• Twitter message of the day | twitter.com/BJMcCray
  My friend from the smallbizosphere, Becky McCray, twittered this last night: “I’ll bet I bought more booze today than anyone else on Twitter! ” (She owns a liquor store.)
  (tags: twitter)
• Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video | Kathy Sierra
  Quote: “All our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable.” Reminds me: I went to Austin just to meet Kathy Sierra and forgot to as I was too busy Twittering.
  (tags: sxsw sxsw2007 twitter kathy+sierra)
• Wired.com gets new look | Wired.com
  I’m liking it. Bonus link: A blog-post gallery of screenshots from the new look and old.
  (tags: wired.com magazines)

• My first Twitter’d thank you | Twitter / Steve Rubel
  Steve Rubel Twittered a public thanks for a Hammock T-Shirt he was using for pajamas. (The #1 use of them, from feedback.) That’s my first-ever Twitter thanks. This is my first del.icio.us ‘your welcome.’
  (tags: twitter)
• Events and magazines | David Shaw
  David shares his notes from a Folio: conference on the topic of magazine-related events (in the b2b arena).
  (tags: magazines events)
• What if we could eat online? | Khoi Vinh
  Download the PDF of his two-minute startup pitch for a Web 2.0 networking, tagging, RSS-feeding, social eating service.
  (tags: web 2.0 humor web+culture khoi+vinh sxsw sxsw2007)
• I ace’d the religion test | USATODAY.com
  I scored a 94 although I got lucky with a guess that the Karma Sutra was a sacred text . Didn’t know Buddhist 4 noble truths or that ‘holy orders’ and ‘confirmation’ were Catholic sacraments. (Being a minister’s son helps.)
  (tags: Religion)
• List of National Magazine award finalists | mediabistro.com
  Favorite “blog-related” finalist: BusinessWeek.com is a finalist in a new category called ‘Interactive Service’ for ‘user-involvement, personalization or community tools.’
  (tags: magazines)

(Below are raw notes, not direct quotes. Joi, Justin and Ben are great. This was the best panel I attended at SXSW.)

Ito: Second Life and World of Warcraft are apples and oranges. “I use Second Life to plan World of Warcraft.” WOW is an evolutionary point in Internet interface design. You can make “addons.” He shows screen of his addons. His display looks like an instrument panel, rather than a 3D world. Little modules track all types of information and statistics. No two users’ interfaces are the same on WoW. “We have a lot of military people on the game. They say this is advance of current military management. Certainly better than project management in industry.” I know more about the guildees in my community than anyone else I know: how they operate under pressure. We used to have this notion of being in “virtual world” and being in “real world.” We go seamlessly between real world and virtual world. Difference in simulation and metaphor. Simulation teaches you how to be something in real world. WoW has nothing to do w/ real life, but metaphorically, it has to do with the skills necessary in the real world. More creative: what can I learn from fighting a dragon? Playing a game together when everything is working is like playing music together. Young people in the group that learn how to do things — and the reward of doing them correctly. MBA types aren’t very good as leaders because the power-role in the real world doesn’t necessarily work the same way online in a voluntary organization like a guild. A guild in WoW is more like a congregation.

Hall: I don’t play WoW because it takes too much time and takes over your computer and you can’t multitask. I used to journal my life for 12 years. Stopped. Now I don’t have that same trail. So he’s turned his myspace page into such a trail: Plazes, recent reviews, music listened to. Passively Multipalyer Online Games: giving you “experience points” for just using your computer. If I follow you around the web, maybe I can learn about you. I’m going to give you “experience points” if you do this or that. (Observation: This is an “active attention monitor” or something: He’s calling it “experience points.” It’s an “experience bar.”

Ito: In the U.S., we ask what the “business application” of a new technology is. In Japan, we ask how can kids have fun with a new technology? They play with it. The barrier between play and work is an Amemrican idea. Like barriers between cyberspace vs. real world and work vs. play. The game industry has been stigmitized by ? (parents? media?). Control vs. being open has to do with trusting kids and users. Blatant ageism.

Ben Cerveny: Play is something that eats away at structure — that’s a threat to the power structure. Playfulness allows you to look at things from many angles. The best leader is often the best listener, not the best talker.

