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Netflix’ Little Known Information for Parents Feature

Posted on December 14, 2009 by jessestay

This post is guest-authored by Luke Stay – you can find him on his blog, AfroWhitey.com, on Twitter, or on his Facebook Page. Luke is Jesse’s younger brother.

I was doing a little exploring on Netflix a while ago when I came across a feature that I had never seen before. It’s called “Information for Parents,” and I don’t know why Netflix doesn’t promote it more. It takes a little digging (as far as I can tell) to even get to it, but it should be one of the most-used features on the site.

To get to the feature, you must first click on the link for a movie (not all movies have the feature, so stick with popular releases). For this post, I will use the new Star Trek. Under the “Details” section, you’ll see the rating of the movie with the MPAA reasons for the rating, and below that you’ll see Netflix’ rating, along with a link for more. Click on that link and you’ll be taken to the Parental Information feature.

The section that comes up is full of valuable information. I am a firm believer in active viewership, meaning that when watching a movie, especially with children, attention should be paid to the messages and themes underlying the plot and all the spectacle. In this feature, Netflix provides sample discussion points for parents to address with children after viewing, thus promoting the active viewership so often missing in many households. It also brings up some possible underlying messages you may have missed.

Next, the feature spells out specifically what elements gave the movie the rating Netflix awarded and why it is or is not appropriate for a certain age group. The categories covered are: Sexual Content, Violence, Language, Social Behavior, Consumerism, and Drug/Tobacco/Alcohol. Your bases are fully covered here, as it provides information for things I wouldn’t have even thought to include. Even the most protective parent can be satisfied.

So there you go, kudos to Netflix for providing this feature that every parent should be using. There is no reason to go into a theater or to rent uneducated. Now, if Netflix would only promote this valuable feature more.

This post is guest-authored by Luke Stay – you can find him on his blog, AfroWhitey.com, on Twitter, or on his Facebook Page. Luke is Jesse’s younger brother.

FriendFeed’s Just Fine

Posted on December 11, 2009 by jessestay

With all the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt around FriendFeed.com one would think FriendFeed is this service that is going the way of Jaiku, Pownce, Dodgeball, and others that went dead after their owners acquired them. There’s no doubt that amongst certain users in the US the activity in their streams is going down and some are talking about it. Just last month, Robert Scoble, FriendFeed’s number one user and unpaid evangelist publicly announced his resignation from the service and move over to bigger services like Twitter. Even yesterday, Louis Gray, perhaps FriendFeed’s second most active unpaid evangelist (and both good friends of mine), shared a statistic seemingly indicating his disappointment with the service. Yet, when you look at the big picture, things are up and to the right. There are no statistics anywhere that indicate FriendFeed is anywhere close to losing users when you look at the numbers and the long-haul.

Louis Gray shared a Compete.com graph of unique visitors yesterday which indicated that in November, FriendFeed had shown less users accessing the site than its low point a year ago. What isn’t shared though is that Compete is normally only indicative of US users, and FriendFeed is well known as an international site, extremely active in regions such as Turkey and the mideast. Remember the activity FriendFeed got around the Iran crisis? Even Bret Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed, now working for Facebook admitted that since August, International activity on FriendFeed is now dominating. See the graph below.

If you look at both Alexa and Quantcast 2 year stats, which when taken as a whole are generally a bit more acceptable a statistics engine in terms of general and international traffic, they both show an up-and-to-the-right trend for FriendFeed that hasn’t stopped since last year. There are a few down points, such as when 2 months in a row, TechCrunch wrote a scathing post about FriendFeed, comparing it to “the mob”, and Mike Arrington’s fallout after that (he was one of the top-followed users on FriendFeed up until that point). The next month Facebook acquired FriendFeed, and the lash back from users ensued, many discontinuing their use of the site, especially in the United States and Silicon Valley. The other major dip occurred in November, where Robert Scoble, FriendFeed’s most followed user, announced publicly that he was moving his activity over to Twitter and lessening his activity over on FriendFeed. FriendFeed still appears to be recovering from that, but it’s way too early to determine if that started a down and to the right trend – I doubt it. If you look at the Alexa stats, the 3 dips I mentioned occurred right around the the 3 events I just mentioned. Coincidence?

