More details on Open Social was just released here.

In the video here is Vic Gundotra, vice president at Google, who gave a little talk to developers last night — they demo how to build an Open Social application. Vic told me last week that he’s planning a whole raft of CampFires where they’ll bring out a bunch of new developer-focused technologies.

UPDATE: In this video a raft of developers show off what they’ve built on top of Open Social.

Vic is the guy who hired me at Microsoft and it’s fun to watch him build a developer network at Google now.

Some things I’d like to see in future CampFires?

1. Do the videos live and streaming.
2. Open up the discussion to microblogging tools like Twitter and Pownce. Today I brought people into the Google press conference via Twitter and it really rocked. Here’s reactions from around the web from Rob Lagesse. From James D. Kirk. From Jay Meattle, who calls Twitter the next generation of journalism. From ZDNet’s Michael Krigsman, who called this “the hidden OpenSocial press conference.”

When Shel Israel co-authored Naked Conversations with me we interviewed about 180 companies about how they were using blogs and how that usage was changing their business.

Today I’m watching companies and political candidates and seeing a new trend that I’ve written up as the “Social Media Starfish.” I just did two videos, one that defined the social media starfish and all of its “legs” and another that explains how Google is going to disrupt many pieces of that starfish tomorrow with its Open Social announcement tomorrow.

Some things in text. What are the legs of the social media starfish?

1. Blogs.
2. Photos. Flickr. Smugmug. Zooomr. Photobucket. Facebook. Et al.
3. Videos. YouTube. Kyte. Seesmic. Facebook. Blip. DivX. Etc.
4. Personal social networks. Facebook. BluePulse. MySpace. Hi5. Plaxo. LinkedIn. Bebo. Etc.
5. Events (face to face kind). Upcoming. Eventful. Zvents. Facebook. Meetup. Etc.
6. Email. Integration through Bacn.
7. White label social networks. Ning. Broadband Mechanics. Etc.
8. Wikis. Twiki. Wetpaint. PBWiki. Atlassian. SocialText. Etc.
9. Audio. Podcasting networks. BlogTalkRadio. Utterz. Twittergram. Etc.
10. Microblogs. Twitter. Pownce. Jaiku. Utterz. Tumblr. FriendFeed. Etc.
11. SMS. Services that let organizations build SMS into their social media starfishes. John Edwards is one example.
12. Collaborative tools. Zoho. Zimbra. Google’s docs and spreadsheets. Etc.

It’ll be interesting to see how deeply Google will disrupt the Social Media Starfish tomorrow.

What do you think?

Here’s the two videos:

Part I of Naked Conversations 2.0: defining the social media starfish. 22 minutes.
Part II of Naked Conversations 2.0: how Google will disrupt the social media starfish tomorrow. 18 minutes.

Cool. Just saw that Pownce released an API (pownce is a micro blogging/presence/micromedia tool similar to Twitter).

Twitter still has a LOT more flow. This will be interesting to watch and see what happens now.

Pownce is a better system for sharing media with your friends than Twitter or Jaiku, though. I like the UI better too, although the UI really doesn’t matter anymore. I am using a tool called “snitter” to read my Twitter stuff. It’s cooler than Pownce is.

That’s the power of an API.

UPDATE: Pownce’s founder, Leah Culver, has more details on her blog and Dave Winer has a first review up. Dave says the API is only about 1/3rd complete.

Loic Le Meur’s new company, Seesmic, was given raves by Mike Arrington this morning.

That drew out Luca Filigheddu who asked whether Arrington was talking about his service, Hictu. Now Hictu had remained off of my radar screen until he made that comment so off I went to check it out.

First of all, notice the difference in launch strategies used by these two guys. Loic has been visiting a whole series of bloggers and showing off his software. Asking for advice. Doing videos where he doesn’t feature himself, but features the blogger he’s visiting. This is HUGELY smart. It’s PR that takes advantage of our egos — in a good way. I have good feelings about Loic because of how he launched his company. It’s the smartest launch I’ve seen in a while and not very expensive.

Also note that he moved to San Francisco to start his company. Why did he do that? Well, because most of the top journalists and tech bloggers are within an hour of San Francisco. So are tons of the world’s top developers and marketers and business people (not all, but enough of a concentration that Loic noticed it all the way from Paris). Smart #2.

But back to the point of this post: bootstrapping.

