Neat del.icio.us tip: Tagging for yourself vs. readlater
From Hannah the Instigator...
Instead of tagging something "readlater" in del.icio.us, a tag you're not likely to ever go back to again and without a way to check if you actually read it, tag it "for:" yourself. This way, when you tag stuff for:yourscreename", it sits in your "for" inbox until you actually click on it to read it.
I don't trust any of you people
Tara wrote a post about trust yesterday that struck me. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what social means and should mean in terms of technology, especially as our social technology starts to make its way into the more private areas of our lives, like our finances. Do Web 2.0 philosophies hold up in the design of social software for the most important parts of our mainstream lives? I am sensing from my non-techy friends a kind of Web 2.0 backlash against all the openness and sharing, and while I still believe that open is better, I believe that when, where, and how are key questions that Web 2.0 has yet to flush out in order to start moving away from the bleeding edge.
So, back to Tara's post. She wrote the following statement:
I disagree and don't think that's how it actually works. People aren't actually good. They're self interested.
However, it is generally in your own self interest to be a good person most of the time, because then other people will be good back to you and then you also don't have to deal with the penalties for being an asshole (poor reputation, retaliation from others, alienation, prison, perhaps...).
That's a key difference, especially when it comes to the design of social software. Take seller ratings, for example. I bought some nice pieces from Bethany Cooper the other day. Do I trust her? Not particularly. I don't know her. Although, if I had to make a bet, unless she's an idiot, if she's interested in succeeding in such a public platform, she's probably not in the business of screwing people over on a regular basis. So, she's probably good, but since I don't have any reason to trust her, I'll make my judgment based on the 1200 positive experiences that people have had with her according to her seller rating... which amounts to 100%. In this case, while people are likely to be good, technology doesn't force us to depend on trust.
She could still, however, steal candy from babies in her spare time, so there's also context around trust. I may not trust her to drive my car, but I trust her to send me some beautiful handmade stuff on time.
Open source works the same way. Are people involved in the open source community generally good people? Maybe, but not always. Are they contributing to the open source community out of selflessness or some interest in the greater good of humanity? Maybe, but not necessarily. In fact, many open source contributors are writing code that solves their own problems. At that point, giving that code back, so that others might improve on it and also share code with them in the future is of greater value to them than hoarding code and not sharing. Sounds "good" but what's really going on is that they've recognized that they're simply better off, from a utility standpoint, sharing.
It's the Prisoner's Dilemma. Two prisoners are being interrogated separately and if they squeal on each other, they have a better outcome than if only one of them squeals. However, if they both keep their mouth's shut, they both get off easy. Without communication and information on what the other person has done before, it isn't likely that these two will cooperate, but if you repeat the experiment a number of times, eventually, they'll learn that the better outcome is to work together. Is that trust, or just two people maximizing utility in a world of free communication and discoverable information?
Trust has nothing to do with it. It's about incentive, reputation, and access to information. Don't ask me to trust you... give me the tools for you to figure out whether I'm trustworthy... or tell me some friends we have in common.
That's why, for example, when social applications like Facebook and Vox were built, they focused on privacy... making sure that the right people saw the right information about you. Privacy is going to be a huge factor in the mainstreamification of Web 2.0, especially in the current culture of fear that's being spread.
Trust me.
It's about time... David Blaine to jump off Brooklyn Bridge
I'll be there right under the bridge with my kayak to smack him on the head with my paddle on the off chance he actually pops back up alive from under the water.
I think it's just a trick to get rid of this idiot once and for all. We'll let him jump, and then he'll realize there are no boats in the water to pick him up... no rescue divers. Hopefully, we'll just get swept out to see and we'll never have to hear about his next idiotic stunt.
"I don't see any boats under there..."
"Trust me, they're under the bridge... they just don' t want to get in the way."
Perfect weather for kayaking this weekend
A few slow mornings at the boathouse, but I did get visits from Matt Myers from 30elm and Josephine Dorado.
What does "social" mean and who needs it?
Fred and I had an interesting e-mail exchange the other day about his theory that "Every web service should be social."
I hesitated to go that far, mostly because I'm feeling a little personal backlash against the idea of every service being explicitly social.
Take WebMD, for example. Maybe one day, I'll be able to login to WebMD and get all my personal medical history there, but for now, its a good place to get questions answered like, "What is this purple growth on my pinky toe?"
