Trouble is brewing in schools

This diagram struck me:



Via pedersondesigns

Paying attention to broken windows

As we have alluded to over the last few weeks, we are now working on what will become the first Beta build of Touchstone. So as we start to tie up loose ends, work on optimization and generally focus in on the little details it's great to come across posts like solving big problems by paying attention to the small things from Matt of 37Signals.

It's true that by polishing off what is already there and making it painless, easy and even glossy - the application truly feels more stable, pleasurable and intuitive.

Oh, Microsoft!

See, Touchstone Alpha is not the only product that crashes ;) Checkout this photo of a giant electronic billboard in Times Square, New York City. Link.

From One Founder to Another...

Over the Christmas break, the Touchstone development team has taken some personal time out to remind their families that they are still alive. Since this naturally has slowed the pace of development, it has taken some of the pressures away from me as a director and founder to take 5 minutes to reflect on the past year and realise the massive steps we’ve taken both professionally and personally.

After this reflection, I have realised how lucky I am to have a partner and friend like Chris. I know there are many other ‘dual founders’ out there, but I’m sure none of them have quite the same relationship as Chris and I. We’re both burdened with an over-abundance of passion and opinion, and while this has on occasion raised some eyebrows in the office, we never let ego get in the way of decisions and we’re very careful to support each other when it’s needed.

Plus, there isn’t anything quite so depressing when you’ve fallen in love with an idea or aspect of the business, and your co-founder tells you that it can’t “be that way” – and you knowing in your heart that he’s right. But when he doesn’t hold this against you, you realise how lucky you really are.

Chris, you are an intelligent and co-operative friend and colleague and I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you for your effort, tenacity, patience and inspiration which helps push me past what I previously thought impossible.

Thankyou buddy.

Blog Highlights of 2006

Hi everyone - I hope you had a great 2006. I know we certainly have. In just one year, Touchstone has gone from the back of a napkin to a funded, flying company with a number of great staff, friends, advisors and testers. We wish to thank you all very much for your efforts this year - we literally could not be doing this without you.

Here are the highlights from the blog over the last year in reverse order (most recent at the top).

Hitting the Mainstream 2
Information Overload hits the mainstream media for a second time - in a big way.

Hitting the Mainstream 1
Information Overload hits the mainstream media for the first time (or there abouts)

Democracy Now!
Web 2.0 has barley hit and people are talking about Web 3.0. We discuss how absurd that is and why YouTube is NOT Web 2.0.

Show me the money (or pain!)
Some people (read:head in the sand) think there is no information overload problem. This post explains why there is.

Filtering vs. Ranking
Some people are still talking about filtering RSS. Filtering is so 5 years ago.

Aggregation is King
Content used to be king. If that's true, then Aggregation is now master of the universe.

Desktop vs. Web-based
Web 2.0 implies that stuff is on the web. Not true. This post talks about the value of desktop applications in a web world. By the way - did you know the Browser is a desktop application? Shock/Horror.

What is Attention Data?
And no - it is not just OPML or Attention.XML.

Personalized Content
Some claim that the battle for 'People Powered News' is over. Digg and others have won. I make the argument that People Powered News MIGHT be done, but Personalized Content is just getting started.

There is no more audience
Participants have killed the audience. Media outlets that treat their audience like eyeballs are doomed to fail in a Media 2.0 world. This is a short rant about the death of the Audience.

Touchstone funded by Angel
Touchstone get's funded by an Angel Investor. What more do we need to say about that!

The Long Tail of Attention
Chris Anderson describes the three factors that have made the Long Tail a viable market. I then explain why a Tool like Touchstone empowers the 'Long Tail' (that's you and me) to take advantage.

Personal Relevancy
What is Personal Relevancy exactly? It's when your interests and personality become the basis for choosing content, rather than the whims of one editor who decides what 'the mainstream' should care about.

Tune Out the Noise
Touchstone is not about alerting - it is about NOT alerting. Think about that.

Attention, Scarcity and Demand
Markets work on Supply and Demand. Price is dictated by Scarcity. So in an era of abundance, the scarcest resource is our Attention.

Power Back in your hands
Amazon Recommendations are great... for them. They help cross-sell and up-sell their customers. But what if you could use the same technology to take control of your information across all the sites you visit?

Anti-Web 2.0
Touchstone is a desktop application. Does this make it Anti-Web 2.0?

Not a Gadget Engine
Touchstone compared to the current rash of Gadget/Widget engines out there.

