The problem is not the content spewing, it is the lack of tools around it. Usenet a decade ago has sophisticated filters (kill / watch / highlight) per person, topic and more if you liked, even some learning automatically.

One person is deeply interested in topics another one is not, and their side, not mine, should do the filtering. Even more so when it comes to mobile.

Well, maybe in 2010 some of those young startups have a look at what is already written down in code and adapt it to their tools *sigh*

Adocu is definitely the future of the web: “less is more”

Michael, I agree completely. The future will be a mix of user generated content and tools for using that content. Fred’s investment in outside.in is backwards looking, I think, and I believe we’ve hit it right on the nose by creating http://www.wikimetro.org, a local social networking site lets users interact with other local users (like your neighbors, people in the same town, etc.)

Michael, I agree completely. The future will be a mix of user generated content and tools for using that content. Fred’s investment in outside.in is backwards looking, I think, and I believe we’ve hit it right on the nose by creating http://www.wikimetro.org a local social networking site lets users interact with other local users (like your neighbors, people in the same town, etc.)

I get where mike is coming from however it’s way too early to truly see a benefit to everyday life.

service such as twitter and Facebook events are beginning to crossover and the line between online and “real life” has started to blur.

I agree, as a mobile developer it is certainly harder to develop mobile tools than web tools. But, the commodity vs non-commodity debate goes somewhat beyond that in this space.

People are moving towards the mobile handset being their main computing device. True, this trend is somewhat slower here in the US rather than Europe and Asia. However, never less that trend is now here knocking on the web 2.0 doors.

Putting the filter tools such as friendFeed and etc on mobile will be first priority for those who want to beat Google and MS.

Open standards such as the Jabber protocol to allow immediacy to the filtering and the resulting conversation will play their role and thus it will be the one who has the most user compelling features and gets viral traction.

Its just a matter of which VCs are going to step up to the challenge and fund one our rebels to do this.

Of course, I already analyzed and came up with ways to put a twitter core on top of both Jabber and Sun’s JXTA; this is challenge but not an impossible one.

I have invented what I call “pico-blogging” - a service that allows you to publish your status in one bit.

Right now, I am “1″.

I mostly agree with your analysis and I think you’re describing an important trend for how the next generation of successful online services will evolve.

In many ways SecondBrain is moving in the same direction as you envision for leveraging UGC. Our goal is to help people work smarter with their online content by bringing everything together in personal content libraries, and allow users to organize, search and discover content.

I agree that the internet is a place for people to interact and to show content they think others want to read about, but the internet is also full of bad content which really makes you wonder if you want to be exposed to it.
I guess the bottom line is the majority of surfers want the internet to be a sociable place and open to all, not just a small group.

The volume of UGC isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of proper semantics and aggregation filtering.

Think of it this way: when we look at the sky, we see everything, whereas the astronomer can look at individual objects, or groups of objects.

We need the tools to look at the whole of social media like an astronomer looks at the sky…

Totally agreed. While social media can, and often is both empowering and compelling there is a huge downside. Nearly everyone things that they are important and has interesting things to say. The fact is, 99% of us are simply ordinary. Interesting to our families sure but not to people worldwide.

This takes the view that content is for broadcast. There ain’t many people only consuming on twitter, is there?
One man’s spew is another man’s fine dining!
I think what Fred was getting at was a future in which we share all share our metadata and find it ever easier to connect with people sharing our own purpose at any one time.

Let’s take this one step further and think about all this information that we share without even knowing. Or even more important: how about this information that we feel comfortable sharing today, not foreseeing the problems or limitations that we are creating to our personal or professional lives 5, 10 or 15 years from now.
Millions of people using social media. Billions of tagged photos of young kids having fun; drinking; exposing themselves. It’s part of being a teenager, we’ve all been there. Actually, even people leading countries have been there. (Even if they didn’t inhale). But the accuracy of recording and organizing this information and keeping it stored for ever is a new phenomenon. I find it quite scary.

I think we’re getting to the point where people who want to use social networking just to use it, already are.

Where it needs to go next is to give the rest of the population a reason to want to use it, and the tools with which to do it. A question I hear often is, “why would I want to use twitter?” These people don’t want to tell the world what they are having for lunch, don’t want to make new online friends that they’ve never met, and don’t want to spend yet more time in front of a computer screen.

