Technology – Page 10 – Stay N Alive

Category: Technology

Huffington Post to Scare Users About Their Addresses, Phone Numbers

Posted on by jessestay

I decided I should prepare you for what is to come. You’re already seeing (hence my title – you can read more here), and will see over the coming weeks a hailstorm of critique, saying Facebook is sharing your phone numbers and addresses with third party sites and applications. Huffington Post’s (see the link above), and I predict many others to come, are, and will be absolutely incorrect. The truth is 1) we don’t know exactly what Facebook is going to do (and hence it’s too early to freak out anyway), and 2) we do know Facebook isn’t going to just share your phone numbers and addresses with 3rd party sites. Huffington Post makes this sound like they’re giving it away like candy.

Here’s what will likely happen:

  • Facebook will require 3rd party websites and applications to prompt users before they can access any information about you. This includes your phone number and address, and means websites and applications can’t just get this information WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.

  • Facebook will prominently display a warning when an application or website is trying to get your address or phone number, and you will be completely aware your address or phone number could be used by the application. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GIVE AWAY YOUR ADDRESS OR PHONE NUMBER, DON’T GIVE ACCESS TO THE APPLICATIONS THAT ASK FOR IT.

  • There is also rumor that Facebook will be preventing minors from being able to give away their phone numbers and addresses to 3rd party applications and addresses. This is something only Facebook can do, unless a minor is posing as an adult – unlikely.

Let’s set the record straight. FACEBOOK IS STILL THE MOST PRIVACY FOCUSED WEBSITE FOR CONSUMERS ON THE PLANET RIGHT NOW. They will be even more so after this feature. What’s the other option? Applications can ask you to manually type in your address and phone number each time you log in. If you’re okay with that experience, maybe you shouldn’t approve applications to have your phone number and address. Heck, maybe you shouldn’t be on Facebook in the first place – at least Facebook is trying to make that process easier.

In the case you choose not to be on Facebook, be especially careful – Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Google Contacts, and even financial services like Paypal don’t even offer this level of granularity. If you give them access, 3rd party websites get access to all your information, phone number, address, and all. In fact, for many of those services I listed, not only do you give your own address and phone number, but you give your friends’ addresses and phone numbers as well. Facebook doesn’t even allow that.

So I caution you over the next couple weeks – don’t believe the sensational headlines. Be prepared to stand up for your privacy. Facebook’s next move makes things more private, yet accessible, not less. At the same time fight that Gmail, Google Contacts, Yahoo, Paypal, and others all offer this level of granularity to 3rd party websites. At least Facebook is doing something about it.

For more background, be sure to read Facebook’s post where they phased this out in preparation for a better version here.

Like ’em or Hate ’em, Paypal May be the Best Checking Account Alternative for Business Banking

Posted on by jessestay

Most of you know my relationship with Paypal. They sent my wife away in tears on a recent Ebay transaction, and their customer service can be horrible at times (I’m now out $230 of my own money because of it, and because supposedly they can’t trust me). At the same time I’m on their Developer Council and I love ’em to death, because as a developer I feel I have a voice with them. Regardless, when compared to my bank, I see Paypal in an entirely different light than the situation with my wife. Without a doubt, Paypal is one of the most innovative banking solutions out there right now, and that’s hard to ignore. I wonder, could Paypal be a decent replacement to my business checking account at my bank? I’m starting to think it could very well be.

Innovation

Let’s start with their biggest strength. Paypal is by far one of the most innovative banking platforms on the planet right now. They are entirely set up to work virtually. They were one of the first to set up online money transfers. With just an email address I can send money to someone. I can set up, and take credit card transactions, entirely online. I can scan checks with my cell phone and they go into my Paypal account. They’re attached to Money Market funds that produce interest on my checking account. I was even able to order a debit card online, and now I can withdraw actual cash from my Paypal account.

Let’s add to all the additional payment services I can use and set up, all online. I can add, just by copying simple HTML, a payment widget to my website if I want to take payments. I can set up shopping carts with ease. I can integrate to payments, deposits, and more, all through a developer API. My banks can’t do that.

