John and Shel Holtz recently released their new book Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand (where yours truly is quoted). Check it out.

>>> Editors Note: I am an idiot and got my “Shel”s mixed up, originally posting John’s co-author as Shel Israel, and not Shel Holtz, who IS the co-author of Tactical Transparency. My sincerest apologies to John and Shel, and thanks to Shel Israel who pointed out my error. I have corrected it above.

For example, Social Media experts are everywhere. When they’re everywhere, they’re nowhere. In other words, they don’t matter.

So if you want to tout your expertise then you better possess a passion for making other people’s lives better, not yours. And you better do what you love in a way that sets you apart from the experts.

I have been pitched by “Social Media Experts” that don’t blog, that dont twitter, that dont videoblog, that don’t stay on top of the more social trends on the web (my least favorite excuse is the one about the shoemakers children).

When I work with clients on these types of projects my main goal is to get them to become the experts. They need to believe this is something different. They need to commit. They need to do the work, make the effort, reach out to the users in real authentic ways. If we are trying to be more real and more authentic, why would we let an agency do it for us?

The Social Media Expert should be a catalyst, an evangelist (sorry @DAHOWLETT !), someone who is looking at the landscape, helping their clients understand what this is about, work together to build the program and advising them over time to tune and tweak and enhance their program and how they communicate. I think there may be something inauthentic about hiring an agency to communicate in a real voice to your users/customers/fans. Part of this thing of ours is about becoming more transparent, removing the “press release barrier”, dropping the the corp speak and taking off some of the armor that companies build to “protect” themselves from their users.

Whats really important?

Past Is Prologue
-William Shakespeare

I had a conversation with my buddy Craig the other day and we discussed how these platforms and models were changing how users interact and part of the discussion touched specifically on:

Right now, every kid under the age of 18 in the US has grown up with potential access to the internet either at home, school, rec center, mom’s office, etc.

For the most part these kids are creating online identities in a ton of places, some are throwaway (to get access to a concert video), and others are permanent (tell my niece she has to quit MySpace and you will end up in a fight).

These kids are getting their own computers (cell phones), self-organizing digitally

They are making their own media (audio, photo, video, text) daily

They are connecting with their friends on these platforms and using them to stay in touch, bully each other, make new friends, etc.

Potentially, this generation will never lose touch with anyone they grew up with – EVER. They graduate from High School Facebook to College Facebook to Work/Life Facebook (or whatever the social platform/graph/grid/mesh evolves to). My niece will be able to keep in touch with, ignore and more importantly, have status on every single kid she is going to high school and college today. I can’t remember every single kid I went to grade school with, but I could probably find a bunch of them on Facebook if I looked hard enough.

Networking? Sure – having the world’s largest, distributed address book in history will make keeping and making connections more interesting.But what happens when you have persistent status of people you know, what they are doing, where they are /were/will be? What happens over time to this data, when it becomes the past tense (was doing, was at, was with)?

Doc Searls has said in a previous VRM meeting that he wants to see a day when the customer can have their own TOS (terms of service) that gives them the right to “nuke my info off your system if I want to quit your proprietary aspect of data”. Outside of the NUKE option (which I think we need), what about an expiration date on my status/intention/attention/media? 15 years from now, does Johnny really want his new girlfriend to see his “Growing Up Gotti” haircut from back in the day? Are those funnel photos from the Preakness really going to be appropriate when your kid decides to “see what mom was like when she was my age”?

Carrying off on this point is a really great and creepy PSA out about kids and the things they are posting to the web:

It changes the game because WE ARE ALL MAINTAINING THE STATUS over our attention/intention/action as well as that of others. There are no reporters, I dont have a secretary, no one is “going to the archives” to find out what I did last week – they just need to follow my twitter feed (which is hooked up to my friendfeed and facebook and wordpress blog) to see what I was doing. Its all in the cache/cloud/reverse chronological order. All someone needs to do is connect the dots (which is getting easier every day).

Your ideas, photos, comments, videos are out there, in the cloud/cache, forever. A persistent, ongoing record, distributed amongst different platforms and social graphs for the world to see. Add in face and voice recognition and that protest rally you went to in college, because that hippy chick you were dating at the time wanted you to go, might become a problem 20 years from now when you run for office, or a job, or meet a not-so-hippy chick. You didnt shoot the video, you didnt know you were on camera, yet it is part of your history. Lots of folks are getting gigs BECAUSE of their participation on these platforms. There are already stories in the “news” (and I do use the term loosely) about how kids are getting turned down for jobs because of things on their myspace page, beauty pageant contestants are losing their crowns because there are embarrassing photos of them on the web, kids are videotaping crimes to get on YouTube.

I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record
- The Violent Femmes
Kiss Off

Things to think about:

Will our past actions prevent us from trying for a job (even Vice President) because we know what closets our skeletons are in (”I told the candidate I could not accept the VP nod because I want to spend more time with my family, and because there are some raunchy pictures of me at my roommates’s bachelor party 17 years ago”)?

Will individuals guard their expressions more closely and be more conscious of their attention/intention/status?

What happens when we run into a “blank slate” who doesnt have a facebook history or is tagged in flickr sets? Will we give them the job/trust/reputation? Will they be a social media pariah?

Will I be able to find a “cleaner” to get rid of all traces of Spring Break 2012 in Cancun before my bride-to-be finds them?

Will there be a “Identity Bankruptcy Court” that will order these graphs and platforms to nuke all traces of someone?

He has some great insights into Facebook these days (he is an unapologetic fanboy)

http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/marketing-faceb.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity
Promiscuity is the practice of making relatively unselective, casual and indiscriminate choices.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuity
Diversity is the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion.

We make choices in how we connect to these spaces and places. Some are light connections and without regard and some seriously focused. Our Facebook page is where we connect with our friends and “adds”, where we have fun, add widgets that are entertaining, and annoy friends with question and movie matching requests. We might add people we just met last night at a party or barely know because this space is casual, fun, the opposite of serious in our life (until a future employer finds the keg-stand and bong photos). Our LinkedIn page is where we take things seriously. We dont post goofy photos, we dont ask stupid questions – we respect the space AND show respect for ourselves and others. We pitch in, make referrals, connect and find connections. A Band’s My Space page is their home on the web – while fun and on a more “fun” social network, its their business – the franchise.

Not all of my friends are in all the same networks. I am not in all of their networks. We connect and get close and pull away and break up by increments over time. There is a lot of overlap in multiple networks – between my network of friends, network of business acquaintances, network of people I kinda-know. I have folks following my twitter feed I have only met once, but have tons of conversations over time, in multiple forms. I refuse to add people I don’t know to my Facebook page.

Promiscuity, or having lots of relationships on lots of networks isnt a bad thing. If you only hang out with LinkedIn kids, what is the true value of your social equity? Does it make sense to be in a clique? Does it make more sense to be in multiple networks, with lots of loose and tight connections? Does that diversity in friends, viewpoints, behavior translate into something more (more social equity)? Does Moore’s law really have an effect when we look at the value of each of our social networks individually and in the aggregate?

Chris Messina (FactoryJoe) once wrote “a monoculture is a monotonous culture”. I think this fits really well.

Well one clear way is to just ’subscribe’ to someone and then find out what they’re doing – wherever they are. This can only be done across vendor’s offerings – so it’s a great use case for open standards.

For a while now I have been a snob of social networks. “I get it, I get it” – I would join, check out early features, and not really invest in the community while trying to get a quick read on the SN. Understanding the theory without being invested. Recently, thanks to having to do the research, friends (like HH) inviting me left and right and some really exciting things happening in the SN space (like Marc’s PeopleAggregator, Facebook opening up, researching SNs in different cultures) I have been getting more invested different worlds, seeing what they have to offer, learning and experiencing (badges to come).

The biggest frustration I have is having to make a new profile from scratch in each of these places. Because, really, my hobbies are the same if I am in facebook or myspace. I might not put my entire employment history in Facebook, but if I did, why would I want to key it or copy/paste it 2x from LinkedIn???? What happens when these data sources become out of synch (like my employment histories or hobbies between social networks)?

The truth Marc has been sharing is simple – open it up (platforms), be free, listen to the customer (radical idea), and anticipate what they want (’cause they dont know it – yet), let them share (on your network and others). I used to think my blog was this center of the social universe for me – and it could become that… we just arent there yet.

We dont have one circle of friends. We don’t have one interest. We dont have only one favorite food. We dont have one email address. We dont only like one musician or singer or group. We dont like only one kind of movie or tv show or magazine. People like choice. They like options. They don’t always make a choice – and that is a choice in itself. They want to engage on their terms in the places and spaces of their choice.

The more you hold them down, lock them out, and box them in the easier it will be for them to invest (time, effort, ideas, creativity) in someone elses platform that is open.

