What is 'Real-time as a Service'?

First, to define 'Real-time' Real-time is no CDN or Cache latency. When there is new data in the database, it's available to the end-user.

Real-time is not needing to hit the refresh button to see new information. It's when information folds into the page while you're reading it.

Real-time is a new volume and velocity of data. A lot of web data used to consist of 'Blog Posts' or 'News Articles'. Documents. Real-time web data is about activities. Granular, human readable micro-stories about the activities that users make.

"I read this", "I rated this", "I commented on this", "I shared this", "I edited this" and so on. Why? Because capturing, surfacing and socializing real-time activity data is part of the core essence of the social web. The ability to see not just the result of actions by users, but the play-by-play stream of those actions along side faces, names and time/date stamps takes an experience from a static 'snapshot' into a living, breathing stream. Further, by enabling users to like, reply, flag, share and otherwise interact with these activities, sites are creating new opportunities for engagement, conversation and conversion.

Real-time is a presentation metaphor. It often (but not always) takes the form of a reverse chronological stream with nested comments and likes. It helps users understand the order of things and mixes content with conversation in a way that drives engagement and return visits.

Real-time means filters instead of facts. Let the user decide what they want to see - to craft an experience that makes sense for them, and their friends.

Now, what is 'Real-time as a Service'?

If all the things above are true, then it changes everything we used to know about web infrastructure, databases, user interfaces and tools for moderation or curation.

APIs can no longer be request-response. Databases must now store far more data at far faster rates. User interfaces need to factor in names, faces and actions. Moderation and curation tools must leverage algorithms, crowd sourcing and real-time flows.

Real-time as a service, then, is cloud infrastructure that helps make this transition easier.

It is a database that can handle new magnitudes of scale - handling hundreds or thousands of write events per section. Not just to a flat table, but to a hierarchical tree of arbitrary activities.

Site -> Section -> Article -> Rating -> Comment -> Reply -> Like.

It's a database that can store all items permanently so that users can visit old streams at any time. Permanent storage that can also handle localized annotations. Localized annotations are the ability to modify the metadata of an activity - say a Tweet (Promote it, tag it, retarget it in the tree etc) - in such a way that that your view of a tweet is different from another customer's view.

It's a database that enables not just the ability to perform an SQL-like search query, but also continuously updates you when the data changes - so that you can modify the UI on the fly.

It's a database that returns not just flat query results, but a hierarchical tree - allowing you to present the activity in context.

It's a database that handles not just a few hundred users requesting (reading) data, but a few million users swarming to see the latest action in a sports game or a concert.

It's a database that organically makes connections between items by understanding the relationships of URLs and #tags to make implicit links in the graph where and when they're needed. For example a tweet mentioning acme.com should be attached to Acme.com in the tree.

And most importantly, it's a database company that understands that the opportunity of the Real-time, Social Web is far too big and moves far too quickly to possibly be built by a single vendor. A company that, as a result of this understanding, chooses open standards over proprietary formats; Partnership with best-of-breed partners over trying to build mediocre versions of everything by itself.

Polls, Ratings, Comments, Live Blogging, Forums, Data Bridging, Data Enriching, Visualization, Moderation, Curation, Analytics Game Mechanics, Authentication... the list is endless. They are all transformed by the Real-time web. They must all be part of Real-time as a Service.

And finally, Real-time as a Service is about service. Enterprise grade support. Best in class uptime. White label.

That's Real-time as a Service.

Further Reading

• Another way to describe it here.
• Here are some Case Studies for what you can build with such a service.

What is Echo StreamServer?

Yesterday we announced a new Echo product called StreamServer. There is very little more I can say that Khris Loux has not already said so eloquently on stage at the #e2 launch event

When you work so hard and long on something (depending on how you look at it, StreamServer was either 15, 2.5 or 1 year in the making) its hard to sum it all up in one, 1 hour event.

But that's what we tried to do.

We tried to thread the needle between a contemporary story about activity data, the existential change (read: opportunity or threat) occurring on the web as traffic and monetization flows to proprietary social networking platforms, the opportunity for every major node on the web to be just as powerful and innovative, the need for open standards and powerful cloud services as the basis of the the rebuttal and our deep desire to make this an industry wide effort. We tried to communicate the important role of aggregation and the pivotal job of mainstream media, e-commerce, entertainment, startup and agencies play in curating activity information for the masses.

We also tried to communicate that this was not just a pipe dream, but rather a commercial reality for major customers. A solution running at scale. A new distribution and monetization opportunity for 3rd party devs and a future ready piece of infrastructure for media companies.

I think we did the best job possible at threading all these stories, and doing it with a human, authentic voice through the lens of customer and partner experiences.

I'm proud of the work we've done so far, and the tireless efforts of the Echo team and our customer/partner devs.

And all of that being said, though, we are only at the beginning. We have just planted the first seed and I look forward to helping it grow.

So what is StreamServer in my words?

It is the real-time, social scale database that Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Foursquare and others built, delivered as an ec2 style cloud service. Turn it on, and forget about managing the data or scaling the infrastructure.

It is the first of its kind and it will hopefully form the basis of many new companies as they deliver many new, novel and innovative experiences to customers and end users everywhere.

And it's a bet on the future of open standards, developer ecosystems, a heterogeneous web made up of first class social nodes.

It's Real-time as a Service.

New Twitter. Feature comparison

Jeremiah and I wrote an analysis of the New Twitter vs. Current Facebook. Here's a snippet:

Situation: Twitter’s new redesign advances their user experience

Twitter has announced a new redesign today, yet by looking at the news, there hasn’t been a detailed breakdown of these two leading social networks.  Overall, Twitters new features start to resemble some features of a traditional social network, beyond their simple messaging heritage.  We took the key features from both social website and did a comparison and voted on the stronger player?

[Great Detailed Graph goes here - See it on Jeremiah's blog]

Our Verdict: Facebook Features Lead Over Twitter’s New Redesign

Facebook’s features offer a more robust user experience, and they have a longer history of developing the right relationships with media, developers, and their users. Twitter, a rapidly growing social network has launched a series of new features (described by the founder as “smooth like butter”) that provide users with a snappy experience and enhanced features.

We tallied the important features of this launch and to their overall expansion strategy and have concluded that Facebook’s features continue to hold dominance over Twitter, despite the noticeable improvements. While we don’t expect that Twitter wants to become ‘another Facebook’ they should play to their strengths and remaining nimble and lightweight yet allowing for developers and content producer to better integrate into their system.

Check out the full results over on his blog.

Guest Post: Facebook's world view

Just wanted to share with you here that I wrote a guest post on Mashable last week about Facebook's world view. Be sure to check it out here.

Are these blunders a series of accidental missteps (a combination of ambition, scale and hubris) or a calculated risk to force their world view on unsuspecting users (easier to ask for forgiveness)? Only the executives at Facebook can ever truly answer this question.