Yet, when you look at FFHolic, the site which ranks FriendFeed users and their activity, you’ll notice a change in the trends. The top users all remain the same – people from the United States and especially Silicon Valley which use the site rarely, yet are very popular. But when you look at the most active users, you no longer see the Monas and the Louis Grays and the Robert Scobles you used to see in that section. The most active users on FriendFeed are now their international audience. The second most active user, VAHID, has a feed of mostly non-English posts! So you can see that yes, when a very popular Silicon Valley blogger leaves the service, a huge chunk of the US audience leaves with them, and so does their activity, yet, the most active users aren’t even listening to or following those guys. FriendFeed continues to grow.

I predict there will be a shift, if this continues, where the most active users on FriendFeed soon will become the most followed people on FriendFeed. The more the popular users neglect the service, the more the more active users will have a chance to catch up to them. FriendFeed’s founding team has made it clear they’re not killing the service. In fact, they’ve been keeping it running and even improving it since they were acquired by Facebook. Check out the open source Tornado Framework FriendFeed is based on – it is still getting updates from the FriendFeed and Facebook teams. The FriendFeed team is all using the service still. FriendFeed was just included in the deal with Google for real-time search results, which means FriendFeed is most likely a revenue-generating site for Facebook now.

If anything, the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed should have you more comfortable, not less, that it is going to be around for a long, long time. There is no reason for it to go away. If it does, they’ll make it easy to get the same features you are getting on FriendFeed over on Facebook itself so you can take comfort you’re not going to lose anything. But if anything should comfort you it’s that FriendFeed continues in an up-and-to-the-right pattern when you look at the big picture and not the short-term dips the big Silicon Valley bloggers keep bringing up. I still see stats for my blog on FriendFeed. As long as FriendFeed is successful Facebook has no reason to remove it as a service. There’s still too much opportunity here. It’s still way too powerful a tool to kill and I think we’re all jumping the gun with the “it’s dead” statements. There are no facts supporting that statement.

Zuckerberg’s No Fool – He Only Shows What He Wants You to See

Posted on December 11, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve seen a few articles tonight gawking about all the information people are able to see on Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s profile due to the new Facebook Privacy settings being “more open”. Of course, Facebook wants to be sure everyone knows what they’re getting into, and they’re also wanting to encourage each and every user to default to a more open status. There’s one thing they’ve changed with this entire privacy settings upgrade however – users now have full control over every single thing they post to Facebook and who sees it. Zuckerberg’s no fool – he’s only showing us what he wants us to see. Let me elaborate.

Facebook’s strongest feature to date has always been its list feature – they had lists for almost a year before Twitter even started testing the idea. One cool thing you can do with lists is take the groups of people you’ve organized and attach them to privacy settings. Previously you could do this for photo albums, videos, and even some privacy settings on a global level. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, the chances are you’re not seeing all the photos and videos I post – I know that’s a travesty, but it enables me to protect my close friends and family, while still friending anyone who wants to be my friend. That’s pretty powerful!

What Facebook has been lacking however has been the ability to take these same privacy features accompanied by lists, and apply them to your status updates. The biggest thing Facebook launched with these Status updates has been the ability for you to now post a status update and only allow a specific list on Facebook to see that status update. Let’s take one example – I’m a member of the Mormon church. I have a lot of Facebook friends that are also LDS/Mormon. I also have a lot of friends that would prefer not to be inundated with shares related to religion. With this new update I can share things, just for my Mormon friends, and no one else will see them and my stream remains relevant to everyone else. This is also a powerful marketing tool for that reason. Now from one account, you can provide relevant data for each segment in your friends list.

This is also why Zuckerberg has finally been able to open up his profile. Sure, some photos people may question why a CEO of a profitable company of 350 million users would make public, but I am willing to bet he knows they’re there. It would take him 5 seconds to make those private, even with the new settings. The reason Zuckerberg has been able to open his profile is because he finally, without hesitation, can post anything he wants on Facebook, and only those he wants to see will be able to see the content he is sharing. Zuckerberg is leaving his profile open because he feels safe finally.

You should too.

So if you haven’t yet, create some friend lists on Facebook. Open up your profile a little on a default level. Then start using those granular privacy settings on a per-post and per-upload basis so you can be sure your content is being sent to the most relevant audience possible, while still maintaining your full privacy. This is all about giving you even more control, not taking it away. This is all about user-controlled context.