RSS is not just about News
Imagine using RSS for something other than News. Feed readers fail for most of those other applications. Touchstone picks up the slack.


Thanks again for sticking with us. The best is yet to come!

Chris, Ash and the whole Touchstone Crew.

The PageRank of Personal Relevancy

Ilya recently posted some great data and analysis on the current state of RSS reading habits.

He goes on to explain many of the issues I alluded to in a previous post titled "Show me the money (or the pain)".

I think the question of information overload is answered. Yes there is an overload. But RSS is not the problem. In fact blogs and user generated news are not the problem either. They are just one source of information in our lives.

There are application events, presence changes from our friends, internal memos from head office, applications on our desktop and more all clamoring for our time...

So tools that try to cluster and suggest content from blogs and mainstream news sites are only (very) useful for part of the time.

Ilya goes on to make a great suggestion in his post. He recognizes that collaborative filtering has limitations, Keyword filtering is 'so 5 years ago' and that any one 'community voting' measurement will fall short.

With Touchstone we have gone to great lengths to cover all these usage scenarios. We have built a platform that accepts 'items' not 'RSS'. This means that we can source content from places other than RSS and then cache, rank and route them in a unified way.

Our 'rank' is not based on collaborative filtering or keyword filtering or community voting or previous reading behavior. It is based on some and none of these things at the same time. As such, our technology can work in a vacuum on a personal item behind the firewall, just as it can work on a news item that the whole world can see and link (read:vote) to.

Also, there is no 'handshake' period where our application tries to track your reading behavior over time. We are on the client side which means we have access to your browser history/cache, documents and email for an instant, broad and ongoing base of 'Attention Data' in order to determine your interests.

Ilya rightly compares this to PageRank. While PageRank uses incoming links as a vote to measure authority, it relies on a broader set of factors to make a decision and produce a number.

And because the result is a number rather than a binary 'yes or no' filter or an opaque recommendation, Touchstone can make intelligent presentation decisions when displaying the alert/content/information. The bigger the number the bigger the item on the page.

My friend Adam also posted about the 'Feed Overload Problem' on his blog.

An ebb of power from the few to the many...

As you may have noticed, the Touchstone blog is starting to move away from the academics of Attention Management toward the more practical goals of helping people manage their media consumption and business relationships/execution. So in that spirit let’s talk about the mainstream media for a second...

I'm watching Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN at the moment and they have spent TWO segments about the Rosie O’Donnell Vs. Donald Trump publicity stunt feud that is going on right now. Don't know about it? Don't worry it is a pointless waste of time.

Suffice to say there were some inflammatory statements made on both sides and now Donald is threatening to sue Rosie for defamation.

Anderson brought in legal analysts to discuss if Donald had a case etc, etc.

Are you serious? Anderson is the guy who confronted Mary Landriew live on CNN about the governments slow response to Katrina and he is now hosting a lightweight pop culture show!




Perhaps John Stewart said it best when talking about the TIME magazine declaration of 'You' as the people of the year.
In response to the TIME spokesperson's statement that, in regard to Media, "…there has been an ebb of power from the few to the many" Jon Stewart said:

"It's almost as though consumers have moved on because mainstream media has abdicated its responsibility...."

Watch the segment here:



There have been plenty of false statements that deserve legal action in the last few years. Statements that have resulted in the death of thousands of people and massive worldwide unrest. I think Rosie and Donald's little feud does not deserve prime time CNN airtime and legal analysis when those issues are still unresolved.

With the volume of real and valuable information out there about issues that affect our lives, it is my hope that attention management and engagement tools will help users see information that really matters, instead of stupid fluff pieces.

Perhaps, also, those same tools will help publishers/outlets understand the value (in terms of affluence and conversion rates) of participants who prefer real news over the false buzz generated by empty pop culture feuds that chew up valuable air time.

Tag, You're It - 5 things you didn't know about me

I've been tagged by Jeff Pulver's Tag game! I have a feeling this is some sort of sick game that Jeff is playing on us and we are all his pawns.

That's ok with me I guess, I'm a fan of his work! Thanks for including me Daniela.

Ok here it goes...

1. I am truly a TV/Media Junkie/Addict. I watch about 20 different TV shows on a regular basis. It is my vice. From the The Family Guy to Battlestar Gallactica. My favorite show of all time is The West Wing.
   
2. I used to be a radio presenter and could have easily ended up doing it full time. It turned out the technology was more interesting to me than the presenting part. The show was actually about IT though, so I was never far from home. Podcasting has been calling me for a while now - but I'm still holding out.
   
