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Daily link November 6, 2007

Facebook and MySpace ad analysis (are you a “fansumer”?)

Here’s a 20-minute video where Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research’s new social media senior analyst, discusses with me Facebook and MySpace’s new ad platforms. He was briefed by both companies and has the best analysis out there right now.

Oh, and he invents a new word “fansumer.” Listen to the video and tell us whether you’re a fansumer of a brand. Oh, and my brother’s bar is on MySpace. We’ll play around with MySpace’s new hyper-targetted ads and see if they work.

What Facebook’s ad platform really means

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester’s new social media analyst, has the best analysis I’ve seen of what Facebook and MySpace’s new ad platforms mean. TechMeme has the live blogging news from Facebook’s announcement.

I’m sitting with Jeremiah right now and we’ll be doing a video about this topic shortly on Kyte.tv.

Daily link November 2, 2007

I wish I was at Chinese BloggerCon

Lots of people are asking me if I am going to next week’s Blog World Expo. No, cause I have a six-week-old baby at home. Plus, I hang around a lot of these speakers all the time anyway. That said, I’m actually pretty surprised by the quality of speakers that this new conference has been able to put together. I’m actually sad I won’t be there, even though I’m not really THAT sad.

But what really looks interesting? The Chinese Bloggercon. BlognationChina is there.

Rebecca McKinnon is too. John Kennedy is live blogging and doing an awesome job. I feel like I’m sitting in the hall. I know it’s lunch time right now on Saturday.

That stuff is all in English, but the official blog is in Chinese.

Next year I want to do a BloggerCon here at the same time and build a video bridge so we could talk about the same issues. Heck, let’s do it. Why don’t you all show up on my Kyte.tv channel. It’s open to ANYONE who wants to post some video.

Some topics that I wish were being discussed internationally:

1. How do we get great Chinese blogs translated to English (and vice versa)?
2. Who is the “Michael Arrington” of China?
3. What’s happening in the Chinese blogosphere that’s different than the English one?

From John Kennedy’s blog I already learned that there’s a Chinese knockoff of Twitter already and I already found some cool new blogs. Really great stuff.

UPDATE: There’s some photos of the BloggerCon on Flickr. Oh, and check out the Chinese Facebook knock off.

Canter on Open Social and the Starfish

I just spent an hour decompressing with Marc Canter about all the Open Social and Facebook stuff along with a TON of coverage of how the Social Media space is shaking out (I call it the Social Media Starfish).

He runs Broadband Mechanics, which makes social networks for a variety of businesses around the world including the Times of India and the Sacramento Kings basketball team. He doesn’t call them social networks, by the way, preferring to call them “DLAs” or “Digital Lifestyle Aggregators.”

Anyway, everytime I have a chat with him I learn a ton. Here’s an hour’s worth of Marc, in three pieces.

Part I, where we discuss Facebook and Open Social.
Part II, where we discuss Open Social’s impact on his business.
Part III, where we just continue the theme.

I’ll try to pull out the key things he taught me, but wanted to get these up ASAP.

Back into the walled garden

So, this morning, what has changed from yesterday? Well, for one, every single company involved in the Open Social initiative is sending me press releases. Marc Canter, founder of Broadband Mechanics, is coming over later to talk. I’ll put him on Kyte or Seesmic or something and do another Twitter storm. He should be here between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Anyway, Don Dodge made the point that all of us in the blogosphere are saying that Facebook is dead. Now, last night I read thousands of posts and put some of the best ones onto my link blog. I only saw one guy say that Facebook is dead. So, I don’t know where Don Dodge gets his facts. But, that never stopped bloggers, right? Facts, schmacts, as long as they make a good story we’ll pay attention to them.

I tell ya, the more I understand “the new blogging world” the more I want to create a fake identity and just make stuff up about people. :-)

But, instead, I’m going to crawl back into my little walled garden.

Why am I going back to Facebook? Don Dodge is right that until the Open Social world provides some real end-user “goodness” that we’ll just stay inside the walled garden of Facebook. Here’s why I am staying inside Facebook for now.