Hosting a Virtual Gift Exchange with Albinophant

Posted on December 9, 2009 by jessestay

Almost everyone has participated in a “white elephant” gift exchange. Some people call variations of it “Secret Santa”, or “Yankee Swap”, but the overall concept is the same. Each person brings a gift, the gifts are placed in the middle or rotated in some fashion, and each person takes a turn picking the wrapped gift of their choice, not knowing what their gift could be. However, in this era of virtuality where your close network of friends and family live all over the world, figuring out how to divy up the gifts or get everyone in one location for such an exchange can be difficult. Perhaps your office all works from home, or you’re self employed. A client of mine, Albinophant, has built the perfect application for the holidays which helps you create white elephant gift exchanges virtually via just your Facebook profile.

The premise behind Albinophant is simple. All you need to do is create a party, invite your Facebook friends to attend the party, and schedule a date and time for the party to start. Your friends and family will get a Facebook invite and when they accept the invite they’ll have the opportunity to RSVP for the event. Once they RSVP they’ll be taken to a page of hundreds of gifts taken from Amazon.com, which they can select and purchase. The host can specify a maximum price range, and only the gifts that fit within that price range will show up for that particular party. This solves the problem of some people having that one really expensive gift that everyone wants. After selecting their gift, the user selects a virtual gift wrapping for that gift (the gifts are real, but the gift wrapping is just for the game to disguise what the gift is), with which the gift will be identified during the game.

Then, the party starts. When the time for the party starts, an e-mail gets sent to the first person who RSVP’d for the gift exchange. They click on a link, select one of the gift-wrapped gifts from the list of items, then their item is revealed, and both they and the rest of the participants are able to see what they selected. Once each person’s turn is over, the next person in line is sent an e-mail telling them it’s their turn, and they get to select a gift.

Here’s the catch though – the “Yankee Swap”, as Michael Scott from The Office puts it. Each player, on their turn, can “steal” a gift from any other player that has already unwrapped their gift. You can do so on each turn until all the gifts have been unwrapped. So even though you may think you have the coolest and most geeky gift, that gift could very well be stolen by any one of the other participants. This is part of the fun of the Albinophant Gift Exchange.

Once the party is over, everyone sees the gifts they’ve won. A message is also posted to Facebook notifying their friends of the gift they won so they can show it off and talk about it with all their Facebook friends. It’s a fun occasion for both that close circle invited to the party, as well as those that haven’t attended that can see what you won. In addition to winning virtually though, if the Host has opted, each participant will then be mailed the gift they selected (which someone else purchased), in real life. The party goes from virtual to real, and the relationships have just strengthened a bit more.

As you’re gearing up for the Holidays, consider giving Albinophant a try in to get in the spirit with your online friends. Go in and set up a party to try it out – use the offer code “1234” when creating a party and all the gifts your participants select will be virtual and free (meaning they won’t be sent a real gift but you can still have the party). Albinophant’s a fun app you can use throughout the entire year to build Holiday spirit regardless of boundary.

You can sign up to host your own party here:

http://apps.facebook.com/albinophant/index.php?page=hostparty.php

Albinophant/PartyWeDo is a client of Stay N’ Alive Productions, LLC, my social technologies consulting company. If you are a blogger and you would like a free demo, or would like to host your own please let me know and I can arrange a tour for you and your friends/family.

Facebook Posts New Dashboard API Methods, Prepares New Interface

Posted on December 5, 2009 by jessestay

Early today Facebook posted a series of new API methods to their Developer Wiki enabling developers to post updates to what was previously called the “Application Navigation”, but what would now appear to be called “the Dashboard”. The Dashboard API aims to provide an easier interface for users to find updates to their favorite apps without cluttering the stream. At the same time, the Dashboard API tries to encourage more users to bookmark applications and provide applications on Facebook Platform another means of sharing information with their users.

The Dashboard, which will appear on the left-hand navigation either in place of or near the Friend Lists, should launch to users in the next week or two according to a vision statement posted by Mark Zuckerberg recently and the current developer roadmap. When launched, users will be able to bookmark their favorite applications on Facebook or on their favorite Facebook Connect-enabled site and those applications will appear in the left-navigation in the new Dashboard. Applications can then send updates, incrementing a counter when new updates are posted, enabling users to know when new updates are available from their favorite applications. When the user clicks on each application they are taken to a page with the updates.

In addition to traditional applications, according to the new developer documentation there will be a games category in the dashboard. If applications have categorized themselves as a game in the Facebook App directory, their app will appear underneath the Games category. This category appears to try and make it easier for users to manage all their games under one easy navigation so they can focus on the more productive apps beyond just gaming. Other applications appear under an Applications category, and there is also a “Friends’ Games” and “Friends’ Applications” category enabling users to view applications and games their friends are using, I assume.

