Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Jaiku Tips the Tuna?

Did Jaiku tip the tuna yesterday?  Leo Laporte  jumped ship from Twitter to Jaiku, his 4,000 followers followed.  The Twitter herd debated platforms, has herds do when chosing to migrate.  Suddenly the story was Twitter vs. Jaiku and Jaiku team dealt with digesting a big chocolate Easter Bunny.

Let me provide some context first.  I was exposed to Jaiku at Aula in Helsinki last June.  From my notes:

Jyri Engeström and Mika Raento on social peripheral vision.  Phones are designed with the assumption that you know who you want to call before you do.  You need to process social signals before using the device.  Jaiku, their startup is looking to augment basic functions of a phone by pasting onto it what is happening on the internet.  If you can't find anyone in your contact book, you can search a directory made of everyone's contacts. Calendars let you share future events to let you plan together.  The demo shows very rich profiles based on phone usage (automatic data) and more social signals (more manual) -- which provides a different form of Presence.  In usage, people still call regardless of presence, but when someone doesn't answer, you leverage the presence to understand why. Integrated IM is more convenient than SMS, and includes group messaging.

Since then, Twittr came on the scene and Jakiu's web interface got a major upgrade.  It's important to understand the significant differences between the two services, their design thinking and strengths.  Joi Ito:

Looks like a bunch of people are trying out Jaiku after "tasting" co-presence with Twitter. To me, Jaiku, which existed before Twitter, is a bunch of Helsinki mobile jocks getting into the Web 2.0 of it all whereas Twitter is the Web 2.0 crowd "getting" co-presence...

Jaiku comes from a "presence" background allowing bluetooth proximity, phone idle time, ringer mode and other things to trigger state changes - the messaging came later. Twitter, on the other hand, is primarily messaging, which as we all know, is just a flexible and manual vector for presence information.

To understand where Jaiku is coming from, I encourage you to read this interview with co-founder Jyri Engeström and his post on social peripheral vision (the ability to have your finger on the pulse of your friends, family, and colleagues).

  Twitter on paper 
  Originally uploaded by jack dorsey.

In digging around for some of the thinking behind Twitter, I found Jack Dorsey's napkin design for Twitter:

from a note circa Jan 2006.

casual awareness.
"what are you up to?"

multiple entry point to set status
- web
- email
- phone
- sms
- im

multiple ways to "subscribe" to status
- web
- email
- phone
- sms
- im

3 aspects
- set status
- timeline (collaborative)
- configuration

The interesting thing is that I found it on Jack's Jaiku page where he had included his Flickr stream as part of his presence.  For a long time I've wanted the Xfire for social software, and today Jaiku provides this kind of persistent presence.

Jaiku lets you incorporate feeds from your blog, bookmarks, photos, location -- and Twitter if that is where you prefer to post status.  Every post of any kind becomes an object for conversation, through comments.  This works easily in the web UI, but it also works in the Nokia mobile client because presence isn't overwhelming. Presence is something you can glance at, not an SMS interruption. 

Unfortunately today this requires a Nokia phone, but they are working on a Java version that also specifically supports commenting (kind of like Radar.net, more on that later).  People coming from Twitter won't expect the ability to add their attention breadcrumbs to their attention stream (developers will) and will probably expect something they can adopt on their mobile easily.  In the US, this is a significant barrier (Sidenote: fuck you Cingular.  Making me change calling plans to switch SIM cards from my Blackberry and claiming the handset wont work because you don't sell it even though it runs the same software is an easy way to lose me as a customer, as if I had alternatives.).  Jaiku isn't ready to Tip the Tuna until their next mobile client comes out. 

But until then I'd expect a lot of people to use the web version as an attention pool.  Posting to Jaiku via Twitter is a no-brainer and I'd hope you can do the opposite without loops and dupes soon.  Rafe asked the right question:           Is it possible Twitter and Jaiku will end up sharing users, instead of hoarding them like the IM services did early on? I responded:           systems of record are being replaced by systems of discovery. 

In other words, in the first web I would worry about which service I would commit my social network, presence and persistence to.  But services are increasingly making data discoverable and discovering data from other services.  We used to worry about transporting our FOAF relationships, but then I think we realized that each tool is different and being able compose a different social network was a virtue (not just because of faceted identity, but that different tools need different filters and the social network is the filter).

Plugging Socialtext

Jeff Brainard blogs at Socialtext.com about pluggable integration:

• Easily export wiki content for integration into HTML, PDF and Word with document management systems
• Simplify authentication and create a seamless portal experience with directory services and single sign-on integration
• Quickly use search to find relevant wiki content, plus use Google for advanced search requirements
• Embed the best-of-breed Socialtext wiki within your existing Microsoft Sharepoint portal environment
• Allow 'anytime, anywhere' access to wiki content with mobile and disconnected-mode access
• Use standards & open APIs to integrate custom applications and content with your wiki

There are some things in his post that are new features that we decided not to toot our horn about too loudly.  For those following our open development more closely, we are planning on spiking a real plugin system that goes beyond our APIs during a hackathon in Vancouver.  We're making a lot of progress that you can participate in, say at our next wikithon.

Topix Portends Media Acquisitions

Topix went beyond aggregation today by launching the ability for local news readers to post or comment upon stories.  CEO Rich Skrenta describes the business model transformation where they took more risk to turn SEO attention into participation -- sharing control to create value.

I wont nitpick on how apt the Wikipedia analogy is, or agree that algorithms love vacuums.  Topix is taking a unique approach to offload the burden of moderating zipcode contributions that could work and scale.  Rafat Ali comments:

I have talked in the past about Topix’s “rut of low visibility”, and this is a risky yet ambitious attempt to redefine the site. Competition is heavy; managing and evaluating user contributions, and keeping signal-to-noise ratio high will be a challenge, but Topix intends to use a mix of human plus software intelligence for it.

