social network

With just about everyone weighing in on the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, I thought I’d add to the noise and toss in my riveting insight (or lack thereof).

First of all, I’ve no idea what it means. But then, no one else does either — there is interesting speculation, however. One of the first notions that was tossed out there on the Internet was that it had less to do with Facebook getting FriendFeed itself and more to do with getting the talent behind it. As one story (PC World) puts it, “… the team behind FriendFeed has quite the impressive collective résumé.” Many of them are former Google employees and worked on things like Gmail and Google Maps. So, yes, I could see why Facebook would want them.

And according to a BBC article, “As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and the company’s four founders will be given senior roles on the social networking site’s engineering and product teams.”

From a user perspective, given how awkward, clunky and user bewildering much of Facebook is, I’m hoping this will be a good thing.

This morning the thinking appears to have shifted from yesterday’s and appears more focused on the challenge this acquisition poses to Google and Twitter. (See that BBC article, for example.) The business-tech world loves nothing more than to see these things in Stanley Cup playoffs terms.

I can, however, see this as an accurate assessment. For example, from that BBC item:

“Google is the king of regular search. FriendFeed is the king of real-time search. This makes the coming battle over this issue much more interesting,” Mr (Robert) Scoble told the BBC.

For me, someone who uses these social networks and the tools but who doesn’t spend much time understanding the technology, only enough to know it works, I’ve always seen these networks this way:

Size: Facebook biggest, Twitter smaller, FriendFeed smallest.

Theoretical usefulness: FriendFeed most, Twitter a bit less, Facebook least.

Practical usefulness: A crapshoot between Facebook and Twitter (for me), FriendFeed least.

Put another way, of them all, it’s FriendFeed I like most, though it’s the one I know the least about. Maybe I just haven’t used it enough to see all its flaws and maybe it does things the others also do, but I’m unaware of them. The problem with FriendFeed, however, is the old retail thing about location, location, location. So far, Facebook keeps winning not because it’s best but because that is where the most users are and most users means most useful (to me).

There are really two things about FriendFeed that I like: 1) the interface, which I find cleaner, easier to read and understand (overall) than either Facebook or Twitter and, 2) it aggregates all my other feeds so, for example, my Flickr photos show up without the need of using Facebook’s incredibly slow and frustrating photos tool or some clunky third party app.

Currently, however, no one knows what the real impact of the acquisition will be. One thought has been it’s the end of FriendFeed. If that’s the case, it brings up an interesting issue, one that hasn’t received much attention that I’m aware of: Data portability, as discussed here. What happens if, for example, Flickr were to end for some reason or other? What happens to your account? Where do your photos go?

Or, what happens if you no longer like Facebook and decide that’s it, I’m going elsewhere (maybe even drop social networks altogether)? What happens to your content? How do you get it, download it to your own computer or some other storage device?

How are you protected from data loss? Or are you protected? That’s a lot of data to just let it go “poof!”

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I’m working with a team developing a new social networking tool tentatively called Crotch. We expect to compete with Facebook and Twitter.

Given the rapid growth of both, and the deep roots each has developed in a short time, you might think it’s crazy to try to compete in the same space. You would be right except we have a unique value proposition.

An aspect of human connection that is absent from all things web-related is the tactile. Everything is virtual; there is no physical aspect to human interaction online. This is where Crotch steps in.

How it works

In the same way as people currently post, tweet, poke etc., with Crotch you also “post.” However, in order to do so, the initiator must grab his or her crotch as they send. Granted, it’s not a physical connection between people, it’s self-contained, so to speak. But it’s a first in that it requires something physical. Eventually we hope the technology will evolve to a point where there actually is something tactile between two or more people online. But it’s a start.

We’ve managed to incorporate this physical aspect to social networking by incorporating software that “sees” the user and can detect whether he or she makes contact between the legs. It simply isn’t possible to send and not make a tactile connection with the nether regions. The software reads (”sees”) what you do.