Technorati Tags: gaming, sxsw, sxsw2007

Jule Davidson (30Boxes), Will Smith (Maximum PC), Scott Rafer (moshery.com & mybloglog.com), Dave Snider (Comicvine), Mike Tatum (CNet), Evan Williams (Twitter, creator of Blogger.com).

[Post-panel observation: While I liked the people on the panel and they are experts on the topic, if you are familiar with the whole "user-generated-content" space, skip reading the following. Indeed, I will never again attend a panel on the topic of "user-generated-content." If you want to learn about participatory, conversational media, don't waste your time listening to people on a panel. Frankly, it is beyond ironic. You can only get it by doing it -- or having a conversation about it.]

These are raw notes below, not direct quotes.

Snider: In the future, most sites will all be “user-generated” — three people can manage a community of 20,000. (comicvine.com). It’s much better to have a page with bad content than no content. It will cause someone to register and change it.

Smith: Mainstream audience wants to be spoonfed and led to the information.

Rafer: When you say, “mainstream” you are steretyping. Everyone is an expert geek (and expert tweak?) on something. They want to be spoonfed in other areas.

Tatum: As a j-school graduate, it makes me cringe when we say we don’t need editors. There’s no fact checking or tone when it’s just ‘user-generated’

Rafer: All the things you just said exists in a public fashion on user-generated sites.

Snider: We have editors. They are the three dozen users that are so super into it, they crush everyone one the sites. They’ll complain about the site, but will work on it every day. It’s the site they wanted to build, but didn’t have the expertise to build it. We just built the tools. The secret sauce is monopoly. Unless you give people a perk who spend all the time on the site. The get access to us and we’ll build them special features. Sometimes that monopoly money is just a badge.

Tatum: The top dozen who contribute, aren’t they going to ask as some time: “Don’t I own this?”

Snider: There will be a legal challenge, I’m sure. “You just sold your company — I want a piece of it.” Our contributors are young. That’s scary — but also why the grammar is bad.

Davidson: Your fear is that they’ll want to be paid.

Snider: I’d love to pay them. Many of them have gotten jobs. When we get money, I’ll hire them.

Rafer: Our hiring at mybloglog is coming out of the community.

Davidson: (Ownership issues question.) Webshots (former site), this was an issue. The terms of service, you reliquinshed ownership rights of photos you uploaded. At some point that will be legally challenged.

Snider: Has anyone read a terms of service? I took ours from another site.

Davidson: Someone will say I didn’t understand the TOS and a lawyer will take it on. YouTube/Google is probably the best target. Content reuse, generating revenue issues.

Williams: (Do you think there will be professional Twitterers?) It’s hard to call Twitter content. It’s more messaging, communication. But who knows? (About Blogger.com) I don’t necessarily agree that every media property needs to generated user content. There will always be demand for what they do (don’t know if there will be the money for it).

Rafer: (About mybloglog.com?) We stay away from presence and identity as a term. Yahoo has a means to figure out how people use their services, but not an understanding about how people who use blogs. They could use it as a means to understand the way people who read blogs use the blog. What the blogger wants is additional connections. It’s not so lonely. Our presence isn’t what the telecom guys would call presence. Something like 70% of people who create a profile say they have a blog. It’s clear they have profiles on multiple social networks. There are others where mybloglog is their only social profile.

Tatum: (About chowhound) The people on the site, it’s their only presence in that space. They don’t like it when we change because there is a sense of ownership by those who create the original content.

Snider: Go where no one else is. We went to comics for that reason.

(About Dogster, from the audience, Ted Rheingold?) We’ve brought in advertisers by “circle of trust” — we bring them into the community. It’s pretty clear on our site when it’s advertising and not. It helps that when marketers aren’t that creative.

Tatum: (About advertorials?) Our users are going to think we’re whores if we don’t do marketing content in a specific way. They are opposed to marketing messages in their space. So we do something unique for marketers: podcasts, for example.

Snider: Has anyone ever set up fake accounts to hang out with the angry users? I do. I want to know what the angry people think.

Tatum: I like your business model.

