Are you on Facebook? What about Google+? Twitter? MySpace? Have you ever thought what happens to all the data that you put in there? Take your Facebook account, for example…you have so much useful information that you’d like to export and place into another place, but unfortunately you can’t. Robert Scoble tried that once and Facebook booted him off their network. The data that you enter into these social networks, while it’s your information, is being treated as if it was proprietary for the network. There’s no sharing allowed. And no matter how much you might think that the adage ”sharing means caring” might apply here, think again…the web is the wild wild West and its every social network for themselves.

Just read this latest post from Mr. Scoble as he comments that the common web is dead (or at least it’s too late to save). In 2008, he tried to export his Facebook information so he could apply it elsewhere, but Facebook wants to protect it and boots him off.  It seems that what you put into making your profile relevant is what you can’t get back. This was further reinforced, according to Scoble, on Friday’s episode of the Gillmore Gang where he once again rehashed his Facebook exile:

Facebook should be allowed to be a data roach motel: data can come in, but damn you Scoble if you want to take that data back out.

At this point, the open web is dead – Scoble has given up and feels that the struggle for data rights (my terminology), akin to basic human rights, is over  – the social networks have won. But is it? The data portability world still has its heroes, like Dave Winer, John Battelle, and Chris Saad. These three are not giving up on promoting the open web and fighting the good fight, but do most of us honestly care what happens to our data? Four years ago, John Battelle predicted the data constrictions we’re seeing now: “The web as we know it is rather like our polar ice caps: under severe, long-term attack by forces of our own creation.” We created this technology and now it’s evolved into a point that, over time, has slowly eroded away our feelings about data portability.

In today’s New York Times, Lori Andrews wrote an opinion article about how Facebook is making their money off of  our backs. In this article, Ms. Andrews states that unlike other big-ticket corporations, Facebook (estimated to be worth at least $75 billion), doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones.  Rather, the inventory consists of personal data. If you look at Facebook’s S-1 filing and also what I wrote about this when news first came that they would go public, most of Facebook’s revenue will come from advertising. And it’s no surprise that in order for advertisers to get more bang for their buck, Facebook allows them to target to us by key words or details that are associated with your profile or social graph (almost like a Klout perk, except being advertised to isn’t a perk). Whether it’s your relationship status, location, activities, favorite books, employment, etc., advertisers can have their pick of the litter of the entire 845 million users. This tactic has been especially beneficial for Facebook having made over $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year and making up 85% of the total revenue. So it makes perfect sense for Facebook to want to protect the data that you put into it. No network wants to allow you to share your data you willingly give it because they want to protect its cash cow! Sure you get some minimal benefit by connecting with your friends and family, but for social networks, your data is virtual gold and worth more than anything else.

And while Ms. Andrews states her arguments about Facebook, the same can be said for Google+, MySpace (they’re still around), Twitter, and startups too…your data is invaluable to them and the only way they’ll probably give it up is if their service gets shuttered.

So is there any point in trying to resurrect the Open Web? Technically it’s not dead (yet), but there are certain steps that may be applicable to stem the damage and make things accessible. Echo’s Chris Saad penned a post in response to Mr. Scoble’s in which he agrees that the Open Web is in real danger, but also points to a bigger problem: we’ve lost sight of the things that matter. You can read his entire post here, but I wanted to highlight a few things that Mr. Saad says in his post that he believes would revitalize the open web:

Add to the web’s DNA
According to Chris, almost every startup he sees is focusing on building an “app” and calling it a “platform”, but they wind up being nothing more than “proprietary, incremental and niche attempts at making a quick buck.” The thought is that companies should think deeper and more long-term. He asks companies what are they doing to change the fabric of the web’s DNA forever? Are you being a true game-changer by contributing to the “essence of the Internet” like other technologies like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, JS, etc have done?

Don’t just iterate, innovate
Of course, someone has to build Apps. We can’t all be working at the infrastructure layer. But too many of the Apps we chose to build (or champion) are incremental. As startup founders, investors, and influencers, it’s so easy to understand something that can be described as the ‘Flipboard of Monkeys’ instead of thinking really hard about how a completely new idea might fit into the future. Sure there are plenty of good business and marketing reasons why you shouldn’t stray too far from the beaten path, broadening it one incremental feature at a time, but the core essence of what you’re working on can’t be yet another turn of a very tired wheel. If you’re shouting ‘Me too’ then you’re probably not thinking big enough.