With my bank, especially my business account, my options are limited. I don’t yet have online check deposit capabilities on my business account.  I don’t have an API to access payments. Heck, for many business checking accounts you don’t even make interest on your accounts! Granted, my personal account situation is much better – I use USAA, whose services are second to none, but let’s stick to business for purposes of this post.

Customer Service

As I mentioned, Paypal customer support sent my wife away crying because we just happened to throw away our shipping receipt for an Ebay transaction that went bad 2 months after the fact. However, if I contrast that with my business banking account, that’s not so bad. With them there is no leverage – if you make a late payment, you get a fee, no leeway. I have to travel somewhere to get any sort of personal service, and calling them takes long waits on the phone. My bank is constantly trying to find new ways to charge me more money. At my bank I have very little protection if someone makes a fraudulent purchase from my bank account. I just don’t see that as much from Paypal. Compared to my business banking, Paypal looks pretty good!

Maybe my experience is different than yours. For my banking solution I have to have a multi-state banking solution that has offices in Delaware, considering my business is a Delaware LLC and my business is almost entirely virtual. So I guess my options are limited. However, Paypal is starting to seem like an awfully good solution to me right now to replace my business checking account. True, they’re not FDIC insured, but is the FDIC even viable any more? I’m starting to think my money may actually be better protected with a solution like Paypal, vs. the FDIC.

What do you think? Are there any better solutions for business banking out there? Should I consider moving my business accounting entirely to Paypal? I’m starting to think that may be a good option.

How to Replace Twitter With Facebook

Posted on by jessestay

I just wrote about how Twitter is becoming much less necessary for me.  In this post, I’d like to show you how, with just a few steps, you can get exactly what you’re getting on Twitter and more with just a Facebook account and a Page you administer.  It’s actually really simple now.  Here are the steps:

  1. Set up your Facebook Account. You’ve probably already done this, but if not, just go to Facebook.com, enter your details, and click “Register”.  Log in, and you’re set!

  2. Create your Facebook Page. You can do this at Facebook.com/pages.  I also cover this in detail in Facebook Application Development for Dummies soon to be released.  Create one that mimics your Twitter Profile.

  3. Go to your Facebook Page, and click “Use Facebook as (your Page name)”. You’ll see the options on the right change to “Use Facebook as (your Profile name)” when this has worked.  Also, note that if you already have a Facebook Page, just go to the new Page, upgrade it to the new profile, and you should also have these options.

  4. Click the big “Facebook” logo in the upper-left. You’ll now be presented with a news feed, just like the one you would normally see on your profile.  Looks familiar, doesn’t it?  It probably doesn’t have much information in it right now though.  Now you need to make that News Feed valuable.  You’ll do that with step 5.

  5. Find interesting Facebook Pages, and click “like”! On the right you should already be presented with some suggestions for Facebook Pages.  Click “like” on those if you like them.  Or, find friends and brands that you like via the search box and click “like” on those as well.  The more you click “like” on, the more you’ll have appear in your feed.  Looks a lot like Twitter, huh?  In fact, you could create multiple Pages, and use those as “lists”, each one following accounts that are relevant to just that Page.  Click “use Facebook as (Page Name)” for each Page, and you’ll get a new view of different types of users to follow on each.  Scoble ought to like this one 😉

Replacing Twitter Search

At the moment I’ll admit, Facebook Search isn’t quite as granular as Twitter search.  However, you can get search results from status updates, as your personal account, or as your Page.  Just type in “facebook” into the Facebook search box as an example and click on “See more results for Facebook” in the drop down.  Then, click on “Posts by everyone”.  You’ll immediately see a real-time stream of updates from people, that updates in real-time, of people and Pages posting in public about “facebook”.  Try it with other terms, like “Scoble”, for instance.

There’s also another, more advanced, way you can search.  It’s sort of a hack, but definitely possible, and something I also show you in Facebook Application Development for Dummies.  By calling https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=scoble&type=post in your browser you should get a parseable result set back from Facebook with all public Profile and Page results mentioning “scoble”.  You could technically call https://graph.facebook.com/(id) (replacing id with the id of the user or Page) on each post and look to see if the object type is a user or a Page.  Or maybe it doesn’t matter.  I imagine Facebook will get more granular with these results in the future though.  You can also, with some advanced magic, get back all the posts from Pages your Page subscribes to that match “facebook” or “scoble”.

