In response to John Battelle’s blogpost: Google+: If, And, Then….Implications for Twitter and Tumblr, I wrote the following: (Note such posts harken back to one of my blog posts about blogging itself: That is, if you find something you are interested in, and read blogs about the topic, often times your replies become long enough to qualify for blog posts. Also, by replying and leaving a link to your blog, it drives a little traffic as well.)

That was one of my first thoughts when I experienced Google+ that Tumblr was in trouble

Still they have a community. I’m on it. My impression of it is more of photo and gif sharing, but not personal photos as much as interesting photos, magazine like photos, that people are posting from somewhere else. To get attention on a Tumblr to post, the photos need to be striking, extremely funny, or otherwise “headline” grabbing.

Like Twitter, not a lot of personal feel to it, but fun, and I like Fred’s attitude that companies don’t kill other companies as much as companies kill themselves.

But my main takeaway from Google+ is not so much the service itself, although it is great, as like you say, it’s integrated with all of Google’s other services. Google may be Germany, but the seem to be the one company of all of these that has all the pieces. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that will be a powerful value proposition.

It almost reduces Twitter and Facebook to applications on this vast Cloud OS, rather than platforms in and of themselves. And Apple, for all it’s wonder, doesn’t have a Cloud Syncing OS, much less a Social Network. I think Apple should buy Twitter and Facebook should merge with MSFT.

The deep integration of Google+ with Android will be compelling and I don’t see the “app” for the iPhone as being as robust an experience as it will be on Android. This could be a long term threat too Apple as well if they don’t get their Cloud Offerings together.

Young people already having fun in "Hangout" the killer video app that will drive mass adoption to Google+

My introduction to Google+ was by way of watching  yesterday’s episode of TWiG, which featured Bradley Horowitz and Vic Gundotra, the two leaders of the Google+ project.

But what caught me,  got me really excited about Google+, happened in the minutes before the show actually started.  Leo jumped on a feature of Google+ called “Hangout,” an instant video conferencing application that is automatic, and which can include up to 10 people from your various “Social Circles.” What immediately jumped out at me was how FUN, spontaneous, and effortless it seemed (as well as being productive). You don’t have to place a call to someone or schedule a video chat. If you see someone “hanging” out you can just jump right in, sort of like the serendipity of jumping into a Twitter or Facebook conversation (known as dipping in and out of the “stream”).  But those are text,  and this is VIDEO, and that makes a big difference. Leo’s first friend who “popped” into his video hangout was Trey Ratcliffe, noted photographer, and for some reason, watching it, there was this surreal feeling that Trey (who happened to be in Chicago I believe) was actually inside the computer, like behind a cardboard cut-out, instead of being thousands of miles away. It made me think of all those hundreds of avatars I see each day on Twitter or Facebook, if they could suddenly come alive, instead of being frozen as they are in still photos. Suddenly the internet had “come to life,” as it were. A marvelous feeling. Among other things that are great about Google+, it seems more “alive” than the other social networks. More living, breathing. And “Hangout” is a big reason why.

Leo said it himself, almost spontaneously,  that Hangout was one of the coolest things he’d seen in a long time, and I agree.

The rest of Google+ is beautiful, engaging, and full of potential, but Hangouts is the killer app, I believe will drive mass adoption.

So the conversations around Google+ were inevitably “Will it kill Facebook? Will it Kill Twitter?”

That question remains to be seen, but I think folks nitpicking this feature compared to that feature, and on and on, are missing the BIG PICTURE.

The big picture is what Google is after, and I would argue has the most vision about, and the most resources to execute.

The Key here is that the Whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

If you take the individual pieces, you could say Twitter is better at what it does, Facebook is better, and Apple is better with it’s mobile OS. I think it’s fair to say that each of their individual pieces is better than the individual pieces of Google’s platform, albeit, just from one evening with Google+ it seems to be every bit as good as Facebook and perhaps better especially with the Hangout feature and the Social Circle feature, which makes it FUN to create lists. No one wants to create lists, but everyone likes to have them. And one more thing about creating “Circles” Did you notice how “Applely” it feels to drag so easily your contacts into the circles. It has the same feel as dragging things on OSX. A prime example of how an operating system can execute with the same feel as a desktop system. One little nudge in Chrome’s direction (Another piece of the puzzle)

But the key here is that Google has all the pieces. Think about it. Neither Twitter or Facebook has a mobile OS. Google does. Apple has an OS but doesn’t have a Social Network, nor the back end Cloud Syncing Data capabilities that Google has. This is why Apple and Twitter are having a “shotgun” wedding in iOS5 and why Microsoft is engaged with Facebook. But these types of “bolted” together arrangements rarely work. Two different companies, two different cultures. But still you get the point: These other companies don’t have all the pieces to bring together the new paradigm of the Web and Mobile being the new productivity platform. Google does have all the pieces. Their “jigsaw” puzzle type logo is now making more sense.

This isn’t just about a Social Network. This is about a platform of services that are tightly integrated.

