Tag Archives: Facebook

On pandas, lobsters and apps that rock both.

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If you can get through the panda and lobster analogies for how we interact with Google and Facebook (it took me a little time, but I’m onboard now: pandas are searching, eating machines; lobsters find a trap and get stuck), Adam Rifkin has an interesting post about corporate culture at Google and how the company’s focus on search makes them less suited to building killer social applications.

Rifkin’s got good points and if Buzz was any indication, Google’s probably not the company to build the next super-wow social app. Rifkin’s concerned because of a list of stats about ad traffic on Facebook and Twitter as a growing force in search. It’s true that the online market is more diverse than it was even a couple of years ago. But while Google would be crazy to sit idly by while others slide into the driver’s seat, especially in the search market, I think it’s most critical to understand whether you’re creating for pandas or lobsters and embrace that completely.

I’d be interested to compare traffic across all of Google — especially their API — with Twitter and Facebook. I’m not sure what you’d find, but my experience is that I’m searching on google.com much less but their applications (especially on my Android phone) are so much more a part of my daily life than ever before. So I’m an even more efficient panda thanks to Google’s ability to put leaves right where I need them. I’m also pretty protective of the relationships I’ve made on Facebook and Twitter and very aware that the three don’t often cross very naturally.

My point in this, really, is threefold:

  1. Rifkin assumes that success for Google must include a beatdown of Facebook and/or Twitter. I disagree. Understanding the kind of service you provide and (better yet) knowing the type of audience you’re serving is more important than trying to beat someone else at their own game. Today’s news of Google acquiring semantic search company Metaweb is more exciting to me than yet another social app.
  2. If the Internet has taught me anything, it’s that there’s room enough for more than one big player, especially when each completely rocks their specific niche. The days of “one ring to rule them all” are over. Thanks to Frodo. And networked computers.
  3. The message of “Knowing Thine Audience” is hyper relevant to content strategists as well; it’s what keeps getting newspapers into trouble because it’s so easy to bounce between the first and best sources. General interest is as bland and unattractive as it sounds. Find a niche and rock it.

App is the new Web. Yeah, but whose app?

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“App is the new Web.” What happens when the 25-year-old Internet meme “Information wants to be free” bangs up against the power, ease and financial promise of the app?

I’m usually pretty skeptical of claims of “x is the new y,” but the phrase came from a trusted source and linked to an interesting piece from On the Media featuring Michael Hirschorn talking more about his recent article in Atlantic about the future (end?) of information freedom.

IWTBF is credited to Stewart Brand, who made the observation at the first Hackers Conference in 1984:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

The notion of information wanting to be free also changes depending on how you define “free.” Free as in “no cost,” or free as in “no boundaries?” Most of the Internet world chose the former definition on the way to the latter. Now, it seems, apps might offer a way for those companies to get paid for content again. Says Hirschhorn of the New York Times:

I think that The Times will be able to offer what is more a reading than a browsing experience through their apps. It’ll be a more organic multimedia experience. It’s something that feels like you should pay for it. And they will stop putting that content on the Web. They haven’t said that yet, but it’s pretty inevitable because otherwise what’s the point?

There is no point, if you’re the Times. Or any number of media companies that start salivating at the notion that readers will pony up cash for news and information. And Hirschorn more than hints at the image of Apple’s Steve Jobs and his squeaky-clean version of the Internet (in partnership with content producers) battling it out with Google’s approach to wrangling the Web’s chaos.

That’s a fine image, and it probably fairly describes the current landscape. But let’s take a bit longer view, say, 2012, and look at the vision laid out by Robert Scoble in TechCrunch, in which information silos break down into a seamless integration of location-awareness, consumer patters, social connections and spontaneity, an idea that highlights the middle of Brand’s statement and, in my opinion, the most important one: “The right information in the right place just changes your life.”

I’m not sure my life has been changed by an app yet, but I’m incredibly pleased with the idea that I can find nearby restaurants and know how they’re rated. Or make note of places that I want or need to visit and have a reminder in my pocket. None of this continues to get better, however, if information remains in proprietary silos. Maybe you’d get one app-reality on the iPhone and another in Android, each with their own officially-licensed database and user interface. Blah.

All of this may be more true of “produced” content than of We’re only beginning to address the potential of millions of tweets per hour, the 72 percent of bloggers who write for fun and the 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

The fact is that much of the really interesting and powerful information being leveraged in apps is created by users: Yelp reviews, Tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts (and recommendations) and more. I’d add that the issue of ownership of that data remains to play out.

I think the specific note here is that shared information wants to be shared. I don’t care whether my sister has a Blackberry, my friend an iPhone and myself an Android. If I click to share, I’d like all of them to be aware of it. If not, I (and most others) will look for some way to make it happen. Because one thing we all should have learned about disruptive technologies by now is that they, by definition, won’t favor the status quo.

“We don’t want to be Facebook. Facebook is Facebook.”

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Thanks to a recent conversation with a local economic development expert and programmer/web guru, I finally have a two line explanation of Web 2.0:

  • User-centric
  • Open data

Obviously, there’s a bunch to unpack there, which gives an aspiring new media strategist some hope for a prosperous future of innovation.

On Friday, mediabistro reported that NYT is developing an open API, with discussions about how much to open and how to bring data and stories to developers and — consequently — the public.

The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to “make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data…”
“The plan is definitely to open [the code] up,” [Marc] Frons [chief technical officer] said. “How far we don’t know.”

In some recent strategy sessions in the organization I work for, we’ve talked about how to incorporate more of the two concepts into our own Web offerings and how to leverage our data (especially about local business and advertising) to take advantage of our toehold in the region. And during a recent Oregon visit, Jason Kristufek and I talked about how what data might be logical to open up.

It’s good to hear the big boys talking openly about this project, and it’s encouraging to hear that they’re struggling with the same basic questions.

But here’s where I think small (and corporate) news organizations can learn the most:

Times Digital is working on to build what Frons called “a news and information platform.” Given the current explosion in social networking, we had to ask if he saw NYTimes.com integrating some networking element. His answer: We don’t want to be Facebook. Facebook is Facebook. We’ll probably do something a little bit different. We’d like it to be like the email an article, only much more robust than that.

More often than not, corporate entities are busy reinventing the wheel with “features” they “roll out” that easily “plug in” to existing Web frameworks (in our case TownNews) but don’t really enhance usability. At best, they actually arrive on time and incorporate into the existing page like they’re supposed to. At worst, they just add to the clutter currently bogging down news Web sites and continue to push the old saw about being a Web destination.

With emerging developments like Google Friend Connect and Twitter, why spend time and money building your own social applications?

Link to feeds, build databases, and concentrate on how to make the Web (and the network) work for you. Note that this is not about “free labor” from readers. These are networks intensively managed by people building trust and habit among readers.

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