplace.
Dotomi Direct Messaging™ transforms the relationship between marketers and consumers by opening a one-to-one messaging channel through banner ad real-estate. Dotomi's solution elevates the traditional ad banner space to a personal messaging opportunity, empowering marketers to engage in direct ongoing dialogue with the consumer. By delivering a personal, timely and relevant message that caters to what the consumer has opted in for, Dotomi Direct Messaging breathes new life into a marketer's data.
As a result, marketers can build on the affinity of their brand, increase customer retention and enhance their ability to cross-sell and up-sell by replacing irrelevant messages with personal ones. With Dotomi Direct Messaging, Consumers Rule!™. Similar to the benefits of Instant Messaging, consumers now have a permission-based and relevant way to communicate directly with their favorite marketers.
 The company was co-founded by Yair Goldfinger, one of the founders of ICQ, so he has thought long and hard about the application of presence-based dialogue between a company and its clients.
The technology is not based on any conventional IM solution, like ICQ, IRC, or the like, but relies on cookies that are left behind by the Dotomi system when users opt-in and register. For exmaple, in the screenshot above, we presume that Sarah has opted into a promotional relationship with Burger King, and whenever she opens any webpage that includes a Dotomi-enabled Burger King ad, that advertisement can be personalized into a message tailored for her.
What is not immediately apparent in the example is that Sarah could click through the ad and become engaged in a dialogue with Burger King representatives, which might be a little more sensible with a different product example, like an car advertisement, or an airline flight promotion.
First Take
Dotomi is a pioneer in what is likely to be the next great thing in advertising. When AOL, Yahoo, and MSN realize that their public IM networks can be repurposed into something like Dotomi's solution, we will see a horse race develop for presence-based marketing. The repurposing of the public networks is simply this:
Today, people log on to IM clients so that they can talk to other people, and the network providers present advertising on the desktop real estate that the IM clients occupy.
This will rapidly be transformed. While people will still log on to the networks to talk to their buddies, through the use of Dotomi-like opting-in at company websites or specially developed ads, the browsing experience will be enhanced. You will see ad banner real estate updated that will reflect your presence, along with a slmultaneous pushing of promotional information through the IM client.
The IM networks will instrument all the ads out there on the web, forming a matrix of enhanced marketing, and making the traversal of websites personalized, and contextualized. It's lunchtime, Burger King knows you're on Atkins, and so your ad will reflect that. The ad that displays upcoming events at Wolf Trap 'remembers' that you like musicals, and a dialogue with a sale representative is proposed. Carmax pushes information to you via IM alerts when a car that matches your needs becomes available.
Strangely, MSN, AOL, and Yahoo seem slow to attack this enormous market opportiunity. Maybe Goldfinger and Federman will wake up the sleeping giants, though.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
Christian Cantrell points to some new features being added to the Macromedia Breeze product. In this instance, the Breeze product is being given new features that are meant to extend and enhance the instant messaging experience.
In theory, the integration would allow a simple IM conversation to escalate to a Breeze-based interactive collaboration using the simple shortcut "breeze now". Interested parties can glimpse this process in action here.
To date, my experiences with Breeze have been less than stellar. For the most part, these have been large, worldwide presentations conducted by Macromedia themselves. The experience lagged somewhat and there was almost too much information and not enough reasonable interaction to digest. Beyond those experiences, I have been involved in a few one-on-one sessions with better success. Though there is the ability for hundreds, that's not a power that should be wielded without great consideration.
This direction, however, has some implications for other "blur-makers". One example is Convoq and their ASAP product. As they describe, "ASAP eliminates the barriers to instant collaboration with powerful features for gathering the right people at the right time into a rich online meeting environment." With Breeze moving in this direction, there is going to be overlap that will either spur innovation or compact the competitive landscape.
It's far too early to predict where things will go - it seems more appropriate to think of time versus experience exponentially, as opposed to linearly, when trying to guesstimate the future of real-time integration.
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June 16, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Radicati suggests that the number of business IM users will almost double by 2008, with 364 M current business users.
[from CNet]
Since IM exploded in the consumer market, several companies have been trying to tap into the trend for their corporate customers. IM software makers such as Microsoft and IBM-owned Lotus have been trying--with limited success--to hook IM into other tools like word-processing, spreadsheets and e-mail to bring what has been a mostly social tool into the business world. Similarly, corporate telephone equipment maker Avaya recently came out with gear to marry IM and landline phones.