What became clear to me last night is that this isn’t just about Google+ (as great a product as that is and will be), it’s about the fact that, with this launch Google has, in effect,  reduced or ‘highlighted’ Twitter and Facebook-type functions as mere applications, powerful and important as they are, within a much greater whole, but not platforms. In a sense, they are apps without a platform and Apple is a platform without an App. I know that sounds silly with what all the hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store, but what I mean is a data app, a cloud app, an app to Data Productivity Services that syncs all of your data immediately in the Cloud, as well as to a Social Network, which I am arguing is simply an “App” of this new Cloud Computing World. Apple Apps are wonderful, beautiful, but they are in a sense isolated islands.

Why is the Cloud so important and why is it considered the leading paradigm? The “Cloud,” as it were, marries the two most important aspects of the data revolution: Automation (Micro Electronic Revolution) + Distribution (The Telecommunications Revolution).  Light and Electrons. Electrons for storing and automating data, photons for delivering, communicating, distributing data. The Cloud is needed to leverage the exponential productivity gains that comes from combining these two separate technologies. Each separately have given us productivity gains as great or greater than even the Industrial Revolution. But together the productivity gains are even exponentially more so. One which both businesses, individuals, governments, and society alike find opportunity and achieve higher standards of living.

Apple is trying with iCloud, but does anyone actually think they have the ability to compete and execute on that front (or maybe I should say ‘back-end’) with all the Data Centers and Engineering expertise in the Cloud that Google does? I don’t. At all.

Last night Scoble scoffed, “Hangouts is kinda cool.” Kinda Cool? What? That’s it? No other company on the face of this Earth could emulate what it takes to make that product happen at scale. Facebook can’t simply copy that feature. They don’t have near the resources or engineering to do it. Not to mention Twitter. Apple has the cash, but I’d argue, it’s not in their DNA. Apple likes to sell things, not connect things. Cloud Computing is not their forte, their passion. They’ll endure it, but I don’t see the product or experience as being particularly promising.

But let’s not get bogged down by individual features. Let’s look at the big picture. Google is the only company that has all the pieces of the puzzle, and as they bring these pieces together, it will invoke a value proposition that users would be depriving themselves of if they didn’t join.

Think for a moment about what I said about Facebook not having a mobile OS. It’s simply an app on the OS that you have to open each time and load your photos manually.

With Android tied to Google+ all of these signals, including photo uploads happen automatically. And that’s just the Social Network aspect, the social signal: Automation.

Google has a plethora of other invaluable services, Maps, Gmail, Location, Search, Music, Video, Cloud back up, automatic effortless syncing, and on and on. And they’ll continue to add productivity and all the categories of apps that people find useful. And with an OS that is tightly integrated with those services, I don’t care how beautiful your hardware is, how beautiful the interface is (I love my iPhone by the way), I’d bet my bottom dollar even diehard iPhone users will think long and hard about what their next phone is going to be, and in a year or two their tablet as well. Google is building and connecting a platform that essentially is the most valuable “content” for mobile computing and experiences. Even when they get around to an iPhone app, the experience won’t be nearly as robust as if one were using it on an Android device.

From this vantage point, Twitter and Facebook are looking a lot like Lotus and Wordperfect did in the 80s. Even though Microsoft Office wasn’t as good when it first rolled out, it iterated and became “good enough” then as good and then better. And the momentum was the integration and trust that came from the suite being tied to the OS.

The same will happen for Chrome, Android, Google Services, and Google Productivity suites all driven by the powerful backend, unmatched backend of Data Centers, the Cloud, and their unmatched expertise in those areas.

Before, Google was the backend that needed Apple for distribution. Now with Bradley Horowitz designing a beautiful front end for Google’s interface they have their own distribution channel, and a way to bring all of their enormous resources to bare in the marketplace.

Is Twitter dead? Is Facebook dead? Or Apple? No, not by a longshot. All of these companies are run by innovative geniuses who are not going to spit out the bit like Myspace. This will be a horserace, and a damn good one, but if I were placing my bets today, I’d say Google will win by a nose at the wire. They’ve always had the best horse. And now they have a winning jockey.

But in the end, the essence of the web is not a zero sum game. One can imagine all of these companies growing, being prosperous, and what’s more important, imparting enormous benefit and productivity gaines to civilization, all without having to annihilate each other. I’d say Myspace went down for lack of vision, lack of focus. In other words, not because of Facebook, but because of themselves.

John Wooden used to say that he rarely scouted the competition, that instead he focused on he and his team competing with themselves to get better. Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Google all have this same drive and spirit. And what would be better than one defeating the other, is if they all constantly innovate, are “into” it, and in effect, all win.

Update: 7/2/11: I’m kind of angry. Today Tom Anderson wrote the following on G+, which is my same idea, yet it got an enormous headline on Techmeme via being copied in a post on Mashable. Kind of makes me mad, because I wrote this post on Thursday and sent it to Techmeme. On the one hand they must have put a small link to my post because I did get some traffic from techmeme, but nothing like a big headline they are giving Tom. Well, I guess that’s life. Tom is Somebody. But still, the idea is exactly the same as mine and yet they gave barely notice, but now that Tom said it, it’s the talk of the town, so to speak.