Dave says…

From Marc’s blog:
http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2007/06/subscribing-to-people

the first post I find dives into another aggregator/platform Ziki

http://thew0rd.com/2007/06/25/zikicom-releases-v2-of-their-digital-identity-management-suite/

these guys should check out the conversation Doc is leading in VRM
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/

So NBC has a text tag on their site linking to a “coming soon” page for their social network.

They are working with:
http://eventful.com for an events database and give event organizers the option to request stringers to attend and record the event, OurMedia will handle the organization and serving of the content
Internet Archive will handle the hosting

The idea is that stringers sign up for the program and list their location and what they do (audio, video). Event organizers tag their events. PodCorps acts as a dating service putting the two together.

They want to grow their stringer base first. They want to have the network in place before they can start setting up events with people. Chicken and Egg – they need stringers to attract events, and events to attract stringers.

here is the url:
podcorps.org

Standing on the shoulders of angry giants

Copyright risks
Statutory Damages
$750-150k damages

Personal Liability
for officers, directors, investors
no reliable shield against liability
everyone knows napster lawsuit
lawsuit contiued until a few months ago long since Napster went under
startups say “we will incorporate as LLC – if we lose we move on” – NOT THAT SIMPLA

LICENSING OF INPUTS

Good News
4 islands of certainty (Safe Harbors)
DMCA Safe Harbor
17 U.S.C. 512
Eliminates Money Damages
Limits Injunctions

-Take monetary damages off table
limit damages to company

court can tell you to takedown or terminate bad users
incred incentive for companies in the online space to qualify for safe harbors

512(a): “Conduit” Island
If an ISP – just providing connectivity – you wont be resp if users use your pipes to infringe
Every ISP relies on this
All who provide pipes and the ping – all depend on 512(a) COnduit Island

512(b) Caching Safe Harbor
for AOL caching activities circa 1997
walled network (the way AOL was)
do local caching for internal network users
works only in model where users req content first
doesnt do any good for akamai of the world
becomes island where nothing grows

512(d) Seach Engine Island
Information location tools
infirnging website – and search engine finds it – SE may be resp for infringements – WRONG
in these circumstances (with rules) SE wont be held responsible
protects the act of linking in these contexts
in 1997 or 98 Yahoo was directory, not spidering/search co
providing a directory of links

512 (c)
Hosting Exception
if you were resp for hosting – couldnt be resp for every user and every page
need protection
number of hosting co’s got that protection in 1998
since exception has grown with progress of internet overall
Ebay has succeeded in invoking this exception

Dont have to be on the islands – but more uncertain (Bittorrent)
no surprise when you look at internet companies – all that have clustered right on these islands of uncertainty

Web Hosting and Search Safe Harbors
What happens when you combine both? _ Ebay – pioneer in using the law to cover new services not accounted for when the law was written
Ebay – host and provide search, dont actually post

nowadays – unlimited co’s that provide one or both features

Blogs (Blogger)
Music Lockering (MPRtunes)
Playlist SHaring (Avvenu)
Photo SHaring (Flickr)
Video SHaring (YouTUbe)
File Hosting (Pando)
COmbos (MOG, Etc.)

How do you avoid being held responsible? This is how
most web2.0 cos have built on these legal exceptions

How close to the waterline
if webhost or search engine – high dry ground
you are protected
a lot of other businesses – not a lot of clear cases
Myspace and YouTube – placing a bet they are on dry enough land they can avoid being sued

3. Basic features you need to do – to be on island of safety
hire a lawyer for the details

ask yourself – when you look at new businesses – see if you recognize features
1. Register a copyright agent – form + $80 check to copyright office
if you dont do this – failing to do it jeopardizes your existanc eon the island
list of companies – every reg form they have ever received
who is on or not on list is interesting
fun to see handwritten notes

2. Notice and Takedown
certainly in post YouTube world – Viacom delivering
if copyright owner complains – that piece, song, photo, belongs to me
resp to take stuff down and promptly if you want to stay on the island
rules copyright owners have to follow when they send a notice – must be specific
cant say “make sure no copy of xxx ever appears on your website
must provide specific url, actual description, number of formalities
3. Infringer Termination Policy
if you get a lot of complaints about a user (like 2 complaints) – law req you have in place and implement a policy for terminating infringers
ToS should have a termination policy

How to Stay on the island
2 ways to lose protection
esp. in Viacom/GooTube (if it even moves forward)
will continue ot come up
1. Red Flag Knowledge – if you know it is going on and dont do anything about it – you will lose safe harbor
2. If you are aware of facts and circumstances that would have been obvious – you are out
what does that mean ? Who knows
Needs clarity
YouTube argues you need to tell, with specificity – where it is going on – need takedown notice
Trouble – if employees spend a lot of time on the website and you fail to do anything about it
What did you and your employees know?
More intimate knowledge – the more risk is created
More editorial, more categorization – dont want to feature something that is obviously infiringing

2nd Way – direct financial benefit from something that was infringing that you could have controlled
More content, more eyeballs, more money
YouTube best example
No ads on the actual video pages of YouTube themselves – some protection
User Generated and Uploaded – you will see ads everywhere else
effort to make clear they are not directly benefitting from infringing videos
have to control the infringement

Really basic architecture issues
need to get a lawyer sooner rather than later

First Half DONE – How do you avoide having to get licenses for every single thing your users are uploading
make sure you are doing the things to qual for those exemptions
can do everything right and still be sued

LICENSING OF OUTPUTS

focus and highlight flickr
a model for participation
upload and host photos
and get photos to use for other purposes
been turned into great free stock photo site
get out of the biz of stock photography – flickr will eat that business alive in short time

how does flickr do it

Creative COmmons Licenses
Do a tremendous job
support creative options
CC Licenses –
Attribution
Att -No Derivs (use but cant change)
Att – No Derivs Not Commercial
Att – Non COmmercial
Att Non COmmercial – Share Alike
Att – Share ALike

Share Alike – use it but make any deriv work available

CC works – content curators web page
directory of people already doing this

Podsafe music network
hassle to get good music for podcasts
Flickr – huge repository for images
Search Funct for yahoo and google and plip
meta tagging standards
search facilitating tech to make it easy

How flickr attracts users to the website
make users interested in reusers and remixers
how to get creators and photogs to use CC
make the licensed materials findable, useful, simple

Category in Flickr Adv Search – is CC licensed photos
can drill down to modify and other criteria w/in CC
if you can find 21k photos of Rain, all for free with attribution, or on TV or website – that will make it hard for folks to charge for it in the future –
will also attract new users to flickr
not just photos for the buddies – also great alt for stock photography
creating new business opportunities as well
Flickr – can always send a message to user – saying you love a photo – auth for non-commerical use – would like to pay – would that be OK
once you attract new set of users they will find other uses for your services
nice job integrating for the re-users of the world
collects all CC categorites and allows you to browse based on combination

Vast majority of users not licensed under CC
Flickr does many things in interface for creators to opt for CC
need to explain licenses, use defaults intelligently, do it in batches

Mostly ATOM – some RSS

del.icio.us/SyndicationTalk

will post to his blog

who is he

pushing data

Archi on windows live platfomr

new search tech and social media space

build better content online
3 things
Intermediate level

great to use feeds – popular consumer endpoints
button inside browser chrome
option in NYTimes to check fresh daily
avail by section

browser is a gateway
news, data, sites
desktop – outlook 2007 – feeds built in

stay on top of info flows every day

every time you access gmail – button shows up
latest messages and subjects – authenticated – build a toolbar – pull in and do notifier
all the ways to do standardized format
CIA and NSA talked to each other – shared intel
e-govt initiative
taking data flows – from ops to people they are following – how do you follow the latest
e-govt initiatives

stat tools – measure map – update on traffic

TiVo – companies are unable to build all the content you want – choose 100 channels – video feed – putin the same now playin list – can take high def and put on tivo or apple tv
pictures
ipods
alt content

html page with alt content
link alts can expose that data

formats – website in formats and let them discover
alt feed content
all brpwsers

Search engine discoverability
coorelate with feeds
multiple choices exposed
subscribe to summary feed – or cat on youtube – mult choices and engage mult places

IETF

neded these standards to come together

Dec 2005 – ATOM publsihed
2 years in making
web content and media syndication
should ? must? requirement?
interop for data formats and feeds
opening up new meth of data transport
XML namespace – feeds most popular form

Feed
ID
TItle
When Updated
Author

optional=
entry
link
subtitle
category
rights
logo
icon
generator
contributor

each feed has multiple entries
entry has required and optional elements
storys or feed should have author

Summary and Content
display not full content
snippet
if you output web feeds do you lose traffic?
point to final url – full or abstract – text or html

