When Is Linkedin Integrating with Foursquare?

I was traveling to NYC and CT this past weekend and using Foursquare, Facebook, and Yelp to check-in at various locations. I know I am a bit of an outlier when it comes to location-based apps, but I was wishing that Linkedin was integrated with Foursquare.

I assume there are a fair amount of users like me who separate their professional and personal world between Linkedin and Facebook instead of having all your online connections on Facebook. Currently, when I check in on Foursquare I usually turn-on the Twitter notification and selectively turn-on the Facebook notification. Then I thought it would be nice to not only selectively inform my Facebook friends about my Foursquare check-ins, but also to do the same with my professional contacts on Linkedin.

If Linkedin wants to be the professional alternative to Facebook, I believe they should start providing such alternatives.

Are Q&A startups a threat to Google?

My tech op-ed article posted this morning at Venturebeat, "Are Q&A startups a threat to Google?", and was reposted at the NYTimes site here. [Update] Also Techmeme-ed here, which is cool since it's my favorite news aggregator.

Most of my interview transcript with Ro Choy, CEO of Peerpong, and Charlie Cheever, Co-founder of Quora, was edited out, so below are some of their additional insights:

When did the light bulb for Quora go off for you?

Charlie Cheever: Over the last few years, there have been a bunch of services that have let people put more and more content onto the Internet -- Facebook and Flickr for photos, Twitter for link sharing, status updates, etc. -- but we didn't see any great way for people to share the knowledge that they accumulate over their lives, so we wanted to make a place for that. There were other things as well. For example, I like blogging but I didn't always know what people wanted me to write about. One thing we've tried to build Quora to provide is a good set of prompts from other people that you can respond to.

When you looked at this opportunity, what were the comparables? Yahoo! Answers, Google, or others?

Charlie Cheever: We thought about all those things but we’ve mostly been focused on making a product to fill a need we saw in the world. I do think there are a lot of things that people want to know that you can't find easily with a search engine because the information either isn't on the web yet, or isn't there in a form that you can easily consume. This is especially true with long tail content.

Ro Choy: Our focus and good corollary is Google. Google can effectively find content through use of pagerank. Can we do that for people? If you believe the vast amount of knowledge doesn’t exist online yet, then if you could ultimately categorize an index of content, publish it, and make it searchable…. If you could do this for 50 million, 100 million people, or half a billion people -- that was the Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Mark Zuckerberg in Forbes 400? Number 35? Please.

Very irresponsible of Forbes to list Mark Zuckerberg in the Forbes 400 when it's still paper wealth. When did Forbes start listing people's wealth based on private company valuations? Look at Slide or RockYou a couple years ago and now? Ning a few years back and now? I'm not saying Zuckerberg won't be a billionaire, but his company hasn't been acquired or gone public, and I hardly consider secondary market valuations valid.

Seriously, do eyeballs and traffic mean that much to you, Forbes? Obvious answer.


UPDATE: Gigaom's Matthew Ingram has a post related to this, "Is Facebook Worth $33 Billion? It’s Complicated"

My quick comment on his post:

I don’t believe you took the middle road or even lean towards saying Sharespost and others are valid markets. Would you invest your 401K into it? Your nestegg? Seriously. I would hardly call secondary markets for startup shares a valid market or even try to compare it to public stock marets with millions more data, infrastructure, researchers and participants. Come on!

So you would agree with the valuation of Slide or Ning a few years ago? Maybe. Would you now? No. Valuation of private companies is not a science but an art. That’s startup 101 stuff.

You should really analyze how valuations were created for various startup companies and then explain how any startup’s valuation is justified as much as Google, Cisco, Apple, etc. It’s a frenzy that valued Slide at $500 million not some analysis based on revenue, cashflow or industry comps.

“Hmm, you guys are pretty hot, so I’ll agree with that $100 valuation…”

“5 engineers from Google and 10 signed deals with Fortune 100 companies… (and 3 competing term sheets) okay, $50 million pre-money for your Series B sounds fair.”

