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There’s a lot of buzz and chatter in the blogosphere about Google’s upcoming social features. Starting with Kevin Rose’s infamous tweet, we’ve been referring to an amorphous “Google Me” platform. Presumably, Google Me will be designed to go toe-to-toe with Facebook. We’ve seen rumors about Zynga bringing social gaming aboard, along with a recent acquisition that suggests Google Me is indeed a reality. While some might feel that Google Me has been blogged ad nauseum,I will speculate what this service will look like.
Google has many very social properties that exist as islands. The core properties are Picasa, Gmail, Voice, Chat (and Video), Reader, Blogger, YouTube, and Orkut. Buzz was an attempt to bring together many of these properties and connect them. Think of Buzz as a hub and the other properties as spokes. However, Buzz did not gain widespread adoption. For some, it was the privacy missteps in the first few days of operation that kept them away. I believe there are more obvious and compelling reasons why people aren’t using Buzz in large numbers right now. First, people want to interact with their existing associates, many of whom they communicate with on Facebook. Second, the Buzz interface is somewhat confusing. Facebook and Twitter primarily operate on a chronological model. Buzz doesn’t. Back to the point, Buzz was a failed attempt to create a widely adopted hub linking Google’s social properties, the islands.
I believe Google Me will connect the islands in a very similar way that iGoogle can be used to connect all of Google’s services. In fact, iGoogle has long had some social features unique among all of Google’s properties, including rudimentary social gaming. I actually think Google Me will, in fact, look quite a bit like iGoogle. We will design our own social networks. We may choose a box for YouTube, a stream of Buzz, some Picasa albums, Gmail previews, Chat pane, etc. which would all appear in some integrated fashion on one page (or a group of tabbed pages). Unlike Buzz, Wave and other Google properties that have “fixed” UIs, Google Me may have a more “dynamic” user-customizable look and feel. Drop and drag a feed of friends on the left, maybe another for co-workers in the middle and keep Chat on the right. Or, maybe have it the other way around. Oh, and the top will likely have a search bar and a status update-like field (not too dissimilar from Facebook). Oddly, if I’m correct about the user-customizable look and feel, Google Me may be somewhat similar to *gasp* MySpace in some respects. (Don’t get too discouraged. MySpace was once wildly successful and there may be some elements worth salvaging.)
Will Google Me succeed where Buzz has failed? I’m sure Google will control the rollout and check, double check and triple check to make sure there aren’t serious privacy concerns. Well, this alone won’t assure it’s success. As I pondered above, many people’s existing social networks exist on Facebook. Zynga could help lure massive numbers of virtual farmers, mafia wannabes and others from Facebook to Google, particularly if Zynga and Facebook completely part ways. There is also an enormous installed base of Gmail users. If there is a way to convert them into Google Me users, Google should find it. Also, consider that Google could leverage its upcoming Google TV, Google Music and Google Books properties. Another angle Google could play is integrating Google Me with Apps. Enterprise might be more likely to permit employees to use Google Me, if there were dedicated business streams and corporate discussions. Whereas, Facebook is practically a complete suck on employee productivity.
In any event, I’m straying want into the “will it work?” topic and I intended to merely write about what it will look like. My bets are on a user-customizable iGoogle-like platform. I don’t have a shred of evidence to support this but, as I titled the post, this is my best guess.
Google is dumping Google Wave. Here’s the official quote:
Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.
This news came as a complete surprise to me and many others. It seems like just yesterday Wave was released and it was the buzz of the internet. It was a trending topic on twitter for nearly a week and many people were scurrying to get invitations to the beta. Nonetheless, Wave failed for very good reasons.
While I was initially jazzed about Wave, just like many at Google according to the official blog, I was blinded by the fact that it was new and shiny. I blogged about it several times and even created a Google Wave category for the blog. However, when I began Waving with friends, they quickly pointed out reasons why they didn’t like it. It was difficult to use. It was launched without full features like email notifications. It was another mode of communication that was redundant with our existing modes. In short, they felt it was a waste of their time and apparently many people felt that way. They just didn’t “get” Wave.