Williams: You know we don’t make money. We made tools with Blogger. Twitter we haven’t figured out. It’s not our content, it’s their content. We never really have considered ourselves in the editorial business.

Davidson: Ours is not a traditional editorial content site, but people can put RSS feeds on their sites. We can’t be free forever, however. Ours is a blend between personal information and feeds from content you find interesting.

Tatum: About gmail ads. I’m freaked out about contextual ads related to content that I’ve never mentioned.

Williams: The primary role of blogs and “Digg” sites is still filtering.

Snider: Digg is getting to be a popularity contents with top-ten lists, etc.

Technorati Tags: conversational media, sxsw, sxsw2007

My blogging and wiki friend, Josh Bancroft made the lede in this BusinessWeek.com CEO Guide to Wikis. (A couple of weeks ago, Josh — media-magnet that he is — was featured in a WSJ.com story about live-blogging ones life.)

If you are at SXSW and are a wiki developer or are in anyway interested in wikis, there will be an informal “birds-of-a-feather” lunch (an “un-panel”?) today (Monday) at 12:30 in the 4th floor coffee lounge area in the convention center. Liz Henry (SocialText), Evan Prodromou (WikiTravel) and I (SmallBusiness.com) will definitely be there. Anyone is welcome to join our impromptu discussion.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxsw2007, wiki, wikis

Panelists: Jim Coudal (coudalpartners.com), Brendan Dawes (brendandawes.com)

(What follows are raw notes, not quotes. And in no way, do these notes do the talk justice – as it misses the demos of the fun and cool things that Jim and Brendan have done.)

Coudal: Talked about the spark of enthusiasm that comes with a new idea that then flitters away. You learn a lot. Get to dream about an idea. You can take it far enough to think about it as a reality. But then it fizzles. Is it a failure? Demonstrated several ways that ideas that didn’t pan out then led good products: The Show, The Deck. Pulling the ship out thinking you’re doing one thing leads to another. And you don’t even know it until you look back. It looks like we’re being distracted by whatever shinny object catches our attention today. The ability to follow inspirations to natural or unnatural conclusions. Not just about creating businesses…but also taking design projects. “We are re-starters, not re-visers.” (Or something like that.) There are things that don’t make money — but make really cool days at work. Specific advice: 1. Paint your bathroom with that paint you can write chalk on. 2. The book: Write down ideas that we’ll get around to one day. It is filled with ideas like million-dollar porn page. And a number of other “oddball ideas.” To institutionalize the activity of recording ideas. “This ones for the book” – like, we’re not going to do it, but want to put it down.”

Dawes: He has a mini-harddrive that he considers a “sketch book” that is filled with “junk.” Dividends are not just money: PR, reputation. His work on Saul Bass. The dividends were ten-fold. Connected him w/ people he does more work with. However, “because of my short-attention span, the domain name expired.” He’s now on his third URL. If you’re going to do something, get the stuff out there…even if it isn’t finished. It’s great having a short-attention span, but don’t let that keep you for doing stuff. (Even if it’s half-assed.) Short-attention spans is about constraints. Constraints are good. With his first computer, Sinclair ZX81, “it didn’t do anything — you had to do it.” What was the creative output? He demos several projects that he did just for fun…that led to other things. Question that leads to cool things: I wonder what would happen if I did this? I don’t make complex things because I get bored easily. Shows projects he did in which he createed pixle-by-pixle versions of films. (Dawes’ grid.) Showed video of a Playdough interface for a computer he created. Quoted Edgar Allan Poe: “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” We should all work in our pajamas.

How do you get skill-sets?

Coudal: You have to have a set of skills.

Dawes: Also depends on what level you want to take it to. Surround yourself with crafters. The execution of the idea is critical. I know what I want to achieve. I’m lucky to have a team to work with me. Learning the skills is about how to apply the time you have. My commute time is used to learn something new every day.

Coudal: Part of the responsiblity at Coudal Partners is to screw around all day. There’s a lot of personal responsibility, but you don’t get grades. We publish links all day long. People come to Coudal all day and we get jobs out of that.

Lots of questions about office/staff/team — how to take this approach?

