Looks Like Soraya Darabi Rocked The 99 Percent Conference

Image via CrunchBaseSoraya Darabi: Mobile Productivity Tools
Soraya Darabi: Top 5: Strike 3
Soraya Darabi On TechCrunch TV
Soraya Darabi In New York Magazine

I have been meaning to write a post on this article in some Australian newspaper, and this conference happened in NYC already before I got around to it. The word that kept coming to my mind was radical.

Yahoo Doldrums

Image via CrunchBaseMike Arrington has relentlessly gone after Carol Bartz from day one. Some of that I have attributed to sexism. Some I have attributed to the media's need for conflict and drama: that is partly how they generate page hits. Some I have attributed to Mike angling to get bought by Yahoo's rival AOL: that happened. But Yahoo does have serious problems.

Yahoo's problem is not that it is not number one, or that it is not going to get back the crown. Yahoo's problem has been that it has messed up being number two. Yahoo bought Flickr, and look at Facebook: photo sharing is the number one thing that happens on Facebook.

Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost

Image via WikipediaChecking in is not the starting point of your Facebook experience, and that is why Facebook is not a threat to FourSquare in the location space. If Facebook is smart, it will just help its users more closely integrate FourSquare into their Facebook experience. One thing I would like is to have the option to have a much greater control over who I share my check-ins with.

But chances are Facebook will try and offer a FourSquare substitute. I am looking at Twitter here. Facebook "learned" features from Twitter and FriendFeed. It outright bought FriendFeed. Buying FourSquare is not an option. Copying FourSquare is harder than copying Twitter.

This Is Not Happening: King Dennis

FourSquare is inherently a mobile web thing. You could add blogging features to my Gmail account, but Gmail is a different experience. You could argue Facebook has also thrived in the mobile web environment. But it started as a big screen web native. The mobile version is Facebook Lite. There is no FourSquare Lite. I have felt stupid every time I have visited the FourSquare homepage on the big screen web. It feels like sitting in a bus that is not moving.

I have no idea how Facebook will roll out location. It was inevitable that it was going to, but the details have not been obvious to me personally. It is because there is an inherent conflict in what I think Facebook should be doing in the location space, and what I suspect it might end up doing instead in that space. And so I have decided to just wait and watch.

Facebook could not have stayed away from the location space, but it has the option to do it right.

TechCrunch: As Facebook Location Looms, Has Foursquare Entered The Pantheon Of Services?: it seems highly likely the Facebook is going to take a platform approach to location. That is, they’re more likely to federate other location streams (such as Foursquare’s) while they themselves remain fairly cautious with their own location services..... Facebook likely has a deal in place with Localeze to build out a massive place database that they’ll then populate with all this data they’re federating and creating on their own.....I remember very well when it seemed like just about everything I read on the Internet said that Twitter was the dumbest service ever imagined and it would never go anywhere .....they run the risk of becoming the Friendster of location
AllThingsD: What Will Facebook Be Announcing Wednesday? Location, Location, Location!: Facebook will finally be rolling out its own geo-location offering .... a long time coming, as Facebook has noodled on how to incorporate the hot trend

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The Next Big Thing In Social Networking

The social has been all the buzz on the web for a few years now. And it is still going strong, for good reason. You might not remember Friendster, but that came along before MySpace. And MySpace was all

Image via CrunchBase

the rage. Then Facebook took over. Like Sam Walton claimed, you can reinvent retailing "again and again and again."

The social has been the web maturing. It is not about technology, it is about people. That is the message.

The joke at my high school back in the days was trousers narrow at the bottom and then go wide again a few years later. How else could the fashion pendulum swing? The social is the trousers going wide

Image via CrunchBase

at the botttom. But the pendulum will swing.

The next generation of social networking is going to be about the individual. That well defined individual's social interactions online will reflect the ones offline. You are closer to some people than others. You share more with some than others. Everybody on Facebook being your general friend is going to start looking bland.

Image via CrunchBase

But first Facebook has to run its course. Twitter already stole a lot of its buzz. Google Wave will likely steal a lot of buzz from both Twitter and Facebook. But Wave is still the pendulum swinging in the same direction. And Wave might remain a great way to collaborate on projects.

At what point will have the pendulum swung all the way? Perhaps when Facebook hits 600 million people? More?

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~ The way of the world is meeting people through other people. ~
Robert Kerrigan


~ It's not what you know but who you know that makes the difference. ~
Annonymous


~ It isn't just what you know, and it isn't just who you know. It's actually who you know, who knows you, and what you do for a living. ~
Bob Burg


~ More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject. ~
Peter Drucker


~ Informal conversation is probably the oldest mechanism by which opinions on products and brands are developed, expressed, and spread. ~
Johan Arndt


~ It's all about people. It's about networking and being nice to people and not burning any bridges. ~
Mike Davidson


~ Position yourself as a center of influence - the one who knows the movers and shakers. People will respond to that, and you'll soon become what you project. ~
Bob Burg


~ In the earliest days, this was a project I worked on with great passion because I wanted to solve the Defense Department's problem: it did not want proprietary networking and it didn't want to be confined to a single network technology. ~
Vinton Cerf


~ Social networking sites like Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook have literally exploded in popularity in just a few short years. ~
Mike Fitzpatrick


Katherine Berry at Pajamas Media discusses social networking: "Having just spent another morning of my life reading the most boring details of other people's mornings, I've realized how very little things like Twitter, FaceBook, or FriendFeed actually contribute to one's life: it's more like sitting in a room full of over-caffeinated narcissistic Tourette's patients with ADHD who are all trying to be the most entertaining. And, really, what's so social about a monologue?"