B2C, not Ego2C
Silicon valley is clearly a B2C town. We all love the sexy new app that our mother might eventually understand. Something we can get millions of users to use so we can show them lots of ads. Besides the fact that I think we should focus a little more on B2B, the problem is we’re not really a B2C town at all. We’re actually more focused on what I will call Ego2c. That is, we pick our favorite apps based on how famous the founding team is OR how easily we can use the app to build yet another niche audience for ourselves (and brands/marketers). It would be a tragedy if the social web revolution boils down to new methods of PR and marketing. But that’s what we seem to be obsessed with. As soon as any app from a famous founder gets released we give it tones of buzz while plenty of more deserving projects get barley a squeak. If the app gets a little traction (typically the ones that have Ego mechanics baked in) you see a million posts about how marketers can exploit it. Inevitably the app developers start to focus on how to ‘increase social coefficients’ instead of how to help human beings make a connection or find utility in their lives.

“Users don’t care”
Speaking more specifically about the Open vs. Closed debate, too often we hear the criticism ”Users don’t care about open”. This is absolutely true and the reason why most open efforts fail. Users don’t care about open. They care about utility and choice. This is why the only way to continue propagating the open web is to work with BUSINESS. B2C. Startups, Media Brands, The bigco Tech companies. They care about open because the proprietary winners are becoming more prominent and successful and that usually means there are at least one or more other startup/company out there who needs a competitive advantage. They need to team up and build, deploy and popularize the open alternative.  This is why Chris believes that open will win.

There are more interesting points that Mr. Saad makes in his post and you can read it all here.

But suffice it to say, there is a small war being waged on the Internet over proprietary sites and the Open Web. The average consumer probably doesn’t consider this in their factor as much, but whether or not it’s a consideration, the lesson here is that the data you put in, while it’s your personal information, no longer belongs to you. Be careful with it.

Photo Credit: Burns Library / Flickr

SoundCloud, the Berlin-based open platform for audio sharing on the web and mobile devices keeps making noise. During the past six months it’s grown from 1 Million to 2 Million users, having attracted both Snoop Dog and Justin Bieber as customers. To keep up with its fast growth in order to become the leader in audio hosting and sharing, as to establish its US presence and the San Francisco office, it needs more fuel to execute. The rumors of raising new funding ($10 Million) were confirmed today, and we can congratulate Union Square Ventures with Fred Wilson and Index Ventures with Mike Volpi for joining the SoundCloud journey together with its prior investor Doughty Hanson Ventures.

I’ve been a fangirl of Soundcloud since its private beta, and long before Spotify Social came along, SoundCloud had been my home for music discovery. Citysounds.fm is still one of my favourite apps, perfect to discover new music from different cities. And now, with the new updated iPhone app, I finally get access to my SoundCloud favourite tracks list streaming nicely on the background. What. A. Relief.

Something tells me that my perfect world scenario, where I can check-in and discover the best food, music and places recommendations all in one isn’t that far away in the future…

Record Your Tunes, Sounds, Talks And Thoughts On The Fly

While doubling its user base, SoundCloud has also been busy developing its latest feature, The Record Button. With the new updated iPhone app with recording and instant upload and sharing features, SoundCloud makes sure you can easily capture and share any audio where ever you are. Like YouTube is for video. Alexander Ljung, Founder and CEO of SoundCloud, cleverly demoed the app in action at LeWeb’10. (Reminder: Just make sure you always have the latest update not to lose any precious sounds coming your way.)

Not an Apple fangirl or boy? There’s an Android app for you. When the new Mac App Store launched for two day ago, so did the SoundCloud Desktop app for Mac, placing itself as steady number 8 on the top 12 list.

With the Record button on both the desktop and mobile devices, SoundCloud now takes the leap into the space of audio sharing platforms such as Audioboo and Cinch, a service frequently used by Robert Scoble when interviewing people.

API Is The New Marketing and Product Development Model

Besides from being one of my favourite startup entrepreneurs, Eric Wahlforss, Co-founder and CTO of SoundCloud, is also a person I enjoy to listen on stage. I had the pleasure of moderating Eric’s session “SoundCloud’s API Learnings“ at Disruptive Code developer conference back in September. With over 100 third party developer apps, Eric and his team have a deep understanding on how to empower, as the value of being empowered by, third party developers. It’s no co-incidence that Music Hack Day unconferences were started by SoundCloud. If you’re running or building service online, this is the presentation you can NOT afford to pass in order to understand why open API is the future model of marketing, product development and should be part of your core business.