The new Dashboard API enables developers to do all the things mentioned above, and comes alongside the 6 month developer roadmap announced earlier by Facebook. The roadmap comes with mixed criticism from developers, with some excited for new integration opportunities and better organization, while other developers mad at the removal of some features in the planned changes. One developer I talked to today was frustrated with the frequent changes Facebook makes on the Facebook.com site itself, opting to begin moving his development efforts more over to Facebook Connect where he has more control. I believe that is exactly where Facebook wants him.

The new Dashboard API should provide new opportunities for developers to update their users and easily notify users of changes within their apps. The API, according to the documentation, is available for development and testing now. According to the documentation there is no sandbox for the new API, but developers can start testing these methods on their own servers. It is unclear how developers will be able to begin testing the UI for the new methods.

DNS is the New Browser War

Posted on December 3, 2009 by jessestay

Today Google decided to go head-to-head with a smack to OpenDNS, announcing their own “Public” DNS which users could integrate to bypass their own DNS provider, get faster speeds, and “improve the browsing experience for all users.” The announcement comes head-to-head with their announcement a couple weeks ago that they were creating their own operating system built around the browser. Let’s make no doubt about it that this is a play by Google to take one more step to having their hands in every bit of the internet experience for users that they can. This is just one more “building block” for them.

The move sounds eerily similar to that of Microsoft’s early days, who, with Windows 98 (or was it 95?), started bundling Internet Explorer as the default browser for the OS, making it impossible to uninstall, and difficult to replace as the default browser. Anti-compete lawsuits ensued from the likes of Netscape and eventually Novell and other companies seeing similar moves. Microsoft’s browser is still in place as the default today. Becoming the “default” and controlling the experience is a natural move for any company building an operating system, except that this one has the internet as its foundation.

While at the Kynetx Impact conference a couple weeks ago (ironically during the Google Chrome OS announcement), Kynetx had set up their rule engine on the network so that everyone who joined the network would have their internet experience customized to brand Kynetx into the experience. Every page I visited had a little link I could expand to view the schedule for the conference. Every time I visited Facebook.com a little piece of code popped up on Facebook asking me to fan Kynetx, and also showed the latest Tweets for the conference. All of this was built on the Kynetx engine. It was pretty cool to see the potential! The advantage of Kynetx was that it was all dependent on users installing the code to customize the experience. While maybe untrue for the conference as a whole, it wasn’t intended to be controlled by one single entity over the entire internet.

Now that you see the potential for controlling the network, you realize that on the “open web”, he who controls the network controls the entire internet. That’s powerful from a monetization and marketing, and especially advertising standpoint (which Google has a vested interest in). When one company controls DNS, that company has the potential to control those that connect through that DNS. Now what happens when Google makes this “Public DNS” the default DNS for its users of the Chrome OS? Now, not only will Google have an edge in the desktop market, but they also now have an edge on the internet itself.

I predict DNS will become the new Browser War. Now that we have the players in the window to the internet (IE, Firefox/Mozilla, Chrome, Safari), the competition is now shifting to the internet itself, and who controls the actual browsing experience for the user. You’ll see players like Microsoft and maybe Apple, and maybe even Facebook enter this race. Let’s hope Google continues to follow its model, “Do no evil” as they approach this. I hope they build open architectures allowing users to control their data and control the experience rather than Google itself. I hope Google stays competitive, rather than knocking services like OpenDNS out of service. I hope they find ways to work with others as they do this.

There’s a new “war” a-brewing and we’ve moved beyond the browser to who controls the web itself. Does Google get first-mover advantage?

How to Customize Your Facebook Page

Posted on December 1, 2009 by jessestay

I get asked a lot how to customize your Facebook Page (that’s with a capital “P”, not to be confused with your personal profile). I wrote an article over on Tamar Weinberg’s (author of “The New Community Rules”) blog showing you what you need to do to get the most from your Page, including how to build your own custom tabs using the Static FBML app. This can be a great use for my book, FBML Essentials. If you have a cool design and aren’t sure what to do to customize this stuff this is a service I offer when I consult for my clients. I would be happy to help you with these efforts.

Check out the article here: http://www.techipedia.com/2009/create-facebook-page/

Oh, and please be sure to share the custom Pages you create with the Static FBML App – I’m doing a book giveaway to the best implementation of what you learned!

