At web2.0 Expo SF Keynote Jonathan Schwartz of Sun in conversation with Tim O'Reilly

I am blogging live from Web2.0 Expo SF today!

Its interesting how we can see how many people are registered for each event on crowdwine, ahead of the actual event. Think of connecting with like-minded people at a conference!

Jennifer Pahlka (CMP) and Brady Forrest (O'Reilly Media, Inc.) are setting the stage with details on where we can provide feedback libe on twitter etc.

A Conversation with Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.) is happening now!
294 attendees signed up ahead of time, 1000+ are in the room.

I am taking video of part of the presentation, will upload and youtube and link here, I can do better justice to this conversation.

They are talking about Sun using blogs, MySQL purchase, Greening of Data infrastructure (eg Niagara platform which went to $1B run rate in 18mo) .... Jonathan is smart and knows where is taking Sun and has a clear pulse of where the market is going and is confident to influence it by blogging and creating a context where other people can think the way he wants the world to be.

Tim wants us to twitter @timoreilly your questions right now!

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh talks about opening Yahoo at Web2.0 Expo SF

It was a good vision and a good presentation. Yahoo announced opening up Search Monkey for Developers as the first step.


I had blogged last Oct about my dream for the Social Email Graph (SEG) and particularly how its a low hanging fruit for Yahoo!

Wow! Yahoo can lead the market to open up search and email, won't that be cool!

What MySpace Knows by Steve Pearman (MySpace)

Web 2.0 Expo has these 5 minute segments on "What a company knows". I am live blogging the Myspace 5 min segment.

Steve Pearman started as a Product Manager then head of Products and now SVP of Product Strategy at Myspace. He shared stats on scale of Myspace.

Steve was personable and very sincere and did justice to his 5 minutes. Looks like Myspace is serious about listening to users and managing spam, we need to watch out!

Summary:
Privacy, Spam controlled from developers and users are the major user concerns.
On what lessons learned from community building on myspace:

• Vibrant communities allow for self expression
• Operating community is difficult and more difficult by scale
• Live and die by goodwill and participation of community, never as good as them.
• Listen to community. How?
• Community tells you indirectly - 10Bil structured public data, millions of comments, directly users tell Tom.
• Major changes, Tom posts blog and gets user feedback.
• Check your ego at the door.

Web2.0 Keynote A Conversation with Marc Andreessen

I am blogging live from Web2.0 Expo SF.

I caught some of Marc Andreessen's keynote structured as a conversation with John Battelle .

Marc was pitching for Ning here are some highlights of his conversation:

• He summarized it as a platform, open with interoperable data, part of Opensocial
• Growth of 1 Million users/day and 1000s of networks added/day.
• He compared with Facebook and made it sound like a past on how they built social networks and Ning was the future. It sure helps justify Ning's valuation to be built upon Facebook model
• Ning has been validated Valley style by their recent round of funding.
• Marc seems to have made a comment that Ning's funding was for an upcoming economic downtime. He explained this very articulately.
  

He explained how Silicon valley does not operate on Debt but on equity and the current economic trouble is because of debt but it can cause a slowdown.

Questions: Audience had questions about Bill Gates, Browsers today , role of academian in innovation and transitioning to industry etc all bringing back nostalgia of Marc and how he was responsible for Netscape and creating the Web evolution.

This is the first time I got to see Marc live and he was smart and articulate but was clearly media trained and focused on promoting Ning.

Are you in SF city for Web 2.0 Expo, here is the party list

I cannot believe its Web.20 time of the year! It is Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco 22-25, 2008.

Last year I was relatively new in the valley and went to Web2.0 and spent bulk of my time at Web2Open, the barcamp event inside Web2.0 (see business week's mention of my talk here). I honestly believe Tara Hunt who organized this barcamp segment deserves more credit but missed the business week reporter!


Robert Scoble at Web2.0 Expo SFO from sujam on Vimeo.

I was in the valley and was excited to meet Arrington, Scoble and Om Malik and blogged their panels live and did mini live videocasts.

We've seen a whole bunch of web2.0 companies last year. Next week, we will be hearing from a lot more new ones we cannot live without!

Dash, the first Internet connected GPS is going to be there this year, at a keynote to tell you "What Dash Knows". It will be a great place to come see a real Dash Express if you are thinking about getting one or compare notes with other Dash drivers if you used your Dash to beat the traffic to the city and to get to the various parties on time.

The real fun is the endless list of parties which Juhani has graciously compiled for us to choose from!

Another fun site to check is this one where you can schedule to connect with others at Web2.0

See you there!

Jason Calacanis Promotes a Dash Contest on twitter and Ustream.tv

I am so thrilled to be part of the Dash team and everyone knows I am Social media fan.

Its exciting when a friend called now to say buzz has broken out online on Digg, twitter and ustream and as I write this Jason is asking for youtube video and ratings there too - all about an awesome product I help market - The Dash Express the new internet connected GPS

Its awesome when someone who is a fan of the product becomes an evangelist and starts marketing for you! Here is a real customer video of Dash I found on youtube!



