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My First Sermon.. Colossians 3:1-17 (The Ah and Um Edition)

The Best Way for Facebook to Cash In!

The other day I was discussing Facebook w/ my wife and she was explaining how much she liked the service especially since our move up north away from friends and family.  

I had also been dealing w/ Facebook on a different level w/ attempting to use there Ad system for YoParts.  It was less than effective to say the least.. then I mentioned to my wife that Facebook should leverage the power of their users and basically rev. share w/ users and auction off user's profile pages etc.  The basic premise is lets say for instance Robert Scoble being a  star user would sell advertising space or to be branded and share the revenue w/ facebook.  

As the economy gets worse more and more peeps are spending time online and especially facebook.. This caused quite the discussion on Techmeme today and what FB should do about it.. It has been well documented that FB has had a really tough time gaining traction in the ad space and is even getting the beat down by Myspace.  Also social network ad spending is trending lower only elevating my point in a diff angle that needs to be approached by FB. 

Facebook has already made small moves in order to get more influence via the search engines by making some internal structural changes to profile pages.  I think a well thought out brand building approach similar to beacon but not as remotely scary is the tactic that should be thought about. This would encourage users to spend more time on FB to achieve a better "Quality Score" of some sorts.  I am sure the algorithm could include tons of metrics FB already has. As a user I would have no problem branding my profile page or co-promoting if I was part of the team.. 

Anyways.. I know this one is a little far fetched but.. I thought I should share.. 

Is Google Pulling a Rope a Dope?

It has been awhile since I posted but I felt compelled under the current economic news and other trends that I have been noticing. 

Apparently the sky is falling and even Google is subject to fall in this unstable economic climate.  Silicon Valley Insider has this piece about google turning up the juice on ad results per search query as a desparation move.  Apparently Google is also getting rid of  10,000 contract workers and extra perks as well.. gasp!.. and the final straw was the complete meltdown of it's stock price since last year.. 

Please step down from the ledge people.. Google is pulling what the "The Greatest" did against Joe Frazier and many others.

Here are my top 10 reasons that Google is going to be even stronger when this Economic Tsunami is over.

1. Obama may tap 'Father of Net' for top tech post; Free Net access ahead?
2. FCC's Free-Internet Plan Could Morph Into Free Airwaves
   
3. Google CEO is on Obama economic team
   
4. October Search Market Share: Query Volume Breaks 10b Mark, Google Search Dominates!
   
5. Print Media is Freaking Toast!
6. Obama's Recovery Plan involves Broadband Development
7. Yahoo and MSN Making it easy for Google
8. Bad Economy is good for Google and online ad spending
9. Google Subsidzed Phones w/ Andriod wil be a Homerun in the Economic Enviorment
10. Live Streaming sites that are starting to monetize via Google.

Twitter Worth a Billion in a Year? hmm more like Jaiku

Link : How Twitter Could Be Worth A Billion In A Year



Recently there have been some interesting conversations going on around the web about the possibilities of what Twitter could become.

Well after reading it I thought compelled to share some thoughts on this subject. First Nate's whole premise is off kilter because it is defendant on Twitter's ability to overcome it's recent scaling issues and loss of it's of respect from the community.

Nate's main point was to use Twitter as a micropayment service. Here is where I think Jaiku (cough cough Google) has the advantage. Google Checkout has already been playing around in the mobile arena for the past year. Now this alone should not be news worthy but I came across an interesting post about Jaiku founder Jyri Engestrom.

"

• Verbs for social objects: we need to think about the verbs that people perform on objects. E.g., Flickr’s aggregation of what people have done with your photos. We should be surfacing the available actions.
• World of Warcraft's information methods for everyday life: “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.
• A new take on social search: Detecting nodal points: “What should I be aware of that’s happening around me? Was what just happened significant to someone on the network.” And then deliver it to people at just the right time, perhaps via push. “Discovery is becoming social.” “It is the end of the era of search,” i.e., of querying for stuff. From browser to search to share (citing former ceo of paypal). From pagerank to “facerank” where what counts is friends in common, physical proximity, shared taste, shared objects."