Newspapers
NYT sunday magazine
what does it all mean
logo
title
category
entry
entry title
entry author
pub date
link enclosure (like attachment)
related links

Standalone browser render environment
isolated web page
relative link – means nothing to a feed in the aggregator – images wont display
rendering ind. browser environment
same with links
use inline CSS
no javascript, no plugins
some readers will strip content before it is stored
anything that can hurt them is stored
Referrer?
depends on how you render

User interaction varies – myYahoo – pulls in things they know are feeds – updates, feeds then jump into more feeds

take tag URIs, take domain and take article IDs – or use URLs

published when initially released – updates when add or edited
as you update that – layer on updated time to the post
tells agg something changed in this article
something significant changed
determines new content instead of old

who are you?
author or contributor – one author per story
email
url

spammers index feeds

why include an email? direct response/feedback

site your source – imp for rep and who are you
give credit
really like a story? subscribe as reading to the entire feed
showing the stories on NYTimes – show me only this section

iTunes
specific itunes ways
duration
taxonomy
keywords
advisories

pdfs synducated into itunes

avoid confusion of tongues problems

creaing something where another space is already available
popular parsing libraries

publishing and creating own namespace – create a parser
make sure the data isnt lost
something not understood – all indexable
feed validators

wc3 is more of a stable validator – no intricacies

Secure Feeds
basecamp
keeping track of current projects
dont want it searchable
not in bloglines or google feed search
flickr scrambles url – at user and photo level
when feed agg sees HTTPS – looks private
agg devs dont pay attention to cache control
daring fireball – membership for full feed ($20 a year) – paypal ID – auto username and password
pub house could do it for current subscribers
gmail – authenticated experiences

possible to est jabber clients whihc connect and send incremental updates via AIM – extra payload
push out to app
good way to push to lots and lots of clients

Atom vs rss2.0.1
producing media files – atom not ready yet
all looking at enclosures and rss
adoption across the board
atomtrickle down will happen
web hasnt moved to xhtml 1.0 strict

atom engagement format 1 of 3
synd
pub protocal
archival
Atom has more standardization – more work done, more predictable behavior
a roaming team of enforcers it is parsing right
parsing libs also output

frameworks have standardized ways

object level

quick and easy way to do it

client support for atom from phones to desktop clients

still an issue for podcatchers

enclosure element in rss 2

alot of academic work around semantic web
atom and rss 2 most pop and widely adopted
FOAF and social networks via rdf – we have moved on
rss1 camp into atom

ATOM allows per entry copyright
define within atom
all rights belong to oreilly
pub houses – list mult contribs

no more shrinkwrap software
have changes live within a day
customers know it – you know it

panel

Josh Schacter
founder of Del.ici.ous – Yahoo, dir of engineering

Biz Stone – founder of Obvious Corp (twitter) – odeo, blogger, xanga

Stewart Butterfield – founder of flickr, ludicorp

roles that customers can play in dev of software
beta testing
software dev with apis
graphic and creative design
writing and uploading and submitting content – participatory web
product roadmap
research
where to go – what do you want
customer service
talent pools
WOM
vounteers, guardians, evangelists
USers want to help and make it better

why do they want to do this? how to get them started

How do you know customers want to be inv. – how do you let them know? community or prod first? chicken and egg

BS – need product first, how do you let cust know you are available
twitter.com – has phone number on contact us page – wont scale but really works
always out there – reading and commenting – emailing, have a prod and excited – the enthusiasm – they cansee it and get in touch

JS – second version of single user system
wanted it for himself
useful to him
wrote it – was the first customer as well
people started showing – not just a product, but the prod was the marketing
useful – connect to other places and systems

SB – no predetermined plan to list users in feedback loops – think that the way the team wanted to operate
building ways to let users part.
flickr has open forum
craigslist is bigger ex
a lot of big websites get too big to have some open space for people to comm stuff
what would it be like if amazon did

big obsessions at flickr – how do we keep same level of interaction and openness and keep scaling

some people wont shut up if they care

venue to tell AT&T what you think of their service… ha ha

must be places for people to talk about amazon

ebay has a number of place

bustling communities around

JS – when peopel say something in public they are afraid other cust will see it – need to deal more quickly – transparency

no forums on delicious – mailing list and blog

partially for design considerations

TR – will people use the service? will they use it if i made the API first
early on you need to decide – work or not? – people say lots of feedback is the key indicator it weall work?

JS – cant build without being in constant connect with the user
a lot of the direction is guided by what do I want
how do I use as a product

still has incoming email copied to bberry

BS – feedback reinforces what you do

TR – no users helped him write it – werent that geeky but were willin to help with beta and finding spelling areas and other features

JS – why you have the APIs – build the features you think are great but cant prioritize
lot of things wouldnt make his list
APIs let those capable try it out and you can seeit and sometimes work better than you could expect

TR – what motivates people to contribute
increasing and working on bottom line
what motivates them?

SB – recognition and acknowledgement – beliefs, and aesthetic, they have them
people who write and on some topic – getting some reco back is always key
getitng comments back – to favorites
social activity – the bigges tthing overall – ops at different levels

use API, cool idea, make it public, others see it – validate

people dev off thr flickr api can be compensated

what else motivates peopple – others helpful and ernest – spend their own time helping for helpings sake – not about gold star ack

BS – doing it for val of co. – disappointed – why arent you paying me for this
comes down for social interaction

dogster and catster – nothing like it on the planet

TR – do you feel beholden to the users? let them down or make company or biz decisions that include what they have done for you

JS – pos value for you, the users? must eval each step
many times had to watch the right thing to do for each
would like to have all the data there
old days – nice to be free and open but then there is reality (scraping and crashing servers)
Delicious between pubs and users
seen delicious button on newspapers – pubs want to presupply tags – makes it harder for users to remember stuff but makes for better prod serv for the user
aggregate behavior is better for all – hard to tell users you are doing something they dont want if it is better in the aggregate

SB – people like to contribute

when considering an acq before it happened – the acq companies respect for the users and the place they hold for the users

SB – corp development – sometimes strat, sometimes just M&A – couple of diff groups interested in flickr – search, photos
no one wanted to screw it up
badass former banker didnt want it screwed up “you have 200k users – possibly the most important 200k on the internet”

sometuimes there is a concern from Yahoo that goes beyond callous approach

BS – blogger getting acq by google – stepped up comm with users
was there concern beforehand that wouldnt be the case?

small team – workign hard – even afterwards a struggle to switch over
allowing him to join team opened dialog
knew why features were coming and when
meant a lot to the users – to help them

Kaliya – who are you when you show up and who are you when things change

flickr cutover highlited – engineers and companies saw registration and authent as authent – and people see it as identity

ID is tied to authentication

in deliciious your login is your ID (bad design decision from a number of standpoints – way off in the future

TR – do you have cust part of a special group to go to ?

JS – yahoo group where people sign up and they talk to them – will toss out stuff, ideas, very user facing – try to get diff viewpoints
pretty helpful
nice

active when he was runngn things alone

couple people good thermometers
some who use flickr as utility – will use as blogs – serious amateurs or hobbyist photogs
def certain people to go to
common pattern where people sign up and add a photo or two and dont come back for months
some learn to love it – where the bumps are on that path – take analytic approaches for state of users, 2x week or once every 3 months
really really hard

listening solely to the people who love it

weird or confusing – flickr terminology
ones who are willing to speak already love it

BS – do the analytics too
do a friends of twitter group – who can release a halfbaked feature on for feedback
have an non trad feedback loop

TR – early on would you release half baked b/c you had so few users or was it always bulletproof from the get-go

JS – do it, feel the effects quickly – 3 releases a week – to push every fix – more on scalabilty side than UI side – new UI will be very painful
originally – code on the live site

difficult to make change in dir – everything we do we do very fast – must make it go fast – could be a couple of weeks for db or hardware
becomes difficult to maintain pace of iteration and scale at the same time
in Yahoo – there is res for QA and stuff – do test before they go out the door
difficult to get coverage and stuff

BS – when he said half baked – meant really 1/2 baked. the stuff is always breaking – this blogger is labs

SB
still does 1/2 baked stuff – launched 3 yrs ago – nothing in common with flickr today
very very rapid interation
partly 1/2 b/c new cat features – ABC – super urgent priorities – huge queue of stuff
fastest turnaround – 2 yrs ago
screwed up childhood – doesnt adjust well to change – put it back – heard a hundred times now

BS
reacing out to users – all at blogger – on their chatting with caterina

interaction pays off

social feedback to become a user – early on caterina and other founders welcomed everyone – each you could get over a threshold is someone who could be pushed further

people who signed in first foour months – when all new everyone else – 90% were still around

BS – when using blogger and pyra
setup and started using it
Ev linked to it – people really linked to it
turned xanga into a weblogging community
reading twittershuge influence on him

TR – do all expect no matter how big will keep involved with comm with customers?