Classic social media, now you know why I am so crazy about it.

read more | digg story

Bay Area Facebook Meetup Mar 2008 Event Blog

It's long due! Here is a summary of the Mar Meetup. See you at our next meetup @ AOL on Wed 4/16.

It was crazy fun with 200 people in a 150 people space, very interactive, lot of learning, good networking ...


Thanks to Nick for the pictures from the event!


I moderated a panel of experts about the 3 S' of success.
What is involved in Scaling, Social Graphing for Viral Play and Spreading to other platforms with similar success.
* Jia Shen, Rock You, the largest App network inside Facebook with 1/2 of Fb users served by Rock You.
* Siqi Chen, of Friends for Sale App which is the hottest viral play on facebook
* Nick Gerekines, of Y! Delicious and Author of "Building Facebook Applications" by O'Reilly Publications
* Kevin Chou, CEO of Water Cooler, the largest sports and entertainment community inside Facebook, Myspace
* Markus Weichselbaum was our surprise addition, of TheBroth, a top 10 App network with 26 Apps, visiting us from Australia.



Thanks to Vishy for the videos, he has more on qik.

(Does anyone have a good sound recording of the event, especially the part where Jia Shen discussed viral plays and A/B testing, please let me know.)


Thanks to Abbas Zaidi for excellent time management to MCed the Lightning Demos of Facebook entrepreneurs. Demoes included: (pl feel free to post your App URL in the comment and I'll update it here when I get a chance)

1. Jing Chen, Richard and Charles - Developer Analytics (http://www.developeranalytics.com), a cool developer community and analytics site helping fb developers with virality and app engagement.
2. Waleed Abdulla of Weekend Apps showed his new "Blogs I Read" app.
3. Dan Carroll and Sara Buckwitz presented social recommendation API -- SoMR. http://www.somr.org/
4. George Deglin "courses" app has been working with Fb since F8 launch. He shared his insights about his other education related Apps.
5. Yong Su Kim - Askpedia, an ebay like knowledge marketplace where users can pay for the best answer from the community. This is an example of an existing business launching a fb app, good example to see if fb is an additional outreach or user acquisition channel.
6. Pikipages by Tony Zuccarino (I love this one, its an amazing example of cool web technology + facebook
7. Patrick Boyle - My Home Thingi, has a nice easter hunt builtin :)
8. Holly Liu Watercooler (http://www.watercooler-inc.com) an online entertainment and sports communities inside your favorite social networks: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Friendster.
9. Derek Dukes demoed Dipity App which allows you to create a social timeline, wow, what imagination to create new apps fitting in the social graph.
10. Dave Nielsen demoed Bracketmadness, an online supplement game to NCAA mens basketball tournament.
12. Ryan Merket will showcase an SpinVox (www.spinvox.com), an example of integration of fb with other web2.0 sites using cell network.
13. Ann Shin will demo Mashed Life App.
14. Mark Slater will show Listage and his demo is focused on "friends list"

Live Event Streaming: Wadiwallah.com, a a platform for the community side of the Silicon Valley and The Siliconstani sponsored live video streaming of the event.

Product Management for Facebook Economy for P-Camp

I am planning to present this topic at p-camp, the barcamp for product managers at Yahoo Sunnyvale tomorrow (Sat Mar 15th).

My definition of Facebook Economy: I see it as the social networking world and the open platform play that Facebook initiated that has created a thriving economy of new facebook apps, businesses trying to reach users by extending their web product with a facebook app and the ecosystem of other platforms like Opensocial and APIs everywhere which was created because of the success of Facebook Platform.

I am finding that its an exhaustive topic so I am going to limit it to Facebook primarily at tomorrow's session.

Whats common in Product Management in all Facebook Economy is the mindset. Some would call it Web2.0, but show me an example that exemplifies all the points below except facebook.

The Facebook Economy Mindset:

• Customer believes to be in charge
• Customer communicates with other customers independent of company, this becomes part of product in the case of user generated content and user's social experience
• Total Transparency
• Shorter product life cycles leading to Agile development
• APIs and platforms from everyone - Y!, AOL, Google, Dash as a new way of extending your product roadmap and doing market assessment at the same time

Applying Product Management 101 to Facebook Apps:

| View

I plan to cover the 101 of Product Management as it applies to facebook apps.

• Define the Product - Customer Definition, Roles and Responsibilites - use cases
• Develop Product Requirements - PRD and MRD
• Market Assessment, A/B Testing vs Multi-Variant Analysis
• Product Phases and Decisions- A phase gate development strategy
• Managing the Product Roadmap
• Launch Plans

ok, the slides look more colorful, hope its helpful to get a feel for what I am presenting.

The Lesson from Sarah Lacy-Mark.Z SWSX interview twitter uproar

Sarah lacy and her interview of Mark.Z is all over the blogosphere. I don't believe in linking to prominent posts and write unless I have a sincere passion or point of view worth of you readers time.