Google has been very quietly getting ready to open a big ole can of whoop ass directed at Twitter. Remember Google could have bought Twitter but why didn't they?? Because they saw the potential in Jaiku as something much bigger than a micropayment service. Imagine and interconnected stream through this new service that incorporates email / video / maps / shopping etc.. on a platform that is truly stable and scaleable and monetizeable.

All of this running on Android equipped phones and piercing through all of the open social partner sites as well.. It's just a matter of time.

The Answer to the Super Delegate Fiasco

First let me divulge I am a full fledged Obama Supporter. After the results of Super Tuesday have come and gone there has been a lot of discussions about the role of "Super Delegates" determining our next president. This scenario described by a Obama memo would have a virtual tie at the end of the primary schedule and would leave it up to these "Super Delegates".. : 0 a disastorous scenario already being discussed by Howard Dean.

After watching Dan Abrams show last night interviewing Congressmen Adam Smith(Washington) an Obama supporter and a "Super Delegate" the congressman acknowledged this as a flawed process and recommended an across the board agreement that whoever is leading via pledged delegates i.e the delegates awarded for actual voters should be awarded the super delegates. Now I do see some wiggle room as far as following State or Congressional district etc.. but the problem w/ that is there are numerous Super Delegates that hold no constituency relationship.

In my mind the Obama camp should press this issue and come out across the board w/ all of there Super Delegates and embrace this scenario...It would put the Clinton's on the defensive and in a position to look extremely selfish if not accepted...being that President Clinton is also a Super Delegate.

Check out this clip and let me know what you think..

Belated Christmas Thank You to Putnam's

During the Christmas break my wife was doing some last minute shopping for some close friends of ours... Our friends love to ski but haven't been able to afford some much needed equipment. My wife has been a loyal customer of Putnam's Ski and Snowboard shop in North Hampton NH for years and decided to talk to the sales guy she always deals w/ to see if she could barter some of her time working to be able to get some equipment for our friends and their children. They said cool .. and was told to have our friends come on down to get fitted.. to my wife's surprise the owner of Putnam's was made aware of this and quietly and and very humbly took care of that whole family w/ no strings attached.. That was just one of the tiny little gifts that was bestowed upon us this Holiday season..

I wonder if e-commerce will ever be able to match the level of personal engagement that a strong brick and mortar store can create by achieving extraordinary customer service like Putnam's.


Brian you will have customers for life!

Cisco ... Isn't this what Twitter does?

The Human Network: Hollywood


Saw this commercial and the first thing I thought of was.. hey Cisco bought Twitter cool!! I wonder how many people fall for this stuff...

Social Media on the Rise for 08 Election?

Digg - Digg The Candidates



Really interesting stuff today via Digg...not sure how long it has been up and running but I really like the social implications and I think can be a good measurement tool for Gen X - Y.

Seems like Obama and Paul have wide reaching base ... lets see how it pans out over the next month or so. Especially after seeing today latest Reuters/Zogby Poll.

Can Google Juice get Obama Elected?

Google Public Policy Blog: Candidates at Google: Barack Obama

Interesting stuff today.. wondering if this interesting and quite proactive plan will get the tech community and more importantly Google to back Sen. Obama. I was very intrigued about his "transparency" comment regarding the government and opening up to America... It seems like this kind of came out of left field. It will be very interesting to see how the next month or so shapes up.


"I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. I’ll let citizens track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts. I’ll let you participate in government forums, ask questions in real time, offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made, and let you comment on legislation before it is signed. And to ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards, I’ll appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer."

Get Satisfaction... For Real!

A couple of moths ago I heard about this company called "Get Satisfaction" basically a help desk on Steroids.. I mean this in a good way.. If your company is about transparency and really want to engage w/ your customers in a fresh and empowering way this is your solution.

I posted a question to the "Management Team at Me.dium.com" regarding the site relevancy that you see when surfing. Withing 4 hours I got a response and now they have actually made changes brought on by the conversation..


The site itself is really slick and clean to use.. It looks like Major companies are jumping on board as well. I think we will be setting up a profile for yOparts as well.

Is Twitter blowing up?