What’s clear, though, is that their platform is tightly coupled with countless other websites and applications across the web, and their financial success is aligned with many influential investors and actors. At this stage, and at this rate, their continued success is all but assured.

But so is the success of the rest of the web. Countless social applications emerge every day and the rest of the web is, and always will be, bigger than any proprietary platform. Through its action and inaction, Facebook offers opportunities for us all. And in the dance between their moves and the rest of the web’s, innovation can be found.

The only thing that can truly hurt the web is a monopoly on ideas, and the only ones who can let that happen are web users themselves.

Open is not enough. Time to raise the bar: Interoperable

Last week Elias Bizannes and I wrote a post Assessing the Openness of Facebook's 'Open Graph Protocol'. To summarize that post, it's clear that Facebook is making a play to create, aggregate and own not only identity on the web, but everything that hangs off it. From Interests to Engagement - not just on their .com but across all sites. To do this they are giving publishers token value (analytics and traffic) to take over parts of the page with pieces of Facebook.com without giving them complete access to the user , their data or the user experience (all at the exclusion of any other player). In addition, they are building a semantic map of the Internet that will broker interests and data on a scale never before seen anywhere.

In the face of such huge momentum and stunningly effective execution (kudos to them!), aiming for (or using the word) Open is no longer enough. The web community needs to up it's game.

The same is true for data portability - the group and the idea. Data portability is no longer enough. We must raise the bar and start to aim for Interoperable Data Portability.

Interoperability means that things work together without an engineer first having to figure out what's on the other end of an API call.

When you request 'http://blog.areyoupayingattention.com' it isn't enough that the data is there, or that that its 'open' or 'accessible'. No. The reason the web works is because the browser knows exactly how to request the data (HTTP) and how the data will be returned (HTML/CSS/JS). This is an interoperable transaction.

Anyone could write a web server, create a web page, or develop a web browser and it just works. Point the browser somewhere else, and it continues to work.

Now map this to the social web. Anyone could (should be able to) build an open graph, create some graph data, and point a social widget to it and it just works. Point the social widget somewhere else, and it continues to work.

As you can see from the mapping above, the interaction between a social widget and it's social graph should be the same as that of a browser and a web-server. Not just open, but interoperable, interchangeable and standardized.

Why? Innovation.

The same kind of innovation we get when we have cutting edge web servers competing to be the best damned web server they can be (IIS vs. Apache), and cutting edge websites (Yahoo vs. MSN vs. Google vs. Every other site on the Internet) and cutting edge browsers (Netscape vs. IE vs. Safari vs. Chrome). These products were able to compete for their part in the stack.

Imagine if we got stuck with IIS,  Netscape and Altavista locking down the web with their own proprietary communication channels. The web would have been no better than every closed communication platform before it. Slow, stale and obsolete.

How do we become interoperable? It's hard. Really hard. Those of us who manage products at scale know its easy to make closed decisions. You don't have to be an evil mastermind - you just have to be lazy. Fight against being lazy. Think before you design, develop or promote your products - try harder. I don't say this just to you, I say it to myself as well. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else out there developing product. We must all try harder.

Open standards are a start, but open protocols are better. Transactions that, from start to finish, provide for Discoverability, Connectivity and Exchange of data using well known patterns.

The standards groups have done a lot of work, but standards alone don't solve the problem. It requires product teams to implement the standards and this is an area I am far more interested in these days. How do we implement these patterns at scale.

Customers (i.e. Publishers) must also demand interoperable products. Products that not just connect them to Facebook or Twitter but rather make them first class nodes on the social web.

Like we said on the DataPortability blog:

In order for true interoperable, peer-to-peer data portability to win, serious publishers and other sites must be vigilant to choose cross-platform alternatives that leverage multiple networks rather than just relying on Facebook exclusively.

In this way they become first-class nodes on the social web rather than spokes on Facebook’s hub.

But this is just the start. This just stems the tide by handing the keys to more than one player so that no one player kills us while the full transition to a true peer-to-peer model takes place.

If the web is to truly stay open and interoperable, we need to think bigger and better than just which big company (s) we want to hand our identities to.

Just like every site on the web today can have its own web server, every site should also have the choice to host (or pick) its own social server. Every site should become a fully featured peer on the social web. There is no reason why CNN can not be just as functional, powerful, effective and interchangeable as Facebook.com.

If we don't, we will be stuck with the IIS, IE and Netscape's of the social web and innovation will die.

Facebook and the future of News

Marshall Kirkpatrick has written a thoughtful piece over on Read/Write Web entitled 'Facebook and the future of Free Thought' in which he explains the hard facts about news consumption and the open subscription models that were supposed to create a more open playing field for niche voices. In it, he states that news consumption has barely changed in the last 10 years. RSS and Feed Readers drive very little traffic and most people still get their news from hand selected mainstream portals and destination sites (like MSN News and Yahoo news etc). In other words, mainstream users do not curate and consume niche subscriptions and are quite content to read what the mainstream sites feed them.

This is troubling news (pun intended) for those of us who believe that the democratization of publishing might open up the world to niche voices and personalized story-telling.

Marshall goes on to argue that Facebook might be our last hope. That since everyone spends all their time in Facebook already, that the service has an opportunity to popularize the notion of subscribing to news sources and thereby bring to life our collective vision of personalized news for the mainstream. Facebook already does a great deal of this with users getting large amounts of news and links from their friends as they share and comment on links.

Through my work with APML I have long dreamed of a world where users are able to view information through a highly personalized lens - a lens that allows them to see personally relevant news instead of just popular news (note that Popularity is a factor of personal relevancy, but it is not the only factor). That doesn't mean the news would be skewed to one persuasion (liberal or conservative for example) but rather to a specific topic or theme.

Could Facebook popularize personalized news? Should it? Do we really want a closed platform to dictate how the transports, formats and tools of next generation story-telling get built? If so, would we simply be moving the top-down command and control systems of network television and big media to another closed platform with its own limitations and restrictions?

Personalized news on closed platforms are almost as bad as mainstream news on closed platforms. News organizations and small niche publishers both need a way to reach their audience using open technologies or we are doomed to repeat the homogenized news environment of the last 2 decades. The one that failed to protect us from a war in Iraq, failed to innovate when it came to on-demand, and failed to allow each of us to customize and personalize our own news reading tools.

That's why technologies like RSS/Atom, PubSubHub and others are so important.

What's missing now is a presentation tool that makes these technologies sing for the mainstream.

So far, as an industry, we've failed to deliver on this promise. I don't have the answers for how we might succeed. But succeed we must.

Perhaps established tier 1 media sites have a role to play. Perhaps market forces that are driving them to cut costs and innovate will drive these properties to turn from purely creating mainstream news editorially toward a model where they curate and surface contributions from their readership and the wider web.

In other words, Tier 1 publishers are being transformed from content creators to content curators - and this could change the game.