You may know that Topix gobbled up some great funding from strategic media investors, one of the smarter moves I've seen made by the industry on the wane.  You see, Topix is doing what newspapers should be doing.

While the economics of print have predicted the death of it for decades, and the recent decimation of classified revenue has print in a panic -- newspapers have only made token moves in defense.  Setting up RSS feeds and a blog or two won't bail you out.  And they are missing the larger opportunity.

Invest in social media where coverage is too costly. This is the simple rule of thumb to turn threat into opportunity for media companies.  If you are a national newspaper, enable local communities to cultivate news.  If you are a local paper, feed on the local interest in national news.  Focused only on print, have users generate the TV studio.  This is a period to pilot expansion into new areas.

Popular attention is on portals buying social media startups.  Partially because they get the technology and promise, but also because they are disrupting established media over time.  Media companies probably only focused on if they could buy or build Craigslist with great disappointment.  Those cash reserves and great brands are standing still.

How long will it be until one of Topix' strategic investors scoops them up?  Until the Washington Post buys Technorati?  Until McClatchy (KnightRidder rollup) clutches SixApart?  The Tribune (did a buyout today) gives tribute to memeorandum? McGraw-Hill edits Wikia?  AP sends a wire to Digg?

Please Be Funnier

Giovanni Rodriguez set up a wiki called PleaseBeFunnier:

Welcome to the PleaseBeFunnier Wiki, a community project dedicated to improving Silicon Valley April Fools jokes. Let's start with a list of 2007 jokes. Enter them here and tell us what you think!

Personally, I'm holding back from a Socialtext prank this year.  Once we did one saying we were closing our source and we had prospects taking it seriously.  The Enterprise funny bone is stunted.

Socialtext Virtual Appliance

We released Socialtext Virtual, a VMware virtual appliance of our open source version.  Go play.

An impassioned scandal that could really change us, for the better?

I wanted to add a non-personal comment about the impassioned scandal rocking our community, the best way I could think of to improve the silence. 

This is a real test of the blogosphere.  Our culture and openness.  We don't know all the facts, but there is enough to be disgusted.  We do know that part of this involves real core and dedicated bloggers.  We do know that this involves trolls, there will always be trolls, and we all have them.  We do know that some speech is illegal for a reason, and sociopaths run against society, but there are slippery slopes in all directions from the hill we think we have climbed.

There are core issues at stake:

• Being safe is something most everyone can agree is a right.  Most of this is governed by laws in our respective jurisdictions and our jurisdictions tend to respect each other when it comes to violence and threats, where there is the rule of law. Being safe is the lowest common denominator for why we have government, and however, it can slip into degredation of our civil rights.
• Being anonymous on the web matters.  Some believe it shouldn't be a right and we should embrace the panopticon.  But this is an undeveloped tangent of how the web meets the world.  Whistleblowing can help, security maelstorms can hurt.  Pseudonymity may indeed be needed, say to protect the real world identity of the editors of Wikipedia pages on topic of conflict.  But trusted brokering of these identities is, again, underdeveloped, in communities, the private and public sector.  Today one with means can attain anonymity, but others with means can reveal, such as a law enforcement officer with an ISP search warrant or more empowered agencies.  The rule of law does draw the line for certain abuses of identity, but it is completely undeveloped for protecting your most basic identity.
• Being open on the web matters.  Transparency is good.  Society values it more every day and it the underlying force field of the blogosphere.  But it is rare to hear horror stories of being too closed, and frequent for being open.  Maybe being to closed makes you unheard to begin with.  Maybe it means isolation which is our greatest fear.  Maybe it also means corruption when conspired.
• Being free with speech is both what makes us great and makes us go too far.  Not only do we each have speech as a widely understood right, but the power to publish that we don't understand. When speech crosses over into action, or the threat of it, rules are largely in place.  But it is societal norms that govern the grey area.

Which is why I'm blogging this.  It turns out that it is personal, in that I want to bring attention to Kathy's post.  And that I need to blog this help sort out my own feelings.  Part of me wants to scream FUCK YOU to the people who have assailed our norms.  Part of me wants my community to sustain, to find what is common and what is wrong -- to feed back the hate without breeding hate.  I want this blogosphere to surround and comfort, not harden a reaction to an extreme by institutionalzing an even worse extreme.

UPDATE: Frank Paynter, Kathy Sierra responds, Jeanane Sessum, Doc Searls, Rage Boy and Alan Herrell

Talk of the Town

I'm quoted on the front page of the Financial Times on Twitter.

Over the past two weeks, Twitter has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling – though such self-reinforcing adulation also led to dotcom mania...

"This is the first application that people have got excited about since Flickr came out," said Ross Mayfield, a Valley entrepreneur, comparing it to a popular photo-sharing site bought by Yahoo in 2005. "I don't think it will be the next YouTube – but I do think it will gain wide adoption," he said.

Users of Twitter post short messages – up to 140 characters – that can be viewed either on a website or on mobile phones. "Twitter probably wouldn't have existed before blogging, when people learned to be more transparent," Mr Mayfield added.

Though launched publicly last summer, use of Twitter started to take off in the middle of March after it was adopted by tech­nology bloggers attending the South by Southwest conference in Texas. As people like Mr Mayfield lauded the service on their blogs, interest spread quickly among the Valley's key opinion-formers.

The extended online version has Biz Stone saying they learned from Friendster's performance failings.

In other mobile social software news, Mozes announced a deal with Universal Motown to provide Twitter-like real time community around 60 recording artists.  Jaiku is launching a new mobile client and website this week at Etech.