“Google+ seems like a “reaction” to Twitter/Facebook. But are you starting to see the ways that Google+ just makes Google a better, more integrated set of services? Google already has top-notch products in key categories–photos, videos, office productivity, blogs, Android, maps and (duh) search. Can you start to see/imagine what Google+ does for Gmail? Picassa? Youtube? Not to mention search? The +1 system that Google now has control of (unlike Facebook Likes) can really influence and change the nature of their search.

My original vision for MS was that everything got better when it was social–so I tried to build all the super popular things used on the web (blogs, music, classifieds, events, photos) on top of MySpace’s social layer. When Yahoo launched 360, MSN launched Spaces, and Google launched Okrut, I was shakin in my boots. But quickly I saw that it’s really hard to layer in social to features after the fact. At MySpace we had the luxury of having social first, and building the products on top of that layer. Then I choked and Facebook realized that vision.

But Google+ really seems to be primed to make good on that original premise–that everything gets better when its social. And unlike FB, Twitter, or anyone else, Google already has the most advanced set of products. And if I can clearly see where this is headed, then I think what we are getting is a much better Google. Does that kill FB/Twitter? Who cares? I’d use all 3, but more importantly, I’ll be using Google products I never used, or use them in new, better ways I never used them before.

Oh yah and I love my Google TV ”

-Tom Anderson, Founder of Myspace in a post on G+ on 7/2/11

More interesting reading:

Gina Trapani – Smarterware.org - What Google+ Learned from Buzz and Wave

Google+ Everything You Need to Know – TechRadar.com

Finally Getting Google – BigEvidence – Thom Kennon

Ad Free Google Plus 50 – Chris Brogan

The Top Google+ Tips and Tricks – Ranker.com

Is Google Hangouts It’s Killer App? - Nytimes.com

Google+ Improves on Facebook – David Pogue Review for the NYtimes.com

Google+: The Complete Guide – Ben Parr for Mashable.com

10 Things CMO’s Need to Know About Google+ : Chris Brogan writing for Forbes.com

Google+ is the Social Backbone – Ed Dumbill – O’reilly Radar

The Mylikes_Retweet account on Twitter. Makes publishing an ad almost effortless, and totally fun!

Remember when I wrote about Mylikes, the social media ad platform, that allowed you to leverage your Social Media efforts? Well, I still love it, for all the reasons I mentioned in the post, but I noticed lately I haven’t been as active on it. There are more than a few reasons for this, but one of the biggest was LAZINESS. For one thing I got a new Mac, I didn’t remember my password, and I’d have to walk ALL THE WAY to the next room to log on. Just think of that: I’d rather walk to another room, boot up another computer, than simply reset my password! I just found out last night that I can log in to Mylikes through Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) but I was alway hesitant to do that because when I used that strategy with CinchCast, Cinchcast simply opened up another account for me, instead of linking me to my existing account. Not Mylikes. Simply logon through Twitter or Facebook and it links you to your existing account. Nice.

But it gets even better, and easier.

A Retweet is All it Takes

I noticed the other day that they have set up a special account called @Mylikes_retweet that tweets ads, and all you have to do is simply retweet (use the twitter retweet button) and of course not only is that ad published to all of your followers, any time that it is clicked you earn money! Talk about removing any friction! Not only do you not have to go to Mylikes and pick an ad, the copy is already written for you. And it’s great, eye catching, fun copy that is more conducive to “clicking” (translate, good for publishers!) As a matter of fact when I do it, I almost have to keep myself from clicking the retweet in my own stream (which would be against the rules.)

I love this feature because of its ease, but not only that, it interests me because it shows the innovative nature of the company. I mentioned in my earlier post that the founders, Bindu Reddy and her husband were ex-Googlers and that that fun, innovative approach was in their DNA, just like it is at Google.

Fun is something that is way underestimated, especially in Western Culture. We tend to divide “fun” away from our business life. Almost a firewall between fun, life, and business. But I just finished reading Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,and the secret to Zappos’ culture is just the opposite: Fun, social, caring are intrisic to Zappos’ DNA. In fact it is their business model.

This theme struck a bell inside me earlier this week. I was chatting with a web developer friend. I mentioned that I was looking for a photo editing, creative application that wasn’t so intimidating (and expensive) as Photoshop. He mentioned Pixelmator and after telling me all the nice features about it, at the end in an unconscious exhuberence spouted, “And it’s fun!”

Well, for all the philosophical debate we have over advertising and it’s place, especially in Social Media, what about the philosophy of Fun?

If you are already a member of Mylikes, simply go to @Mylikes_retweet and pick an ad from their tweet stream. Simply retweet it, and see if you don’t have some fun as well as potentially earn some money.

And if you are not a member go sign up here: Mylikes.com (It’s free, and if you sign up with that link, I have a chance to win an iPad2, which you can too once you are a member.)

Update 9/27/11

Here it is in a nutshell. You don’t need to read the rest of this post: Don’t worry about getting followers. Just fill your inbound (who you follow) with cool people your interested in who, and this is key, whose information will somehow make your life better. Help you learn cool new stuff.  That’s how you get value. And the same would go for Google+.

date 6/23/11 -

Just saw this tweet from @steverubel (Good guy to follow) “How To Answer The Question “How Often Should I Tweet?”http://j.mp/kyTYGR ” – Thought it’d be a good and perhaps valuable read for this subject.