I haven’t read the other commentary in the blogosphere on the failure of Wave but I think many will be discussing Google Buzz and the rumored Google Me project. I suspect that Wave will be replaced with Google Me and if Google Me gains tractions we may see Google Buzz fall by the wayside too. While I would be sad to see Buzz go, I would welcome a better replacement that achieves more widespread adoption. Frankly, I can’t convince anyone in my social circles to get active on Buzz. Hopefully, Google has a recipe for marketing a service that will compete with Facebook which is now 500 million strong. I’d like to see a superior replacement for Facebook with better governance.
Miio is a mixture of every hot property on the web right now. It is a little like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and FriendFeed. In other words, it is a social networking site. Do we really need another? The answer appears to be a resounding YES. Miio brings in the best of each of the hot properties and it is really gaining traction. The service is so polished that TheNextWeb entitled a post “Early adopted alert: miio is here, and it’s looking really slick.”
I’m a big fan of Google Buzz and I’ve been vocal about it. The CEO of miio, Richard Lusk, is also a Google Buzz fan. I’m not alone in saying that I plan to shift some of my social networking time to miio.
I’m not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel. There’s an excellent review of miio in the blogosphere entitled, “Why miio isn’t Twitter or Facebook: And why this is a good thing.” The post contains a video demo and a terrific overview of the service. It’s recommended reading.
If you check out miio, add my profile to your network. It’s at http://miio.com/jon.
File this rumor in the “quite possible” folder. It comes by way of Kevin Rose, co-founder and CEO of Digg. He tweeted to his 1.1 million followers:
Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon “Google Me”, very credible source
TechMiso picked up the tweet and the rumor is gaining steam on Google Buzz.
I believe there is room in the Google ecosystem for a new social network. While Buzz is still fresh out of the box, it really isn’t ideal for keeping up with friends and family. Buzz is somewhat more like Twitter in terms of the relationships between users, although discussions tend to be more fulsome than those on Twitter. Google does already have a Facebook like service, Orkut. However, Orkut is significantly behind Facebook in terms of features and it never really caught on outside of Brazil and India. Some point to Wave as a social network of sorts but it’s really a different animal. Wave is more like a collaboration service that better suits business purposes than social purposes.
If there really is a Google Me, I’m really curious what the service will look like. Surely, it will incorporate many Facebook features but I would expect some significant departures from the mold, and not just better privacy settings. Surely, there’s room for improvement upon the Facebook format.
I believe the biggest obstacle to any Facebook competitor is that many Facebook users have invested significant time amassing their group of Facebook friends. Even if an large group decided to defect from Facebook, it’s not easy to export Facebook contacts to Google. It actually requires a Yahoo! account to pull from Facebook and export to CSV file. From there, the CSV file can be imported into Gmail. Instructions can be found here.
I’m hoping Kevin is right. It’s about time someone shakes things up and competes meaningfully with Facebook.
I’ve been blogging less lately. I haven’t lost interest but I have been allocating my time differently. Among other things, I’ve been playing around with KIN 1 and KIN 2 (short review coming soon); I’ve been customizing the heck out of Ubuntu linux to make it look more like this video; I’ve been catching up on Google Reader which has been redlined at 1,000+ articles for weeks; oh, and I’m still playing on Google Buzz.
I wrote on May 17 that Google Buzz deserves a second chance. It looks like I’m in good company; now, some tech heavyweights have written similar posts.
- Yesterday, Robert Scoble wrote “Is it time to reconsider Google Buzz vs Facebook or Twitter?” It’s a great read and he’s an avid Buzzer.
- Pinging off of Scoble’s post yesterday, Matt Cutts wrote a post entitled, “Give Buzz another look.” Matt works for Google so you couldn’t expect dissent but I still think it says something about Buzz that he’s prominently featuring a Buzz endorsement on his personal blog.
If you haven’t been to Buzz lately, check it out. Simply load up Gmail and click Buzz in the left-hand pane. Do some searches for topics that interest you and begin following people. I’ve been fortunate to have grown my followers on my personal account to over 530 and I’m always welcoming new followers (http://www.google.com/profiles/jonathan.mallin). I also have a blog account with another 215 followers (http://www.google.com/profiles/techbottle).
P.S. I shipped my Blackberry Tour off to Australia to reward a loyal RTer for his generous efforts. #payingitforward
I’m a big fan of Google Buzz and encourage others to check it out. Today the Google Buzz Team made two big announcements — one awesome and the other so-so.