3. I don't have any pets (I think I am too selfish to keep something else alive right now) but I do have a younger brother who is a whole decade younger than me if that counts. No siblings in between; big gap!
   
4. I was on local TV at age 10 espousing the value of the Internet as an important emerging phenomena (I didn't use quite those words back then). How wrong I was hah.
   
5. I have never worked for someone else (in the strictest sense). I have always been in a contractor, owner, director or CEO. I like to feel like I have ownership over the direction of stuff I'm involved with.

Leave some comments to tell me stuff about you guys - time to delurk! You know you want to.

Passing it on... Tag to:

Ben Metcalfe
Cameron Reilly
Martin Wells
Marjolein Hoekstra
Mark Jones

Update: Shout out to Marianne and John for also tagging me.

Search Engine Optimizing Media

Are we now at a stage where online distribution and discovery via search means that media creators need to Search Engine Optimize the name of their TV shows and Movies?

I just discovered a mini-series on Sci-Fi Channel called 'The Lost Room' because I was searching for stuff about 'Lost'.

Was that a coincidence, or was there a decision to name the show in such a way that it would get discovered by online fans of another, very popular, property targeted at the same audience?

I wonder...

In any case, it worked. I am now watching the 3 part mini-series.

Presence Stream by Jaiku

Everyone said Twitter was cool - but I didn't really get it.

Jaiku gets it though. They are Twitter++. They call it a 'Presence Stream' (which I love) and they allow you to publish all events about your life to a unified stream. Very, very cool.

In fact, they are a perfect partner for Touchstone. Just like AIM/Skype/MSN does a popup toast when a user logs on, I'd like Touchstone to alert me when any event occurs in the life of one of my friends/contacts.

Based on the event importance, it could be routed in various ways and to various devices/platforms.

I love it.

Via Library Clips

The Disintegration of Reality – no really….

For better or worse, there is an emerging trend that goes beyond the web or media – the very fabric of reality is changing.

Reality is disintegrating. No wait hear me out.

Granular parts of our established systems are being dislodged from their containers and only reforming via temporary, loosely coupled connections.

Content is being disintegrated from the Page, TV and Radio via RSS and Microformats.
Functionality is being disintegrated from applications (loosely coupled smashups are starting to overshadow complete applications).

People are being disintegrated from families. Divorce is now common place and starting to lose its taboo. As a result families are forming all sorts of strange and lopsided combinations where ex’s and steps come together for special occasions and in support of ‘the children’. At all times, however, the individual seems to be achieving more freedom and importance than the ‘family unit’.

And finally (at least in my list of examples) people are being disintegrated from companies... People work from home or freelance more. They change jobs more. And most recently, via blogging and other online identity management tools, people are now building their own brands - their name.

They are establishing themselves as free agents of opinion, action and connections - they are forcing companies to treat them as valuable resources because they are, in fact, one of the scarcest.

Companies have always been about relationships first – who you know rather than what you know – however in an age of LinkedIn and blogging, a person’s individual worth (beyond their monetary compensation) is being measured, respected and leveraged like never before.

Hearing names over and over...

While on our Trip to the US and while chatting to friends and contacts online you begin to hear names over and over. One of those names is John Battelle...

"Oh John Battelle would love what you're doing" - Mr X

"Your ideas are right up John's ally" - Mrs Y


I have only just now had a chance to catch up with John's blog and work. It's fantastic - and now I know why people kept on mentioning him.

As you can see I have recently had a run of posts around the theme of 'Media 2.0' and his recent post about Packaged Goods Media Vs. Conversational Media does not disappoint.

Don't worry John - I got to the end!

Is Attention Finite?

Over on David Henderson's blog he has posed (and in some ways answered) the question "Is Attention Finite".

I have always considered it finite. As you can see from our Manifesto (written almost a year ago now):

"Attention is what you care about. It is a resource that is quickly evaporating as an avalanche of information sources clamor for your time."

David also quotes John Hagel's post "the economics of attention" which is Amazing.

I dare not quote any one part of it here because it is, in its entirety, a wonderful summary of the relationship between Attention and Economics and future Markets which itself pulls from quotes and summaries from other definitive sources.

Our Manifesto, by comparison, looks simplistic at best. The key for us, however, is not how Attention may affect markets on a macro scale. Nor is it about how companies can get, keep and leverage your attention. Our/my interest is in the individual. Me.

