Will FriendFeed be as kind as Twitter? May 13, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
Just read this piece about FriendFeedLinks on TechCrunch and the first thought I had was — will FriendFeed have a problem with this? After all, could you imagine a MicrosoftLinks or GoogleLinks?
Corporate lawyers live for this kind of stuff. But that was before Twitter.
Twitter really changed things by not going after 3rd-party services and the companies who used their name or likeness. Twittermail, Twitterrific, TwitterSecret — the list goes on and on. I believe the jury is still out on this trademarkless strategy as they can never reign it back in. True, they have allowed an incredible Twitter ecosystem to be created with so many tools and services they could have never built, but if the time comes where they need to expand their footprint, can they do it without squashing a friendly complementary service? I suppose they can buy out the good ones, but they can’t buy everything around them. And they clearly can’t put the genie back in the bottle and try to protect their trademark.
So, I’m intrigued to see if Twitter started a trend here by encouraging (or maybe it was just dumb-luck ignoring) unaffiliated hackers to use their name — or are the lawyers at FriendFeed just getting warmed up? The founders are from Google after all, and the company had a lot of experience in trademark law, albeit, defending their own trademark violations.
The Dark-Side, Dick Cheney equivalent is Facebook. If you’ve developed an application on Facebook or even tried running an ad, you know what I mean. They are the anti-Twitter where you can’t even use the word “face” in your app name or ad text. They allowed RockYou’s SuperWall and Slide’s FunWall as an application, but you can’t use the word “wall” in an ad. WTH?
I’ll give FriendFeed a couple of weeks to respond to FriendFeedLinks and if they do nothing, I call dibs on FriendFeederrific.
UPDATE: Saw Louis Gray had a mention about FriendFeedMachine today (and he wrote about them last month), so I guess FriendFeed is letting the trademark go and going the way of Twitter.
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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
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.