That's not exactly the kind of question I want to broadcast to a group, nor do I want an armchair diagnosis from Louise from Chattenooga. I also don't want to be friends with other people with purple growths on their pinky toes. In fact, if WebMD were suddenly morphed into a more explicit social sharing community about health, I actually might be less inclined to use it and so would others, because its not necessarily the kind of think the mainstream is comfortable being social about.
However, that doesn't mean the fact that 34% of all 27 year old males in Bay Ridge have this issue isn't useful to me. "People like you...", a concept Amazon pioneered and really nailed, is indeed a very powerful social feature. But, if you asked most people, you wouldn't normally think of Amazon as a "social" web service.
Would Amazon be even better if they became a social network and aggregated all my reviews, purchases, etc. into profiles? Can I have Amazon friends? Clearly, not every user would necessarily want their Amazon purchases so prominently displayed, but giving people the option to publish a public profile could be an interesting move for them.
So, what I'm saying is... aggregated social data can be a fantastic addition to a site, but making the core of your service to be explicitly social may not be. It goes back to the idea that a service needs to work if you're the only user and you don't care about the community. del.icio.us worked at one user in a way that Digg never would.
Allowing users to commune... that can also be an added feature, but it's important to make sure that it doesn't alienate users who aren't interested. There are many people who don't want their web experience to be social. They see the web as convenient, easy, on demand, but social isn't necessarily want out of their web, even if us designers and product managers and VC think that makes the web universally better.
Social doesn't always mean friends and a public profile... it can mean data aggregation, design, filtering... and be careful about alienating the people who want to just buy their Slurpee without having to tell the guy at the 7-11 counter about their kids and where they're from.
Hudson River Office Hours: Kayaking Starts Saturday
I absolutely love the opportunities this blog and nextNY have afforded me to meet lots of interesting and passionate people in NYC.
The problem is, I never have time to meet all of them... and when I do, it seems to be all of them at once, and I can't sit down for more than two minutes at a time with someone.
....except during the summer, where I aften spend endless amounts of time completely available to anyone... anyone who'd like to go kayaking anyway. (Or if you just want to hangout by the water, but that's no fun...)
Yup, kayaking season is starting again at the Downtown Boathouse this Saturday. We have three locations: Pier 40 (by Houston St.), Pier 96 (W56th St) and 72nd St. in Riverside Park.
This summer, I'll be manning the one down at Pier 40 almost every Saturday, and most Sundays, too. We open at 9AM and the last boat generally goes out at 5:30, but since we're all volunteers, that's sort of flexible. This Saturday, though, I'll be out there at 9AM sharp if anyone would like to go for a paddle or just hang around the dock. I'll probably stay until 3PM.
So if you want to talk shop, talk kayaking, talk about the Mets, or just say hi, you're welcome to come by anytime!
It's not just about free content...
Videohybrid has a copy of Spiderman 3 that you can watch right now.
I tried to sit down and watch it the other day, and about 3 minutes into it, I stopped. I was bored.
It wasn't the movie. It was the experience. I really like going to the movies. I like going with my friends. I like the huge screen and the Snow Caps and previews, man do I love the previews. I could seriously just watch two hours of nothing but previews... all the best parts of upcoming movies. Fantastic. All in all, despite increases in price, I still think paying the twelve bucks or whatever it is to go to the movies is totally worth it and one of the best values you can get for your money. Bowling (at least in NYC) is more expensive, and so is pool. You can't really drink for that kinda money for two hours... not much you can do for six bucks an hour, really.
And that's really what it comes down to. Provide a great experience, and people will pay for it. If content owners spent nearly as much time trying to create a great user experience at a fair price as they did trying to police content, they wouldn't see declining revenues.
I might watch Casino Royale on the web, b/c I've seen it already, but that doesn't mean I'm not still going to buy the DVD. (Tried to once already... sold out at Best Buy.)
A product is born: Voki lives!
Finally, I'm a product manager with a product.
Voki is now public...brought to a level by which it can only improve through actual usage by real consumers.
What's personally interesting for me is that I thought that this would be the kind of milemarker that I would sit back on and take a breadth...carefully watch what people do with it, put the specs aside and listen to the market, talk it up.
Well, yes, I need to do all of those things, but there's no breather here. Launching a product is not the end of a phase, it's really just the beginning. All of those endless debates about what's more intuitive, what should a screen be called, where should a button be placed... now they become issues for potentially thousands of people in a very real way.