I’ll start with the awesome announcement. The mobile version of Google Buzz now works on virtually all smartphones, including Blackberry, WebOS, Android <2.0, Nokia S60, and Windows Mobile. Previously, only iPhones and Android 2.0+ could access the mobile site. The Blackberry version can even support location based searches by following some simple instructions. The inclusion of Blackberry specifically should help build the Buzz user base because 43% of smartphone users are toting Blackberries, as of Jan. 2010.
The so-so news is that Buzz now has a native rebuzzing feature which is called “reshare.” Some people are wild about this but I’m not. While it’s only been out a few hours, it seems to fragment meaningful discussions into multiple tidbit buzzes. Also, who wants to read the same blog post 30 times in their Buzz stream? Nonetheless, the eagle has landed and rebuzzing is here.
[via Official Gmail Blog]
When it comes to privacy, Facebook just doesn’t get it. Today Facebook held a press conference where CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out Facebook’s position on privacy, apologized for some mix-ups and offered up some bandaids that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. I am going to focus on the most important point of this entire debate which centers around whether public sharing should be opt-in or opt-out.
I’ve been thinking critically about the latest Facebook changes, writing posts about them (here and here), reading other opinions, and participating in debates on Google Buzz with some tech enthusiasts. I’ve come to the following conclusion: Facebook accounts should have an option to only share information with friends and that should be the default selection. Changes that permit the broader sharing of information should be implemented in a opt-in fashion, not foisted upon the masses.
Facebook has routinely moved the privacy goal posts. Every time changes take effect, Facebook “mandates by update” sharing beyond one’s circle of friends. This is not what many of us signed up for. I joined Facebook about three years ago when users had better control over their information and Facebook didn’t regularly flip switches to make banter among friends public to the world. We have shared opinions, jokes, links and pictures within this framework in a controlled fashion. Flash forward. Beginning in December and then later with the Open Graph API, Facebook opened up practically everything to everyone. Users needed to toggle switches to maintain the same level of sharing as they enjoyed before. This is plainly absurd, as I observed before. It would be akin to Google or Microsoft taking your email and publishing it without you affirmatively electing to do so. Now, I wouldn’t have a problem if Google or Microsoft permitted users to publish emails provided that the option were accompanied by adequate instruction. Facebook just does what it wants when it wants and without adequate instruction, control or warning.
Super kudos to the French reporter who asked Zuckerberg why Facebook doesn’t follow the OPT-IN model for sharing. It was probably the single-most important question to ask and it was completely fumbled in a very laughable way. This is the exchange:
Q (French press agency): Why not make the default the most restricted possible privacy setting?
A (Zuckerberg): We want to give people control over their privacy. Really restrictive settings make it hard for people to find each other.
Are you kidding me? First, making the model opt-in does not interfere with a user’s control over privacy settings. You could have all the same choices but the default would always be the most restrictive settings. Accordingly, when Facebook makes changes that allow broader dissemination of previously private or semi-private information, the changes wouldn’t just be sprung upon unsuspecting users. Second, why would an opt-in model make it difficult for people to find each other? Users are identified by names and a thumbnail picture, if they so choose. Friends in common are also displayed. Why does publishing someone’s news feed make it easier “for people to find each other”? It doesn’t. Someone really should have followed up on the French reporter’s question.
Some might argue that you opt-in when you sign up for Facebook. Not when I signed up. We created our own sharing circles. Sure privacy policies can and do change but I made an erroneous and naive assumption that the service was run by responsible adults. Instead, we’re being forced into the public sharing model to (1) “give people control over their privacy” and (2) “make it [easier] for people to find each other.” #FAIL.
P.S. Leo Laporte of TWiG is promoting Google Orkut as a Facebook alternative like many of us on Buzz. While it needs some fixin’ and some polishing, Orkut really is a decent platform. More importantly, Orkut is backed by Google, a company run by adults who have proven themselves over a long period to time to be responsible.
