The Praized Blog

Big storm this week in the blogosphere as Robert Scoble’s Facebook account was temporarily suspended for breaking the site’s terms of service. He was using a new tool from Plaxo Pulse that was extracting and matching Plaxo and Facebook users. As Robert said: “I wanted to get all my contacts into my Microsoft Outlook address book and hook them up with the Plaxo system, which 1,800 of my friends are already on.” Scoble was eventually reinstated but the debate about data portability now rages on (see also DataPortability.org).

A few minutes ago, I discovered that LinkedIn now allows you to export your data in various formats (.CSV and .VCF). I don’t know how long they’ve been offering this feature (not long I suspect) but it’s an extremely smart move to position themselves as the definite business-oriented social network. Bravo!

Best summary is on Read/WriteWeb:

To summarize: today LinkedIn announced some cool new features and made more promises about what will be a closed platform for select 3rd party partners, built on top of an API of questionable worth and targeted at business users with a history of disinterest in social applications. It’s not ready yet. Did we mention that the users will be people with money, though? I imagine that for that reason if nothing else, widget developers will remain very interested. I’d like to see LinkedIn do something better than this, though.

What it means: although the announcement is still a bit “vaporware-ish”, I think there is tremendous potential in tapping into the LinkedIn user crowd. If developers can build useful B2B-oriented apps, strong adoption could follow. But LinkedIn needs to open up the API to a larger developer base before it happens. Another developing story to keep on your radar screen but no short-term action.

With the rise of Facebook and the arrival of the OpenSocial ecosystem, web site operators are left wondering about prioritization. Which social network(s) should I embrace, where should I invest my time, what site(s) offer the biggest bang for the buck if I build an application?

The folks at Compete have analyzed member overlap at various social networks and explain their findings in this blog post. The graph below shows those interactions.

Here are some of the highlights:

• 20% of MySpace members are also Facebook members.
• 64% of Facebook members are also on MySpace.
• Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster all share more than 49% of their members with MySpace.
• LinkedIn shares 42% of its members with Facebook and 32% with MySpace.

What it means: From a sheer size point of view, Facebook and MySpace are interesting but operators should not underestimate the reach of Bebo, Friendster, Hi5 and LinkedIn. Some of these social networks are very strong in different parts of the globe and, depending where your user base is located, could make interesting platforms for your applications. In addition, LinkedIn and Viadeo reach a business-oriented user base.

Following this blog post yesterday about my speculation that Google is building a mobile development platform, the whole blogosphere announced this morning that Google is leading an initiative called OpenSocial that will see the launch an open social web API. This new API will allow social networks and application developers to work together using a set of standardized instructions. Partners currently include Google’s Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

Flickr photo by magerleagues.

As Marc Andreessen said this morning on his blog,

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

• With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a “container” — “apps” can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.
• With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) — those languages and APIs don’t work anywhere other than Facebook — and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

TechCrunch explains in more details:

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

What it means: this is a major announcement, maybe the biggest announcement of the year. Standardizing the social web will go a long way towards the explosion of social as a key element of the Web operating system and one more step towards the web becoming a gigantic word of mouth machine. You’ll want to embrace these standards.

Update: According to AlleyInsider, MySpace will announce today that they join the OpenSocial “alliance”

Update2: Techcrunch reports that blog software publisher SixApart is also joining. Bebo also.

On Monday, Yahoo Search launched improvements to their search engine including something they call the “search assist“. Like some other bloggers, I wasn’t too impressed until one of my friends showed me how you could use it in the context of people search.

If you do a search for my name on Yahoo and trigger the search assist, you can now see concepts associated with my name. The keywords Linkedin, Facebook, Robert Scoble, local search, social networks, blog archive, online media and product management appear in the search assist screen. As my public face on the web is mostly professional, all these keywords are bang on and offer a good representation of who I am on the web:

Linkedin: I’m a heavy Linkedin user and the site has a great SEO strategy.

Facebook: I’ve blogged about Facebook a lot during the summer and some of my ideas had big impacts in the blogosphere.

Local search and social networks: my job and what I blog about.

Online media and product management: my job.

Robert Scoble: I discovered what Robert was doing with Facebook and blogged about it, creating an important Web meme.

The people-search site Spock uses tags to convey the same kind of related information. Unfortunately, on a search for my name, the info is much more limited as it comes only from my Linkedin profile. It misses a large portion of my other online activities, most notably the blogging.

What it means: structured business data has always been the bread and butter of the directory industry but most publishers have put their residential search function on the side, not really caring about it. Be careful! Residential or people search is a great traffic driver into your ecosystem of web sites and many people are after that traffic. By introducing structured people search, Yahoo, Spock and others are making it much more relevant. Residential search is about to be disrupted.