It’s Time to Free the Twitter Client

Posted on December 1, 2009 by jessestay

Dave Winer wants a programmable Twitter client. I think it’s a great idea. It’s something the browser has had for quite awhile now via extensions, frameworks, and plugins. Up until this point Twitter clients have been closed systems that can’t really be extended in any way. Loic Lemeur thinks he has the answer with the ability to extend his company’s Seesmic Desktop client – I applaud them for this – it’s something that I think would allow apps like my SocialToo.com to help clean up the stream both in and out of Twitter. In this way the Twitter client isn’t stuck with exclusive relationships where partners have to pay large sums of money to participate. Developers and users have full control over the experience they get from the client. I have a recommendation for Loic, Iain, and other social browser developers though: extend your browsers using open standards if you’re going to do it.

Up to this point we’ve been talking server-based open architectures. You have OpenID, OAuth, Wave, rssCloud, Pubsub Hubbub, heck, you even have HTTP, SMTP, and even TCP/IP. But up until now there haven’t been many client-based architectures that extend across any client enabling developers to easily write code for any web client on the client side and have that port from the AIR client to another AIR client, to the browser, and to any other app that touches the web. Fortunately that technology is here now, and I think the Twitter and Facebook client developers have the opportunity to push this stuff mainstream and put pressure on the generic web browser developers to do the same with their own extension architectures. That technology is the Selector – Action cards.

Craig Burton said the Cookie is dead, and this is why: Cookies can’t extend across multiple applications on a single computer. The Selector has that potential. Imagine a plugin architecture that read an Information Card to identify you on Twitter or Facebook, etc. You could add to it an Action card from a site like SocialToo (my site), and based on that Action card and the settings set forth in the Action card by the user the entire Seesmic Desktop experience will be customized based on the settings SocialToo set for that user based on their preferences. The cool thing about this is it can all be done in simple (and open) Javascript using frameworks like Kynetx’ KRL.

If I were Loic Lemeur I would seriously be studying the open standard of Information cards and especially Action cards right now. He has the opportunity to follow an open standard in this plugin development architecture that would extend across his app into other apps and even the browser. This is Seesmic’s opportunity to lead in this effort. If not other clients will take the ball by embracing these standards – developers will flock to this if it’s done right.

My hope is that Seesmic and any other Twitter or Facebook client can do these plugin architectures the right way. Information cards and Action cards right now are the most open and extensive way for any desktop (or even mobile) client to put control back in the developers’, and more importantly, the users’ hands. I hope they do the right thing.

I commented on Loic’s blog post but did not receive a response – hopefully we can hear more about their plans for this new architecture soon, and let’s hope it’s built on open standards. If you write the first Twitter client to support Information cards or Action cards let me know and you’ll get a big fat blog post here promoting the heck out of it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the future of the web and we need to be pushing it as much as possible. I’m calling all client developers to action.

Be sure to read my article on my vision for no log in buttons here – it will help you understand this stuff, and more of my vision, even further.

The Future Has No Log In Button

Posted on November 25, 2009 by jessestay

Since last week’s Kynetx Impact Conference I have gained an entirely new vision for the open web. I now foresee a web which the user completely controls, lives in the browser, syncs with the cloud, and has no boundaries. This new web completely makes the entire Social and Real-time paradigms miniscule in terms of significance. What I see is an internet that, regardless of what website you visit, you will never have to enter your login credentials again. I see the end of the log in button.

It all centers around identity. The idea comes with a technology called Information Cards, and a term called the “Selector”. With these technologies, websites will rely on the client to automatically provide the experience you want without need for you to log in ever again. It relies on OpenID, doesn’t really need oAuth (since all the authorization ought to happen on the client), but the best part is you, the user, don’t ever have to know what those technologies are. It “just works”.

OpenID

Let’s start with what you might already be familiar with. You’ve probably heard about OpenID before. If not, you might notice a little vertical orange line with a little gray arrow going from the line in a circle on some sites you visit. Google just announced today that their profiles are now OpenIDs. That basic concept is that you can specify on any website on the web a “provider”. When you log in via Open ID, all you have to enter is your preferred website that specifies this “provider”. The website you’re logging in to then redirects you to that provider, you provide your password, and it takes you back to the authenticating site. It’s a simple authentication mechanism that enables sites to know who you are, just via a simple URL. StayNAlive.com is a identifying URL for me, and points to my provider, myopenid.com.