I sure picked the wrong week to be busy with non-tech stuff. Much has happened in the past week and my Google Reader is still readlined at 1000+ new articles to read. These are some of the stories from the past week that look the most interesting:
- Android 2.2 “FroYo” debuted at Google I/O. Many people have it up and running on rooted Nexus Ones. It supports the creation of mobile hotspots which basically turns a FroYo device into a wireless router. IntoMobile has been providing good coverage. It recently reported that the “leaked” version is not the final version, according to Googler Romain Guy, but it is apparently very stable.
- Google I/O attendees found HTC Evo 4Gs in their goodie bags, Oprah style. I’ve written about the Evo 4G before (which should have stayed with the codename “Supersonic” but, anyhow…). What happens when you give an hot Android phone to hundreds of developers? Well, someone figures out how to gain superuser access by rooting the device (video). Robert Scoble started a high traffic Buzz comparing the Evo to the iPhone platform. Many newly minted Android fans weighed in and dueled with Apple fanatics. The iPhone 4G (or HD or whatever they decide to call it) has a fierce competitor comprised of Google and virtually every major device manufacturer.
- Mark Zuckerberg conceded by email (which he agreed to make public): “I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes….” Captain Obvious? I wonder, however, whether they did as big a land grab as possible with a slight retreat in mind from the onset. Don’t know. In any event, it remains to be seen what Facebook intends to do about the mistakes. I suggest that they include a lockdown button in the privacy settings which basically toggles off all information sharing except with friends. In my opinion, that would be a step in the right direction for Facebook.
- Gizmodo found or stole another prototype, depending on your perspective. This one appears to be the Motorola Shadow which runs Android. The story goes that a gym employee found one laying around and Gizmodo got ahold of it (follow link for pics). This phone looks great and it’s almost certainly Verizon bound. It could be branded as the “Droid 2.”
- The Google Orkut experiment is still ongoing. A number of Google Buzz users are playing around with Orkut and enjoying it. If you’re at all interested, check out my post about it.
- Finally, this blog has been getting very heavy traffic lately compared to historical numbers. I attribute that primarily to my posts about the HTC Incredible which is still back ordered at Verizon. I’ve loaded up on apps and if you don’t know where to start, check out my AppBrain page. Also, I redid the TechBottle logo in the header of the blog. Do you like it? Be honest. I’m on the fence about it but I’d rather read and write to the blog than tinker with the logo more.
P.S. I have something brewing with a major carrier. Expect good but very honest hands-on cellphone reviews. It’s also possible I’ll have some leaked info about upcoming phones soon. Stay tuned!
I budget most of my social networking time for Google Buzz. Here’s my long-winded why…
Facebook support waivers and A list bloggers like Mashable speculate about the fate of MySpace, but nobody seems to be reporting on Google Buzz. Sure, it faltered out of the gate with a privacy misstep. To briefly recap: users were set to auto-follow their Gmail contacts and those auto-follows could be seen by other Buzz users. However, this was done inadvertently and the problem was patched faster than a speeding bullet. This issue was addressed quite well at SXSW. Google apologized. (It differs significantly from Facebook intentionally taking what was previously private and unapologetically broadcasting it to the entire 400 million plus Facebook community but that’s another post altogether.) Now, in case you were wondering, Buzz doesn’t have any known privacy bugs. You can buzz publicly or privately. You can show or hide your list of people you follow and people who follow you. Has anyone in the media or blogosphere been reporting on this?
To me, this is what makes Google Buzz appealing and more so than competing social networks:
- Building a Buzz environment to your liking: It is easy to build followers and to reciprocate follows. My Google Buzz followers are largely active Buzz users. I have more Google Buzz followers than Twitter followers and I joined Twitter ages ago. I enjoy both reading and writing on Buzz.
- Twitter falls short: Twitter is often difficult to follow. Conversations, which rarely develop, need to be decrypted because of the 140 character limit and the lack of meaningful organization of Tweets. It doesn’t help matters that many active Twitter users tend to be get-rich-quick schemes and pure follow-back whores.
- Facebook is a different animal: Facebook isn’t really about expanding horizons. Sure, I like keeping in touch with people and Facebook makes that easy. I suggest you ask yourself these questions if you think Facebook is the be-all-end-all of social networks: How many new people have you met on Facebook? How many real conversations have you engaged in on Facebook? What is the signal to noise ratio on Facebook? Are you content with Facebook governance and frequent changes in policy?
