SocialAudio

January 13th, 2012 Posted in social networks

Social networks like Facebook and Google Plus are battling it out right now for supremacy and video chat has become one of the fiercest battlegrounds. Google has taken the lead with its hangout feature which supports up to 10 video participants at the time while Facebook has improved its chat feature by adding video capabilities.
I believe the next battle will involve improved audio capabilities as the world becomes ever mobile and on the go. Being able to communicate verbally on mobile devices hands free while driving or doing other things has become increasingly important.

In the past, there has been social networks based on audio communication (hence my term SocialAudio). The best of them all was a service called Utterz.com which came out before the age of the iPhone and smartphones hit its stride. They were smart by allowing their members to use any cell phone which then posted their audio files online so it was both a mobile and web social network. You could also listen to audio posts while driving hands free. You can also reply and cycle forward and backwards thru messages of those you were following and even from the public timeline. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were never able to become as popular as Twitter or Facebook and vanished.

If Google integrates Google Plus with its Google Voice product then they could provide the most impressive SocialAudio network ever. Since they’ve already started integrating G+ with their other products, this is not that far fetched. Users would be able to communicate via audio in real-time or via recorded messages any time any place.

In the mean time, there are some other services that operate in the SocialAudio arena. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Cinch.fm is the most well-known because it is backed by the folks from BlockTalkRadio. Google can look at their design for good ideas.
AudioBoo is an excellent mobile app that lets members record audio messages and post them on its own network. You can also use its BooMail to post messages that way.
Shoutomatic is similar to cinch in that its users can post audio messages and cross post to other networks. One of its most popular users is Clayton Morris from Fox news.
SoundCloud is different than these others because it isn’t actually designed to be a communication network but it is a social network where members share audio files, usually music but it also includes many other forms of sound. Many share their podcasts or just record audio messages. I can see them adding features that make it more of a SocialAudio network very easily.

Here’s a video demo he did about Shoutomatic.

Here’s a demo of AudioBoo

Intro to Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.

Stop Me if you’ve Herd this one before

July 16th, 2011 Posted in social networks

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Most people today never heard of Utterz which was an innovative and fun community that launched around the same time as Twitter. You could do all the things we do now on Twitter and Facebook but even more. For example, not only could you publish posts on their website with text, images and video, but also audio via your cell phone. This was just before the release of the iPhone so it was very unique in that respect. Once the iPhone came out, Utterz really picked up new users quickly.

I actually liked the goofy name and the funny mascot Bessie with all of the built-in puns about cows including the catch phrase “Be Herd!”. It was so easy to share a voice post by simply calling a dedicated phone number and best of all you could listen to your circle of friends by using the phone’s keypad to cycle thru them. You could even reply to any audio post with you phone. It was perfect with a hands free setup in the car during long commutes.

Utterz wasn’t just a destination for your posts with a vibrant community, but it also let you publish whatever you posted to any of your other services such as on Twitter, Facebook, Flicr, and any of your own blogs. It was very easy to setup your channels too. They even had groups so you could share your posts only with that particular group (much better than G+ circles because it was easy to curate and join).

Everyone is going crazy over Google+ these days but Utterz everything it does and much much more. There have been some other audio/mobile based platforms since Utterz closed shop such as Cinch.com, ShoutOMatic.com and AudioBoo, but none of them can match everything Utterz did.

Here’s Simeon Margolis who was not only one of the founders of Utterz but also the official face/voice of the Utterz brand and community. We all loved Sim who was very active with the community. When he left rather abruptly, it took the wind out of the sails (and sales) of Utterz. So many things changed and not for the better either. The name even changed to Utterli which made no sense and along with that change they took good ole Bessie the cow mascot and shot her. So the cute and odd vibe was gone and so was its leader. Slowly, Utterz…um…Utterli died. Never to be herd from again. Sorry, just had to use one last pun in Bessie’s honor.

Here’s a good demo of how Utterz looked and functioned.

Here’s how easy it was to connect your Utterz to your other platforms.

utterz

Google Like it or Not?