How can I, during my ordinary, everyday life, maximize my time by filtering out the noise and receiving information, products and services that meet my needs and expectations at any given time.

How can I, in an increasingly Attention Savvy marketplace (where companies are mining and using my Attention Data), take control of my Attention rather than ceding control to others.

From this perspective, I think the issue becomes far more manageable. And the value to the user becomes far more practical.

This is not a fight the system proposition however. On the contrary. It is a commercial exercise. The user has an urgent and growing need to take back control in order to bring balance to the system. And when there is a need, there is demand; and where there is demand there must be a supply.

Can you say... BlackBerry?

My great friend Marjolein of CleverClogs tipped me to this piece from the Wall Street Journal:

As hand-held email devices proliferate, they are having an unexpected impact on family dynamics: Parents and their children are swapping roles. Like a bunch of
teenagers, some parents are routinely lying to their kids, sneaking around the house to covertly check their emails and disobeying house rules established to minimize compulsive typing.

It goes on to say...

Emma, 14, also identifies with adults who wish their kids spent less time playing videogames. "At my student orientation for high school, my mom was playing solitaire," she says. "She has a bad attention span." Her mother, Barbara Chang, the chief executive of a nonprofit group, says, "It's become this crutch."

Sometimes it's best just to turn your distractions off. With Touchstone, you can go into 'Away' mode and it will suppress all alerts until you get back. One of the advantages of routing all your alerts through one alert management system!

I am TIME's person of the year!

And so are you :)

Congratulations to all of us. This is the yet another important step along the road to the Mainstream Media embracing Web 2.0 to create Media 2.0. I'm sure you have heard the news from many sources - but here are some quotes from the online version.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

And later in the article...

But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious.

Update: Noah Brier just pointed me to this.

I think it's funny - but a bit snarky. As I said to Noah - It's a fair point but it was nice of them to tip the hat. The fact that it's link baiting is no big deal, Colbert does it every other day.

Media 2.0 Roadmap

I have been thinking a lot about 'Media 2.0' lately. So I quickly wrote up a roadmap from the distant past media landscape to our near future opportunities. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Distant Past (Local Radio Stations)

• Distribution: Costly, via radio towers and dedicated ‘wireless’ receivers
• Content: Local news and radio plays
• Advertising: Local sponsors
  

Past (National Radio Networks and TV Networks)

• Distribution: Costly (via radio and TV towers, TVs and Radios)
• Content: National shows targeted at demographic groups
• Production: Costly
• Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by editors) is on the air – segmented by broad demographics
• Advertising: Local and National sponsors
  

Recent Past (Internet – Web 1.0)

• Distribution: Cheaper (via modems and PCs – unstructured content in HTML)
• Production: Costly (in terms of time and skills)
• Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses – now also on the web
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the editors) is on the air – segmented by more niche demographics
• Interaction: Interest groups and communities trapped in silos
• Advertising: Local and National advertisers splitting revenue across web, tv, radio.
  

Now (Internet – Web 2.0)

• Distribution: Mostly Cheap (existing TV, Radio towers and across multiple devices using the Internet – structured content via RSS)
• Production: Cheap (just click publish on your blog)
• Audience: Two way participation within the audience (‘the bottom’) with democratic editorial control in the grassroots
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the audience) as measured using services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg etc. Segmentation in the mainstream continues by more thinly sliced Demographics)
• Interaction: Interest groups unbound by silos (due to RSS)
• Advertising: Context sensitive Ads targeted at the page – served by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
  

Coming (Media 2.0)

• Distribution: Cheap (across multiple devices using the internet as the ‘universal pipe’ – structured content via RSS). Aggregation is the main user interface.
• Production: Cheap (just click publish on your camcorder and mobile phone)
• Audience: The audience is gone, only participants are left: Two way participation with all stakeholders and democratic editorial control of what’s on the web and what’s on the air
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the participants and measured by services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg) is played on air. Segmentation by niche interest groups.
• Relevancy: With hyperchoice, ‘What’s personally relevant’ becomes far more interesting that 'What's popular' – Audiences of one.
• Advertising: Ads targeted at the individual – served by aggregators

Citizen Tipping Point

Over on his Logic + Emotion blog, David has a great YouTube video of an interview with Ben McConnell about how citizens are now dictating the 'Cultural Conversation' through social software and participant generated content.

He also goes on to explain why corporations need to tune into the conversation. Now if only they had an easy-to-use tool that made that possible.