- The Buzz platform is well designed. Sharing information from Google Reader, YouTube and by URL has never been easier. We are expecting to see the Buzz API opened up at Google I/O which should benefit the platform and accelerate Buzz growth.
- Community support and mobilization: We’ve taught each other how to use Buzz and some conventions for Buzz use have developed. We’ve mobilized to support Buzz and provided feedback to the Google Buzz Team. The Google Buzz Team has responded with improvements and is currently privately beta testing new features.
- Buzz is a community. I have met new people near and far (very far) and joked, shared opinions and debated. Buzz users have engaged and thoroughly discussed many topics. My posts and ideas have generated more discussion on Google Buzz than any other platform. I’m not alone in this regard; other people report the same. It’s nice to have feedback every once in a while from a diverse group of people.
Buzz is social media at its finest! If you were scared off by the privacy glitch and haven’t experienced Buzz recently, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Give Buzz a second chance.
What the hell is Orkut? It was Google’s first attempt at building a social network. It launched in August of 2008 but never posed a serious challenge to Facebook. As of December 2009, the breakdown of Orkut users by country was 51.09% Brazil, followed by India with 20.02% and United States with 17.28%. Apparently, in Brazil many cafes proudly display the fact that they offer Orkut access. Last night, a bunch of Google Buzz users decided to poke around on Orkut. We even formed a “Community” for Google Buzz Users that anyone can join.
These are my impressions: Orkut’s interface blends Facebook and MySpace both circa 2008. Users follow one another (requiring the followee’s consent) and status updates appear in chronological streams. In this regard, it functions pretty much like Facebook and MySpace and differs from Twitter and Buzz. Like MySpace and unlike Facebook, users can customize their experience by selecting themes and completing detailed and risque profile information (turn ons, turn offs, things you can find in your bedroom, etc.). Many of us tame folks just pasted a link to our Google Profiles that we use for Buzz. One feature that caught my eye today is that users leave “tracks” when they view other people’s Orkut pages. Some might find that objectionable but Orkut otherwise provides significant control over your information, moreso than Facebook does.
Where do I think this is heading? Probably nowhere outside of Brazil and India but it is a Facebook alternative that some people might consider. Some of the Orkut plumbing was probably integrated into Google Wave and Google Buzz. Speaking of Buzz, apparently the API is going to be released at Google I/O, per a buzz by Robert Scoble, which could boost activity. In my opinion, Buzz is alive and well despite the hiccups at launch and dearth of media attention since then. Leo Laporte, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble and other tech notables routinely hang out on Buzz. It’s really become an interesting platform because headlines, excerpts and full posts become launchpads for in depth discussions that don’t (couldn’t?) occur on Facebook and Twitter. Also, some users have reported that improvements are being privately beta tested on Buzz, although details are scarce.
If you click over to Buzz, feel free to follow me or if you want to try out Orkut send me a friend request.
Some notable blogs are setting up a false dichotomy between “social” and “search” for finding and consuming information. They suggest that Facebook is the “social” alternative to Google’s “search.” This is fundamentally wrong, I argue below. Instead, what we have is a war between two “platforms” neither one of which really fits purely into one of those categories. Both want to attract your eyeballs to their advertisements.
What is Google?
It’s a conduit through which advertisers reach people who have shared their personal preferences with Google. While Google was initially purely a search engine, that is no longer true today. As I wrote yesterday, Google wants to know everything it can about each and every person. Reiterating yesterday’s musings:
Whom do you phone? Google Voice.
To whom do you write? Gmail, Google Wave and Google Buzz.
What do you buy? Google Checkout and Google Product Search.
What do you watch on television? Google TV, which is anticipated to launch with Sony next month.
What do you read? Google Reader and Google Scholar, despite some bumps in the road.
Where do you eat? Google Maps, 800-GOOG-411, Google Places.
What ailments do you have? Google Health, although it appears to be a flop.
Where do you work? Google Profiles.
Where do you live? Google Maps.
What do you look like? Google Profiles and Google Visual Search, perhaps tied together one day.
Where are you? Latitude, Google Buzz and Google Places.
Where did you go and where will you go? Google Calendar.
While the search business fits into this overall picture, it is important to note that very little of the preference harvesting today relies heavily on it.
What is Facebook?
