Product & Startup Builder

Today is the end of Facebook type walled gardens

Added on by Chris Saad.
Facebook Beacon is bad... we get it. Can we stop talking about what we are against and start talking about what we are for.

We are for owning our own identity. We are for having access to our data. We are for the right to control our own user experience. We are for the right to choose. We are for user rights and respect.

Facebook is just a tool. A tool to communicate. As with all tools it should be used to serve OUR purposes. Not theirs.

The tool should act on our data, not warehouse and trap it for it's own ends. The data should be shared between all my other tools in a way that is under my complete control. My friends are my friends, not theirs. My interests are my interests, not theirs.

Now they want my purchasing history as well? The recent revelation that Facebook is collecting purchase history information for users who are opted-OUT of beacon is yet another level of privacy violation.

Purchase history is an incredibly rich source of Attention Data. In fact it is the richest source of Attention data there is. If you are willing to part with your money for something then it is obviously of significant interest to you.

The problem, though, is not with Facebook - the problem is with us. The community and bloggers. We are focused on what we don't like about Facebook instead of what we do like about an alternative to Facebook.

Like the mainstream media we fail to provide context and alternatives to the stories being told. We need to talk about a new model of social networking. A model where we have undisputed access to our friends, data and rights.

Let's promote a new model. Let's demand it. And lets remember that we vote with our feet. The Beacon advertisers have already started voting with their dollars - they are 'opting-out' of Beacon.

Facebook increases user profiling - still no APML!

Added on by Chris Saad.
Facebook has added 'I like this' and 'I don't like this' buttons to each NewsFeed entry.

So Facebook are now they are collecting your explicit Attention Gestures to measure how much interest you, as a user, has in the ads and notifications coming through the stream.

This, of course, adds another dimension to their already comprehensive Attention Profile.

Still no APML or RSS though.

At a time when APML is being integrated into NewsGator and Ask products, tools are being created to convert Last.FM attention/listening data to APML, and Facebook's ad platform is receiving a lot of heat, one wonders if Facebook will continue to open their platform to give users control.

APML - The complete story so far....

Added on by Chris Saad.
Michael Pick has written the most comprehensive overview of the Attention Economy and APML so far. I encourage everyone to read it and pass it on to all your friends

Read it here: Attention Profiling: APML Beginner's Guide

Some highlights from the post:

We have reached the point of information hyper-saturation. It can become quite a chore to find relevant content online, when there is so much other information competing for your attention. But by implementing attention profiling, it becomes possible to have the services and websites you visit begin to make suggestions for content that you might be interested in.

APML is a proposed standard that gives you greater control over your own attention data, and in principle will allow you to selectively record your attention profile - the sites you visit, the search terms that interest you most, the content you most commonly link to - and share it with your favorite websites and services.

...


While APML stands up as its own standard, it is also possible to see it as part of a bigger picture.

As the web evolves we are seeing a great shift towards smart information filtering - the evolving notion of a "semantic web", but also, just as significantly, a move in the direction of expanding data portability.

Open standards make for an effective way of allowing data to freely flow from one web destination to another, rather than keeping different sets of data in closed silos and walled gardens. At the moment if I want to have a profile on MySpace and Facebook, for instance, I have to create them separately, and any information I enter on each remains locked into that particular destination.

Open standards and data portability are all about allowing me to take my information and use it across a number of services.


Well done Michael - it's an awesome piece of work.

Facebook says that you are a FANatical ConSUMER

Added on by Chris Saad.
Jeremiah (fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup member) has just posted the latest news from myspace and facebook about their new social advertising solutions.

From his executive summary:
Both Facebook and MySpace have launched profile and network targeted advertising and marketing products. As they both use member interests and the communities which they are part of, trust continues to become key in adoption as information is passed along the network. The sheer size of MySpace's member base, as well as the thriving local business membership will lead to success. Facebook, which brings a unique solution evolves advertisements to endorsements and encourages members to subscribe to a brand in what we are calling "Fan-Sumers" (an evolution of the consumer). As consumers share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.
Advertising as we know it is indeed dead. Word of mouth has always been more powerful than messages shouted from on-high. And now, with Media 2.0 reducing friction to zero and increasing visibility toward 100%, Word of mouth has never been stronger - or more important.

Your words now echo for all of time - and they get louder as they travel.

