Breaking the Rules and Still Winning: Twitter’s Je Ne Sais Quoi

June 29, 2008 by 9 Comments

When I was in grad school our professor gave us an assignment. Our papers had to be within a set word count. Nearly all of us diligently stayed within that rule, constraining our analysis as best we could. But not one classmate. He blew right through the word count restriction. When the professor discussed our papers the next day, he called out this student’s paper as the best of the lot. We all learned two things that day:

  1. Ignore this professor’s word count restrictions in the future
  2. Rules don’t matter if you create something people love

Twitter is going through its toughest stretch ever right now. Here’s a FriendFeed search on the phrase “twitter is dead to me“. And here’s Steve Isaacs’ thoughts on the current Twitter:

I expect Twitter to be 1) reliable = epic fail. 2) Something more than a simple one way alerting medium = fail 3) to grow and mature like all great web services = also a fail. Am I being too hard, I think not.

Pretty grim, eh?

Well, not so bad. Several big names have recently stated their new interest in FriendFeed in lieu of Twitter. But read these comments closely, and tell me that these guys have really given up on Twitter:

The beautiful thing about Twitter is that spontaneous, diverse conversations erupt that are almost synchronous, or chat like – Michael Arrington, in post praising FriendFeed over Twitter

I’m steering people to FriendFeed, can’t help it. My discussions are happening there. And bonus: It pisses off Steve Gillmor. 🙂 – Dave Winer

Really tired of Replies being broken here. Spending more time in FF, but still subscribing only to close friends over there. – Shel Israel

There are others. These are people who are practically being dragged away from their favorite social media app.

Their words say FriendFeed, but their hearts say Twitter.

And this is what I mean. Let’s look at the rules Twitter has broken.

Rule #1: Build a scalable platform

Well, this is the crux of the current problem, so clearly they messed this one up. Google didn’t mess this one up. Amazon.com didn’t. eBay didn’t. Yahoo didn’t.

Twitter did.

Rule #2: Communicate with your users

For the most part over the last several months, communication has been via the Fail Whale. Not a lot of feedback to the loyal users about the problems. And when features are removed, it doesn’t seem to be communicated correctly.

Dave Winer noted that Twitter’s own employees are not among the power users of Twitter. The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.

Rule #3: Web 2.0 companies actively add features

A hallmark of hosted web 2.0 services is they constantly roll out new features as they get feedback from users.

Not Twitter. They rely on a robust ecosystem of developers to take care of that. Twitter users relied on a member of that ecosystem, Summize.com, while they took down the Replies tab this past week.

Rule #4: Web companies need realistic paths toward profitability

And that generally means advertising. But not Twitter, at least not yet. Profitability shmofitability. But to be fair, when you see YouTube picked up by Google without revenue, and Powerset purchased by Microsoft without revenue, you realize this is a rule that is getting relaxed more and more.

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But Twitter’s Got that Je Ne Sais Quoi

Dave Winer appears to be twittering about as much as he always has. He has also started to engage folks on FriendFeed as well, as a look at his comments there shows. But Twitter got its Replies feature back Saturday, causing Dave to wonder:

Now that Replies are back, we get to find out if our fling with FF is the real thing, or just a summer love.

And here’s a sampling of FriendFeed comments on his tweet:

  • “Twitter is the Cliff Notes of Friendfeed. Quick and easy & you get the gist.”
  • “For me, it’s like friends with benefits and evaporates when my true love returns.”
  • “Twitter is my Best Friend… Friend Feed is my Book Club… there’s more ‘deep conversation’ over here – but I don’t always want every conversation to either be non-existent or terribly deep. Sometimes I just want to twitter like a little bird.”
  • “I like FF – I love Twitter – FF needs to be organized differently, I think – it doesn’t have the right logical setup for me.”
  • “I’m sure people will complain about twitter when it fails to work, but when they manage to kick themselves and make it work, people will flock back”

This comment from Arrington’s FriendFeed-favorable TechCrunch post captures it for me:

I will stick with Twitter for now, because even though about half of my tweets are @ replies, I don’t really use it for _conversation_ per se – more like spontaneous short IM chats that end in ❤ tweets and involve 2-3 people. Don’t need an entirely different website to “manage” that.

Twitter’s got that new funding including Jeff Bezos, they’ve got heavyweights rooting for them (e.g. Arrington’s “Twitter!” post) and loyal users who are sticking with them despite the limited functionality.

Twitter also has going for it the same asset that helped AOL through its downtime crisis in the late 1990s. If you were on AOL, you had all your email connections there. Switching costs were high. Same thing applies to Twitter. Social network switching costs are high, a point recently made by Corvida.

Here’s what I predict will happen. The new architecture is built. New features will be added (threading tweets, Seesmic-like video conversations, etc). There will be an avalanche of positive coverage: “Twitter’s Back!” And it will continue its growth trajectory after a 9-month rocky road.

Twitter…breaking all the rules and living to tell about it.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Breaking+the+Rules+and+Still+Winning%3A+Twitter%E2%80%99s+Je+Ne+Sais+Quoi%22

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Smart Workers Will Figure This Out: Social Media = Career Advancement

June 25, 2008 by 1 Comment

Do you think you’ve got more to contribute to your organization than you’ve had a chance to show? I’ll bet you do too.

There have been a fair number of posts about the adoption rate of web 2.0 inside companies. In my previous work doing enterprise 2.0 product marketing for BEA Systems, I can confirm a growing interest out in the corporate world.

But interest from the higher-ups is one thing. What makes the employees actually want to wiki/blog/tag/comment/tweet?

I came across this comment on an old Nick Carr post, Web 2.0’s Numbskull Factor:

Successful adoption [of web 2.0 inside companies] is likely to be driven by the usual three support cycles involved in effective change: achieving personal benefits from using them, seeing peers achieving the same benefits and continuous management support over the 24-36 months required to embed them in business as usual.

Graham Hill, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Graham’s three elements are spot on. In this post, I want to discuss the first two cycles he discusses. The third cycle is for another post.

Personal Benefits Come in Two Flavors

In a company setting, personal benefits mean one thing:

How will it improve my career?

I know that’s a bit crass. But I think it speaks to what energizes us to work. You want recognition that you can “bring it”.