What’s Missing Still

  • Search. Of course, Facebook still needs more search options compared to Twitter for them to be an exact parallel.  Twitter’s search was built to index and retrieve granular data at the user level, and you can subscribe to each resultset as simple RSS.  Facebook just doesn’t have this yet, although I wouldn’t doubt they see the power in this.  After all, Facebook’s CTO, Bret Taylor, founded FriendFeed, and they have perhaps an even more granular (when it’s working) search than Twitter has.  I have no doubt Facebook recognizes the value in this.

  • Lists. With Facebook, even before Twitter, you could organize your friends into lists of users you can follow and organize by list.  This is yet to be released for Pages.  While, as a user, you can organize a list of Pages, a Page cannot yet create its own lists.  Where a Page is more comparable to a Twitter account, adding list support, and public list support (which others can subscribe to) would significantly increase the value Facebook has compared to Twitter.  Public lists are one of Twitter’s crown jewels right now.

  • Firehose. Twitter charges for this as a whole and actually makes it very accessible compared to Facebook.  Right now I’m pretty sure you can get access to Facebook’s firehose if you have money and the right contacts and reasons to do it.  However, Facebook doesn’t make this very easy.  Maybe it’s rightfully so in that only a few developers and companies can be capable of even handling such data, but Twitter does make this pretty easy to access via services such as Gnip.  I argue this is an advantage Twitter has over Facebook right now.

What else am I missing?

Some Things Facebook Has That Twitter Doesn’t

While Facebook still misses some elements that Twitter provides, there are still features Facebook has, that, IMO, make it an even more valuable solution than Twitter, namelyI:

  • Insights. Facebook provides very granular data on how well each post is doing, demographics that are visiting the Page, growth of the Page over time, and much, much more.  Twitter has been rumored to be making a similar analytics suite, but has yet to release anything comparable to what Facebook provides.  (I wouldn’t count Twitter out of providing one in the future, though)

  • Richer, inline content. Facebook shows photos, videos, links, and more that a Page has posted.  You can also view the same, all inline, with the News Feed view of those accounts you’ve liked.  With Twitter, you have to click on each post, and only occasionally that content appears on the right column of Twitter.com.

  • Viewing Wall Posts of Other Users. On Facebook, as a Page admin, I can enable the default view of my Page’s Wall to be posts to the Wall by other people that have “liked” the Page.  This is an interesting strategy if your brand has a devoted audience, as it’s a great way to show people that are interested in your brand and show that you have a loyal following.  It’s also a great way to maintain a positive perception of your brand.  With Twitter there is nothing even close to this.

  • Events. Each Page can create its own events, that other users on Facebook can RSVP and have their friends see they RSVP’d.  This is built into Facebook, making it an integrated part of the experience, and a very viral tool for getting information out about a particular event occurring surrounding yourself or your brand.

  • Customization and Branding. With Twitter I get a background and a profile picture.  While Facebook doesn’t allow background images, it does allow a default, full HTML view, for every Facebook Page that chooses to do so.  Therefore, I can set it so the first time you visit my Facebook Page you are presented immediately with a welcome message from me and any other relevant information. This is very powerful!  (I show you how to do this in Facebook Application Development for Dummies)  You can’t do this with Twitter.

  • Advertising. As I mentioned earlier, frequent requests to promotedtweets@twitter.com return no response (others are tweeting me saying they’ve seen the same, despite spending millions on Facebook).  There is no interface to create ads for the common user.  It’s almost impossible to advertise on Twitter.  On Facebook, it’s as simple as visiting http://facebook.com/ads and following the instructions.  In fact, I can see close to exactly how many impressions I’m going to get through my ad on Facebook.  Facebook has been pretty transparent in this.

What else am I missing?