So moving towards a world where sites can enable brands to better facilitate and moderate the word of mouth network seems obvious. The problem, though, is with the fundamental thinking at these organizations.

For example, the name Fan-sumer is disgusting. FANatical ConSUMER? It's far worse than User Generated Content! Sure it's just a name, but it is a revealing insight into their line of thinking.

Word of mouth is not sanctioned, it just happens. Ultimately the best you can do is join in the conversation. Giving away 'free steak knives' to your friends only reduces everyone's credibility.

As I said on Jeremiah's post, however, the core idea is not a total write-off - but it will need heavy modification to align with reality - friends trust each other, and helping them spam each other does nothing for anyone

I wrote:
Fan-sumer? So now we are further reduced to FANatical ConSUMERS?

As usual, the underlying idea is interesting, but the execution is so user-unfriendly (the name alone reveals their true intentions) that they are just legitimizing peer-to-peer spam.

As a true social solution for advertising it is not a write-off, but the execution needs a lot of tweaking to be truly about engagement and personalization with a true sense of trust based endorsements from your friends.

Update: I have also posted about this on Blognation.

News Flows, Consciousness Streams

Added on by Chris Saad.
The New York Times doesn't know it yet, but an article published in the arts section is a prophesy for where their news business is heading. Ironically it's burried in the arts section.

"News Flows, Consciousness Streams: The Headwaters of a River of Words"

It's a post about the new art installation at the Time's headquarters. From the article:


Since The Times moved in June from its longtime home on West 43rd Street in Manhattan to its new, almost completed tower designed by Renzo Piano on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets, two men - an artist, Ben Rubin, and a statistician, Mark Hansen - have all but taken up residence in the building's cavernous lobby, huddled most days around laptops and coffee cups on a folding table. Flanking them on two high walls are 560 small screens, 280 a wall, suspended in a grid pattern that looks at first glance like some kind of minimalist sculpture.

But then the screens, simple vacuum fluorescent displays of the kind used in alarm clocks and cash registers, come to life, spewing out along the walls streams of orphaned sentences and phrases that have appeared in The Times or, in many cases, that are appearing on the paper's Web site at that instant.


As stated on this blog many times - the future of information consumption is not stocks, but flows.

As information workers and members of the social web, we need to change our pre-conceptions that information must be collected, sorted and marked as read.

Instead we need to realize that there is so much beauty in the world, we just need to let it flow through us, making us feel warm inside (to paraphrase the movie American Beauty).

Are you looking for money?

Added on by Chris Saad.

It's a phrase I hear often with Faraday. It's a loaded question, particularly for a young start-up. There are so many implicit questions that follow... How well funded are you? Have others put faith in your new-fangled-widget already? How can we ride your ideas to the bank? How can we get a cut of the action? Are you desperate enough to give us a good deal? Do you live close by? Do you have a great management team? Is your product defensible? Is your market huge? Is your company worth a huge exit? Are you planning to cash out at 10x our investment?

My answer has changed dramatically over the life of Faraday. It has gone from "Looking for money? What you mean on the street?" to "Are you kidding, we would love any money - how about $10, do you have $10?" and then to "Sure we are raising a round, we have [insert great elevator pitch here]". It then shifted to "Really? Is that all you got?" and so on.

Since some of the most recent developments in the product/business strategy and the great adoption rate of APML has become clear the question "Are you looking for money" has been raised a few more times.

Most recently though, my answer has changed again.  My answer now is "No, but we are looking for partners".

As I have mentioned in other places, I have come to realize that money is not actually the scarcest resource. People are. Good, trustworthy, influential, dilligent, humble, friendly, altruistic, hungry, happy, skilled, like-minded people.

These people can be staff - and money makes that easy - or they can be friends, advisors, other start-ups and users. Partners in success. So while cash is in that equation somewhere, it sits alongside a broad array of other contributions that partners can bring. It is just a resource. If you and your investors can't bring the other desirable attributes - like good people with a great attitude - then a real partnership is not possible.

Another issue to consider with funding from VCs is the whole process of pitching. I have learned that I hate pitching. Not because I am not good at it (although I am probably not great) but rather because I don't think people can get to know each other in a 1 hour meeting. Especially not a meeting where one party is trying to act approachable and nice - as if they haven't seen 100 other start-ups that day. The other party is trying to act smart and confident - as if they have a total understanding of their 5 year business plan.