July 3rd, 2011 Posted in social networks

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Eventually, Google will need to make some decisions regarding the way they let people like things if they want to have any consistency across all of their products and services. For example, on its new Google Plus network you can click the plus one button to “Like” something. See image of G+

However, on google’s popular video platform, YouTube, you still see the traditional like button. Notice it also has the dislike (thumbs down) button which is not available on the new G+ network. You can’t give a minus one or negative one to anything, merely +1 or take it back.

Now let’s take a look at Google Buzz, it’s earlier attempt at social networking. You will also see the “Like” button which becomes an Un-like button once you like something so on this platform (like on G+) you can only like something or take it back. You cannot give a negative vote as on youtube.

Eventually, Google should provide the same methodology in its UI across all of their products. They should also make sure that the information all flows back to its flagship social network which will obviously be Google Plus.

Share and Share Alike

The same decisions regarding consistency should also apply to other functions on each service such as sharing and commenting. If you want to share something on Google Plus you don’t have many choices right now. You can only share it inside of Google Plus. You just have to decide to share it on the public stream for all to see or to one of your curated circles.

Note: There is a third party Chrome extension that allows you to share something to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but I’m addressing built-in features from Google itself.

On YouTube you have many more options to share something. You can email it to anyone you want or share it directly on Twitter or Facebook. You can also get the embed code (in some cases anyway) and embed the video on your website. I give Google a plus one for adding its Plus One button to YouTube. Nice job! Also noteworthy, if you +1 a video on YouTube it will show up in your Google Profile under the +1′s section! However, nothing you +1 inside G+ or in a google search shows up yet. Double boo there.

On Google Buzz you will notice a similarity to Google Plus where you can only share something on Buzz itself. However, they did include the email option which was good.

Adding Your Two Cents Worth

The way Google handles commenting will change for sure too. They must become a model of consistency if they want people to embrace their platform for commenting. Already there are many people who have stated they would be willing to make Google Plus comments their commenting system for their blog. This is a big deal as platforms such as Disqus have spent years integrating with thousands of websites. Facebook comments has slowly replaced Disqus and other commenting systems so it is possible for Google Plus to infiltrate this market if they provide a worthwhile platform.

Google Plus offers a simple and straight forward system for commenting on someone’s post. You enter your comment and post it. Nothing much to do.

An important thing to note here is the fact that Google Plus does not thread comments or conversations. It’s very twitter-like which is hard on the eyes and makes following the flow of conversations very difficult. You will see someone responding to a comment way down on the vertical list and have to do a lot of scrolling up and down if you care to make sense of it all. This must be fixed at some point. You can add the person’s name in your comment which helps a little but not really that much. Seeing the comment and then the reply/response just below it makes the most sense.

On YouTube, well, no one really reads the troll infested comments on there do they? In any event, let’s compare how it handles commenting. As you can see, simple entry form but they do offer the option to leave a video response which makes sense since it’s a video service. They also display the number of characters remaining for comments (500).

Also worth noting, there’s no threading either. Just a series of comments…no context.

Google Buzz offers a similar plain vanilla commenting system like Google Plus. Just post a comment, you can’t reply to a commentator directly either.

It also does not thread comments or conversations.

Note: Google should have a dedicated tab in Google+ that shows all of the comments we’ve made. Right now it only shows posts we’ve shared on G+, not any of the comments. They should follow the examples by Disqus and BackType which Twitter just acquired.

Summation

So there you have it. An examination of the three core functions that Google will need to address at some point across all of its products:

1. How do people like something? They must replace Like with the Plus One button everywhere.

2. How do people share things? They need to offer wider array of choices as they do on YouTube. Yes, even to Twitter and Facebook.

3. How do people comment? They should offer a rich text experience with easy bold/italics formatting and the ability to thread conversations by replying to comments.

Google

Google’s Circle of Strife

July 2nd, 2011 Posted in Social Media, social networks

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I’m really liking Google+, the new social network from the search giant. Everyone who’s gotten into the field test release for G+ seems to be liking this effort much more than Google Wave and Google Buzz which is a good sign. However, everyone has complaints and suggestions too. What else is new?