Dawes: We show each other our stuff. It’s chaotic. I wish we had a process. We fly by the seat of our pants.

Coudal: Everybody has to pull on the same end of the rope. Maybe there’s a point at which there are too many people that you can’t do that. We try to come up with great idea that we can’t top — and then go to the bar.

Question: How do you know when you’re finished?

Coudal: You know when you’re in love with an idea at the beginning. Then you know when it goes. With client projects, you’re done when you get the check.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxsw2007

Panelists: Christian Crumlish, Ted Nadeau, Mary Hodder, Kaliya Hamlin, George Kelly

[Below are raw notes, not direct quotes. Sorry, no links.]

Crumlish: Shows a series of identity screen grabs that display identities one has online and when they may conflict or intersect with one-another, spying on oneself, seeing what Google ads appear on your blog, your search history.

Hamlin: With OpenID, we decided to let you use “one box” to register on any site. OpenID 2 is a little more complex but it is designed to do away with competition among all the services. OpenID, inames, LID, sxip now work together. You just put the login box and adjust user tables and you can accept people from everywhere. Already have an OpenID. Just Signin. A user’s “identifier” lives somewhere — and when you register somewhere, it refers back to the i-broker, OpenID Provider. It doesn’t do a lot, but allows for new things to be built on it. Where it is going: OPen Standards for identity. On top of that are reputation and verification management. We didn’t want to pack a lot into it at first — so we could get adoption.

Nadeau: Speaking on “reputation.” The small town we used to live in is now Internet scale. Your reputation is exposed to the earth. What is your reputation? There are non-monetary assets that are important. Some parts of my identity are asserted by me or by others. Your reputation is part of you identitry, it appears different to different viewers. You are not currently the primary authority on your reputation. You are the last person to ask. What is the reputation of reputation? Not a built out domain set yet. Show’d lots of places to seek reputation. Bottomline: Reputation 1.0 is not working. Lots of papers and research, but nobody is coding it yet. But what is reputation: General judgement of the public or individual toward an entity. You need to create a methodology for how people act in certain situations: reputation plays an important part in that. Some things have BIG reputations (order of magnitude): Corporations’ identities are worth lots of money. Lots of online systems w/ built in recognition systems: eBay, LInkedin (recommends), World of Warcraft, Amazon, Google Pagerank. Pre web: D&B. What would the perfect reputation system be like: “Data Stores & Key Spaces” — your own copy, that of others, shared/agreed. Problems? Reputation theft, reputation damage, loss, etc. reputation stuck, identitfy first, reputation later. You should be able to move identitfy. Not be stuck in a “caste.” Need to get identitfy figured out first — then figure out reputation. Where is your reputation

Hodder: Attention. Usability engineer. (Think as a user. You need to relate things to yourself first.) Root Markets (Seth Goldstein) and others started the attention trust. Looking for ways to make attention more concrete. Services (like Google, etc.) are collecting iniformation about you — collecting your “gestures”. What are they doing withi that information? Doesn’t seem consequentional but is incredibly consequentional. Gestures: A link on your blog is a gesture that says you believe what you are linking to is worth linking to. The Attention Trust assumes you also own a record of your information. Seth Goldstein and Steve Gillmore went around to the companies and got everyone to aggree that users own a copy of their “attention strand” — Also built a recorder where a user can record their attention strand. It’s important for companies to keep that private. But if an individual collects that information about themselves, you can choose to use it in certain ways. The concept of “social norms” is important because … If the only entities who have that atttention pool are big corporations, then individual behavior can be demonized (if not seen in the context that such behavior is very normal). We should be able to share our information anonymously in a pooled way so that there is a record of what is “normal.”

Kelly: Shows kevan.org — nohari?view=allaboutgeorge (I hope you can try this out, it’s pretty spooky or good, depending on your point-of-view) There are implications for putting information out there. Spoke on the importance of “persistence of identity.”

Where to continue the conversation on this?

Internet Identity Workshop (May 14-16).

AttentionTrust.org lists events.