It's a farce.

I would rather get to know people and develop a deep undertanding for their approach, strengths and weaknesses. People who could potentially partner with, not just fund, our company. Some VCs work this way, they get to know you over the course of time and bring their own value to the conversation. Some don't.

Newsgator and Bloglines support APML

Added on by Chris Saad.

We are very happy to announce the following new developments for APML.

NewsGator Announcement
NewsGator has just announced on their developer blogs that NewsGator Technologies Inc to support APML across its product range starting with FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Inbox

Further, The APML Workgroup is announcing:

  • With NewsGator Technologies APML implementation, they now join:

    These are three companies that already support APML using Engagd.com APIs.
    Engagd.com makes APML implementation quick and easy using a simple API— great for mash-ups all the way through to large-scale apps.

  • There has been a new APML.org site launched - It's designed to make APML a little easier to understand.

  • There is now a new APML public discussion group for the community.

  • There have been a number of new additions to the APML Workgroup:

    • NewsGator (family of cross-platform and mobile feed aggregators)

    • Bloglines (web-based and mobile feed aggregator)

    • Me.dium (social browsing)

    • Ma.gnolia (social Bookmarking)

    • Talis (semantic platform)

    • Peepel (multi-window AJAX environment and office suite)

This follows previous successes of the APML Workgroup such as:

Thanks and Acknowledgements

As usual, I would like to thank everyone involved in and around the APML Workgroup.

Particular thanks to the latest round of announcements must go to Chris Pirillo, Ben Metcalfe, Elias Bizannes, Daniela Barbosa, Ross Dawson and Marshall Kirkpatrick.

Also my personal thanks must go to Marjolein Hoekstra who has been instrumental in pushing things forward.

Coverage

Digging deeper into the APML Spec

Added on by Chris Saad.
Elias Bizannes has posted a great follow up to Marjolein's Attention Profiling overview. While Marjolein explained Attention Profiling in general and walked through the user experience of using Engagd, Cluztr and/or Dandelife to get one.

Elias has dug deeper into the spec itself to explain the type of information you APML can actually store about you and how it maps to the real world.

From his post:

APML - the specification

So all APML is, is a way of converting your attention into a structured format. The way APML does this, is that it stores your implicit and explicit data - and scores it. Lost? Keep reading.

Continuing with my example about Sneaky Sound System. If MySpace supported APML, they would identify that I like pop music. But just because someone gives attention to something, that doesn't mean they really like it; the thing about implicit data is that companies are guessing because you haven't actually said it. So MySpace might say I like pop music but with a score of 0.2 or 20% positive - meaning they're not too confident. Now lets say directly after that, I go onto the Britney Spears music space. Okay, there's no doubting now: I definitely do like pop music. So my score against "pop" is now 0.5 (50%). And if I visited the Christina Aguilera page: forget about it - my APML rank just blew to 1.0! (Note that the scoring system is a percentage, with a range from -1.0 to +1.0 or -100% to +100%)


Read more on his post.

Basics of Attention Profiling - By CleverClogs

Added on by Chris Saad.
I've said it before, and I will say it again. Marjolein is a wizard. She takes complex and abstract ideas and makes very real examples and walk-throughs out of them.

She has done it yet again with her latest blog post entitled "Basics of Attention Profiling through APML".

As her blurb says:
"If you want to inform yourself of the basic principles of attention profiling or need to explain the concept to others then please read on. Feel free to add your clarifications, your conclusions and your constructive criticism to this deliberately non-geek conversation."

She begins with a great summary of the topics she will cover:

In recent months quite a few bloggers covered the growing adoption of APML, a proposed standard for attention profiling. Those about to give up reading here already, please don't. I personally found most of these posts delving in rather deep. If you want to inform yourself of the basic principles of attention profiling or need to explain the concept to others then please read on.

With today's post I'd like to make an attempt at writing a layman's article answering exactly these three questions:

  1. What is attention profiling and what are the benefits?
  2. What tools and services already support or endorse attention profiling?
  3. Where could you go next?

And answer them she does. With screenshots and all.

Check it out - show it to your Attention challenged friends - spread the love.

The post is already linked in a RWW post by Marshall.

Bloglines announces intention to support APML

Added on by Chris Saad.
Bloglines has announced support for OpenID and an intention to support oAuth and APML.