Two ways such an outcome occurs with social media/web 2.0:

  1. Makes me better at my job and strengthens relationships with colleagues
  2. Others with the power to advance my career start to form a good impression of me

In terms of improving your work, web 2.0 apps offer a variety of benefits. That’s actually going to be future post.

The second benefit is one of reputation. I think all us who work in big companies know that reputations are vital to career advancement. You form impressions of others, which frames your view of their work. And most assuredly, others form impressions of you.

In the typical work environment, you interact with others via email, phone, team meeting. Contributions are made, but not recorded. Knowledge of your effort is silo’d and much of the good stuff we do is invisible.

Social media changes the game. As projects run through wikis, a permanent record of your contributions is created. Your comments are visible and searchable, greatly increasing their value relative to verbal contributions or email. A blog post with a good idea is accessible everywhere, at any time. It also can be shown as the spark for that killer product the company introduced. Your tagging of internal data is like Louis Gray sharing posts from Google Reader. People love your tags.

You also get to step outside of your assigned duties, and weigh in on the big issues facing the company. Always felt like you’ve got a good bead on areas the company needs to address? But your manager and peers aren’t really interested? Blog about it. Tweet about it. Comment about it. Establish your cred. If your thinking pans out, you’ve got a basis for demonstrating your contributions.

The other thing is this. Your contributions via social media need to help others. As you offer insight, decisions and ideas, others will find value in your contributions. Well beyond the normal four walls of that cubicle you’re sitting in. You can build relationships with geographies, business units and departments that are not normally in your work sphere.

To recap the benefits of social media for you:

  • Work better
  • Get beyond relying only on the annual review, create an electronic trail of your work
  • Show you can contribute to larger issues affecting the company
  • Establish relationships with people outside your daily social circle
  • Build – better yet, control – your internal reputation

Peers Getting the Benefits

This one is pretty basic. You know those mass internal emails calling out an individual or team for doing something really outstanding? Don’t you love those?

Well, social media will have some of that. You’ll be on the company portal or wiki, and you’ll see a complimentary message for someone’s work on it. If it’s anything like what I see on FriendFeed or Twitter, there will be several of these messages. A great way to give the “atta boy” or “atta girl” to someone’s work.

And everyone else seeing these complimentary messages will start to get the hint. My colleagues are starting to have an impact. I’d better participate.

Final Thoughts

Workers already have a host of channels with which to establish their reputation: project teams, emails, meetings, water cooler. For some, adding web 2.0 apps is just another thing they have to worry about.

Smart employees are going to see things differently. These tools offer the chance to better contribute, to get a better read on the pulse of the company and to better control one’s reputation. A chance to change the rules for career advancement.

*****

If you want an easy way to stay on top of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed. The room takes feeds for Enterprise 2.0-related items on Twitter, Del.icio.us and SlideShare. To see this room, click here: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/enterprise-2-0

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Smart+Workers+Will+Figure+This+Out%3A+Social+Media+%3D+Career+Advancement%22&public=1

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Investment as Signal: Bezos Funding Twitter Is a Green Light

June 24, 2008 by 1 Comment

Twitter announced today that it picked up more funding, which I first heard through Marshall Kirkpatrick’s tweet. He has a nice post up on ReadWriteWeb.

Investments provide three benefits:

  1. Cash
  2. Signal the broader market about the company’s prospects
  3. The investor provides advice, ideas and introductions

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is one of the investors. His investment hits all three benefits listed above.

Let’s look at what Bezos has done while at Amazon.com:

  • Established the preeminent brand for online retail
  • Built a platform for small merchants to sell on
  • Integrated user ratings as a key element of the sales process
  • Pioneered affiliate marketing
  • Developed Amazon’s highly successful recommendation engine (35% of sales)
  • Created a vibrant cloud services offering
  • Gambled on Kindle, which is showing some promise despite skepticism

Clearly, the guy has a good eye for things that can be successful.

Now he’s put his own money into Twitter.

What are the two biggest things Twitter needs?

  1. Reliable, scalable architecture
  2. Monetization strategy

Amazon.com processes how many transactions per hour? I imagine the number is huge. Amazon Web Services are all about scalability, with the need to process millions of transactions reliably. If you can’t scalability master Google or its executives to invest in you, I’d say having the founder of Amazon.com qualifies as the next best choice.

Monetization is the other question for Twitter. Amazon has had success in its affiliate marketing (relevance drives the clicks, distributed advertising program), its recommendations (35% of sales, driven by relevance) and in its fee-based Amazon Web Services. Ads, incremental revenue, web services fees. You think in that mix there is a solid revenue model for Twitter? I’d bet on it.

I really like this investment by Bezos in Twitter. Good for Twitter, and I hope it portends success for them in the months ahead.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Investment+as+Signal%3A+Bezos+Funding+Twitter+Is+a+Green+Light%22&public=1

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Using FriendFeed Rooms for Work: What’s Needed?

June 23, 2008 by 2 Comments

I believe that Participation is the killer app.

Whether it is end user participation in content driven conversations on blogs and wikis, or end user developed applications, mash-ups and widgets, I think that it is participation that key difference between Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise 1.0.

Rod Boothby, Participation Is the Killer App, Innovation Creators

Making work more interesting and more engaging would have benefits for companies and workers. To that end, I’ve suggested that FriendFeed has aspects applicable inside the enterprise. Steven Hodson took it a step further, suggesting engineers could use FriendFeed rooms to manage their software development.

The idea of using rooms for work purposes has been broached by other as well:

  • possible248: “Companies already have blogs and wikis, is there going to be something like a FriendFeed room that they can host on their own server?”
  • Jigar Mehta: “How would it be, if FriendFeed allows users to attach documents (doc, docx, ppt, pdf, txt, rtf) and discuss over them!!”

Personally, I think there’s a lot of merit to this idea. I’ve seen so many good discussions around ideas on FriendFeed. And for many of us, work is the creation, advocacy and execution of ideas – projects, presentations, campaigns, financings, etc.

The land of wikis is well developed, but most of them suffer from only emphasizing multiple user changes to documents and revision tracking. They lack the interactive participation that makes FriendFeed so compelling.