User growth doesn't mean revenue growth. Radicati expects the market to grow to only $413 million by 2008, with free IM services dominating. Indeed, the company expects that 88 percent of the projected 670 million users will prefer to use public IM networks for business and personal communication, instead of specialized business versions.
There may be more room for growth overseas. Only 20 percent of global enterprise users consider IM a valid corporate communication tool. This is expected to quadruple to 80 percent by the end of 2008. In North America, the figure is already as high as 85 percent.
A corporate survey conducted by the market researcher found that 44 percent of companies went for enterprise IM to increase intra-office communications, while another 33 percent were happy that they could reduce long-distance phone charges. About 11 percent of firms implemented it because it increased productivity and another 11 percent said it was complementary to e-mail and telephone.
Personally, I don't think the market will stand still, and the Radicati projections will be useless by 2008. IM will become embedded in everything, and as a result the growth will be both faster and less intrusive than the use of public IM clients would lead us to believe.
And people wonder why I am skeptical about quantitative research.
(Pointer from Loic Le Meur [from Do you use instant messenger for business ?])
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I had a series of conversations recently with Peter Quintas, who has assumed the newly created role of CTO at Silkroad Technology. Silkroad, which was founded by Flip Filipowski, the founder of Platinum and divine, has grown very quickly, and part of their strategy is the acquisition of a variety of complementary technologies.
In a nutshell, Silkroad has a vision of the socialized enterprise: the business animated and accelerated by advanced and integrated social technologies. The central pivot of their vision is blog-based content management as the core mechanism for enterprise information management and distribution. This is the company's Silkblog technology. To that, they are adding other elements of the vision: mobblogging, instant messaging, real-time conferencing, voice-over-IP, and soon, streaming video.
Peter Quintas [via email]
I wanted to drop you a note and give you an update on SilkBlogs and SilkRoad technology...
In the last month, we have developed and acquired technology that has helped form a more complete solution of our social collaboration suite centered around our flagship and focal offering, SilkBlogs. Back in February, at DEMO 2004, when we announced SilkBlogs and were attributed with coining the term ‘Enterprise Blogging’, we really had a more grand picture in mind where blogging was a central piece (but not the only a piece) of a larger collaborative suite.
I am excited to tell you that last week we completed the acquisition of Pendulab, a provider of world-class collaboration and community solutions led by ChatBlazer: a multi-party chat solution also featuring one-to-one instant messaging and voice/video chat capabilities. Through the end of the year we will follow on with a multi-party voice and web conferencing solution that will yield a robust single platform for communication and collaboration through multiple mediums, devices and channels. This is surely the most innovative and robust collaborative suite on the market today.
This acquisition follows another recent development of the addition of SilkBlogs Mobile to our capabilities. SilkBlogs Mobile allows the publishing of content from mobile devices anytime, anywhere, including text messages, pictures, and video or audio clips.
For more information on these developments visit my weblog at http://tourniquet.on.silkblogs.com.
Also for more information on ChatBlazer visit http://www.chatblazer.com.
And finally to try out SilkBlogs Mobile, visit our mobile community website at http://www.silkmob.com.
I have written a lot about the convergence of various social technologies into a seamless suite of capabilities that allow us to easily change tempo (from synchronous to asynchronous) and channel (video, voice, text). Silkroad is pushy very hard to integrate these components for enterprise application, and I expect that technologies such as theirs will rapidly become the infrastructure on which the next generation enterprise will operate.
Gregory Bateson once observed that "a business is best considered as a network of conversations," and Silkroad is perhaps the best example of a company that is building its product strategy around that metaphor.
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June 14, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Kevin Werbach asked me to chair the panel on Spam and the Future of Email for the upcoming SUPERNOVA 2004 conference, to which I have happily acceded. I had planned to speak at Inbox a few weeks ago on the same topic, but jury duty entrapped me here in Virginia.
I find it fascinating that I am asked to speak on email since I hate it so much. Perhaps that is why I get asked to speak on these panels: I think we should all transition -- as fast as possible -- to IM-like closed networks, or other media where spam just can't (easily) intrude.
My prediction is that email (as we know it) will dwindle to insignificance, at least in the business context, just like postal mail has. The next generation of converged social tools -- presence-based real-time communication plus blog-based community-focused solutions -- will offer such great benefits that we will all transition to them just as fast as the vendors work out the kinks.