I wasn't there at SWSX. I trust Dave McClure's honest and quick summaries and he represents the audience geek's view well. Arrington seems to want to bring some balance and decency to the topic with his post. Brian Solis does the best job of providing a neutral decent post.

I am a little biased here as I am a Sarah Lacy fan and everyone knows I am crazy about Facebook not just as an active user but for Mark.Z's vision and execution to bring our real world social networks to flow through facebook creating a new paradim shift in marketing, advertising, online content, community play and how we evolve as a species with the next generation of the Internet.

I see this event as a strategic inflection point in the maturing of the live web, though everyone may not agree its for the better.

What is ironic is that SWSX grew twitter to a phenomenon and SWSX was for college students for not just geeks, but young geeks who went to party with each other. This year Twitter has reciprocated the favor and elevated SWSX to a notable conference with enough pageviews and web referrals!

Lets get out of taking sides and acknowledge that this mobbing on twitter and blogs is a testimonial to the power of social media to let people speak their minds and gang up in numbers virtually, however we maybe divided on whether it was right or not!

Companies started taking bloggers seriously after Apple lost 40% in 3 hours. Sarah herself referred to the audience ganging up against her as "mob like Digg" which is a episode where users ganged up to speak their mind to control Digg content.

Sarah in all fairness seems to have done her homework well in preparation for the interview. She is not any old media business writer, she is someone who has lived the transition to social media with transparency in her response to her fans. She was transparent in her approach to reply at her own fan's page on facebook last night.

I see this event taking regular conferences to unconference BarCamp mode where audience want to run the show! This is the beginning of users on twitter or blogosphere ganging up any product or service one way or the other to truly let companies focus on the consumers.

WeekendApps Sunday Nite Cool Demos

Waleed and Tyler were impressed by "Stanford Apps Launch Nite" and got inspired to start Weekend Apps and have done an amazing job.

Bunch of people got together and built many Facebook Apps from friday nite to launch now on Sunday @ 8pm. You can goto @ http://discuss.weekendapps.com to vote for the winner tonite., another winner is the App that gets max number of users in 1 week.

Today I gave a brief presentation about Facebook App Monetization followed by a panel discussion on micropayments. (my talk is below, I'll try and get the panel video online soon). There was also a cool presentation by Lee Lorenson who was a sponsor of this event. (I hope someone captured that talk, I was busy listening).



I am blogging live demo of Apps built this weekend now!

1. Deface a Baby - Tyler and Shawn, the name says it.

Cool tech piece is they added a "Share on facebook" which adds a bookmarket.

2. Tyler launched "Lessig for Congress" on friday.

3. Pikipages by Tony Zuccarino, Juan Pinzon, Paul Acevedo, Murray Low - A Drag and Drop Wall for Facebook, can drag and drop from web (say Flickr) or from anywhere on Facebook, resize, arrange creatively, add background, embed any media, allow friends to edit this and it shows on your profile.

Its super cool, but what I like best is that its open and can be viewed by friends who are not on facebook, or who have added this app., thats truly letting the users decide how cool it is without forcing a viral play on them.

4. Matchastic - Jeff Roberts , started on friday and coded all weekend in ASP.net. Cool matchmaking app, flirt in realtime, with stalkers, cool feature loaded.

5. OH SNAP! - Team of 10 guys, all met at weekend Apps. Real success story of this weekend App concept! Its about managing your facebook photo albums, keeping it fresh in photo page, with built in viral tagging and newsfeeds.

6. Peace Quiz by Standford Persuasive Technology Lab led by B.J Fogg learnt to use platform and use this as a template for future.

7. Hitchhiker Hookup - Bill, Jake, Tony, Ellie and Andy. Came together on friday, way to meet new people from social graph. Go from point A to B and meet people, cash in points for real vacation. I voted for this one, very promising.

8. ASPECTS by the cool team of Suling Yee, Aihui Ong, Nick Urban, James Ream. This app shows the world the different aspects of your life, your skills and your interests. This app allows people to add icons to their profile to show their hobbies, skills and interests. (updated feb 29 thanks Aihui Ong :))

9. Spring Break - Andy and friend John (from San Diego), App lets you meet new friends and gives you a relaxation for the week with a virtual spring week. I like this App.

10. Send Artist - Paint me a Picture request to friends by David Amusin. Can buy a poster of the combined work on an affiliate's web site allposters.com

11. Blogs I Read - by Waleed Abdulla's App, cool to show what blogs we ready, sorted by blogs so you can discover new blogs that your friends read or common blog interests you share with friends. I am going to add this blog, so if you are on facebook and a regular to this blog, do add it and rate it, ok? I love mybloglog on the web, I can see myself using this one.

Bay Area Facebook Meetup Feb08 @ Google Summary

Wow Folks, Thank You for taking the time to make our Feb Meetup @ Google such a huge success.