Check out the post and watch the video.

Thanks to Marianne who pointed out David's blog to me!

Can blogging create World Peace?

I was chatting to an old (as in long term - I would never call her old) friend of mine today and we got to talking about Politics and Justice and all those light weight things (as you do). We are both very interested in those topics.

We got to talking about how the latest wave of social software might help improve the world. I almost alluded to it in a recent post about Web 3.0 (*cringe*).

We came up with this interesting line of thought (if you look closely you could imagine a small green Muppet saying the words).

War is based on fear, fear is based on ignorance, ignorance is based on a lack of information, lack of information is based on bad/biased editorializing and/or audience apathy

So by that logic – perhaps if we can further empower the mainstream to share their unedited stories it might actually broaden our understanding and acceptance of each other - even those scary people over there (that place that is different from ours). Perhaps if we are able to connect in new and powerful ways governments will be forced to listen to the will of their people in a way never before experienced. Perhaps transparency in government will improve.

If this were to occur to a sufficient scale, would ignorance not begin to dissipate and interconnectedness grow? Would fear begin to give way to understanding of commonalities. Would wars and injustice based on fear become extinct?

Apathy may still be a problem – anyone got any suggestions?

It is probably far too idealistic and naive - Maybe wars are not based on fear but rather on energy crisis’s - I just thought that it was a fun piece musing late on a Saturday night.

Too much noise for 37signals

Matt from 37Signals (I'm a big fan) asks if there is any way to tame the RSS beast. These posts always make me smile. As do the responses/comments.

A lot of people almost get it, but never really provide a complete answer.

To date our answers (and the answers of others in the Attention space) have been fairly academic - over the next few months as we head into Beta - you will start to see some simple, practical solutions. Solutions that might make 37signals (and their cult of the simple) proud.

Echo Chamber and Group Think

Being from Australia, we often discuss internally the advantages and disadvantages of being in the Valley.

Having just come back from there, I can tell you it is an amazing place with an amazing group of people. In fact, I am considering moving there.

The down side though, is that when you are in a tight nit group of people, you can often get trapped in groupthink.

Tara from Citizen Agency has a great post about "Why Smart People Defend Dumb Ideas" where point 2 is what she calls "Circle Jerk" or 'Echo Chamber Thinking'.

The are many other interesting points on the list so check it out.

Now if I can only control my egotistical need to be right.

Web 3.0 - Are you serious?

I am starting to get a little sick of talking about versioning the web - as I'm sure you are. But I've just found something that has forced me to address it again.

Have you seen this? It's a search from the Web 2.0 Workgroup website on Eurekster on their hottest topic at the moment - Web 3.0.

Web 3.0? Are you serious?

Apparently a lot of people are. More than I imagined.

It seems from the search results, though, Web 3.0 is some sort of Web 2.0 - except with more of everything. More mainstream users, more revenue (or finding a way to get revenue in the first place), more programmable etc.

First let me restate my case about Web 2.0 (*sigh*). 'Community' is not Web 2.0. Community is as old as Newsgroups and IRC (pre web) forums (web 1.0) and have merely changed shape with more sites dedicated to 'user generated content' (ugly term I know). So the community aspects of YouTube (for example) are not what make it Web 2.0.

The Web 2.0 part is more complex and profound - yet it all has a common theme - the participant is the most important entity in every transaction. You and I are in control.

It's about how the creative and editorial power is shifted from a central editor to a community of millions.

It's about making the site content portable through embedded players and syndication.

And it's about the CEO bloging about what they're doing so that the community has a transparent way of understanding the motives, intentions and direction of THEIR platform.

YouTube, however, is still not a fully realized Web 2.0 platform. It still tries to trap the user on their site. To drive traffic to their pages and to create a community on their terms.

The ultimate Web 2.0 solution is when I create my own platform and video is only part of my self-expression and community. Where my friends are my friends, irrespective of the tools they use or the content they create.

This platform is already emerging - to date they have been called Blogs, but I think blogs are much more important than people think. Maybe the name needs to change to suggest something grander than a 'Web Log' - but ultimately blogs are the ultimate form of participant power.

They are not a forum, yet there is a discussion going on.

They are not video hosting site, yet there can be video there.

They are not a photo sharing site, yet there are photos there.

They are not mySpace yet I have a list of subscribers (read: friends) and contacts (read: blogrolls).

They are not social news, yet Technorati and TechMeme seem to know what the top news is.