In addition, utilizing technologies such as “FOAF” (Friend of a Friend), and the Google Social Graph APIs and other technologies, you can do cool things with identity. Since I know your provider ID is being linked by your website, I know both your website and that provider are the same person. You can link sites together, and now you know which profiles around the web are truly you – it becomes much harder to spoof identity in this manner, especially as more and more sites begin to adopt this methodology. The problem with OpenID is its still a little confusing (even for me), and not everyone is familiar with entering in a URL into a log in space to identify themselves.

Information Cards

Enter Information Cards. This is a new space for me, but a fascinating one. An information card is a local identity, stored in your browser or on your operating system, which you can “plug in” to any website, and it tells that website about you. Theoretically, they could even sync off of a local server somewhere, but Information Cards (so I understand) are controlled on the client.

The cool thing about Information Cards is that you can store lots of different types of information on them (again, if I understand correctly). At a very minimum, information cards allow you to store an identity about an individual. In an ideal environment, you would be able to download an information card program like Azigo, visit a site like Yahoo.com, select your Yahoo information card, and just by clicking the information card it would immediately log you

into Yahoo. The cool thing is that ideally, this completely avoids the phishing problem because Yahoo is the only one that can read your information card for Yahoo.com.

Here’s the kicker though – you can store more than just the log in for an individual in an information card. Imagine storing privacy preferences. What if I don’t want Yahoo to have access to my birth date, for instance? Or what if I wanted to go even further and completely customize my experience? What if I wanted Microsoft to provide updates for me right on top of Yahoo.com? What if I wanted to get a completely customized experience based on the websites I really like around the web? This is where the next part comes in.

The End of the Cookie and Birth of “the Selector”

Imagine a web where you, the viewer or user or consumer, are able to browse and get a completely customized experience that you control. What if you are a Ford user and want to see comparable Ford cars on Chevy’s website? (I talked about this earlier) Or here’s one I’ve even seen in production: I’m a big Twitter user. What if I want to learn what others are saying about the websites I visit on Twitter without ever having to leave those websites? Or say I’m a AAA member and want to know what hotels I’m searching for are AAA-supported? What if I don’t like the way a website I visit is rendering content and I want to customize it the way I want to? All this stuff is possible with the Selector.

In the past you usually were at the mercy of these websites unless they provided some way for you to create your own context. This is because these sites are all reliant on “cookies”, pieces of information stored on the browser that are reliant on IP that are only readable by the websites that generated them. With a cookie there is no identity. There is only IP. With a cookie the website controls the experience – each website is in its own silo. The user is at the mercy of each silo.

Kim Cameron and Craig Burton have been big proponents of a new identity technology intended to replace the cookie. It’s called “the Selector”. The idea of the Selector is that you, the user, use Information cards in a manner allowing you to fully control the experience you have as you peruse the web. The idea uses an extension to information cards, called “action cards“, which enable users and consumers to specify their own preferences as to who shows them data and when around the web. The cool thing is that businesses have a part in this as well that the users can opt into.

For instance, Ford could provide an action card (or “Selector”) using technologies like Kynetx to display comparisons of Ford products right next to Chevy’s right on the Chevy.com website. Chevy.com can do nothing about it (other than provide their own selector) – it is 100% user-controlled, and the user’s choice to enable such. Or, let’s say I’m a big Mac user and I want to see what Dell products are compatible with my Macbook – I could simply go to Dell.com and find out because hopefully Apple has created a Selector for Dell.com. Not only that, but these sites, Dell.com, Apple.com, Ford.com, Chevy.com can all track my interest based on preferences I set and customize the experience even further so I am truly gaining a “purpose-based” experience around the web.

All of the sudden I’m now visiting “the web” instead of individual sites on the internet, and the entire web becomes the experience instead of a few websites. The possibilities are endless, and now imagine what happens when you add a social graph full of truly contextual identities on top of all this. Now I can feed my friends into this contextual experience, building an experience also based on the things they like and adding it onto the things I like. There are some really cool possibilities when the web itself is a platform and not individual websites.

Ubiquity

The future of the web is Ubiquity, the state or capacity of being everywhere, especially at the same time. Users will be ubiquitous. Businesses will be ubiquitous. There are no boundaries in the web of the future. I’ve talked about the building block web frequently but that just touches the surface. In the future these building blocks will be built, and controlled by the users themselves. Businesses will provide the blocks and the users will stack them on top of each other to create their own web experience.