In the race to open up and leverage social and real-time technologies, these media organizations are actually making way for the most effective democratization of niche news yet.

Niche, personalized news distributed by open news hubs born from the 'ashes' of old media.

Don't like the tools one hub gives you? Switch to another. the brands we all know and love have an opportunity to become powerful players in the news aggregation and consumption game. Will they respond in time?

Due to my experience working with Tier 1 publishers for Echo, I have high hopes for many of them to learn and adapt. But much more work still remains.

Learn more about how news organizations are practically turning into personalized news curation hubs over on the Echo Blog.

A call for focus from the open standards community

Time to refocus the open community

Over on the Open Web Foundation mailing list Eran Hammer-Lahav who, despite his gruff and disagreeable personality, I respect greatly for his work in the development of open standards, is effectively calling for a complete shakeup of the foundation and the efforts being poured into the 'common ground' of the standards efforts.

Let me define the 'Common Ground' as I see it.

Building strong common ground is like building strong open standards deep into the stack. Just like a software stack, our community needs a stack of organizations that are loosely coupled and open to participation. Groups like the W3C and IETF provide a rock solid core, more agile groups focused on specific standards like OpenID and Oauth are in the middle and a project like the DataPortability project was supposed to be on top - a kind of user interface layer.

You see, good standards efforts are neccessarily projects that work to solve one small problem well. The problems are often deep technical challenges that attract passionate and, let's face it, geeky people to hack, debate and decide on details that don't hit the radar for 99.9% of the population.

The problem, of course, is that the rest of the world has to care for a standard to matter.

Leaders and project managers need to be found, real companies need to get involved (not just their staff), collaboration platforms need to facilitate real and open discussion, calls for collaboration need to be heard, specs need to be written (and written well), libraries need to be written, governance needs to be put in place and so on.

Also, once the standard is (half) baked, less involved hackers need to participate to test the theories in the real world. Less savvy developers need to hear about the standard and understand it. Business people need to understand the value of using a standard over a proprietary solution. They also need IP protections in place to ensure that by using the standard they are not putting their company at risk. Marketing people need to know how to sell it to their customer base. Customers need to know how to look for and choose open solutions to create a market place that rewards openness.

All of this is 'Common Ground'. It is common to any standards effort and there should - no must - be an organization that is just as lean, mean and aggresive as Facebook in place to provide these resources if we are ever going to compete with closed solutions.

At the start of 2008 the DataPortability project became very popular. It's goal was not to build standards, but rather to promote them. To provide much of the common ground that I described above.

The DP project's particular mission, in my mind at least, was to focus on the marketing effort. To build a massive spot light and to shine that intense light on the people, organizations and standards that were getting the job done.

Is the OWF providing a generic legal/IPR framework? Fantastic! It was the DPP's job to let everyone know - developers, business execs, media, potential editors, contributors and more. Our job was not, and should never be to start the framework itself, but rather to advocate for, provide context around and promote the hell out of someone else's effort to do so.

Is a conference happening next year? Excellent. It was the DPP's job to get in touch with the conference organizer, organize not just a DP panel, but a DP Track and to create room (and perhaps even a narritive) inside which the people doing the actual work can speak.

Has Facebook just announced a new feature that could have been achieved through a combination of existing open standards? Then it is' the DPP's job to consult with each of those standards groups and create a cohesive response/set of quotes for the media to use.

Unfortunately, though, many in the standards community chose to fight the creation of the project for whatever reasons crossed their mind at the time. They used all sorts of methods to undermine the effort. Some that would Fox News to shame.

The result, of course, has been a diversion from the important work of providing common area services to the standards community to a self-protection state of creating governance and creating our own 'deliverables' in order to justify and protect its own existance.

I have, as a result of a series of unfortunate events, fallen out of touch with the Steering group at the DPP. Moving to the US, getting disillusioned with the community I admired (not those involved with DPP. Ny friends at the DPP Steering group have always performed very admirably and worked extremely hard) and ultimately shifting my world view to realize that the best contribution I can make - the best way to really move the needle - is to ship Data Portability compliant software at scale.

At this juncture, however, I think it's time for us all to refocus on our original mission for the DataPortability Project.

To restate my humble view on the matter:

To provide a website that explains data portability to various audiences in neat and concise ways. It is the onramp for the standards community. You should be able to send anyone to 'dataportability.org' and they 'get it' and know what to do next.

To provide context and advocacy on news and development from inside and outside the standards community so that media, execs and less involved developers can understand and react

To build a community of interested parties so that they can swam to the aid of standards groups or the standards effort in general.

To act as a market force to (yes I'm going to say it) pick winners. To highlight what works, what doesn't and what should be done next to move the whole effort forward. Nothing is as powerful as removing confusion and planting a big red flag on the answer.

To recognize that we have the authority to do whatever we want to do because we are an independant, private group who has chosen to create public/transparent processes. We need to believe in ourselves. If we do good work, then people will listen. If we don't then they can listen to someone else.

This necessarily means that the only real deliverable from the project would be a small set of communication tools that build community, context and advocacy around what we believe is the 'truth' (or at least things worth paying attention to) in the broader standards community.

In my book that is not only a very worthy effort, it is increasingly critical to the success and health of the web.

Over on the Open Web Foundation mailing list Eran Hammer-Lahav who, despite his gruff and disagreeable personality, I respect greatly for his work in the development of open standards, is effectively calling for a complete shakeup of the foundation and the work being poured into the 'common ground' of the standards efforts.

Let me define the 'Common Ground' as I see it.

Building strong common ground is like building strong open standards deep into the stack. Just like a software stack, our community needs a stack of organizations that are loosely coupled and open to participation. Groups like the W3C and IETF provide a rock solid core, more agile groups focused on specific standards like OpenID and Oauth are in the middle and a project like the DataPortability project was supposed to be on top - a kind of user interface layer.

You see, good standards efforts are neccessarily projects that work to solve one small problem well. The problems are often deep technical challenges that attract passionate and, let's face it, geeky people to hack, debate and decide on details that don't hit the radar for 99.9% of the population.

The problem, of course, is that the rest of the world has to care for a standard to matter.

Leaders and project managers need to be found, real companies need to get involved (not just their staff), collaboration platforms need to facilitate real and open discussion, calls for collaboration need to be heard, specs need to be written (and written well), libraries need to be written, governance needs to be put in place and so on.

Also, once the standard is (half) baked, less involved hackers need to participate to test the theories in the real world. Less savvy developers need to hear about the standard and understand it. Business people need to understand the value of using a standard over a proprietary solution. They also need IP protections in place to ensure that by using the standard they are not putting their company at risk. Marketing people need to know how to sell it to their customer base. Customers need to know how to look for and choose open solutions to create a market place that rewards openness.

All of this is 'Common Ground'. It is common to any standards effort and there should - no must - be an organization that is just as lean, mean and aggresive as Facebook in place to provide these resources if we are ever going to compete with closed solutions.

