How do you feel?

I was playing with my iPhone earlier today and I remembered a notion we've all spoken about. For some reason, though, this time I pondered it a little longer than usual. It feels wonderful.

The iPhone interface feels authentic, polished, robust and reactive in a way that few other software interfaces do. Many Apple interfaces do in fact.

I started thinking about other examples of this and I've come to realize that todays users seem to be rewarding feeling over function in their software. Google, FriendFeed, iPhone OS, MacOS, BaseCamp, Omnifocus, Flickr. These are all applications that feel good.

In many cases, they are far less functional than their counterparts, but that doesn't seem to matter.

I also recently came across the Facebook Design Team's Facebook Group.

This is from their group description:

We love clean and simple. We are passionate about enabling the user to connect and share what they want, fast. We design for users of all ages and demographics. We don't believe in reading a manual to understand how something works. We care about details down to the pixel. We are a small team of 20, and we design the homepage, profile, chat, inbox, platform, and every part of the Facebook experience.

I especially like this sentence:

We care about details down to the pixel.

I don't think anyone was under any illusion that Facebook did not care about pixels. Their interface is so clean and consistent that they have actually killed category of personal branding - self expression through design.

I was recently lobbying for something to be simpler to use. At the end of my description of how it might work, I was told that I contradicted myself, because the implementation I described was more complex.

The reality is that simple, intuitive and good feeling design is not about a simpler implementation - it's actually about a more complex implementation. It's usually an implementation that takes more thought, more time, more pixel pushing and ultimately more business logic for the developers.

Apple didn't need to make their home screen bounce when you tried to push pass the end. But they did. It makes it feel great. I sit there playing with that little bouncy effect all the time (yes I do have a life). It took more time, more complexity and more work. But that's not the point - the end result felt and behaved like a real-world object. It feels nicer and is ultimately a more intuitive way to signal the end of the list than ignoring the user input or jarring the user with some brute force notice.

Pixels matter. Animation Matters. Layers of additional business logic that try to consolidate and simplify the user experience matter. More than most engineers and product managers know.

Product managers need to give engineers the time to polish the pixels. They need to consider that getting a product 'feature complete' does not mean it is 'user complete'. Engineers should also lobby for product managers to give them the time needed. When they are writing code and presenting things to the screen they also need to take the initiative to consider the pixels because the pixels matter.

As a product guy I've been guilty of pushing for feature complete instead of user complete. And I am going to try to find the patience and the process to change that.

Engineering is not just about building something that works - it's about building things that belong in people's lives. Things that people want to use not because they have to, but because it makes them feel good.

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.

Social Media is Dead

It isn't SOCIAL media, it's never been SOCIAL media. It's always been PERSONAL media. My friend Jeremiah just wrote a post about Social Media scale. He posses the question, how is it possible for those with growing audiences (or indeed celebrities) to really scale up their social media interactions?

He highlights the fact that most of our social media idols are actually using ghost writers to write books, tweets, emails and more.

I would argue that this these idols outsourcing their social media are missing the point. They are trying to scale up one-to-one interactions to a point where they are no longer authentic.

The media phenomena that is occurring all around is us not about being social, it is about being authentic and personal.

The point is not that u have to contact everyone 1:1 - only that what you DO say is real - your own voice from your own keyboard.

It also means that the news you get is not necessarily from or for the mainstream, but more from your personal connections and more closely linked to your personal interests.

It's only social because each person has a social aspect to their 'being'. It's a symptom not a cause.

As I've said before, the reality is that this isn't a new practice. Stories have always been personal. We have always shared our own experiences in our own voices with one another since man first started drawing on cave walls (women did it too!). The industrial age broke our ancient tradition with Mass Publishing leading to Mainstream Media. These new tools are just allowing us to take back our stories to get personal, authentic and intimate again.

The only difference this time is that we are not limited by geographies of landscape, but rather connected through geographies of ideas.

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.

Repost: Staring at the Sun

Please note: I'm going to be re-posting some of my posts from the old Particls blog here. These posts were far ahead of their time and were written at a time before streams, flow and filtering were popular concepts. I am re-publishing them here so that they might find a new audience. After each post I may write an  update based on the latest developments and my latest thoughts.

The Attention Economy Vs. Flow - Continued

Originally Published June 13th, 2007

Steve Rubel posts about his information saturation.

He writes:

We are reaching a point where the number of inputs we have as individuals is beginning to exceed what we are capable as humans of managing. The demands for our attention are becoming so great, and the problem so widespread, that it will cause people to crash and curtail these drains. Human attention does not obey Moore’s Law.

…

My attention has reached a limit so I have re-calibrated it to make it more effective. I think this issue is an epidemic. We have too many demands on our attention and the rapid success of Tim’s book indicates that people will start to cut back on the information they are gorging. If this happens en masse, will it cause a financial pullback? Possibly if ad revenues sag as a result.