I am beginning to experiment with the use of private blogs (within the Gush product architecture, or using more well-known offerings like Typepad) as a replacement for email with those colleagues that I have an on-going and in-depth relationship. I think this is the foreshadowing of a major communication paradigm shift, one that most market analysts and prognosticators seem to have overlooked. More to follow, as I develop some of these thoughts for Supernova.
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June 11, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I was poking around at Blogger, looking for supposed 'social networking' features -- which i haven't found, by the way -- when I stumbled across a Biz Stone entry: How To Network With Blogger. It is a pretty good recitation of the implicit social networking features that blogging gives. The piece also included a pointer to a funny post at Craigslist that I missed:
Kottke.org [from Wanted: personal social network coordinator]
Permanent full-time position for a personal social coordinator for a New York-based web designer.
Your primary responsibility will be managing my accounts with various online social networking sites including, but not limited to, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark.
[...]
Future duties may include discouraging companies and individuals from starting new social networking sites so that additional staff won't be necessary in the future. Past employment as a bouncer, "heavy", or hired goon may be helpful in this regard.
Back to the romp I took at Blogger: I was struck by the mismatch between the now-traditional website style navigation and trying to find information buried in various blogs. I transited to Blogger by browsing manually to www.blogger.com, which is a 'brochureware' style website. There is a really good intro to the value prop for blogging in a sequence of pages there, but most of the critical marketing and developer sorts of communication is buried in a set of blogs. But they are hard to find, and there is no apparent 'blogdex' or card catalog to help explore them.
You'd think that someone like Google would be piloting in that direction, coming up with a new metaphor for blog-based search, or blog information access, or blog information discovery.
At the very least, though, Blogger should post a catalog of the company blogs, and a 'front page' a la AlwaysOn Network so that information is shuffled together into some manageable, accessible format.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
Stowe's latest Darwin piece talks about the 4Cs (Communication, Coordination, Collaboration, and Community) and the seemingly inevitable blurring/convergence that is happening as software tools evolve to their more advanced, and potentially useful, social tools status.
In a quick and dirty example of this transgression, AIM's new plans shed some useful light:
"We're making (AOL Instant Messenger) a new front door for communications services," said Ed Fish, senior vice president of AOL's desktop messaging unit. "We think it's becoming the new phone."
[...]
"The idea of being able to escalate an instant-messaging session to an audio conference is new," said Andy Nilssen, an analyst at Wainhouse Research. "We've been waiting for it, and there's good demand for it."
Source: News.com, "AOL unveils premium instant-messaging services"
Blurrage indeed.
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June 10, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Yet another in the monthly stream of Social Commentary columns at Darwin.
Stowe Boyd [from The State of Social Tools]
The Four "Co"s
I have over the past years talked about the four "Co"s that make up social tools:
Communication: instant messaging, e-mail, Web conferencing, streaming video and voice tools, and other messaging solutions
Coordination: calendaring, task and project management, contact management, and related technologies
Collaboration: file and application sharing, discussion, wikis, blogs and other shared-space technologies
Community: social networking, swarmth (digital reputation, also called karma or whuffie), group decision and other explicit community supports.
Increasingly, these technologies just won't stay put. The features of specific products are beginning to expand with greater functionality and transcend any single "Co" to the point that each "Co" is no more than a convenient handle rather than a distinct market niche. This convergence will lead to a collision of many sorts of products, with widely varying starting points and orientations, and could lead to a wholesale recasting of product categories that we almost take for granted.
And we should expect dramatic, near-term convergence for technologies in this market space. As I put it in the piece, a "blurrage" of technological consolidation is in the works.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
Last week, the announcement of Pocket Rendezvous made waves in some circles and confused or amused others. As I've argued, the success of Pocket Rendezvous will be mediated by the portability of the network, regardless of the network itself.
Although there are several backbones upon which Rendezvous-like ad-hoc networks could be established, the most interesting, and presently viable, would the the 802.11x networks currently used for Wi-Fi. Two main factors drive this form of adoption: speed and availability. Relatively speaking, the speed cannot be matched by any widely available consumer protocol.
From the ubiquity standpoint, annecdotally we have strong indicators that Wi-Fi is the force to be reckoned with. From its wide installed base in consumer electronics to its adoption at both business and government levels.