Mainstream Users Confused ReadWriteWeb with Facebook

HatTip To Sam N. This is pretty funny. Thousands of people came to the tech blog, ReadWriteWeb, thinking it was a new Facebook interface:

"The phenomenon came about as mainstream audiences were directed to our story via Google search for 'Facebook login'. While RWW's regular tech readers found the mistake amusing, it perhaps speaks to the fact that there are huge variables in user interaction."

"Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login" ReadWriteWeb

"We're Still Not Facebook: Lessons from Late Adopters" ReadWriteWeb

Facebook Crossing the Ethical Lines

Last week I received Jason Calacanis' mass email regarding Facebook's change in their privacy policy, "Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?".

It's spot-on, amusing and a must read for all of you social media addicts and startup entrepreneurs out there.

Also a good follow up op-ed is by digital identity guru, Kaliya Halmin, over at ReadWriteWeb, "Facebook's Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users". An excerpt:

I think Facebook believes it can do anything with users because it believes they will never leave because "all their friends are there". Friendster was this arrogant too. Facebook blocks users from scraping their friends' data out of the service, which would allow them to easily find and reconnect with them elsewhere. It claims it prevents us from getting this information to protect our privacy. Really, it is all about locking users in.

I wonder how many more times they will get strip us down, leaving our familiar social clothes and underwear on the floor, and leaving us socially nude.

I think it is unethical and I agree with the concern that Jason Calacanis raises about how this will affect other Internet companies. "Facebook's reckless behavior is... simultaneously making users distrust the Internet and bringing the attention of regulators." This change will affect all of us working on building the new techno-social architecture of our society via the web.

Facebook Cufflinks... Only for Geeks?

I assume only coders from Facebook would love these :)

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

My op-ed on the real-time web is up at Mashable. HatTip to Adrian Chan, Dave S. and John S. for providing their insights on this piece. Check it out, comment and retweet if you can :)

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.

Real-Time Collaboration is Ripening
Real-time will play a major role in the future of online collaboration. We’ve seen all the hype around the new Google Wave platform, as well as the growth of Twitter and Twitter-like communications (such as Facebook status). On the business side, SAP’s Gravity, a prototype of real-time collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave, is a good example. But I see this as the tip of the iceberg.

Companies that are more efficient have an advantage whether within their walls or with their customers. Imagine being able to make real-time changes with your colleague in another city and graphic designer at your local Kinko’s to finalize a presentation and print it hours before your meeting. Or working with your manufacturer in Nanjing, China on changes to your new BBQ grill design and seeing if it’s possible in real-time. Or game developers in Korea and Dallas story boarding a new video game concept in a new real-time game development application. There is massive potential for real-time collaboration across almost every discipline, and I believe there are an incredible amount of exciting possibilities here... (full post)

Is your product a “must have” or “nice to have”?

My tech op-ed is up at VentureBeat. Check it out:

IS YOUR PRODUCT A "MUST HAVE" OR "NICE TO HAVE"?

I also posted the version that was unedited by VentureBeat's editors at NowPublic. This original piece is chopped into two articles at VentureBeat with the second being published next week. This one is longer and I don't think they appreciated my reference to "Something About Mary" :)

IS YOUR STARTUP A "NICE TO HAVE" OR "MUST HAVE"?
With the downturn in the economy, numerous people are talking about starting a new business or company. Whether it’s a technology startup or new restaurant idea, I’ve heard of more and more people meeting to brainstorm and working to bring their ideas to fruition.

Whether you’re in the idea generation stage or have already started to build your new thing, you should take a breath and reassess whether the concept still holds your initial level of enthusiasm. Can still envision 30 million visits during the first month? Are you still as enthusiastic as you were when you came up with it? Do you believe your product or service is a “must have” and not just a “nice to have”? If not, step back – being a successful entrepreneur requires high – some say insane – levels of dedication to your idea.

There’s a great scene in the movie “Something About Mary” where Ben Stiller’s character, Ted, picks up a hitchhiker who is a psychotic killer and budding entrepreneur:

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?

Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7. 
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.