Stowe Boyd writes in response:

No, I think we need to develop new behaviors and new ethics to operate in the new context.

Most people operate on the assumption that the response to increased flow is to intensify what was working formerly: read more email, read more blogs, write more IMs, and so on. And at the same time motor on with the established notions of what a job is, how to accomplish work and meet deadlines, and so on.

In a time of increased flow, yes, if you want to hold everything else as is — your definition of success, of social relationships, of what it means to be polite or rude — Steve is right: you will have to cut back.

Who is right? Who is wrong? Maybe Steve is just old and Stowe is divining the new social consciousness.

Maybe Stowe is just being an extreme purist (Stowe? Never!) and just needs to recognize that there is middle ground.

Maybe the middle ground - Flow based tools that help to refine the stream.

Our eyes can handle the sun - but sunglasses are nice too.

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Update

Steve and Stowe's posts were written pre Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook Newsfeed days. These observations were mainly based on blogs posts, Digg, Flickr, del.icio.us etc.

At the time these services were consumed using a traditional feed reader using an email Inbox metaphor - items in channels, marking items as read.

At the time of the post, we were building a product that would essentially stream items much the same way Twhirl or FriendFeed do today. One after the other in reverse chronological order. No folders, no marking as read.

Two years later, in a Twitter world, the notion of the stream has now become omnipresent. It is beginning to even replace the Inbox metaphor for email itself (refer to Google Wave). Allowing information to flow over you, as Stowe described, is now more important than ever.

So too, however, is the notion of filtering - sunglasses for staring at the sun.

So far the only filtering that has really made it into commercial products is filtering by friends. These days I don't get raw feeds from new sources (at least not as many), instead I subscribe to friends and they help filter and surface content for me.

The filter I was describing in this old post, however, and the filter that has yet to be built and commercialized, is a personal and algorithmic one. One based on my interests. Based on APML. This is true because as your friends (think of them as level 1 filtering) begin to publish and re-publish more and more content, a personal filter will again become necessary (level 2 filtering).

In any case, streams are finally here to stay. Mining that stream for value is now the next great frontier.

Wave is the future of the Enterprise

I was just debating with a friend about the value and usefulness of Google's Wave in the enterprise.

His argument is that Wave has 10 years of adoption curve ahead of it and would not quickly replace email or wikis for enterprise staff.

I tweeted my response:

20% of enterprise users will be using wave in the first 12 months for more than 50% of their comms (replacing email and wiki)

Edit: To be clear, my 12 month time frame begins when Wave is publicly available.

That's a big call to make on enterprises adopting a radically new technology. Enterprises move very, very slowly. So why am I so bullish on the adoption of Google Wave in the enterprise?

Here's why...

Email is king

Everyone uses email right? Why would people swap? Because with Wave, they don't have to.

First, with Wave's API there will quickly and instantly (I mean in weeks, long before public launch) be integration between Wave and Email. Wave messages and events will  be funneled to email and back again as if the two were built from the same protocol.

Second, Wave will be viral. Users will quickly realize that their email inbox is only giving them a pale imitation of the Wave collaboration experience. It will be like working with shadow puppets while your friends are over having an acid trip of light, sound, fun and productivity.

If someone had told me that they were setting out to kill/replace email, I would have laughed in their face. Now that I see the Wave product and roll out strategy - I think it might actually happen.

Enterprise IT Departments

IT departments are slow to adopt and roll out new technologies right?

People forget that enterprises are just a collection of human beings. Social beings. Like IM, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, Wikis and countless other applications, Wave will soak into an enterprise long before the IT department knows what the hell is going on.

The enterprise adoption curve of Wave, however, will make those other technologies look glacial. Everyone who ever picked up a Wiki, IM client, Facebook or Twitter (I think that covers 99.9% of the developed, working world) will latch onto Wave for dear life.

Everyone else will be forced to open a Wave client to find out what the hell is going on.

Too many tools

Enterprises indeed have many, many tools that already 'own' a large part of a given knowledge worker's/enterprise user's day.

None of them matter anymore. Again, with Wave's amazing API and extensibility model, each of these apps, custom or not, will have a Wave bridge.

Official Wiki Pages, Sales Reports, Bug Tickets, New Blog Posts, Emails, Customer Records will all be available and accessibly from the Wave interface.

Who's going to write all those bridges? Hacker employees, smart IT department engineers, new start-ups and the companies that own those other products hoping desperately to remain relevant and competitive.

Half Lives

Geocities, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. What do these things show us? That technology adoption has a half-life. Geocities lasted as king of the heap twice as long as MySpace, MySpace twice as long as Facebook and so on. We are approaching a kind of singularity - although just like with the mathematical function, one can never achieve 0 of course.