At the start of 2008 the DataPortability project became very popular. It's goal was not to build standards, but rather to promote them. To provide much of the common ground that I described above.

The DP project's particular mission, in my mind at least, was to focus on the marketing effort. To build a massive spot light and to shine that intense light on the people, organizations and standards that were getting the job done.

Is the OWF providing a generic legal/IPR framework? Fantastic! It was the DPP's job to let everyone know - developers, business execs, media, potential editors, contributors and more. Our job was not, and should never be to start the framework itself, but rather to advocate for, provide context around and promote the hell out of someone else's effort to do so.

Is a conference happening next year? Excellent. It was the DPP's job to get in touch with the conference organizer, organize not just a DP panel, but a DP Track and to create room (and perhaps even a narritive) inside which the people doing the actual work can speak.

Has Facebook just announced a new feature that could have been achieved through a combination of existing open standards? Then it is the DPP's job to consult with each of those standards groups and create a cohesive response/set of quotes for the media to use.

What is the relationship Facebook Platform, OpenSocial, Open Standards, OpenID, OAuth, Portable Contacts and Twitter's 'Open API'? DataPortability.org should have the answer neatly described on its website.

Unfortunately, though, many in the standards community chose to fight the creation of the project for whatever reasons crossed their mind at the time. They used all sorts of methods to undermine the effort. Some that would put Fox News to shame.

The result, of course, has been a diversion from the important work of providing this common ground  to the standards community to a self-protection state of creating governance and creating our own 'deliverables' in order to justify and protect our own existence.

I have, as a result of a series of unfortunate events, fallen out of touch with the Steering group at the DPP. Moving to the US, getting disillusioned with the community I admired (not those involved with DPP. My friends at the DPP Steering group have always performed very admirably and worked extremely hard) and ultimately shifting my world view to realize that the best contribution I can make - the best way to really move the needle - is to ship Data Portability compliant software at scale.

At this juncture, however, I think it's time for us all to refocus on our original mission for the DataPortability Project.

To restate my humble view on the matter:

• To provide a website that explains data portability to various audiences in neat and concise ways. It is the onramp for the standards community. You should be able to send anyone to 'dataportability.org' and they 'get it' and know what to do next.
• To provide context and advocacy on news and development from inside and outside the standards community so that media, execs and less involved developers can understand and react
• To build a community of interested parties so that they can swam to the aid of standards groups or the standards effort in general.
• To act as a market force to (yes I'm going to say it) pick winners. To highlight what works, what doesn't and what should be done next to move the whole effort forward. Nothing is as powerful as removing confusion and planting a big red flag on the answer.
• To recognize that we have the authority to do whatever we want to do because we are an independant, private group who has chosen to create public/transparent processes. We need to believe in ourselves. If we do good work, then people will listen. If we don't then they can listen to someone else.

This necessarily means that the only real deliverable from the project would be a small set of communication tools that build community, context and advocacy around what we believe is the 'truth' (or at least things worth paying attention to) in the broader standards community.

Many have scoffed at that these goals in the past claiming that there was no 'value'. In my book this set of goals is not only a very worthy, it is increasingly critical to the success and health of the web.

Merry Christmas - The power of memes

Many, many of the things in our lives could be called 'Memes'.  Here's what happens when you type 'Define:meme' into Google.

a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); "memes ... wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The Morlocks are a group of several fictional comic book mutants associated with the X-Men in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Paul Smith, they were named after the subterranean race of the same name in H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine. ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_(comics)

The term Internet meme (, ) is a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_(Internet)

"Meme|ミーム miimu" is Rurutia's 4th and last original album under Toshiba-EMI and was released April 13, 2005. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_(Rurutia_album)

A meme ( - rhyming with "cream"), is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that gets transmitted from one mind to ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. ... en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meme

As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ... www.silcom.com/~barnowl/chain-letter/glossary.htm

An idea or pattern of thought that "replicates" like a virus by being passed along from one thinker to another. ... web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_M.html

Richard Dawkins’s 1976 coinage, on the analogy to gene (with a little aid from mime and mimic), for a cultural copying unit, such as the word or melody that is mimicked by others. williamcalvin.com/LEM/LEMend.htm

viral encapsulated idea, with built-in feedback loop. www.awaredesign.co.nz/glossary.html

An idea that, like a gene, can replicate and evolve. Examples of memes (and meme systems) include political theories, proselytizing religions, and ... wfmh.org.pl/enginesofcreation/EOC_Glossary.html

Leftist pseudo-intellectualese or linguistic affectation, generally used in the pejorative, employed to designate a commonly held position ... www.theacru.org/blog/2007/04/a_dictionary_to_educate_the_politically_incorrect/

a cultural item or idea that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the propagation of biological genes. 10 thesis.jessierauch.com/index.php/about/glossary/

an idea, concept, belief, thought, project etc. that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a ‘culture’ in a manner similar to a virus. blackbookactivists.com/others/glossary.doc

Memes are everywhere. We just experienced a country wide meme here in the US called 'Thanksgiving'. We are about to hit a similar meme (except this one is global) called 'Christmas'.

Memes are fascinating things. They are almost as important as Context, Perspective and Metaphors. Together these three things compose the great majority of our thought processes.

What is this like (metaphor), What else is going on (context), What does everyone else think (meme), What does my experience and current state of mind tell me (Perspective).

Some memes emerge organically over time - like folding the end of hotel toilet paper into a little triangle. Others are created through brute force by strategic construction and repetition. No one has mastered this better than the extreme right wing of the US political system. Fox news is a bright shining example of how to craft, seed, propagate and manipulate a meme.

Silicon Valley loves a meme. We live on them. In fact one could argue that the whole ecosystem would shut down without the meme of the day, week and bubble.

.Com, Web 2.0, Data Portability, Real-time web, RSS is dead, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Cloud, Semantic Web, Synaptic Web and so on and so forth.

Like in real life, some of these memes emerge organically, some through brute force. Some make more sense than others. Some of these memes get undue attention. Some are created to stir controversy. Others form organically to create a shorthand. Some are genuine cultural shifts that have been observed and documented.

These memes matter. They matter a lot. They dictate a large part of how people act, what they pay attention to and their assumptions about the world in which they live, and the people they encounter. In Silicon Valley they dictate who gets heard and which projects get funded. They form the basis of many of our decisions.

Some services like Techmeme do a very good job at capturing daily memes. I've yet to see a service that captures memes that span weeks, months, years or even decades though. I dream of such a service. Particularly one focused on news memes.

Imagine being able to zoom in and out of the news, and drag the timeline back and forth like some kind of Google maps for headlines. Imagine being able to read about an IED explosion in Bagdad and quickly understand its context in the decade long struggle for the entire region through some kind of clustered headline/topic view.