Its high time I summarize the meeting as I promised with all the videos for those who could not make it within the 170 people limit. Next time I need some volunteers to help with the videos, please let me know if you can help.

Date: Feb 13, 6.30 to 9.30pm Location: Google (Thank You Elizabeth for the food, and all the professional logistics) Logistics: John Lin and Hiren Patel, the event ran smoothly only because of your help, thanks Guys!

Pictures from the event are on facebook here, please tag yourself and your friends.

OpenSocial

We started with OpenSocial Update from Patrick Chanezon, his slides are here.
Google would love to get your feedback about this event so take a survey here.

Announcements

• Dave McClure announced App Nite @ Graphing Social Pattern, you get 50% off if you signup for these awards as a developer. Check it out!
• Mitch Levy shared marketing meetup info where Jason Alba, author of "I am on Facebook, What Next" was presenting. Cool Book, worth your time.
• Waleed and Alexander announced Weekend Apps, its not too late, come tonite to see the launch of new apps that were created this weekend.


Facebook Entrepreneurs, cool Demos and Experiences (video pending for first 3 demos, will update, I have a huge video of all 3 demos which Google video is unable to upload)
1. Frengo - Mobile API for Facebook:

Mahi De Silva showed Flirtable App and presented "Frengo", a new Mobile API for Facebook Apps which is in use at RockYou and Slide (will get video soon as soon I can upload or break it into smaller ones)

2. Social Mints - a new micro payment system for facebook Apps.

I launched my new Facebook App Social Mints and demoed it with my partner Sumit Gupta. We showed Puzzle Bee, which is one of 26 apps of Thebroth network of Apps and King of Vegas, from SocialGears. Both Apps use Social Mints to allow 1 click purchase of points @ $1 or 100 mints.

3. Listmania - Subbu Subramanim did an engaging presentation sharing his experience of building and launching a Facebook App. Is it a myth that you can scale users easily using Facebook Apps, what are the lessons for new developers.

4. Intelligentsia - Raymond Rouf (video) presented a new IQ App for Facebook. Very cool! See how smart you are compared to your friends with enjoyable puzzle questions. He uses SocialMints to allow users to use mints to get the correct answer.

5. IMO.IM - video pending, a cool Social IM App demo. This was an impromptu demo by Ralph Harik and Praveen Krishnamurthy.

6. Social.IM - Building an App outside of Facebook
Yanda Erlich presented Social.im (video) a cool software to chat with your facebook friends and manage all your facebook alerts like wall posts, messages etc. What was cool about this presentation was that Yanda shared his experience in calling Facebook from outside of Facebook and how he tackled those problems creatively.

7. Skiwithme - Vikas Gupa of Jambool (video) amazed us with his demo and sharing his experience of building user generated content using facebook Apps. He has an authentic list of ski resorts better than any place on the web, created by his users.

His slides are here.
Networking

Wow Folks, this is hard to capture, but we finished all presentations by 8.40pm and hung in there till 10pm when Google security had to herd us out. This part was fun to meet 170 people, learn about stealth mode projects, brainstorm with Dave about the future Social Media on the web ....

Next Meeting: Its mid Mar, 19th Mar (tentative date to be confirmed shortly) @ AOL, Mountainview. Please join our Facebook Group and Meetup site to stay in touch.

If you would like to demo your app, please ping me on facebook. See you all!
Please use Flickr tag: bayareafbmeetup for your pictures or just share on facebook and tag everyone.

Facebook Hype or Optimism? Just look in the right place

Robert Scoble wrote today "Is facebook doomed? following a blog post from Rory Cellan-Jones

Robert has two complaints, one that he cannot add new friends because he has reached the max of 4999 users. We all saw it happen so quickly and Robert had a ball with his notifications and blog posts and Posted Items Shared.

You have an easy solution, Robert, unfriend some friends who you just don't remember who they are and those you will not remember if you see them in person, that should free up more friending option! You can always add them later if you meet them again and realize you care to keep them as friends.

As for Facebook stopping too much messaging, let the complaining user's friend create a group and share his actual grievance and see if his friends on facebook support him. Facebook is a democratic place and they have checks and balance to respect our privacy and stopping spam.

Now to the Nay sayers!!!

1. Facebook is still fun and growing, for students and for older crowd who is joining daily.

2. Its common to see new people who hear about the facebook hype signup and fumble around with poke, wall, tons of App request and look for something tangible and useful to do. These people take a while to figure out how to change their preference to the privacy setting they want, turn off emails from facebook Apps and groups and try to spam notifications on all their friends by trying out everything all too quickly.

But most of them settle down and appreciate the beauty of "just being you online", connecting with old friends, finding simple ways to nudge an old connection or even learn more about friends they already have. They figure out the right way to enjoy facebook by making it a part of their online access points to their real world without spending all day on facebook.

If the hype is dying from Media, maybe it will help all newcomers to come and enjoy this settling process more elegantly.