Comedy aside, how familiar does this pitch sound to all you entrepreneurs or intrepreneurs out there? The reality is that the hitchhiker’s idea was a “nice to have” and wouldn’t have threatened the well-marketed 8-minute Abs video even with his insane level of dedication. Of course, he’s not similar to your pitch about your product, but does it remind you of your friends’ new thing? They all hope to have the next awesome product that will change the world, or at least get crazy traffic on Facebook. The driver of sales or user adoption? It should be as obvious as a 7 minute workout being more attractive than an 8 minute workout, right?

Most entrepreneurs are too close to their topic to realize where they really are on the user adoption curve. As an entrepreneur, you’re hoping that the jump from what Geoffrey Moore describes as “innovators” and “early adopters” to the “early majority” is short, but unfortunately, in reality, sales and user adoption rates are about as easy to predict as blockbuster movies.

Must Have, Meh, or What Does It Do Again?
For entrepreneurs, one method to frame the product development process is whether your product is a “nice to have” or a “must have.” Here, “must have” is loosely defined and can be identified by answering questions like:

• Is it easy for people to recognize that your product will save them a significant amount of time?
• Or a significant amount of money?
• Do people quickly see how much better it plays their music?
• How much better it allows them to access data?

For example, back in 2005, when I was working on my startup GoingOn Networks, we identified a trend of blogging and social networking entering the corporate world. We built a private-label social media platform, thinking that companies would soon recognize this trend and purchase our software-as-service platform.

In hindsight, the first two years were painful. A long education process, working on quelling fears of “opening up” to customers, and another long sales cycle. We were hoping our market chasm would be the neighborhood creek, but we found out it was more like the Grand Canyon. Plus, by 2007, about thirty competitors were also targeting this market. I realized that our social media platform wasn’t a “must have” and maybe not even a “nice to have” during our early years because our target market first needed to be greatly educated on the benefits of social media. It felt as if more often than not, sales meetings went like this:

Me: “Open, two-way communication with your customers is more effective…”
Potential customer: “Like a walkie-talkie?”
Me: [Sigh]

For consumer plays where users don’t pay for the product, the “must have” bar might be set a bit lower than for paid products, but it’s still a significant hurdle for the early majority to spend their time (even if it doesn’t cost money) on something new of which the benefits aren’t obvious, easy, or quick to grasp.

So how do you figure out whether your insanely great idea is likely to find customers and become a “must have”? When you’re trying to identify “must haves” in the market, consider these techniques:

Trend Surfing. Extrapolate a current technology, trend, or “must have.” What is the next product in the evolution of an industry? Consider the evolution from the Walkman to MP3 players to the iPod. Or look at what emerging technologies will create new market opportunities. For example, Qualcomm and its CDMA technology. Or exercise trends that created a whole new market of Pilates videos and trainers. My personal favorite is the rise in popularity of specialty bacon, where I can also plug my “Ode to Bacon.”

There are numerous examples, but the reality is that it’s difficult to predict and ride such trends. I learned this from GoingOn, and my prior startup, HeyAnita, when voice recognition technology was hot. With competitors such as Tellme and BeVocal, our space raised over $300 million in 2000, but quickly faded a few years later when users didn’t widely adopt a voice-controlled interface.

Twitter seems to have hit the right wave on the trend from blogging to micro-blogging. Initially, it was just an echo chamber of Silicon Valley people tweeting to each other, but now even major media outlets such as CNN, ABC, and ESPN see communicating in 140 characters as a “must have.” Like Twitter, if you do catch a trend wave, it swells, and you execute well, then you could be golden, with a profitable tech company or the best-selling line of Pilates videos on your hands.

Identifying a Market Gap. Where in the market is there an underserved need? Is there a place in the market that a taste is not being met? Chipotle filled a desire for fast casual Mexican food. Netflix let people easily rent obscure movies and keep them as long as they wanted without late fees. Meebo met the demand for a single, unified IM platform. What element is missing in a market – one that you know and are passionate about – that you believe you can fill as an entrepreneur?