With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a list of features that would provide very basic wiki functionality in FriendFeed rooms. Wikis can have all sorts of advanced features. What would be the minimum feature set to make rooms function as lightweight wikis?

To be clear about the objective…I’ll set the wiki bar low. A room would only exist to manage the production of a smaller project or document. No large-scale stuff here. And that’s probably a good approach in business anyway.

Rooms already have three key elements for making them into wikis:

  • Ability to manage who the room members are
  • Room-specific search
  • RSS directly into rooms

Here are my four features for wikifying FriendFeed rooms:

  1. Better handling of RSS feeds for document changes
  2. Sticky setting for entries
  3. Timestamp comments
  4. New comments and entries notification

Better Handling of RSS Feeds for Document Changes

In Jigar Mehta’s entry, Nick Lothian commented:

Doesn’t GDocs have a RSS feed for changes? Hook that up and then you can have discussion about the changes to documents

That makes a lot of sense to me. FriendFeed doesn’t need to upload the document and maintain revisions. It can leverage that functionality in another app, like Google Docs. And this use case is exactly how FriendFeed works: users read blog entries and then come back to FriendFeed to Like and Comment.

I set up a public document on Google Docs, and had the document changes feed into a specific room: Rooms Wiki Experiment. If you go there, you’ll see my original entry, “Politics 2008 – Google Docs”. I commented a couple times. Then you’ll see another entry called “Restricted”. If you had access to the source document, you’d see information about revisions. I, of course, do have access. And that link only takes you to Revision #3. I made 15 revisions, but those changes didn’t stream into the room.

So that needs to work better, either from Google Docs or within FriendFeed.

Sticky Setting for Entries

Brad McCrorey posted a good question on FriendFeed:

Would having a “sticky” setting that keeps an item at the top of the room be too “forum like”? I think I’d get some use out of it.

I like this idea. In terms of advancing a project or document, this feature would let key decisions remain visible to everyone in the room.

Timestamp Comments

This is a recurring request. And it makes sense in terms of the wiki. Projects and documentsd evolve, and the timestamp helps one understand whether a comment was made before a change or after it. Or before a decision, or after it.

Timestamps give an extra bit of context to the interactions that occur around the project.

New Comments and Entries Notification

Inside a company, you are busy with multiple tasks. You’re not likely to keep the FriendFeed room up all the time (although that may be possible).

But it’s important to know when new entries have been posted. These entries would be:

  • New changes to a document
  • New direct posts of someone with an idea or question
  • New document added to the room

Notification provides the visibility needed to ensure interactive participation and timely decision-making.

Final Thoughts

The comment at the top of this post reflects my position regarding the future of work. More open, more interactive, broader participation, more engaging. FriendFeed, and Twitter as well, have created terrific interactive models not seen in most Enterprise 2.0 apps today.

I’m sure the FriendFeed guys aren’t worried about this now. But somewhere along the line, companies may see the potential in FriendFeed and begin asking for this type of functionality.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Using+FriendFeed+Rooms+for+Work%3A+What%E2%80%99s+Needed%22&public=1

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Social Media Effect: Improve Customer Service Before It Hits Twitter

June 22, 2008 by 6 Comments

Customer service is the new marketing and you have to Engage and Respect your customers.

Joseph Rodgers, Filter 2 Evangelist, Joseph Rodgers’ Internet Marketing Blog

The above quote actually has two meanings in my mind. The first meaning is to find customers who are having problems with your product or service, and engage them out in social media. Smart companies are doing it more and more, with great examples from Louis Gray, Colin Walker and Sarah Perez.

The second meaning for me is this:

Social media puts more power in consumers’ hands than ever before, and companies need to recognize that the messages their customers post will in time become as valuable as TV commercials, online ads, and magazine and newspaper ads.

Customers should not have to make a complaint on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or other social media. Rather, companies need to become more aware that the way they treat their customers is going to be broadcast, with positive or negative effects on their brands.

In my previous jobs, I know that customer service tended to be that backoffice operation.  Some guy somewhere worked on that. Not something into which many in the organization invested a lot of thought. The function is not considered strategic, and many companies figured they could outsources the work.  A 2006 article from Business 2.0 pointed out the problems with outsourced customer service.

A 2005 Gartner study predicts that 60 percent of organizations that outsource customer-facing processes will see significant numbers of frustrated customers switching to competitors.

And that was before the rise of social media. Now a customer that is dissatisfied isn’t just switching to a competitor. They’re going to tell their social networks about it.

What this means is that companies need to realize that their operational cost-center approach to customer service needs to change. A couple examples tell the tale.

Adobe Customer Service

Adobe makes some killer products. The Adobe PDF is everywhere. Photoshop continues to be quite popular. Adobe is keeping the photo processing at the leading edge. Adobe Air is the new technology for rich Internet applications. All good stuff, and clearly Adobe is maintaining its market leadership position.

Which makes it such a shame that its customer service is so weak. Here are the most recent six tweets on Summize.com for “adobe customer service“:

Now when you’re producing kick-ass products, perhaps you can get away with bad customer service. But if viable competitors gain traction and deliver comparable products, what people say about your company will make a difference. Who wants publicity like that above? And those 5 different users have 637 followers on Twitter.

Let’s look at a company that has more favorable than unfavorable publicity.

Amazon Customer Service

Amazon seems to have a particularly good (not perfect) focus on customer service. Here are the most recent six tweets from Summize.com for “amazon customer service“:

Amazon.com does this as a matter of course, and has seen the benefits. The New York Times’ Joe Nocera related his personal experience with Amazon’s customer service in January 2008. Money quote:

There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos’s obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online? Then again, there may be another reason good customer service makes sense. “Jeff used to say that if you did something good for one customer, they would tell 100 customers,” Mr. Kotha said.

Final Thoughts

Customer service has not traditionally been sexy. It reflects imperfections in the product, service or in the explanations for how to use it. Who wants to deal with that?

But as companies start to see their customers talking about them in various social media, it will become apparent that all customer touch points are chanves to burnish or tarnish their brands.