Consider the context, perspective and metaphoric power such a tool would give us. How could it change our world view and help turn the temporary, vacuous nature of a microblog update into something far more substantial and impactful with an in line summary of the rich historic narrative inside which it belongs.

The algorithm to create such correlations and the user interface to present it would challenge even the smartest mathematicians and user interaction designers I imagine. It's commercial value is vague at best. It probably shouldn't be attached to a business at all - maybe it should be some kind of wikipedia style gift to the world.

Maybe the news media, Reuters, CNN and Washington Post might take it upon themselves to sponsor such a project in an effort to re-contextualize their news archives in the new AAADD, real-time, now, now now, every one is a journalist media world.

I've bought some domains and done some mockups of such a service, but I probably would never have the time or the patience to build it - at least not in the foreseeable future.

Maybe I'm just dreaming. But I think it's a good dream!

You get what you deserve

Lately a number of my friends seem to be having great wins and making their mark on the industry in awesome ways. When I first moved out to Silicon Valley (starting with a short trip in 2006) I already knew (by reputation) many of the names and personalities that made up the ecosystem. I read them on blogs, listened to them on podcasts and generally admired their work and learned from their ideas.

Once coming out here, I got to know many of them personally. Some let me down, others surprised me with their generosity and still others became wonderful friends.

I'd like to highlight just a couple of those today because they've been on my mind.

Jeremiah Owyang (and his new partners Deb Schultz & Charlene Li) has/have always struck me as one of the hardest working and smartest people in the valley.

Most recently I've had the pleasure to get to know Jeremiah on a personal level but had never actually worked with him 1:1 on anything serious before.

That changed last week when we sat down for a real 'business meeting'. He blew my mind. That doesn't happen often. His blog posts only show a fraction of the mans thinking. Not only does he think 5 steps ahead, he manages to find a way to package it on his blog in a way that even laymen can understand.

I am so happy for his collaboration at Altimeter. Jeremiah, Debs and Charlene are the nicest people and are all wicked smart.

Those that have been around me in the last 12 months have probably heard me talk about the need for an Altimeter group style firm and I'm glad that they are the ones to pull it off. They've done it with grace, style and stunning execution.

Can't wait to see what they do next.

Stephanie Agresta is another of the people that I got to know as a friend once moving out here. For some reason and on some level we connected as kindred spirits who love to smile.

I've always felt like she had an undeserved level of faith and affection for me - but I accepted it gladly because it meant she wanted to hang out!

She too has recently made a move that not only befits her stature as a connector and thinker, but also rewards her kind spirit and positive attitude.

She gave me her new card at her birthday the other day - it says EVP of Social Media, Global - Porter Novelli (or something like that hah). EVP, Global, Porter Novelli. Are you serious!?

This is such wonderful news for our community because it means that someone who not only gets it, but loves it and is one of us, is in a position to help the brands we all know and love.

These are just two of my friends who have gotten what they deserve lately - in the best meaning of the phrase possible.

Congratulations peeps.

If I can help any of you reading this to achieve your goals, please let me know. This whole ecosystem, worldwide, is built on pay-it-forward. And I have a lot to pay forward.

What is Echo Comments?

On October 14, 2008 I wrote a blog titled 'Who is JS-Kit'. In it, I explained why I was joining the JS-Kit team and how their philosophy and execution resonated so much with me. On Friday the 10th of July, 2009, the JS-Kit team launched Echo. Here's the video. It is the clearest example yet of the potential of the JS-Kit team that I spoke about back in my Who is JS-Kit post.

I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what Echo means to me personally. But first, I'd like to make something very clear. Although much of this will be about my personal opinions, feelings and philosophies on Echo and the trends and tribulations that bore it,  Echo is the result of the hard work and collaboration of a stellar team of first grade entrepreneurs that I have the pleasure of working with every day (and night).

From Khris Loux our fearless and philosophical CEO who lead the charge, to Lev Walkin our CTO who seems to know no boundaries when it comes to writing software, to Philippe Cailloux, the man who turns our raving ADD rants into actionable mingle tickets, to our developers who worked tirelessly to turn napkin sketches into reality. We all scrubbed every pixel and will continue to be at the front lines with our customers. This is the team that made it happen.

For me, Echo is the next major milestone on a journey that only properly got underway in November 2006 when I visited Silicon Valley for the first time.

I was at the Web 2.2 meetup. It was set up by one of my now friends Chris Heuer. There was a group discussion about social networking and how we, as individuals, might communicate in ways that were independent of the tools that facilitated such communication.

I was sitting in the back of the room in awe of the intellect and scope of the conversation. Could you imagine it, for the first time in a long time I (a kid from Brisbane Australia) was in a room full of people who were just as passionate about this technology thing as me - and they were actually at the center of the ecosystem that could make a real impact on the outcome of these technologies.

I shyly put my hand up at the back of the room and squeaked out (I'm paraphrasing and cleaning up for eloquence here - I'm sure I sounded far less intelligent at the time).

"Aah... excuse me... aren't blogs the ultimate tool agnostic social networking platforms?"

What I meant was that blogs use the web as the platform. They produce RSS. They have audiences. They illicit reactions. They create social conversations over large distances. They essentially create one giant implicit social network.

I got some "oh yeah he might be right" reactions and the conversation moved swiftly along to other things.

For me, a light turned on. One I've been chasing ever since in various forms and to varying degrees of success (or failure as the case may be). For me, Faraday Media, APML, DataPortability and now JS-Kit have all been an exploration on how to create a tool-agnostic, internet scale social network that has notification, filtering, interoperability and community at its heart.

As I said at the start of this post, Echo is the next step along that journey. For me, Echo represents an opportunity to making Blogging not only 'cool' again, but to make it a first class citizen on the web-wide social network. To make all sites part of that network.

Much has been made of its real-time nature. Even more about its ability to aggregate the fragmented internet conversation back to the source. These are both critical aspects of the product. They are the most obvious and impactful changes we made. But there is much more to Echo than meets the eye. Much more in the product today and much more we hope to still add.

Our choice of comment form layout. The use of the words 'From' and 'To'. The language of 'I am... my Facebook profile'. The choice to treat the comment form as just another app (as shown by the use of the 'Via Comments' tag) and more. The choice to merge the various channels into a unified stream (comments+off-site gestures). These were all deliberate and painstaking choices that the team made together.

Echo is based on a theory we call the 'Synaptic Web'. This is the frame of reference from which all our product decisions will be made. It is an open straw man that I hope will eventually be just as exciting as any given product launch. It states in explicit terms the trends and opportunities that many of us are seeing and is designed to help foster a conversation around those observations.

In the coming hours and weeks I'm also going to record video screen casts of the specific product decisions that have already made it into Echo - hopefully these will further illustrate how each pixel brings about a subtle but important change to the space.

In the mean time, I'd like to reiterate how humbled I am by the reaction to the product and how excited I am to be working with the JS-Kit team in this space at this time in the Internet's history.