Update 2/06/11

If you’re a member of Twitter, then I’m sure you got this email recently from the Twitter team on how to get the best experience from Twitter. I’ve copied and pasted it hear and put my comments in parenthesis:

Happy New Year,

Our resolution is to help you get the most of out of Twitter this year. To start, we thought we’d send this note with four simple suggestions. Come on by our web site to try these out anytime! http://twitter.com

1) Follow your interests. We’ve found that the people who enjoy Twitter most tend to follow a variety of accounts: friends, family, people in their profession, local shops and events, and most importantly, people who share their passions.
(This hasn’t been easy in the past. For the first few years twitter was all “techies”, but now that it is becoming more mainstream, it’s becoming more possible.)

2) Get specific. Like sports? Follow your favorite leagues, teams, players, coaches, commentators, writers and fellow fans. Love food? Follow chefs, restaurants, critics, bloggers, specialty shops and respected foodies.
(Obviously, no-brainer.

3) Don’t panic. People turn to Twitter during emergencies. Snowstorms, power outages and fires are just a few emergencies where Twitter may be helpful. Search for #hashtags and follow local civic accounts to stay informed.

(This may be one of Twitter’s most understated assets. Search in general on Twitter is not that good. But when you are searching for something that is happening right now, it’s fantastic. For instance, my team was playing the other night. Their schedule said it was broadcast on “CSS” which is Comcast something. I don’t have Comcast. I have Dish, but I thought maybe somebody was “Ustreaming” or something. So I did a real time Twitter search (Search is the box at the very top center of the page). Couldn’t find anyone Ustreaming it, but what I did find was even better. Someone tweeted loud and clear, “Arkansas vs Georgia on @ESPN3 tonight” ESPN 3 is the online streaming arm of ESPN. )

4) Return to Twitter. There are about 200 million accounts on Twitter now – that means new interests, new voices, and new ideas every day. We offer services in seven languages, apps for most devices, and SMS worldwide.
(Wow, 200 million is a serious number. But I believe it. Every where I go, everything I hear, Twitter and Facebook are mentioned in the same breath, same tandem. So it makes sense that Twitter would start to be getting “Facebook Numbers” so to speak)

Thanks for being part of Twitter,

@Biz, @Ev, & @Jack
Co-founders, Twitter

Part I: What’s in it for You?

Firstly, I wish the follower counts weren’t listed on Twitter. It becomes an obsession, and it works against the first tenant of how Twitter is best used for the “average” user.

If you are an average human being, who isn’t interested in being “recognized” or being a digital “star” the best way to look at Twitter is simply what value you can attain from it. You shouldn’t care a hoot who or how many people follow you. You should only be concerned about following people who interest you, who can give you value for your life, entertain you, whatever turns you on. You’re first objective is that Twitter should be a pleasure, not a strain. You should look at it as a media source, the same way you look at which book or magazine to buy that will give you those same things.

• So, firstly, you should find 150 or so great people to follow or whatever your “Dunbar” number is, and leave it at that. Don’t follow people just so they will follow you back or just because they are following you.
• You would rather follow 1,000 of the most awesome people in the world and have 0 followers, than have 10,000 followers and be following 5,000 people who tweet things that aren’t adding value to your life.

That really could be the end of it for most of us. Think of Twitter like a book. If you’re reading an awesome book that enriches your life, do you care if that book “Like you back” so to speak, or “follows you back.” Heck no. Even if you were Ashton Kutchner or John Mayer, you would be better off with ZERO followers but following only people who were enriching your life. This really is the top priority of Twitter. What can I get out it that adds to my life. Not, oh, if I can only get Roger Ebert’s or Steve Martin’s attention!

Part II: Your Still Not Satisfied

OK, so you still want to be a “Digital Star” part of the “digerati.” If you do want to attract honest to goodness followers, and by that I mean folks who aren’t following you just so that you follow them back you need to

• Create original content in a subject that you are passionate about, preferably in video format.

It’s easy to tweet interesting content that someone else created, say the New York Times, the Tech Blogs, etc. But everyone is doing that. It’s ok at times, and especially if its something you find truly interesting and that you have actually read yourself and thought about, but people are more interested in the source. They may follow you, but they are listening to and influenced by the source. Because the source is the guy who is passionate about his subject, he’s going to deliver the most interesting, not only content about it, but perspective and opinions about it.

So find your passion, no matter what it is, and create original content around it. It may not be tech or some of the other popular Twitter topics, but even if no one else on Earth was interested in what you were covering (and that’s highly unlikely) at least you’ll be living on the edge of excitement all the time.

And one of the points of Twitter is that you would rather have 1,000 followers who are truly interested in your tweets than 10,000 who are only following you so that you follow them back. That is akin to having a conversation with someone who is only there so that you’ll listen to them.

What are your thoughts about the best way to use Twitter? Love to hear your insights.

Camera+ Shot I Got, and While I Love the Effect, I'd Like to Have the Original Too.