Customer service groups…please step into the spotlight.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Social+Media+Effect%3A+Improve+Customer+Service+Before+It+Hits+Twitter%22

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Knowledge & Innovation: The Journey Is as Valuable as the Destination

June 17, 2008 by 5 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a pretty traditional background in terms of product management. I was an assistant buyer for a retail chain, I marketed as an investment banker, and I’ve had over seven years in the software world. From that work, I’ve gotten a good feel for the process that occurs in producing an end result.

  1. Start with the idea
  2. Bounce it off your boss and peers
  3. Write it up
  4. Email it around
  5. Sit down with people
  6. Re-work the idea
  7. Produce the final version (PRD, white paper, pitch deck, etc.)

For most of us, step 7 is the prize, the definition of what’s valuable. All else is a pain in the ass.

But having spent some time on FriendFeed, I’m starting to recognize the value of steps 2 – 6. The conversations and debates to get from Point A to Point B are actually incredibly valuable.

The problem isn’t the work of getting from Point A to Point B. The problem is the methods we typically have inside the workplace. I suspect few corporate cultures are set up to make the journey as rewarding as the end result.

What do I mean exactly? Well, take the iteration process for a given initiative. You send an email, get single replies back from several folks. You sit in a meeting, and there’s this vague group meeting dynamic where someone with the most passion (right or wrong) ends up controlling the meeting vibe. Maybe you do a series of one-on-ones.

The problem with these methods is that the conversations are limited. Debates take the form of comparing the feedback of different people. I know this. I’ve lived it. You ever try to coordinate the Outlook Calendars of various people? In a series of meetings? It’s a nightmare.

So what has FriendFeed taught me? That there is a way to improve this process. That the journey to  Point B can actually be fun and engaging. And that it has value. Companies should take heed.

Here’s what I would love to see. Companies adopt ways to enable asynchronous conversations around ideas that are searchable, engaging and radiate greater benefits than just producing a final result. Wikis are good, but they too often have an emphasis on maintaining versions of documents. They lack the vital conversations that go into the various versions of a document.

What are the benefits of companies than can figure this out? Plenty! Here are three that come to mind:

  • Context for the end product
  • Other ideas come out of the process
  • Deeper understanding of others’ views and knowledge

Let me break these down a bit more.

Context for the End Product

When consuming the content after it is completed, all someone knows is what they read. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The document says that System A will do Action 3 after receiving Data #. It’s a straightforward recitation of what people are supposed to know.

But if you have context for why things are spelled out the way they are, I argue you’ve got much more informed workers.

I’m personally not satisfied with only reading something. I always want to know why something ended up the way it did. Especially when you’re reading something new, that background is vital context.

But too often, all workers have is the end product. Which means they end up with half the story, and not enough background to really grok the content.

Other Ideas Come Out of the Process

A rich conversation and debate around ideas and projects can become an innovation jam. As people jump in the fray to discuss something, inevitably other tangential ideas come flying out.

In an earlier post FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index, good discussion erupted out on FriendFeed (here, here). If that post was Point A, I’ve already written about Point B, which was an app built by felix to automatically calculate your likes compatibility index.

But there was another idea thrown off from the discussions: how well represented are women on FriendFeed and social media? Mark Trapp wrote Friendfeed Like Factor and the Gender Divide which put some numbers and thoughts to this question. Which got its own discussion going.

I’m quite sure an energetic conversation by engaged employees has the same effect – unplanned ideas come out of them.

Spread some innovation jam.

Deeper Understanding of Others’ Views and Knowledge

It’s funny to say, but I feel like I have a better read on some folks through FriendFeed than I did on people with whom I actually worked.

Why? Because work in some companies is fairly isolated. You may trade some emails, do some calls and attend status meetings. But the fertile soil of engagement is lacking. Aside from missing the benefits described above, employees miss the opportunity to learn more about one another.

Why does this matter? The better you understand your colleagues, the easier your job becomes. People develop instinctive ways of working, and a shorthand language built from prior interactions emerges. Long time employees do this, but it takes while. And new employees have to pick up the signals as best they can.

What I like about this approach is that employee social networks just emerge naturally via the interactions. A more formal social network approach isn’t needed.

Gimme Some FriendFeed Inside the Enterprise

If I could get a FriendFeed-like experience inside a company, I’d be thrilled. For all the reasons stated above. Plus it would just be fun.

I’ve said before that FriendFeed is a social network built around ideas. And the typical work for a lot of folks is also around ideas. Seems like there’s potential.

There would need to be some new features to make it the experience more pertinent to work versus play. But that’s a follow-up post.

Final Thoughts

As stated earlier, I’d like to see companies adopt ways to enable asynchronous conversations around ideas that are searchable, engaging and radiate greater benefits. Things like wikis are a good start as collaboration vehicles, but they lack the interaction aspect that has emerged as the killer feature of social media.

The nice thing is that new start-ups are popping up all the time. I look forward to seeing the ones that take in the next wave of innovation.

I’m @bhc3 on Twitter.

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Smart Social Media Marketing: Caleb Elston and Toluu

June 12, 2008 by 7 Comments

Interacting with bloggers called vital for business

Brice Wallace, Deseret News, June 7, 2008

Toluu released several new features on Wednesday. The features are cool, and are covered in another post on this blog. Which leads to the point of this post…

Caleb Elston did a masterful job of getting coverage for his fledging company Toluu. By himself, with no PR firm. How?

Caleb is a participant in social media. He’s established relationships and credibility with bloggers, and with others on FriendFeed and Twitter.

In a recent post, I asked Will Brands Figure Out FriendFeed? The idea is that rather than rely only on standard press releases and marketing campaigns, companies should look at engaging customers out in various social media, with a focus on FriendFeed. Establishing these deeper relationships pays dividends:

  • Reliable audience for updates
  • Viral distribution of company information
  • Customer advocates
  • Feedback from the market, with the ability to follow-up on questions/comments

Caleb has all of these advantages through his efforts in social media. How involved is he? On FriendFeed, he subscribes to 278 people, has 248 Comments and 244 Likes. On Twitter, he’s following 479  people and has 734 updates. In other words, he’s involved. Which is actually pretty amazing considering he has a day job on top of building out Toluu.