I look forward to hearing from each of you about your thoughts and feelings on our direction, and shaping our road map directly from your feedback.

Good Governance

Over the past few weeks and months some in the DataPortability Project (Specifically the Governance Taskforce) has been intently focused on designing a new type of governance model. A model that borrows from Robert's Rules and adapts it to a time-shifted, asynchronous, distributed and global organization. The participants in this effort, I believe, are performing historic work to crystallize and codify the ideals of the founders (and by extension the community) of the DataPortability project whereby the goals of openness and transparency are built into the way our community operates and makes decisions.

The careful balancing act of advocating and supporting open standards, encouraging democratic community participation and adopting the support of major vendors has been difficult to say the least. Indeed we have failed on more than one occasion. But the continued perseverance of the project leaders has been a testament to their commitment to the cause. Not just to promote data portability - but to engineer a new type of organization - one that broadens the reach, scale, tone and tempo of the conversation.

Each of these stages in the groups growth has been an organic evolution as the project has found its place, purpose and people.

As the new governance model takes affect and the new steering group forms we will finally be in a position to continue the organic growth of the project.

While it has been a real pleasure to help create and shepherd the group during its incubation - it has always been our intention as founders (at least since the explosive growth of the group) to constantly and organically hand over control and accountability to the community.

The next logical step is to apply the governance model to elect a chairperson.

I look forward to that conversation when it comes - and having the community (via whatever means comes to pass) choose a person to lead the project.

I will continue as interim chairperson until the role is filled by the selection process. While I have loved filling in while the project has grown I think the time is right for another member of the community to step in and take the project through the next phase of development. Therefore, I, myself, won't be running for the role. I will, however, continue to be heavily involved with the project and participate as part of the community how ever and when ever I can.

We will continue to keep everyone updated through the mailing lists and blogs as to our progress.

In the mean time, however, the conversation about data portability itself continues both inside and outside the project and we continue to support it however we can. There is talk of conferences, meetups, possible taskforces (based on the new governance model) and more. Stay tuned!

Also, and perhaps most importantly, I'd like to send a heart felt thank you to the leaders of the governance conversation including Elias Bizannes, Trent Adams, Brett Mcdowell, Steve Greenberg, Brady Brim-Deforest and Mike Smith. You guys are amazing.

Scaling Caring? Seriously?

When I heard about Gary Vee's talk at #140conf was titled 'Scaling Caring' I though "Seriously? That's stupid". I just watched the video. I was wrong. Maybe in the wrong hands that could have been a stupid talk, but in Gary's hands it, like everything else he does, was a fun, insightful and earnest attempt to open people's eyes to what's in front of them.

The talk actually touches on what Jeremiah and I were blogging about recently. Jeremiah had asked the question 'Can people scale along with Social Media'. In other words, can you really keep up with all these incoming messages while remaining authentic and doing a real level of caring.

My response was no, you can't. And you shouldn't try. Social Media is actually Personal Media and it's not about talking to everyone who sends you a message - it's about being authentic and staying in touch with friends and things that interest you.

Gary has highlighted another type of Scale though - one that Jeremiah and I missed. One that is obvious to some but all too often missed by many.

Gary's point was that brands (personal or corporate) should pay attention to the once private and now very public,  searchable and archive-able word of mouth that is happening at breakneck pace across the web today. You should care about every single mention and react, respond and resolve every single mention of your brand.

I wasn't going to write a post on this - it was just a passing thought - and then I got a PayPal customer satisfaction survey in my inbox. Really? Do you really need to run a survey to know what I'm thinking? Why don't you just tune into my Twitter feed?

Does PayPal listen to Twitter? I don't know. Do they respond? Doesn't seem so. Their @PayPal account seems to be just re-posting news highlights. Maybe they are - I don't have time to do any thorough research on this specific case, but it did tip me over the edge to post.

Gary Vee is making a fundamental point that we've all made in the short history of this new media ecosystem - but as usual his delivery style makes all the difference.

This theme especially resonates with me with my recent work at JS-Kit. We (the strategy team) often talk about support as a killer feature. We try to respond to every blog post and twitter message about our service to let customers know we care. But more than that, we actually care. We don't just respond, we factor it into our decision making. I'm sure this isn't unique, but it is far from pervasive - especially outside the web industry - and it should be.

We also spend a lot of time thinking about how a tool like JS-Kit Comments might facilitate more scalable caring. How can a site owner or a participant/user keep track of their audience or their friends in all the social media noise?

The answers are still being formulated - but rest assured I will keep an ear out for the clear and resounding feedback - not with a survey, but by tuning into the ongoing, searchable and archivable conversation.

Facebook Vanity URLS are not what you think

Facebook has announced that they are about to release vanity URLs. What most people don't realize is that this move, while interesting, is not really about vanity URLs at all - it's actually about addressable identity.

One of Twitter's key advantages in the race for dominance over internet identity is their growing namespace of what I call Addressable Identities.

What are they I hear you ask? An example of an Addressable Identity is being able to write '@chrissaad' and have the system and users understand that it is a direct and concrete reference to me. This form of addressing is particularly interesting because it is easy to write in a sentence or micro-blog.

With Vanity URLs, Facebook will encourage users to specify a tidy/tiny/compact identity identifier by which friends/followers/others can reference/point to each other. This is a big step towards keeping up with Twitter as one of the web's only providers of modern addressable identities (email is an old, less compact version of this).

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and how we consolidate these namespaces when using 3rd party services.

It might ultimately have to end up like good old email:

chrissaad@twitter.com, chrissaad@facebook.com etc.

Ideally though, we should be able to use our own/personal email address and have it resolve to an OpenID for true, federated and open addressable identity.

That, however, is still some way away.

Media 2.0 Best Practices goes live

Today the Media 2.0 Best Practices went live. I'm very happy to see this come to light.

I've been working on something like it for a number of years now, and with JS-Kit's backing and the participation of my friends it has taken shape.

I'd like to thank all involved. I look forward to having conversations with the participants and creating something that vendors can use to make and keep user-centric promises to their participants.

I'm also very happy that the Media 2.0 Workgroup was able to take on this process and see it through. There is a lot of potential in that group that is yet to be realized.

Check it out…

Visit the site and view the strawman at www.mediabestpractices.com

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Follow along Announcement Only Mailing List Public Discussion List Media 2.0 Workgroup combined RSS Feed Media 2.0 Workgroup combined feed Twitter Relay For Media Enquiries please contact Chris Saad

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You can't compare Twitter to Facebook

I'm a little weary of the Twitter Vs. Facebook debate. I posted this comment on Fred Wilson's blog. I thought I would share here:

Twitter is the status service of the web-wide social network. Facebook status updates are the status update feature of Facebook. The web will always be bigger than Facebook therefore Twitter's potential as a messaging bus will always be greater.