Blogs are the purest example of Web 2.0. They are decentralized, syndicated (and then aggregated), social, self-expressive personal islands that connect via a great ocean called the blogosphere.

So if we have not yet properly recognized, commercialized and leveraged Web 2.0 - why the heck are we talking about Web 3.0. Especially when it seems like the definition seems to be 'Web 2.0 for the masses'. If Web 3.0 is Web 2.0 for the masses, then that sounds to me like Mainstream adoption of Web 2.0.

I am queasy just writing all these version numbers.

Dreaming up the future is one thing, but trying to create a new buzzword so that you can be the first one who thought of it is quite another.

Web 2.0 represents something much more fundamental than a bubble of new software online. Web 2.0 represents the democratization of information and media. It is a change in the way we tell stories and connect to each other.

More importantly than that, however, It is a symptom of a cultural change in the civilized world from top down hierarchy to distributed participation and freedom of expression. Where the storytellers are no longer just manufactured celebrities – but you and me. Where what’s newsworthy today is not what’s popular for my demographic, but rather what is personally relevant to me.

Let's not trivialize this cultural change (it's greatest example being Web 2.0) by trying to jump ahead to some fantasy version number just because some of us want to pretend to be pioneers.

Messy is the new clean

I have long held a strong personal dislike of MySpace. I don't think they really care though - it's not targeted at me - it's targeted at a totally different demographic.

That won't stop me airing my grievances though.

One of the main reasons I dislike it is how messy it is. How utterly useless the user interface is and how much worse the users make it with their colors and backgrounds and embedded music tracks. It drives me crazy whenever I find myself accidently stumbling onto a MySpace page.

I have always been a fan of clean lines. In fact, I have just been working on the secret, yet-to-be-revealed, Touchstone user interface that will be revealed with the all new Touchstone Beta and it is all about clean, simple lines.

Over on BubbleGeneration however, he explains that clean lines are just old fashioned. They are part of the 20th century's Modernism movement. To quote:

Re-engineering was about streamlining: about cutting the fat; about removing "resistance" and "drag" created by superfluous processes, whose near term returns were non-existent.

The result, as we all know too well today, is a commercial landscape both bleak and bland: homogeneous, robotic, synthetic, and hyperrationalized, where the Barista's or burger-flipper's value is timed, measured, studied, and analyzed to death.

He uses mySpace as the prime example. He states that mySpace beats LinkedIn as a real social platform because, unlike LinkedIn, mySpace allows its users to get messy - to hack up the page and distroy any trace of consistency.

Touchstone, of course, is very different from MySpace or LinkedIn. The primary setup/status windows are not about personalization, self-expression or social networking. So we can get away with clean, simple lines. That's what I tell myself anyway. I don't want to make a messy interface that people can hack up. I want it to be clean and slick.

I take comfort in the fact that Skype seems to have the same philosophy and they aren't doing too badly.

Am I the only one who thinks that MySpace chaos and CraigsList's complete disregard for aesthetic quality is disturbing and concerning? Someone save me...

Update: Daniela suggests to me on Skype that perhaps I don't like MySpace because Murdoch bought it just to drive traffic to his Fox TV sites.

This is probably a topic for another post but I don't mind that Murdoch, being an old school media guy, recognized (in some small way) the volume of traffic that MySpace could generate and purchased it to keep his media company relevant. I do, however, have a problem with the fact that the platform itself didn't necessarily deserve the popularity it received/receives (for reasons mentioned above and many others) and the fact that people like Murdoch, in general, don't understand the real power of social platforms beyond the old 'eyeballs to monetize' paradigm.

Show me the money (or the pain)...

When you are in a startup that has any sort of visibility investors will always approach you. So having spoken to more than my fair share you start to hear certain patterns in their line of questioning. Some have already realized the growing problem that faces users as information explodes and attention dwindles. Some, however, ask a common investor question… “Where is the pain?".

Let me rephrase it in a few other ways…

What problem is your product solving? Is that problem causing pain in user’s lives? Is it so painful that they would they take time out of their life to try your product? Is your product so good, and the pain so great, that they would change their behavior to use it? Do they NEED you?

Because need creates demand and demand needs a supply. Sounds almost like drugs.

As Rod Tidwell would say from Jerry McGuire - Show me the MONEY!!! Or in this case, "Show me the pain, and the money will follow".