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She is also a mentor for startups at Seedcamp. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn,
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

In the era of social networking and democratization of the web, connecting with ones customers and audience on an emotional level is becoming ever so important and crucial for businesses.

Using video for digital storytelling has shown to be effective, but it has been, and still is, a bit of a mystery land and non-option to many companies due to high prizing and technically advanced solutions, combined with the requirements on high video quality.

23 Video from Denmark, Europe, or as Robert Scoble puts it,” the country that nobody visits!”, has just finished its international launch tour with a mission to make own videosites accessible to everyone. Everyone should have one, and everyone should be able to afford one. With over 200 running websites and paying customers, 23 Video is now going global offering 100 partners in 15 different countries.

23 Video has already been called for the WordPress for video by the tech savvy media, allowing one to get started by swiping a credit card, choosing a design and a domain name. With a self funded team of ten, 23 Video is taking up the fight against competitors like Brightcove and Ooyala, who combined are good for $145 Million in funding.

Case Study in Building Product and Launching Internationally

Moreover, 23 Video is a great case study on how to build a product and launch internationally in a very competitive landscape.

1. Solving real problems: Listen and Learn

Get early adopters and customers and work together with them to get feedback. Go hunting for feedback. Show your product to everyone you think might benefit from it. Listen, digest, and focus.

When I first met with the co-founders Steffen Tiedemann Christensen and Thomas Madsen-Mygdal for a year ago, they were doing a feedback demo tour in Stockholm. I remember writing:

“23 Video is determined to kill that mumbo jumbo and difficulties surrounding setting up ones own web-tv channel”

One quick look at the feature list tells that it’s exactly what the team’s been busy with during the past year.

The team have been breaking down every possible barrier to entry there is for a small business to get started with online video. How about features like one price and no limitations, or as to quote Thomas:

“Why have limits, we believe in empowering instead of limiting users”.

The list continues with all the goodies like HTML5, API, distribution across all platforms, SEO friendly, own ad serving (partnership with Videoplaza), and access control in case you’d be into paywall solutions, to name a few.

2. Build your fanbase

I can not stress this enough: Involve people early on in your product. You will need ambassadors to help with feedback on the product development, spreading the word and making those important connections and recommendations. For example, do a feedback tour like 23 Video did.

3. Educate

To disrupt an industry and behavioral habits is normally a long process and never simply done just by introducing a new technology. Sure, both luck, timing and a great product is needed, but foremost, it’s about hard work educating and enabling both the customers, and their customers.

23 Video has been working with tutorials, workshops, as securing and educating partners to fully utilize the product. How easy the platform and tools might be, one still needs help and inspiration to produce the content.

4. 100% Human

23 Video is all about the people, for the people.

“23 Video is just a tool: it takes humans to make the most of it. Instead of automated responses, you will have your very own contact person to help you out.”

Many companies today are struggling to humanize their brands to be able to meet the increasing customer demands regarding transparency in customer service and company communication.

5. Launch with help from your fans

Everyone can throw a launch party: hire the works, invite “important” industry people, potential customers and press (no guarantee for show up), but as at most of the times, it’ll end up being yet another launch party soon to be forgotten, without having created none whatsoever connection or relationship with the brand itself.

Or, you can launch in smaller scale, inviting few special people recommended by your fans and trusted peers to create something that sticks. Instead of spending lots of money on eyeballs, spend time with people. 23 Video did that by having team of four doing informal launch dinners in San Francisco, London, Hamburg and Stockholm, finishing back at home in Copenhagen. Be creative. Be a person and socialize.

Watch Robert Scoble’s in depth interview with co-founders Thomas and Steffen of  23 Video.

More reading on digital storytelling on Bub.blicio.us.

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She is also a mentor for startups at Seedcamp. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn,
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

By Julie Blaustein

Geolocational services are everywhere. Its in our smart phones, our cars and in our pictures. So why is there so much interest in it now and where is it going? The Ge- Loco Conference tackled the next big thing in advertising, social media and discovery at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 21st. Part of the reason for such interest now is its potential market in mobile advertising, as according to BIA/Kelsy Group, its expected to grow in the U.S. from $320 million in 2009 to $3.1 billion in 2013. That explains why all the buzz for FourSquare that has only 2.1 million users compared to others such as Facebook with 500 million users, Twitter with 190 million users and Yelp with 30 million users.