There’s no doubt Facebook is making it harder and harder to justify Twitter any more.  For many, this article may actually convince you.  My hope is that a) Twitter realizes this and adapts to compete, or b) Facebook realizes this and closes the final missing pieces to remove all needed functionality that a Twitter account can provide.  There are actually very few of those missing pieces any more!

If you haven’t yet considered a Facebook Page or the possibilities it can provide, now may be the time to start considering if you’re on Twitter.  Assuming Twitter does get acquired, or Facebook does continue competing the way it has, you’re going to want an audience on Facebook just the same as you have on Twitter.  More importantly, build your own presence and blog so it doesn’t matter any which way what network you’re on!  2011 will be an interesting year, that’s for sure.

With Facebook’s New Page Design, Do We Really Need Twitter?

Posted on by jessestay

(Alternate Title: “Twitter: 3 Years Later and Nothing’s Changed”)

Talks of acquisition, deprecation of whitelisting, charging for API access – Twitter’s doing all they can to reduce cost and become more profitable.  It’s actually a typical story for them.  I’ve written the same post several years in a row – about 4-5 years strong and Twitter still hasn’t changed.  Yet, it seems Facebook is always changing, and they’ve been around for almost the same time.  I’ve been looking for the excuse for years now (remember when I quit Twitter, and came back?) to be able to reduce my usage on Twitter.  The fact is I’ve got almost 30,000 followers on Twitter, and it’s a great megaphone for me to get word out and share.  I’m not required to have a 2-way relationship, and people can just click “follow” and they’re immediately getting my updates in their stream.  Until recently, Facebook made that really hard – it was hard to be a brand on Facebook, follow others, and build real relationships as a brand.  However, Facebook changed that recently, when they started allowing brands to “like” other brands and Pages and follow them in a stream, just like a normal user’s account, with their new Facebook Page redesign.  Now, I can “Use Facebook as (my page)” and see other public, more anonymous, accounts just like I do on Twitter.  There really isn’t much difference!  And I get more features!

Twitter has much fewer active users (they quote in the hundreds of millions, yet when I look at my sample of that data, only 30% of Twitter’s users have more than 20 updates total!), much less engagement, and it’s much harder to organize the conversation.  Let’s add to the fact that as a brand I’ve sent numerous email requests to the company asking to advertise with no response back.  On Facebook it’s much easier to represent yourself as a brand, it’s much easier to network, and there are so many more integration points to share and get into people’s conversations!  I have weekly conversations with my Facebook account rep.  I get Insights telling me how well my posts are doing.  I have a self-serve ad interface where I can get real-time stats on how many people my ads go to.  I have accounts with hundreds of thousands of users as an audience.  I have APIs and Search APIs and Real Time APIs to all these public accounts as a developer.  I’m really starting to think, is it really worth using Twitter any more?

In an era where the competition is fierce, has more features than you do, and is more appealing to brands, where the money is, I’m afraid it might be the time to sell for Twitter.  I’ve suggested before that Twitter would end up in an acquisition and I fear if they can’t start competing faster and better, they’re going to get left out in the dust, with a lower and lower value.  I hope they can prove me wrong, that they can accomodate brands better, and start competing with the likes of Facebook, but I’m afraid Facebook’s recent move makes Twitter an even less necessary platform for brands than ever before.

Maybe I’m wrong – can you share with me why you think Twitter is still more valuable than Facebook for users, developers, and brands?  I admit I’m now out of options.

Image courtesy http://www.chaaps.com/facebook-vs-twitter.html

UPDATE: See my latest post, “How to Replace Twitter With Facebook” if you want to know how to do this.

"Super Indexing Sunday" Breaks World Record With 2 Million Records Indexed in a Day

Posted on by jessestay

Facebook has quite a database with 500 million active users, and rumored total users in the billions.  There are few that can relate to the types of problems engineers and architects encounter with a database of that size.  FamilySearch.org is one of those, with a claimed database size of over 1 billion individual records, and possibly comparable numbers in associated documents and files.  Their Facebook Page claims over 400 million records indexed since 2006, and a goal to do half that number in just 2011!  Today FamilySearch.org broke another record, with an organized “Super Indexing Sunday”, claiming over 2 million records indexed in just one day, breaking their previous record of 1.9 million.