While Twitter continues to create loosely coupled links across the open web (a lightweight process), Facebook continues to try to expand the perimeter of its walled garden (a heavy weight process that is creating a backlash from major brands and savvy users).

Twitter is public and asymmetrical. It allows for bots and other innovations.

Facebook is private and symmetrical, forcing users to use their real names and deciding which updates get through to follower news feed.

The two services couldn't be more different and the influence and effectiveness of their scale can not be measured 1:1.

Getting down to business about the Social We

I have just published a post about "Peered Data Portability" on the official DataPortability Blog. While the post deals with open standards and software architectures it's actually about business. How much is the social networking aspects of your web-based properties worth to you? If you are a major media property (CNN, BBC, Fox etc), a provider of digital services to large brands (Ford, Amex, Coke etc) or a large blog/website how comfortable are you with outsourcing a major part of your core value to a single, central social networking node (In my example it was Facebook).

Major companies across the world are starting to realize that to remain 'in the game' on social networking specifically and the web in general it's critical that a peered model for data portability emerges.

Check out the post here.

Real Life Community

I'm sitting here in the shuttle to JFK having finished an awesome trip to NYC and I'm thinking about community. In our industry that word gets thrown around a lot, but I'm not talking about our product, I'm talking about our process.

This thing that has happened over the last few years has been special. A global ecosystem of people - no of friends - has been created. Friends defined not by their knowledge of each other necessarily, but in the knowledge of a shared idea. A shared belief perhaps. That by being more open and connected we can achieve new, better things.

Better ideas, better friends, better businesses, better governance... maybe even eventually a better society.

I have met these people everywhere I go. From Amsterdam to New York City. They are individuals and groups with unparalleled openness to new people and new ideas. They have opened their homes and minds to me and the others around them. It has been amazing to watch.

We all seem to recognize our common hopes in each other instantly. Hopes about the social web, about our work and maybe even in a new kind of global social consciousness.

People like @askfrasco who let me stay in her Greenwitch Village apartment for almost a month. @Brett who invited and introduced me to almost everyone in New York - especially @tedmurphy, @mikepratt & @hellyeah1. My old friends (old in both age and length of friendship) @globalcitizen and @bryanthatcher who lent me their offices and reminisced about past parties and work. One of the first people I met in the US tech scene, @gregarious, who showed me his old family home and introduced me to new friends like @rogerwu @themaria, @suzymae, @skyle and @technosailor. And by extension their introduction to @hermannm who had us over for a random dinner party.

All these people (and these are just some of the ones in NYC), have all shown me this new kind of person. This new community. I hope that this collective survives the faded Web 2.0 bandwagon and the defusing funding surge to turn into something more important, long lasting and profound.

A new kind of global collective that seeds our ideas in the general, mainstream public to change the people around us - one at a time. To help them to discover the kind of global village we know exists. Because after all, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed... yet.

Happy new year my friends.

A note of thanks...

The new year is approaching and I am finding myself reflecting on an incredible 12 months. Incredible, surreal, gratifying, crushing, uplifting, concerning and more. This year I've basically been a homeless nomad as I've traveled the world to conferences and meetings. I've spent 14 hour stretches on planes, stayed in everything from crappy random motels all the way through to mansions in high-rise buildings.

I have loved every moment. It has been life changing.

I owe a lot of people a great debt. They helped make this year possible. I am going to invariably miss some of them here, but I'm going to try to name them anyway.

Nik Seirlis

Nik was the guy who believed in a 10 year old kid doing work experience in a computer store. He listened to my complaining one rainy night 3 years ago and said "Kid, you need to stop doing this small time stuff and think bigger". OK he didn't quite say it like a cowboy, but you get the drift. Nik continues to give me a firm kick in the arse every time I start to rest on my laurels. He helped me get the courage to start this journey.

He literally got on a plane with me in '06 and we went to Silicon Valley together. Nik's personal success set the bar for me in my own life and continues to inspire me.

Ashley Angell

If Nik helped me start the journey, then Ashley packed his bags, sold out his family and joined me on the road (figuratively). Ashley and I co-founded Faraday Media together, dreamt up APML and Data Portability together and have had countless discussions about social media, friendship, partnership and much much more. '

Ashley has that rare quality that you need in a business partner to be able to switch contexts. We each explicitly switch gears from 'Friends' to 'Founders' to 'Board Members' and emotionally and logistically bucket our discussions. Having worked with countless partners and friends, I can't tell you how important, and how amazing this skill is.

Thank you my friend!

Steve Kelly

Steve Kelly funded the journey. He is Faraday Media's angel investor and still funds aspects of the company to this day. His dry wit, calm attitude in the face of adversity and generous spirit have made it possible for Ashley and I to ride out together.

Ben Metcalfe

Ben is a unique guy. Dude is maybe a better word. When I first met Ben with Nik Serlis in 2006 his first words to me were 'Why would I want to download THAT" referring to our then windows download product. I took an instant dislike to him.

Right after that, though, Ben showed his true nature. He and Sofia totally set us up in the Valley. They introduced us to almost everyone we know today. They showed us the sights, explained the culture and not only pointed us in the right direction, they took us by the hand and lead us there. Within a day I was having drinks with one of my heroes in SF city - Stowe Boyd.

Stowe Boyd

Stowe has been my inspiration for quite a few ideas over the last couple of years. What I call Edge Theory, Streams and even some of my ideas on the Attention Economy have been inspired by him.

Stowe continues to be an inspiration and I'm grateful to be working with him even more closely today!

Daniela Barbosa

Daniela is beautiful both inside and out. She is my co-conspirator, my collaborator and my friend. Along with Ashley, Marjolein and Elias (and many others not on this list) she helped me co-found and more importantly operate the DataPortability project. Without her, Elias and Marjolein (in the early days) it would have literally imploded under its own weight.

She has been unwavering in her loyalty and commitment and for that I will be forever grateful.

Marjolein Hoekstra

As I've described before Marjolein is a quiet supernode of the social media landscape. Her emotional and logistical investment into all this 'Chris' in the last couple of years has made it possible to keep up with our community, related posts and people and ideas and trends.  Marjolein uses her news radar skills and her countless browser tabs to find gold nugets in a raging river of noise.

I wish I saw more of her these days.

Elias Bizannes

Like I said above, Elias is one of the people who co-founded DataPortability with me. More importantly, however, he has been compeltely piviotol in turning the project into an organization. While we don't always agree, we always respect what each of us brings to the table. And he brings a lot of HARD, detail orientated work. Like with everyone on this list, I could not have done significant chunks of my work this year without his help.

Martin Wells

Martin is almost as much a philanthropist as he is an Entreprenuer. I first glimpsed Marty's name on the '2 Web crew' website. An Aussie cabal of Web 2.0 leaders. They were once a pinicle of 'in crowd' for me to reach out to.