The conference started out with Robert Scoble‘s opening remarks. What better authority than Scoble who is the uber consumer user of location based services (LBS) and devices to aid him in both his personal life to find a descent places to eat and for his jet setting around the world for business. He then joined the first panel, The Future of Location Based Services. By 2014 all on the panel agreed that any user generated content will be automatically Geo-Tagged. Privacy is still the biggest issue, contributing major and justified concerns regarding stalking. Michael Liebhold of the Institute for the Future pointed out that facial recognition will be the most feared of all privacy concerns. On a brighter note, all agreed LBS is seen as enabling and fostering better communications among individuals and communities.

Fred Wilson

VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, provided the Keynote where he stated the two biggest issues with LBS – Privacy and  Monetization. What gets him pumped? Applications that create lots of data that gets shared with millions of people such as maps – a utility where massive amounts of date are stored in the cloud. Wilson later had an interesting and entertaining “fire side” chat with John Battelle of Federated Media. Playing word association, Battelle asked Wilson to share what comes to mind when he mentions the following: Research in Motion = Not Good, Facebook = Juggernaut, Gowalla = Its tough being second fiddle, HP = Great Company, HP Palm = Great Acquisition, Microsoft = Dinosaur, Apple = Evil (laughter and applause from audience), Boxee = Promise, Google = Challenged.

Panelists Shoes

The issues of Privacy and Monetization were discussed in depth, but certainly not solved during the conference. This conference is just the starting point. There were a number of  industry leaders in attendance along with those that were tweeting or listening in that provided some insight into where things are going in the future. A number of additional issues were discussed and links were shared at the hashtag #geoloco, which is also a great transcript of the conference whether you were there or not. If you were there, its a great place to share your expertise, provide links and other thoughts to the conversation. And, as a result, you become more visible, gaining more followers on Twitter and in the industry. Sharon Lin, Senior Marketing Manager at Jumio, did a fantastic job keeping up with the fast talking panelists, acting as a moderator of the #geoloco stream. Its also interesting to note the many tools used to tweet. Most tweets were generated from Hootsuite and Tweetdeck but others included Seesmic, TweetGrid, TweetCaster, UberTwitter, Echofon, Brizzly. At times the discussion started to get a bit snarky, commenting about how the panelists were dressed. I started noticing what shoes panelists were wearing. Can you match up the speaker to the shoes in the photo? Let me know if you do @julierb.

To the event organizers, Mark Evans, Diane Bisgeier and to the many volunteers, congratulations on a well run and thought provoking meeting of the minds in Geo Locaion. If you missed it, become part of the conversation at #geoloco or check out Justin TV’s livestream of the Geo Loco Conference. You can also check out more photos of the panelists here.

By Julie Blaustein

Don’t miss the next big thing in advertising, social media and discovery!

The Geo-Loco Conference will be held in San Francisco on July 21, 2010 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center where you will learn how geo-location services are going to be monetized and leveraged across industries and verticals.  You will discover what the new breed of Geo-Location-enabled services and applications is doing for brands, for businesses and for consumers.

Speakers will provide their expertise from agencies, brands, businesses and consumers including:

• Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (Keynote)
• Othman Laraki of Twitter
• Paul Adams of Lattitude
• John Battelle of Federated Media
• Andy Ellwood of Gowalla
• Matt Galligan of SimpleGeo
• Deborah Schultz of Altimeter Group
• Robert Scoble of Rackspace and many more!

As a loyal Bub.blicio.us reader, they are offering a special 20%  DISCOUNT!!! Register here and include the promo code bubble20

And don’t forget to join the conversation by following the Geo-Loco Conference on Twitter @geoloco2010 & #geoloco and their Facebook Page.

It’s striking how fast one has come to experience search, distribution and measurability of ones content across different social platforms as a commodity, no matter how great or disruptive the service itself might be. Since all objects are social, we also have a need to share and know what’s going on with our content to better interact around it.

Good example of a great and disruptive service is Prezi, an online visualization and storytelling tool that aims to change the way people present information and tell their stories. To me Prezi was love at first beta invite, resulting it to become one of the very few software products that I’m actually, and happily, paying for. And I’m not the only one who’s been dazzled by how it inspires and challenges, both its user and audience, at the same time. In just within a year Prezi has become the darling of the innovative minds in tech, design and educational institutions. It’s often seen on stage in places like Davos, TED conferences, who also has invested in Prezi, and LeWeb. Robert Scoble is in love with it, and it’s certainly not every day Umair Haque describes a product as “total awesomeness”.

Thus, it’s no surprise that education, social media and technology are the most common words used in the public prezis.