What is Indexing?

For those unfamiliar with Family History or Genealogy research, “Indexing” is the process of taking scanned in images and putting them in searchable, text form that others can easily find.  Similar efforts are going on in smaller scales with Archive.org, the Gutenberg project, and other organizations, but FamilySearch.org seems to have mastered this technique (arguably, Ancestry.com is pretty good at this as well).  With modern technology, FamilySearch has found ways to quickly and efficiently scan in records, then use its army of 400,000 volunteers (over half of those aren’t Mormon, the LDS Church being the parent owner of FamilySearch.org) to index those records for searching and attaching those records to applicable individuals in users’ Family History.

Example records indexed are Census records, Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Civil Registrations, and Marriage Certificates.  With such a worldwide effort it is becoming easier and easier for individuals around the world to prove their lineage and ancestry, and know more about their ancestors.  See the video below for a glimpse at what goes on to make this happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KLea_DPxb4

“Super Indexing Sunday”

That’s why today is particularly important.  Today, as others were watching the Greenbay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Superbowl, potentially hundreds of thousands of people were participating in breaking a new world record in the number of records indexed in a day.  The event “Super Indexing Sunday” was organized by a person not affiliated with FamilySearch.org, Ken Sisler, a Family Historian who lives in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada.  It was a grassroots event started on Facebook, and spread to hundreds or even thousands on Facebook as all rallied around this event.  I’m sad to admit that despite my employment at the LDS Church, I had not even heard of this until the event was over.

This evening the FamilySearch Indexing Facebook Page announced that over 2 million records had been indexed in a single day.  Assuming the 1.9 million record from before is correct, that would make this a new world record, and goes to show that Family History and Genealogy are things that aren’t going away any time soon.  To me this is an amazing feat!

If these types of efforts continue, FamilySearch.org is going to have no problem growing by almost half its size in indexed records for the year.  As the world’s largest database for genealogical information, I think they could easily say that they could compete for the title of one of the largest databases of individual data in the world.  To me, this makes FamilySearch.org one Web 2.0 website that is worth paying attention to.

You can participate in the FamilySearch Indexing effort at http://indexing.familysearch.org/.

Disclosure: FamilySearch.org is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my employer.  While I am employed by the Church, the statements herein are my own opinion and do not constitute official word or doctrine from the Church or its counterparts.  To be clear, I have not recently talked to FamilySearch.org and the information contained is all information I gathered from publicly available resources – I have no insider information.  I’m sharing this because I think it’s cool technology and something my readers might be interested in.

Privacy is Not an On and Off Switch – "Do Not Track" is Not the Answer

Posted on by jessestay

Victoria Salisbury wrote an excellent blog post today on “Who’s Creepier? Facebook or Google?“.  I’ve been intrigued by the hypocrisy over criticism of Facebook’s own very granular privacy controls when sites like Google, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, and others have an all-or-nothing approach with some things (location and email in particular) that are even more private than anything Facebook is currently making available at the moment (if you want some good examples read Kim Cameron’s blog).  The fact is that Facebook, despite the amount of private data available, will always be my last resort as a hacker when I want to track data about an individual online due to the granular control of data available, and lack of default public data.  However, despite all this, even Facebook isn’t at the ideal place right now in terms of privacy. The fact is my private data is still enclosed on Facebook’s servers, and with that, there will always be some level of risk in storing that data, no matter where it is.  So what’s the solution?

Browsers such as Mozilla and Chrome are now beginning to implement “fixes” around this problem of tracking data about users across online services (note my article on how even Wall Street journal is tracking data about users), called “Do not track.”  The extension, or in some cases native browser functionality, seeks to give users the option of completely turning off the ability for sites to track a user around the web, removing any personalization of ads and in some cases the removal of ads completely from the browsing experience.  This experience is fine and dandy – it gives the user an option.  But as my friend Louis Gray puts it, “all it does is ensure off-target ads with a crappy experience.”  It is clear an on and off approach is the wrong approach, and I fear those behind these extensions and browser integrations are missing out on an important opportunity.