Yesterday, his involvement paid dividends. He reached out to bloggers the day before to let them know of an upcoming release for Toluu, and asked us if we wanted to cover it. Well, since I know him already, saying ‘yes’ was easy. He got eight different bloggers to write about the new release:

The combined Technorati Authority of those eight blogs is 872, which is like getting a top 5,000 blog to write about you. Many of the bloggers are active on FriendFeed, which combined with their existing subscribers, meant that a lot of people saw the news about the new features.

Caleb describes the payoff:

All I can say is wow. Yesterday was an amazing day for Toluu, you helped us shatter every metric we track. We had a record number of pageviews, visitors, signups, new feeds, connections made, invites requested, and time spent on the site. All I can say is thank you.

He even picked up technology celebrity Leo Laporte as a user. Said Leo, “I’m in dire need of a feed reset!”

Admittedly, as a small start-up with limited resources, this is all he could really do. He can’t crank up the PR, marketing and advertising machine.

But that doesn’t devalue the accomplishment. Caleb managed to get people interested in his company thanks to his active involvement in social media.

Big companies…are you listening?

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Smart+Social+Media+Marketing%3A+Caleb+Elston+and+Toluu%22&public=1

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Will Brands Figure Out FriendFeed?

June 10, 2008 by 3 Comments

No one wants a relationship with their mustard.

NeoAtOgilvy COO Greg Smith, via Kara Swisher at Boomtown

Two posts caught my attention. Kara Swisher has a nice post titled Social Ads Not Cutting the Mustard? In the post, she breaks down the issues that brands have in being part of the social media world. And Jeremiah Owyang hypothesizes about How Brands Will Use FriendFeed.

The two pieces do a good job of highlighting the challenge of social media for companies. Social media is authentic, it emerges from everyday people, it’s governed by its own community rules, it’s random and it’s an ongoing conversation. How do profit-oriented companies requiring measurable results and consistent formats deal with this?

The general thrust of companies’ social media efforts is to create enthusiasts who will turn around and do viral marketing on behalf of the company. Word of mouth (WOM) marketing. It is a big deal, and it would be wrong to suggest it doesn’t exist. It’s quite powerful when it happens.

But a problem with most WOM marketing is that it’s too dependent on big hits that catch the imagination of people. The fantastic YouTube video. The funny widget for Facebook and MySpace. The imaginative web page.

Those types of mega-hits are incredibly important, and are a requirement for every marketer’s toolkit. The problem is when a company’s social media strategy only relies on the big hits.

Jeremiah talks about how companies should engage users on FriendFeed:

The one caveat is that brands will need to be part of the discussion that happens among these social tools, as what’s really important is the people that are talking, debating, and discussing what your company is announcing. For those that get it wrong, no one will subscribe, no one will talk about it, no one will ‘like’ it and spread it to their network. So be active in the comments, conversations, and an open manner.

He lays out a good philosophy that companies should follow. Don’t simply rely on the big hits. Get out there and engage people. Become part of the community.

I’m wondering what exactly does a company’s participation on FriendFeed look like? Jeremiah points to Ford Motors as a company with one version of social media press releases. So how would Ford use FriendFeed?

To Do’s for Brands on FriendFeed

Create a Ford Motors room: Every company should have a destinaiton on FriendFeed. As an individual, my presence on FriendFeed is defined by subscribing – both by me and to me. A company should have a more permanent home than just being in a list of subscribers.

Find your initial audience: The everyone search is a good start. Start with people who are talking about your company, good or bad. Search on ‘mustang‘. Search on ‘F150‘. Search on ‘Ford Verve‘. Subscribe to these people.

Like and Comment: If Ford comes across someone’s interesting content, throw a Like their way. Jump in with some comments. Here are a couple examples.

First, there’s this Tweet:

Going to test drive F150 tonight. We must be crazy. Prius won’t pull horse trailer though.

Great opportunity for Ford here. In this case, someone from Ford could add a comment like, “Yeah, we made the F150 pretty powerful for those big jobs. I can get you set up with a special visit at your local dealership if you want.”

I’d also avoid laying the smack down on the Prius, tempting as it is for Ford. Criticism based purely on a profit motive is a fast way to undermine authenticity.

Next, here are some Flickr pictures of a ’67 Mustang:

Ford occupies a unique place in Americana, and this picture taps into that. Ford would definitely want to Like these Flckr photos. Add a comment too: “Those 67’s were classic cars. Takes you back to a different time, doesn’t it? We have several of them here in the Ford museum. One thing we’re realizing here is that people still love that style, and look for the new 2009 model to reflect a lot of what made that car great.”

See? Ford has engaged a person. The interaction caused the pictures to pop into others’ streams. And Ford got to plant a seed for what’s coming out later in the year.

Engage on topics that fall outside pure product: Establish a presence beyond just talking about specific products. It will help the company’s social media ‘cred’, and make it more interesting for people to follow. The downside? Your critics will find you, and you can get stuck in a nasty throwdown. So choose your topics carefully. Rising gas prices are a recurring topic on FriendFeed and other social media. A lot of people would want to know what Ford is doing in terms of gas-powered fuel efficiency, as well as in gas alternatives, such a hybrids.

This is a chance for Ford to blow it, or to shine.

Here’s what blowing it looks like: “We continue to believe that California’s efforts to enact higher gas mileage requirements are wrong.” Say that, and you’re just itching for a fight. People will no longer focus on Ford the car company. They’ll focus on Ford the antagonist.

Here’s what shining on FriendFeed looks like. “We see the market segmented into those for whom gas mileage is important, and those for whom capacity and power are important. And our view is that the fuel efficiency segment is growing fast, and we are responding to that.”

Stick with it: This type on engagement is a long term play, with benefits that will be realized over years rather than a quarter. There will be direct benefits as consumers learn more about companies. And companies will get a lot of publicity for their efforts until it becomes mainstream and everyone is doing it.

Final Thoughts

I’m no brand expert, but these are my thoughts on how companies could use FriendFeed, and other social media as well. Done right, this type of marketing could emerge as an important part of  companies’ engagement with the market.

What do you think?

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22will+brands+figure+out+friendfeed%22&public=1

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Three Big Questions Facing FriendFeed

June 8, 2008 by 6 Comments

I write about FriendFeed. A lot. Someone told me they wondered if I was employed there. Nope, just really enjoying the service.