Here’s my two cents worth. It centers around what I consider the best feature of G+ which is the Circles feature. In short, you can create groups for your contacts so you can isolate and control where your posts go, in theory anyway. There are some flaws in this design of course. The worst flaw has been fixed already though which involved the embarrassing situation that allowed people in your private circle to share your post publically. The Google dev team has been ultra busy patching holes like this so much praise must go their way. However, there are some other leaks that should be attended to sometime soon.

For example, let’s look at this situation. You create a private circle called XYZ for your small company and add about 10 people who work with you. Whenever you post something to this XYZ circle, only those 10 people you added to your circle will see it. That’s perfect and as designed. However, is this process as streamlined as possible? Not quite. Because this process is one-sided, it only truly works for the person who created the circle. Also, in order to make this form of communication a two-way street, all 10 people from XYZ must create and curate their own private circle for XYZ and must add all of the same people if they are all planning to stay in sync and on the same page. Obviously, for other types of circles (groups) this doesn’t matter as much. For example circles for good friends, relatives, etc.

Here’s another problem. So let’s say you create a new circle called Film Buffs and add some folks that love discussing films. So you try to share posts that involve movies to this film buffs circle instead of the public stream…which is what you do on twitter. Everything is shared in the public stream on there except if someone has a private account which is rare to see.
On G+, even though you added people who are into movies to your film buffs circle it does not mean everything you see will be about films. Every public post made by the members of your film buffs circle will appear in this circle, doesn’t matter what it’s about. The same holds true for you if they create a movie circle and add you to it. That movie circle will display all of your public posts regardless of the topic.
How do you handle this? Should there be an option to block public posts and only display posts shared directly to the circle? This won’t work because there is no centralized management of circles. Everyone creates/maintains their own circles.So unless the members of the circle agree to create synchronized circles with similar memberships it will not work.

What’s the answer?
I think a public circle where someone controls its visibility and membership would be the answer. For example, once employees of XYZ join Google+ they can do a search for public circles and find their official XYZ circle (Friendfeed did this well). The members are already curated for them and members are added/removed automatically. You can decide to join or leave any time as well.

Without centralized circles everyone will have to create and curate their own which is fine for most situations but there are many cases where we can save a lot of time and effort by having official circles available. It would avoid duplication as well. Right now, people are having trouble labeling people…does this person go to social media circle or marketing or both? Friend or acquaintance?

The other problem with relying on individuals to create all of the circles is that people will post something to a circle they created about something and the people they added to the circle will see it, but if someone replies to the post only those that happen to have created the same exact type of circle with similar people added to it will even see the reply. Unless the reply is marked public then many of the members of the circle won’t see it…which defeats the purpose of creating the circle in the first place. We are supposed to post to the public stream for all the world to see or to a particular circle for only those select people to view and respond to. As it is today, Google’s circle design is flawed and should be fixed someday. Judging by the amazing response from the google development team so far I will bet it’s only a matter of time before they improve the process of communicating with circles on G+.

Note: G+ needs to improve Sparks too by integrating Google Reader and/or Buzz but that’s another story for another day.

Google

Hindsite is 2.0/2.0

April 17th, 2009 Posted in social networks, twitter

6 Comments »

Yes, I know how to spell! I was just trying to be cute with the title of this post. Hindsight is indeed 20/20, especially when it comes to web 2.0 startups. There’s no better example than with Twitter, the ultra hot buzzword these days. Let’s take a look back at some reviews of Twitter to see who got it early and those that didn’t.

Mis-tweeten

Leo Laporte made a bold statement 2 years ago when he decided to leave twitter for its chief rival at the time, Jaiku (since purchased by Google and hung out to die on the vine).
Goodbye Twitter, Hello Jaiku! When did you come back, Leo? heh heh

Ross Mayfield from Many 2 Many was close but no cigar in his review of Twttr in which he said “To me its reply-to-all baked in your phone.” However, he gets half credit for this, “If they support MMS and let me send a photo to twttr and CC flickr, it will be a killer app. But for now, put my SMS’ in a sidebar widget or give me feeds I can splice.”

Tweet On the money

Almost from day one (July 2006!) Michael Arrington saw the potential of Twitter early on so kudo’s to Mr Techcrunch. It was called Twttr at the time and not even Odeo’s primary service offering. Michael astutely gave Twttr thumbs up and even predicted the failure of Odeo’s main product at the time.