So where can we go from here if “Do Not Track” is not the answer?  The answer lies in the problem I stated above – the problem being that individual user information is being stored on 3rd party servers, without the control of users and assumed risk of relying on a 3rd party.  We saw this as Facebook made a temporary mistake earlier in 2010 when they launched Instant Personalization on 3rd party websites along with other 3rd party website features, but in doing so accidentally opened up a majority of their users private information with little notice to users (I did get an email warning of the change, however).  Facebook quickly fixed the privacy problem with even better privacy controls than before, but by that point the damage was done.  It was proof positive that there is huge risk in storing private information on 3rd party websites.  The advice I give to customers and users and news organizations in interviews I give is, “if you’re not okay sharing it with the world, don’t share it at all, regardless of privacy controls.”  It’s an on or off solution at the moment, and I’m afraid there are no better choices.

There is a solution though.  Chrome, and Firefox, and IE, and every browser out there should be working towards this solution.  We need to take the granular controls that sites like Facebook provide, and put them in the browser.

Awhile back I spoke of a vision of mine I call “the Internet with no login button.”  The idea being that using open technologies (we already have Information Cards, for instance), the more private information about users can be stored in the browser, reducing the risk of that information being shared by accident with 3rd party websites.  Rather than something like Facebook Connect (or Graph API), for instance, a browser-driven version of OpenID would control the user authentication process, identify the user with a trusted provider (Facebook, Google, Religious institutions, Government institutions, you choose), and then be able to retrieve private information about individuals directly from the browser itself.

The fact is I already use tools to do some of this.  1Password, for instance, allows me to keep a highly encrypted store of my passwords, credit card, and other data on my hard drive and provide that data, as I choose, to the websites I visit.  A browser-native experience like this would make this process automatic.  I would specify which sites I give permission to have my data – name, address, phone number, email, location data, etc. – and I would also be able to choose what users have access to that data.  I could then choose to store my more public data on services such as Facebook and elsewhere, with the same option to still store it on my own hard drive if I choose.  With such a fine-tuned integration my more private information is completely in my own control.  My browser controls access to the data, not any 3rd party website or developer.

At the same time keys could be given to 3rd party websites to store my data on their servers.  In order to render that data, they need my computer’s permission to render the data.  The solution is not quite evident yet, but some how a trusted, separate service should be able to provide the permissions to render that data, and when that permission is revoked, all data, across all 3rd party websites, becomes disabled.  Or maybe just a few sites become disabled.  The goal being control is completely handled by the user, and no one else.  Maybe sites get disabled by my browser sending a “push” to the sites, forcing their data of mine to delete completely off their servers (or render useless).

Chrome and Mozilla have a huge opportunity here, and it’s not to provide an on or off switch for privacy.  I should be able to decide what information I want to be able to provide to ads displayed to me, and that data shouldn’t come from Facebook, Twitter, or Google.  My browser should be controlling that access and no one else.  Privacy belongs on the client.

I’m afraid “Do Not Track”, in the browser or by government, is no the answer.  There are better, much more granular solutions that browsers could be implementing.  It is time we spend our focus on a dimmer, not an on-and-off switch, for the open, world wide web.  I really hope we see this soon.

Facebook Quietly Launching Friendfeed-like Live Commenting

Posted on by jessestay

Tonight, in a moment of rare form, as I was singing Hakuna Matata on Facebook with Krystyl Baldwin and others (an occasion one must do often) I noticed a new feature pop up before my eyes.  Instantly, with no refresh of the page, my News Feed was literally singing with new comments.  It appears Facebook has taken its “Recent Items” feed to a new level, introducing a very FriendFeed-like live commenting system, also similar to Facebook’s new Groups and Messages system.

