July 28, 2009 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · 
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The Nichepaper Manifesto http://cli.gs/nV7Ns [#]
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Fwd: 10 Powerful Ways to Target Facebook Ads Every Performance Advertiser Should Know – http://cli.gs/h8P0Wh (via… http://ff.im/5P4Cq [#]
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July 27, 2009 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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Communicating UX Through Video: 1. Prototyping http://cli.gs/TPBBT [#]
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Monetize The Audience, Not The Content http://cli.gs/ZS08Y [#]
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The Value Of Virtual Currency: The Real Price Of Super Rewards Was Closer to $50 Million http://cli.gs/dEdnb [#]
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July 26, 2009 at 9:05 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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Fwd: "Startups: Your Online Dating Site Will Fail" http://bit.ly/c1Of2. Reasons new ones won’t get funded. (via… http://ff.im/5K0OX [#]
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July 25, 2009 at 9:17 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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Facebook Wants To Know If You’d Mind Sharing All Of Your Information http://cli.gs/L0MJZ [#]
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AdWords Gets More Local http://cli.gs/hTbvY [#]
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July 24, 2009 at 9:06 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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Fresh @ thebluebear dot-com: Looking at FriendFeed’s today, envisioning a better future (http://cli.gs/npt5GH) http://ff.im/5Cxgk [#]
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How to Increase Sign-ups by 200% http://cli.gs/bTM9z [#]
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Freshly rated @ IMDB: Ponyo / http://cli.gs/3mZuZ3 Just like Totoro, another Miyazaki masterpiece, Ponyo is… [pic] http://ff.im/5EbtC [#]
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Fresh @ thebluebear dot-com: A Lounge & a Dance Album for a Cheerful Weekend (http://cli.gs/bLpQ1R) [pic] http://ff.im/5EwE5 [#]
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Turkish special forces capture 5 pirates from seized Turkish Frigate at the Gulf of Aden – http://cli.gs/GSTRN7… http://ff.im/5ETVk [#]
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New Media Models /video: Media’s today, future, advertising models. Panel: Jeff Jarvis, Michael Arrington, Guardian CEO http://cli.gs/5zpDaB [#]
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July 24, 2009 at 1:58 pm · Filed under Music · Print This Post
Artist Info: @Last.fm
What to expect: Dub, Latin, Downtempo
Rating: 8/10
Listen & evaluate it
Artist Info: @Last.fm
What to expect: IDM, Glitch, Techno
Rating: 8.5/10
Listen & evaluate it
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July 23, 2009 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Blog · Print This Post
The debate on the success and future of FriendFeed has recently heated up on the tech blogger community. The debate concentrates on 3 main questions: “What are the problems of FriendFeed?”, “Can FriendFeed hit the mainstream like Facebook or twitter?”, and “Does FriendFeed have superior features to other social media platforms?”. Before addressing these, I first want to focus on a more basic question:
I totally agree on this view that, in its core, “FriendFeed is a social bulletin board service… At the most basic level, FriendFeed is a forum”… However, FriendFeed’s strength lies at facilitating REAL TIME conversation around content. It’s a great tool to “listen” what’s happening around the world of social media. FriendFeed’s design enables content to go highly viral in no time.
Actually, feature-wise, FriendFeed is a lot like an “evolved” version of 4chan, which is a highly popular bulletin board used by the geeky internet subcultures. Just like FriendFeed, 4chan is mostly composed of picture memes & topic bumps (posts popping to the top of the page as people comment). Also like FriendFeed, 4chan is a highly viral environment: its community was responsible of many successful real-time coordinated attacks against other websites. Now, coming to other 3 questions…
Robert Scoble has a quite length post about this question, I mostly agree on his points, but I will discuss ones that matter most for me:
• Noise & quality: Comments that don’t add value sometimes dominate FriendFeed, and result in noise. Noise easily gets amplified, and gets out of control. User feeds and conversations may be dominated by few people.
• Usability & control: The GUI is cluttered, and full of usability problems. Few features exist to control the user experience, and they require a lot of effort . You can’t display the front page with comments hidden, for instance.
Actually, FriendFeed has another major problem, which is much, much more essential than these two, but I want discuss this in the context of next question:
My short answer is that, in its current form and direction, no. It will surely get more popular, but unless management realizes a new strategy, it will never get to the extent of Facebook or Twitter. Why?
Friendfeed can’t hit the mainstream because, it simply lacks a “twist” – a powerful brand essence; and the current User Experience hinders its social value for masses. Let me clarify, by taking a look at the popularization of 3 major social media platforms of the day:
• Initially, MySpace successfully captivated alternative music bands as a place “to create identity and have a place to point fans to“. Young fans followed, marked MySpace as “cool“, and created their own online identities.
