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There are plenty of near misses in the dot-com world. The Hits are difficult to predict. It helps to have a good idea, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be original. Having a well-connected team is a plus, and appears to have really given Twitter a shot in the arm.

Twitter is one of those up-and-comers that’s getting an inordinate share of buzz. Of course it doesn’t hurt when you have some rather high profile techies playing with it. Of course, I had to give it a test drive.

So what is Twitter? The story is best told from the horse’s mouth:

Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives.  Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away.  Curious people can make friends.  Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

Clear as mud?

In many ways, it reminds me of the rather crude shoutbox I’ve seen on sites for ages. The premise is that you tell your friends (or the world, if you choose) what you are doing — all in 140 characters or less. Why the character limit? Because text messaging is one of the primary methods of posting your activity. Of course, you can also use instant messaging, or the web site, or something like The Icon Factory’s Twitteriffic (if you’re running OS X).

You can also put a badge on your blog or website so others can see what you and your friends are up to. I’m using Sarah Issacson’s Twitter sidebar widget for Wordpress — you’ll see it in the right-hand column under the heading What am I doing?

Aside from sharing what I’m doing (as if anyone really cares), you can also see what I’ve done, or what other people are doing.

Of course, Twitter couldn’t be a self-respecting Web 2.0 project without some dimension of social networking or community. Yes, you can link yourself with other Twitter users, establishing contacts, and following their activities. The activities of the people you are following (the language is eerily stalker-ish) are sent to you according to your preferences. They can be displayed on your blog via a badge, or sent via IM or even text message to your mobile phone.

You can also send private messages to your contacts, or nudge them when they haven’t shared what they’re doing in a while. Hmm… maybe parents could use this to keep tabs on their txt-crazy kids.

Twitter began as a side project at Odeo less than a year ago, and had grown by leaps and bounds. There isn’t any apparent monetization yet, although it’s easy to picture the updates including targeted, 140 character adverts. “Your friend Jeff liked this… you might like it too! Click here to buy now.” For now, they are building market share, and really creating a new market where none previously existed.

My friend Tintin in Shanghai took a look at Twitter and her initial comment was “What a waste of time.” And yet, she signed up. What’s the attraction? Equal parts of buzz factor, simplicity, and fun. After all, we all need to waste a little time now and then.

Take a look at Twitter and let me know what you think? Does it pique your curiousity?

The social network is a buzzword that every Web 2.0 company has to include in their pitch. But what is it? Does social networking matter, or is it just a bunch of hype?

Here’s my brief, unobjective primer to social networks.

When explaining knowledge management to people, I usually tell them that it’s really nothing new. We have been sharing knowledge for ages, both on a personal level and with larger groups of people. At work, you ask a co-worker a question, and they share an answer. The tacit knowledge of one employee is transferred to another in that social transaction.

Likewise, social networks are not anything new. We all have our own personal networks, subconsciously tagged as family, friends, co-workers, business associates and so on.

Wikipedia describes a social network as “…a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.”

So if social networking is nothing new, what’s all the fuss about?

The popularity of so-called social networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn have captured the attention of the media. These sites generally revolve around the ability for members to setup a personal profile, and identify connections with other members.

In it’s simplest implementation, MySpace is merely a reflection of pre-existing social network structures. A teenager and his friends join, setup profiles, and add each other to their “friends” list. They already know each other. In this case, the virtual network is a mirror image of their real world network of friends.

The virtual networks make it easier to forge new connections, though the tensile strength of those connections is generally much weaker than real world connections. On MySpace, it’s not uncommon to find people who are looking to add everyone and anyone who will accept them as a friend, sometimes generating tens of thousands of friends. Naturally these are not real friends, and the connection can’t really be considered a relationship.

It’s not always vaccuous. Just as in the real world, people are also creating new relationships through these virtual social networks. Sites like Flickr and Last.fm encourage this by showing other members and giving you an opportunity to meet someone whose photography catches your eye, or who has a similar taste in music. These relationships begin much like the old pen-pal relationships I remember from grade school. They begin as virtual communication, and sometimes extend into the real world.