For instance, back in the old days before the majority of malware came from websites and links to them, there was an opportunity for different kinds of anti-malware products. Brian Kellner, now Newsgator’s VP of Products, gave me some interesting insights into his days at anti-spyware company Webroot in the 1990s: “Webroot was one of the first two companies to release an enterprise anti-spyware product at a time when Internet Explorer had a lot of vulnerabilities and anti-virus companies didn’t catch spyware. The product was tremendously successful because it really hit the pain avoidance and laziness needs.”

But as much as Webroot tried to make deployment and management of the solution easy, when both anti-virus offerings and browser security got better, the cost of owning and running a dedicated anti-spyware solution became unattractive. “The pain level dropped significantly as anti-virus companies added adequate anti-spyware protection and it was much easier to just run the anti-virus software alone,” says Kellner.

So, for a while, Webroot was a “must have.” But when other, possibly bigger, companies start tapping into the Market Gap you found and have been filling, you need to find other ways to remain a “must have.” For example, by trying to extrapolate to the next logical “must have” in your market (Trend Surfing), or by making sure your product keeps something attractively unique about it, or is just clearly the best of its kind.

Building a Better Mousetrap. What product category is doing well, but could be done even better? Do you have an idea for something that will clearly be the best of its kind? IKEA did it for the budget-conscious furniture retail market. Zappos.com turned shoe shopping into a very convenient, easy, low-pressure experience. What features are missing that could be implemented and allow a new player to change the market? Friendster to MySpace and Facebook. MySpace and Facebook provided more value that simply connecting with friends through music and then third-party applications.

In speaking with Brian Rakowski, former lead product manager for Google’s Gmail product and current Product Management Director for its Chrome browser, he explained how he led the launches for these two products and how to make them better than any of the competitive products already out there: “Both Google Chrome and Gmail were new entrants in existing spaces so we spent a lot of time getting to know the market-leading products in their categories and identifying the biggest user pain points. For webmail, it was small storage quotas and clunky, inefficient interfaces. For browsers, it was general instability and unresponsiveness, especially on advanced webpages.” Google succeeded nicely with both of these, with Gmail surpassing Youtube earlier this year as the second-most-visited Google property and Chrome gaining just under 3% marketshare after one year. Rakowski concludes, “In the end, the best way to test whether you have a “must have” product is to threaten to take the prototype away from your early users. If they don’t riot, start again.”

Brian has a great insight here. Would users of Microsoft’s Vista have rioted if it had been taken away? No, there probably would have been celebrations throughout office buildings all over the world. What about Segway after all its hype? Maybe only mall cops would have grumbled.

Like the story of Webroot and anti-spyware becoming part of anti-virus solutions, the Building A Better Mousetrap category also brings up the importance of sustainability. How do you maintain being a “must have” in your market? During the 1990s, my favorite search engine was Alta Vista, but it didn’t maintain its “must have” status and gave way to Inktomi, which eventually gave way to Google. Google has been maintaining its “must have” status by not only staying on top of the search algorithm game, but also by offering superior or extremely competitive complementary products and services to its users: Adsense and Adwords for advertising, and nicely integrated apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs that make it easy to make Google your default online place to get things done. (Yet even Google has had its share of failures or incompletes such as Google Lively, Froogle, Checkout, and Spreadsheets.)

Finally, with all three of these techniques for identifying a potential “must have” opportunity – Trend Surfing, Identifying a Market Gap, and Building a Better Mousetrap – keep regularly asking yourself “is mine a “must have” product?” questions like the ones listed earlier. And of course make sure you’re still insanely excited about your own idea most days of the week – because if you’re not excited, it’ll be hard to make others think of your product as a can’t-live-without-it “must have.” But hopefully, these techniques and examples are giving you some extra inspiration on how to get to the next step in your new great idea.

Social Media Revolution

One of the better videos that provides an overview, facts and insights into how social media has changed our world.

Portable Social Graphs Imagining Their Potential (FB Connect)

Presents the potential of portable social graphs with Facebook Connect as the primary example. Good presentation by Razorfish's Jesse Pickard.

Portable Social Graphs Imagining Their Potential (FB Connect)

View more documents from Bernard Moon.