Robert (@Scobleizer) Scoble compared Twitter & Pownce, the pet project from Kevin Rose of Digg in July 2007 and correctly described how and why Twitter was going to be more successful (note, he didn’t say better).

Veronica Belmont (@Veronica) from CNet TV back in May 2007 did this fun Prize Fight between Twitter and Jaiku. It was a heated battle but Twitter won in the final round!

Final Thoughts

I know it’s not easy to predict which services will make it and which ones won’t. There are many variables that go into these things. Many of the times, the best man doesn’t always win and the better technology doesn’t finish on top. A good example is the BetaMax format vs VHS. All experts will tell you that VHS was inferior but somehow it became the standard and the rest is history. Was Twitter VHS and Jaiku BetaMax? Does it even matter?

P.S. Twitter’s true birthdate?

Twitter wasn’t really born in 2006 as they’ll have us believe. That’s when they became available to the public. The germ of the idea (called Status) was born in July 2000.
Here’s more if you’re interested.

jaiku, twitter

When Worlds Collide

April 14th, 2009 Posted in social networks

10 Comments »

Our personal lives have begun to merge and blend into our professional lives online thanks to the massive success of social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Our once separate virtual worlds have begun to collide, mixing friends with clients and coworkers with family members. It all reminds me of a hilarious episode on Seinfeld called “Independent George” where Jerry’s friend George became hysterical when his world’s started to collide and his fiancé started being friends with one of his friends from his other world.

I know it might seem silly to some. After all, we are who we are. We shouldn’t really keep anything secret and isolated, do we? Some will argue rather convincingly that it’s best to keep personal lives totally separate from professional lives while others have no problems mixing everything up into one online existence (as I do).

I must admit that everything does change once you break down that wall that kept your worlds apart. I think it has more to do with the level of anonymity that one kept more than anything else. For example, some start with their real name (i.e. ChrisBrogan, GuyKawasaki, etc.) so privacy was never a concern. However, others started out with some trepidation and used an alias (cough…cough). I think those that began with a cloak of privacy have the harder time of letting their worlds collide and thus might require a longer period of adjustment in order to fully accept this major change.

In any event, no matter how you decide to manage your worlds, one thing is certain: We must be as authentic and as honest as we can be, no matter which world we’re in. Everything we share online is documented forever for all the world to see.

What NOT to do if you let your worlds collide online

10 Ways to Get fired on Twitter

Cisco fatty coverage

30 ways to lose your job on Twitter

Don’t insult Client or their town on twitter!

How to get fired Facebook-style

Woman Killed by Husband because of Facebook status change

Find Your Social Network Feeds

March 22nd, 2009 Posted in social networks

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Many social websites nowadays provide news feeds – constant updates of changes since your last visit. However, finding all these feeds – to put them in Google Reader, for instance, can be tricky. Well, I’ve taken the hassle out of this chore by putting the URLs of many of the most popular feeds into one handy list. Enjoy.

Brightkite

http://brightkite.com/people/username/objects.rss

(replace rss with kml if needed)

http://brightkite.com/people/username/friendstream.rss

(to include feeds for friends)

Upcoming
Go to “My Events” page and look for the Subscribe button. Right-click and save feed URL.

Yelp
Login to Yelp and go to http://www.yelp.com/rss for links to RSS and Atom feeds.

LinkedIn
Next to your Network Updates is the RSS Button. Click it and enable the RSS feed option.

Wakoopa

http://wakoopa.com/username/feed/recently_used

(Recently used apps)

Good Reads
In the “My BookShelf” area you will find links for each of the following three types of feeds your GoodReads account can generate. Within each page there will be an RSS feed link you can right-click and copy and use elsewhere. The three feeds are: 1. Books Read, 2. Books Currently Reading, and 3. Books You Want to Read

Find Your Blog Feed

Blog platforms offer multiple feeds with some standard URLs. We won’t go into all of them here: instead we direct you to these helpful resources for the WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad blogging platforms.