Known issues

We’re so far advanced in the development of Crotch that our biggest obstacle right now is linguistic. We’ve settled on Crotch as a name for the social network, but what do we call the “send” aspect? Do you “crotch” another user? Does a user get “crotched?” It strikes me that the name gets ugly when you start turning it into a verb with a variety of tenses.

We’ve considered one possibility: pubed. “I’m pubing him,” or “She just pubed me.” The problem here, of course, is laser hair removal. The term may confuse some users.

Many of the other possibilities we’ve tossed around were eliminated not so much on their sound merits (many rolled off the tongue) but by the constraints of gender. I recall one in particular that worked really well but, unfortunately, was too much like “tweet” (a mere vowel away) and was too gender specific a term.

Still, these language issues are minor and should be overcome in short order.

Coming soon

Crotch will also have a mobile aspect so people will be able to use it on their iPhone, or just about any cell for that matter. Our expectation is that it will be launched within six months and, one year from now, given the quick growth of successful social networks, we envision a world where people everywhere – in their cars, on the streets, in office cubicles – will be clutching their groins because they’ll all be using their Crotch!

(Btw, a user’s account will be known as MyCrotch.)

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Two thoughts on the hubbub around Facebook’s terms and conditions and the backtracking on the revised version:

1) What if Facebook users wrote their own terms and conditions and include in it an assertion that not only do they own their own content, they own Facebook? Surely that would be as valid as Facebook’s attempt to own the user content.

2) If all of Facebook’s users started posting porn, and if Facebook makes a claim to own all content posted on the site, could we make Facebook the world’s biggest pornographer?

Okay. They’re rather silly thoughts. But then, the Facebook revised terms and conditions, and the rather sleight-of-hand way they attempted to put them in place, were rather silly too, albeit in a dangerous way.

I confess I’ve never really give a lot of thought to the question of ownership online, so I’m not entirely sure what my position would be, but I think it would circle around this: I don’t think I have a problem with others using whatever content I might put online unless,

a) someone other than me claims ownership of it,

b) someone other than me claims authorship, unless they actually are the author (unlikely since I write everything I post, for good or ill), and,

c) someone is using the content and generating revenue from it.

That last one would be a really big deal, for me. If you’re using content I’ve created to generate revenue, or to support the generation of revenue, I expect to get paid. In the case of something like Facebook, yes, people are posting content and, yes, Facebook is generating revenue. But I think the scenario is different in their case because what they are is a platform, that is what they own. There is an unarticulated assumption by users that they own their own content (pictures, posts etc.) and they are using the platform to share that content with others (their “friends”).

One of the reasons the ownership of content is a big deal is because if someone else claims to own what we create, and they can make such a claim stick, we have no control over how it is used. As for the revenue generating aspect, that’s a hot button for me. On the other hand, I have to admit that content (writing, design, art, film, music etc.) has essentially been commoditized and, in income terms, ain’t worth much any more.

But that’s another blog post.

(Hint: supply and demand applies. Lots of content plus absence of time, attention and critical thinking equals decreased value. You can work your butt off creatively but you’ll give it away for a song.)

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When I look at Twitter, I notice that of the people I follow, most “tweet” once or twice a day but a few “tweet” many times during the day. In fact, there are so many tweets I don’t look at them because there are so many. On the Web, I see the same person’s thumbnail running down the page – maybe 5 to 15 of them. So I end up scanning and looking for the thumbnail that stands out simply because it’s different. It stands alone.

Granted, I don’t use Twitter a lot, and I don’t offer myself as an example of the typical user. But I suspect my use does, to some extent, reflect how most react to many “tweets.” At a certain point, you ignore them because of the frequency.

My suggestion, though it’s almost contrary to the way Twitter gets used and it’s ostensible intention, is to think twice before tweeting. At least if you tweet frequently. Do you really need to tweet what you are about to tweet? Too many may mean your followers start ignoring you. (It would be interesting to see some data on this. Is this just a feeling I have that doesn’t reflect how people respond to frequency, or am I on the mark?)

(I can’t believe I’m using a word like tweet over and over with a straight face.)

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