I have to admit I have been on sort of a Web 2.0 hiatus for the past 4.5 months since launching our new site. In the last week or so I have been inspired by much of the exciting news in this space as well as in Mobile scene too.

So I decided to start using my Twitter account again..now when I say use what I mean is post. I utilize Twitter in a data streaming way and love it. I get updates from Techmeme, Jason Calacanis , Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land, and of course one cannot live w/ out live Redsox casts via Twitter.

Today I read a great article over on Steve Spalding's blog on "How to use Twitter" in which he listed some great applications like....

ServerMojo - Monitors your web server and will send you update notifications via Twitter.

Remember the Milk for Twitter- Remember the Milk (rtm) is a popular GTD web application. By adding the rtm Twitter member as a friend you can send commands to your account via the Twitter interface. This is particularly useful if you are using Twitter by SMS when you are out and about and you only have your mobile phone and no Internet access.

SugarStats - If you are diabetic then check out SugarStats. This site allows you to monitor your sugar levels and gives you all sorts of graphs and charts. Plus you can send in your data via Twitter.

Twitter by Voice = Jott.com send a Twitter update by speaking into your phone--your voice gets
converted to text and sent out to all your followers.

Foamee.com is a fun IOU system built on Twitter that helps you
track who you owe beers to (and vice versa). All you have to do is
follow the account "ioubeer" and then send it @replies. So, say
you owe me a beer for helping you change a flat tire, this is what
you'd send to Twitter:

@ioubeer @biz for helping me change that flat tire

Then, your IOU will show up on the front page at foamee.com.

I also came across Guy Kawasaki's post regarding his Twitter app that feeds his Truemors site.. really slick if I say so myself..


I wonder how developers will leverage some of these apps via Open Social and Facebook Api's...hmmmmmm there are so many facets of Twitter.. there are business applications, social and now even health and safety values being equated too it...

I actually wrote about Twitter being used in an Emergency situations after the tragic events at Virginia Tech last spring. But it looks like Twitter really has scaled in this capacity during the recent natural disasters in California.

I just see Twitter creating so much value lately? Is it just me or has it been this robust for awhile now?

Hypocriacy brought me out of retirement

Awhile back a set a Google alert for Blendah. Well today it payed off big time... In my inbox came this little tid-bit from from someone that wants to make $10k off this idea but calls me out for squatting on Yelp...hmmm do you smell something here? I do ...The irony of the whole situation is that Twitter has a policy of turning over Trademarked names to their rightful owners.

Maybe this is what I needed to get back in the game.. things have been a little hectic since launching our new "Wholesale Autoparts Club" w/ a splash of Web 2.0

clipped from blogs.claritycon.com From the 10K Monkey Idea Lab: Yelp + Twitter = Yelpitter Anyway regarding Yelp / Twitter. I was thinking about my old school IRC days in college and chatbots. I think there could be two fun ways to use Twitter and Yelp together and incorporate some chatbot functionality.. Yelp Review via Twitter What I think would be cool is to have a new Twitter user, let's call it Yelp. 1 When reviewing a restaurant, you would just add Yelp as a Twitter friend and direct message them the name of the restaurant. Yelp/Twitter would auto respond back to ask what you thought of the restaurant. You can then respond back to Yelp/Twitter with the review and it's added to Yelp. 1It appears someone has squatted on the Yelp twitter name. Has Twitter squatting become the newest form of cybersquatting? Thanks for trying to ruin Twitter Tom@blendah.com

Ebay sticks to it's gun's for a whole 16 days

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the big "Cat fight" between Google and Ebay regarding Google Checkout Event thrown Guerrilla Style at Ebay Live in Boston...

Well Ebay pulled all their ads off of US Google sites.. but today while surfing I found this Google syndication link... I wonder how much their traffic suffered to do a 180% so quickly??????

I have also posted a Compete.com Daily Vector Graph.. very interesting..

clipped from www.honda-tech.com civais Offline 455 posts [100%] Austin TX 2-3-2004 « Re: (civais) « » 12:15 PM 8/18/2005 Reply Edit bump Austin Weekly Meet, http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1246841 88 CRX HF 98 CIVIC clipped from gmodules.com

Mahalo should be Aloha for Hello and Goodbye ...