But when I’m in a bookstore and wondering if I should buy a certain book, and have a network of readers whose opinions I trust accessible at the push of a few buttons — that’s when twitter etc. will become useful. Those are the kinds of tools and uses that need to be developed.

http://www.fubnub.com is being built to address some of this - pulling all your data from various sources back into your own control (on your blog or into your email)…it’s in the EARLY stages but check it out if you have time.

One of the things I think is really interesting about the fubnub.com approach is that you can use Twitter, the fubnub website, or automatic scheduling to grab (and republish) your data…

These are still early days. People are only just getting used to creating content for all to see. The challenge is to help them raise the bar and showcase their thoughts and experiences in a more creative way…

this entire discussion leaves out a critical element: Reputation. Simply putting everyone’s thoughts out there is silly without some kind of value system. No one will care unless the person communicating has earned some kind of viability, AKA a positive, notorious or otherwise notable reputation. Ratings and rankings will create an environment that determines whether we get readership or not. Blatant self-promotion (as evidenced in several comments on this thread!) should get tagged as such by readers and the commenter rated accordingly just as obvious linkbait should get the same.
Without a self-regulatory mechanism, social media will just turn into a lot of meaningless chatter- background noise to real life.

Both points of view are correct, I think.

Our personal privacy is disappearing, but where people, even recently, used to be worried about this, I think we are _voluntarily_ giving up our privacy. We desperately want to connect with people, and to share every part of our lives. It’s definitely not a big leap to extrapolate from current trends (Twitter, blogging, social networks in general) that in 5 years we’ll be sharing nearly everything that we can share, whether explicitly (Twitter) or implicitly (location-aware devices, last.fm, etc.) We’re already halfway there, so surely you can’t argue with this.

But you’re right, as the noise grows, there needs to be a way to filter that noise, to make it meaningful. Mobile context is going to play a big part, but you have to see that they’re two sides of the coin - just because people want to filter noise, doesn’t mean they won’t be “spewing” their own at the same time. I think it’s inevitable.

“Your mobile device should help you filter out people around you to bring mutually-interested people together.”

This gave me a vision of the following scene:

Guy: Look at that hot chick over there, I should go talk to her.
*Pulls out phone, selects the woman’s mobile signal (as shown on a map of the local area) and searches for info about her. Puts phone away*
Guy: On second thought, she doesn’t look that great when drunk.

As to the post, I fully agree. We need new ways to filter and utilize the information that’s already being flung up onto the web. Refining that information and delivering it to the palm of your hand will change the way we think from twittering “I’m on fire!” to being told “stop, drop and roll!” Ok, maybe not the best example but it gets the point across (I hope)

If you follow the trends of technology evolution, even back in the early days of web browsers and enterprise software, there has always been an explosion of common new ideas and platforms. Startups identify a gap, fill it, get copied 5 times over, bigger players jump into the space (which validates the market), then comes the consolidation phase. Someone, either one of the bigger players or one of the startups whose managed to run their business efficiently enough to gain considerable momentum, agility, funding and progressive management, will come up with an integration layer, open standards, etc. The consolidation phase can sometimes take a different route through acquisition. Many times bigger players will consume the smaller guys only to drive an impenetrable wedge between technologies, then come up with their own standards giving developers and users fewer choices – but standardization nonetheless. Given our capitalistic nature this seems to occur more often.
The typical phases appear to be:

Identify the Gap >> Fill the Gap >> Marketing Development & Validation >> Consolidation >> Standards

By no means is this an original discovery on my part. I’m sure there’s some business book sitting on Barnes & Noble shelves about this very thing. I just thought I’d share some observations over the past 10 years.

The future of social is the Converged Me, or “Meme, Myself and Eyeballs” as I like to call it.

The future of social is going viral at the speed of a photonic burst.

But make sure you have your packet protectors strapped on nrrdboys and nrrdrrls!

Suburban tweens? Make way for Gen I.

Great article Michael.

The new web is absolutely about INTERACTION. That’s why I have been so amazed at the new interactive services like Ustream.tv, Qik.com, and Flixwagon. Whether you are interacting with the friends you know, or interacting with like minded individuals during a live Obama speech, INTERACTION is at the center.

It seems to turn the web into a experience rather than just consuming it.

@Mike,

My “rant” was written with tongue firmly in cheek — Erick got the joke, surprised you didn’t: http://publishing2.com/2008/04.....ent-409826

That said, I think we agree more than we disagree.

