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Giving in to Facebook: A Weekend on the New "Instantly Personalized" Web (Op-Ed)

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:29:52 +0000

At last week's F8 developers' conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to offer "instant personalization" all over the web , a way for websites to become instantly more social. Without even signing in, sites gain access to publicly available Facebook information like your name, profile picture, friend list and more, in order to personalize your experience on the site. At launch, only three partner sites are offering this feature: Microsoft's new Docs.com , Internet radio Pandora and user review site Yelp . You can opt-out of this experience if you like, but by default, you're opted in. Sponsor These changes have raised concerns among privacy advocates and are even now being questioned by government officials like U.S. Senator Charles Schumer who is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into how social networks handle our private information. And yet... and yet ...after spending the weekend on these "instantly personalized" sites, I have to admit...begrudgingly, mind you...that the experience itself is amazing. Online Music Gets Personal, Too Personal? Pandora's Internet radio is a service I usually partake of via its mobile application on my iPhone, not its regular website. But after the launch of the newly personalized Pandora , I had to take a look. And it was worth it. I immediately discovered which of my friends had the same musical interests as I do. My editor, Richard MacManus, for example, is also a fan of The Killers! Who knew? And apparently, a whole bunch of friends are getting into MGMT now. But finding connections like these aren't the only types of discoveries you can make here. As social media user extraordinaire Robert Scoble found out , you can easily discover your friends' more embarrassing personal tastes too. Kenny G?, Scoble laughingly chides a co-worker after stumbling upon his decidedly unhipster musical interests. These are precisely the types of things we want to stay hidden. Kenny G, for instance. But also our secret obsession with that attractive actor or actress, our fondness for pictures of cute kitties, our forays into celebrity gossip sites when we have a reputation for being intelligent thinkers, our secret Star Wars addiction and so forth and so on. While there aren't " instantly personalized " sites showing you all these types of interests just yet, believe me, there will be. If Facebook has its way (and guess what? It will), your real identity , not just the public parts you've willingly shared in the past, will be revealed to anyone and everyone unless you take action to opt-out. The Real You Can No Longer Be Hidden This is precisely as it should be, Facebook CEO Zuckberberg, more or less said. Earlier this year, he made statements regarding Facebook's new openness, claiming that if he built the social network now, he would make a lot of the data housed there more public by default. This would reflect the current social norms, he said. But that's not exactly true. Facebook isn't reflecting social norms, it's attempting to create them. That said, what an amazing creation it is. On Yelp, I can find the reviews my Facebook friends authored with just a click. I can see who else really digs that local sushi place. And I can do all this without going through the whole "re-friending" process that Web 2.0 sites have put me through in the past again and again. I'm there, my friends are there, and I didn't have to do anything to make that happen. Frankly, it feels right. (Fellow ReadWriteWeb blogger Mike Melanson agrees .) A Minute on the Lips... But it's oh so wrong, isn't it? By giving into to Facebook's vision for the web, we're ceding control of our data, our likes, our interests, our "social graph" (aka who we know, who we friend) - everything - to one company. Historically , one very, very closed company . We're definitely worried about the implications of that. You should be too. But in the meantime, like that calorie-rich dessert we know we shouldn't eat, we're sampling Facebook's web and secretly savoring its deliciousness. Why does everything that's so wrong have to feel so good? Blast you, Facebook. Blast you. Discuss

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Giving in to Facebook: A Weekend on the New "Instantly Personalized" Web (Op-Ed)