The Hungarian startup with its Swedish CEO Peter Arvai and Jack Dorsey, Co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, on the advisory board, seems to have chosen the right path by being obsessive about the product development to create great user experience and an awesome product. As Jason Calacanis keeps reminding the startups on TWiST: “Create great user experience and an awesome product, and the business will follow.” Having both dedicated fans and paying customers with a great product is a good space for Prezi to be in, but to stay competitive I think it’s important they gear up its social sharing and discovery of content a notch.

Prezi was early to embrace social media by including basic social sharing options, as well as using blogging, Twitter and Facebook for customer feedback and service.

If that’s not enough for being social as a service, what am I still missing?

User profile and improved search: To be able to share and socialize around content it needs to be found. There’s no public user profile page, and since the search function only includes the titles of the content, it’s nearly impossible to search and find single users. (I’ve tested to add my name in the description field without any luck). For example: A search for Sean Percival results to a copy of his presentation saved by someone else only because his name is found in the title. On the positive note, Prezi has become more search engine optimized after changing its URL structure to more readable ones.

Tags and categories: Adding possibility to tag and categorize content will also facilitate and improve the search and user experience.

Statistics: A standard and important feature in so many levels, both to the user and the service itself. Prezi does have a page for popular prezis, which I believe would better serve its purpose if including metrics about number of viewings and sharings.

Notifications: Since it’s possible to “pad”, i.e. like, a presentation, as well as to comment on it, it’s necessary to receive a notification of some sort to be able to act upon it. This would also help to increase the conversation and engagement level of the Prezi community.

Slideshare: All the functionality mentioned is found on the largest document sharing service Slideshare, yet a closed door for prezis. As Slideshare doesn’t support Prezi’s file format and Prezi doesn’t offer any conversion functionality, this has become a slight inconvenience to, and a request from, its users, who now have to use manual workarounds.

Copyright: Gregg from GriDD

Whereas Prezi’s claimed to be the Powerpoint killer, it’s actually pretty funny to find over 200 Powerpoint or Keynote presentations on Slideshare about Prezi, or actual prezis converted to ones. Think if they were all prezis.

Prezi recently released an improved editor, to my liking, and is now also offering reuse of all the public prezis. There’s a free public license option so you can easily let yourself get inspired by the works of both Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, and Sean Percival of MySpace, to get started with your own storytelling.

To quote Joi Ito: “All of our talks are inspired by others and using and reusing material should significantly improve the quality of all of our talk.”

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Follow her on Twitter: @paulamarttila
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

By Miiko Mentz and Alison McNeill

Earlier this week, Alison and I attended and shot the video for Dave McClure’s Startup2Startup holiday party over at Automattic, makers of WordPress (btw, they have quite the kick-ass space over at Pier 38 in SF). The December Startup2Startup was not only a holiday party, but it was the “Roast of Robert Scoble.”

It was a lot of fun, so we thought we’d share the video that we did for Dave with our Bubblicious readers. You can watch the pre-roast interview below, but head on over to Startup2Startup’s YouTube channel to watch the entire roast (note: as of 6:30pm PST the videos of the roast were still uploading and probably won’t be available until later tonight).

In addition to the pre-roast video, you’ll definitely want to watch David Hornik’s video, which was played during his roast of Scoble. We loved it and it’s sure to entertain you, too. Check it out. But first here’s the pre-roast interview with Scoble:

RELATED POST: December 2: The *Real-Time* Holiday Roast of Robert Scoble (aka The 2009 Startup2Startup Holiday Party)

Follow us on Twitter: @miikomentz @alisonmcneill

by Brian Solis

Robert Scoble and Louis Gray

Last night during a small, but memorable dinner, we all wondered who would leak the news, Robert Scoble was leaving FastCompany. The story is live on TechCrunch right now and according to the story, Scoble confirmed with Mike sometime before the evening was over.

Indeed Robert Scoble is leaving his full time job at FastCompany.tv to introduce, well, we’ll let him tell you at SXSW. He’ll continue to write a column for FastCompany in the future.

Scoble continues the story in his post, “Why I haven’t posted for two weeks.”

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

(L to R) Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur, Barak Hachamov of My6Sense, Harry McCracken, Deb Schultz, Eliane Fiolet

JD Lasica

Harry McCracken

Deb Schultz

Hashtag

Yoav Shoham and Eliane Fiolet

To see the rest of the pictures from the My6Sense Blogger Dinner, please visit my album on Flickr.

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