Micro-blogging Services

Tumblr

http://username.tumblr.com/rss

Twitter

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.rss

Utterli

http://www.utterli.com/u/rss/username

(Personal feed only)

http://www.utterli.com/u/rss/home/pv-username

(For circle of friends)

Plurk

http://www.plurk.com/username.xml

identi-ca

http://identi.ca/username

Photo Services

Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/username

Picasa

http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/username?alt=rss

SmugMug – In your Gallery, look for Available Feeds and you’ll some find some for RSS and Atom.

TwitPic – All of the photos you share on Twitter via TwitPic in one feed

http://twitpic.com/photos/username/feed.rss

Zooomr – Go to your zipline (

http://www.zooomr.com/username

) and look for the RSS feed icon.

Find Feeds for Video Services

YouTube-

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/uploads

(video uploads)

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/favorites

(favorite videos)

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/playlists

(Playlists)

12 seconds -

http://12seconds.tv/channel/username/feed

Vimeo

http://vimeo.com/username/videos/rss

(Videos)

http://vimeo.com/username/albums/rss

(Albums)

http://vimeo.com/username/likes/rss

(Things you’ve liked on Vimeo)

Seesmic -

http://feeds.seesmic.com/user.{username}.{format} (RSS or Atom)

Find Feeds for Music Services

Blip.fm – http://blip.fm/feed/username

Last.fm -

http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/username/recenttracks.rss

iLike – After logging in, look for the RSS Feed button next to Recent Artist Updates.

Pandora – Generate any feed you want here: http://www.pandora.com/feeds

Bookmarking Services

Delicious-

http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/username?count=15

Magnolia -

http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/full/people/username

Google Shared Stuff – Click the View Your Shared Stuff link and look for the RSS button.

StumbleUpon -

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/user/username/favorites

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/user/username/blog

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/user/username/reviews

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/user/username/comments

Commenting Services

Disqus-

http://disqus.com/people/username/comments.rss

BackType

http://feeds.backtype.com/username

Intense Debate – Go to the AddOns page and you’ll find all of your RSS feeds.

Find Feeds for News Services

Digg-

http://digg.com/users/username/history.rss

Google Reader – Google Reader Shared Items RSS Feed: Click Shared items under Your Stuff, then the link in the following line “Your shared items are available publicly at this web page.” On that page you will find the Atom Feed for all of the items you shared from Google Reader.

Less is More

January 10th, 2009 Posted in Social Media, social networks, Web 2.0

4 Comments »

2009 will be the Less is More year as increasing numbers of startups become shutdowns and people start to focus on using less services. The waves of early adopters has already begun to settle down and even the most excited web 2.0 proponents (myself included) realize that there are only so many minutes in a day and only so many services one person can ever use in a lifetime.

So, look for the trend to include far fewer startups but more usable services that allow their functions to be accessed via mobile devices and even through other services. The web will become increasingly more mashable, allowing us to plug and play with services the way we want.

Open vs Closed Platforms

All this leads to the importance of open platforms such as Open Social for web apps and Android for mobile apps. Sure, proprietary platforms will continue to enjoy success in the short term such as Facebook apps and iPhone apps, but ultimately long-term success will be all about the openness and flexibility of development environments.

Keep in mind that being “Open” does NOT always mean “Free” and zero revenue. Yes, initially things will be free as in all things open source, but it can lead to profitable windfalls should the platform and applications gain traction and become successful.

Divide and Conquer

Personally, I’ve also begun to divide and conquer in my daily battle with the firehose of data and information. Yes, I will still dip my toe in new waters and test drive new startups and technologies, but my core every day services will continue to remain a manageable amount. For example, is there really any reason to jump on and use a dozen different social networks? That requires a lot of time and effort regarding login credentials and managing all related emails within each system. Twitter and Friendfeed provide more than sufficient access to what’s out there these days.

On the mobile side of things, I’m thrilled with being able to reduce the number of devices and gadgets that I used to carry around all the time. For example, I used to have a Blackberry for phone calls and emails, an HP Ipaq with pocket PC/windows mobile for more advanced PDA functions and an iPod for music, videos, podcasts, etc. Well, thanks to Apple’s iPhone and similar devices I no longer have to maintain and carry multiple devices. We’re able to reduce the number of gadgets to one multiple purpose mobile device which is an excellent example of the beauty of less is more.

Doriano Carta

Renaissance 2.0

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