...continue reading.
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June 09, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
There is a definite battle brewing for the rights to search your desktop. Several weeks ago, news was leaked about a internal Google project, "Puffin", that was aimed to leverage the search prowess of the Net's number one search darling down at the individual desktop level.
For months now, we've heard more and more about Microsoft's Longhorn promise and the revolutionary new methodologies being introduced by the new desktop environment.
Most recently, Ask Jeeves has entered the fray as well. News.com reports:
Dinesh C. Sharma
[from News.com, "Ask Jeeves taps into desktop search"]
"We expect that Tukaroo's desktop search and information management capabilities will enable Ask Jeeves to deliver a seamless, end-to-end search experience across the desktop and the Internet," Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said in a statement.
There are two interesting things to look out for, in my opinion. First is the evolving definition of search. We're seeing that the content base is shifting as well as a renewed interest in "hyperlinking" using non-discrete algorithms - contextual, anecdotal linking will change the way we find things.
Secondly, the social and cultural reactions to this newfound ability will be worthy of note. For many, I anticipate, there will be significant hurdles to cross as we attempt to secure attitudes, separate the public from the private domains, and cope with the loss of "forgetfulness".
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I am fascinated with the LLuna project, that is building on the Jabber Virtual Presence specification, to support swarming avatars of users viewing the same web location. Rather than joining a chatroom, the participants bump into each other by browsing the same web pages. (See the three figures at the bottom of the screenshot 'chatting' via cartoon bubbles. No, you don't have to speak German to participate.)
This is quite like the Eyebees technology, although it is based on the Jabber protocol while Eyebees is proprietary. In both cases, the technology is really only workable for small groups, although the Eyebee's eyes might be a better way of representing dozens of individuals, and Eyebees also includes an interesting metaphor for 'movement' that parallels real world interaction.
[pointer from Cmdr Taco: Slashdot | Do You Really Want to Meet People on the Web?]
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June 07, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
News.com reports on an upcoming update of BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless). The software is mostly intended to serve as a broker for micro-payments:
Ben Charny
[from News.com, "Qualcomm brews tiny transactions"]
The company on Monday released a new version of BREW, or Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, that lets cell phone service providers broker "minitransactions" that allow customers to pay a few cents for add-on feautres to games or small amounts of data.
The software, which is typically used to funnel downloadable ring tones, games and video mail programs to consumers, breaks "new ground," said Gina Lombardi, Qualcomm's senior vice president of marketing and product management.
Though this is promising for the cellular providers, intent on selling leagues of celebrity-endorsed ringtones, wallpapers, and video games, it seems promising for the fledgling blogging industry as well.
...continue reading.
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Posted by Gregory Narain
A couple of days ago I posted a quick announcement regarding Simedia's soon -to-be announced product, Pocket Rendezvous. This entry proved to be quite popular and was viewed and trackbacked quite a bit over the past few days. Out of them all, Sandy McMurray's trackback particularly struck a chord with me.
Sandy makes two observations that are worth taking note of. First and foremost, he deals with the issue from a Mac-centric point of view. Sandy goes each of my use cases (Conference Management, Classroom Coordination, Business Networking, and Location-based Services) and identifies existing technologies that cater to these different audiences - all using the Apple-centric implementation of Rendezvous.
Unfortunately, I think Sandy has it wrong and is comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended). I'd have to make the case that the most important aspect of Pocket Rendezvous is the "pocket" one. Consider the unique traits of pocket/mobile devices.
...continue reading.
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June 04, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
The use of VOIP is growing more and more in various different contexts. Consumers received a new form of relief today as Vonage, one of the dominant players in the consumer VOIP marketplace announced a $50 rebate on their installation/setup package.
[from News.com, "Vonage slashes price of Net telephony kit"]
The kit, which includes a Motorola phone adapter, is now $30 at Circuit City, Fry's and RadioShack after a $50 mail-in rebate, Vonage said Wednesday. The starter kit, which consists of an adapter and two months of free Vonage service, used to cost $100 at the same stores.
As Vonage's subscriber numbers grow, it has a greater ability to pass on savings to its customers, according to company Vice President Matthew Deatrick. Vonage made a similar argument in mid-May, when it signed up its 150,000th subscriber, saying it had reached an "inflection point" that allowed it to lower the cost of monthly unlimited North American dialing from $35 to $30 a month.
