I don’t need a special UI for my iPhone, thanks May 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentWith the Safari browser and the iPhone’s sweet touch screen functionality, I can look at any web page and do what I would do on a laptop. Granted, browsing on the AT&T Edge network can try your patience, but when connected to wi-fi (and soon 3G), the browsing speed is perfectly reasonable.
So, it bothers me somewhat when I land on a site and they serve up an “optimized” UI for mobile devices (try MSNBC from your phone). Typically, there is less functionality available to you and in the MSNBC’s case, it won’t let you switch to the standard UI from a mobile device. I have the same issue with Twitter where the mobile UI doesn’t have the functions and details seen on the standard UI such as Reply, Delete, and how it was sent (Twirl, MessageDance, etc.).
If I choose the “Standard” UI option for Twitter on my iPhone, it works perfectly fine. Sure, maybe it’s small but two quick taps on the screen and it zooms in.
There was a lot of buzz yesterday about the availability of FF to Go which is an optimized FriendFeed UI for mobile devices. It lacks several of the features found in the standard UI, most notably search. Standard FriendFeed looks and works great on my iPhone.
At MessageDance, we believe in the future that the iPhone has brought us. Web companies don’t need to develop special UIs for mobile devices because the browsing abilities on ALL devices will move towards what the iPhone offers today. The same is true for companies that build resident application clients for mobile devices. Why not just take advantage of the native applications on the device? All you need is a good browser to access an application and an email client to use as an integration layer. Wi-fi is becoming ubiquitous so being connected all of the time seems less like a dream. Execution is critical; develop your applications accordingly.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
It’s the blog, stupid! May 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 3comments
The title is apropos for the election season, but I'm going to propose an idea here and I hope to get some feedback. Lots of people are talking about the disconnect with comments and conversations happening on Twitter, FriendFeed, and their blog. For example, you make a blog post and (with MessageDance automatically) it goes to Twitter (and thus to FriendFeed), people can comment about it on your blog, Twitter, and FriendFeed (and on MessageDance.com). Big-time fracturing of comments. Since you started with your blog, shouldn't you be able to stay on your blog and see all of the comments come back to your blog? There should be no reason why you have to monitor everything to see what people think about what you said — just have it fed back into your blog.
Your blog is the center of your universe
When you post your blog entry, wouldn't it be right to have it say on Twitter that it came "from {your blog name}"? Not from Twirl, the web, or MessageDance — it is actually you and your blog that created the content — you should get the credit! When someone comments on FriendFeed, shouldn't that go back to your blog as a comment, regardless if it was your original post or on a Google Reader reblog by someone else? Same is true for a Twitter reply. Heck, why not make tweets, @ replies, and FriendFeed posts directly from your blog for that matter.
To steal a late 90's term, your blog should be your portal. You start with it everyday and you don't need to leave it to keep up with your friends and your conversations. Your blog is all about you. Keep it all together.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
I sense a disruption in The Force! May 9, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says he will reinvent Nokia into an Internet company as detailed by Anders Bylund of Ars Technica. It’s a clear reaction to the success of the iPhone (with the frenzy of activity around jailbreaking it and the new SDK), the poorly kept rumor about the Google Phone along with the Android platform, and of course the decreasing margins that always come with hardware. I disagree a bit with Nokia’s intention to not innovate in hardware design and Anders’ thought that mobile devices will converge to basically the same feature set because there is a lot to be done in the area of usability and power consumption that a device maker could still differentiate itself greatly. The iPhone is an incredible step forward but there is obvious room for improvements such as data input and power usage.
ALL mobile phones are fast becoming mobile computers (not limited to “smart phones”) with incredible power, storage, and Internet capabilities. While I believe you can still set yourself apart as a manufacturer, it will be the services and software native to the phone that will be an even stronger selling point. For web companies, why build an app or user interface specific to each device when a really good Internet browser is all you need? Safari on the iPhone proves this. Why build a special mobile data integration layer for each device when you can just use the email client native to the phone? Web companies should build their site and services with this in mind and the device/platform companies should optimize their native apps and OS for these simple requirements.