Let me start out by stating that I am a huge Jason Calacanis fan... I follow him on Twitter and take great interest in his candor and the way that he leverages PR.

When I first saw Mahalo.. I thought jeez is this really all he is introducing?? basically Cha Cha meets Wikipedia .. so I wasn't overwhelmed w/ the angle of going after the Fat part of the Tail.. it seems to me that the way to truly utilize a combination of People / Machine search is to target micro- niche's ... this became more evident when I searched for "Honda Civic" after listening to Jason's Podcast w/ SEO critics today on Mahalo being that I am a long time Honda enthusiast and directly involved in the Aftermarket industry. My impressions of the search results were that it was a totally "mailed in" .... I wonder how many more are?? Now let me preface I think that they Mahalo is on the right track w/ it's Greenhouse Program..

"Honda Civic Message Boards and Blogs

• Autoblog: Honda Civic Search
• HondaCivicForum.com
• Engadget.com: Honda Civic Search
• Technorati: Honda Civic Tags

courtesy of Mahalo.com

hmmm autoblog - no biased there (cough cough) if you search "Honda Civic" you get 8 not so great posts.. more like press releases ...

HondaCivicForum.com - is an ok board.. but did the guide just simply search for "Honda Civic Forum" on google and walla you guessed it HondaCivicForum.com .... Honda-Tech.com would have been a much better choice in my opinion.. you be the judge 240,000 members vs 22,000 ..

Engadget.com ????????????????? What relevance does that have.. oh wait (Weblogs Inc) .. I see pattern here

Technorati Link... great idea but did the guide look at these results????



I could go on and on about the results on that page.. but the results speak for themselves...people want valuable info not the same old same old...

Jason this is you reputation on the line and with results like this.. I'm not sure you will gain loyal users.. but you are a sly one.. and I think that you are actually banking on that "Google Juice" when someone actually types "Honda Civic" into Google and the Honda Civic Mahalo page scores high on SERP i.e exactly how Wikipedia does...

But I thought the point was to provide the best possible results :(


p.s. I would have left feedback but I was only limited too 500 characters

Check out the tail on that one...

Saw this post today.. and thought I would check out Ilike.com .. I had never heard of it and I'm not a Facebook user as well.. so I was blown away when I saw their traffic graph .. May 24th was the day they launched their Facebook App... Wow is all I can say..

The team at Facebook is hedging that their site will now be the Social Network Mecca.. and with the way that they have postioned themselves in bringing value unrivaled by any other network to it's users.. in my opinion will catapult it to the top... bubye Myspace ..

clipped from www.techcrunch.com The Long Tail Is Getting Fatter Three separate news stories involving numbers this week caught my eye. iLike announced it has now has 6 million registered users and is now adding 300,000 new users a day. Apple’s Safari browser for Windows has now had 1 million downloads. Finally SpaceTime, a 3D browser we reviewed June 5 passed the 100,000 download mark.

Ebay the bully or Scared of Google....

The Blogosphere is abuzz w/ the today's action by Ebay to pull all it's advertsing on Google's US properties due to Google's light hearted attempt at making a point of Ebay's policy of not allowing Google Checkout as a viable option for Ebay users...then Google call's off there party...

That got me thinking...why would Ebay really do this..it has to be something more.. Could it be when Google was outbid by Ebay for StumbleUpon...then Google released a similar feature for Google toolbar owners that gives personalized search results too...

I think that Ebay might actually be a little ascared of little ole Google Checkout.. the often mocked Google payment system... I believe it is actually gaining ground at a very fast pace.. it seems like every time I do a google search lately it is laden w/ Google Checkout sponsored adwords for advertisers.. plus it seems like it has really gained traction in the long tail of e-commerce sites..never mind the top retailers that have made the switch like BlueNile.com and Buy.com with 0% processing fees..