There are many answers to the question of pain when you are talking about a product like Touchstone. You can use all sorts of industry buzzwords that refer to trends that are emerging... things like 'the Long Tail’, ‘Publishing 2.0’, 'Participant Created Media', 'Syndication', 'Information Overload', 'Attention Deficit' and so on...

I have been guilty of using these phrases many times... As I have admitted before I have a problem.

I agree pain is important when it comes to building a high-growth startup - especially if you want to cut through the noise in this increasingly crowded marketplace where everyone is trying to make the next YouTube and Digg.

Cutting through noise, however, is exactly the problem. It is the pain. The volume is increasing. Can't you hear it? If you can't hear it then you are not listening. Chances are, however, if you’re reading this blog you are listening all too well.

You could argue that users - your typical Jon Doe - don't hear it yet. I would argue that there is a growing number of users every day that stop watching TV and start watching YouTube and BitTorrent. There is a growing number of users every day that are starting to read, write and remix the blogosphere and flickr and facebook and youtube and they are not going away.

Some could argue that those users are coming, but in the mean time John Doe is happy to read the local newspaper. Have you heard what's happening to the local newspaper recently? They're being decimated.

Mark Cuban recently suggested something new to save Newspapers - More Content and RSS.

Can you imagine it. Your local newspaper becoming a clearing house for every piece of gossip that happens down the road?

Forget newspapers; what about when every school, golf course, company, employee (etc etc) start publishing content and packaging it in RSS. No wait, they are already starting to.

That is rivers and rivers of content that an increasing percentage of the population is becoming aware of and coming to grips with. When you are drowning in a river, pain is everywhere.

Add to this the pain of keeping all your devices up-to-date and trying to fit some productivity in amongst all that news reading – and you are ready to black out.

What about Publisher pain. I (along with many others) have already mentioned how publishers (particularly newspapers) and broadcasters are hurting as users flee to online, time-shifted, personalied alternatives. Don't they need a way to strengthen their brand and monetize their users? Their shareholders are definitely feeling that pain.

In all this discussion of pain however, people have forgotten to ask about pleasure. But that's a post for another day.

Sounds like there might be a pain looking for a solution.

Unsocial behavior on social networks?

Lately I have noticed two annoying trends on LinkedIn that are starting to bug me.

1. People hiding their connection list?

2. People not passing on contact requests/messages.

If you're going to join a social network - then be social!

Getting STIRRed Up in Sydney

STIRR was imported from Silicon Valley to Sydney Australia last night and I think Marty and Mick from Tangler (don't worry you will find out what it is sooner or later) did a fantastic job.

They gathered a great group of people (even Brisbane residents like myself, and Joel Pobar) to drink, eat and play games. There was also some networking involved I'm sure.

It was great to see 'old' friends like Marty Wells, Mick Liubinskas, Cameron Reilly, Brad, Randal, Mike Cannon-Brooks and finally get to meet face-to-face with Emily (Congrats on winning Emily!), Mike Zimmerman, Marc Woodward (thanks for sponsoring the night guys!) and others.

I didn't get a chance to take photos of my own unfortunately but there are plenty posted up by Mick on flickr.

Look forward to the next one...

Update: Watch the video from The Podcast Network - on the cam with good mate Cam

IAM responsible for this

As you could predict, Chris Anderson is a hero of mine. I almost had a chance to see him speak at Plug & Play while I was in the bay area last month but unfortunately we had a scheduling conflict. Thank heavens for blogging.

His latest post entitled 'I'm not responsible for this' , like many, strikes a chord for me personally and for Touchstone as a product.

He quotes:

The fact that you and I both watched American Idol last night probably doesn't define us, whereas our niche interests really do. We go deep and find people who share our affinities, which represent much tighter connections between us. So my suspicion is that we're going to have fewer loose connections with lots of people but tighter connections with fewer people.

I like this idea very much. It is an idea we have been discussing internally for quite some time. If Touchstone can calculate a highly granular and complete picture of your 'long-tail interests' and store it in APML, and if it can apply that model of your interests to filtering and finding content and people - have we not created both a finger-print of your identity (at least part of it) and a highly personalized world view of content and people like you (and that you like).

The whole post is put in context to Kevin Smith and his continuing popularity despite his recent box-office failures. Anderson writes:

Just like they did 10 years ago, lonely/nerdy/smart teenage boys see in Smith a humor they identify with and a personality they want to emulate. The movies are incidental: Something like Clerks II has the relationship to the Smith brand that a communion wafer has to Catholicism.