BS – if you love your job, yes

JS
API alleviate a great deal
delivious not about the code but the scale

not hard to build features but make it go fdast – what is the way to do this thing fast
alot of the way was doing things in mysql well – stuff people ask for – not that they cant do it – things that are in their lexicon or expect -can we sort things alpha – we provide way to do it – need to help them use it
people ask for stars – why bookmark something that is only one star
ask for things they expect – even though it works fine without them
have to force or cram down the engineers throats – letting people hack and add lots of stuff could be weakness and not strenghts
soemtimes see stuff that is way better – can i use this? sure.
way to explore territory in feature space that lets you avoid some exploratory groping that doesnt work out
people ask for stuff – have prob, dont know solution, but ask for somethign weird or nearby
cant verbalize what they really meant
pretty sure flickr and twitter is simple
succeed by getting users to the door – which things to add and not add
about scale – number 1 req on agg data – what are the most bookmarked sites
1. – not surprising
2 – someoen will try to get on that list

not missing b/c they dont wan tthem to do it, but dont want to reinforce bad behavior

BS – twitter fan wiki
twitter- purposefully simple
APIs – seen a lot of activity – if new to API, easy to build
twitter fan wiki – people who like twitter – org cool api projects
get ideas, contact people
having them build those things helps immensely
not on them to help
keep our core service running and point them

question – how did you spread word early?

JS – delicious could post to blogs
found rss is hugely useful API and marketing way to continue to give someone a way to be updated – anything that can does use rss
1/2 of traffic is RSS

BS – 1/2 of traffic is api

SB – a platform is easy to get with photos
easy to get in and outhost from flickr to the blog
doesnt know the current ratio outside flickr – over 1 bil served/day massive source of traffic

TR – Hiring expensive – do you hire from your communtiy?

SB – hired many from the community
tech support specialist qa guy – looked at the forum and found someone good
preference is to always hire from within the community
engineering team – higher than avg sensitivity to good software design and usability
attuned to the needs of the community

BS – everyone hired has been a user
hasnt seen them as a superuser
all be users – def red flag if they never signed up
10 or 20 hr project first to see if they like them

JS – consult for a month and if we like we will hire you
one guy write a book on delicious before he was hired

first job was changing the api so his book was no longer correct

BS – hired at blogger because he was a user

Question – at what point do you ask – should i be exposing the future plan/roadmap?

JS – doesnt think that far in advance
a lot is how he feels about feature – is excited, will fit, easy to do, least implementation, lazy
struggle with scale and # of transactions
firefox extension who hit sys every few seconds
stuff like yahoos expertise cam in handy
all about what scales
more about working towards each diff thing
features easy once you have the underlying technology
tries to be communicative
will tell why things wont happen
1 emails a day saying how people shoudld vote on how others get to use tags
difficult to reply to – against wha tthey are trying to do

for a large class of problems – dont need a web dev – pull it together off the shelf
home depot concept – dont need a contractor
for a lot of problems you can solve yourself

bake this deeply into the core of your web apps
apps becoming platforms – getitng off the site – security to liability to scalability

DIY era

things like blogs and wiki give us a channel on the web
self expression highly social

Ease of consuption a big piece of it

still making fairly hard to do something useful
ease of use and consumption

sometimes a javascript or flash plugin

WPF/E – shipping with vista and capable

more than flash

atomizing diff ways

dont have standard terminology

do have directories – being solved quicckly now

open platforms not standalone apps

deeply expressing the platform

implications for product quality
spreading your product beyond the vendors you site
APIs – app prog interfaces – nonvisual part of widgets and badges – need programmers to use

End user friendly – the next step

you will atomize and build on top of others

google maps most popular ajax widgets – compelling
spent 10s of millions dev and improving

building on the shoulders of giants

need to be bringing best of breed from others

GLOBAL SOA

SL uses Amazon S3

to be competitive

self help to deploy now

Wdigets – on the web in ajax or flash
Badges – displays of content pulled under cover of other sites
Gadgets – more formal widget models from google and MS

bring in diff widgets and feeds to do things
surreounded with content and cross-relate
create mashups

counter terrorism and disaster management – create a blog for each disaster with widgets for sal displays, info, calls into disaster center – will report on what is going on
where to go and look

natural platform
bring in other views and feeds

exploit SOAs and aggregate the functionality

not just content – functionality aggregation

send email to get the slides for the widget talk

copy and paste is key aspect

single line javascript includes
object/embed tags in flash

connect to undelying sites to provide value
have business model baked deeply
driving traffic, content consumption, advertising

Widget Business Model

WHat makes widgets powerful

functional and content PORTABLE

users do the work to broaden their distribution
supply mashups and hosting

make it a foundation of others success

forming real business relationships

good widgets hard to find – not seeing as much as youcould

widgets take a long time
simple apps – readers, plan vaca this way
use myspace quite a bit

developers and pro sumers – build web apps themselves

widgets may gen more traffic for you but hard to say

google gadgets for web pages
provide functionality directly
good resource

Microsoft Live Gallery
MS major web2.0 plays
roaming on the web for apps and data
desktop and web gadgets

WidgetBox
sense that shows what is taking place
diff categories

Myspace widgets
lists of widgets can be widgets

Recent Stories
YouTube video badge
highly viral
what web2.0 tools work – radically simple
1 button, 1 field to edit – eminently obvious – viral aspect should be as obvious

use web as a content billboard

never be as big as the web

dont take users intelligence for granted

google adwords widget – most successful in internet history
drives majority of googles ad rev

80% of goog rev comes from advertising
80% of ad comes from displays of their ad widget

99% of ads displayed on their ad network

understanding motivation to offer to users
will cut in for piece of the action
piece there resp for helping google become co with lgst market cap in history

big thing

treating the web like older platforms – rules are all different

leveraging the strengths of networks – if you have something great it will spread

army of millions to spread your products

amazon looking at api space
amazon built their own platform for themselves and used it once – then opened and got 50k other business to work with it

will you leave the majority of the value of your online and services untapped

you can build with yahoo just by cutting and pasting

APIs? if you need the visual component of it

Amazon – lgst based on API sales

at a high level javascript isnt accessible – but not really

Best indicator of accessible content is valid, semantically accessible html
many of the great web2.0 sites have valid, well managed html

if you are still developing without using the modern approach, it will be a strike against you for accessibility

maintenance and new features also a problem – mastery of html and css is critical

Unobtrusive Scripting
script is living sep from the doc itself
good thing is that you can dev your scripting, pull it out and test with or without it – one of many ways you can make sure the core is working well

if you can take the script, pull it out and the site flow is still intact you are still getting closer to functional accessibility

no silver bullets
auto tools only as good as users
policy puts focus in the wrong place
cms and app frameworks intro own problems

make it easy for the devs and the interface and the content devs to do the right thing – not forced, but led to the right thing
important – when adding an image, make sure there is alt text
at the point that someone can do the wrong thing, make it easier to do the right thing

deisnging for people

for every blind user there are 10 more that cant read at 20/20

mom is the benchmark

2.5 mil cant grasp or handle small objects – cant handle a mouse with any precision

video sites – it becomes an enormous issue
talking about huge population of people who are missing out on a lot of this content

group in Utah – WebAIm – excellent webaim.com – excellent research – talk about cognitive problmes – 6 areas
memory , problem solving, attention, reading and lang, math, visual comprehension
nothing diff – simple principles of human-computer interaction

not talking about small group not interacting with the web anyway

18-64 numbers
outside of the range – up to 4 mil of all americans that cant grasp small objects
easier to use keyboard

Labeling
when we are creating labels – acc is about dealing with the disabled

underreporting of disabled
text only sites – funct equivalent is ghetto-ization
taking these people, and marginalizing
problem talkin about acc as the people who have disabilities

few people diagnosed with one or another will come out and self segment
imp – they are people
make sure that the us vs them isnt whats comign to mind – think enabling based on capabilities and helping them to work around their limitations

AJAX accessibility
a lot of progress
some of the best javascript devs in the web field are accessibility advocates
building frameworks that most people are using to create ajax based sites
good news about whats going on
we are used to having people like that dev

People who brought you
ray kurzweil speech synth in the 1970s

Universal remote control is a movement to accessibility

check out acc functions on your OS (OSX zoom function)

Ditectly accessibile AJAX

XHTML2 becoming more interesting
WC3 roadmap for access
ARIA – how we will work with these technologies
runs the gamus of wc3 tech
the way things are progressing

AJax as enabler
LMS with ajax as its core

working on it at all levels of the stack
making sure these things will be easier to use tomorrow than today