Sure, enterprises move much more slowly, but when was the last time a really new enterprise productivity application hit the market? Do we even know what the current half-life is? My bet is that it's pretty damn short - and Wave has the potential to be ahead of the curve.

Related link: Business Opportunities around Google Wave

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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Twitter is no more narcissistic than a camp fire

This TimeOnline story about Twitter is clearly linkbait. But dammit, I can't resist. Here are some of the quotes from some clinical psychologist dude by the name of Oliver James and a Cognitive Neuropsychologist David Lewis. Oliver and David clearly have no idea what they are talking about and should quit their day job.

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”

“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”

Are these people for real? A lack of identity?

Twitter is simply the most recent tool by which we perform an age old, very human, very healthy behavior. Connection and Communication.

Connecting and Communicating is the very essence of identity. It is the method by which we test, refine, express, learn and declare our identities. It is everything.

Twitter is two friends chatting all day while they work. It is a group of friends sitting around a camp fire. It is a group of colleges learning from each other. It is the world expressing its collective identity to each other.

If it is narcissism to express yourself and tune into the expressions of your family, friends and peers then we are all narcissists.

Twitter is a return to story telling that was sublimated by the invention of mass media. It is the purest most durable expression of personal media to come out of the Web 2.0 bandwagon.

We've all heard these knee-jerk reactions before at the advent of the Telephone, The Internet and Blogging. Each time we find a new, easier ways to communicate, out of touch people need to question why human beings need to be so connected.

These crack pots who have not experienced these tools for themselves should do a little more research. Maybe Andy Pemberton, the author of this article, should have spent a few more days learning about and trying the tool he admits to have just discovered before passing judgment on it, lest someone confuse his self-expression (i.e. his 'journalism') as ill-informed filler.

I've written more about this on my book outline.

I also spoke about it in my interview for the 'Life In Perpetual Beta' documentary.

I appologize for the tone of this post, but when 'professionals' seem to make such clearly absurd statements it drives me a little crazy.

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.

An update on the data portability landscape

I just posted a summary of the current data portability landscape to the Official DataPortability Blog. From the post:

Closed platforms are like ice cubes in a glass of water. They will float for a while. They will change the temperature of the liquid beneath. Ultimately, however, the ice cube must eventually melt into the wider web.

Facebook’s success with Facebook Connect can and will further drive innovation in the community to develop an open alternative.

Facebook’s success will (like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, AOL, Myspace, countless major media properties and countless small startups) to create alternatives. At least some of those participants will recognize (if they have not already) that the most open among them will earn both the respect and the market share of the next phase. Moving from Facebook Connect’s ‘data portability’ to Interoperable DataPortability.

A web of Data.

That’s a landscape where we can continue to innovate on a level playing field.

Proposal: OpenID Connect

OpenID needs to be as simple as Facebook Connect if it has any chance of competing. The problem is User Experience. It's a nightmare. My proposal:

1. All Email providers and OpenID Consumers (particularly Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail) implement: http://eaut.org/
2. Until we have critical mass with step 1, a 3rd party, community controled "Email to OpenID mapping service" should be provided. Vidoop runs a related service at http://emailtoid.net/. It's quite good but it should be donated to the OpenID foundation for independent control.
3. OpenID Connect login prompts ask for your email address on 3rd party sites.
4. When you hit 'connect' it generates a popup much like the FB Connect popup.
5. The contents of the popup is either:
   • The password screen of the OpenID provider as resolved via EAUT OR
   • The password screen of the OpenID provider as resolved via the community EmailtoID service OR
   • A prompt from the EmailToID service that walks you through creating a new OpenID or mapping an exiting OpenID to this email address.Here's the important part: In all cases, the screens MUST conform to a strict UX Design Guideline set forth by the OpenID Foundation to ensure the process is as simple as Facebook Connect.Only providers that confirm to this OpenID Connect UX standard (as certified by the OpenID Foundation?) may have their OpenIDs validated in this popup. This is a harsh rule but it ensures a smooth UX for all involved.
6. This initial Email to OpenID mapping through a 3rd party service is painful since most email providers and OpenID consumers do not use EAUT yet.
7. This can be overcome if we get a series of OpenID Consumers and OpenID Providers involved as launch partners. A major email provider (Gmail, Hotmail and/or Yahoo) would also be be helpful but not a blocker.

Potential Concerns:

1. How do we deter phishing? Does this work-flow make phishing worse because of the predictable UX? Does it matter? Is there a way to ensure a distributed karma system is included in the work flow?
2. This only solves the login problem and does not go into the issue of connecting to, accessing and manipulating data as the full data portability vision describes. This is a conversation for another thread.