I’ve mentioned frequently here that Facebook, with its FriendFeed co-founder CTO Bret Taylor, and developers such as Benjamin Golub and others from the FriendFeed team, is quickly becoming more and more “FriendFeed-like”, gradually implementing all the features that were cool about the site FriendFeed.com.  One of those features was live, real-time commenting, where the comments appeared before your eyes without having to refresh the Page.  The live commenting, I’ve found, increases the engagement within the conversation because one isn’t stuck waiting for an email or Facebook notification notifying them to refresh the Page and find the conversation again to continue commenting.  The conversation just naturally flows, making conversation much easier.

Facebook seems to have launched this tonight, as I don’t remember seeing it before on the main News Feed.  This is a feature that has been already in wide use on Facebook Groups and the new, Facebook Messaging system that launched recently.  It seems natural that Facebook would extend this into other areas of the site.

It’s unclear whether this launch is just limited to a select group of users or whether this is widespread, but whatever it is I think it’s pretty cool.  I’m pretty excited to not ever have to refresh my News Feed on Facebook again.  Now, if we could just get FriendFeed’s search built into Facebook I’d be in Nirvana.  No worries!

FamilySearch.org To Discuss Living/Dead Relationship Technology With New RootsTech Conference

Posted on by jessestay

One of my favorite things to do is research my family history.  Even more interesting to me is the technology that can make finding and exploring your heritage even easier.  As a former employee of OneGreatFamily.com, a former Consultant for Ancestry.com and FamilyLink.com, and a current employee of the LDS Church (who owns FamilySearch.org), I think my passion has shown over the years.  In fact, I even have mockups from before Facebook was popular on a way to take my previous Open Source project, Jeans (the original platform for this blog, in fact – click to see my very first post!), to become a Family-oriented Social Network.  The fact is I love technology that brings us closer together, both in real life, and the life beyond.  That’s why I’m really excited for the conference FamilySearch.org is putting on for Technology professionals of all types called RootsTech.  This conference aims to discuss ways we can connect, in a better way, the living with the dead.

When you think about it, the process of connecting, throughout history, all the different types of relationships is fascinating.  Technologists, developers, and the like are only currently discovering the complexities of mapping out relationships as we work to sort out the living and their interactions on Social Networks.

Now imagine the complexity of going beyond this life to map those living with those who have passed on.  There are different historical relationship types to consider.  There is historical context to consider.  There are discovery aspects to consider.  FamilySearch.org claims to have billions of user profile records in its database (that’s at least twice the size of Facebook’s active user base!).

With the advent of mobile, social networks, new database technology, new hardware technology, we are now able to find ancestors and learn more about our origins in new and unique ways.  More information is available at our fingertips than was ever possible before.  We are able to collaborate in ways we were never able to before.  We’re learning things about those who have previously paved the way before us in ways we have never done before.  RootsTech, FamilySearch.org’s new Family History Technology conference, aims to get all the best minds in this industry together to discuss these challenges, and share new ways of approaching relationships and data archiving and retrieval in this life and beyond.

The conference won’t be interesting to just Genealogy professionals though.  The conference will be Keynoted by Shane Robinson, CTO of Hewlett Packard, as well as Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.  It should be interesting to all technology professionals with an interest in organizing relationships.  We will have Unconference sessions with moderators such as Phil Windley, founder and organizer of the Internet Identity Workshop and others very involved in Semantic web technologies.  I will also be participating in Phil’s panel.

If you’re interested in any sort of relationship-oriented technologies, there will be a lot to be learned at this conference, and you’ll learn many new and creative ways to organize data and relationships.  I hope to see some of my Facebook, Google, and Twitter employee friends there.  So come on out, book a ticket, and come for what is sure to be a really interesting, and fascinating event centered around relationship technologies among both the living, and the dead.

You can register and get more information here.  The cost for registration is just $99 for a regular registration.  It’s $35 for students.  I can generally get a round trip plane ticket to/from California for around $200-$250 so it should be a fairly inexpensive trip!  Oh, and come say hi if you’re in town visiting.

This post is my own opinion and by no means an official announcement or declaration by my employer.  Family History is a personal passion!  That’s why I’m sharing this with you today.