Youtube resp for offering ways for content to be captured
video.google.com/videocaption

making it easy to caption or audio desc is critical – standardization is the next steps

skip links useful and take no effort
keyboard op is huge

Twitter
great interface
likes it alot
works without script
can resize text
any number of ways to access and add content
socialize with one another
fatal problem – captcha
captcha one of the things that frustrates to no end – such opp and instead, by making a simple decision, you have shut people out
visual verification is a pandoras box
pushing away more users than you are keeping away the bots
what about script

a lot going on – a screenreader built for firefox
excited to see what is going on in modern acc development

Juicy Studio – blogger who does amazing work with this tech

Tagging
Taxonomy
Social Web Scaling

what is a tag?
simple meta data
used for sorting
hook for aggregatinig
identifier or description
personal marker

more than 1 tag on an object

History of tagging

Lotus Magellan – 87-90
desktop
DOS world
meta data to files and annotate, add context, not really networking
using sneakernet
handing off files
good way to add context
pull info back together
more networked world
compuserve
files and adding keywords – only 255 keywords
the sysop could replace tags – breaking the peoples means of finding that info – that they tagged
compuserve got lots of feedback from devs
really want their own metadata and keywords to keep track of what they found and added

personalization – track info back to yourself

Bitsy
signup for account and tag with URI
Cory Doctrow – MetaCrap

2003/2004 – Del.ici.ous – started and growing
flickr too
taggin in networked/web environment
what do we call this

the f word – FOLKSONOMY

apple and iphoto and add your personal tags and make them social tags
social and personal lines blurring (sometimes both sometimes just personal)
more or

tagging for those consuming the information

Value – external derived from own vocab and adding meaning

whats going on based on where and how they are brought up
will add that info
all have our own window – tagging lets us put hooks on that info

all about the individual

the less you think of what tag – the more you can retrieve and refine

removing a tag – removing one or may peoples means of getting back to info

Folksonomy triad – object, metadata, identity
most people applying perspective thru their own lens

relationship between object and ID is interest – making a specific connection

one of the three legs from the stool to pivot

vocab between community and meta and community and identity – you start opening the box to connection and definition – social networking and web begin to work

community is tagging audi things, clothing, pen sets – may or may not be interest
interest around same term
obj and relationship wiht the tag in the same manner

use communtiy and id as an anchor – using same tags on objects – algorithms doing smart search

pivots and connections used intelligently

folksonomy vs taxonomy

library sci – love tax – see folks as a threat

see folks as a threat – bottom up vs top down
what we call things across

tax expensive to build and out of date

common is the product and the obj in the middle

ID gaps in the tax – include the terms where there are gaps – look at spikes and say “Oh” makes it inclusive – find the gaps

Business Tensions
Naming control vs peoples vocab
Sample groups vs every perspective (really getting all persp. – all that you may not have considered
inhouse vs outside (home brewed vs del.icious or others)
knowd dollar value – w/ unknown dollar value

bussiness gains – internet
target message lang need and taste
opening up communication
what the interests are
explicit statement on the part of the user – i digg this – why i value this or not – better understanding of customers – pos or neg – helpful when you figure out who what when where why

Intranet
improves refindability
refinidng is hugely not being addressed issue
lacking tools – tagging tools that do it well close the gap
helps understand context – getting to common vocab
connecting silos
ease of sharing resources by perspective
similar interests and experienc over that

Scaling

COld Start Problem
need somewhere to start
Scaling and FUnctionality
people vs times object tagged
many people tagging with few times – dont see scaling – not that useful
few people with many things – skewed perspective
a. works for personal use – delicious lesson – maintain bookmarks and annotate and refine
social tools dont work well beyond
b Serendipity – not perfect tool, not more mature
c Powerful – search working, seeing trends

Phases of interaction
saving and tagging
refinding
clicking pivoting

Personal to Social

As much of 28% of people on the web has taggged

shfit from gen categorization to actual tagging
trends similar to rss
more powerful – beyond alphas to 2nd stage adopters

why tag?
Reasons people tag?
Own value
Add perspective context
refindability
State of interest
Sociality

Biggest reasons – own value and refindability

Spheres of Sociality
Personal (web services, things that matter)
Selective (we are selective vs everyone here – people we

Tools need all 4 layers when in dev phase

Social Context
Personal – Capture
Social – Share
Hook/Copy – Point
Annotate – COllab
Refins – Filter
Privacy – trusted groups

Shape of Tags
where do people tag
social – deliv
viddler – tag at certain bookmarks – in video

Wherever there is a digital obj or marker – they are tagging
People using tag services
tagging
descriptions – and long free text annotation – more than just tags, feeds to info, interfaces to diff svces

commas work well for western euro lang – others dont have that delimeter – text box for each item works well

scanning is big with tags

collective approach – when you look at selective – seeing contacts of people you know with perspective similar to your own

what the collective vs mob vs your network can reduce the tsunami

groups another way to filter, segment

filtering and clustering – flickr does well – find things similar and grouping

tag combinations – raw sugaar – takes trad taxonomy and clusters together – adding and defining context

helps to filter

Library thing – culture – variations and related info (related based on community?)

algorithmic approach – interestingness from flickr

Tag Cloud
not overly fond of tag cloud – dont work well with real people
notfinding relevance – wont come back to the site – nothing of interest – flat list works better – easier for pattern matching

tag clouds best work on granular items

works really well as descriptor

SHopping – Amazon – art of the pivot done well

discomusic.com top pick

people can find recommendations this entity has and works well – nav the amazon site and get rep points

tagging is a feature not focus – secondary order of functionality

Easy tagging with amazon
– taggin is yes no

What Is Going On
I want social web and tagging
kevin federline page on amazon
person making a social statement

talentless page on amazon

Improvements – things not going well yet
value of tagging for non taggers
volatility of tag objects
tethering needed
when we point to things and change them (updated, changed,) – what happens – pointed to similar, or archives

Social Networking – broadline friends
Interoperability – desktop, laptop, push to delicious, flickr
Tag Commons – meta data do we need and looking at interop more successfully

Privacy – a lot of interesting things happening in the tech cpace

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

Web2.0 is about controlling data – 4.13.07

Its about data, who owns and controls, and who gives best access to
Still in early stages b/c data isnt owned yet

when a company is a bounty of new resources – at a philosophical level – and generally what law regulates

question – who is the part in the best position to make decisions about how to treat data?
goivt, technologists, entrepreneurs

how we think about privacy is extraordinarily important

User’s privacy experienc is a combo of law an tech

nothing bad for privacy

what kind of society do we create

providing info to one company for one purpose – but used by another for another purpose
how cool you can tell company where you are and they will connect you with people in the same place – give co the info – provide with the service – tracking whereever you are

that info is valuable
how do we think about diff between privacy question and the secondary question of how info transfers beyond initial transaction

another issue – permanence of the data

can everyone have access (not just rich parties) but also – how does it turn people off from participating
what are the reprecussions down the line

“I dont want to play anymore”

link between online and offline ID

how are we combining info with how they are doing things online wiht their offline identity

how to dev a sep ID for themselves online
keep distinct

comes up in community websites – you know your neighbor b/c you have relationship – what happens when you know a lot more – how does that change our social relationships

whether the market is thebest way to judge consumer privacy concerns
ID theft credtcard fraud
downstream effects displaced in time
notice at point of transcation

Massive societal, technology changes

google-doubleclick deal

think about advertising in the traditional model – i know a certain type of

tech allows it – but is there value? businesses like targeting, is the connection of the ID with the data opens possibility for people who want to access more info about individuals

massive societal change to resooirtboundaries

ability to buy with anonymity gives you a freedom that you dont get when you have to attach ID

web2.0 and kids – not as able to judge downstream effects – is there a corp obligation to think about this when you enable kids to do things

loss of control for those – who uses and how it is used

harm – someone cant get mortgage because of identity theft

occupies entire life

constitution – overarching question
data you collect – someone may come asking for it at some point
respobsible, good corp citizen
if you have it, someone can come and get it
when you think aboutthe context of thhe user experience – that is part of it
privacy what the expectation is
set by the market – what people exp in the world
frames how courts and judges eval techhnologies
what was the exp. when they engaged

when you build and enable collection – would you feel comfortable

what internal protections do you have? so many problems not about externals – its about people internally not well trained in how to manage process and keep it safe

great arch to protect privacy
and then a CS person gives out info

who are the people and how are they trained

building privacy in –
how is data live
how do you cue people to being tracked
opt-in or opt-out

collection of info – who holds, third parties – how long kept, personalized – which country, and laws that are covered there

data or communications

Innovate in privacy

how to survive those big press events
privacy policy generator – where2.0 conf
giving info – give more practical tools

internet app that will allow you to go to website and ask questions
taking thru the process to create policy

harvard – ToS at Berkman
Cyberlaw doing privacy

David Hornik – VC – concerned about privacy implications

see what kind of advice they are giving the clients

would like to shop based on peoples privacy policy

doesnt make those choices – companies dont realize she isnt interested – dont build to the need b/c they dont know

informed choice – useful to your company
explanation of provisions

graphical tags – to allow groups to endorse and machine readable – that allows you to find thru semantic search

tool to reduce repetitive work
point of reference

social scientists and researchers

more standardization in the market

commentary cards (why wouldnt all of this tie into OpenID?)

