DISQUS

You have no idea what you are talking about. Plentyoffish founder recently put out a blog post in which he wondered whether he should start his own dating company. I scratched my head at that one until I found out his entire business model is pushing visitors to a paid dating site in return for the lead gen. He's the most popular dating site but there is no dating going on there - I think you just got played on the spin too.

Facebook and others rely on strong bonds - ie you are friends with people you somehow know... that removes the serendipity of finding dates you are otherwise unconnected with. Again FB and the dating apps on there tend to be just lead gen into paid dating.

Match.com and others are having a hard time because the dating industry is segmenting into two sections: psychology-orientated match making (such as lavalife.com) or casual hookups (adultfriendfinder.com etc). Match.com is neither and it's caught in the middle.

If I had the time I think setting up a dating site for casual hookups that has safty reviews and isn't orientated around porn would be a very lucrative thing right now - esp as the economy is hitting people's wallets and they don't want to go out to date in bars

Hey, thanks for the blog post! Just wanted to let you know that Twhirl can be found at Twhirl.org and not Twhirl.com as stated in the post.

But thanks for your support, we hope you like Twhirl!

(er, I mean LV). OR maybe you should get a flight to LA instead. OR hold your next zivity hot tub party in LA, and invite me! :)

Sorry you are feeling nauseated, sorry you are stuck at SFO and sorry you didn't make it your Las Vegas hot tub party.

I don't know about you, but that would make me sick to my stomach... oh right :)

Growing up in England, and I guess a fairly privileged and middle class part of England, I was introduced to such verbiage at a very young age.

I too was asked if I had 'nausea' and promptly escorted to the 'sick bay' so that the 'welfare assistant' could take care of me. Kinda frightening to be told all that when you're only 5.

Hope you get to LV and enjoy the hot tubs. I can only imagine what a zivity hot tub party in LA looks like....

Hey

Just wanted to let you know that I didn't build this (sadly, as it's just simply GREAT!). No, it was built by a fine chap by the name of Tiil, who lives at tiil.us.

I really can't take ANY credit for this other than that I'm involved in the Seesmic service itself, but I didn't have anything to do with this uber cool Mashup

Wow, really chuffed to have made your list, Robert. Thanks!

BTW: I don't technically work for MySpace, they're one of my clients who I love working with and helping succeed in new areas.

I wish I could work at Seesmic, looks really fun. No wait...

I think a key point here is achievement. For every person you've mentioned in your post, they've achieved something.

Now, many people have achieved and not become on-going brands - usually out of choice. But equally few people are brands without actually doing something.

Louis Gray is an interesting example of this - the guy knows his smarts and has done for sometime, but only developed his 'online brand' when he started putting his thoughts down and achieving something.

Scoble helped Microsoft to suck less/appear to suck less, Loic Le Meur has founded numberous successful companies and is a well read blogger, Guy Kawasaki was Apple's first evangelist.

The point is you can't be a brand without some substance, some significant substance. Unless you want to be a paris-hilton type, and in this environment they don't float to the top.

I myself do a lot, am very busy, but people tell me my brand has waned because much of what I achieve these days isn't very visible or public anymore. They're absolutely right, of course. And my brand has slid.

I'm still deciding whether it's worth pushing it back up or concentrating on other priorities right now.

sorry, I meant "Louis" of course. Mis-spelling someone's name is particularly embarrassing, sorry.

Been Metclafe

Hey Lois,

I can't believe I was the first person to break the news about Twitter, in fact I know I'm not. But great work none the less - and interesting and original idea for a post!

"I assume they're getting something that isn't possible with just the
regular API. Maybe I'm wrong."

Nope, they're not getting anything that won't be publicly available. I think it's becoming obvious this wasn't messaged clear enough, but then I don't write the press releases.

The only reason for having 'launch partners' is to have someone to test and debug the implementation with and also have the ability to demonstrate the complete value proposition end-to-end (not everyone understands what this is, esp less tech savvy people).

"All I was really trying to point out is that this seems primarily designed
(naturally) to get people to use MySpace for all of their data, and
allow it to act as a kind of clearinghouse for that data."

Yeah that's exactly what it is, well at least if the scope of 'all' is social network data. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's a reasonable proposition but hopefully will also stimulate other holders of social data to also release their data in interopable formats.

"I'd much rather have the data myself and let it flow to wherever I
want, instead of wherever MySpace wants."

MySpace won't be deciding where the data goes. That's down to the developers who choose to interop with MySpace and the users who choose to bring their data to the 3rd party.

"having your own data' is an interesting point - if you don't maintain a website (the kind of demographic of myspace users) then it's very hard to 'own your data' whilst also having it available to be subscribed to elsewhere.

Hey Mathew,

I was disappointed to read your disappointment with the project. I was wondering whether you could elaborate on a couple of your points...

"after all the party favours are handed out and everyone’s finished their MySpace punch, it might be worth noting that this “data portability” initiative still keeps the power very much in MySpace’s hands."

I'm a bit confused by what you mean by this, or to put it another way, how it falls short of your satisfaction. Anyone can consume the data (assuming permission of the user of course), other than being the social network the said user has chosen to use, I'm a little confused as to how 'all the power is in MySpace's hands. The data has to originate and be delegated from somewhere (otherwise how do you control the deletion or alteration of a piece of data?)