Cheers,
Scott

please visit the site: http://www.newsendorser.com
upload videos and invite friends to visit the site. your help means a lot!!! thank you!!!

With projects like what Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England and John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University work on, Fred Wilson may be spot on.

Granted it may be a bit farther down the road for the typical human (average), everyday (for a lack of better description)… simple thinking will place everything you do into a database which can then be shared, and with the way our government is going, you may not have much of a choice with whom you can or cannot share your every moment with.

Another very intelligent essay from you Mike, but here and elsewhere you seem overly centered on the cell phone. I spend more time using my computer than my cell phone, simply because of form factor and screen size.
Regards, Glenn

Hi Mike,

you must have been reading my mind

I answered Fred in a post called The real value of social media = interaction.

Let’s take Fred’s vision to the extreme. Let’s assume the entire world is expressing his thoughts and experiences on the web. Let’s also assume that that is all that happens, we express ourselves but no one is listening. I bet that the phenomenon would die out very quickly. It isn’t the expressing your thoughts what makes social media tick. That is only half of the equation. It is the “social” aspect of it that matters most. The ability to react, to agree or disagree, to build further (as I do now what Fred’s post), the sharing of experiences in order to learn from each other, to have fun, to argue or fight, in other words, it is interaction that matters.

http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/.....teraction/

Alexander

first useful - thought provoking article in a long time

twitter at the bookstore? I don’t get that at all. If none of my friends are using twitter (which they aren’t) aside from seeing random notes and thoughts from people which sometimes are useful, what is the use of twitter? its sill an echeloned geek crowd using this app.

@ ann - “people who are already using social are” - not. I quote arrington more than a few times: “what would you rather be the ceo of…google or microsoft?” arrington: “facebook!”

I actually know, talk, touch and see people with my own eyes (social human interaction 1.0) who are getting on facebook every day to open a new account because its where the ‘mass’ has chosen to adopt / be. thats it. game over. no one is going to migrate - for awhile - in that mass - for a long time. until its like flipping channels, right now facebook owns the ’social’ space. the rest are mere applciations.

twitter WAAAAY over rated.

Mike,

Could not agree with you more…its about the user centered universal profile that works across the social web…kinda service that SezWho provides

and capturing content is indeed becoming a commodity.

-Jitendra

not just ‘interaction’, but ‘meaningful interaction’ - that should be a goal.

@Jamie I think that Ann’s point is not where the user base is today, but a clear example of where the technology could be tomorrow that would support mass adoption and casual usage. Imagine if you could get immediate feedback from a network of trusted individuals (and potentially bots at some point) when seeking to make “experience goods” purchases.

I thought that Fred’s post was a bit too simplistic. Clearly, there is the perpetual need to have tools and services to get your digital self online, and as most of those services are decentralized, there is the increasing need for better tools to aggregate and centrally manage your online information.

But the reality is that there are far more consumers than creators so a lot of the next wave is going to be about how you filter out the crap and filter in the good stuff, and how you connect and cultivate conversations with like minds in something richer than the one-dimensional “friending model.”

Cheers,

Mark
–
Read - Why I Blog, it’s about Brand, not Bread
http://thenetworkgarden.com/we.....g-its.html

So Apple’s Internet strategy is focusing on mobile web using me.com? Wonder what innovative services they are going to offer.

@Marc Vermut — you’ve got it exactly, thanks for translating my thoughts.

@Jamie — My twitter example was simply that: an example. Every day I deal with people who have never read a blog, or listened to a podcast. These people aren’t on facebook or twitter or any other service. They may use flickr because it’s useful to them, they can see a concrete reason (organize their digital photos). Until those types of concrete uses for social media are made evident to them, they are unlikely to adopt any of it.

Ann

!

The web is already awash with ugc. but there are broad niches to be developed with high quality content - professional networking built on a ’social platform’.

Our emphasis is on worldclass filmmakers & film industry professionals. FILMCOMMUNITY.COM is the Social Network for the Film Industry Worldwide.

At the Cannes Film Festival they were calling FILMCOMMUNITY.COM ‘the Facebook for Film’ [ FB >> FC http://www.filmcommunity.com ]

Mike,

I think you are missing a point. While Social Interaction is the goal of Social Media, there is a lot of “behind the scenes” information that will be generated to facilitate the interaction.

Automated location broadcasting is an example of this. When the mobile device becomes the center of the world, I believe that every 60 seconds or so, everyone’s gps coordinates will be broadcast to the web. A collection of ancillary services will turn this data into information that will facilitate social interaction.