This morning, InsideFacebook reports that “Facebook has added two new undocumented functions to its API Test Console this evening that appear to reference an as-yet-unreleased feature called “Friend Lists.”” They continue: “The addition of Friend Lists means one can now much more flexibly and powerfully manage privacy settings per List. Work friends see one portion of your profile, personal friends see another, best friends see yet another.”

In addition, a few minutes ago, my friend (and Praized Media partner) Sylvain sends me this relationships chart, part of an effort to standardize the definition of “friend”. He found the reference to it on a Google group that discusses Social Network Portability (see my post about the web becoming a giant word of mouth machine to understand the impact of social network portability).

The relationships chart tries to capture all types of relationships that can exist between two persons. Examples include lifePartnerOf, neighborOf, worksWith and wouldLikeToKnow.

What it means: 6 weeks ago, I had forecasted that Facebook would modify and add layers to their definition of “friend”. It seems like this is coming sooner than later. This could represent a serious threat to Linkedin. Moreover, many smart people on the world wide web’s edge are thinking about social network interoperability. That’s why I strongly believe “social” will become part of the fabric of the web. Better follow these conversations now if you want to hook yourself early on with these new standards.

Remember last Saturday morning when I shouted “I am media”? Want to know what happened since then? I accidentally went from theory to practice…

Robert Scoble picked up my post and confirmed my theory. My blog received 10 times more traffic than usual for two days and I’ve had many interesting conversations during the weekend. I also added many friends to Facebook, Pownce and Linkedin.

And just when I thought that wave had subsided, the magic of Facebook connected Colin Carmichael and I on Tuesday morning and put us on a mission to save Business 2.0 magazine. Alerted by my status update feed, Colin created a Facebook group dedicated to this cause and we started leveraging social media to create some buzz around the group. You can read the chronology of these events here.

The group now has about 1075 members. We’ve been adding 1 member every five minutes since the launch and all of the major industry influencers have joined the group. Since the launch, we’ve received coverage from the following major media/blogs:

Valleywag, “Facebook to the rescue!”

Advertising Age, “Can Fans Save Business 2.0?”

San Francisco Chronicle, “Save Business 2.0”

GigaOm, “Saving Business 2.0, Facebook Style”

Fast Company, “Can A Social Network Save Business 2.0?”

Washington Post, “Trying to Save A Magazine Through Facebook”

San Jose Mercury News, “Facebook group hopes to save Business 2.0”

Business 2.0, “Can Facebook Save Business 2.0?”

I even got mentioned by name in the San Jose Mercury News article! Many Business 2.0 readers have had the chance to express their love for the magazine, many subscriptions have been sold and some people even registered on Facebook just to be part of the group! I think we’ve already made a difference in the lives of the Business 2.0 team. I think there’s a lot of things we can learn from this experience especially about the various social media vehicles working together but I’m still digesting as this is an ongoing process. It’s been a good ride so far. What a week.

One thing’s for sure: I am media!

Efforts to save Business 2.0 magazine via a Facebook group are going very well. We currently have 500 members (including a large number of tech influencers) after only two days and we’re getting traction in multiple media (ValleyWag, Advertising Age, Fast Company and a variety of blogs).

As the “Official ‘Save Business 2.0′ blogger”, here’s my theory of what I think happened to get to this result as quickly.

1) I was the original sneezer after seeing the New York Times article talking about the potential shutdown of the magazine. I wrote a Facebook status update that said “Sebastien is sad to think Business 2.0 magazine might fold in September”. As I’m using Facebook for networking and I’ve been adding many friends since Robert Scoble talked about me last Saturday, I reach out to 250+ “friends” with my update.

2) One of my friends, Colin Carmichael, picks up the news via my status update, decides to create the group and invites me.

3) I blog about the group in the Praized blog.

4) My blog post gets picked up by Techmeme and is attached to the original New York Times article. It’s the first broadcast about the creation of the Facebook group.

5) Someone from Business 2.0 (or someone close to the team) finds my blog post via Techmeme and sees that Colin has created a group.

6) A good portion of the Business 2.0 staff, freelancers and former employees joins the group. All these people are important influencers. As quoted by Advertising Age, “Editor in Chief Josh Quittner said he signed up for the group as a purely reflexive emotional gesture. “It choked me up — an old cynic like me,” he said.”

7) Close friends and business acquaintances (other tech journalists & bloggers) are invited to joined the group via the Facebook “Join this group” function.