Facebook Stop Running Egg Donation Ads!

The Center on Bioethics & Culture's campaign against egg donation ads on Facebook:

"It has come to our attention that Young Women on Facebook are being targeted with ads asking them to "donate" their eggs. Egg "donation" has less to do with donation and sadly more to do with exploitation of women's body. While offering large sums of money, young women are enticed to sell their eggs. Currently in the U.S. there is absolutely no monitoring, tracking or follow-up of young egg donors. And it is a fact that egg donation carries risks! Short terms risks of infection, stroke, bleeding, and myriad symptoms related to Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. Even, in rare instances - death. Longer term risks of cancers are documented in the medical literature as well as negative effects on future fertility."

Join the Facebook group here!

One story on this medical scam, "Woman X: My Story as an Egg Donor" by Woman X

GoingOn Social Media Platform is the Love Child of Blackboard + Facebook

The online education platform built by GoingOn, my old software company, gets a review from UPenn's student newspaper:

Open Learning Commons combines elements of Blackboard and Facebook

The love child of Blackboard and Facebook has a name - the Open Learning Commons.

The new platform prototype, launched by the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, allows interested people within and outside the Penn community to participate in classroom activities from the Web.

The first class covers global environmental sustainability and combines coursework with social networking.

Led by Political Science professor Donald Kettl, the course involves not only 14 Penn students, but also international university students and anyone interested in "a flavor of what's going on at Penn in the classroom," program developers Lisa Minetti and Jennifer Maden said.

"The students are doing a real-world, real-time project, focused on framing an American approach to the next round of climate change policy," Kettl wrote in an e-mail.

Marni Baker, the program director, originally conceived the idea after fruitlessly searching for an ideal platform to combine "private interactions with the students" with YouTube lectures, discussion forums and a blog, all open to "wider audiences."... (full article)

You can visit the Global Environmental Sustainability Collaborative site here.

"Love child of Blackboard + Facebook" is a good description for this vertical Dave, Jon and team are working hard at leading.

25 Things Meme From Mernit

I just found out today that Susan Mernit has been tracking various "25 Random Things About Me" lists from her Facebook contacts and the blogosphere. (Thanks, Susan, for the add.)

Pretty cool how this Facebook chain note has spilled over to the blogosphere. She has about 20 listed here and more on other posts.

25 Random Things About Me

A popular Facebook chain note has been going around and I finally caved in and wrote my response. I decided to post it here for your amusement and to show that I'm not a completely stale, boring blogger:) Some of it is best understood in the context of my friends since I primarily connect with people I know in Facebook, and I made some edits here for favorable public consumption :)

The rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

1. Over the past year, when I go to McDonalds alone, I order a BigMac, Filet-O-Fish, and Southern Style Chicken (their new sandwich is magic). No fries. If I'm not that hungry I'll get a cheeseburger instead of the BigMac. When I go with Christine, I order a BigMac and maybe a Filet-O-Fish if the mood is right.

2. During college, my father got into a juice kick and made some pretty horrible drinks with his juicer (e.g. beets, lettuce, celery, and maybe an apple). I came back during a break and my brother warns me to pretend sleeping. Next day at 6am I hear thumping at the door. "Wake up, Bernard!" My dad walks in and hands me a tall glass of liquid that looks like the sick cousin of V8. "Drink it... Drink it now." The nightmare began that lasted a couple years.

3. During my second startup, I lived in Seoul with my parents, who were there seventy percent of the year. My dad forced my brother and I to eat yogurt from Tibetian mushrooms for a few months. Supposedly it helped clean your bowels. Still uncertain of its effects, but it did double my crap output. I took a crap 3-4 times a day. My younger brother, Lenny, took 5-6 craps a day. I believe his sphincter muscles are permanently damaged.

4. My friend Sang and I started two things together at our high school, Glenbrook North: GBN Bible Study and the Boys Volleyball Team. It was also cool several years later to see Lenny (5 years younger) win the IL State Championship for Boys Volleyball for our high school.

5. I had to get my stomach pumped as a toddler. One of my dad's drunk friends gave me a bit of whiskey one evening. I don't believe my mom ever allowed him back in our home.