For example from my gps coordinates, a “movie service” could figure out that I am watching Indiana Jones at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood and automatically twitter my “movie friends” shortly before the end of the film. After the movie I might have get a notice from a someone in Hollywood to have a drink at Beauty Bar to talk about the film.

It’s the automated creation of “social data” and subsquent processing of that data into “social information” that will make the interaction with my friend possible.

It’s not even that Karp’s postion is wrong - Saying that user generated content is pollution is akin to claiming that the a person’s nervous system should only send their brain sensory information that they aren’t conscious of. There is a lot of important information processing going on below the threshold of consciousness - It’s that Fred Wilson didn’t go far enough: we will each be continually producing social media data to make the creation of meaningful social interactions as likely and as easy as possible.

Joel

Suddenly I see a new business idea for a feed aggregator that collects like information like so:

Fred and Mike and Larry are taking about social media.

Jim and Sue and Al and Jake are posting pictures to Flickr and/or Photobucket.

257 of your friends are having dinner.

7,538 people you have never met and don’t care about are talking about what they did today.

I would be suspect regarding anyone individual able to keep up with all the advance in social technology, hosting sites, social networks and and any technological advancement that would tie everything in together. Because just as soon as you sign on to one site that can not deliver on it’s promise another sight emerges that looks better but is just as useless.

Instead of becoming connected we are becoming fractionalized and balkinzed.

I myself would be happy with one search engine where I could actually find what I am looking for with out having to sift through numerous pages of non related crap.

Ii would also like to an honest webwide ranking system that dosen’t rank the crap.

What good does it do me to accept and invitation to use a site that hasn’t got the bugs worked out and even when it does what is is actual worth? That has a help system that renders one who has not got the hours to spend time searching a help forum that will not answer the question.

And how hard can it be to come up with a real commenting system for blogs that doesn’t result in your blog doing flip flops and loading more slowly that even comcast can be held responsible for.

Despite the hype of MySpace and Facebook what rile do they really play. And then add the numerous of the social networking sites and who can keep up.

I am not a geek, however I know geeks who are totally frustrated with the current state of the internet.

It is not that I haven’t tried to learn because I have. It is that I can not keep up.
I can not play the game. I do not have 24/7 to experiment with programs that claim to meet my need but do neither.

I can not count the programs I have tried and trashed abd have bookmarked to try to further trash.

If somebody came up with an accurate T.V. guide for the internet with a ratings standard equal to Consumer reports I would scrap ever penny I have to buy at lest one share of stock.

Last thought: The internet is danger of becoming to time consuming to be of any real value other than an e-mail provider and even then your privacy cab but be guaranteed. I know people returning to snail mail for any really sensitive communications.

Their is much diversity in a rain forrest. but try and navigate through one.

Whether we create, synthesize or consume content, this on-line content is clearly not “working for us” because we managed to create a real estate meltdown and capital crunch far exceeding the dotcom bubble of 2001. Interestingly enough the real estate bubble occurred concomitant to the rise of the UGC via social networking sites. The transactional sites eBay and Amazon are still the standard bearers for added-value, consumer networking. Call it “user generated commerce” - bookmarked, tagged, searchable and all for sale!

@ Ann - they’ve never read a blog or listened to a podcast i.e. they are pretty hands off online yet they use flickr? I don’t agree with the premise. most people I know have never heard of flickr let alone use it or know what it is. Facebook, on the other hand, is recognized and used by most people I know. It’s a tipping point phenomena. I’m not saying your particular case isn’t true - fine, ok - but I find it very hard to imagine finding a pool of people who dont’ use facebook but they do use flickr - they just aren’t the “types” to use blogs / podcasts. I think its the other way around. Facebook is now a very mainstream application.

@jamie — I think you’re missing my point.
I’m thinking of my mother (67 yrs. old) and in laws and coworkers — yes, most over 50.
Why should someone use facebook? Flickr (or photobucket or shutterfly) allows them to organize their digital photos, and likely software or a trial account came with their digital camera. What can fb do for them?

People who are not plugged in all the time will only become users of a technology if it can in some way make their life easier. For them, the computer is a tool, not a social medium.

(Personally, I signed up for my fb account less than a month ago, and only because there was a work-related subgroup that was using it. I had no reason to use it until them. Meanwhile, I’ve been online since 1992, before graphical interface to the web.)