Google’s Eric Schmidt Gushes About HTML 5

cgseo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:43:45 +0000

Forrester Research is recommending developers continue developing rich Internet applications and take long pause before embracing HTML 5. For Forrester, HTML 5 is still many years away from becoming a standard in the market and fully functional across multiple platforms. The analyst recommendation reflects on Google's mobile strategy, which CEO Eric Schmidt says is rooted in the company's support for HTML 5. This topic is of real interest now as Apple has dropped support for Adobe Flash. Google is forging ahead with support for HTML 5 but is also playing all sides as Flash remains the incumbent technology for online video. Sponsor So though its commitment is to HTML 5, the company still faces the reality that adoption for platforms such as .NET remain high. Analyst Jeffrey Hammond writes in his report : "These trends underline a key hurdle that HTML 5 technology must overcome to be a ready substitute for today's RIA platform options; users expect it to be as low cost as the other options, but to be of use it must also integrate with Java and .NET server technology. Even if HTML 5 turns out to be a great spec when it reaches Candidate Recommendation state in 2012, it's not clear that this alone will be enough to reverse current RIA adoption trends." In the meantime, Google is debating if it should develop native applications for different platforms. A Google Docs product manager said to us recently that the company has not decided if they should invest in native applications for different mobile platforms. Last week at Google Atmosphere, Schmidt was emphatic about Google's interest in HTML 5. Also at Google Atmosphere, Google Apps President David Girouard moderated a discussion that touched on the HTML 5 issue. In Vint Cerf's view, the "Internet of Things," will evolve to the point where more "things," will go on the smart grid. Speeds will increase at the edges of the network, making downloads to a web page almost simultaneous. What this seems to mean is that we will see the borders between apps and the Web dissolve. There may even be the evolution of new networks that are different than the Web itself. In view of what they say, there is no clear dismissal of different platforms. It's more how mobile apps and the Web blend together. Forrester is critical of the draft HTML 5 spec. Hammond states cites the deep developer use of existing rich Internet application platforms. From his report: "Will HTML 5 make rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete? For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite "no"; inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML 5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML 5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge. Furthermore, this "either/ or" scenario is driven only by vendor politics, not by developer realities. Ultimately, HTML 5 and RIA platforms will be complementary technologies, and enterprise development shops will need to invest in both approaches to deliver expressive applications that combine reach and richness." It is a little tiring when we hear the war of words over apps versus the Web. What will win? Probably neither. It will just depend on the demands of the market, the views of the developer and the powers they decide to follow. Discuss

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Google's Eric Schmidt Gushes About HTML 5

One Approach to Growth: Build Your Own Cloud with vCenter in the Middle

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Today, we got the chance to sit down with Aprimo, an on-demand marketing automation company that has built their software business around scaling their own cloud infrastructure with VMware vCenter . Aprimo has optimized its offerings to scale with customer growth and leverage best-in-class hardware to match innovation in the software layers it develops. In this discussion, we found less need for discussing private vs. public cloud. Instead, we found more focus on performance and speed-to-market as key drivers for moving a virtualization strategy into personal cloud infrastructure reality. Sponsor The story of Aprimo starts with virtualization - and has led to the company defining the boundaries of its cloud offering and product architecture around the benefits of scaling resources on demand. Aprimo uses a Microsoft .Net three-tier architecture with MSSQL in the back-end. All of the three tiers (front-end, business logic, database) run in virtual containers that are monitored with vCenter. Performance is the question that Aprimo studied when bringing vendors on board. The company has relationships with 3Com, Cisco, and HP for the three key parts of the technology stack. vCenter joins these offerings together and offers the company quick response to new customer requests. Like many business, marketing can come in waves and this architecture is designed to scale around the unknown and to be agile enough to support the marketing calendar. Here is a diagram showing the core services VMware vCenter is focused on: We had the chance to explore the customer experience of build-your-own-cloud with John Gilmartin, Director of Product Marketing at VMware. We asked him if VMware sells clouds, or if instead its tool build clouds. What we found is that it is a bit of both. Like a data center itself, or a complex application, building your own cloud can be a multi-faceted event. Customers are using vCenter as a building block to manage the resources and enabling automation around business processes. By thinking of automation as the line in the sand between virtualization and cloud, we can easily see how connecting business processes focuses on the best place in harnessing on-demand resources for business benefit. Some of the areas of focus we the Aprimo team took on as the company to optimize its virtual resources into its cloud. Design and optimization of resource pools Database tier optimization and support new dynamic customer scaling Designing for performance with vendor evaluations Leveraging best practices from VMware on tuning and finding bottlenecks Processes for spinning up new users automatically across all resources Out of these focus areas, we found database scaling the most interesting to consider. It seems clear that as build-your-own-clouds grow, database performance, concurrency, and process integration are ripe for further optimization. What we learned from Aprimo and VMware vCenter is that launching a cloud infrastructure is a combination of virtualizing computing resources and designing the automation of the right business and technical processes. Reaching the stage of an effective cloud depends on how the team thinks about connecting software, sales, and infrastructure together as a process. Making a commitment to your own cloud can bring a company together - from sales manager to developer. This join can position an organization to win customers and grow the business due to an increase in the end to end agility of the organization. Is your business ready to cook up a cloud recipe of your own? Discuss

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One Approach to Growth: Build Your Own Cloud with vCenter in the Middle