6. I have a natural high tolerance to alcohol from my dad's side. This was scientifically supported when I got pulled over at a check point in Seoul and blew into a breath analyzer. After five drinks, it registered a .03% (limit in Korea is .05%). I wasn't even buzzed, so I was confident that I would pass.

7. Japanese is my favorite cuisine. I love sushi (toro, maguro, uni, everything!), shisamo (it grosses out Christine, but i can eat dozens of them), teppan style, ramen, soba, etc.

8. I was a Dungeons & Dragon geek as a youth. I was primarily the dungeon master.

9. Christine is my best professional coach and counselor. Extra gravy on top of being my godsend wife and partner.

10. I sometimes hate arguing with Christine because even when she's wrong, she can make her viewpoint sound rational and mine irrational. Drives me crazy!

11. During junior high, one of my friends pushed my younger brother, Lenny off his bike. Lenny was crying, so I was pissed and pushed my friend off his. That event eroded our friendship within the year, but it was worth it.

12. During my late 20s, I discovered I had extra padding on my cheeks that provided additional protection. One time I got sucker punched by a guy who was a solid 225 lbs right on my eye. Bone on bone sound was heard, but no damage, no bruise and just a little pain. If I knew about this before, I would have trained to become an MMA fighter in my early 20s (Where was Henry, a friend that trains special forces Brazilian jiu-jitsu, back then?).

13. During college, I ordered from Domino's Pizza so much that when I called from other locations, they would say, "Moon, what are you doing over there?"

14. After intense workouts, I crave milk. A couple tall glasses, or if it's after playing basketball outside I would buy a bottle of Strawberry Quik and Gatorade. Drink the milk and then the Gatorade. This would gross out a few of my friends.

15. I have an extremely long second toe. Some friends would call it "the finger" because it sort of looks like an index finger. My close friend, Hamon, would call "hand ball!" a few times during high school soccer practice.

16. I was nicknamed "Ralph" separately by two friends during freshman year. One because my wardrobe back then was about half Ralph Lauren. Another (PAhn!) because when I played with Korean Americans I was always stuck as a center but wanted to play small forward like Ralph Sampson. So when I'm at a fast food joint and have to give a name, I sometimes use "Ralph."

17. While living with my parents in Seoul, I got kicked out due to their disapproval of the girl I was dating. My friend, Mike, had an extra room and saved the day, and later corrected my delusional thinking about this woman. This ex is still the ace card for Christine if we argue... negotiating from a weaker position really sucks.

18. I still want to skydive and bungee jump. Hopefully I can make time before 40!

19. While learning to ride a bike, I was knocked unconscious. My father tried a short cut and placed me on an inclined road and let it ride! My brother was given the slow route on flat surfaces when his time came.

20. I was a mediocre hockey player in my youth (started late). During high school tryouts for the JV team, I wasn't looking and collided with someone during a drill. I got up and couldn't remember my name. Then I couldn't remember the day and time. My parents picked me up and I went home, slept almost 24 hours, and was okay.

21. I was addicted to volleyball from my senior year in high school through junior year in college. I loved the sport, but rapidly lost interest after I sprained my ankle during my junior year that kept me out for a few months. I tried a few come backs, but it was never the same. I play once in a while thinking I still have a 35" vertical but really have a 12". Yes, it doesn't look pretty when you're form is based on having a vertical 20" higher... net, net, out, net, out.

22. I sharted once during college when I was trying to let one rip in my buddy's room. My friends Sam and Bob had a good laugh. I had to get new underwear.

23. During freshman year, my mother would call my dorm room every morning for a few weeks to wake me up. I felt really bad for my roommate and friend, Chad, and begged her to stop, which she finally did. Amusing outcome is that Chad can speak a few words of Korean after listening to some of those morning conversations.

24. I miss delis in NYC... the sandwiches, sides and breakfast sandwiches (egg and double bacon on a roll, please). I miss hot dog joints and steakhouses in Chicago. I miss noodle shops in Hong Kong. I miss mandu (dumplings) and gop chang joints in Seoul. I wish those Star Trek teleporters were real.