Thought you were knee deep in it now? Try being a sewer worker during the Superbowl when everyone flushes at the same time. Such is the responsibility that comes with being a product guy.
Still, though, it's important to recognize the hard work that got Voki to this point. It would not have been possible without a lot of hours from Oddcast's creative and technical staffs, none of whom were completely relieved from various day to day fires that need to be put out related to other products throughout the company. Still, they found time to make a new product happen.
Over the next few days, I'll be detailing some of the thoughts and decisions and "todo's" related to the product and I'm excited to be able to give an insider's perspective into the process of product management. It will be fun to talk about a product that is out there and one that hopefully iterates and innovates over time. If we're doing out job right, it will be obvious that we're listening to our community and working hard to make Voki more useful, easier, and yes, more fun.
But right now I need a favor... from every last one of you.
I'd really like you all to be a part of this... check that... I really need you all to be a part of this. If you've been reading this blog for a while, or if you just recently joined, and you've ever got any value out of it, I'm glad. I've never really asked for anything in return, but today I will.
You see, I really believe that the best products are made better by passionate users, and so, right now, that's what I need...users. But don't use come in, poke it once, and leave. Really use it and tell me what you think.
Here's what I'm looking for:
- Register for an account.
- Go to My Voki.
- Click "Create a new Voki" and, well, create a new Voki.
- Send it to a handful of people by clicking "Voki for others" and select that scene that you just created (or a completely new one). Send it to me, too, if you want. And don't just send a boring "Hey, check this out e-mail." Send something cool. Something funny. Be creative, angry, sexy, moronic, obnoxious, sweet, sincere, alluring... whatever you want. Talk about what you're really passionate about. Tell others about the war, or net neutrality, or about Paris Hilton's arrest. If it's really good, we'll post it as a "Featured User".
- If you have a blog or a MySpace profile or anywhere else you keep widgets, post it, even if only for a few days to see what people think... and to see what you think of being able to change your Voki's look and message on the fly.
Asking a lot? Maybe... but you have to understand, Voki is something I really want to be fantastic. I don't want a lot of users because I want to go sit on a panel somewhere... I want a lot of users because I want to be able to say that I helped build something that people use... that when it's my birthday, I get to hear the voices of my readers because they're sending me Voki.... when I happen upon your blog, you're telling me what you're up to for the day, or just greeting me.
But I can't do that unless it's good, and I can't do that without the feedback of users. So, try it out, stick with it for a little bit, and tell me what you think. E-mail me at charlie@oddcast.com. Don't pull punches either. Tell me exactly what you think and I'll be posting the feedback right here and what we're doing about it. It will be an interesting exercise in transparency and honesty.
So thanks for helping me out... thanks for reading... and seriously, sincerely, I look forward to hearing your voice soon, on a Voki. Because, and I've said this before, it's not really about the avatar or virtual worlds, or being like Second Life or anything like that... It's a voice app, and voice is emotional. I think of Voki as a creative skin for your voice and I believe in voice on the web. We spend a lot of time by ourselves in silence on the web... often times glossing over the idea that there's a real person on the other side of the IP address. Voice is a reminder, to me, of the human side of the web... and even with a little animated fish in front of it that lipsyncs for you, it can be a very powerful thing.
And while you're at it, RSS people, click through to my blog to see the first public Voki in my sidebar. Go ahead and comment on it! (It will take a second or two to appear... ) Play ball!
danah's Twitter questions
Because I'm interested in the research and I'm an admitted fanboyd...
[x ] Yes, and you *must* use my real name.
[ ] Yes, but please use a pseudonym and don't use any identifying information.
[ ] No, please just use this for your own weird thoughts.
1. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?
I use Twitter to keep up with what a particular social group is up to after work... Only my tech friends really use it, and so I use it to make my city smaller...increasing the "random" run-ins and stop bys.
2. Who do you think is reading your Tweets? Is this the audience you want? Why/why not? Tell me anything you think of relating to the audience for your Tweets.
I don't understand why many of the people who are subscribed to them are. Seems like a lot of the people don't really know me, so I'm not sure why they would care when I go play softball or what bars I'm at. At least when strangers read my blog, they might gleen some interesting technology info or something... but my twitters are the day to day minutia of my life... Sometimes, I'm not even interested in them.
I'd love for some of my non tech friends to be on it... and maybe I'll clue them in, but I don't think you'd really "get it" if you weren't blogging or reading blogs and understanding the value and potential of this kind of openness.