Emailvision Acquires Social Media Marketing Company ObjectiveMarketer

Posted on by jessestay

I’m always giddy to report on people I know whose companies have been acquired.  Amita Paul’s ObjectiveMarketer announced today it has been acquired by Emailvision, a leading Software as a Service Email marketing company providing solutions to enable marketers to communicate more effectively.  No details were disclosed as to the amount of the transaction.

ObjectiveMarketer is just one of dozens of companies in Guy Kawasaki’s very successful Advisorship portfolio (“Guy’s Golden Touch”), currently and previously containing several Twitter and Facebook marketing companies.  One of the most recent successes in that portfolio you may be familiar with was CoTweet, which was acquired by the Marketing firm ExactTarget.  I’ve had the chance to meet Amita Paul, ObjectiveMarketer’s founder at BlogWorld a couple years ago, and I must say the acquisition is well deserved.  The acquisition is also near and dear to my heart, as my company, SocialToo, is also in Guy Kawasaki’s Advisorship portfolio in similar fields – it’s exciting when someone else in your field gets acquired!

The acquisition comes on the heels of many other similar acquisitions by more typical marketing companies hiring social media businesses to get a leg up on Social Media and stay competitive in their industry.  The first, more famous acquisition was the CoTweet acquisition by ExactTarget, which I mentioned earlier.  You may also be familiar with the acquisition of Nutshell Mail, the Social Media notification and summary email service, by Constant Contact.

This acquisition is exciting, as all of these acquisitions cross boundaries somewhat with some of the services my company, SocialToo provides.  To me it just gives even more credibility that there is value in Social Media Marketing tools and customers are willing to pay big money to manage their presence on Social Networks.  I’m excited for what the future holds.

Congratulations to who I’m happy to call my peer in the Guy Kawasaki “Golden Touch”, Amita Paul.  This is an exciting day for her and an exciting day for Social Media Marketing tools as a whole.

Looking for a Facebook Internationalization WordPress Plugin

Posted on by jessestay
The Coat of Arms of Indonesia is called Garuda...
Image via Wikipedia

As I’m writing my book, I’ve come to realize that a good portion of you that visit here speak another language.  In fact, Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Facebook’s 2nd largest market (Indonesia, with over 200 million population), just so happens to have a high ranking in the readers of this blog as well, at least amongst those of you who are Facebook users.

There’s a little known fact about me that you may not know – I lived 3 years as a child in Indonesia, and, while I have forgotten much of my Bahasa Indonesia (as a kid, I could speak somewhat fluently), I do pick up some here and there and I thoroughly understand Indonesia’s culture and would love to have more of you Indonesian readers and visitors have a more comfortable experience on StayNAlive.com.  I’ve wondered if it might be worth sending each blog post through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, pick a few of the top languages visiting here (including Bahasa Indonesia), and see if I might be able to have multiple versions, in multiple languages integrated into this blog’s design.  Then I had a better thought – Facebook has its own crowd-source Translation product, Facebook Internationalization.  What if I just used that, and allowed you, my readers to translate this blog for your peers and the translation could happen in any language, natively.  There’s one problem though – there’s not currently any WordPress plugins that do this yet.

So I’m giving the idea away for free.  Facebook has a whole slew of documentation on how to integrate Facebook Translations into a website.  I’ll also be including a chapter about how to do this in my book, which I have to focus on at the moment.  Because of this, I don’t have the time to write one myself, but I’d love it if anyone felt compelled to build a Facebook Internationalization plugin for WordPress that others could use.  If you write one, let me know, let me provide feedback, and I’ll integrate it into the design of this blog and give you as much attention as you need to promote the plugin.  If you know of such a plugin, let me know!

Auto-load on scroll plugin?

I have one other request.  I think it’s a waste of time to have to click to the bottom of a blog and click again to go through past posts from that blog.  I want my blog to work like Twitter.com, where if I scroll down, it keeps scrolling, auto-loading additional content the further I scroll.  Is there such a plugin?  If not, why not?  That’s another plugin I’d promote heavily were it to become available.

If no one jumps to the cause, I may just build these myself when I get some time, but I thought I’d throw it out there in case someone wants a fun project to work on.  I think they’re both pretty forward-looking plugins that would see a lot of use.