• Facebook, successfully captivated the college students as a place to create identity, and gossip on each other asynchronously. The social value offered was relevant for everyone, and the student-only membership rule made it “charming“. So when they opened up the platform, it spread like a virus.
• Twitter, successfully captivated mega-celebrities where they’ve seen it as a place to have a relationship and dialogue with their fans. Asthon Kucher and Oprah made twitter “trendy“, so masses followed, and since the barrier to participate was little (140-characters) they realized that it’s a good tool to casually chat with acquaintances, and to meet new people.
On the other hand, which evengalist community FriendFeed captured? Tech early-adopters, bloggers, and geeks. It’s good to have these people on board, however, the problem is that the social value they get from FriendFeed isn’t replicating to masses.
Noise & usability problems identified earlier perhaps don’t bother tech early-adopters, but it does most others. Furthermore, people usually perceive FriendFeed as an aggregator that is mostly useful for heavy social media users, so its potential user base becomes more narrow than most channels feeding into it.
And finally, FriendFeed lacks a “twist” in its brand ID – what made MySpace “cool” to the young, Facebook “charming” to the masses. FriendFeed is not attractive to celebs either, since they can’t yet brand & customize their pages. So is FriendFeed crap? The answer lies at the following question:
There are many things that FriendFeed does very well. It invented an absolutely magnificent way for listening to all the Internet’s social content in real-time. However, the problems I highlighted hinders FriendFeed’s growth, and giants like Facebook and Google easily mimick its functionality.
So where to go from here? FriendFeed needs a two-folds strategy in order to have a better future.
1. FriendFeed needs a serious User Experience re-design: Time to get professional UX Consulting, and create a much simpler and smarter GUI. While keeping the virality of the platform, the UX re-design must create mechanisms to effortlessly keep the monitered conversations in control. So I’m talking about the noise and spam, which will become more serious issues everyday. Also, serious brainstorming must be made with regards to how to add the desperately needed “twist” into the FriendFeed’s brand.
2. FriendFeed needs to also focus on the Business user by launching parallel services: In addition to tech early-adopters, I find that marketers increasingly use FriendFeed to keep the pulse of consumers and gather trends in real time. Furthermore, as the “Social CRM” concept gets more popular, businesses are increasingly willing to keep tabs on multiple social media channels.
There’s a great opportunity for FriendFeed to be an invaluable tool for marketers and corporate social media staff to monitor (and publish to) various social media channels. I’m directly quoting this “Also, as companies develop more metrics to measure social media success, FriendFeed could offer premium services with comprehensive analytics and reporting”.
Today FriendFeed is a “niche” product, and with the current strategy, it’s destined to stay that way. It could be OK to be niche, however I’m not sure if FriendFeed could generate adaquate revenues that way. I’ve outlined my and others thoughts with regards to how it may have a better future.
Am I optimistic that the change is coming? Not quite, since one of the founders recently claimed that “There is no doubt Friendfeed is the most advanced app on the Internet right now“. FriendFeed could be a quite advanced application for today. However, to make the transition from good to great one needs to be very open-minded and sceptic, rather than arrogant…
Furthermore, FriendFeed lacks a “twist” in its brand ID –what made MySpace “cool” to the young, Facebook “charming” to the masses. It’s not attractive to celebs either, since they can’t yet brand & customize their pages.
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July 22, 2009 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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Fresh @ thebluebear dot-com: Top 5 applications to “crowdsource” personal & small business innovations http://cli.gs/LDpRW4 [#]
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Check out this blog! Things Marketing People Love http://cli.gs/0yTT3n (via http://cli.gs/026LVb) http://ff.im/5xXnC [#]
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I don’t know why so many pigeons find their way into my appartment… It’s always a big hassle to direct a panicked pigeon to the way out! [#]
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A Brave New World: 700M New Net Users Seen By 2013 http://cli.gs/AZGst [#]
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Through the Chaos: In 2005 Bob Garfield wrote "Chaos Scenario", warning marketing & media industri.. http://cli.gs/Rvt9M [#]
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Ideas Project: Ross Mayfield on social software: We’re shifting from a need-to-know to a need-to-share culture http://cli.gs/qjP97 [#]
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This Message will Self-Destruct: New Tool Makes Online Postings Disappear – http://cli.gs/MPEnHB (via… [pic] http://ff.im/5yNXU [#]
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July 21, 2009 at 9:39 pm · Filed under Blog · Print This Post
Once upon a time, a creative mind came up with an idea. It was such a great idea that, it could have driven a positive change for many people, businesses, and governments… Although he was proud of his idea, the creative mind never shared or acted on it. Eventually, the idea was forgotten, forever…
If this story was taking place prior to web2.0 era, this creative mind could be regarded as “unfortunate”. But today, he’s more likely to be regarded as “foolish”, because now the Internet gives us all the tools to turn our ideas into real innovations, small or big.