Then I see a couple of bigger names in the online world, Robert Seidman and Steve Rubel, expressing their view that FriendFeed feels like it’s going to be the next big thing.

And I realize I’m not the only one with great enthusiasm. It’s growing.

As FriendFeed continues to acquire new users, innovate and roll out new features, it’s inevitable that some big decisions will need to be made. I want to discuss three of them here. Shall we?

1. How Will FriendFeed Balance Signal, Discovery and Noise?

This question really hits on two fundamental elements of the social media experience:

  • Distribution of information
  • Consumption of information

Managing information is a BIG deal. It’s hard to get the balance right – when do users really need a piece of info, when are they in the mood for a bit of discovery and at what point do they tune out because of information overload?

Google’s success was in recognizing the need for better information access, a process they continue to refine and improve. The thing with Google is that you search when you have a defined need. User intent is known. It’s what makes Google’s advertising so successful.

FriendFeed has a bigger challenge. Intentions vary by person. By hour. There’s time the river of content needs to deliver a hard dose of signal. Other times, you need a break from some work you’re doing, and you want a bit of discovery. But above all, please recognize what I consider to be noise!

So FriendFeed has to figure out the user intention, a burden that Google doesn’t have.

They’re off to a great start with these:

  • You choose the people to whom you subscribe, providing the first cut on topics you’ll see
  • Excellent Hide function
  • Rooms to isolate discussions around topics
  • Ability to view top content by likes, comments and other signals

This will be an ongoing war for FriendFeed, particularly as the service grows beyond its information junkie user base.

2. How Much of a Social Network Does FriendFeed Want to Be?

FriendFeed states their mission as follows:

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

A simple goal. And yet, early users of FriendFeed are finding the social network aspects of FriendFeed to be compelling. I personally have established a completely different network of people on FriendFeed from what I have on Facebook or LinkedIn. I didn’t just port over my friends from those services, I established new connections.

When I was training for my first marathon back in 2003, I regularly participated over on Runner’s World message board. A group of us were running the California International Marathon in Sacramento, and an online bond formed. We conversed on the message board, and decided to meet up in Sacramento. How’d we do it? One guy posted his disguised email address, and we all emailed him. We then did the email thing to coordinate.

FriendFeed is above that level of social networking right now, but not by a whole lot.

FriendFeed has the potential to be a very powerful social network, one rivaling Facebook and LinkedIn. Why? Facebook is your network from school. LinkedIn is your network from work. FriendFeed is your network based on stuff that interests you. That’s what makes it so powerful.

Remember the interest in felix’s FriendFeed Likes Compatibility Calculator? People were really curious about who they match up with based on shared interests.

A few things come to mind as “best of” elements of social networks:

  • Direct messaging (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all provide this)
  • Profile page – express yourself, complements your content, Likes and Comments
  • Status – for those times when you’re just not around or you need to get personal

Want to take it further? I can see FriendFeed becoming a more robust professional network than LinkedIn. You like all those comments and content? Maybe you’d look at that person as a potential hire. How about calendaring? Coordinate events, and it’d be a real nice complement to the Rooms.

How far does FriendFeed want to go in social networking?

3. How Will FriendFeed Make Money?

Ah, the money question. It’s inevitable and ultimately must be addressed to justify the venture capital.

I can see two possibilities for making money at this very early stage in the company’s history:

  • Advertising (duh…)
  • Business uses

Social media advertising has potential, but is not without its issues.

FriendFeed has a a few things to address and going for it when it comes to advertising. Users’ affection for the Refresh function means a lot of page views, but how much time will they spend on the ads. There’s a field of white space off the right, so real estate for ads won’t be a problem.

But FriendFeed does have two good weapons in its arsenal when it comes to advertising:

  1. A search function with a ton of potential (and search is the killer advertising feature)
  2. A mountain of data about what users’ interests are

As for business uses, my first thought when I saw the Rooms feature was that it could be a great thing for companies to use. Employees can trade thoughts on ideas and projects via Rooms. In fact, that’s how the FriendFeed guys use Rooms:

It started when we wanted a better way to share feature ideas and product plans with each other here at FriendFeed

I can also see media companies adding Rooms functionality to their sites. A much richer way to let readers discuss content than the current commenting systems.

Final Thoughts

I’ve written plenty about FriendFeed, and I’ll probably write more in the future. Partly because it’s such a compelling site for me. As a full participant, I can see a lot of stuff going on. And it doesn’t hurt that the site is getting hot in the blogosphere.

But there’s something deeper here as well. In FriendFeed, you can see some of the bigger issues that all social media have to deal with. For instance, I’d written a series of posts about the noise issue on FriendFeed. My most recent post stepped away from being FriendFeed-specific, and took a look at the broader issue of signal vs discovery in social media. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb took it a step further with a great post Why Online “Noise” Is Good for You, pulling in scientific studies on the value of noise and discovery.

FriendFeed is tackling some meaty issues, as described above. Since they’ve got traction, a talented team, an innovative spirit and an attentive audience, their efforts to address the big questions will be a terrific study of the larger social media realm.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22three+big+questions+facing+friendfeed%22&public=1

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Social Media Consumption: You Want Signal or Discovery?

June 5, 2008 by 17 Comments

In yesterday’s post A Definition of Noise, I talked about two types of social media consumers. Those who have a strong desire to receive only signal (signalists) and those who are looking for stuff outside their own interests (discoverers).

I thought it would be interesting to explore this a little further. Shall we break it down a little more?

Where are you on this table?

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22social+media+consumption+you+want+signal+or+discovery%22&public=1

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Fostering Innovation: Lots of Little Fires or One Inferno?

June 3, 2008 by 9 Comments

An area that I find really interesting is role that social media can play in improving innovation. Before the advent of social media applications, innovation needed two primary drivers:

  1. Someone with the passion and time to see it through
  2. The luck that someone’s offline social sphere picked up on an idea and helped spread it

Today, innovation can occur much more easily than before, courtesy of social media. An idea can be disseminated and discussed far beyond (i) the originating person’s social sphere; and (ii) their level of energy to pursue it.