I suspect that filters, both technological and sociological … continuously shortening attention spans being one .. are the future.

Let’s get something straight about the ecosystem here: Michael, you write about visionaries, Fred invests in them. Positioning yourselves as visionaries is, well, someone else fill in the blank, please.

That was an impressive summation of pretty much everything that has been troubling me about today’s computing in the last couple of years… I’ve only recently written to Netvibes that they should team up with an operating system in finally creating an internet-based, connective desktop - what Vista would have been, I suppose, if Microsoft kept their wits.

I think that social media is pure content spewing !

sharing opinion is content spewing isn’t it ?

Interaction isn’t the future. It’s always been. I have always felt the Internet was about interaction. Content exists as a product of the interaction.

I think we could all become venture capitalists, in a way. Except that the capital we stake will be our reputations that we stake on opinions that we understand and care about. Then if enough people of good repute in an area think something in particular should be federally funded or voted into law, it will happen. I’m thinking a person’s quantified reputation in an area should increase if their recorded opinions are migrated toward by masses of other people (so your reputation increases if you can convince people about your opinions).

If we used a small fraction of our total creativity, I think we should be able to fund our info-products through a “crowdsourced” proposal/reputation system that allots federal funding based on (a crowd of) acknowledged experts’ votes. People will be federally funded to pursue their proposals, and then the results can be shared for free with everyone, since it was federally funded and it doesn’t cost anything to copy it. Then we shouldn’t have a need for copyrights or patents, since there would already be a system to fairly fund people for their proposals.

Besides funding info-product proposals, there would be enormous application for such reputation/trust systems, from helping with legislation, to solving the problem of oversight of classified programs.

I have the answer but can’t can’t tell you since we are apping to TC50.

But I will say this. Some people above hit close to the right answer. Niche communities. Off line. And a high value. And when i say high value, i am not talkign about a place where you go and show people your pics and communicate. /yawn. But to cater to a sector that dwarfs all social networks put together who do not currently know how to connect themselves with this new social boom is my answer.

Ann said, why would my 50 year old mom want to come on? That question has burned into my mind for a year now and now I know. And no, it’s not to catch up on all the “Murder She Wrote’ episodes. What is it that she does on a daily basis or have a passion for? What does this 50 year old lady value? The answer isn’t specific, but in general and what she and all of you do every day. In the future online social networks will be more off line than you know and the reason why most of you tech people can’t figure it out is cause you’re in this online box and don’t know how to think outside it. Heck, you don’t even know you’re in it. - Think I am crazy yet? You will after I say this: The majority of business websites in the future will be a pointer page and will be 1 page big. New businesses won’t even buy URLs. Climb out of your box and think about the bigger picture. What’s generates more money, online business or off line business? What’s been proven longer than time, off line or online business models? - the older I get, and when it’s broken down to the simplest form, the more I believe that Bible verse, there is nothing new under the sun.

When I think of facebook I laugh, cause I think of Netscape. The next generation of social sites will have to offer more than just this value: Communicating with others and more than just this stream of revenue: advertising. (in general) Where is the stickiness in FB when that 20 year old golfer who is passionate about golf finds out Tiger Woods has his own social network and is on a few times a week to talk to people? Or when he participates on this gold site he earns incentive points to buy trade in to talk with Tiger directly or purchase gold clubs with. I don’t think he’ll leave FB all together at first, but he will slowly move towards his passion. Again, I laugh when I think of FB being so /coughs ‘web 2.0′. - I was apart of a online social network back in 1993 when they were called M.U.D.s. Old nerds rule!

So I say to niche sites, like the filming one mentioned above. You HAVE to offer more than just what all the other social networks offer (communicating with others) because there is no stickiness to that. And being just a niche will leave you vulnerable” for that niche who comes in as an evolved network offering value your customers truly want. Because news flash, and most of you know this, the stickiness value of FB is so thin and that is all they know. Wait till this next generation of social networks come along and owns FB if they can’t evolve.

Best article I have read on TC in a long time, ty Mike. My nipples got hard when I read what you wrote: “The future of social media, I hope, isn’t in more tools to help us spew more content. Instead, we need ideas and technology that can leverage all this available online content (including status and activity streams) to enhance real world social interactions.”

My nipples thank you.

think digital windmills… think of swarms of connected people creating the change they are starting to realize. think outside of the net as in sensor technologies creating winds of change.