25. I look forward to getting old with Christine and seeing our daughters grow up. So much more to do and places to visit. I can't wait to travel around the world with our children.


("More 25 Random Things About Me")

Facebook Bugs

Over the past few weeks I've encountered random bugs at Facebook that annoyed me. Today I just ran into another one. On "My Notes" I found out that most of my notes were only visible to me when I originally had them viewable by everyone. Weird.

Annoying Trolls on Facebook

So I generally try to keep my professional contacts and people I never met on Linkedin, especially obvious sales people and recruiters, and personal contacts or professional contacts that I met up with in various settings on Facebook. A few months ago I cleaned up my Facebook friends and removed almost 60 people, and but since then I've had a couple lapses in judgment.

A few days ago for the second time I foolishly allowed a friend request from someone that seemed harmless but was trying to accumulate sales leads for their tech company. I got a couple emails from friends asking who this person was trying to friend them on Facebook and that it was one of my contacts. Annoying. This happened last month too. Embarrassing. So no more random friend requests on Facebook. Seriously, these people should troll Linkedin and not Facebook.

Qbox Facebook App Launches!

Qbox is a cool startup that I advise. It's a social music play that allows users to access and play free music through their player/application. You can either download it for your desktop, embed a player on your blog (e.g. Xanga, Blogger:), or as they just launched several hours ago on your Facebook profile. What's cool is that typically a video from YouTube or another social network plays in the embedded player, so your blog or site becomes more active and lively.

Here are some screenshots from my Facebook profile:




I didn't post this before, but VentureBeat referred to them in a longer piece on online music sites, "38 free/cheap music sites — Welcome to the fray, Qbox!"

CLEANING UP MY FACEBOOK CONTACTS

My initial activity on Facebook lent me to accept some random invite requests or random invites being sent out from my gmail contacts. So I decided to clean my "friends list" a bit and clear out the randoms and professional contacts I would prefer to limit to my Linkedin account (i.e. recruiters, headhunters).

For me there isn't an exact criteria since I do believe Facebook is useful for some professional contacts, and keeping in touch with acquaintances. I've been eye-balling my "friends" directory, thinking about how I know someone (or don't know), and then removing those I would prefer to know through Linkedin or email. I've removed over 40 so far.

Hopefully this will keep my small world a little more manageable.

800 FACEBOOK FRIENDS TOO MANY?... ACADEMICS NEED DEEPER ANALYSIS

This is a stupid statement. 800 Facebook friends are too many and reflect insecurity? Please. I'm not responding to this because I am approaching 800 friends on Facebook, but the fact that it doesn't take much analysis or deep thinking to see that this assessment is flawed.

First, it's not surprising that people like Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis have over 2,000 friends because their blogs are read by tens of thousands. So do any of their 2,000+ friends perceive them as insecure? No. They are just well-known in the blogosphere and attract invite requests. Even Hugh MacLeod, the cartoonist and blogger, gets 28 requests a day and he's a second-tier blogger.

But I'm not even referring to these people in my analysis of why these academics haven't looked beyond the shallow end of the research pool. I'm thinking about people like myself, who are very extroverted, or recent graduates that used Facebook as their primary online address book.

Consider a very social person who belongs to a large religious organization, such as a church or temple, or social organization, such as a fraternity or sports club. A large church would have at least a thousand to several thousand members. If you're fairly active and friendly in a church of twenty-somethings, you could get a few hundred Facebook connections from this organization alone. Then add another hundred or more from your fraternity, and then your other friends from high school or other circles which can easily add up to 500-1,000+ connections. Would people perceive these people as insecure? No.

If you are a recent graduate of a professional school, such as an MBA program or law school, it's easy to realize that 800 is not a number reflective of insecurity or people simply wanting to horde online friends. Such programs are about networking, so with classes of 300 to 1,000 a very social person can easily accumulate a large number of friends that would welcome the connection. I finished my graduate program in 1998, so not one of my 104 classmates are on Facebook but if we recently graduated I am certain that I would have connected with many of them (probably more since there were 200+ MPA students in the total program plus 700+ MIA students) because we had small classes and had many social gatherings every month that led to a close-knit culture.

