"Innovention" Is Alive And Well

"Innovention" is alive and well, thank you very much. No, I'm not talking about the make-over of the old Disneyland "Carousel of Progress" - but I'm talking about innovation + invention = "innovention."

Facetweet - Will Facebook Kill Twitter?

Well - as seen on numerous blogs around the world today - it's finally come out that Facebook really DID try to buy Twitter last fall. There had been rumors all over the place that Mark and team was vying to snap up the microblogging site - and roll it into their own offering.

So after the negotiations had come to an unfruitful end (from Facebook's perspective) - they took a play out of the Gates handbook for business 101 - and just decided to build their own microblog format. I say good for them!

Now I don't know Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter personally, and I don't have any inside information as to what they have in the works - but it just seems to me that if someone like Mark Zuckerberg and team come to you and want to buy your brand (for an "undisclosed sum" - read: HUGE cash) - then unless you have a really, really, really good plan to monetize your platform - you should just sell the damn thing.

I mean, really! So, you invented the space of microblogging. Bully for you! It's still not really caught on to the mainstream yet - and your own site's features are so anemic that a whole industry and dozens of others have stepped into the ecosystem to siphon off users from your site (read: less eyeballs for ads)...

So, you have a super simple site - which is a good thing. You have a medium that lots of tech folks (and PR folks) use as sort of a "live AP" feed - also good.

But... ummm... the idea and the tech behind it are... well... just NOT that hard to re-create. The barrier of entry to create another service just like yours is, well, trivial. Just look at all the Twitter-like, me-too spin offs that have come about.

Yeah, you have first-mover advantage, but the Facebook people have a little think called "150 million registered users." Oh, and a valuation that's backed by the largest software company in the world - Microsoft. Oh, and some really, really smart people.... AND... a really robust infrastructure.... AND... did I mention 150 million registered users?

I think it's a good thing that Facebook will put in a microblogging feature - I think that people will use it and that it will really be a welcomed addition to their service. In a way - it's already there. You can see the status updates of your friends, get a "live feed" of what others are doing... so it just makes sense that if you could "broadcast" your status to anyone... you're done.

So - Twitter - unless you're going to announce something (and soon) - I'm afraid you'll be relegated to the MySpace bid of "cool idea, first-mover advantage" slow death. The difference is - you didn't sell out for $850 (while the getting was good).

I hope I'm wrong. Maybe all the people who are addicted to Twitter will continue to tweet forever. I'm sure that people who have used the service for a long time will continue to use it. However, all the "new" people who are just discovering social media (both individuals and businesses) - they WILL sign up for Facebook.

And when they do - they will have a new option to "broadcast" their stuff to anyone on the Internet - as well as to "subscribe" to other feeds. All in the CONTEXT of their friends, customers and other relationships.

OR - they could choose to go to yet another source, start cross posting (or do what I do - and use the EXCELLENT Ping.fm to do it for me) and reading two sets of feeds.

Ummmm... yeah. In-context feeds all in one aggregated place with the largest social network on the planet - or a spartan interface in scrolling format.

My money's on Facebook to win and Twitter to place.

America 2.0

All I can say is "WOW." I literally just finished listening t0 president elect Obama... sorry - I mean President Obama give his inaugural speech. Man, is he a terrific orator!

I really am hopeful that he is able to execute on the promises and hopes that he has fired up. I hope and pray that he will be able to really cross the aisles of not just the US Congress, Senate and House - but to also cross the divide that has been created with the rest of the world.

It was really amazing to watch the coming together of people just flooding the Mall in the Capitol. All ages. All faiths. All colors. All Americans.

Even here in the office - we tried to get one of the video feeds going (to no avail) - but we were able to get a live audio feed from an ABC affiliate news station here (KNX News Radio 1070 am). I was able to get the audio feed on my laptop and pumped it out through my desktop speakers so we wouldn't overwhelm our own LAN 0r saturate our ISP with everyone having their own desktop feed.

It was almost like those pictures you see of people gathered around the radio back in the days before television. We were all listening - no one spoke. No one was checking email. No phones were ringing. It was really an almost surreal experience.

President Obama talked about a wide range of topics - including building out infrastructure, helping the poor, warning the crazies, and elevating science and technology back to prominence. However, one of the lines that really struck me was when he said:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. (emphasis, is mine)

President Obama laid out what he sees as the most critical path to America's problems. He is an incoming leader that has a road map:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Personally, I believe that it IS possible. We CAN pull together, weather the storm, re-invent ourselves and come out stronger and are all issues that need to be addressed by our country at some point in time.