need to know this can be connected back to a person’s name
need to notify them of that

back end – simple db – output gives your policy

chosen – program introduces class user profile, need advice from real lawyer

with appropriate disclaimers

people in the room should be thinking about this – need to get ahead of it, set good standards and create great user experience and not just higher level interaction with your service

does she read privacy policies – sometimes yes, and most of the time no

some services cause more concern than others

balancing disclosure with good user experience and non-cumbersome user experience

more protections, more cumbersome
depends on a particular thing – cookies great if they allow you to know where you were or remember prefs – but can have horrible applications

sometimes you do have to encumber user experience

UE – includes privacy – part of the experience – this is critical

reccomendation for good resources?
where should they go to learn more

reading caselaw wont help you – no magic bullet privacy answer

some things the law does deal with – health you need guidance – you need rules to provide experience to the user

writing privacy policices in lang users can understand (short of making it graphical)
on cyberlaw site – students wrote policy for muni wireless – took that approach – mom should be able to know what will be done with her info

how far is Stanford and Berkman in the work?
goal – have the legal part done b4 students leave for summer – now tech implementation part

tag content to tell people how you want to give them permission to use it
# of diff licenses and metrics – machine, lawyer, people and graphical code

CC license – huge choice – more than what the law requires
go to PP gen and allows u to do whatever you want with peoples stuff

educational element

2 diff rules that address
CDA – comm deceny act – provision that limits liability of service providers for content posted for third parties – any content that is not copyright

DMCA – notice and takedown process – if youhave that regime your liability is limited
reduces liabilty in most cases

in the current youtube viacom – how far that protection upholds is in question

myspace context – how far will we let the limitation on liability on content go?

wide ranging limitation on liability for companies

Starting points – OpenID architecturee
holy grail
web-wise dist. single signon

coming together of competeing efforts to collab and cooperate
important
too much of the wbe in walled gardend

cutting edge of what it means to have identity
multiple social contexts
far from solving the problem

Trust is the heart of what we are talking about
how and why we trust

because you say we are
when do we do this in real life – only do it when dealing with entities like bank, govt, passport control

truct comes from past interactions and current context
can be our own experience

based on past experience and referential transactions (jane says susie was good person)

trust is not an algorithm

trust is not a rating

trust is a knowing set of instincts we have evolved – and intuition to survive and thrive in social groups
we have our own way of balancing our needs for trust
communities have their own ways
we make decisions on trusst based on range of info
how is not obvious

enough helpful tools and practices
need to be much deeper than ratings – deeper human drivers than processes

solutions to these problems must be user centric
rooted in community context

what do we do today and where do we start
start supporting openID

let people bring identities to you
before we get answers we need better questions
whats happening at identity commons and the conversations starting to emerge

questions on the edge about how group ID should be supported in a living way

web2.0 provides a set of engines that make wikipedia possible, live search, etc

big conv. – what new engines can web2. provide for support and improvement of id and trust in the social fabric

what can we do to make that happen

Q – ID stuff is back to centralized model – shouldnt we look at it diff – all the places in the real and virt world – cant we have alogrithm and look in the real world – actually has real ID based on e

concept of trust associated with the picture

our ID is shaped by all the things we do on the web – part of the challenge has been that until recently we didng have a way to take ID between diff websites

diff social contexts with diff cultures

sheet has detailed history of open ID
every AOL screenname has one
relatively large platforms supporting it
DIgg NetVibes, 6Apart

How can you say its here – hopelessly innocent

ID portable and moveable

ID is is URL and all of your relationships – portable ID in which your content, comments, feeds and social network that you own and take with you

anyone can write a client to consume xml file

ID as component of differentiation
always a danger with standardization

All these things are now more than big ideas
identity layer is being built now
in real terms speaking about coding and developing the nextgen tools

Identity commons – links on the wiki
internet identity workshop – 1 month in mountainview
big topic of conversation

hardware costs dominate
driving down people costs fast with autoadmin
bad – 40% costs admin
good – 3%

hardware matters – multiplies badly
some properties – 50%
dynamic resource allocation – super important

non-vm world – blast images
dynamic resources super important

resource equalization
10 or 12 instances

discs some with 500-750 gig capacity
100 IOps per sec
large # of apps – IO bound

see some apps are bounded on one or the other – balance workloads

networking bandwidth – egress and ingress
big gains ot be had

savings in admin costs
new app model in svcs world
100% automation
old – alert and investgate
new – restart reboot
really cheap model for admin
only works with 100% redundant state
oh so cheap to admin

5
more small slices
stop buying big systems
consoldiating workloads
very small inexpensive systems
power scales linear, or cubically with freq

end of the gold plated machine room
20% of cost is redundant power
investing b/c they couldnt afford to ever go ddown

stuff to hear about -
concept of data center and what you think of with infrastructure
seen as what the servers are
why am i deplying great code
infra a lot more
size of data center, container, hardware – a lot more than the servers themselves – the app deliver subsystem
app delivery infra

between servers and router lots of boxes with diff resp. – securing, faster, right place,
first mile
network itself –

between servers and what you get to the network is something
lot of things happeneing there
app devs – keep in mind what is happening

1. The talent is out there
altruistic goals attract altruistic participation
wikipedia the best example
Community is grown not built
build the walls firm – be too rigid is a mistake
the people who you want know more about what they want to do with it
elasticity

how do you build this container
create the tools that they want
reqward good contributions
editorial aspect – rising to the top, leading by example
punish the bad – have tools in place to make sure people who lead community in a bad way, need a way to neutralize them
expect the unexpected
you will always be surprised
last year for flickr, when launched geotagging, d&d interface – drag onto map, into pinpoint – giant F*CK in greenland story
use them as learning opportunities
using your tool in a way you dont expect – doing them a favor
as community designers – first reaction when users use their tools wrong – oftentimes users arent stupid – and you have something you can learn from them

Design for Selfishness
why would anyone do this
and the only answer is cool or b/c wikipedia does it – you may want to think
reason could be ego – make you famous
could be monetary
all diff ways to entice participation

2. FInding the Good Stuff
how do you separate the good from the bad
how do you create a system

there are many interesting examples of how people are doing it now
2 trad ways –
editors
decide what the news is
assign a writer
review and approve and publish

slashdot – moderators
meta moderators who judge if mods did the right thing
computers
what google did
look at the relationship of links to links – id good as having lots of links

more interesting model – the best of both
flickr’s interestingness
pictures chosen by magic donkey – secret sauce looking at behavior
fluid list of int photos going thru the commnity
how many people have viewed, favorited, comments
takes human behavior like commenting and tagging (meta info around photo) and makes interestingness score – populates it

negative access of creating celebrity class
can drive some people nuts
early on it was rank
people made it a goal to get in
rolled back and reloaded abstract list
want to figure out why it is doing what it is
feed into that

keep it as broad as possible
flickr not asking people to vote on the best stuff – collecting intention/attention around a photo and determine something larger than the sum of its parts
whenever you have a system that is making decisions based on user input – you always have a game – ? what kind of game and what are the rewards
if the game is becoming famous or getting attention – creates behavior that isnt good

JPG does something similar

Desc of JPG magazine

last issue collected 1 million votes
want users to participate – give their voice

point – techniques for ferreting out the good stuff

threadless example
sells tshirts
dont design – you do that
vote on tshirt designs

uuser additions, voting and editors

11000 submissions for last issue – having the community help filter and sort is a great help
let the wisdom of crowds do its thing – with the wis of editors
designing systems like this – buy wis of crowds by Surewicki

stock market – acting selfishly

good stuff out there – get them to make –

3. How does it make money
communities and commerce are not mutually exclusive
in the past they have treated communities like porceain dolls
communities form around commerce all the time

pull out any product – chances are there is a disc group about it
how do you integrate commerce in community gen stuff without all going to hell

how not to integrate

ex – Yahoo Games Wii site
announced to old skool members they would need to merge with yahoo ide