Technorati Tags: identity, attention, sxsw, sxsw2007

There is a standing room only crowd in Kathy’s keynote — and we’re talking thousands. And there’s a standing room only crowd in the over-flow room. I’ve taken notes, but, frankly, they don’t do her talk justice. Find it on video — not audio, as it will make little sense without the visuals.

She’s throwing out some incredibly valuable nuggets.

Like this: “According to research, when people read conversational english, something in their brain thinks “this is a conversation. I need to hold up my end of the conversation.”

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxsw2007

Panelists: Tara Hunt (horsepigcow.com), Ted Rheningold (dogster.com), Gabe Rivera (techmeme.com), Shanalyn Victor, Ryan Carson (DropSend).

(These are raw notes, not direct quotes)

Ted Rhenigold: The closest business model to dogster.com is a magazine. Online business models are more like real world business.

1. Advertising and sponsorship: If you have lots of traffic, it works great. If you have a passionate audience, you can make money through advertising. Selling your own advertising inventory is a hard job. “I’m a big fan of sponsorships. Not as concerned with impression, but with long-term presence.” Techmeme has “sponsored blog posts.”

2. Affiliate programs: I can’t find one good example of it working. (Later, the eBay affiliate guy says that eBay pays $100 million a year in affiliate fees, so “someone is making money on affiliates.”)

3. Selling goods: If you sell software, it works good if you have a popular software. Showed example of someone who sells music, ringtones. Other examples (deviantART) sells art from one member to another. PixleGirlShop sales goods.

4. Selling services: Laughing squid web hosting is an example. DropSend is selling service. Tara Hunt sells consulting services on her blog – “Get in Touch.” Ryan sells conferences.

5. Subscriptions, virtual currencies and virtual gifts. deviantART is a subscription service. Hot or Not sells “virtual flowers.” On dogster, you can give away stars and ribons and hearts and post messages.

6, Micro-Sponsors, Donations: ZeFrank’s ducky program. You can buy a ducky. Connects the person who appreciates the content with the content itself. Jonathan Coulton’s “gimme some candy.” This is a way for those who appreciate your service to sponsor it (something better than a donation).

Did you start your online project with an expectation of making money?

Gabe: When I started, there was a range of possibilities. I was comfortable with it. Good resume builder.

Did anyone study business?

None did. But they are now interested.

Carson: You’ve got to figure out how to make money.

How much of information about running a business can you find on the web, or do you need mentors?

Hunt: We seek mentors. Thinking of hiring a CEO.

Gabe: Friends and accountants.

Victor: Have to be willing to invest in marketing.

Rhengold: Good advice from co-founders father: “Unless you are spending 50% of your time selling, you are going to fail.”

Hunt: Every thing we do is selling (like blogging, Flickr posts, etc.)

Gabe: I’m at a phase where selling is not that important.

Victor: Before you’re popular, you’ve got to do things to get your name out there. Have to invest in marketing.

Hunt: I don’t find advertising creates connects. We preach, “Be a part of the community you serve.” That doesn’t come natural to everyone. Find ways to get involved. Not in a “let’s go start selling stuff, but in being peers.” That’s when you’ll be top of mind.

Victor: I did it backwards from that.

Rhengold: How did you determine pricing?

Rhengold: At first, we priced based on what we needed to pay rent.

Carson: We price based on what people will pay.

Rhengold: We were never able to make money on classifieds. If we’d known before, we would have never started it.

What about an exit plan?

Carson: Our business plan: “How much money do we need to quit our day job — that’s a business plan.”

Hunt: It’s cheap to fail, so fail often.

Carson: The beauty of a “life-style” business is you can do it for ever. There’s a big tax advantage to selling your company, so you should build a company to sell. But we don’t wish to do that for a long time.

Hunt: I want to do this for as long as I enjoy doing it. The day I dread doing it is the day I’ll let it vanish.

Gabe: I’m not seeking a sell. I’ll meet with anyone who is interested, but they don’t seem to see the value in what I’m doing. I don’t see me fitting in well with them. That may change down the road. I don’t have an exit strategy in mind without taking it a month at a time.

Victor: I started this as a hobby, so the idea of “selling it”

Rhengold: Everyone on the panel is involved in a “sustainable” business.

Carson: The “e-myth” is the one book that is must reading.