3. Facebook is not going to become dull as long hundreds of thousands of developers love it and believe in it and are busy chugging along expensing their creativity to learn what works and make new Apps with lots of hopes an dreams. Its like Google Ads where a whole SEO industry was created and everyone who did not get results went wondering how to get smarter than the other guy who seems to get the users.


If you really want to understand if Facebook users continue to love it, you need to be at Weekend apps this weekend at Santa Clara. There are a whole bunch of new developers trying to come up with new facebook apps, old timers sharing their experience of what works and what doesn't, instant reviews of viral plays for new apps that are going to go live today!

Its startup energy, theres optimism, and it is going to create fresh content for facebook and lets sit back, relax and enjoy the new apps notifications, viral invites and more spam (if you wan to call it that by not setting your preference right) to shower upon us in the next week or so.

You never know, the killer App for facebook is still waiting to happen!

Silicon Valley Events coming up rest of Feb 2008

I've been meaning to blog about various events in the valley from my experience in the past year in the web2.0/Social spaces. Thats gotto wait, as its too big a project!

Let me share my excitement about upcoming events in the next week which will be worth your time.

Jason Alba, co-author of "I am on Facebook, What's Next" is visiting the valley this week. He speaks about Facebook in some events and also about linkedin based on his prior book on that topic in some event.

Here is his speaking calendar for the week.

I love the SNAP Summit and SNAP Chats, image having Jason Alba in a SNAP Chat. Thats what is waiting for you on Monday 18th in SFO . Details here!



On Feb 22nd, theres a cool event called "WeekendApps", where you meetup on friday nite and come back Sat and Sunday and are guided to build a facebook App within the week, pretty Cool, eh? Its a free event. Details are at http://www.weekendapps.com

Eweek at Stanford starts on Feb 22nd and you can find interesting speakers and really learn if you are into entrepreneurship (not just facebook topics). Details here!

Have a great week!

Search SIG: Using the Social Graph / Social Platform

I am blogging live from the Search SIG at Yahoo! Sunnyvale. I expect an interesting evening, my high expectation are set because its moderated by Dave McClure

Food and Networking: Thanks to Y! for Lasanga. Huge audience including Jeff Clavier.
(I haven't see him for a while since I blogged his event last yr, guess I am more into Facebook events these days than general web.20 events.

Intros:

Panelists are:
Kevin Marks, Google
- Orkut, Opensocial, Social Graph API are 3 products from Google in social space.

Aditya Agarwal, Dir of Engg, Facebook
- works closely with Facebook search team, cool thing in social space are Friendfi and facebook.

Kent Brewster, Yahoo
- works on the developer network, and social updates using mybloglog.

Eve Phillips, Chirp
- Chirp pulls content discover what your friends are doing.

Dave McClure
- Welcomed everyone to Social Graphing Pattern conference and what he thinks cool are - slideshare.net photoplow - virtual chat w flickr

Dave: Whats special about Social Search or Discovery, is it evolutionary or Revolutionary
Google personalized search from Google, not hugely sucessful - DM

Adithya - Surprised everyone saying its evolutionary.
There was huge data on internet google came w ways to find relevance. Facebook data is around a particular use to apply as next step.

Chirp - Social content, using friend graph to filer thru all that as two parts.
First part is a search problem. Answer comes from second part. Eve is smart, her perpectives have been deep and very articulate.

Dave: Seredipitious discovery like stumbleupon, other I know what I am looking for
How does social data play into it, how does it monetize it, which is easier.

Kevin says search with intent is direct and easier to monetize.
Adithya - both are similar data, news feed has lot of data. In future, huge amount of data around social graph coming up. Yes, its clear monetization strategy when theres intent.
But brand ad is larger thats where the facebook potential lies.

Eve - Difference is similar to the difference in experience between sitting in front of TV/Radio and Computer.
Social context - you don't just get a coupon for P&G product, but you get familiar with the brand.

Dave: Whats assets does Y! have to bring to discovery?
Mybloglog - integrates users diff profile on diff New in API, you can sya who user is at this point of time (Check developer.yahoo.com)

Dave: what parts of search engine and social graph are important?
Dave listed feeds, developer API to build upon the social graph, and brought my favorite - email and IM data.

Kevin - Says privacy issues of friends hidden in email as compared to open friends declared publicaly by the user.
Adithya - All facebook measures to encourage people to show their accurate social graph.
Adding tags as family member was not highly motivational so it was not hugely successful. We want user to express the entire content.
Needs feeds content is built on friends list and also knowing about a person whether they like video stories more etc. Dave said Facebook should be infering a person's real social graph by the frequency of communication etc and Adithya didn't accept or refute it. This is fascinating, guess thats how they prioritize what they show in feeds.

Dave: Yahoo, do they have everything needed to tap into a user's social graph, what about email.

Kent says who is being followed on twitter vs who is following on twitter is different. He says email list is not good to follow, can't spam people based on their email interactions. He says why social networks don't use email.