I think every time I see a Tweet or other notification from out in the World of Social Media that is an example of Social Media’s “Shadow” Side, I’ll put in a post. We’ll call it the on going “Shadow Side of Social Media” series, although in some sense, I hate to harp on the negative. Maybe harping on the negative notes, brings more negative notes. Of course to balance it out, I’ll remind myself that Social Media has many positives. If it weren’t for Twitter, for instance, I wouldn’t see Jason Falls‘ experiences, both the negative and the positive, nor his knowledge, which mixed with a network of knowledge is greater than the sum of its parts. So social media is, overall, a Positive force in the Communications Revolution. I stress that to balance things out. But I’ll bring up the negatives sometimes too, if only so that maybe some momentum can be built to correct them.

Hey @posterous Why would the text in my emails not post? All I’ve got is pictures all day. Each one of them had copy with it?! – @JasonFalls

Comment: This reminds me of the time I first tested Evernote. I decided to take a photo inside their application. Bad mistake. When you do something like that you can never recover the JPEG for yourself. Oh, it just so happened to be one of the best, cutest photos of my dog, ever. Now it stuck inside of Evernotes “Notes” folder, server, or whatever they call it. FOREVER. I can’t get it out.

Same thing happens in these iPhone Photo apps like Camera+ and Best Camera. I took this great action shot within Camera + and then played with the effects. Found one that was really cool, hit SAVE. Rut-Roh. After you hit save in those apps, again you’ve lost the original, which I would like to have in this case more than the one that I played with and found an effect for.

At least Jason Falls problem with Posterous, which I think is a great service by the way, nor my problems with Evernote or the photography apps are “intentional” in the sense of being evil, trying to lock you in. But they are lazy. And the shadow demonstrated here is a lack of attention to detail to some of the problems that may occur, and again the over riding theme I see again and again, in the so called Web 2.0 world, lack of appreciation or stewardship to the customer’s data.

Lesson for SmartPhone Users:

• ALWAYS TAKE PHOTOS IN THE PHONES NATIVE PHOTO APP FIRST, THEN OPEN THAT PHOTO IN YOUR FAVORITE APP FOR FURTHER USE. That way you’ll always have the original.

Aspen, stuck inside an Evenote "Note" :***

Lesson for Posterous Users:

Actually I really don’t know. I have a posterous. Its cool and everything, but still, the whole idea of your data going out there on someone else’s servers, I just don’t get sometimes. Why not send it straight to your blog instead? I mean I understand the value of Posterous and Tumblr is that it makes blogs more Social. I get that, and I like it, and I want to try to be more involved in those services going forward, but sometimes it makes me scratch my head why I am sending traffic to those services based on my own data and content. But at least with Jason’s problem above he hasn’t lost any data. Presumably its still on his phone and in his outbox of sent messages on his email server. In his case, its just frustrating to have to do things over again, edit posts that didn’t display correctly, and otherwise not get information out to an audience, in the way that you meant, at the time that you meant.

What are your ideas on Posterous and Tumblr and how one should use them within the context of having your own blog on a server where you control the data?

UPDATE:

Hey, I think I just learned something. In an effort to find that Evernote photograph, I opened my Evernote account for the first time in a year. Well I found the photography of my dog Aspen that I was talking about. It was tied into what they called a ‘note’ Couldn’t find a way to share it or get it out of their system. But I did notice that when I right clicked the photo, it did give me the option to ‘save image as’ or ‘open image in a new tab’ which did allow me to pull the JPG out. Still, the photo, taken on the iPhone 3GS is much grainier than it would have been, if it was simply shot on the iPhone’s camera app. So, a little better, at least than I originally thought.

This is  a VERY cool, and very paradigm shifting new site: Blekko.com. I caught this on John Battelle’s Searchblog tonight, got a beta invite, played with if for a few minutes, caught on quick and already found tons of new cool things that I wouldn’t have found before based on my interests and the ability to filter the searches to give me more accented, tailored, specific results.

Example:

My favorite musician, Josh Rouse. Now with a simple / “slash” I can search for Josh Rouse say only on blogs like so: Josh Rouse/blogs or only in forums like this: Josh Rouse/forums (Click those links to see the results of said searches. I also just Tweeted a link to those results. You get the picture, and that’s just scratching the surface.

New interesting information which is valuable to me as a fan, as an aficionado of said artist, immediately begin popping up at the top, based on my filters.

This is making me feel that giddy, ‘irrationally exuberant’ feeling I initially felt when I tried Google for the first time back in 2000. I felt I had the World at my fingertips back then.

But some kind of sludge in search has slowly happened. Some have blamed it on SEO/SEMs gaming the system so much that the results have slowly deteriorated.

I have no doubt that’s part of it, but shouldn’t Google have been innovating like mad to keep up with the onslaught of deterioration?

I’ll be the first to say that I LOVE so many of Google’s additional services, Gmail, Docs, Voice, all their wonky, data, cloud stuff (not their social) and that to say they shouldn’t have extended their reach beyond search would be like saying Amazon shouldn’t have extended its own reach beyond books, but it does sort of seem like, especially in the last three years of the Social Media threat, that Google has not innovated enough on their main product. It’s kind of like Microsoft jealously chasing everyone else’s success so much, they dropped the ball on their Golden Goose. (They did rally and sell 200m copies of Windows7, but still, no one would deny the mindshare, at least in the U.S. lost to Apple.)