3. How do you read others' Tweets? Do you read all of them? Who do you read/not read and why? Do you know them all?
I read on the phone, but have it set to not buzz during certain hours of the day, like when I'm sleeping. I do not read all of them... just the people I'm likely to bump into and a few extras who I happen to find really amusing or interesting. I know all of the people I read at least digitally... not necessarily in person.
4. What content do you think is appropriate for a Tweet? What is inappropriate? Have you ever found yourself wanting to Tweet and then deciding against it? Why?
I don't know why people have public casual conversations over Twitter... the kind that others aren't likely to be interested in.... I mean, I know why the do, I just wish I could filter it out. I've never bagged a Tweet.
5. Are your Tweets public? Why/why not? How do you feel about people you don't know coming across them? What about people you do know?
My Tweets are public and I'm fine with it. To people I don't know, they might seem irrelevent, but certainly not something someone would judge me on in a way that I care about.
6. What do i need to know about why Twitter is/is not working for you or your friends?
Twitter needs better group and notification management tools. I want to be able to get different messages across both phone and IM at the same time, or at different times. Basically, I need a calendar that allows me to turn on/off independently of each other what my notifications are with a schedule. Also, I would like to be able to bundle/group people with this same level of control.
Petsi's Pies: Going the extra 344 feet
If you live in Somerville, MA, you know Petsi's Pies. I've never had the pleasure of having a piece myself *hint, hint* , but everyone in the area raves about them.
Well, I happen to know a couple of Harvard Law students busy studying for their exams that live right down the street. Only problem is, I'm in NYC and Petsi's doesn't deliver...not usually anyway.
But I called the shop and asked if they would be willing to hand deliever a blueberry pie down the street, which they happily obliged. A lot of places might not have bothered, but Petsi's went the extra 344 feet (according to Google Maps) to close the deal. Apparently the owner delivered the pie herself, "in her pie-making outfit". Thanks!
Roadtrippin'... Driving across the country in July and the app that could have helped me
I'm not much of a traveller, I'll admit that. I can count the number of times I've been out of the country on one hand, and one of those times was Canada, so I'm not entirely sure that counts. (Just a little good clean Canadian humor, eh... just kidding around.)
So, when the idea of a cross country road trip was proposed to me, I jumped at the idea. Ok, so actually, I thought about it carefully, and created several maps and spreadsheets on it, but the jumping was there in spirit.
But, actually, the whole planning thing was not only a logistical pain in the butt, but I thought of lots of opportunities for web app to help me out.
So first off, here's the trip: (PS... All these yellow markets aren't necessarily real stops... sometimes, I just had to make sure Google Maps put me on the right road so I had to enter somewhere random to force it.)
And here's a link to the real map...
And then to our calendar. It's quite ambitious... and no, I'm not driving the 'Stang. No interest in putting 4900 miles on it. That's what rental cars are for. Plus, we're only driving one way.
But what I really wanted was a great integration of a map and a calendar, one that took into consideration driving times. On top of that, I wanted to layer on events and hotels... ones that took into consideration the time I was going to be there. For example, by random chance, I stumbled upon a fair in St. Louis going on right around July 4th when I'm going to be there. Also, it was a pretty manual process to match my driving and my calendar with the various baseball games that I wanted to see, because teams aren't always in town when you are.
Not only that, the group collaboration around this trip was very manual... mostly with passing links back and forth. I wanted to give my co-pilot the opportunity to comment on various parts of the trip. Plus, the collected wisdom of others came in handy. We got advice from others to make sure we hit the South Dakota Badlands and exactly what time to hit them. Now we know that, but what about others making that same trip.
So what I'm looking for is a Google Maps, Gcal, Travelocity, Yelp, Gchat, Wiki, Blogs, Flickr mashup for roadtrips. That doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do. :)
Every ad should have embed code
I just saw a great ad on Shockwave.com with a limp joystick asking "Is spyware affecting your performance?" Hilarious. Nice job whoever did it for McAfee.
And I'd love to have reposted that ad on this blog... and I suppose get paid for it.. but regardless, why should video be the only form of viral advertising. Every single ad element out there should be sharable. Where's the embed code for this ad? Even if you don't build in a way to pay me, people don't get paid to pass YouTube videos around (for the most part) yet either... so why shouldn't you be making banner ads that are just as entertaining and just as worth playing?