Why did I call Seesmic “video Twitter?” Because it actually uses Twitter and builds on top of it. Hictu doesn’t do that. I don’t see any of my friends on Hictu, while I see anyone who posts a video in Twitter in Seesmic.

That’s brilliant and is why, I think, Arrington was so addicted all weekend long.

Also, why am I more addicted to Twitter than the prettier (and more capable Pownce)? Look no further than Seesmic (and Dave Winer’s TwitterGram and FlickrGram). Among others. The API is bringing us really cool new services that aren’t possible on Pownce.

Seesmic IS addicting. I saw that immediately when Loic showed it to me. Sorry Hictu.

I sure wish companies would stop building new social networks and start bootstrapping on top of existing ones.

A few years ago I wrote to Microsoft’s leadership and asked them why they weren’t involved in the new Web 2.0 space. I got an answer back that was about 2,000 words long and included the words “business value” 13 times. Translation: Microsoft’s leadership thought that Web 2.0 and social software like Flickr didn’t have business value and was too much of a potential fad to invest in.

Glad to see that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, is consistent. Notes that Geocities lost most of its value after being acquired by Yahoo and says “it had most of what Facebook has.” Let’s come back to that point in a second.

The thing is that Ballmer has bought into the advertising hype too. I remember when Microsoft’s President, Kevin Johnson, came to our group when I worked at Microsoft and explained that the advertising industry is 10x the size of the software industry and that he was going to steer Microsoft more into an advertising-driven business rather than just one that made its revenues from selling software. Translation: Microsoft was going to compete more with Google, Yahoo, and other companies going after the advertising pie.

Don’t miss this quote. It’s demonstrates everything that is wrong with Microsoft’s approach:

“There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,” Ballmer said.

When I worked at Microsoft I heard this over and over and over again from various engineers and program managers who STILL haven’t competed effectively with WordPress, Flickr, Skype, YouTube, or any of the other things over the years I’ve heard this “we can build that in a few weeks” kind of arrogant attitude attached to.

But, remember eBay? Remember how dozens of competitors tried to get into the eBay space? (and still are?)

Why aren’t they succeeding? Because eBay is NOT about the technology. It’s about the community and unless you have something that’ll convince the buyers and sellers all to switch all at one moment you’ll never be able to take eBay’s market away. Translation: it’s too late and eBay has huge defensibility around its business because people won’t move away from it even if you demonstrate 5x better technology.

Same with Facebook. I’m not moving away from it. Why? I have 5,000 reasons why (and another 500 already who want to be included in my Facebook network). Unless you can convince them all to move I’m not moving. This is why LinkedIn isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, even though I like Facebook’s approach a lot better. It’s also why MySpace isn’t going anywhere. My son says his friends are all on MySpace. My brother’s bar is on MySpace. They aren’t moving no matter how hard I evangelize Facebook.

Which gets us back to Ballmer’s quotes.

First, let’s share this one: “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” Mr Ballmer told Times Online yesterday.

I’m 42. Hardly young. And Facebook is appealing a lot to people in my social network and age group lately (and so is Twitter and other social tools like Pownce, LinkedIn, and sites that use social groups like Yelp, Flickr, Upcoming.org). I guess Ballmer missed that. This is what happens when Microsoft executives don’t get outside of their ivory towers very often. Steve, you really need to go to any tech industry conference and hang out in the hallways. Don’t come to San Francisco, you won’t believe anything you hear here anyway. But go to, say, LeWeb3 in Paris and hear what they say about social networks. You’ll probably hear Bebo. Facebook. And a few others. From even the old folks. Last night I was at a National Geographic event and lots of people were talking about Facebook.

Here’s another quote:

Mr Ballmer also noted that sites such as Geocities, an online community that was bought for $3 billion by Yahoo! in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, “had most of what Facebook has.”

Oh, boy. No way, no how.

First of all, I never joined Geocities. It never had utility for me. It was a place to build free Web sites. I found it had all the disadvantages to me that MySpace has and NONE of the advantages of Facebook. It was NOT a social network that exerted the kind of social pressure on me to join the way that Facebook did. I tried to ignore Facebook for years. Same with MySpace. But people I kept meeting kept begging me to join. Kevin Rose, when we had dinner, told me I was blowing it by not being on Facebook. That NEVER happened with Geocities.

Also, Facebook is now a business card collection. A rolodex. That has real utility that’ll keep me using it long after it joins the “old fad bin.”

Oh, and anytime people say “this thing is a fad?” I think of blogging. Lots of people told me that when I started it too. It wasn’t. Neither is Facebook.