I love that :)

Intelligence Amplification

I like this article by Ryan about "Intelligence Amplification"

To quote:

Our ability to produce information is growing exponentially, and this can be problematic. What do you get when you leverage internet applications to coordinate the clickstreams, hyperlinks, tags, actions, relationships and interests of billions of people? Hopefully the means for humans to synthesize information into knowledge exponentially faster than was previously possible.

I also particularly like a comment by Tom's on the post which refers to "Aggregation Is King" which I posted about earlier this week.

On a more serious note, Spencer Wang's report for Bear Stearns - "The Long Tail: Why Aggregation and Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment" cries out for a tool for "intelligence amplification," though his operation definition is "filters required to connect users with content that appeal to their interests." Same thing.

Automatic Digging...

Imagine this:

Touchstone is a Personal Relevancy Engine. This means it can automatically calculate which Digg stories are the most ‘Personally Relevant’ to you.

Therefore it is conceptually possible for someone to write a Touchstone ‘Output Adapter’ that:

1. Checked incoming Touchstone items to see if they came from the Digg RSS feed.
   
2. If they came from Digg and they are rated, by Touchstone, as very personally relevant to you, the adapter could execute the ‘Digg’ command for that story on your behalf.

This way, Touchstone could automatically Digg stories for you.

Automatic Digging…

Update: I'm not sure if this is useful or even appropriate for Digg - it was just an idea that struck me - if nothing else it is an interesting application of Touchstone Technology. Feel free to comment to let me know your thoughts.

If you are interested in creating this adapter, contact me and I can get you started.

If you want to know when the adapter has been made so you can try it out, sign up to our mailing list (on the left hand side of the page) and we’ll let you know when it’s done. No spam I promise - I hate spam.

Filtering is so 5 years ago

In a recent Read/Write Web blog post Richard (Great guy by the way. Met him at Arrington's place for drinks and poker!) talks about Filtering RSS. He states:

[Filtering is important] Because it's the next step up from RSS aggregation, as many of us now have too much information coming at us.

I agree there is too much information coming at us, but the problem is not just the volume, it's the quality.

There is no variation in the sound. It's like using all the colors of the rainbow at once. The result is white. Or playing all sounds everywhere at the same time. The result is noise.

What we need to do is add variation back into the system. We need a way of creating our own personal signal.

I have a problem with filtering. To me, filtering is like Web 0.5 search. WebCrawler and others were doing keyword matches and returning a barley useful set of results. Filtering is rudimentary and only partially useful. Google understood that a piece was missing. A way to rank documents not only based on the number of keyword hits, but on their popularity in the community and relevancy to the subject matter.

What we need for RSS is ranking. Real ranking. Not just based on the number of keyword hits but on relevancy. Unlike search, however, relevancy is not enough. What we need is Personal Relevancy.

Personal Relevancy is not about asking 'How many keywords hits does this document have to my search query' or even 'how popular is this document based on incoming links' but rather 'Based on everything you know about me, how much do I personally care about this document right now, in what format do I want it presented to me and on what device'.

Can you see the difference? Of course you can.

Unlike filtering, relevancy is not black or white. On or off. Include or exclude. It has variation. It has rank.

Touchstone has been ranking content for 6 months now. We have decided to go one step further. Escalating Alerts. But that is a topic for another post.

Another key theme of the post was the ability to re-syndicate the 'filtered' content to RSS. Touchstone has also been doing that for ages. But again, our RSS feed is not just filtered; it is ranked. We have added an extra tag called 'Rank' so that compliant applications can make intelligent presentation decisions just like Touchstone does with its Escalating Alerts.

Filtering is neat. Ranking is powerful. And over the next few months when we start to release Touchstone into the wild I am sure the community will agree.

If you have interesting ideas about how to apply our personal relevancy technology, drop us a line.

Google should stick to maths

Google shuts down Google Answers - losing out to Yahoo's competing service...

I've said it before and I will say it again - Google should stick to math’s and automation instead of trying to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft at what they do best - community/applications/platforms.

The only two things Google has ever hit out of the park were search and advertising. Both involved automating the process of people finding stuff. Automation being the key ingredient. They are great at math’s.

But when it comes to building communities like with Google Answers Yahoo or Microsoft seem to win every time.

Google should stick to what it does best instead of getting distracted by the other 2. If it plays to its strengths then it would minimize it's growing evil image and decrease its wasted efforts.

I guess for now they have the cash to burn, even if all they achieve is keeping Yahoo and Microsoft on their toes.