As the Silicon Valley tech crowd is a tightly-knit group, they quickly reach out to their peers who then join the group.

9) In the meantime, I try to fan the flames using Digg and Linkedin. Digg does not work but Linkedin contributes to the conversation.

12) In the meantime, Colin talks with many media about the group and its purpose.

10) Valleywag picks up the news, sends it to another level.

11) Group members continue to invite other influencers, Advertising Age picks up the news, reaching a more mainstream marketing population.

12) Snowball effect is in action as we get more and more media/blog coverage, more people joining and more people inviting other people. 48 people added themselves to the group while I was writing this post.

13) What’s next? Business 2.0 is saved? Let’s continue the movement and save the magazine!

Now, this is just my theory. I think Colin and I played an important role by starting all of this but I think Techmeme played a critical relay role. And I think the use of the viral functionalities of Facebook by the influencers who joined the group in the early hours played a critical role as well. In addition, what I find fascinating is that we’ve had many people tell us that a) they created their Facebook account to be able to join the group and b) they ended up subscribing to the magazine after seeing the news and the efforts to save it. If that’s not the power of social media…

What started yesterday as one of my Facebook status updates is slowly becoming a grass-root effort to save Business 2.0 magazine. The Facebook group created yesterday morning for that occasion now has 139 members (and growing every minute). The list of people supporting the magazine is starting to read like a who’s who of tech entrepreneurs, bloggers and journalists and includes amongst others Reid Hoffman, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Craig Newmark, and Josh Quittner.

In addition to the Facebook group, I’ve posted the news on Digg (very limited results) and I’ve also asked a question on LinkedIn (some interesting comments there). We’re also now crossing over into blogging media with a Valleywag article covering our efforts to save the magazine. Hopefully, we can get more blogging media coverage today and maybe (cross your fingers) get offline media coverage as well!

With that many “sneezers” on board, I have very high hopes we can tell Time Inc. that the magazine is a must-read amongst the digerati and save it.

BTW, if you like Business 2.0 magazine, make sure you add your name to the Facebook group! If you want to add me to your Facebook network, don’t hesitate to invite me also.

End of day update: the group is up to 329 members and Advertising Age has covered the news! Keep going!

I’ve been thinking about Robert Scoble’s post on Facebook since I blogged about it yesterday. In it, he invites people to become “friend” with him on Facebook (and he does it again in his last post yesterday night). Intuitively, I knew he was unto something and I asked the Praized blog readers to do the same thing (you can do it by clicking here).

Now, I’ve been “friends” with Robert ever since I met him at Google Zeitgeist 2005. We were sitting at the same dinner table and had the occasion to exchange a few words (he’s a great guy BTW!). For those who don’t know him, Robert was one of Microsoft’s technical evangelists. He was part of the Channel 9 MSDN Video team, walking around the Microsoft campus and shooting very informal new product videos. He became extremely popular by having a more balanced view about his employer (more balanced than traditional PR people), sometimes congratulating and sometimes criticizing Microsoft. More info can be found on his Wikipedia profile

Since meeting Robert, he’s been part of my LinkedIn network, and recently I added him in my Pownce network. I obviously added Robert to my Facebook network yesterday afternoon after reading his post (and he accepted it quickly).

Now, if you look in his Pownce public feed, you’ll see that Robert has been micro-blogging about stuff he’s doing. He currently has 1253 “friends”, all early adopters as Pownce is still in beta. In Facebook, he now has 2702 “friends”. Yesterday night, I got a message in my Facebook news feed section. Robert had uploaded a video and
I got an alert about it because he’s in my friends list.

It made me wonder: why would Robert Scoble accept “friends” invitation from people he does not know? Why do you want to be connected to people you don’t know and alert them to stuff you’re doing? And then it hit me! Robert Scoble is media. He’s building his own broadcast network. He understands that media is completely fragmented and, by participating in all these new social communication vehicles (blogging, Twitter, Pownce, Facebook), he’s aggregating readers and viewers,
thereby increasing his penetration and his worth as a media. I’m convinced Robert reaches close to 100% of all early adopters in Silicon Valley (and a good chunk in North America). He now has tremendous influence on “influencers”.

Now, I finally understood why I invited people yesterday to connect to me in Facebook. I am media as well. By writing the Praized blog every day since October 2006, I have become media. And if you are media, you want to build up your “circulation” to increase your influence and by extension, your value. But be aware: you have to accept the reciprocal conversations though. Robert Scoble receives updates from 1253 Pownce friends and 2702 Facebook friends. The noise level is very high. This conversation is not unidirectional.

I have seen the future of media and it’s Robert Scoble.