It will be interesting to see how this pans out and to watch the traffic rankings to see if Ebay see's a dramatic decline in traffic and revenue.

clipped from valleywag.com Ha. After a report that Ebay was boycotting Google's text ads, the search engine has decided to cancel a party to woo stores on the online auction site. Google planned to hold the cocktail party tomorrow night in the fringes of Ebay's Live event for its biggest sellers. Mountain View, which plays on online shops' disgruntlement with Ebay's monopoly charges, had entitled the invitation, provocatively, "let freedom ring." Ebay's Meg Whitman must have blasted her Google counterpart on the hotline. Freedom for Ebay's imprisoned retailers, who are being lured by lower fees on Google's credit-card payment service, may yet ring. But not just yet. WED JUN 13 2007 BY NICK DENTON AT 6:18 pm 244 views

Nice Job West Warwick!! cmon NH get in the game

Seems like Wind Power is really taking off lately and it is being done on the local government level..which is the way for a grassroots effort to really make an impact. What if every town used it's natural resources to supply it's own power? What a concept...

clipped from www.zwire.com WW considers plan to use wind power WEST WARWICK - A New Hampshire company wants to introduce a new era of wind technology to the United States and it wants to showcase that technology here in West Warwick. Representatives from Portsmouth Power Corporation made a presentation to the town council and town residents last night to introduce the principles of the project. The company would like to build three module power towers on Arctic Hill. The company is proposing putting one tower near the tennis courts and two towers at the rear of the baseball field behind the high school. The company would donate the tower closest to the school to the town and would own the other two.

Google Antitrust? Microsoft just payed $6 billion for a competitor?

When Double Click agreed to sell to Google last month some of the big guys namely Microsoft got all worked up and started raising questions of Google's strength in the advertising market... Fast forward 3 weeks and MS bus aQuantive for $6 billion???

It's Funny how Google gets picked on sometimes..online advertising is a fraction of the whole advertising industry..but yet they are always singled out?

But yet the FTC is opening up a antitrust investigation against Google...I just don't get it..

The thing is that most of their competitors are failing to realize or are just afraid to admit is that people (us minions) like using Google because it makes our lives easier

clipped from www.nytimes.com Technology Google Deal Said to Bring U.S. Scrutiny The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, an industry executive briefed on the agency’s plans said yesterday.

Got My Ocean am I cool?

Well I finally took the plunge this week and purchased my first cell phone in 5 years!! .. It was a peaceful 5 years but w/ the new business launching imminently (hopefully) .. I needed a device that allowed me to stay connected all the time..

Our new startup is a Social Commerce play..so I wanted a device that I could essentially handle all IM's/Tweets/emails/sms/pics/ etc etc.. Of course my first inclination was to wait for the Iphone .. but as my initial buzz wore off over the hype and started looking more and more at the features and service.. it became clear that it was overvalued... Two of the biggest reasons for not going w/ the Iphone was price ($499-$599) and the slower Cingular network coverage..

With the Helio in my area of New England it piggybacks off of the Sprint 3G network...I also like the "all in" features of unlimited text/sms/data/myspace (uggh) /buddy beacon, gmaps etc.. for a reasonable price. I choose the $100/month option which is unlimited text/sms/ web browsing etc. and unlimited nights and weekends.. and 1500 daytime mins. (They do have an all you can eat plan for $135/mnth)

Things are working great so far.. some minor bugs but nothing earth shattering (Weak battery life so far but I am trying a possible solution to remedy the problem) ... My first impressions are that is smaller than it looks online.. and the browsing is pretty intuitive. The Search from any box is pretty awesome as well.. Camera works really well.. and I had no problems setting up My Google apps Gmail. I'm not a huge music and video fan but service worked flawlessly when I tried it....I think this phone has a chance at making Helio a name in mobile industry... I will keep you informed w/ any updates..


My friends know that I can't go many posts without somehow bringing up a Twitter thought.. and I just couldn't let them down.. :) Here is my thought.. If the Ocean really takes off... I think that Helio should buy Twitter and combine it w/ their Buddy Beacon GPS tracking system.. Helio has embraced web 2.0 w/ partnerships w/ Myspace and BoingBoing...


p.s. Here is a link for $100 off coupon for using amex.. yes $195 and free bluetooth!