Similar to Google in a sense. Facebook is a conduit through which advertisers reach people who have shared their personal preferences with Facebook. This really begs the question, what do we share with Facebook? Not much when compared to Google. Facebook is far less efficient at harvesting information and has fewer tentacles. These are the questions Facebook may be able to answer about a particular user:
What is your name?
What do you look like?
What is your birthday?
And so on. Facebook also knows what social games you enjoy playing and what you “Like.” Facebook cannot answer most of the questions above that Google can answer. Facebook doesn’t have an email client, a calendar, mapping software, voice transmission, video transmission, etc. Google is much more efficient at harvesting information because it has many more web properties and, not surprisingly, they happen to be the best in most areas.
As an aside, this is where Facebook has truly gone off the deep end: Facebook is giving away the crown jewels. It is now divulging your preferences (“Likes” cannot be made private, for example) to third parties who can archive them indefinitely. This is contrary to the Google platform that seeks to obtain everything tidbit of information about you but tries to lock down that information for Google’s use only. (Buzz was a notable, accidental exception but that mistake was remedied within a couple of days.)
Implications
Search vs. Social is bullshit. Google is social. Google services allow me to communicate with friends and family by Gmail, Wave, Buzz, Voice, etc. I can read their thoughts in emails, hear their voices, see their faces, etc. What makes Facebook more “social” than Google? The fact that someone I went to elementary school with posted about her breakfast food and that she spilled orange juice on her new shoes? Now, there’s the “search” issue. This deserves emphasis:
Facebook does not have a map of the entire internet; Google does.
Google is a better platform for other reasons. It is better organized. I know where to find information I seek. My appointments are on my calendar, my emails are in my inbox, etc. I can archive everything. Facebook provides us, primarily, with a stream of crap that tells me about my friends’ virtual farms, mafias, fish, etc. I see a bunch of happy birthday posts too. The Facebook stream is entirely disorganized and it is not archived in a useful way.
The argument that Facebook will somehow whip Google in the near future baffles me. Google is way out of Facebook’s league in so many different areas. It harvests information better. It protects information it harvests better. It offers utility to its users. If provides us with services that Facebook cannot even come close to providing any time soon. So, this Facebook > Google argument that is being tossed around the internet seems like nonsense to me. I put my money where my brain is. I’m holding my GOOG stock and maybe building the position especially since some people were recently fooled by the blogosphere into believing that Facebook is a serious threat to Google. It isn’t right now and couldn’t become one for a very, very long time.
Chances are good that you (1) use Facebook and (2) have no idea what the new Facebook Open-Graph API is all about. It’s basically a behind-the-scenes way for Facebook to share your personal information with the entire world; the sharing is default, although you can opt out, which isn’t an easy task. Want to know whether Facebook is telling the entire world that you like Fruity Pebbles cereal? Ka-Ping Yee created a tool which allows you to find out what any Facebook user is sharing. You can find it here: http://zesty.ca/facebook/. All you have to do is type in a Facebook ID or user name and it does the rest. It can report a user’s real name, birth date, location, “Likes” (formerly pages you were a “fan” of), photos, etc. This begs the question, “where exactly did we sign up for this shit?”
That’s the question being asked by many, including many of the top Googler celebrities who have deactivated their Facebook accounts. Four Senators have sent a letter to Facebook complaining about this issue. (Perhaps they didn’t use the word “shit” but, anyways…) Chuck Schumer, D-NY, has spearheaded this effort and even lobbed a complaint in with the Federal Trade Commission.
I have been contemplating suspending my Facebook account but ultimately decided against it. I just won’t “Like” anything and I will monitor my information to make sure that it doesn’t get shared with the public (again). The real solution: A turn-this-shit-off-forever button. I’d “Like” that.
[via GigaOM]
What’s Facebook up to with all this “like” stuff? I’ll begin by assuming that you are as confused as I was about this idea. Basically, Facebook is attempting to get every website to implement a Facebook “Like” button. When you click a Like button, your Facebook profile will be updated to include your new Like. If this catches on, then the entire internet can be ranked, in a sense, by Facebook users. This information about Likes is relevant in two ways. First, the data can be used on the micro level to target advertisements to you on Facebook, the stickiest and most popular website on the internet. Second, the data can be used on the macro level to perform a popularity ranking of the internet.