This is great news for users who want to take control of their Attention Profiles. We expect this to be the first of a number of announcements from larger players over the winter.

Thanks to Eric Engleman (New GM at Bloglines) for his support of open standards and user rights - he is really shaking things up over at Bloglines in the best way possible. Having spoken to Eric myself, it is clear that he has a keen understanding of the issues and is dedicated to creating an improved feed reading experience while giving users ownership of their own metadata.

You can read more on the Bloglines Blog. You can also implement your own APML support with just a few lines of code using Engagd.

Thanks must also go to Chris Pirillo for making the introductions.

You can read further coverage over on Read/Write Web where Marshall has done his usual thorough and eloquent analysis.

Further Coverage:

Ross Dawson from Future Exploration Network has written a very thoughtful piece about the growing APML movement and its implications for user control and advertising.

Ian Forrester from BBC has covered the announcement.

Elias Bizannes from PWC has also chimed in.

Daniela from Dow Jones has written a post. She may consider moving back to Bloglines now!

Duncan Riley over at Techcrunch has picked up the news also.

Why does CNN not get it?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Why is this poll on CNN.com's home page?
  1. I don't have a pet
  2. I don't want to own a pet
  3. There are plenty of other more important things for CNN to cover than pets
  4. Argg!

Come on people... please. How hard is it to learn my interests and serve up relevant content (I don't even dare asking for APML support). Even without tracking user interests, I can almost guarantee you that people visiting CNN.com do not care about Dog food. Not on the front page!

An even broader question - do they not watch Jon Stewart? Do they not get it? The world is begging for real questions and real answers to real problems. How hard is it to stick to real news in this day and age. Surely they can leave Pet food to the Lifestyle channel?

Why do they waste our time with O.J Simpson? Ratings? Imagine the ratings they would get if they actually picked a fight with Washington - if they actually spelled out the truth of things for everyone to hear and see.

This is why Media 2.0 will win. We can use tools to find the real content and skip the garbage.

Showing pets love... buh.

Google reader to support APML?

Added on by Chris Saad.
In his latest post about Google Reader on Read/Write Web, Marshall asks about the lack of APML support:

"I also wonder what the Google Reader team says behind closed doors about the proposed Attention Data standard, APML. It's great that Google Reader gives me access to data about my reading habits, but I'd like to take my data to other apps for personalization, thank you very much."

He rightly suggests that the new Bloglines push might very well outpace Google by choosing to support more innovative and open standards in their reader.

Steven Ashley suggests that APML support is already on the roadmap:

"Hopefully just because they are no longer in Beta, Google Reader will still continue its fast pace of new feature implementation. Still expected support for 40 different languages and feed recommendation system. In the future support for the proposed Attention Data standard, APML is also expected."
Does he have inside information?

The Me Meme

Added on by Chris Saad.
Brian Caldwell over on EponymousX has written a fantastic and poetic post about the Me Meme.

He writes:

Our own personal lifestreams, or "public timeline's" if you prefer, are slightly more mundane that the one from Final Fantasy, however it can still be pondered in an analogous manner. Our lifestream threads together everything that we are. Where we go, what we say, who we interact with, how we express ourselves, concepts inside artwork that we create, symbolism that we identify. All can be considered "us" or "me" in some, hopefully non-banal, way.

We say "me" a lot in our lifestreams. Not always directly. Indirectly also. Off the top of our heads. Well thought out over hours of writing and editing. At the snap of the shutter on our iPhone. While visiting at parties and gatherings. By connecting/friending/following through social nets. Generating our APML wake and bow waves through the public timestream. We are the social seed for our downstream online and offline, everyone has a built-in personal wetware network and many people let this stream filter back online, forming a personal lifestream wake.

It's a great read full of all-too-familiar names and experiences. It reminds me of the little rant we posted at AreYouPayingAttention.com.

He also makes an interesting point. If the question of 'What do you do' becomes redundant at conferences, maybe we can move on to deeper conversations more quickly when we meet?

I know that I regularly talk with people I have never met. I trust them as much as people I have known in person for years. They are my advisors, my confidants, my partners and my friends.

The social consciousness is humming now. Can you feel it? Our Lifestreams and APML files are bursting at the seams. The best is yet to come. As our reach and reflection grows, maybe so too will our influence and insight into world affairs - both mundane and monumental.

Yes I love alliteration.