BrandToBeDetermined

Knols Authors will be Biased, but Wikipedia is Crazy

  The Entrepreneur 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

Google announced "knols", which is a site where people can contribute on topics, or knols, they are familiar with. Very similar to Wikipedia. The google blog describes knols as:

... a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. ...

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

and

All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Now - first I do agree that the zealots at wikipedia are a bit crazy. For example the Houston Technology Center as I write this does NOT have a wikipedia page? Do they add it themselves and get yelled at for bias? How is this problem solved? Wikipedia has no facility to solve it beyond hoping a non-HTC person adds the page and then vets it for bias. So this model, while obviously powerful and prolific, has obvious flaws.

Knols on the other hand takes the dangerous step of revenue sharing with the authors.

OpenSocial APIs Published on Google Code

After all of the OpenSocial hype, I was pretty excited this morning when OpenSocial's API and video training went live on the net. (youTube OpenSocial video is a bit bigger)

As a recap - OpenSocial is a way for developers to develop applications that can be used on multiple social web sites. So you can write once, and have it work on linkedin or orkut or a host of other providers.

This is a good thing. Even if you aren't a developer - you want happy developers because they can do more to serve you at a lower cost. And everyone likes low cost / high value propositions, right?

My personal interest is to be able to leverage OpenSocial to extend the functionality of Tendenci for associations. Our company of course wrote Tendenci starting over six years ago, but luckily it is very object based and can already authenticate against several different APIs. So our programming team is quite busy right now. And this too is a good thing.

Thanks Google!

Club Rights Extended to Visitors; the Open Social Dilemma

  American Kennel Club Hounds 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

I woke up around 3:30 AM today thinking about three concepts.

1. Club Rights and their extension to visitors. More on this below.
2. Familiar Stranger concept (Milgram) and;
    
3. Open Social and it's implications on concepts 1 and 2 in social software.

By the extension of club rights to visitors I am referring to our tendency to "take into the fold" a stranger based on certain criteria. So a police officer from Detroit will be given a pat on the back and treated as "one of our own" when visiting a police officer's pub in New York. "Club rights" have been extended to the visitor because of her status as a police officer.

Goffman on club rights

It is interesting to note that when teammates come into contact with a stranger who is their colleague, a sort of ceremonial or honorific team membership may be temporarily accorded the newcomer. This is a visiting-fireman complex whereby teammates treat their visitors as if he had suddently come into very intimate and long-standing relationships with them. Whatever their associational prerogatives, he tends to be given club rights. - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman, pg 162

So we "take care of our own" even if they are strangers.

The second concept has been talked about more frequently and it is the Familiar Stranger. We all have experienced this. The person you see in building year after year but never talk to. Yet when you stumble into them on the metro in Paris you are like "wow! How are you! What a coincidence! My name is Bob. Do you want to travel together?" - so suddenly this stranger is your best friend given the foreign location. We, as humans, are quite odd actually. OK, back to the subject.

Time.

With both club rights and the familiar stranger time is the un-talked-about variable. We extend club rights to the visiting fireman if he is VISITING. If he moves to our town and takes a job as a gym manager, well, he is out of the club. Extension of club rights is temporary. If he wants to live here he must join the club.

More after the jump.

"Pimp My Non Profit" Panel for SXSW 08 Makes the List!

  light at the end of the sxsw tunnel 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

Yea! The SXSW 2008 Panel initial results are in and the Pimp My Non Profit Panel made the list! WHOOOOOOOP! The initial SXSW panel list, subject to change of course, is posted on the SXSW site.

As a recap, the topic for the Pimp My Non Profit panel is:

Non profit groups struggle with funding and public support issues on a daily basis. Yet many have overcome the odds and made a splash online and offline by using the latest Web technologies -- for pennies on the dollar. This discussion will center around the stories, strategies, triumphs and challenges of innovative non profits with a passion for change and the cajones to rock it out online.