Well, I disagree here. Email data is different, I agree people will not appreciate the spam message but there maybe a different way to overlay services on top of email based on the knowledge of the email social graph.

Dave: Upcoming became more interesting after Dave added his friends. So what do you see as assets you would like to share to make it better by being open (this is my understanding of the question):

Kevin - Opensocial allows the App developer to take the social graph in their network and do interesting things. We all see the world from our view, Kevin learnt a lot of interesting thing about social graphs of different social networks involved in Opensocial.

Dave follows us asking explicitly what assets of Google will they be bringing out as open.

Adithya - About platform and interacting with other networks
Opensocial allows App within separate small networks. Facebook opened API to allow more cool Apps, because we need active users first.

About Javascript API of Facebook API - Adithya says its the first iteration of Facebook platform, allowing user to take their graph to their web site. Its an interesting new beginningm I wish I could learn more on the impact of this one. Guess, this is Search SIG, this is not the place for it.

Lets focus back on social search.

Dave: Dave Acordian in is audience who is a huge proponent of - Privacy and Portability - how important are these?

Kevin - email is private but doesn't give any info about user, social site shows who is the person but doesn't allow communication.

Adithya - Privacy is at the core of everything we do.
Kent - There can never be a privacy surprise. Also runs a Bulletin Board for writers for 10yrs. Its not portable if you cannot remove it.

Dave: Question to audience - Privacy, portability or password more important.

Demos now:

1. Blogjuice by Kent: I am a huge mybloglog fan from start. They have something called blogjuice allowing mybloglog user to share their social profiles that can be discovered live for any sites's reader. Cool.
2. Chirp by Eve: Integrates content (in this demo) photos from facebook, flickr etc shows as screen saver, whats interesting is you can comment on a picture from chirp and it will show up on facebook.
Interesting, I didn't realize any external program could input data into facebook.

Anyone know of more examples of being able to write into facebook from the web, thats a step towards making an open web?
3. Social Graph API from Google by Kevin.

Audience question: Demos from Y! and Google and Chirp are about discovering what user is doing, maybe embarassing serendipitous search. Concerned about leaving consumer out without engaging them.

Adithya raises a set of questions of what all user concerns maybe and Facebook's thinking on where to ask user to show user' data to friends. Bottomline These are difficult questions so Facebook is committed to portability but slow because they are comitted to privacy and want to do it right.

Nice finish for this talk.

Open Social Graph

Cross posted from my digitalmusings blog which I've tried to fold into this blog recently where I blogged this live!

My biggest motivation of Graphing Social Pattern07 conference was this topic of OpenFaced, takes me back to the dreams of web1.0 with XML and microformats and creating an interconnected web built on open standards of different sites.

Dave McClure set the stage and said if Yahoo and Google were serious about the Open Social Graph, they need to participate in such panels. Brad Fitzpatrick co-author of the "Thoughts on Social Graph" has joined Google, setting expectation of Google opening into the Open Social Graph

Live Blogging from the Panel here:


OpenFaced panel: Opening Up the Social Graph - Tantek Celik (moderator), David Recordon SixApart, Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook, Joseph Smarr Plaxo, Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited

Joseph Smarr Plaxo:
Online Identity Consolidator find the same person's account across twitter, flickr,ma.gnolia.com, pownce and everywhere else on the web , all without compromising the privacy if the user.
opensocialweb.com - lists a bill of rights to build out an openweb.

David Recordon SixApart

Ted Grubb Satisfaction Unlimited allows import profiles from other services which support microformats.
Love the ability to create an address book, where is a friend should get a friends phone if I have his email.
Facebook does not allow data taken out of facebook using Facebook API to be stored for more than 24 hrs.

Chamath Palihapitiya Facebook:

• Facebook pioneered open technologies like Memcache.
• The service itself itself is conducive to people trusting facebook.
• There is one social graph of 6Bil users in the world, we have captured 45Mil of it.
• Here is one model of it, we acknowlege we need people to help us.
• Everyone including facebook is at the starting point, we need to measure progress over coming years.
• Its a delicate balance between being open on the web on one hand and trusted and private on the other side.
• Should be done methodically and systematically not reactively.
  
• Consumer choice leads in the end.
• We need to provide more and more control to App developers and will open slowly and cautiously.

Questions:
How about integrating Openid and symantic web?
How long will it take for developers to build to an open web across platforms instead of one facebook platform?
What is each panelist doing to share open social graph:

David: Implement Openid
Facebook : want as much information to flow across the graph and touch everyone in the world.( This is an ambitious and audacious goal, but does not seem to signal real open graph outside of facebook, or unless I missing the point here)

update- my followup thoughts: Facebook has done well in initiating an ecosystem of developers and VCs with the F8 platform.
Facebook is building a competitive advantage with this ecosystem and unless the ecosystem demands with clear competitive returns, it does not make business sense for them to open up.
From my own personal experience hanging around facebook developers and SF Bayarea facebook meetup I find facebook clearly aligned with developers and opening up slowly where it makes sense for the developers and facebook.
Chamath has articulated this eloquently and I believe facebook is here to stay and buildout its competitive lockin.