Question from audience about “sacrifices” the panelists have made.

Carson: We work four days a week, which I’m proud of. We decided we were going to pay people full time and make them work four days a week. We take pride in the fact we work as little as possible. Sometimes it’s scary because there’s no money coming in.

Hunt: At first we did a lot of sacrificing of our personal lives. Then we decided we were losing why we are good at what we’re doing. Don’t sacrafice what’s important in life.

Gabe: I spent two years without a salary and I work all the time on my business.

Victor: I am online all the time and work all the time, but I DO love it. I don’t like not doing stuff. I took my laptop on my honeymoon. There is a sacrifice of being alone. Not lonely, but alone.

Rhengold: Don’t spend more money than you can afford to lose — so you can do the next thing.

How did you ‘poopularize’ your site?

Rhengold: Make something people like using. Dogster is so silly, it’s hard to sound serious about this.

Carson: Gabe made something that really works. Have to be willing to put in an extended period of time making something really good. You have to expect people to come.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxsw2007

Panelists: Ben Batstone-Cunningham, Bill Victor, Eric Rice, Jan D’Alessandro, John Tolva.

(What’s below are my notes, not direct quotes.)

What is the difference in the ‘page-based’ Internet and the 3-D ‘virtual world’ Internet?

I didn’t quite catch the answer, but I think the answer was a 3D world is “more immersive.”

Victor: With 3D, the idea is to create an immersive environment.

Tolva: The most popular virtual worlds are open environments, with user-created content. The push, however, seems to be pushing counter to that. Sony, for example, is moving into the “space.”

I learned more about video-blogging and blogging from spending time in Second Life.

D’Alessandro: When these virtual worlds become advertising platform, their first question is, “How do I control the message?” However, it’s like in the real world: You can sell someone a tee-shirt with Coca-cola on it and they can go rob a bank. Does that mean Coca-cola endorsed the bank robbery?

Setting up businesses in virtual world: Will we see accounting firms set up in a virtual world?

Batstone-Cunningham: Why not? If there is such a thing as a “hip” accountant.

Eric Rice: I can totally see Real Estate businesses be in a virtual world.

Tolva: What are the truly unique business models possible in a virtual world?

Tolva: At first, some of these real estate (metaphors) in virtual worlds were feudal. That’s now changed.

D’Allesandro: Two potential business models: advertising and the sale of virtual things. The sale of virtual things is huge in Asia dn will be here, also.

Rice: I’d add media to that list. Who’s to say that we can’t listen to a local band that we can see and interact with.

Batstone-Cunningham: Real world and web-1 metaphors are easy to think of. Beyond that, it’s hard to imagine the sell of virtual goods and virtual services. Like hiring a virtual tour guide. Tour guide is not a new business model. Much of the metaphors of the virtual worlds is “real estate”

D’Allesandro: The possibility of brand extension is great in a virtual world.

Issue of identity — crossing from one virtual world than another.

Batstone-Cunningham: It’s up to individuals to move their identity. Suddenly, everyone I know is on Twitter and then I’m on Twitter. When my community goes there, the cost of moving over becomes much less. We have an IRC channel outside of Second Life (for a Nintendo Wii community), so is that IRC channel a virtual world? It’s the same community, but it’s easy to transfer and export.

What about gaming? (as a business model — or are there lessons to learn from that business?)

We are now able to move the “user-generated model” into the gaming world — it’s like what happened with blogging and podcasting. All companies are media companies.

D’Alessandro: From a focus group of teens: “I want to be different, just like my friends.” It’s about community. People want to be with their friends. People want to be where people like them are. It doesn’t matter so much what the technology is.

Eric: The easy technology will win.

Batstone-Cunningham: World of Warcraft is not that great a game, but it’s got a great community. You’ll pay the money to support your community — and to grow your community. The money is made by keeping people together and keeping it working.

Tolva: Facilitating a critical mass of people.

Rice: Google just bought an in-game advertising platform for $23 million.

Tolva: There is an opportunity for helping people learn how to work in teams — styles of self-organization. What does it teach us about the nature of team work.

Technorati Tags: sxsw, sxsw2007