Bonus:

• If you provide OpenID but do not consume it you need to be named and shamed. There should be a 2 month grace period, then The OpenID Foundation, the DataPortability Project and everyone else who is interested should participate.
• "OpenID Connect" should be a new brand with a fresh batch of announcements with strict implementation guidelines (not just around UX but also around things like consumption).

To summarize, my proposal world:

1. Allow users to use their email address for OpenID
2. Standardize the User Experience for OpenID
3. Provide a stop gap while Email providers catch up with Email to OpenID mapping.

Get involved:

I'd love to do mockups for this - but I'm busy. Anyone interested in learning from the Facebook Connect UX and drafting OpenID Connect Mockups from which we can draw the strict UX guidelines I mentioned?

Could this work?

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!

Is Data Portability Safe?

'What about privacy and security' is a question that comes up regularly when discussing Data Portability. I'd like to address some of the reasons why Data Portability is actually good for privacy. More safe than today.

Data Portability is not about putting more personal data in the cloud. We're dealing with data that's already out there. The goal is to provide the ability to give access to your data to applications you trust.

Using proper protocols and formats to move the data such as oAuth and OpenID is safer than allowing sites to scrape your mail account by giving it your username and password. They are safer because you are not giving your username and password away and because the access is scoped. Scoped access mean that you can grant specific and precise access to only the data you want to share with the requesting application (e.g. just your address book) as apposed to giving them complete access to your entire gmail account (address book, email, account history, google searches etc).

Federated Karma - Market Forces made Explicit

It may be possible to build a distributed trust or Karma system that sites and services can expose on Authorization Screens so that users can make informed decisions before trusting an application.

Users could rate services and the ratings would be normalized and made available via trusted Karma aggregation services.

This would provide an explicit meta layer of market sentiment at the point of permitting a data portability transaction.

This solution is far better than the Facebook Protection Fee solution.

Privacy is the wrong word

The real issue should not be labeled Privacy. Privacy is an idea but it's not actionable. It can not be converted into 'functionality'. We should be discussing 'access controls', 'portable permission metadata' and 'universal privacy models'. These ideas combined allow us to define and implement privacy preferences in concrete terms.

Hyper Transparency

Privacy advocates can never and should never come to peace with it, but it's clear that traditional ideas of privacy are changing.

Remember that It was once thought unconscionable to share you photos, daily activities, location, relationship status and other personal information for the world to see. Now it's standard practice for young people around the world.

What taboos of personal privacy will fade next? It's quite possible the question asked by future generations of Internet users will ask not why their data is available for everyone to see, but rather why it isn't.

"I think therefore I am".

Maybe now it's

"I tweet therefore I am".

The web-wide social network

Ross Dawson has an excellent summary of a Gartner presentation on the Distributed Social Web by David Cearley. A web where each participant is their own central node on a web-wide social network. It is the only natural conclusion of the vision of Data Portability.

It will be made possible by a series of futurists, technologists, philanthropists and engineers developing core building blocks like OpenID, oAuth, APML, PortableContacts, XMPP, RSS/ATOM, OPML, Microformats and more.

It will be commercialized by a series of entrepreneurial start ups with stars in their eyes running in and around the feet of the giants who are each fighting each other to keep up. Startups like JS-Kit.

It will be fueled by traditional and not so traditional media companies, steered by young, idealistic intrapraneurs, who are willing to take a bet in order to stake their claim on the next generation of social networking and human communication.

It will be monetized by a recognition that one can't monetize word-of-mouth. Instead Attention will emerge as the ultimate way to measure, discover and interact with participants. See Faraday Media.

It will be popularized by bloggers, smart IT journalists and conference organizers who understand the importance of open over closed.

We have already started to see a preview of the world to come via the early attempts at rudimentary aggregators and proprietary data portability implementations. This is just the beginning of the beginning.

For a more details around the emerging trends, check out Ross' post.

Facebook charging a protection fee?

According to CNet, Facebook is going to start charging app developers a fee to achieve 'Verified Application' status. The fee is optional, but that doesn't matter. Apps that are not 'verified' will quickly get buried by those that are. I think in hindsight people will recognize this move as one of the final death knels of the Facebook platform as we know it today.

First, they de-emphasized applications all together by relegating them to a 'boxes' page and making the stream their primary interaction metaphor (Read: FriendFeed clone). Now they are trying to lock down the platform further, raising the bar for participation and charging what amounts to a protection fee for app developers to get any real attention at all.

The fact of the matter is, an increasing number of people are finally realizing that Facebook looks very similar to Pre Internet networks, AOL, Passport/Hailstorm, and any other proprietary implementation of a platform that can and must be open.

The only platform that matters on the web is the web itself, and Facebook through its actions and inactions is helping us all learn this lesson faster than ever.