Which brings me back to the ongoing discussion about distributed conversations. Is innovation the product of lots of little conversational fires or one raging talk inferno? The answer is ‘both’, but I think people have undervalued the potential in lots of little fires.

The Myth of the Iconic Genius

Recently, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article for The New Yorker, In the Air – Who says big ideas are rare? The piece examines the history of innovation, with Alexander Graham Bell’s role in inventing the telephone as a case study. Turns out Bell wasn’t the only one working on the telephone. Elisha Gray also had a working telephone at the same time. As Gladwell describes it, this is but one example of what science historians call “multiples” – cases of simultaneous invention by completely independent persons. It happened in calculus, evolution, decimal fractions, and many, many other fields.

After discussing the findings of two researchers, Gladwell puts context to the common occurrence of “multiples” in history:

For Ogburn and Thomas, the sheer number of multiples could mean only one thing: scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place.

In other words, it’s a fallacy to think that innovation only channels through one singular genius. Which brings us back to this idea that distributed conversations are a bad thing.

The Value of Lots of Little Fires

Lets use innovation inside the enterprise as an example. An employee comes up with an idea. Not a perfect idea, perhaps not a fully formed idea. But an idea that’s got some shine to it. I hope that sounds plausible to you if you work inside a corporation. It rings true to me.

Assume the company has a good platform for this employee to propagate it. She blogs the idea on some internal web application. Other people pick up on the idea. Now stop here for second.

If her idea is to gain traction, what makes the most sense? Employees from other departments, divisions, countries all interacting with this person they don’t know? Or employees thinking through the idea with their own social circle?

I argue that employees should be free to discuss the idea how they want and with whom they want. Why? It goes back to the observation of Ogburn and Thomas – invention is often the product of current broader thinking and prior discoveries. Inside a company, this likely means an emerging issue or opportunity that employees are starting to sense.

Little fires become big fires because they burn areas that are dry and ready to ignite. In the same way, letting employees hold their own conversations is a great way to find those patches of dry tinder that are ready for your idea. Some conversations will snuff out due to lack of good kindling. But other conversations will grow as the sparks from the originating fire find lots of wood to burn.

And that’s the importance of distributed conversations. You never know from where the energy and support for your idea is going to come.

Don’t Underestimate the Value and Motivations of People

So little conversational fires are important for building a buzz inside your company. What else do they do?

  • Provide different perspectives from outside your sphere
  • Motivate employees to care about your idea

In our company example, lets say the originator of the idea is in Field Operations. She knows the customers well and has a good sense of what they’re feeling. So she writes up her idea in a blog post.

But her idea would affect a lot of different groups: product, operations, development, finance, marketing, sales, etc. Each of these departments will have a unique understanding of the idea’s requirements. Would you force all of these different perspectives through that one blog? Of course not.

Stepping outside the employee motif for a second, I think it’s important to understand that people have different experiences, interests and talents. And they have their existing peers with whom they talk. When it comes to discussing a newly presented idea, it’s unnatural to force them to abandon these existing connections and prior conversations. If that means the originating author has to chase down the conversation, so be it.

Stepping back into the employee motif, the other value of little fires is the motivational aspect. If you want an idea to take hold, you have to relinquish some control of it. If you don’t don’t, you’re going to run right into a wall of indifference.

This sounds bad to say – aren’t employees only interested in the greater company good? Maybe. But lets not make that the only basis for the success of an idea. Acknowledge that people work hard and have ambitions. The little fires of distributed conversations give them ownership of the idea within their particular social sphere. They can point out the flaws, come up with improvements and relate the idea to previous thinking.

Forcing everyone back through the originating blog post loses this dynamic, and you’ve just killed the personal motivation of some people to participate.

But Isn’t This All Messy?

Yes. It is.

Proper recognition for the idea will be an issue. Going back to Malcolm Gladwell’s article, he lists a number of people who came up with an idea at the same time as more famous inventors and discoverers. But they didn’t become household names (e.g. Elisha Gray).

Also, as different groups work through an idea, fiefdoms might emerge. Different groups laying claim to having the best vision and plan for the idea. Who’s right and who should drive it forward?

But here’s the good news – the idea got traction. Senior managers are well-paid to figure out the other issues (I’ll pause here for your Dilbert snicker…).

Now if the company’s blogging software is any good, the original author of the idea will be recognized. And more than likely, our heroine was involved in several of the distributed conversations that occurred. She is not divorced from the whole innovation process.

Final Thoughts

Distributed conversations are an important component of gaining traction for innovative ideas. They enable a greater percentage of ideas to come to fruition than in traditional company settings where dialogue is limited to your own social sphere.

I’ve used life inside the enterprise to describe why distributed conversations have value. I think a lot of the same motivations apply out on the world wide web as well. If you’re a blogger and you think you’ve got a good idea or insight, recognize that you most likely were not the only person thinking that way. So don’t be too bothered when little conversational fires start elsewhere – your spark landed in some dry tinder.

Grab some marshmallows and join the fun.

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Fostering+Innovation%3A+Lots+of+Little+Fires+or+One+Inferno%3F%22&public=1

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FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Index: Case Study in Value of Distributed Conversations

May 29, 2008 by 6 Comments

By keeping comments distributed, or decentralized, more than one discussion is able to take place. New ideas are likely to be heard since readers often start with a blank slate and are more likely to participate.

Shey Smith, introspective snapshots, The Case For Distributed Conversations

Today, a great example of the value of distributed conversations took place. What started as a blog post here ended up with three different developers coming up with innovative new scripts that FriendFeeders were digging. And it all happened because of distributed conversations, not despite them.

The very smart and in-tune Fred Wilson wrote a piece yesterday decrying the distribution of conversations all over the Web, including on FriendFeed. Mathew Ingram followed up with a concurring blog post. I understand where they’re coming from, but I think they overlook the value of distributed conversations.

What I’d like to do is briefly describe the action today, and then point out how distributed conversations made innovation possible today.

FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Index Calculators

Wednesday night, I posted a piece titled FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index. The post reported some number crunching I did to figure out who most often Liked the same things that I do. The idea was to see what other FriendFeeders shared the same interests. At the end of the post, I made a request for someone to automate the analysis.