At MessageDance, we recognize that the browser and email are the apps found on virtually every PC and soon on every mobile device. We’re not too keen on being device-specific so we use the ubiquitous tools already available and everyone knows. Using the “Share” feature found on many social sites like YouTube and Digg (and probably on all sites sooner rather than later), our users can send their favorite content to their favorite social destination or their friends’ by using their MessageDance email address. They can create a blog post from their iPhone or Facebook Messages section by simply emailing it to “blog @ messagedance.com“. The blog post also can go automatically to Twitter. All of this is done by a simple yet powerful email address.
Nokia senses the disruption caused by the iPhone and Google. They believe the higher margin business will come from the platform and services built on top of their devices. This is a natural evolution as witnessed in the PC business as well with IBM focusing more on software and services. I hope they will continue to innovate on the devices as well as make the platform and native apps stronger so companies like MessageDance can innovate and develop their offerings to be useful anywhere and from any device.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
Email is the Internet’s natural integration layer April 29, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 1 comment so farNo matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to shake off email. While it basically hasn’t changed much in 15 years, it serves its promise of delivering data very effectively. It certainly has its issues with spam, but if email is used in the context of an integration layer for the Internet, its future has never been brighter.
Brad Feld shouts “I Love Email“:
Every now and then the “Email is dead” meme makes the rounds and lights up TechMeme. The right answer isn’t that “email is dead”; it’s that new and exciting stuff is happening around the use of “messaging” and it’s time for some new innovation.
His partner Chris Wand of Foundry Group goes further:
In a time when many folks view Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as the new darlings of the Internet, we still believe that email has been and will long continue to be one of the Internet’s few enduring killer apps.
The keyword that Chris uses there is “Internet”. Email is an Internet app. Its largest value isn’t on the desktop; it’s the ability to transport data.
TripIt has it right with using email as the input mechanism for user data into their system with a transformed output delivered back to the user. Their presentation at Web 2.0 Expo is right on the mark.
At MessageDance, we use email as the engine for our users to share content from their social sites to wherever they choose it to go. They each have a powerful email address (”you”@messagedance.com) they can use to share conversations, videos, and blog posts from sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Digg. Their sharing doesn’t have to start from an email client, but when it does, it can be very powerful, as this blog entry itself was fully written and posted from my Gmail account, including image placements, tagging, and category assignment. It also went to my Twitter account automatically.
It’s great to see our private beta users really spanning the spectrum in the email clients they use and the integrated services they are sharing from. Here are samples I’ve pulled from the shameless snippets we add to the end of their blog posts created with MessageDance.
We’re just getting warmed up, so stay tuned for more innovations in the way you will use email in the future.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail
An argument for the opposite of Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed April 22, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 6commentsDon’t get me wrong, there is absolute value in knowing what my friends, colleagues, and people-I-pine-to-be-like are talking about. But not everyone who is in my circle uses an aggregator to follow me. I have friends who see my Twitter tweets. Some people see my updates on Facebook. I’d like to think people see my stuff on MySpace, but I doubt it (except maybe Lola and Cheyenne). I also have this blog, which is how my mother keeps up with me when I don’t call and return emails. Separately updating each social site, morphing the content to fit each format, is painful, tedious, and unlikely.
Inward-Out
Publishing my rich content and messages to all (or just some) of my social destinations in a single post is the opposite of the aggregators. They are Outward-In (not that there is anything wrong with that). MessageDance is Inward-Out.
The Middleware of the Internet
The key to this sexy processing comes from an unsexy tool — email. Email is still the killer-app. It is the most ubiquitous, under-utilized, and abused tool in everyone’s toolbox. When most people think of email, they think of spam. The beauty of using email in the context of MessageDance is that an email inbox is never the final destination of a message or content that has been shared. MessageDance uses the really good part of email which is its ability to transport data in the simplest of fashions. Along its journey, MessageDance transforms the format of the content for its final destination.