Businesses will have more sales because the consumers will be getting what they want, and consumers over all will be more productive. This new approach to the web will be win-win for both sides, and we’re just getting started.

Where We Are At

Here’s the crazy thing that blew me away last week – we’re so close to this type of web! We see Google building an operating system entirely out of a browser. We have Information card and Action card/selector platforms such as Azigo, which enable users to seamlessly integrate these experiences into the browser. We have developer platforms like Kynetx which enable the creation of such an experience.

Imagine if Google were to integrate information and action cards right into ChromeOS. What if Kim Cameron were to get Microsoft to integrate this into IE and Windows? (hint – they will) What if Apple integrated Information Cards into the Keychain so you actually had context with your log on credentials? All this is coming.

Where We Still Need to Go

We’re not there yet, but we’re so close! I want to see more focus on this stuff and less on the Social web and real-time technologies. For those technologies to fully succeed we need to stop, take a deep breath, step back, and get identity right. We’re not quite there yet.

I want to see technologies such as Mozilla Weave integrate Information Cards for their browser (rather than reinvent the wheel, which is what they appear to be doing). We need more brands and more companies to be writing contextual experiences on the Kynetx platform (which is all Open Source, btw). We need more people pushing companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple to be integrating these technologies so the user can have a standardized, open, fully contextual experience that they control. I want to see Facebook create an experience on these platforms using Facebook Connect. I want Twitter to build action cards.

For this to happen we need more involvement from all. Maybe I’m crazy, but this future is as clear as day for me. I see a future where I go do what I want to do, when I want to, and I get the exact experience I asked for. This is entirely possible. Why aren’t we all focusing on this?

Sign in Graphic Courtesy Chris Messina

Twitter – TIMTOWTDI

Posted on November 23, 2009 by jessestay

I love Twitter for its variety. In many ways it’s a lot like my favorite programming language Perl, whose mantra is “There is more than one way to do it.” Some people choose the messy, spaghetti code way, while others choose nicely formatted, object-oriented way, even taking it to the extent of protecting it further with libraries like Moose. On the web I can do basic, old-style CGI, or take it as far as a full MVC structured framework using Catalyst (if you don’t know anything about what these are that’s okay – just know that they’re good, and well structured). Perl has both a good and bad reputation because of this, and I like it that way. I like it the same way I like Twitter – there’s more than one way to do it.

That’s why I get so bugged when I see so many people trying to tell me how to write my Twitter stream. Some say I have to have multiple accounts to organize the data. Others say I can’t run ads and my content can’t be promotional in any way. Funny thing is most of those people are promoting something of their own, whether they admit it or not. Personally that doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is that I can use Twitter the way I want to. I can write everything in one stream if I want to, or I can run ads if I want to (which actually, I just signed up for ad.ly yesterday to see what it was all about – no one has purchased anything yet though so no worries there, if there ever were any in the first place). I can be profane if I like (but generally I prefer not to, just like real life). I can even retweet the way I like to. The cool thing about Social Media is we all have our own purposes and our own ways of doing things and when we do such we use the best tools for the job. The great thing about Twitter is that it allows us to do such. I use Twitter the way I use Perl, however I want to and what works for me – and I get criticized in the same manner. There will always be a critic of the way you use Social Media, just like there is always a critic of how I write Perl.

And I’m okay with that.

The fact of the matter is I’m interesting because I’m ME. Hopefully you follow me because of that. If I advertise it’s going to because that’s something I think will help pay for me to be me, and it will always be some sort of reflection of myself. If I don’t advertise it’s because I don’t think that’s necessary. If I separate my content into multiple accounts it’s because I want you to find out different bits of information about me in different ways. If I keep it all in one stream that’s because I think that’s the best way of learning who I am. If I retweet it’s for my own reasons, not anyone else’s.

I think we get way too caught up in what we think is the best way that works for us, and thinking others should do the same. What works for me will not always work for you or the next guy. What works for Chris Pirillo or what works for Chris Brogan will not always work for Robert Scoble or Leo Laporte or someone else. We are all unique, and that’s what makes Social Media a beautiful thing. Social Media is all about how you receive, not about how other people give. Receive well, and you will give much. Social Media is all about ME. And you. And him. And her. It’s about connecting Individuals, which individuals are not the same.

And if you don’t like that concept, I’m okay if you unfollow me. After all, there’s always more than one way to do it.