I have a friend who used to spend a lot of time online, communicating with people all over the world via instant messaging. Her network of friends was vast, but tenuous. Eventually, she chose to pull back from the online network and focus on the people she sees face-to-face (which includes some people that she initially met online at one time).I can understand and respect that choice. The tenuous nature of online-only relationships can be shallow and unfulfilling. People are wired for more than cerebral interaction; like Peter Gabriel said “I need contact!“

Personally, I’ve made a number of new friends online, through discussion forums such as BigBlueBall, shared interest sites like Flickr and even sites like MySpace. Most of them I’ve never met, and I only know them through our online interaction (and their online personae). Some of them I correspond with regularly via instant messaging or voice chat. A few (about seven, so far) I have met ‘IRL’ (in real life), further strengthening the connection.

Some people may find it strange to make friends online, but it’s not much different from meeting new friends in your community. You participate in an activity with other people (going to church; playing tennis; playing World of Warcraft; exploring Second Life). In the process, you meet some people that you get along with, and a friendship begins.

So what does this mean for online social networks, particularly in the context of Web 2.0 and beyond?

• For networks to have meaning, they must be limited to real relationships. Flickr may have recognized this when they recently put a limit on the number of contacts you can have.
• Online communities can foster genuine relationships that exist purely online, but they must be based on common ground. LinkedIn, which focuses on professional networking, recognizes this. You cannot add someone without knowing them, or at least sharing a friend in common.
• Friend whoring devalues the network. For long term success, communities need to find ways to discourage this behavior and encourage real relationships.
• Stronger connections are enabled by richer contact experience. Real world relationships generally have the highest likelihood of developing a strong bond, but technologies such as VoIP and webcams can help strengthen online relationships.
• We need strong, deep relationships as well as casual friendships more typical of online communities.

My fortune cookie encourages me to expand my social network. It’s good advice, but I’d like to hear from you. How do you recommend I expand my social circle?

Ever find yourself scratching your head and wondering where Jack’s been in the last 24 hours? You’re not alone. Bohan has created the Jack Tracker on Wayfarer — a website mashup of Google Maps, social networking and personal publishing.

Wayfarer looks pretty interesting. I’ll have to dig a little further into it later.

Most mobile phones these days come with a basic camera built-in. It’s handy for spur-of-the-moment snapshots. I’ve used it in stores to capture price and SKU info for further research, or to document that fender-bender in the parking lot.

What’s not convenient is a way to share those photos online. Sure, a lot of the mobile companies have services, but if you’re already using something like Flickr, you don’t want or need another online gallery.

A number of companies have created add-ons that allow uploads from your mobile to Flickr, including Shozu, Nokia and Yahoo’s own Zonetag. But none of these would work with my HP iPAQ hw6515.

Enter Nakama.  This free service allows you to upload photos from any mobile phone capable of sending picture messages. While Nakama does provide it’s own online gallery, the real strength is it’s ability to automatically publish uploaded photos to your Flickr, MySpace or Live Space account.

I’ve tested Nakama,  and it worked perfectly. No special software was required, just the ability to send picture messages from my phone.

One caveat — the gallery of popular photos on Nakama contains a lot of suggestive photos. They do provide a “flag as inappropriate” capability, but so far, the majority of visitors apparently approve. Personally, I don’t give a rip about their own gallery; I’m only interested in using the service to make it easy to post to Flickr. And that it does quite well.

Wallop is a new social networking site that completely turns the typical MySpace business model upside down. Wallop began as a project at Microsoft Research, and was spun off as an independent venture by Kark Jacob and Sean Uberoi Kelly, with VC backing and an equity stake from Microsoft.

I had the opportunity to test a very early version of Wallop over a year ago, and more recently got a walkthrough of the current incarnation from Kelly.

How is Wallop unique?

In a number of ways. First of all, there are no advertisements. Wallop’s business model isn’t build on advertising, but on taking an eBay-style transaction fee on ‘mods’ purchased by members. It’s a crafty blend of Flash, MySpace and Second Life.
Second, Wallop’s interface is built entirely in Flash. Because their business model doesn’t depend on ad views, there is no need to drive up a page-view rate. This leads to some really interesting and innovative interface options that make Wallop feel more like an application than a website.