I mean filtered searches seem like such a no brainer that you would have thought Google would have had them in right from the beginning. (Well actually they do, but no one can figure out how to use them, and usually the results come back blank for some reason as if the data base and or code running it act like you’ve done something wrong. It’s like when a car back fires, and you hear what you think is an explosion. Except this explosion is not a band, but a ‘whimper.’

Remember the movie “The Fugitive” with Harrison Ford? One of the best Movies ever. Remember that scene in the Hospital when he’s searching the database for records of people who’ve received prosthetic arms? His first search delivers hundreds, maybe thousands of results. Then he keeps narrowing the search by filters (I can’t remember what the exact filters were, dates other types of subsets) and finally gets down to a manageable number of results, and more importantly, results that have meaning.

Granted it was a movie, but still, that was 1994! People understood even back then before the internet was mainstream, that one of the most valuable automations of computers was search, and that one of the most important features of search were filters.
It’s mind blowing Google hasn’t at least already initiated these kind of easy filters for its flagship product. I assume they will soon and or buy Blekko.

I’ve only used Blekko for a few minutes. I want to use it lots more in coming days, but it already has such polish, and it feels silky smooth and fast, the kind of silky smooth quickness I haven’t experienced since FriendFeed, which for the life of me I can’t figure out why no one can duplicate, not even Facebook itself, which purchased FriendFeed and has one of its founders as its new CTO, Brett Taylor.

Remember how last week Wired published a story about how the Web was dead? Well I didn’t buy it. Thought it was link-baity gibberish for the most part, but it did have some valid points. Steve Jobs didn’t leave out flash because flash was dated. Steve Jobs left out flash to close off, to a large extent, the media distribution ability of the Open Web.
More and more stuff is happening through apps and other such ‘silos’ which does tend to negate the open web.

Well, although Boing Boing had a great rebuttal to the Wired piece, I do believe that if there is a sort of , how shall we say, ‘jaded’ feeling for the Web itself, I do believe a large part of the problem is this lessening of the ability to find the really interesting, cool, exciting stuff. It’s out there, but for some reason our discovery engines, the main one being Google, have somehow become clogged and stale.

I think Blekko, for one, can be like Roto Rooter to this clogged drain. These filtered searches are going to re-invigorate the joy of discovering on the open web, and in turn re assert the open web’s, if not dominance, at least equal importance to “apps” in this ever evolving, every life changing, and ever standard-of-living-increasing thing we call the Communications Revolution.

Google said their mission statement was to uncover the Worlds information, or something to that effect. Well they are doing a lot of other good things, but their eye, at least lately, has been off that ball at least in the long tail stuff, which are the hidden treasures. Maybe its time for a new leader. Maybe Blekko’s it.

Oh, I’ve got 5 invites. Just email, tweet, or leave a comment, if you would like one.

Update 9/2/10 From my incoming traffic I found this page that is loaded with good information about Blekko over the last few days. Links to 10-15 stories written about it in blogs and a ton of ‘real time’ reactions based on the hash tag #blekko. I wish I could just copy and paste everything from this page and post here, but I wouldn’t feel right. Here is the full URL:

http://www.skrenta.com/2010/09/blekko_coverage_and_twitter_gl.html

You know I was just thinking, I wonder if you could create a cool page like that in Paper.li or really just using Blekko.com itself using the “/” syntax.

Yeah you can. Just check this out:  http://beta.blekko.com/ws/blekko+/twitter

Oh here’s a Paper.li I just created for the hashtag #Blekko. Pretty cool, although not filled with as much content as I would have expected.

Update Thursday Aug. 26th 2010 – As you can see I wrote this Sunday the 22nd the day after Leo’s blog post. I was a bit too negative and ranting. So I sat on it a few days. Read the always non- controversial Louis Gray’s piece that was also in response to Leo’s original piece Soaked it in. All in all, I’d rather have had Twitter and Facebook over the last few years than not. They are exciting in many ways. Facebook’s like rediscovering old friends. Twitter is new friends. There have been a lot of positive experiences. Still I’ll publish the original rant I felt and wrote Sunday pretty much unchanged, because going forward these negative issues are important and need to be addressed and kept in mind.

Original Post from Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

Leo Laporte’s post yesterday “Buzz Kill” about how Google Buzz had failed him recently, and more importantly how Social Media had failed him in general, really got me thinking.

A) I totally agree with him. He nailed it. You should read the piece. We put all this energy into “Social Media” and what do we have to show for it? That information and energy goes into a vacuum, a black hole, if you will, and never comes back out again.

It’s our energy that’s creating the value in these networks, the content, and not only are we not compensated for our energy, we’re practically slapped in the face for it. “Who the heck are you, you pion with your 50 followers? You worthless piece of nothing loser! Why can’t you be more like Aplusk or John Mayer with their millions of followers or at least a porn star with their thousands? Yeah, you heard me, you’re not even worth what a porn star is worth in our eyes!”

Dial it down, Stephen. Dial it down! OK, I’ll meditate on it a few days before posting this, but isn’t that what Twitter, if not literally,  seems figuratively to be screaming at us all day long?