Perhaps you could elaborate a little, or lay out an alternative setup that would allay your concerns as I'm not clear what that looks like?

"[MySpace] still get to choose which services can play, since they have to agree to MySpace’s terms of service in order to get access to the API."

Yes there will be a Ts & Cs... again, I'm not sure what you are suggesting? There be no Ts & Cs? I'm not sure how having no Ts & Cs helps users around making sure their data is being handled in appropriate ways (that's one of the areas where Data Portability is doing fine work). MySpace, as far as I can see, are not choosing who gets to have access, other than yes asking data consumers to agree to terms. I don't think that's a show stopper.

Again, really interested to hear your thoughts, esp how this could be implemented differently as I'm somewhat unclear what the proposition you are aspiring to looks like.

(Disclosure: I am a consultant for MySpace on the overall platform project and I am a co-founder of Data Portability)

Yeah, Seesmic in Friendfeed! Let me know if you want me to assist Cathy, Loic as I'm guessing there will be some API/Feed issues to sort.

Just wanted to confirm "I have acquired" = Adam Ostrow, or do you mean on behalf of Mashable?

Clearly there's a tongue-in-cheek tone to your post, but launching a product with a strong API from the beginning is very important - and I agree with most of the points you raise as being important factors into that.

Personally, something like the Google Social Graph API is not _product_ per se, but a service. Products are used by (normal) people, and the API on its own holds very little value unless it's integrated into something that the end customer can use.

To me, launching an API with your new product not only gives it geek cred and allows new kinds of sideways usage of your product to occur, but also shows you (probably/should have) built the product on top of the API anyway.... and API driven application development is where it is at.

@Martin Buberhead: We thought quite carefully about the amount of time that developers would get to develop. Its rumored that the F8 launch partners only got 6 days to bring their apps.

If we had left things for longer than a month then I think we'd begin to loose the patience of the developer community who were ready to get out the door with something.


(Disclosure: I work with MySpace on the developer platform)

Hey Stephanie,

Chaat Cafe is a 'order at the cash register before you sit' restaurant, so everyone will probably be able to pay for their own.

Lolcatz to me for not spell-checking my prose. I'm dyslexic, so I should know better.

I corrected the mistakes - thanks for pointing them out :)

Now that you can run windows applications in OSX via parallels I can see that the reasons for owning a Windows PC are growing less and less, but I still like my ThinkPad running XP.

The build quality on Apple worries me, not to mention the size and weight of the damn things. And perhaps, to an extent, the price.

However I gotta admit Apple make a tempting choice for the computer prosumer and I'm not surprised you switched.

Oh boo hoo for Microsoft. Someone described what Niall has done as 'unprofessional'...

...yeah so what? It's not like Niall was working for them in a 'professional' capacity at the time. Do we have to be 'professional' and on our best behaviour *all* the time?

Sure you might be 'burning bridges' by exercising that choice to be unprofessional, but equally I'd to think that people would hire/not hire me based on my work not on what I choose to do in my spare time and on my personal blog.

Sure these issues, and that aspiration, are nothing new - but I does frustrate me that people feel the need to keep their *entire life* 'squeeky clean' in order not to fuck up their potential career.

We're human beings, and a bit of out-of-work mischeif doesn't make me any less capable of doing a given job.

For windows I use WinSSHD (server) and Tunneler (client, free) from BitVise (http://www.bitvise.com/products.html). It's a very simple SSH solution that nicely sets up the forwarding ports and also access to Terminal Services Client, etc.

For IM, it's worth remembering that Skype traffic is encrpyted - both voice and chat.

At some conferences there is also the miss-conception that if they provide a WEP key then the traffic is encryped from everyone. Of course, it's only encryped from those who don't know the WEP key.

Hey Robert,

Seeing as I am one of the bloggers who have been listed in the CNet article as "hating it" (and hmmm, two of the citations were not even bloggers) I'd be happy to give one a try and let you know what I think. :)

Yes, I agree this is a massive problem, especially if blogs are mechanisms for conversations.

I think there are a number of people working on this - it's definitely the next big problem to be solved.

Having a comments RSS feed, like your blog does (as do all wordpress blogs) certainly helps.

Yes, I agree this is a massive problem, especially if blogs are mechanisms for conversations.

I think there are a number of people working on this - it's definitely the next big problem to be solved.

Having a comments RSS feed, like your blog does (as do all wordpress blogs) certainly helps.

1) I find I can hold real conversations with a video camera and/or a Web forum and/or Skype and record it and put it up.

Well, sure it works better with video and even skype. But it's only a conversation between invited parties, and it doesn't persist.

Text has all those things going for it - it persists, is searchable, is cheap to produce, is easy to store and transmit, and faster to consume (text can be skim read, etc).

So, I'm not looking to dump text for conversation - I'm just asking if people can think of any additions we can add to make it easier to deliver tone, etc. Kind of like the way people use emoticons to represent sarcasm... maybe emoticons2.0, I don't know!

BTW: I still feel quite strongly that when I'm "out of uniform" on my blog, than I'm not "the BBC" (as you put it).

You've written the disclaimer "Robert Scoble works at Microsoft (title: technical evangelist). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted."

Which seems to me you are trying to do the same too - say that this is your blog and not representing Microsoft... Hows that's any different to what I've been saying?