Do you have a business, a product feature, or a political reform idea? Even if you don’t want to develop it, share it with relevant people and spark a change. Or don’t stop there… Gather the needed resources yourself (funds, engineers, publicity..), and realize the dream. So, here are the tools:
Just like Zafer from Turkey, who imagines better city planning in Istanbul or Zac who wants to create superior web comics, you can use Borgger –the collaborative thought engine– to “shout” your ideas to all the world. Borgger community gives feedback to your ideas, thus help you to revise and make them even better. Perhaps, some like-minded ones will approach you using the networking feature, and they will join the effort to make the dream a reality.
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coFundOS, on the other hand, let’s you realize ideas relating to a more specific domain: software applications. So do you have a project idea stemming from personal needs? Then post it on coFundOS, just like this user who needs an extension for the Thunderbird web browser. Then the crowdsourcing process starts. First, you collaborate with community to refine the idea and project requirements. Then, the project must be funded, by you and others who have the similar needs. Finally, specialists who can realize the project come in. They only get paid if the funders agree that requirements have been met. A promising concept, yet a big limitation is that the resulting software may only have an open source license.
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Wridea, created by Turkish entrepreneur Cem Hurturk, is a very simple tool that lets you document and organize your ideas, as well as discuss them with friends that you invite. There’s also an interesting feature called “idea rain” which allows further brainstorming on your ideas. Plans are underway to make a major update to Wridea, which will add key functionality such as idea tagging, voting, and others.
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IdeaScale, is promoted as a business tool to turn customer feedback into business innovations, however, it can practically be used as a tool to discuss and refine ideas of any group or community. It allows voting, commenting, categorizing, and tagging the ideas, as well as marking them “under review” (i.e. can be used for bugs in software), “in progress”, and “completed”. Not all the functionality is free however, most require a monthly fee ranging between $15 to $100 per month. IdeaScale claims that their application is being used by Microsoft, US government, Mozilla Foundation, and others.
• Kluster brands itself as “a group decision-making platform that helps bubble up new ideas and see which ones fly”. It offers quite similar functionality to IdeaScale, however it’s not customer facing (because only users you invite can participate), and you can rate ideas in multiple criteria (i.e. rate a prototype with respect to “Layout”, “Color”, “Readability”). It also offers extensive analysis with regards to “how much support an idea has from who” and “whose support you’re really going to need to make the idea happen”.
A major problem with most of these applications is that they’re either too new (so they lack some important features), or they lack a sizable community to make them useful crowdsourcing platforms. I could see similar applications that will be developed as a plug-in for existing networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, which could boost the participation.
Another shortcoming, is their ability to integrate into existing project management solutions, such as basecamp or activecollab. It would have been cool, if small businesses could use these tools within their existing project management solutions.
Now, I also want to give a few advice for the users of these applications. Please don’t forget that, even the Internet makes innovation resources accessible for everyone, the chances that someone will simply adopt your idea and realize them are slim. You are the one responsible from your dreams and passions… Furthermore, don’t forget that tools are just tools. Often, software features mean very little, the biggest challenge is educating and motivating users to drive intended results.
If you’re in need of a more sophisticated crowdsourcing platform, wait for my article “Top 5 applications to crowdsource enterprise innovations” where I will explore Chaordix, InnovationSpigit, HiveLive, Kindling, and MindManager. These actually may have great personal & small business uses as well, however they are quite pricey, too!
[donotprint]July 21, 2009 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Daily Digest · Print This Post
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"Liquidated" Brand Logos: Notorious logo destroyer & graffiti artist Zevs pleaded guilty, Armani demands $1M http://cli.gs/pQXj7 [#]
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Prezi – The zooming presentation editor: Create uber-cool business presentations with prezi ! http://prezi.com/ [#]
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Market share tiny, profit share huge for iPhone, BlackBerry http://cli.gs/jssYN [#]
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Steps to Creating an Engaging Product Experience: "Designing an engaging product experience should be lead by… [pic] http://ff.im/5v277 [#]
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Zemanta: Blog Smarter: Fred Wilson just announced he invested in this plugin (enhances blog posts). Now installing.. http://www.zemanta.com/ [#]
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Innovation and the Future of Media: Why Economist is so successful when other weekly news magazines have not? http://cli.gs/M993g [#]
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