Fujitsu Making $537 Million Investment in Cloud Computing

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:13:00 +0000

The Nikkei Daily in Japan is reporting that Fujitsu will invest $537 million in cloud computing for 2011. That seems like a staggering investment to us but perhaps it's not at all surprising considering the metamorphosis in the IT sector. According to The Nikkei and Reuters , the investments will be for more servers and external memory storage at data centers in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Australia and Singapore. Sponsor Fujitsu is not a name that is often thought of in terms of cloud computing. But it is one of the largest IT management services companies in the world, competing with the likes of companies such as CA and Microsoft, two providers with deep investments of their own in cloud computing. A little more insight into the investment came at the Symantec conference last week during an interview with Fujitsu CTO Dr. Joseph Reger. According to TechPulse 360, Reger said that relationships are developing, so to speak. "The IT industry and the cloud thing are in the dating stage... Dating is when you see only the bright side, the opportunities and you don't sit down and worry about what could be the issues." And like a lot of enterprise technology companies, Fujitsu is pushing for is own cloud stack for he enterprise: "It is a step away from current IT but it needs to be connected to the current IT: so private-public cloud. We're thinking about trusted boundaries, the security perimeters and so on. And we are seriously hoping that the cloud will be just another incarnation of IT, not a total different thing. Meaning that there will be a cloud stack where everybody can contribute... Because if the cloud is like an end to end proprietary big heater proposition, that's not good for us, for you [Symantec] and for our customers either." Open standards, anyone? Discuss

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Fujitsu Making $537 Million Investment in Cloud Computing

Docs.com: Facebook and Microsoft Go After Google Docs

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:24:06 +0000

During today's F8 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new products and features for Facebook, including a new collaboration with Microsoft. With Docs.com , Microsoft's FUSE labs just launched an online document editor and viewer that connects directly to Facebook and uses all of the new social features for third-party sites that Facebook announced today. Docs, for example, allows users to share documents with their Facebook friends, edit them collaboratively and discover documents that their friends have uploaded to their profiles. Sponsor Creating Documents in the Cloud and Sharing them With Your Facebook Friends With Docs, you can create new documents right in the web application or upload them from your desktop. Docs gives you the option to share documents privately or you can allow a select group of your Facebook friends to edit the document with you. A button next to every document allows you to add additional editors at any point. In our tests, the editor wasn't working properly yet (though the document viewer works just fine). We will take a closer look at Docs editing features once it is fully up and running. In addition to being able to create and view documents, Docs.com's Facebook integration will also allow your friends to discover these documents (if you choose to share them). You can also add a new tab to your profile page that shows all the documents you have shared with your friends. This also means that you can use Facebook to discuss these documents in public, just like you would discuss any other status update on the site. Attacking Google There can be little doubt that this is a direct attack against Google Docs . Even though Google Docs only offers relatively basic editing features, the service's collaboration tools allow it to stand out from Microsoft's products. Until now, collaborating on Microsoft Office documents was always a rather difficult task for Office users and generally involved using third-party software. It remains to be seen how many people in an office environment will really want to connect their documents to Facebook. For students and other Facebook users who aren't using this tool in a corporate environment and just want to share documents with each other, however, this looks like a great solution. Discuss

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Docs.com: Facebook and Microsoft Go After Google Docs

Google’s Vint Cerf on Private Clouds v. Public Clouds

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:01:10 +0000

The debate about private clouds continue as the traditional heavyweight enterprise software providers make their big and glossy pitches for their vision of a private cloud. So, it may come from Google, but still, it is refreshing to hear the intellectual tone that a scholar like Vint Cerf provides. Cerf is Google's chief technology evangelist but his reflections give a sound bearing on how private and public clouds do interact. Sponsor He spoke last week at the Google Atmosphere Conference. We came across one of the discussions he had with fellow Google innovators. He repeats what we hear him say a lot. It comes down to interoperability. Private clouds are tools. Google develops tools that are distributed on the Internet. The question is how do clouds interact? It's a contrast to what we see with Microsoft or Oracle in its quest to sell cloud computing environments into the enterprise. In the meantime Amazon continues its own quest to dispel private cloud computing as a myth, not a reality. In an interview with eWeek , Adam Selipsky, vice president of AWS outlined their views: "....Moreover, Selipsky said what people are calling private clouds come with the following drawbacks, where the customer will: · Still own the capex...and they're very expensive (big fixed investments) · Not pay for what you use · Not have true elasticity...when groups relinquish their servers, the company still owns the datacenter space and servers...and will also find that managing this supply chain will present a dilemma...will either have to significantly overprovision which is wasteful or become really expert at managing just-in-time supply-chain so there are no long waits for servers...managing a supply chain like this is really hard and takes a lot of effort and refining and keeping the status quo of long time to market is not so appealing either · Still own the headache of managing the undifferentiated heavy lifting" And so, the debate continues. Discuss

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Google's Vint Cerf on Private Clouds v. Public Clouds