Wallop provides all of the typical social networking features — journal entries, comments, friends, photo sharing and so on. But it’s entirely extensible by a community of developers or “modders.”

Flash developers can create their own mods for Wallop, and offer them for free or for sale in a marketplace. In addition, if you see a mod that you like on someone’s Wallop “page”, you can click to purchase it for your own page. The modders name their price.

Mods can include anything from games to ecard-generators to auto-updating photo montages of your friends. If you can program it with Flash, you can create a mod for Wallop.

Control Over Who Sees What

One key feature that I really liked was the ability to create ad-hoc groups of friends, and assign view or comment permission to those groups on an object-by-object basis. For example, Steve might be in my network of friends, but I also include him in a subgroup of friends who like Mott the Hoople. I could also include him in any number of other subgroups that I define (or redefine at will). Then I can post my own Mott-commentary (or photos, music, whatever) exclusively for those friends in that group. A really smart idea that I’m surprised hasn’t taken hold sooner.

How to get Wallop-ed
As of today, Wallop has opened their beta on an invitation-only basis. You can request an invitation, or if you’re a Flash designer, you can join the Wallop Modder Network.

Links:

• Wallop
• Wallop Modder Network
• WallopCorp

Recently I’ve been reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, which describes the new marketplace economics enabled by the Internet. In brief, the Internet exposes consumers to the “long tail” of products (music, DVDs, books — just about anything) that isn’t readily available in the traditional bricks-and-mortar outfits. It’s a great read, though I’m still trying to sort out how to use long tail economics to my advantage.
Robert Young over at GigaOM has written an an excellent analysis that expands (figuratively and literally) on Andersen’s long tail. Young introduces the fat belly.

Having been involved with the Internet since literally day zero of its commercial inception (back in November 1992), I have had a front-row seat watching the power of our medium’s “democratizing” effects. Digg is a great example of such effects as the value proposition of the entire system is reliant on the most democratic of all instruments… one person, one vote. Consequently, I’m a big fan of Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” thesis, as I find the framework to be remarkably consistent with my own experiences and observations. Yet, when one attempts to understand the strategic implications of Digg, and its role as a democratizing force, even the Long Tail paradigm fails to fully showcase its true, disruptive nature.
While I won’t go into the details of the Long Tail thesis here (read Chris’ book), suffice it to say that what I find limiting is the fact that he divides the power law distribution curve into only two segments… the hit-driven head (what I call the “Big Head”) and, obviously, the long tail. What’s missing, in my opinion, is actually the most important part… the section in the middle of the curve that I affectionately call the “Fat Belly”.

The recognition of the existence of the Fat Belly is critical for many reasons, but allow me boil it all down to this overarching statement: Any economist or political scientist will agree that the health of any democratic society that’s fueled by free market capitalism is measured by the robustness of its middle class. A large and vibrant middle class demonstrates a healthy redistribution of wealth within a nation and its economy, ultimately serving as a catalyst for the power of one vote and equality amongst its peers/citizens. What all this means, and to bring this back down to earth, is simply that I prefer to segment the power law curve into three distinct segments… the big head, the fat belly, and the long tail.

Now, why is this relevant/important? The answer is simple… in my view, the potential success of any Internet venture, particularly for those heavily reliant on the development of an online community of active participants, is directly correlated with the concept’s ability to create a large and dominant Fat Belly… much like a successful democracy will result in a large and dominant middle class. And towards such ends, Digg is one of the best examples I’ve seen.

GigaOM » Digg that Fat Belly!