1. It’s faster. I played on Plaxo last night and it’s slow to add new users. Frustratingly slow.
2. It’s prettier. I like Facebook’s UI better than MySpace or Plaxo or Ning or any of the others who signed onto the Open Social platform.
3. It’s here today. Yes, some Open Social things are shipping tonight (Plaxo, for instance, deserves credit for getting theirs done ASAP). Notice that when Facebook did its F8 event it had tons of apps SHIPPING at the time of the announcement. How many containers are shipping Open Social apps today? MySpace is a couple of months away, the execs told me yesterday.
4. FeedHeads. It’s the best Facebook app out there. Ironically it uses Google’s Reader. But Google didn’t fly Mario (the developer of that app) into the announcement and I haven’t seen him port his app yet. Now, remember, there are thousands of “Mario’s.” Until they all port their apps to Open Social I ain’t moving. Scrabulous is one of the best Facebook apps. Are they moving? Until they all move there’s no way I can leave Facebook.
5. My 5,000 friends. Yeah, I’m mad that I can’t have more friends, but look at the lockin of my friends’ network. I’m not moving ANYWHERE until all my friends ALSO MOVE. That’s going to be daunting.
6. In the next two months Facebook will announce SocialAds and revenue sharing for those ads. From what I’m hearing what they are announcing is pretty exciting too. If Facebook is PAYING ME to stay on Facebook do you think I’m going to move to Google?
7. Video messages. I’m doing a video conversation right now with Teresa up in Seattle. Until other systems do that I ain’t leaving.
8. Events. The event calendar inside Facebook rocks and is already the biggest event site on the Internet. Bigger, even, than Upcoming.org (which is actually a better event calendar than Facebook).
9. Videos. The way I can discover videos inside Facebook is addictive and compelling. I haven’t seen any Open Social member show me anything that blows that away.
10. The defacto rolodex. Facebook presents people’s information to me in a way that reminds me a lot of my business card collection. But with benefits. So far it’s FAR more advanced than anything else out there (although Plaxo is really close and I love how Plaxo integrates my contacts into Outlook and other places).

So, what are your reasons for staying in the walled garden?

Daily link November 1, 2007

Flixter CTO gives developer viewpoint of Open Social

Saran Chari is on my video channel talking about what today’s announcement with MySpace and Google means to developers like Flixter (they make a popular Facebook application).

I recorded this today after the Google/MySpace press conference.

I asked “does it let you build the same kinds of apps you build on Facebook?”

Answer “absolutely.”

I ask about limitations that he sees.

What will Yahoo and Microsoft do? Is Zuckerberg scared?

So, the conversation in the hallway here at the Nokia conference that I’m now at is “what will Yahoo and Microsoft do?” Followed quickly by “what will Facebook do?” Or, “is Zuckerberg scared?”

During the last panel, which funny enough was about developers and social networks, they asked the audience which social networks people used. Facebook? Nearly every hand went up. MySpace? 1/3rd of the hands went up? The rest? Very few hands went up.

So, Facebook is STILL in the driver’s seat. Or, as Erick Schonfield says over on TechCrunch: “Not so fast Mike.”

What is the best answer for what Zuckerberg will do that I’ve heard? “Embrace and extend.” Facebook should come out and say “we’re supporting Open Social too.” But then they should say “but we have a new ‘version 2.0′ platform to announce today that goes a LOT further than Open Social goes.”

That would take all the wind out of these sails.

As to Yahoo and Microsoft? Well, I talked with an executive from Yahoo today and he said he had nothing to announce. Translation: we have no clue. If they had a clue they would have had all guns blazing today. Now their choice is to join up. The industry support is too strong behind Open Social. Or, they could make a deal with Facebook on their “embrace and extend” strategy.

What will Microsoft do? Who cares. They bought the inventory on Facebook. They are safe for now by NOT having a developer strategy. I think that’s stupid long term, but heck, my Microsoft stock is going up so who cares?

Bebo now is onboard with Google’s Open Social API

Google just announced that Bebo is now onboard.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Facebook is being surrounded.

Google says they reached out to Facebook…

Google’s Vic Gundotra just told us that Google has reached out to all the major players to try to get them on board with this new platform. Including Facebook. But for now it’s clear that everyone BUT Facebook is on board.

Write apps once, run them everywhere but Facebook

Disruption.

That’s what just happened.

Google and MySpace just dropped a major bomb on Facebook: they are joining forces to build a new social networking application platform that overnight will be considered the standard.

Chris, CEO of MySpace, about why open approach.

Joe from Flixter denotes why this is SO HUGE: his app will run anywhere that the OpenSocial platform is running. Plaxo. Ning. NewsGator. MySpace. No rewriting of apps.

One thing. Those apps now will run everywhere BUT Facebook.

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© Copyright 2007
Robert Scoble
robertscoble@hotmail.com
My cell phone: 425-205-1921


Robert Scoble works at PodTech.net (title: Vice President of Media Development). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.


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