Yahoo games site affected
owned by yahoo games
created photo badge – pulling anything tagged wii
anything in terms of licensed photos and rights reserved – not the right thing to do
in addition to legal – do the right thing

jan 31 – their photos were being pulled in without permission – so they replaced with “Yahoo sucks”
people still somewhat angry
if you are doing the legal thing – using the content that is allowable but not the right thing – they can bite you hard in the derrierre
go above and beyond
making decisions in commercial endeavors
not necessarily going to town
other lesson – provide copious opt in an opt out
any use of member gen stuff – they may not know about – even if ToS says pubblic – people participating under set of social guidelines told or perceived
another area they didnt know about
copious
if flickr or yahoo games said to community “we want to do this” – would have been a run on it – people who freaked would have participated if asked permission

pay the photographer $100 at JPG magazine (less excited about money – but jpg saw it as jumping mediums – from web to print – monetarily thank them)

GM Tahoe
ex of the day
being stupid about the internet
site attracted 600k visitors in 3 weeks
9 min on the site
2/3 went on to visit chevy.com
number 1 referrer when active
still wondering if it was a commercial success
why did people make such mean ads
give people a comm tool and you never know what they will produce
was there an anger about tahoe?
or was it a byproduct of the interface itself
your only input was to add some text
all video was stock parts of chevy ads
all you could do is rearrange their video bits and add some text
give them a tiny box to participate it – it was insulting
put in in a little player – only had it there – couldnt email to anyone, couldnt take it with you

developers as editors with APIs
new editorial layer
agg photos in ways people are thinking about
people always have other conversations going on – let them interact and share in these other areas
only pull things back into your site
you dont own your users – they own you
threadless – see profile pages
recognizing their members exist in wide universe where they are creating all over
copious ins and outs – show respect to members

Why Print JPG mag at all – first – in a world where you can upload photo anywhere – how do you pick?
not another photo website or forum
want somethign that appreciates photos – honor great work at photoblogs
a reason to participate
choose to part. at the website – might get publsihed
looked at trad magazines and they are all terrible – all same stuff – same top ten list
third part – make more mags like this – potential for the web and print to work together – most mags treat websites as a threat
every submission is online
go and talk online
best stuff gets into print

growing community of people who care about the output

how do you deal with comm feedback on design changes
not lacking in comm feedback

get lots of feedback

will never get 80-% of listeners without 20% of talkers

b horowitz – 1% creators, 10% synthesizer, 89% listeners

jpg – 25% submits
50% – votes

Authority travels upwards in community driven sites
in real world authority travels down (editors down to readers of New Yorker)

good community participant – do right – they give you authority

if heather was GM she isnt sure she would want users to make ads
maybe not everything needs to have a community
the voice that comes back – listen to it

oh my goodness – maybe not what they expected – or cynically this is what they expected

not whether you should start a community – you have a comm that cares
are those people online
and do they care enought to use the tool for what they put out

Nike – custom shoes to get them to write sweatshop on the shoes
ask – are the people you are talking to your people or not

commerce – one other example – how can commercial entities participate in existing communityes

instead enter an exist comm for GM – and ask to participate there

Lonely girl vs MySpace

Sponspored themes
gives comm one more chance to publish
no editorial control – comm still has power
pay to help print the issue
people who print get awesome prizes

free jewel boxes from the sponsor – outside brand participate respectfully and reward part. in an existing community

good stuff out there
find it
have a viable business

enourmouse # of technologies

cant participate in all communities – have to pick and choose
can try out all the clones for free or low cost
Not an endorsement of any tech – best tool for him or her – might not work – hosted versus local

tools out there – to get at tofay

the ecosystem

a lot of tools fall into one to one category

all web2.0 tech powerful enuff to abuse or misues

toolkit

1. Your Site
Blogs, RSS, forums, email

2. Out at the Edges
blogosphere, social networks, photo and vid sharing –

3. Offline – (3d worlds)
events, meetups, conferences

make your own presence as a company known

very interative tools

start small and private and expand over time

change from buying a superbowl as

easy to get intimidated – how to do all this stuff

how to manage all the attention and info – pick and choose little pieces, start small and expand over time
Part of the community itself

Categories of tools
Blogs
Podcasts
WIki
Rss
SOcial Networks
Chat
wiki
video
chat
email lists
forums/groups

list of 10 other things – all req interactivity and maintenance and managment

not all tech right for every org

“rules are” – they are full of it – misleading lie – everyone doesnt need the same difunct lifestyle

2 or 3 – maybe not everything

Definitions
regularly updated, frequently updated – what its all about

blogs – owner starts conv and everyone responds
wiki – share document between a number of people

social networking underpinning of these tech
enable who you have relationship in a specific way
relationship confers some status

groups and forums connect community to each other

“a series of tubes becomes a series of crossroads”

complement between the diff tools

highlights of key ones

Blogs
great starting point
immediate and ongoing connection
provides human face to the evangelist
enables you to join the community
be proactive and quick to act
low barrier to entry (just get started)

keep the relationship going in a consistent way

start with what works for you – ok to start without comments – didnt allow comments when they started

feeds , permalinks, established blogging elements

lot of the tools self correct over time – listen to the community – they will have impact and you will have a better result

not being dogmatic or bullheaded

not about the tools – blogs are forgiving and about a relationship – plenty of places to find online
great great complments to the other tools

Podcasting and videoblogging
VIdeo services – metacafe, blip, photobucket

photo tools – flickr, photobucket

desktop tools – iMovie, Quicktime, Audactity, Picasa

tools becoming commodified

WIKI
editable web pages
great for collaboration on evolving projects
need tending
hosted vs server side
hosted – social text, jotspot, PBWiki
server – mediawiki, instiki

can rapidly go out of date
inaccuracies and errors if not tended

everything has mistakes – key= people who are interested in managing and maintaingn and organize – let them organize

willing to play a littl, it doesnt have to be perfect

follow model as blogs – free or cheap and getup&go – or installed software (call IT dept) – more complex but more power

easy to move data between diff types of software

all prod are low enough to expense

not uncommon

wiki good tool for internalizing evangelism

wiki less scary inside org

tie to email address for business and internal use – people grow up – wouldnt do that with name attached to it

FEED READING
any site with a feed can be tracked passively and centralized
cuts down on the number of email newsletters
feeds for concepts, searches, topics – search the future

subscribe to feed on a topic – verticalizes what you are searching

more broad than just the exact name – not having to track all the blogs – have the software do the work

discover sites and blogs discussing the topic

hosted vs server for feed reading – power users want offline

sharepoint and portal apps allow feed reading as well

SOCIAL NETWORKING / MEDIA TOOLS
get out there in the community
anything on your blog can link out – post screenshots to flickr, upload video to youtube
ensure you are easy to find
use tags, social bookmarks
use the same screenname across the ecosystem
create a presence – product community page, events calendar

be respectful of the context you are in
myspace and plumbers

devil is in the details – use the same tags – persistent vocabulary – use the same screenname across ecosystem

GM mention
find us on – and then all the networks you participate in

care about participating in those communities

authenticity – dont join a network just to be on it – if you cant add something useful and acting like a native and being honest for that group of users – dont do it – thats OK

no reason to have empty – noting lonelier than flickr without photos

SOme guiding priciples

Be Authentic
participate
you are not in control
get transparent

a Day In The Life

How do you keep up with this stuff
skillset and type of person

a day in the life of mr dash
works in blogging company
every customer has a blog
wonderful customers not afraid to kick in the ass

x tens of millions with tools
track 4-5 brands
2-3 senior executives represent the company
any mention of the brands or people is considered an obligation for 6A to respond
SF, PAris, Tokyo
25 million people, 25 lang, 20 key terms
volume in blog posts mentioning in a lang they can respond in tends to be 6-700 posts
on days when launching something new to somethign active – 10k posts
goal to acknowledge every one
over time – reduced the amount of resources it takes to do it
1. uses all of the feed search systems
a. icerocket, technorati, sphere.com, yahoo blgo search, google blog search
each tool does a search for a product term – searches for all – opens each search in own tab in FFox bookmarkes the tabs
does for each products
feed of every search for the tools
how the day begins
some agg have the tools built in
dashboard – lots of spam and people misusing the terms
take away x %
some people are tag spammers – broad brush
heart of customer comm
diff cats – hey trying out this product or service – mention it in passing
people who just formed a relationship with the org
key opps to say HI I am with X – thanks for talking, considering doing a meeting – huge touchpoint
surprised where thay benefit comes back
POC that early changes impressions
most is fairly structured – not in favor of copy and pasting – follow structure – make bullet list of main points and make them releavant
saying something that is unique to a certain community
“hello, welcome, thanks”
and add on epiece of info that isnt sales-y
“if you need information – here is how to get in touch”

will expose if there is a problem with help at your company

Asymmetrical – will find the gaps and the outliers – where to take the notes and maintain a record

second major group is moderately disgruntled
annoyed, peeved, little problems
fairly straightforward
9 out of 10 – prob aware of it if engaged in community – shouldnt be a surprise
once you set policy you can talk about what you are doing about it
justify what you get in exchange for the fees

underprmise and overdeliver
aware and working on it
fix it or explain – but be sincere
they will understand by being upfront