Reach out I did, to many of them. None responded with the generosity and common sense advice that Marty did. He not only elevated my thinking, but challenged me to think even more. He challenged me to stop thinking and to act.

He almost flew back to Australia to drag me to the Valley this year. I'm so glad I came.

Beyond the professional, however, I'd like to think that Marty and I have become great friends. He opened his home to me for many months and I will always love spending time with him, his wife and kids.

Robert Scoble

I met a lot of my heroes in the course of this year. Some were great, others were disappointing.

Scoble is exactly as you'd imagine. In the best way possible. He is constnatly swamped by people wanting his attention. He has a million incoming messages at any given time. And he tries his very hardest to give every single person SOME time. He sees us all as equals in a giant conversation.

His laugh is infectious and he is ALWAYS smiling.

His faith in me during his Facebook crisis helped propel the DataPortability project to a new level and his friendship through countless conferences and meetups (We'll always have Amsterdam Robert hah) have turned amazing nights into surreal moments frozen in time.

It's all just too much fun.

Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington is an amazing person. Number 100 on Time's top 100 list this year (Lucky the list didn't stop at 99 hey Mike?). That is seriously an amazing achievement.

Too many people assume Mike's success is undeserved in some way. They are dead wrong. Mike works his *$@#ing arse off - often to the detrment of his health and his relationships. He gives TechCrunch everything.

When Mike invited me to stay at his home I was blown away due to his noteriety and 'power' in the valley. When I actually came to stay, however, I was blown away by a more important fact.

One of his first words to me were "I don't want my shit on Valleywag". In that moment I realized that he was taking a big risk letting me into his home and life - because any minute thing in his life could be blown out of proportion.

The most amazing thing I learned about Mike was that he still LOVES startups and helping people succeed. I would have never expected that.

Everyone wants something from Mike because they see him as a ticket to traffic or success. After spending a lot of time with him, I'd be happy to just call him a friend.

His faith and support of me at the start of the year will always be remembered and I am forever grateful.

Bill Hudak

I was introduced to Bill Hudak by Martin Wells. Almost instantly Bill, Marty and I became a crazy trio of Aussies. Bill isn't an Aussie though. He is an American trying to be an Aussie. Oi, Bugger!

Bill is a valley boy - born and raised. He knows everyone there is to know here. He walked me into meetings with people I couldn't believe just by making a phone call. He is super smart and super funny.

But more importantly than any of that, just like Marty, he opened his home and life to me. He lent me his car (A Pontiac Solstic no less) for countless months and litterally enabled me to speak to the people I needed to speak to.

I am proud to call him a friend.

Khris Loux

I met Khris just before a trip to Amsterdam. I really got know Khirs on the flight to Amsterdam and the ensuing 4 day Next Web Conference. When I say got to know him, I mean we laughed our arses off, took over the town, met the most amazing people and imagined the future of the web together.

Khris finds business value the way I find architectural value. He is the ying to my yang when it comes to startups. He too opened his home to me when I stayed in the valley. But more than that, he opened his mind!

As I've posted before, I've been offered a lot of gigs this year, but JS-Kit, lead by Khris, was special. I can't wait to see what Khris and Chris can pull off in the new year.

In conclusion

I owe all these people, and countless others, a lot. Their faith, support and efforts on my behalf have made everything possible. I look forward to helping them to continue their journeys next year, and meeting more amazing people in '09.

I'm sorry if your name does not appear here, my fingers are about to break and it's Christmas Morning - I need to run!

Thank so much everyone.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Facebook Connect AKA Hailstorm 2.0

Have you seen this? Let me quote the highlights for you:

If the initial development race of Web 2.0 centered around "building a better social network" then the next phase will certainly focus on extending the reach of existing social networks beyond their current domain. How? By using the elements of the social graph as the foundational components that will drive the social Web. Where we once focused on going to a destination - particular social network to participate - we will now begin to carry components of social networks along with us, wherever we go. In the next phase of the social Web, every site will become social.

Agreed. That's been the vision and promise of much of my work for more than a year.

Here's the scary part

Facebook Connect proposes to make data and friend connections currently held within the walled garden of Facebook accessible to other services. This has two distinct benefits, one for the sites and one for Facebook.

For the participating sites, Facebook Connect provides more social functionality without a great deal of additional development. A new user can opt to share the profile information in Facebook instead of developing a new account. This gives the user access to the site and its services without the tedium of developing yet another profile on yet another site. In addition, users can use the relationship information in Facebook to connect to their friends on the other services. In short, it makes the new partner site an extension of Facebook.

Essentially, Facebook is trying to replace all logins with their own, and control the creation, distribution and application of the social graph using their proprietary platform.

The most scary part of this, is that while Facebook is quietly and methodically building out this vision with massive partners, the standards community is busy squabbling about naming the open alternative.

Is it Data Portability? Is the Open Web? is it Open Social? Is it Federated Identity?

At the start of this year one would have thought that the open standards movement got a huge boost by the massive explosion of the DataPortability project. It's set of high profile endorsements catapulted the geeky standards conversation into the mainstream consciousness and helped provide a rallying cry for the community to embrace.

Instead of embracing it, though, many of the leaders in the community decided to squabble about form and style. They argued about the name, about the organization, about the merits of the people involved - on and on it went.

Instead of embracing the opportunity, they squandered it by trying to coin new phrases, new organizations and new initiatives.

The result is a series of mixed messages that have largely diluted the value of DataPortability's promise this year. The promise of making the conversation tangible for the mainstream - the executives who are now partnering with FaceBook.

Will we let this continue into 2009? Will we continue to allow our egos to get in the way of mounting a real alternative to Hailstorm 2.0? Are we more interested in the theater of it, the cool kids vs. the real world or will we be able to reach the mainstream once again and help them to understand that entire social web is at stake?

I've not lost hope. There are countless reasons why Facebook and it's Hailstorm 2.0 are not inevitable.

I have, however, lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I once admired. Maybe they can clean up their act and we can work together once again in the new year.

I put a call out to all those who are interested - technologists, early adopters, bloggers (especially bloggers), conference organizers, conference speakers, media executives - let's get our act together and take this party to the next level.

I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Internet Wish: Twitter Bot

I would love it if someone would write a TwitterBot service. It would:

• Allow you to give it the Username and Password of a given Twitter Account (let's say JSKitSupport)
• Auto-follow people when they followed it
• Auto-unfollow people when they unfollow it
• Allow you to register one or more 'Bot Owners' (Both Twitter account and Email Address)
• Forward any @replies or references to given keywords to Bot Owners
• Allow bot owners to direct message it and have it relay those messages to its followers (perhaps optionally auto-append the Owner's twitter name to the end of the message)
• Allows Bot Owners to direct message it commands
• One of those commands could be 'd tag last' which ques up the last @reply in some sort of 'follow up' queue for the bot owners.

Can you think of any other features? Add them in comments and if I like them I will append them here!