With today's college students living on Facebook as their primarily social tool, I would hardly label a person as "insecure" if they accumulated such numbers unless many of their connections did not know them at all.

So there is the other side if a person accumulates a majority of their connections without really knowing them, then I would label them as a bit off or possibly insecure (probably neurotic). Most of these people you could identify with the little interaction that you've had with them. From your conversations, nonverbal cues, or how they present themselves on their profiles can be indicators of insecurity or shallowness of their relationships. So the researchers from Penn State who created mock profiles to test this theory would obviously gather such responses since these online "people" had zero real connection with their "friends." Also placing an arbitrary number, such as 800, on this behavior was stupid. This perception or behavior could be for people with 100 connections or 2,000. Just a quick scan through my list of friends, those with 800 or greater connections are all either personalities in the blogosphere or very social people with connections to large organizations whose typical members are in their twenties (i.e. churches, schools, community groups).

Another factor to consider is the purpose of the connection since some people are using Facebook as a business tool ("Facebook - the Hub for Your Personal Brand"). For myself, probably a quarter of my connections are professionally related connections, so I don't know them as friends but it's assumed from both sides that the purpose of being "friends" is business related. Generally, I try to keep my Linkedin connections separate from my Facebook connections unless I have interacted with the people fairly often. So there are many people, especially in Silicon Valley, that conference hop and accumulate connections by using Facebook as their rolodex so again it's easy to see active networkers accumulate 500 to 1,000+ Facebook friends.

Anyway, since I didn't see the details of these various research results I might be missing something, but I hope these academics come out with more interesting findings on online social interaction in the future than this topic.

TEN MILLION IN TEN WEEKS... STANFORD STUDENTS' EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING FACEBOOK APPS

Last night I attended presentation of Facebook Applications created by students from a course led by BJ Fogg and Dave McClure. This class is an offshoot from BJ's Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford.

Here's the overview of the event from Facebook:

Join us for an evening of demos & insights from students in the Fall 2007 Stanford CS377W course: "Create Engaging Web Apps Using Metrics & Learning on Facebook" (aka The Facebook Class at Stanford)

Ten weeks ago, over 100 students packed a Stanford class about creating engaging Facebook apps. Instructors BJ Fogg and Dave McClure warned students that this new course would be risky -- lots of uncertainty and no proven way to teach the topic.

The 75 students who remained blazed new trails in using psychology and metrics for creating web apps. The statistics show their success:
* Over 10 million Facebook users installed Stanford student apps
* Over 1 million daily active users on the apps
* 5 student apps rank among Facebook's Top 100

This event will share what students learned about creating viral and engaging web apps for Facebook:

1. Learn about viral adoption on Facebook
2. Understand tradeoffs between virality and engagement
3. Find out why some apps succeed & others fail
4. Learn how 25 teams of students teams collaborated
5. Gain insight into techniques for app metrics & measurement
6. Watch live app demos by student teams
7. See why Facebook is the #1 persuasive technology of all time


So it was fun watching the students' presentations and cool to see how many of them learned from their initial failures and the adjustments they made that improved the reach and impact of their applications.

The stats on these students' success was impressive:
- 5 apps with 1 million+ users
- 10 apps with 100,000+ users
- 20 apps with 5,000+ users

Daily Active Users:
- 6 apps with 100,000+ users
- 10 apps with 10,000+ users


One interesting general statistic that they discussed about Facebook was how there are over 4.1 billion photos posted and 40% of click-throughs are on photos. This reminded me about some analysis of CyWorld's crazy growth in Korea a few years ago and one stated driver was how they allowed users an unlimited amount of photos to be uploaded. Whatever culture it seems that photos are key :)

Some takeaways for Facebook application developers were:
- Use one action to invite users
- Include a personal touch
- Enforce a minimum number of invites

Some of the applications were Love Child, Good Eats, Perfect Match, Send Hotness, Guess Who, and Photographs.