Stand Up Comedy: Thinking On Your Feet: 2.0

What would be the 2.0 version of thinking on your feet? Thinking on your feet is having something to say. But it is not like your friends on the other end can tell. Ah, you looked at my status update for 50 seconds before you could press that Like button. That does not count.





The first thing that would count is being in the loop. You might have been my college roomie, but are you on Facebook? Sure we met at that party two months ago, but do you have my Gmail address? If you are not on Twitter, I am not going to hold that against you, but you are no friend on the bleeding edge, are you?



My enthusiasm for the various social networking sites comes from reading about stuff in the news. LinkedIn showed up, and I signed up, although I have never used it the way it is meant to be used. Friendster showed up and I signed up. I got my invite to Gmail from Google itself when Gmail came out. There was at least one smart relative I could not convince to switch to Gmail back then. Hotmail gives me more space than I need, he kept saying. It is more than extra space, it is different, I said. Not listening.



My own enthusiasm for the various social services has had its ups and downs. For example, right now I am kind of lukewarm on Twitter use. I still "get" it, don't get me wrong. But these past few weeks I have been more into blogging. I blog and then I send the blog post links down the Twitter stream. Because my blog posts automatically show up in my Facebook stream, I find myself logging into Facebook after a new blog post. Is it there yet? Is it there yet? I guess it is not real time. The delay can be anywhere between a half hour to several hours.



Recently I have found a whole new use for my blog posts. I put out a blog post. And wait until it shows up in my Facebook stream as a note, and then I tag a whole bunch of people to any particular note. I think 30 are allowed. You show up in all of their Facebook streams. Cheesy. Yes, I have been thinking about you.



Like my most recent blog post/Facebook note: Is Reading Socializing?

I decided to tag all my black/African friends from college days to that note, or at least those that are on Facebook with me. Let's have a little reunion here. Yesterday I created a few different groups.

Reimagining The Office (High school classmates)
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher (A whole bunch of women from the college days)

I like the idea that when one of the tagged individuals will click on the note, they will meet a whole bunch of other people that they know. Happy Reunion!

Now think on your feet. Say something funny.

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Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

I think social networking the internet way is even younger than the internet, and has more places to go, many more. The metaphor that comes to my mind is that of a tornedo touchdown. The internet is the tornedo. When you use it for social networking purposes, it is a touchdown. The results can be positively "devastating."



Look at MeetUp.com. I have some history with this site. My early enthuse for Dean got me to the site. And I got hooked. Dean moved on, I stayed on. So imagine my utter surprise when I bumped into the CEO of MeetUp, mid-westerner Scott, close to my age, who has since invited me to his office, not long after I moved into the city. I met this guy at a MeetUp. To me it was like I ended up at some party where I met a Hollywood star, something akin to it. And he is so self-effacing in presence. I guess he is one of those never-lose-your-cool, big-picture visionaries. I mean, what did I expect him or someone like him to be? Obnoxious? Look, I got the big idea! The guy is MIT Innovator Of The Year. He hosts the Tech meetup in the city.

I have told him, eBay is people meet stuff, MeetUp is people meet people. MeetUp could potentially end up the Yahoo of social networking. It is like you grow big, early, fast, then you go public. And you grow bigger. Then you conduct a lot of smart buys, like a frog eats up dragonflies.

The quicksilver market that the internet is, it is not guaranteed MeetUp or any other one site will get there. But MeetUp has the broadness that few other social networking sites have. For one, it has this definite offline component. Social networking sites that are all screen time and no face time have something fundamental lacking. But then there are some that are doing quite well. Look at these three that took up a lot of my time today: Flickr | 43Things | Delicious.

Flickr is a good example. Curiously Scott had something that was earlier than Flickr, and quite like it, but I guess Flickr is smoother in operation, sexier, and so it got bought up by Yahoo and made two people very rich very quick.

There is this another, 8minutedating.com. Speed dating, I think it is such a cool concept. I went to one, if I did not get a second date does not mean my enthusiasm for the concept is any lesser! But my point is it is another of those tornedo touchdown concepts.

I think MeetUp's future lies in attempting to become the Yahoo of social networking.

And then there are a whole bunch of Friendster type companies.

In short, there are all these great ideas that started out as great companies that still have a lot of people, especially investors, people who count a little more than the rest of us, believing in them, but the breakthrough has yet to happen. One obvious criterion therefore is those who will patiently stick it out will stand a chance.

But more important than that might be the quality of a rabid hunger for rapid expansion. It is a race in time. If you do it almost as good, but are about a year late, that might be a little too late.

Since I made my trip to Scott's office, I have played with the idea of getting involved in some way. I couldn't afford to do it full time, not to get a job, because I have these ideas that I am cultivating. There is the IC idea, there is the online marketing idea, and there is the political involvement to do with Nepal. Maybe I can consult for them.

I do not pretend to be an engineer, although I have a pretty good intuitive feel for concepts in physics. But my strength is group dynamics. I think the winner social networking site will tackle the challenge from the High Touch end rather than the High Tech end, although tech is very important, after all what you are offering is a site. A web service.

I think, for MeetUp, the key is to further decentralize. To make localization more possible. Used to be there was this one golden day someone had chosen when people on one topic met all over the country. Now local Organizers can monkey with the meeting dates. That is good. What would further localization look like? It goes from the city to the group. From the group to the individual.

Broadly speaking.

Internet based social networking is a young market. It will likely see many upheavals. There will be pendulum swings from common sense to sophistication and penetration and back.

What can I say, all the best Scott.

Social network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wait a minute. Guess what I found out this very minute: Scott has been profiled by my former rival Rediff! Now I know why we Chaitime people lost: we never discovered Scott!