As I’ve read The Long Tail, I’ve been searching for an application to areas of my own life. Certainly there is “long tail content” in a mature knowledge management system. Well-established websites and forums such as BigBlueBall contain a lot of long tail content, as do blogs that have been around for any time. The big head is great, but unpredictable. The long tail is nice, but not especially valuable unless you can aggregate the value of the entire tail. The fat belly is the sweet spot for most niche players. Not a top ten hit, but popular enough to draw a significant audience.
If you consider Anderson’s long tail theory carefully, you will find that the curve reshapes itself over time, with the fat belly indeed growing bigger.
Here’s to fat bellys!

technorati tags:long_tail, gigaom, chris_anderson, fat_belly

Photos pose a challenge to search engines such as Google. While it can sometimes do a fair job of guessing what a photo is about based on the file name, or URL, or even the context in which the image appears, none of these are as accurate as the description an actual human would give an image.

Flickr, in contrast, provides rich meta data for each image as it’s collected, with the opportunity to add or modify that data. My contacts can add their own tags to my photos, further enhancing my photo with relevant meta data, and making it easier to find and retrieve similar photos.

But what about the millions of photos already out on the web? How on earth do you set about tagging those photos?

Enter the ESP Game. Begun as a research project, this “game” pairs you up with a random partner with the objective of “tagging” images with the same tag. Each match increases your score. You play a game, and the tagging, well, that’s like free labor.

Google has now borrowed a page from the ESP Game with their own Google Image Labeler project. It’s admittedly based on the ESP Game, but much more obvious about the objectives (improving image search results). It makes me wonder how many other menial tasks can be turned into games…

Anyone up for a rousing game of “fix the sprinkler heads?”

Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration has analyzed the tagging behavior of users on four websites that have helped popularize folksonomy-style tagging: Flickr, del.icio.us, Technorati and YouTube. According to Agarwal, the results indicate that the Average Joe is a better tagger than the tech-savvy user.

Agarwal suggests that Technorati, YouTube and del.icio.us are more tech-oriented sites that the friendly photo-sharing site Flickr. Possibly a stretch, but I’d agree that photo-sharing transcends the boundaries of geekdom.

Using Google search to analyze the number of distinct tags used at each site, here’s what he found:

• Technorati: 403,000 tags
• YouTube: 2.1 million tags
• del.icio.us: 877,000 tags
• Flickr: 4.7 million tags

This got me thinking. As you know, I’m a big fan of folksonomy tagging. I regularly use Flickr and del.icio.us, and slightly less frequently YouTube and Technorati. And on top of that, my vocation (and avocation) make me passionate about knowledge management. One of the early concepts incorporated into most knowledge management systems in the 90s was that of a taxonomy for knowledge. A structured approach at organizing knowledge for easy lookup and retrieval.

The trouble with taxonomies is two-fold. First, they are often only understood by the person who created them. The layperson is befuddled. Second, the structure quickly turns to inflexibility upon real-world application. This is one of the reasons Clay Shirky supports folksonomy-style tagging, as he discussed at last year’s Emerging Tech conference.

But can folksonomy tagging take hold in an enterprise environment? Will the success that Flickr has experienced with the Average Joe translate into the corporate world? Will the Average Employee grasp the personal value of tagging? It’s a question worthy of further study. In my own experience on Flickr, I’ve seen some people go absolutely nuts with tags, while others neglect to use any at all.

I suspect we’ll see similar behavior behind the firewall. As with Flickr, some people get the value proposition of tagging, while others don’t. Some need time to discover that value, and will eventually have their “ah-hah!” moment. The beauty of tagging is that once you get it, it’s not a chore to tag items. It’s your own personal breadcrumb trail back to that photo, that link, or that video. It frees your mind from rote memorization of a rigid and often cryptic taxonomy, and puts you back in charge of the stuff that matters to you. And isn’t that what we all want?

technorati tags: folksonomy, tagging, del.icio.us, flickr, youtube, technorati, taxonomy, km

AOL is pimping the 10th anniversary of the AIM Buddy List — touting it as “the original social network.” In some ways, I have to agree. BigBlueBall has the details, including a timeline of AIM from 1989 to today.

danah boyd has written an excellent essay on why Friendster has fallen from grace, while the cheesier MySpace has taken off. A good read for anyone interested in social media and the dynamics of online communities.

For a dynamic comparison of the rise of MySpace vs. Friendster, check out this graph on Alexaholic.

technorati tags: myspace, friendster, social media