But all this makes me think that Ballmer is trying to send signals to Zuckerberg (Facebook’s CEO) that the price is too high and that this is just a negotiating ploy. Nice one! But it doesn’t give me confidence that Microsoft is going to figure out Web 2.0 or social networking strategies anytime soon.

It also makes me realize that Ballmer has no clue about the future of advertising. If he did he’d be talking about how Facebook’s ability to concentrate people into buckets in a new way should be copied and studied. That’s where Facebook’s real advertising value is and Microsoft hasn’t demonstrated ANY ability to see that yet. Of course, Facebook itself hasn’t shipped its advertising platform that’ll demonstrate its vision there either, but I hear it’s coming.

Will Microsoft get a clue before Facebook gets an entrenched advertising platform going?

Ballmer proved with Google and with these quotes today: no.

Here’s one of my conversations lately (this conversation pretty much happened this way the other night):

FAMILY FRIEND: “Can you email me photos of your new baby as soon as possible?”

ME: “I’ll put them on my Flickr.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “What’s that?”

ME: “It’s where I share my photos.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “Why are you being a jerk, just email them to me!”

ME: “I will put them on my Flickr account. Flickr is a much better place for you to look at photos, plus I can get them there from my cell phone without doing any work so you’ll get them faster.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “How do I get to your Flickr account and why can’t you just email me your photos?”

ME: “Just visit my blog, I link to my Flickr feed there.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “I don’t know where your blog is.”

ME: “Go to Google and search for my name and you’ll find my blog.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “I don’t get why you can’t just email me them. Well, can you at least let me know when your new baby arrives via email?”

ME: “Yeah, I’ll do that on my Twitter account, which will also show up on my Pownce account, and on my Facebook account, among others, just watch those places with your RSS Reader.”

FAMILY FRIEND: “GGGggggaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.”

MARYAM CHIMES IN: “Don’t worry, he’ll email you. I’ll make sure of it.”

ME: Realizes this is pretty stupid but has a plan. I’ll email everyone when my Twitter account, Zooomr account, Flickr account, Facebook account, Pownce account, Plaxo account, YouTube account, Kyte account, Jaiku account, and my blog are all updated with baby stuff.

Yes, the birth of our baby is about to bring the world more email. :-)

Anyone have an email system that’d watch all the above for mentions of “Milan” or “Baby” and send out an alert to a preset list of people?

And now you know the trouble that these Web 2.0 sites will have in getting everyday people to try them out.

UPDATE: Barbara gave me heck for not having a Tumblr account, so here’s my Tumblr account. Heheh.

So, last post was about me hitting back at all the personal insults and the inbalance of the blogosphere. As Len Edgerly said in my comments last night we like our junk food more than we like our broccoli, even if the broccoli is better for us.

Dave Winer this morning sent me a clear message: admit you made a mistake and move on.

Danny Sullivan continues the conversation.

First, to Dave Winer. Of COURSE I made a mistake. Anytime you open yourself up to personal attacks the kinds of which have been made on me the past few days that’s explicit evidence that I made a mistake in some kind of judgment. Even I get that. Especially punctuated when you get really smart people like Danny or you to attack.

But Dave’s right. Time to make an accounting of the mistakes and things I have learned.

The reason I’ve been quiet is to figure out what my mistakes were, and to glean some personal learning about it.

Here’s the mistakes I can see I made. I’m sure there’s at least 20 others, most of which have been pointed out in excruciating detail on the blogs I linked to on Monday:

1. Hooking my thesis to a technology that doesn’t have an obvious tie to search. TechMeme.
2. Hooking my thesis to a company that doesn’t yet have a good track record: Mahalo.
3. Attacking SEOs needlessly, which caused all sorts of people, including Danny Sullivan to get their hairs up in a fighting stance.
4. Doing too simplistic an analysis of how Google actually works.
5. Misjudging Google’s speed today. It took literally minutes for it to show up on searches.
6. Misjudging TechMeme’s ability to point at a short post and at video. Turns out if you get enough conversation going it probably will link to a one-word post. Gotta try that someday! :-)
7. Jumping into a battlefront (SEO’s vs. Google) without really understanding how that warfront will go.
8. Not making it clear that I was making some BIG assumptions. Like that Google won’t adopt and that Facebook will open up enough to make it possible to build a new kind of search engine in public on top.
9. Using the form of video, which makes it a lot harder for some people to consume. But, then, I’m doing R&D and am going to continue to use new technologies like Kyte to see what’s good and bad about them.
10. Hooking my thesis to a guy, Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo, who has been pushing his stuff so hard lately that lots of people have turned him off. Or worse.