Microsoft’s New Platform: Politics

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Today at the Politics Online Conference , Microsoft unveiled a new crowdsourcing system hosted on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Town Hall . TownHall is advertised as "software that allows you to easily create a destination for folks to voice opinions, identify problems, offer solutions and come together around common interests and concerns." Sponsor TownHall focuses on "rich engagement" in the political sphere, aimed at candidates and politicians as well as political interest groups. It allows for the creation of a social media-rich site that runs across platforms and provides methods for gathering information as well as expressing opinions, by furnishing architecture where visitors can make queries, vote on issues, posit and respond, and create community conversation. TownHall is currently available only for the PC. In the coming months, Microsoft intends to provide TownHall clients for the iPhone, the iPad, Google Android and Windows Phone 7. The software for TownHall can be downloaded free of charge. Users pay to host their site on Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing program. TownHall is just a part of a new Microsoft Initiative called Campaign Ready. The power of social media - the electronic version of listening to what the voters say - started with Howard Dean's abortive bid for the White House in 2004 and came to full fruition with Barack Obama's successful one. Subsequent to his election, Obama has shepherded through a series of open government initiatives, which require federal government agencies to seek transparent avenues toward public engagement. Microsoft has posted more Town Hall screenshots on Flickr. Discuss

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Microsoft's New Platform: Politics

Social Media Management System Spredfast Secures Series A Funding

cgseo — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:26:18 +0000

Taking advantage of the increasing importance of social media management for businesses, Spredfast , a finalist at this year's Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, has received $1.6 million in funding from Austin Ventures. Featured here on ReadWriteWeb in January, Spredfast is the first enterprise-class social media management system. Sponsor Spredfast supports companies at both the enterprise and SMB levels, allowing businesses to manage their social media campaigns through a single dashboard. Spredfast incorporates data from multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and most blogging platforms (such as WordPress, Blogger and MoveableType). As the information from these platforms is in one location, and as the service integrates both Omniture and Google Analytics, Spredfast facilitates social media automation and then ties social media analytics with Web analytics to secure "click to conversion" metrics. The pricing for the services range from free to $100 per initiative per month. Since its public launch in January, Spredfast has attracted Oracle, AOL, HP and IBM to its customer base. "We've been working to establish Spredfast as the 'Omniture for social media', a valuable tool for anyone trying to effectively manage and measure a social media initiative," said Kenneth Cho, Spredfast's CEO. "Our relationship with Austin Ventures, specifically with AV partner Mike Dodd previously of Omniture, is great validation of the huge gap Spredfast is filling in the social media market and the reception so many customers are having toward the product." Discuss

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Social Media Management System Spredfast Secures Series A Funding

What Can Startups Learn from Last Week’s Twitter Announcements?

cgseo — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:00:42 +0000

Last week brought two major announcements from Twitter. On Thursday, the company announced an official application for BlackBerry. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had purchased Atebits, the makers of the iPhone app Tweetie . Over the weekend, there was substantial discussion and a fair amount of hand-wringing by third-party developers, many expressing their frustrations about the company's direction. Attempting to reassure developers in advance of next week's Chirp conference, Twitter API lead Ryan Sarver responded by email to some of these concerns. Sponsor Certainly Twitter isn't the only company at the center of debates about control of a platform (Apple, Google, and Microsoft come to mind), but in light of the flurry of responses to Twitter's moves, it is worth considering some of the (perhaps contradictory) lessons for startups that can be gleaned from the past week's events. Find your niche : Much of the third-party development on Twitter has served to address gaps in the original product: mobile clients, URL shorteners, photo sharing, and search for example. As VC and Twitter investor Fred Wilson argued in a blog post early last week that tipped the hand, perhaps, to where Twitter was headed, there is still room for the development of "killer apps" in social gaming, enterprise, and analytics. Innovate and adapt : Find your niche, but then be prepared to innovate and adapt. Some have suggested that Twitter's acquisition of Tweetie might not bode well for other Twitter clients like Seesmic and Tweetdeck , unless the two can continue to innovate. By adding new features unavailable via the Twitter website, and by linking streams from Facebook and LinkedIn, they have established themselves as more than just a Twitter client - but the pressure is certainly on for these to continue to distinguish themselves from the official Twitter applications. "Of course we're hole fillers," Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur admits , explaining that while that's a good place to start, it isn't the right place to end. Look beyond the platform : As Mark Suster writes of both Twitter and the iPhone, it is important to think beyond the platform, contending that startups should not think of Twitter "as a business but rather as a channel." In other words, a platform like Twitter should be a used as a way to reach customers but, unless you're Twitter, should not be the vehicle itself. If this is the " inflection point " for Twitter, the tasks for startups will be to learn the lessons from this critical juncture in the platform's history, balancing the sometimes contradictory needs for specificity and flexibility and innovation and stability. Discuss

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What Can Startups Learn from Last Week's Twitter Announcements?