This is in addition to Vonage's recently inked distribution deal with Radio Shack, not to mention an alliance with another landline provider. Price drops aside, I am most enthused to see that a VOIP has such widespread distribution channels already in place. 150K subscribers is still just a blip on the radar, however, its still encouraging.
The only thing to look out for now, unfortunately, is the governments attempts to normalize this new technology into archaic paradigms they can relate to. Vonage is already partially getting served some cold tea in New York but they aren't standing still.
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June 03, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I see that Gary Turner of Memoria Technica is hanging it up, and clsoing down his blog.
I got a chill reading his oblique disclosure about why: Gary Turner
What's brought this sudden change of heart? Frankly, and I'm not sure if I'm 100% on the ball with this, it's an identity crisis that was quietly baked in from the very beginning but which lately, has been surfaced and exacerbated by my recent spate of meetings. In short, my blog self is not my entire self and I must say that I've been cool with that as long as both of those two selves never happen to appear together in the same room. When that happens, it shines a spotlight right on top of that partial disclosure or split identity issue and this is something I'm finding uncomfortable to reconcile.
This isn't a profound real life personal identity crisis thing, it's just something that I've recently come to notice and realise is a conflict in my blogging terms of reference, and it's a conflict which seems to have mortally wounded my blogging self.
Maybe I can get him to blog over here, after the hangover is done...
[Update: 6/3/2004 5:15pm EST
I should have mentioned Greg Narain's 'Blatigue' -- blog fatigue -- when talking about Gary's condition.]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
JuliterMedia CEO Alan Meckler got interviewed recent, and he is lukewarmish on the future of blogs, even though he says they generate leads.
Steve Rubel [from Alan Meckler: Few Blogs Will Generate Money]
MP: What's your view of the blog vertical business model that Nick Denton's Gawker Media and Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc. have developed? In some ways they're emulating what you created with Internet.com way back when. Business 2.0 reports Denton pulls in $250k per year. Not too shabby for blogs.
MECKLER: Very few blogs will be able to generate money. Within the Gawker and Weblogs Inc. empires one will find a handful of blogs that can generate income. Therefore I am not a big fan of the concept as a way to make big income. Blogs associated with network sites like our Jupiterweb, on the other hand, can in fact tangentially generate revenue because the readership is likely to want to find out more about a writer and this in turn can lead to lead generation. We see this with our Jupiter Research division. Several analysts write blogs which are free. Readers of these blogs might be impressed with the opinions expressed by one or more of our analysts -- and this can lead to sales leads.
Referred by pc4media, who disses Hylton and me here at Corante:
And why doesn't anyone ever mention corante.com when they talk about blog empires? I think Corante needs an outspoken personality.
Coming right up.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Interesting piece on the use of Blackberries for "personal social networking" (i.e., dating) and introduces a great term: JENNIFER 8. LEE
[from A BlackBerry Throbs, and a Wonk Has a Date]
The devices have given Washington professionals a way to Ping-Pong witty messages back and forth with potential love interests around the clock. The BlackBerry's mobility makes exchanging personal e-mail at all hours a lot more convenient than using a computer, and it offers protection from the awkwardness that voice communication can present.
Never mind liquid courage: this is digital courage.
And the author's name? [from norlos.com]
“Some people have asked what is the deal with the Washinton Post’s Metro reporter Jennifer 8 Lee. Well here it is… Jennifer’s parents are from China, where there about 200 million people have the last name “Lee.” To impart a sense of individuality they gave her the middle name “8,” which has special meaning to the Chinese. It means luck, good fortune, security and strength.”
Yeah, but I don't get the period -- its not an initial, is it?
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I read at Boing Boing that Amazon has launched personal logs (Plogs) as a mechanism to personalize the user experience.
I can't tweak very much, can't change look/feel, move things around -- just toggling on and off the monetary value of purchases made -- and I can't actually add any content. Wouldn't it be sensible to have my own reviews, etc.?
Is this only a mechanism to push information to me? Even so I like the format. But there is no RSS feed, so I guess you have to actually go and read the damn thing.
And the whole social angle -- seeing updates to your buddies' wishlists, for example -- isn't integrated at all.
They have a long way to go. But I like the direction.
[Update: I have had a few requests to show a screenshot , since it seems some folks (like Peter, and Kottke) h
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