Crowdsourcing is the outsourcing of tasks to a large community. An example of crowdsourcing is a cellphone app that reports gasoline prices and asks users of the app to report back prices they observe. Facebook is attempting to crowdsource the internet. Instead of crawling the internet with sophisticated spiders that follow every link, they shift the task to the website owners who must install a “Like” button and to the Facebook populance who must click the buttons to make the system work.
This fundamentally differs from Google’s approach to indexing the web in a few ways. Google spiders the web to detect new content. This approach is changing somewhat through advancements like PubSubHubBub (say that ten times fast) which allow content providers to push their updates to Google and burn real-time RSS feeds. Google also crowdsources the internet in a way but it does so seamlessly and, more importantly, privately. When you search for pages on Google and click links, Google learns both what you like (without clicking a button) and also uses this information to target advertisements and even rank pages in your own search results. In the aggregate, this information (your clicks) is used to rank pages.
So, what’s the difference? Facebook has slowly chipped away at users’ privacy. For example, Facebook updates are now public by default. Perhaps Twitter paved the way for that change but it was not a welcomed change by many. Now, Facebook users are being asked to essentially display their internet preferences and browsing history to their “friends” and the general public. The privacy implications of this scheme are profound. Imagine if Google’s Chrome browser or Google.com asked users to opt-in and make their browsing history public (even on a per-click basis). People would be, rightfully so, outraged. Facebook is being raked over the coals by privacy groups and many people who actually understand what is being proposed. However, the cuteness of “Like” concept and the appeal of the Facebook brand have blinded some people from questioning the entire concept. Frankly, I don’t plan on clicking Like buttons and I believe that people should really think critically about the system that is being implemented.
Somewhat uncomfortably, this website has a Facebook button in the upper right. This enables those who click to see posts in their Facebook stream. This button was created long before we were asked to rank the entire internet. It was intended to serve an entirely different purpose and it wouldn’t bother me one bit if you choose to unlike Tech Bottle but follow the posts another way (by e-mail, Buzz, Twitter, RSS readers, etc.). While on the topic of unliking, I have read that unliking something might pluck the logo off of your profile but there will be other ways to determine a user’s past likes. So, if you Liked Coke last week but want a job at Pepsi this week, you might have sunk yourself.
P.S. Another major issue with the Facebook scheme involves sharing your personal information with other Facebook partners across the web. You probably saw a small box about this at the top of your Facebook stream. This is another somewhat confusing change to Facebook and I have opted out of it. I don’t think it is clear what data will be shared and exactly how it will be used. Perhaps I will become more comfortable with a personalized internet and opt-in at some point but for now, I prefer the internet the way it is.
UPDATE: Matt Cutts, a high profile Google employee, just suspended his Facebook account. http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-deactivates-facebook-account-40543
The Facebook app “Who’s Stalking My Profile?” and similar variants do not actually tell you who viewed your profile, according to The Register. They’re scams intended to line the pockets of the app developers by making the apps go viral. The app developers stand to profit from sharing advertising revenue on their apps’ pages.
Rik Ferguson, a senior security consultant at Trend Micro, explains: “The app itself is designed to look convincing enough, but none of the many ‘Continue’ buttons it offers will activate some under-the-counter profile checking functionality – they will just push you into another Facebook app earning the scammer advertising revenue in the process.” He reports that Facebook is removing the offending apps.
I am having fun with Google Buzz, much more than I ever had with Twitter. It took a couple of weeks for common buzz practices to develop and I thought I’d share some of it with those considering buzzing. Here are some tips for absolute beginners on Buzz…
How do I get many followers?
One of the best methods of attracting followers is to begin following people. Many people will follow back. Another good method is to comment on popular buzzes with insightful remarks. Do some Buzz searches for topics that interest you and comment on relevant buzzes.
One way to lose followers is to import tweets from a twitter account. Many Buzz users find tweet importing annoying.
What can I do to spark conversation?
Ask a question. The most popular buzzes, even those from the large blogs, are those that begin with a question. Also, add a picture or link to the buzz. Buzzes with pictures attract attention. Use bold when asking your question. You can do this by putting a * before and after your question.
Have fun with it!