When did I Endorse a Business on Facebook in their Ad?

I came across two Ads with friend's pictures on Facebook Sponsored Ads in the past 2 days.

Hmm, Sumit seems to have added Blackjack App, which appears like a notification, but actually its an ad for Scramble Facebook App.

Still its all in the realm of Facebook App world right?


Look, what I saw just now? Brett's picture for a Blockbuster signup as a notification of their Movie Clique App. Brett may approve of a notification of his app usage, does it mean he endorses Blockbuster as a brand and signing up for a paid membership, I am not sure?

Now this is getting interesting!!!

In the normal web world, no company would create an ad with your picture without your explicit permission for an ad of their product just because they found you using one of their products!

I am curious to learn more on the user's involvement in these cases, but want to learn of similar such campaigns by other businesses and user views.

The promise of social media marketing, particularly facebook is to allow user's adoption of a product as endorsement of the brand to their social graph. But there were people who objected to Facebook Beacon. Wonder who else is using the power of such user's implicit endorsements?

Facebook as Marketing Medium for Authors

I have always compared Facebook to the web and F8 to Netscape launch! No, I am not there where I would replace "Facebook" with "all Social Media Sites", Facebook is unique from the perspective of a business or anyone interesting in marketing anything!

I see businesses who were focused on SEO and SEM now expanding in Social Media Optimization with Facebook Apps and Facebook Ads.

Here is the first (my observation, I haven't seen other authors on Facebook) book author who is promoting his book release on Facebook with a Facebook Fan page.

I am on Facebook, now what? is the new book from Jason Alba and Jesse Stay with their own Facebook Fan Page.

It has just started and has 138 fans a I write this. They have smartly added their own blog as Notes to this Fan page. I am going to watch this as its a beautiful example of using the essence of Facebook to allow initial fans to tap into their social graph to invite more friends or friends hear about it from their friend's notifications.

I heard about this Fan Page from a notification from Dave McClure's feed notification. This is the start of the viral play, each of us sharing our supporting of this book brand!

A Competitive Research of Photo Apps on Facebook Apps

I've been slicing and dicing Facebook Apps to look at whats out there and find new opportunities in various different segments.

Its such a fun exercise as new Apps crop up within the time I sleep, and I waking dreaming some new possibility only to find its been tried out in a different way.

Online Photos is a space thats still in infancy in spite of many acquisitions and IPOs. I've blogged about it since 95 here. Facebook seems a natural platform for new entrepreneurs and this in my summary analysis of Facebook Photo Apps.

Scrabulous leads the way to Business Transformation in the Facebook Economy

Hasbro has sued two Facebook developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla from India, claiming that the developer's App Scrabulous which gets 600,000 daily active users infringes on their US and Canada distribution rights for the board came Scrabble.

I've joined the 17,000 members of the Save Scrabulous group on Facebook.

Living and breathing facebook Apps and hanging around with the growing Facebook economy, I am amused at Hasbro and Mattel's move. I've spent a lot of time with large companies as they adapted (some are adapting still) the web.

It reminds me of when Barnes and Noble woke up to Amazon's success and sued them for claiming to be the world's largest book store before waking up and building their online site. An interesting lesson there was that the web strategy for Barnes and Noble was not a pure online business like Amazon, but a transformation of their brick and mortar business to use the internet to extend their business, leaving us consumers with more choice.

I was lucky to be part of the team who build Harcourt.com for $2B education publisher Harcourt Brace & Company (now part of Reed Elsevier) where we integrated 27 brands into an online site. I led strategic planning working with 27 business unit presidents to understand their business and how to transform it using the Internet and executed on it working with many disparate groups with entrenched business knowledge and vested interests.

The Scrabulous-Harbro story today seems a simple case of business negotiation where Hasbro is trying to leverage it's size to threaten two Facebook developers to bring their market valuation down which should be minimum at $6Mil at $10/user acquisition cost. Any business executive in Mattel or Hashbro can see the cost of building Scrabble in the Facebook world and the customer acquisition cost to even match with Scrabulous as it is today would be costing upwards of $20Mil and a time to market of 1 year+. Also inside a corporate setting, any executive has to justify this cost by coming up with a plan on how they would monetize this acquisition by translating it to new business for existing Hashbro or Mattel businesses bearing the real risks behind this plan on his or her career.

Lets look at it from a Facebook Developer point of view! Building and launching a facebook App as done by most developers I know is counted as a single person's time of few months. The smart ones adapt to the social graph and viral reactions of early users to build user base. Many facebook developers from Facebook Meetups that I meet daily dream about a similar scenario where they would like to sell their Apps in millions to some large company.