2 easy cases – welcome to the community or you have a problem

3rd – people who are really upset

most upset for something that has nothing to do with your company, product, service
your product failed at the wrong time – impetus is never about the failure of the prod – you can never say “here is what you are upset about” – cant do that – more exasperating

going a little beyond makes a big difference

more when the battery comes back

Philosophy of evangelism
what is community evangelism
Key concepts
Human tools and tech tools
technical know-how
case studies

WHat can you do with a Book? (AD)

concept that informs a lot of what he sees personally

talk to young people – what can they do with a book – read it, notes, cover it, burn it
dont quickly get to the idea they can write a book

dramatic change for them – they have control over somethign they interact with every day

profound disctinction re the web – the web is something they can manipulate, creat and control

Want to start a podcast, reach a large audience

ton of times reading books or school – but none on the web

diff is the potential of evan

what they can do with the mediaum

2 ideas to review – Persistance and Awareness
fundamental enablers
make the rest o what we do powerful
how many use print or DM?
small number
some actually still cold call caustomers

how do we shift from old school to new school – thru persistance and awareness
obvious in retrospect

media is totally disposabel – degrade automatically – can be lost forever
business comm – a lot that we send comm in a way that says “this is disposable” –
we dont have to settle for that – great comm can be made that we want to keep – meaningful enuff that we want to keep over time

Visits to the Long Tail
from the last month
61% from last month, 27% older than 1 month, 12% older than one month from search

how much of our commm is around newness, and immediacy – we are ignoring almost 1/2 that conv

people are sending links, passing them on, referring to the later

lots of comm going on that is persistant over time – valuable for the long run.
see a lot of cisitors to older content on a blog that is about writing a book (aritfact on a shelf for the rest of your life

blog is persistant over time

social tension arising from use using email and IM over time
emo we need something to hold on to

ikea is a maze – cant get out without buying something

not how the web works
exp of going thru store where they are controlling everywhere you go and everything you see

profound thing – not having a maze

Permalinks and date stamp – see them forever
what was missing from those company websites designed to be ikea store
in all of social media there is a social contract – date stamp promises there will be more updates

A DATE STAMP IS A SOCIAL CONTRACT

because no ones name was attached they were free to make something that didnt have value – namestamp is a confirmation of value

wikipedia – edit link – we trust you to be part of the editing – think about what a leap or promise that is

i have the right to be on the page – think of the risk and opp they are taking wiht that – social expectations being set – I WILL STAY IN TOUCH

Intentions of maintainging relationships

want to talk to someone other than asking for money

we dont stay in touch –

how do we turn the promise to stay in touch where we actually do stay in touch

fulfilling that promise to stay in touch

at the bottom line – what matters

the reason we can trat them as disposable – they are

if we promise and we do so the bar is raised – we can only stay in touch if we add value – no value less attention is paid

kids can watch a movie over and over

resonance there that doesnt happen with web and web20 tech

1/3 of the books he moved he never read

intention of emotional connection

books and movies about meaning ful things we have that ARENT people

can comm using web2.0 that is meaningful and resonant as the best media we consume

as meaningful and the best movie you have ever seen

making something lasting, meaningful and persistant

not to say it will be in the same way – but will be able to comm and treat with the respect appropriate to that comm (friends getting engaged announced with txt)

treating phys objects as disposable – they dont have to be – they can be valuable

MEANINGFUL

how meaningful a relationship you can have with non-competitors

AWARENESS
crux of info overload problem
one key resp as evangelist is to nav sea of info to find what has value and what needs to be trashed

“I NEED MORE EMAIL” – no one says that

awareness not about alert messages – prone to being misused

thoughtless – not appropriate – hurts attention – worse than spam –

junkmail can be deleted – mental expense of people being unintentionally being thoughtless because tools allow it, enable – rude by accident – tools encourage us to do that

WE ARE ALL SINNERS

offer forgiveness for myself and all of us

dont have to be rude

what inspired us – what do people love and covet – ipod, tivo, wii

why these tools were diff than fax machine in office space

same fols working on them

should be similar

diff b/c they offer you control

tv commercials – loud, obnoxious, annouting

good tv now

tivo – not beholden to schedules or commercials – control
ipod – control instead of radio station
wii – 1 button , move it around – visceral powerful levels of control –

how do we trans to web experiences?

RSS ICON

Feeds about control – choosing where and when you get info
subscribe, get info – on your terms, on your time

some of the best tools for feed look like tivo, ipod and wii

seeing there is a convergence towards software and web tech and phys devices enabling control

persistanc e- val over time
awareness – connection without being rude

Persistance + awareness = a relationship

relationship doesnt fit into columns

assign metrics and measurement about evangelism

goal of evangelism – maintain a relationship on the web

using web2.0 to build relationships

COMMUNITY EVANGELISM

Customeer advocate
listener and educator
world of control – corp has lost a huge amount of control – they can make a huge difference

role of evangelist can bring individuals and community along

Amongst the people – being a native as well as on the road

increaing numbers of ethnographers and anthropologists getitng into tech

everyone here will be talkign about users as if they are the other – we are different from them – we are different – we need to get inside the world of people who dont care and dont use all day every day

learn from it and respect it – there is a diff culture out there and be part of it and bring use to it

evangelist is not sales or marketing role – human face of the company – 3d embodiyment

online and offline – cross functional – not just role of the marketer – not solely a markeitng role
that individual has to have and feel comfortable and empowered across the company – HR, Marketing, corporate, CS

Internal as well as external – need to be able to interface with marketing and CS
not just outsiders –

foil for the company or a critic – say things your CEO doesnt want to hear
externally facing – biggest fan | internally biggest critic

“gone native” – off there on the other side – living in a middle of a bridge between the two

human skills

Listener
COnnecter
Critic
Catalyst (Starfish and the spider – decentralized awareness persistant landscape)
Partial Geek
Detective
Diplomat
Juggler
Driven by relationships
Approachable
Intuitive
Inquisitive

catalyst connector role – need to connect and forge relationships

perceived egotistical evangelist isnt bad

working and thinking on the feet alot

pushing pushing

interesting balance – element to succeeding where good evangelists become as well known in the brands they are worknig with as their communities – is it for you or the company/product

if aligned to these values it is clear to what you are in service of

interesting tension to be explored –

conquistadors thought they were evangelists (ended up destroying the civ they visited – DeSoto)

geek vs partial geek – translating and human skills – you end up treading more lightly – very instructuve to think of the conversation and interactions

bringing your cult to the world that isnt read yet – evolution, interation and change

important – like porn – in it for their ego or corp ego – you know it when you see it

before you start an evangelism program – make sure you are aligned with where the company is
ask the tough questions up front

already dozens of bloggers around MS

that kind of face

transparency – len hasnt gotten a lot of credit for being a catalyst behind that – a lot of clarity around the bigger goal

Sometimes transactions dont matter

there is an exchange going on – its ok to admit that – but need to find respect

Key Concepts

Democratization of tools and access
The Live Web
Decentralization
Amateur culture
Increased individual influence
COntrol is out of control
let the seller beware
people are the message

Blogging and the role of marketing – now we can jump into the conversation
human face – corp blogs and ceo blogs – connector and curator

kind of person that can jump in – people are the message – markets and conversations of the cluetrain

they are paying you – respect and listen to them – relationships take work – take time, take effort – in it for the long haul

EVANGELISM
ANil hates the title
no better work yet
overtly religious analogy going on – look at people who practice and the ones most effective are not evangelists – they are witnesses – live the life you want others to experience

for those evangelizing – goal has to be to live the benefits – if we participate we will gain from it

the role of witnessing – diversion but important point – pounding the podium doesnt work

ideas to cover before break – using web2 to build relationships
1 be where your audience is – mentally and physicall – in the communities online – sometimes in the ugly parts of the web – hard time justifying you are working if that site is in your browser – translating into biz req will save time and trouble later

clean polished parts of the web not where the edge is

someone driven by other motivations will not spend time being detective

not into challenge

no its not

2. Offer something of value – not bribery – info is most valuable (inc connection), validation
a response saying I read what you said (no qual, not agreeing) – saying “I am with this company and are responsing to what you said – goes a long way – validation is huge
things you take for granted – is valuable

3. Use WHat You Got
decision making process of one initiative – put it out there for debat – means the world to those using the product or considering a purchase
share that part of the conversation “oh, you actually put thought into this”
dont have insight or respect of it

can get lost in transparency and authenticity

baby steps to talking in a different tone

not that difficult a transition to make

If youdidnt get your badge this AM – tables at bottom of escalator

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