That’s a lot of mistakes for a 20-minute video on a Sunday morning.

But, as Tom Rolander, one of the guys who has made an even bigger mistake in his life and lived to see another day, says “every story has to have 10% fruit juice to be believed.”

So, what’s the fruit juice in my story?

1. Google is getting noisier and isn’t improving as fast as we’d like it. So, anyone who has an idea of how search is going to improve will get listened to. I think this is why Powerset and Spock got so much hype.
2. A lot of people have discovered social networks and services in the past six months. Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Plaxo, not to mention Upcoming, Yelp, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Digg, etc. And we’re just starting to learn about how those are potentially going to change our life and the services we expect. So, anyone who can see a new pattern in how these will be used will get paid attention to.
3. Anything with a halfway interesting story about how an upstart like Facebook will beat Google will get listened to if for no other reason than to argue about it.
4. There’s a LOT of personal animosity against “a-listers” and anytime an a-lister gives everyone a chance to get that animosity out of their system it will be used.
5. Kyte.tv, the technology I used, is a lightening rod of its own. People either hated it or loved it. Many of you came by the chat room over the last three days and told us that. If you use a new technology to tell an interesting story that’ll increase the chances you’ll get listened to.
6. RSS has such a strong place now in how many of us consume information that when you mess with that reading behavior you’ll increase your chance of getting noticed.

So, to wrap this up. Did I learn my lessons? Are there others that I should have learned that I didn’t pay enough attention to?

Plaxo, sometime in the next few hours will ship an online identity consolidator (that’s what they call it) based on microformats. What does that do? Lets you keep track of your identity from a group of online social networks.

I spent some time at Plaxo this afternoon and already have the video up.

And yes, Dave Winer, it’s all RSS all the time too. :-)

Why is this important? Because we keep our identity (and a different social network) on so many different sites. For instance, I have a separate social network on Yelp, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook, Flickr, Upcoming, and other sites. What if one place could aggregate all your social network info from all these different places? Wouldn’t that be interesting? Yes, it would.

That’s what we discuss in the video.

My column is up about microblogging services and Mansueto Digital President Ed Sussman interviewed me about all this stuff.

I had about 250 people in my Kyte.tv chat room. I think Engadget said they had something like 40,000 unique visitors in an hour. Now you know why Peter Rojas gets the big bucks.

But I am a newbie at this press conference thing. I didn’t understand why Engadget sat in the back. Isn’t up front the place to be?

No.

The folks in the back could take pictures. Up front Apple PR people were telling me “no pictures.”

So, I did what I could.

I sent some video to my Kyte channel before we went in. I shot that with my Nokia N95. I have the Kyte app on it and it uploads video within a few seconds. Really great.

Once inside I found no wifi I could use so I plugged in my EVDO. Ran great. So far so good.

During the keynote I couldn’t really get photos off because PR was giving me the evil eye.

So, I resorted to text chat. You can go back and look at the chat.

One thing is that TechMeme will never link to video, streamed or otherwise, so if you’re hoping to get on TechMeme and you’re at a hot news event you better have at least one person live blogging it. To get noticed, though, you’re going to have to do something better than Engadget does. For me that means you’ll need to have a team covering events like this. One person blogging. One person taking pictures and pushing them up to Flickr. One person videoing and pushing those up. And one person chatting with all the peeps. Oh, and doing marketing during the event. Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, etc.

In other words the single blogger or journalist doesn’t have a chance. If you can get a team to photo/video/chat/market/and blog all at the same time then you’ll be able to attract an audience and stay relevant to the conversation.

Some things I’ll do myself next time. 1) Bring more batteries for my laptop. 2) Bring an ultra small camera on a bendable neck so I could sneak it in between people and position it well. 3) Band together with other people so that we can split up tasks and have someone at home wrap them all up.

Oh, and Steve Jobs granted interviews to people with notepads after the event but wouldn’t let himself be videoed. So, be flexible. If you can’t get one kind of interview done, switch to another kind.

But, seriously, when you are competing with 200 of the world’s best press you have to find an angle that no one else sees. I’m not sure I got up to that level today, but the people in the chat seemed appreciative that I was chatting live during the event.

Anyway, that’s all from Apple. Now back to work on other stuff.