Yes, I believe America can be re-made. It's America 2.0, if you will. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Maybe not next year. Maybe not during his first 4 year term. But we WILL do it. There is really no other option.

He seems to "get" the fact that technology and social media are an important part of the process - because his process is about PEOPLE, and PEOPLE communicate with each other using technology. I'm not just talking about YouTube and streaming audio. It's more than Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. It's the "old" technology of television and over-the-air radio. It's the technology of providing speech text in advance to all the news outlets. It's the fact that he has people that even give a crap about communicating using ALL mediums all at the same time.

There's a spirit of a level playing field in terms of communication. There's a spirit of a level playing field in terms of common goals, dreams and ideals. It's up to all of us to transform the vision, goals and dreams into reality. Godspeed!

Microblog: Facebook #1?

According to Comscore - Facebook because the largest worldwide network back in the middle of 2008 - but it's still lagging behind MySpace in terms of page views - 76 million unique visitors for MySpace versus 54.5 million for MySpace.

In the US - Facebook's growth was 3.8% per month (a big number when you're talking about those kind of pageview numbers) - versus MySpace's growth rate of just 0.8% (still - a great number given the sheer volume of page views). Assuming that growth rate continues, Facebook should overtake MySpace sometime in 2010.

The question is - who cares? I think the most important social media site is the one that people are using. The one where you can connect with your customers, employees, friends, and colleagues. So it's important to be on the social network they use as their primary contact point. Most people, if they're on social media at all - are NOT on 6 different services. They're on ONE - or maybe TWO...

It sort of comes down to the age-old "cool kid" factor. A few years ago MySpace was the cool kid - and now, I believe, that Facebook is the new cool kid. What do you think?

The Day The Net Went Dark

I've never been accused of being an optimist - and maybe it's just the rainy, humid weather here in Amsterdam, but my thoughts today returned to the pessimistic side of my personality.

Hey, what can I say?

I was thinking about the botched launch of the iPhone, the fact that Yahoo is closing its music portal, and the merger is XM and Sirius digital music services... and I was fantasizing on what it would be like if all of a sudden all the popular services (the "cool kids") suddenly went dark.

What would it be like if Salesforce.com just shut down its servers Monday morning? How about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and eBay? What if, when we woke up on Monday, all these "staples" of our digital lives didn't exist? Worse yet - what if Google took a huge dump, along with all their related sites and services? What if the entire Internet crashed - and it took 30 days to reboot?

What would happen?

Chaos.... for about 3 days.

Then people would (gasp!) pick up the phone to schedule meetings, they would get on an airplane and actually meet people IRL (In Real Life). We would all start buying stamps and go to the (gasp!) post office to actually "mail" invoices and send "letters" to people. We would go to the corner drugstore to get (gasp!) "printed" pictures.

We would be forced to tell people to their face what we thought of them - rather than just typing crap on a "blog" - and fax machines all over the world would be pulled from closets and fired up.

Xerox and HP would sell a record number of toner cartridges and getting an appointment with a copy repair person would be like trying to get someone to install an air conditioner in Phoenix in August.

Paper companies and airlines and travel agents would be riding high - as well as hotels, rental car companies and restaurants. People would return to nightclubs and comedy shows and good old-fashioned dinner-and-a-movie dates.

People would actually buy "newspapers" (daily printed paper with world wide news that happened in the last 24 hours) and gather in "coffee shops" to talk about pressing national and international events.

There would be a minor "baby boom" as couples... well... coupled. Kids all over the world would actually get to talk to the adult "strangers" they call "parents" who previously occupied the dinner table with their Crackberries visible (on vibrate - of course) and their eye on the real time stock ticker and after hours trading on their NIKKEI index hedge funds.

Lines at government offices would get longer - and service would still suck. People would stand in line to make deposits and withdrawals using human "tellers" (people who actually work at a bank!). People would actually go to their mailboxes and receive mail that wasn't 100% spam advertisements.

At work people could finally concentrate on whatever it was they did before responding to the Pavlovian "ding" of arriving email. Bosses would be forced to actually "talk" to their employees and there would be a run on "interoffice mail" envelopes at office supply stores.

FedEx and UPS stock would be the new Wall Street darlings while the tech sector would be in the "fire sale" bin. Companies would be forced to hire "people" to answer their phones - and for one brief period, the entire population of India wouldn't be inundated with tech support and credit card activation calls.

Then, finally, after 30 long days of living in the "dark" ages... things would thankfully return to "normal."