From this post, two separate conversations emerged. The RSS feed for the blog post hit FriendFeed (Original Post). And Louis Gray shared it on Google Reader (Shared Post), which started a second conversation.

What happened? There were three different places where conversations were happening: on this blog and on two different items in FriendFeed. And it resulted in three separate developers coming up with solutions.

Yuvi

Yuvi, a 17-year old wunderkind who does amazing stats analysis, was interested in automating this analysis. He posted the same comment on all three locations: “I could automate this…if friendfeed fixed this bug.” Yuvi was concerned about a bug in FriendFeed that won’t allow you to go more than 11 pages back in your history.

His comment generated responses in FriendFeed on both the Original Post and on the Shared Post.

Original Post:

  • Phil Glockner: “Yuvi, does that bug exist when doing queries against the API?”
  • Yuvi: “Yes, it exists in the API too.”

Shared Post:

  • Shey: Yuvi, could you automate it up to page 11?
  • Hutch: Does the limit of going back beyond page 11 risk the script failing? Or does it limit the data collected?
  • Yuvi: @Hutch: Limits data collected.
  • Yuvi:@Shey: Well, I could… But, it’ll be of limited use, no?
  • Bwana: I say do it now so when they do fix it, it’ll be ready, plus there seems to be an interest
  • Shey: @Yuvi Limited yes, but I think 11 pages of data is of some use for analysis of recent data
  • Cyndy: Yuvi, I’m not sure it’s a bug. I think it’s a limit that they have set. Since the variable is passed in the URL, if you try to go past that number of posts manually, it still won’t go. Could be that they are only pulling from cache?
  • Yuvi: @Cyndy: Well, they’ve been mum on this – so I don’t really know. But, if even *I* can’t access my old stuff, isn’t that wrong on at least “some” level?
  • Benjamin Golub: I don’t think it’s a bug either. I feel that there DB sharding might be setup such that it is very very quick to pull recent data.
  • Bwana: Well if there is a limit imposed, pages after 11 shouldn’t even be shown. It’s a bug of some kind either way.
  • Yuvi: @Benjamin: Yep, agree on that, but there should be ‘some’ way to get the older data out, no?
  • Yuvi: Just repeating – the API has the same limit in place. Script ready anyway – First Target – LouisGray 😉

So in that sequence, you see that fragmented conversation, away from the blog post itself, resulted in Yuvi creating a script to determine who shares your Likes.

And Yuvi blogged about it, linking to my blog post and even mentioning me by name. Everything a blogger could want.

Do you see what I mean Fred and Mathew?

Ole Begemann

On Louis’s Shared Post, a second developer Ole Begemann weighed in:

  • Ole Begemann: I’ve written a Python script that does this, too (for practice). Interestingly, Phil is no. 12 on my list of Louis Gray’s most compatible likers. If there’s interest, I’ll try to wrap it up on a web page (it’s command line at the moment) and publish it.
  • Hutch: @Ole – Yeah, I’d like to have a page where you could see these results.
  • Ole Begemann: I’ll get around to it Hutch. It might take me a few days. It’s my first try as a Python programmer. 😉

A second developer came up with a script for this. Again, via conversations that happened entirely away from the originating blog.

felix

Finally, back on my Original Post in FriendFeed, a developer named felix added this comment:

“I just created a little javascript to go and grab the last 30 likes of anyone and do a basic calculation. Have a couple more features I want to add, but no more time today – what do y’all think? http://is.gd/nLc“

That link goes to a blog post, where Ole links back to my original blog post. Again, as a blogger who wrote something I thought might be interesting, this is all really good stuff.

None of it occurred on my blog. And it doesn’t bother me in the least! in fact, check out felix’s blog post. You’ll see that he, Yuvi and Ole are having a conversation about FriendFeed API limits.

Why the Distribution of the Conversation Made a Difference

Three points to make here.

1. Go where the conversations are

If I’d been hung up on forcing everyone back to my blog for comments, this likely would not have been as successful as it turned out. FriendFeed offers a dead simple commenting function that makes it incredibly easy to comment. People find it easy to interact around content, rather than everyone having to travel from blog to blog to hold conversations.

Some blogger removed his RSS from FriendFeed recently, because he didn’t like all the FriendFeed comments along with it. Really? I remember the story, but can’t find the link to his blog. Seriously.

2. Connect to people outside your blog subscriber base

Digg, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed…all of these give exposure to your blog outside of those who subscribe to it or bookmark it. And when conversations about your blog occur on these venues, you’re getting vital exposure.

Make no mistake about this. A Like or a Digg or a Stumble is great. But if you really want to attract people to your blog post, comments are king. They tell people that the post is interesting, and that they better go read to get in on the discussion.

Louis Gray has a bigger, and different, community than I do. So his share of the post on Google Reader, and the subsequent conversation, attracted people who might never have bothered with my post.

felix, who developed the really cool app where you can see who shares your Likes, does not subscribe to me in FriendFeed, nor does he subscribe to my blog. I looked at his subscriptions, and we do have a number of FriendFeeders in common including Louis. I presume that’s how he found his way to the conversation about the blog post. Would he have been attracted to the blog without the conversation going on inside FriendFeed? Unlikely.

Embrace distributed conversations. They are free advertising for your blog.

3. Use the everyone search feature

Have people figured out this one yet? On FriendFeed, you can run a search for your blog post title in the ‘everyone’ tab. It can be a little hectic, but also fascinating. Click here for the everyone search for the FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index post.

Note that not only will you see all the different instances of my original blog post. You’ll see Yuvi’s post as well as Thomas Hawk’s post on the subject. I like seeing comments on those related posts as well.

As a blogger, I get a lot of value out of seeing who liked the blog post, and all the conversations among the different tribes. They help me improve.

Final Thoughts

Would that blog post have resulted in three separate scripts being developed if conversations only happened on the blog? No. At least not for me. If you’ve got a huge subscriber base like Fred Wilson or Mathew Ingram, it might.

But if you’re small fry, the distribution of conversations provides enormous value. Now let me go see who shares my Likes on FriendFeed…

*****

See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22FriendFeed+%E2%80%98Likes%E2%80%99+Index%3A+Case+Study+in+Value+of+Distributed+Conversations%22&public=1

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