A Fuller View

I am not sure that this isn’t just a bit of fun for the folks at The Onion. But they may be launching a new social netoworking site called Frrvrr.

Ok, I am now convinced I have to re-start using and posting to Twitter! RWW has a nice piece on ways to have fun with Twitter.

I just couldn’t resist a blog post title with ants and algorithms in it… Anyway, over on Edge.org there is an interesting interview (both text and video) with a biologist — “ANTS HAVE ALGORITHMS - A Talk with Iain Couzin” — about ants and about thier behavour. Worth watching if you have time, even on a Friday evening. I found the quote below interesting on traffic jams, I am also sure we can use ants to help buold models on socail networking…

The reason these ants don’t have traffic jams the way humans would is that they’re related. As I say in every talk, I always refer to these ants as ’she’ and as ‘her’. That is because almost every ant most people see is female, and so they’re related by a genetic determinism called haplodiploidy, which means they’re more related to each other than to their own kin, so of course they function together as colonies.

When we look at the optimization of an ant trail, we can look at what optimizes the benefit for all of the individuals. We also model human crowds, and when we model human crowds, we use a different algorithm entirely; we have a game theoretic algorithm where individuals may minimize their own travel times, but may do so at the expense of others because they don’t necessarily care whether they cause congestion for other individuals.

It a very storming in the UK today - the 1st big one this winter and spring in on the door step. I think there is another storm brewing over privacy and the uses of cookie data (user profiles, behavioral targeting etc) to target ads. I’ll point to 3 pieces that form part of my thesis:

1. AOL trying to get ahead of the curve (smart move, btw)
2. UK start-up Phorm getting into hot water
3. More on the decline of users on social networking sites - I wonder if maybe some people are getting turned off by all the advertising (here’s a previous example I posted) and the spam (although I bet this is a small impact) on social networking sites?
4. This NYT piece also worth a read re: this subject

SAI says they see Google as the least exposed of the big 4. I disagree as the have user data across multiple services (mail, docs, igoogle, etc) and this appears to me that this data is used to help tagret ads. To an end user looks like a profile and looks spooky. All the big players need to have solid PR and education programs in place around privacy and profile targeting (this my generic term fo all user type targeting tied to a cookie).

Simon B on AdViking says he thinks social advertising could be a real thing and a real business model - he even provides a meta algorithm here. I agree only if I can be in control and that the recommendation side gets easier to access. My biggest complaint is that many of social networking sites expect the users to do to much work, = boring. One of my biggest complaints about FB was the lack of usability. Maybe FB + IYP database + Google maps = a better experience?

I disagree with Mr Blodget’s comments on SAI re: 20% time at Google. That just proves that Wall Street analysts don’t get tech innovation or how the Valley works. The 20% is great “life hacking” and I am sure Google still gets 125% from most staff… On a related note this over on Fast Company is cool and well worth read!

• Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation

Plus, worth checking this one on NYT:

• Yahoo Reveals (Some) Details About Its Ad Plans

I added some comments to yesterday’s post on AOL below.

Great video interview with Nicholas A. Christakis on The Edge about his research into social networks (and not just the online variety, but the real social networks offline).

This just in on TechCrunh a rumour that Google may try to buy 20% of Yahoo to block you-know-who. Totally wild.

This news - see Facebook ’sees decline in users’ - about Facebook in the UK brought a small wry smile to my face. Maybe I started a trend by quiting Facebook last month in an effort to find more time for “real social networking”!? I need to put together a definition of what I mean by real social networking - but in a nutshell what I mean it is networking offline in the real world with real people by phone or face-2-face.

Back to FB - I know the drop was only 5% which could really just be a case of a long and bad holiday hangover. Who knows? Or maybe there just is too much competition for out limited attention (see attention economy for more of an idea of what I mean) in the social networking space. I liked this table the BBC had on the top 10 social networking sites in the UK - BBC in at No 5, nice.

Well, I am not sure this is good news or a sign that we really are at the tail end of a the bubble 2.0? The Industry Standard has relaunched. I was a big fan of the orginally Standard back during the dotcom bubble 1.0 - it always had good reporting and a lot info on start-ups. Plus it had a nice format as a printed version weekly magazine (I think it was weekly?)… This time it appears to be 100% online and includes a socail networking and a prediction market angle. I will be reading and watching the site to see if its worths adding to the blogroll.

Do you remember the Tribewanted story?

I had sort of forgotten all about this experiment in eco-based social networking. Well they have started to air a reality TV show about this island adventure – its called “Paradise or Bust” – here’s a review of episode one. It makes for very good watching and I can’t help wanting to root (in a positive way) for this new “backpacker” tribe. I agree with Decca Aitken (Guardian Weekend piece) that at some level there is a real bond being developed between the local islanders (who own the island and have leased it to Tribewanted) and many of the new tribe members.

I am also impressed by the forward thinking of the local cheif for leasing the island (which is in a remote part of Fiji) as a way to develop ths resource and make some money. Note: to get to Vorovoro say from LA is a minimum of 2 flights then a truck and boat ride; the 2nd flight will be on an internal turbo prop flight. I spent 14 months in Fiji back in the mid 1990s and it is a magical place and the Fijian may be the most friendly people on the planet.

Now one of the interesting things to watch is will this show drive more members to join? As of today the site lists 1397 members. I will check back in a few weeks on this stat and in the meantime I am going to keep watching the show. Below is a short intro clip:

So far I have had at least 3 invites to the private beta by NotchUp a stealth startup based in Los Altos, California launching later this month. I have deleted all the invites, sorry guys. This part of my personal pus to do more real social networking and less online - see the related post: Why I am Quiting Facebook.

 If anyone reading my blog has used the site please feel free to share your initial feedback on the service!

 I keep thinking LinkedIn would do well to expand its service in the job search area. btw - LinkedIn have opened a UK office and now have over 1 million members in the UK.

Yesterday a friend of mine asked me “do you by any chance know any good blogs or reports on social networking, especially from a monetization andmarketing point of view?” So I pulled together the list of links below for him taht I am now sharing with the blogsphere:

Might be worth getting this report:
http://radar.oreilly.com/research/reports/facebook.html

RWW will have some good posts:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/consumer_apps_2007_year_in_review.php

This one is also good:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/06/myspace-and-facebook-launch-new-advertising-products-why-hyper-targeting-social-ads-and-rise-of-the-fan-sumer%E2%80%9D-matter-to-brands/

Plus there will be asome links off my posts on MySpace:
http://afullerview.wordpress.com/category/myspace/

There are specific MySpace and FB blogs - I would hunt around for
these by searching on Google. Here are a few links -
http://www.allfacebook.com/
http://adonomics.com/
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/-the-big-question-for.html

There is a good list of Social Media Marketing on SEL blogroll -
http://searchengineland.com/ - list below:
10e20 Blog
Brent Csutoras
Cornwallseo.com
Collective Thoughts
LinkedIn Blog
Mashable
Micro Persuasion
Muhammad Saleem
Pronet Advertising
ViperChill
Tamar Weinberg

Note: if anyone know of any other good blogs or reports on social networking please comment and share. Thanks.