If Hashbro or Mattel sees the business potential of Facebook, they can easily tap into 600,000 active Scrabulous users upselling the board game and other related products. So the Scrabulous developers should try to negotiate a partnership with Hashbro to upsell their products and generate revenues out of Scrabulous App. I am sure some smart executive in Hashbro or Mattel is likely to see how they can scale this partnership and will likely buy Scrabulous for its right valuation.

In the meantime Hashbro and Mattel have created a PR fiasco against themselves. History has shown repeatedly that the large company who sues a startup with real user following fails. My favorite example of this is Ben and Jerrys ice cream which was sued by Hagen Dazs to stop their distribution which prompted Ben and Jerrys to sue the parent company Pillsbury with the campaign "What the Doughboy afraid of?" in Boston.

Michael Staton of Courses App has shared with us about how he hears from companies wanting to do bizdev deals with him from the education industry every day. It takes time and experience to see which of these are viable deals worth pursuing.

Its fun growing up as an entrepreneur when your small App gains attention and you can work a real business deal to generate revenue, thats when we are truly tapping into the Facebook Economy for all its promise and potential.

Bay Area Facebook Meetup - Facebook App Valuation by Lee Lorenzen

I usually write about entrepreneur related stuff in this blog but have been writing a lot about Facebook because of the startup energy I see in the Facebook economy.

Last thurs Ont 25th 70 of us gathered at AOL in Mountainview over Pizza.

The Facebook Entrepreneurs:
We saw 2 cool Facebook App demos with very honest experiences shared by the developers.
Demo1 - Pumpkin App by Samit. He said he was learning viral play with getting a Pumpkin App as a quick test case.
Demo2 - Treat Someone by Sammara and Raymond. Virtual Gift App with appealing graphics.

Facebook App Valuation by Lee Lorenson of Altura Ventures, the first official Facebook Only Venture Fund (of $250M fund)
Its turned out to be one of those rare evenings where a speaker is smart, articulate and truly connected with the audience and engaged in an open discussion.




These here are what I personally gleamed out of the discussions, I have a habit to focus on what makes me think and connect with other stuff I read or come across.

1. Look at Lee sharing his excitement about why he thinks Facebook valuation is worth $100Bil really.

Lee was honest to admit he wants Facebook to buy shop.com as the universal shopping cart he is proposing as he still owns 20% of shop.com.

2. Lee shared his guerrilla marketing tactics of how he built his facebook network to get Altura Ventures differentiated among the budding influencers of Facebook economy.

3. Bulk of his talk was centered on building valuation into a Facebook Application.
Lee is ready to talk to developers who have 10K users to broken a sale of their app.
He uses his Adonomics App (which he purchased along with the developer to form the consulting arm of his business), he'll evaluate the price based on this formula (link to his blog).

4. What was most thought provoking was his example of how he planned to go about finding buyers for Apps that interest him.

• Most of Facebook developers who make real $$$ today make it based on Ads, some are making transient money by offering referral users for 50cents/click for new App developers.
• Lee said he likes Apps like 'Treat Someone" which can link to real world brands.
• He gave the example of "I am hungry facebook application" which was sold on ebay for $20K with 250K users. He said it was low.
• Actions I take in a commerce setting are passive product endorsement.
• He suggested morphing the App to match a potential sponsor and talking it to their Ad agency. He said " I am hungry" could have set a default restaurant as MacDonald or Steak House which the user could change if they wished and majority won't change the default. He would have taken "I am hungry" to McDonald or Steak house Ad agency for a sponsorship as a buyer.

5. Lee's Bullish Ideas about Facebook Economy:

• Lee was very bullish about building Apps on Facebook. He said it was not like the California Goldrush, it was more like th Oklahoma land grab.
• Fb is a chance to reinvent the web with a traffic cop around.
• Reinvent the web on top of social web.
• Messaging in Facebook is better than email with no spam. I love this part, see my past post about Social Email Graph and Facebook here.
• Anything thats big on the web that can be re invented on FB
• Facebook restrictions are the beauty of inventing the platform along the way.

6. Why FB will win, worth $100B valuation
===============================

• FB identities are real. Myspace are fantasy form of who you want to be.
• Fb is not a way to meet a bunch of strangers, its a way to bring your real relationship online.
• BJ Fogg book on Influence says 'Fb genuis - Big ugly question mark, empty wall" when you get started.
• Users teaching new users, making it engaging.
• Import people who really know from AOL email account, coaching from friends, not fb telling me what to do.

7. Thoughts on other Myspace opening platform
Myspace can't do newsfeed, fb 7 times more tham myspace.
There are Adnetworks today. Facebook should give developer a fb monetizing tag (like an open adsense)

8. Advice to users on viral play:
What kills viral play - complexity, making users think, need user to type (show radio buttons)
Application fatigue - don't believe in it.

Lee shared a wonderful marketing book on Influence, which I hope to find and update here, anyone who knows the book or Lee's cliff notes please let me know.