If they hadn’t had the followers number highlighted would the service have taken off? I don’t think so. So Twitter had to appeal to a lowest common denominator “High School Popularity Contest” mentality to, not only make it work, but for it to keep working.

When I first joined Twitter in early 2007 thanks to following early adopters like Leo and Scoble, I thought, “How cool is this? Even though no one in my small town knows about this, I can do all kinds of cools things.” I had always noticed how inspirational or ‘insightful” thoughts would come to me when I least expected them, usually when I was out somewhere in my car, at dinner with friends, etc. and now I could simply text such thoughts to my Twitter account and retrieve them later for expanding. Or if I simply wanted to remember something cool that I saw or heard while out. Just tweet and retrieve. A repository of my daily life, my existence, my continuum, my stream of consciousness.

But where are these insights, these things I wanted to remember, this digital outline of my life that I so dutifully recorded the last 3 years? Gone. I can’t retrieve them. I can’t search them. I can’t find them. And even though one hears that Twitter has been working on such a feature that will be released ‘sometime’ in the future, its like “Gee thanks Twitter, it’s my information, for God’s sakes. I don’t need it some time in the future. I need it now, and every day since I’ve been using your service, feeding your service, so that you could sell me out down the river to Microsoft and Google with your ‘firehose.’

If instead all of this info had flowed into my blog, it would still be there, searchable, mine, the true archive and repository that it was meant to be. Some will say, “Well that is the price you pay for ‘free’”

Oh yeah really? You know, I’m not the biggest fan of Ma.tt in the world, but look at WordPress.com. Totally free. Holds at least a thousand if not a million times more information than Twitter or Facebook, and it yours, you control it. You can put it in and you know you can always get it out. He’s not selling your information to third parties for his gain. He’s upselling (the freemium model) on additional features and using the popularity of the WordPress site and name to make a cut on Web Hosting purchases for those who choose to self host their wordpress blog. He’s Smith Barney. He’s making his money the ‘Old Fashioned’ way.

But look, this is not an attack on Twitter, per se. Facebook is 10x as bad. At least Twitter is semi part of the ‘Open Web.’ Facebook hides behind its wall, not because it wants to protect the privacy of its users, but because it wants to protect its monopoly at the expense of its users. You post a picture into Facebook, it ain’t comin out again. You post a video into a Facebook, not only is it not coming out again, you can’t even SHARE the damn thing with the internet. I mean, how evil is that? That is crazy evil. All the comments and exchanges and time you put into writing messages on the Twitter or Facebook platform? They’re not yours. They belong to these companies. And they can and do disappear at the drop of a hat.

Not to single out Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, Flickr, (just go to Scoble’s Google Profile to see a list of every Web 2.0/Social Media company that’s every existed) just to name a few are all the same. ‘Evil’ gets thrown around a lot. That’s too strong. ‘Evil’ is Hitler. How about ‘Unethical’? More interested in building a brand, a critical mass or ‘network’ effect as they call it, ala the Zeitgeist of the ‘Start Up’ crowd, so they can have a profitable ‘exit’ and IPO rather than being ‘into’ it and wanting to build something cool to benefit the user him or herself.

Instead of screwing with the granularity of your main page or account, confusing and aggravating the users, all that Facebook has to do is have two separate pages for each user: one completely private (except for those one chooses to be friends with), and the other completely open and connected to the open web. They already have this feature in “Pages.” All they have to do is tell people that this is your private page, and this other is your public page. To encourage users to create a public page, make the public page the only place that is searchable in Google or the open web. If only 10% of users choose to have a public page, you’ve got an automatic Twitter in one day. But to encourage even further adoption, innovate and iterate the public pages like crazy, and also tell the users, they must have a public page in order to search the public database. If the only way people can search and more importantly gain value from the Facebook public database, and the network effect that goes with it, is to have a public facing page, I can guarantee you 90% of users will adopt it.

What does this approach do?

• It restores user trust. If you’re main account is completely locked down, not even searchable, you will also gain more users. My sister doesn’t belong to Facebook. She doesn’t trust it. Maybe it’s too late, but if trust were restored, she and millions of others, who don’t even consider Facebook and option, may join. But even if they don’t, you’ve restored trust in your main user base.
• When users have a clear choice, they are going to contribute more value to the eco system. I recently heard Deepak Chopra quote, “A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” This manipulation of users to “trick” them into sharing things in public, only makes them more reticent, if not in fact close their account, to share anything useful.
• You’ve simplified things. Not all those “sliders” to give everyone a headache over their account settings. The main account is completely private except for friends. The public page is completely open. No frustration or headaches. The simplicity will make the value of the network effect and the eco-system, and possibly even the number of users, explode.

When Facebook aquired FriendFeed last year, I thought this was the approach they were going to take. Dead simple. Everyone would have their private account and then a separate public page that would essentially be FriendFeed, with all its value of search algorithms that I had thought simply nailed Social search, and would not only prove fruitful to a business model, but also provide even more value to the user. The perfect recipe for “win, win”, the exact recipe for applying Google’s search model to Social Search.