Portable and Powerful Email Address
Now there is great power in just an email address. You don’t need to start your sharing from an email client. Start in Facebook and send your extra-facebook messages, blog posts, tweets from the native Facebook messaging app. Stay on YouTube.com and share a video to Twitter by just using your MessageDance email handle. Hell, blog from Amazon.com if you must. Besides signing-up and adding a few settings, you never really need to use MessageDance.com or your email client — and still reap powerful Anywhere to Anywhere sharing.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail
What is a User in Web 2.0? March 19, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentWhile we’re in private beta, we’ve been limiting the amount of users into MessageDance so we can gather good feedback from a semi-controlled group. When the time is right we’ll open it up and start to count users to demonstrate traction. In doing research as to what a “user” is in Web 2.0 services, it seems to be a very squishy term. It’s pretty clear that some companies count pretty much anyone who types in something into one of their webpages as a user. How else could a comment-enhancer for blogs have 325,000 users (back in June 2007)?
I got a chuckle out of Vimeo’s claim of 7 billion users which has to be an attention-grabber number only (it worked) since there are a couple billion less people on Earth. Wikipedia has them at a more down-to-earth number of 275,000 users.
It’s a wild time in Web 2.0 where many user numbers I see out there don’t pass the snicker-test.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail
The Twitter Demographic February 21, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : Off Topic , 1 comment so farI was checking out the US presidential candidates presence on various social media. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook accounts. I don’t think John McCain is on any of them as the ones I found are likely spoof accounts.
As a candidate, you can have your young, hip staff create these sites for you, but the staff can’t make them popular. Clinton’s Facebook profile has 120,000 supporters while Obama’s has 600,000. Definitely a good following for both. Obama’s substantial lead is an indication of his appeal to the Facebook demographic (not sure what this really is anymore but let’s say it’s primarily 21-34 year olds — which I am not a member, sadly). His lead over Clinton gets very interesting when looking at Twitter.
Hillary Clinton has only 473 followers on Twitter. I’m pretty sure this is her official Twitter profile as it is the most popular Clinton one and the tweets seem official (albeit boring as hell). Now looking at Barack Obama’s, he has 6,661 followers (some are pretty interesting)! Clearly, a domination in this demographic. Which leads of course to, what is the “Twitter demographic”? Lonely, Prius-driving, 20-somethings (Barack’s base!) is a popular consensus, but Twitter is becoming pretty mainstream pretty fast. I don’t have an empirical stereotypical profile for the demographic, but it is clearly somehow favored to Obama.
The gap between Clinton and Obama on Twitter really deserves some analysis. One thing I noticed is that if you follow Obama, he’ll follow you back. Clinton doesn’t do this, so maybe Barack’s approach has some appeal for people to tell others that they can have him follow them too. Also, his tweets are inspiring and informative, while Hillary’s sound like a to-do list.
If I were an aspiring intern on the Obama campaign, I’d do a quick research study to find out why he is dramatically more appealing to the Twitter crowd than Clinton. Take the results to the campaign leadership (go over your boss’ head if you have to) and outline a targeted campaign for volunteers and votes. You will be guaranteed a plum position in an Obama administration. And when you figure out the Twitter demographic and get your promotion, please send me the research results so I can target the same people. Thanks and you’re welcome.
Business model based on another’s shortcomings? January 22, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentI saw the announcement when I logged into Twitter about their service going down for two hours tonight.
This isn’t something new as we all heard about their outage during the MacWorld conference as well as a general trend of their uptime edging more towards downtime. It got me thinking about business models that focus heavily on another company’s shortcomings. I guess that is really how startups get their start anyway because one’s failings create opportunities.
At MessageDance, we have a new service that sends our users’ messages to Twitter (by email or through MessageDance.com) and will batch them up for delivery if Twitter is down. This is great during periods when Twitter has these infrastructure issues, but what about when they get it together? If you’re a one-trick pony company, then that’s about it for you. Your best hope is for grabbing as many users as you can and then figure out how to serve them after the storm has passed (any good examples out there?). The good thing about us is that it is just a nice feature that came about because of another’s shortcoming, but it isn’t the meat of our offering — it’s still all about Just One Email.