I am the official "cat herder" as the moderator. The panelists planned are (note - Seth was unavailable due to travel so Michaela is joining us - Thanks Michaela!):

Beth Kanter, bethkanter.org
Rachel Weidinger, Strategy for Social Entrepreneurs and on Netsquared here.
Michaela Hackner, Girls with Macs and World Learning.
Erin Denny, Senior Product Manager, YouthNoise Initiatives

So a couple shout outs. First - thanks to Netsquared, Britt, Marnie, Beth, Katie, Jason. Beth also introduced me to Michaela who I am really looking forward to meeting in person soon. A special THANK YOU to Katie as she is the one who came up with the "Pimp My Non Profit" theme and panel description.

OK, now before Britt says anything I need to go and actually post to the Netsquared blog for a change!

The photo? Just a good visual to go with the LONG WAIT between the panel picker votes closing and the announcements. Thanks for the hard work Hugh! I can't imagine SXSW panel selection is easy!

facebook monetization slideshare

Via Beth, slideshare with a slide on monetization of facebook applications.

Spammers! Come Quick! New Twitter Tracking!

I definitely enjoy twitter. But boy, they need to be careful with this recent tracking update. As I understand it, if I follow phrase on twitter I can see all updates that contain that phrase even if I am NOT following that person. First the email announcement from biz:

Tracking Twitter We're really excited about this new feature which allows anyone to track concepts in real time over SMS or IM. Tell Twitter what words or phrases you're interested in and you'll receive updates containing those words the instant anyone Twitters them. One of the most popular words being tracked by people right now is "overheard." Send "track overheard" to Twitter to find out why. (Send "untrack" if you change your mind and "stats" to get a list of words you track.)   (emphasis added)

Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out everyone is going to track their name and their brand names. So if you want to spam the world with pro-DRM-content all you do is post about @scoble and everyone tracking that phrase receives it.  

As Clay says, spam is part of the system. Google alerts work because they filter them for crap based on their existing algorithms. It will be interesting to see how twitter does.  Bottom line: the Twitter tracking feature is a Great Feature, but ONLY IF you have akismet spam filtering technology enabled. If not, not so good. This is going to be a problem Biz!

As for me, well I have some twitter alerts to set up! You didn't think I wasn't going to try it out, did you?

Social Software in the News

A couple of articles of note regarding Social Software.

1. TechCrunch round up on Yahoo Mosh and Google Social Stream
2. Yahoo Mosh itself (requires login that I don't have - yahoo id does not work apparently)
3. Google's Social Stream
4. Media 3.0 with a few related items

Back in Houston from iPhoneDevCamp. Lots of iPhone APPs to check out!

Microsoft Research Shuts Down AURA

Microsoft Research Communities shut down the AURA project on June 30th! This was news to me as I just saw it last weekend at the Communities and Technologies conference. Here is a description of AURA from the Microsoft Research Site:

AURA - Allows populations using mobile devices to collectively author and access annotations on physical objects.

What they mean in English is that "AURA let you scan stuff at the grocery store. Upload images like Flickr and provide ratings on the objects." So in theory you could walk around Wal-Mart rating objects real time and perhaps connect with someone in the store who had experience with that particular object. Diapers are expensive you know.

Anyway, this is what the AURA page now says:

Microsoft Research AURA project and all AURA services have terminated as of June 30, 2007. The Microsoft Research Community Technologies Team thanks you for your interest in this research project, and hopes that it has been a valuable resource. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or feedback.

So, if you are thinking about this as a business model perhaps think again?

One thing that I *know* was broken with the AURA model was the "last mile" - it only worked on Windows Mobile Devices. And even those needed lenses to allow the camera to focus on something as close as a barcode. So it wasn't convenient. And now it is gone. Hmmm.

Naomi Tamar Nathan - born and twitterred

Marc Nathan just twittered this - how cool! Congratulations Marc!

marc1919   Naomi Tamar Nathan - born 7:46am 7lbs. 8oz 20in long - perfect health 10 fingers and 10 toes all in the right places!   5 minutes ago from txt                      

Viewing Class Divisions in Social Software

For those interested in the field, this thought provoking essay on class divisions and social software is well worth a read.