Instead, they seemed, and even more so now after F8, to move in the opposite direction. Screwing with everyone’s main account, violating that sacred trust that enabled them to get such a large user base in the first place, and what is more, doing nothing with “Pages.” And now it seems after F8, “Pages” are almost being discouraged in favor of the “Likes” implementation. I guess they figure that anyone with a public page already has a website, and instead, why not just encourage them to virtually turn that open page into a Facebook page with the “Likes” implementation? Sounds good. But what are the implications? What happens when I the individual user clicks the “Likes” button? Is all my information being shared with third parties? What happens when that gets out, and every headline across the country screams, “Don’t click the ‘Like’ button!” Turns what might have been a useful thing for not only the user, but also the Facebook brand, into a liability, not to mention simply just bad Karma.

I don’t know Marc Zuckerburg, or know what his values are. If they are indeed, “evil,” a term the industry labels a company that tries to make their money through manipulation, then I guess this post is like talking to a tree. For even if they do “Correct Course,” as Dana Boyd, Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, and many other smart prognosticators predict they will do, does it matter? This is indeed one of the salutary effects of a free market: Consumer push back and the realization that the big money is in making the “right” choices, forces a company to change or be in danger of losing its business. In a true free market, what’s right for the company is aligned with what is right for the consumer. But still, if Facebook is the “it” company of the next decade, and only the market is forcing them to make the right choices, the internet won’t hold in its hands a very transcendent leader. “He who is forced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”

The internet and the communications revolution is truly a place of infinite possibilities, almost a metaphor itself for the “Quantum Effect,” which states that, even in a complete vacuum, even in complete nothingness, (which is not to be imagined as a patch of empty space, because in nothingness, even space doesn’t exist), the idea of symmetry must exist, and the slightest break in it, which must occur, leads to an explosion of infinite proportions.

I would argue that Facebook would be of greater value and in turn be capable of making even more money than they ever imagined, by doing it the old fashioned way: providing value, innovating, and being completely transparant. Good will translates into cash in all sectors of a truly free market, but even exponentially so in the freest of free markets, one where “choice” and “free will” is the highest value: the internet. The Communications Revolution.

What do you think?

I was thinking about this subject tonight, that there is no way such closed systems as Twitter and Facebook can survive the force of the open Internet in the coming years with the price of data, storage, and bandwidth all marching toward near zero cost, much less be an Eco System or “Platform.”

As these communication and computation costs lower each
year, it will drive so much innovation, the walls will be torn down.

See, what is exactly the value proposition of a closed network such as Twitter or Facebook?

A) The Network Effect.

The Network Effect, or “Metcalfe’s Law” says that the value of a network equals the number of users it has squared. Obviously, the more users the more exponentially the value of said network increases. Facebook has 400million users. Twitter around 50million. You might think Facebooks network effect is tremendously greater than Twitters, but Facebook is a much more closed network. On average a typical user may have 100 “friends” or network connections. On Twitter you can connect to virtually anyone on the network simply by “following” them. It doesn’t have to be a reciprocal agreement. Everyone on the network is accessible to you. This means Twitter’s more open Network is of far greater value than Facebook’s larger but more closed Network. That’s why Facebook is in a tremendous frenzy to open their network more through “Pages” “Facebook Connect” and changing the default privacy settings.

So if Twitter’s vastly smaller, but vastly more open network has more Network Effect value what does that mean? The more open a “network” is, the more valuable that it is. This means there is an incentive to build a completely open network. So one will be built, or shall we say, not built, but merely “facilitated” because the act of building one implies some degree of closed. The completely open network already exists. It’s called the Internet.

We all know how many users and how much traffic Facebook has every month. They say its like an upward hockey stick. But how much value are Twitter and Facebook giving off each month?

And how much traffic and how many users does Internet, Inc. have?

Basically you trade your identity and your content for their network effect. Also they throw in their bandwidth, storage, and programming. As of now this has value, plenty of it and that’s why you see the spike in these “networks’” traffic.

But now the process of them selling you down the river begins. They figure they’re giving you network effect, bandwidth, and storage for free in exchange for them selling your content. Sounds fine, right?

But the problem is innovation will drill a hole into any walled garden. Quickly, innovation will fork around sand boxed networks and find ways to connect people without them giving up their identity or their content. Each day, storage and bandwidth prices drop. They are heading rapidly to zero. So that part of the economic proposition is losing weight very quickly as well.

Twitter isn’t the network. Facebook isn’t the network. The network is the network.

Even the mighty Apple, as much as I am blown away by this iPad I’m typing on, can’t survive this onslaught of the open web. For instance, tonight I was watching a TV show on the wonderful ABC app and it occurred to me that I was being forced to watch the commercial because I couldn’t minimize the browser. it felt Pavlovian to me, being trained by the nature of the device, forcing me to behave in a way I didn’t want or like.

I don’t think the user will put up with theses strategies for long, and I’m sure the open web will come to the rescue.

It also occurred to me tonight that Gmail keeps 5 years and 25,000 of my emails forever available and searchable and yet Twitter only let’s me go back and see a few weeks of my Tweets, with a substandard if not plain archaic search system.

That’s just plain lack of innovation. And Facebook is hardly better.

Technology, driven by innovation as it is, is a poor place for a lock in business model. Technology doesn’t want to be trapped, and will eventually fork around it’s captors.

Sent from my iPad