Friendfeed's Imaginary Friends is a Master Aggregator
From Micro Persuasion, popular since 4 monthsLike lots of bloggers, my latest fascination these days is Friendfeed. The site, which opened up to everyone about three weeks ago, has been on fire. It aggregates the various streams of all your friends from across all the big social sites into a flowing river organized by date. You can find my stream here. However, when you dig into Friendfeed, there's much more than meets the eye here. Using the site's Imaginary Friends feature you can turn it into a powerful, master aggregator.First, sign up for a Friendfeed account. Then head over to the settings page where you can create an unlimited number of imaginary friends. Each of these can collect any number of feeds or streams that you [...]Go to site
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Radio is Dead by super-structure The following is also my column in Advertising Age next week.All the talk about one medium replacing another, to date, has largely been just that - talk. Over time new formats tend to be additions in our lives, not replacements for something else. In the 80s, video did not kill the radio star, as the old Buggles song says. Rather MTV made it stronger.Still, an era is dawning where some new media will, in fact, supplant others. Or, more likely, existing information we interact with daily will come from new players that harness the Internet, e.g. bloggers stealing eyeballs from journalists. It's a function of the attention crash. We can't keep adding media to our lives without reaching a saturation point.While TV and print have been hemorrhaging, radio has remained more resilient in the digital age. It reaches 93% of the population for 18.5 hours per week, according to Arbitron. This is only down from 22 hours per week 10 years ago. The US - despite rising fuel prices - remains a car culture. We live in our automobiles and radio still rules here, despite the iPod invasion.This, in part, is because radio serves as a powerful discovery engine for new music. However, the medium today is one-way. That's about to be change thanks to sophisticated mobile devices. The broadband-connected cell phone turns this experience into one that harnesses crowds to become far more personalized. All you need to do to see this yourself is to buy an iPhone and download some of the free streaming audio applications like Pandora or Last.fm.The iPhone 3G and other smartphones like it will change how people access interact with audio. Already, the Pandora music discovery service is the fourth most popular application in the iTunes store. And bloggers like Jeff Jarvis believe that it will disrupt radio. I tend to agree.The cellphone will change the radio landscape by not only establishing a two-way modality but by ushering in new models for advertising that are mapped to people's musical tastes and perhaps locally relevant as well thanks to GPS. This maybe one of the most promising mobile ad formats and is a space to watch.
Lifehacker is one of my favorite blogs. So when editor Gina Trapani invited me to guest blog about how to be productive with social media, I jumped at the opportunity. Here's the intro and summary. The full essay is here.Social media is the equivalent of digital food. It's nourishing, tasty and, for many of us, necessary. However, consume too much and you can get sidetracked and create larger consequences. The good news is you can participate in social media in a way that adds value to your life. You just need to know how to manage it so so that it does not devour your attention???the most valuable commodity of the digital age. Here are three simple steps I take.Step 1 - Set a North StarStep 2 - Apply the Pareto PrincipleStep 3 - Schedule Time to Be Social
Photo: Abandoned farm shed by serendipitypeace2007, modified under a Creative Commons license.Anyone looking for a place to live invariably needs to first answer this question: "should I rent or buy?" Each has pros and cons. If you rent a house or an apartment, you control your own destiny. It's easy to get out if you want to move. Then again, you're limited in what you can do to remodel.On the other side, owning real estate has advantages too - a tax break, flexibility and potentially a lot income if you flip it later on. The downsides? Lots. You can't easily sell in a down market and you're on your own when it comes to repairs.The same can be said about choosing where to participate online. I had this discussion recently with a colleague who asked me why I am investing all this time in building Twitter's "equity" rather than doing so on my own blog, which I have been writing for four years now. It was a rather thought-provoking question.Running a blog on your own domain (even if you use a hosted provider like TypePad, as I do), carries with it lots of perks. I can remodel pretty much any way I want as long as I follow proper blog protocols. I can track my returns - Google Juice, subscribers, comments, traffic, leads, press quotes, etc. TypePad really doesn't realize the same kind of benefits that I do personally by writing this blog. Then again, it has downsides too. Namely, Twitter has community built in.Investing time on Twitter, on the other hand, truly is starting to feel like renting. When the landlord is doing a good job, everyone is happy. When the landlord is negligent, the tenants get testy and threaten to move. I now view Twitter like a summer rental that you hope doesn't get hit by a hurricane while my blog is casa de Steve. I may be alone here.It seems to me like "renting" online equity is now what's in vogue. Long-form blogging is less prevalent because the competition for attention from pro-bloggers is step. That's why I love the Friendfeed model. It's like a co-op. I can invest in my blog and realize benefits not only here but also on Frienfeed. Or, I can invest in Twitter and see the same return on Friendfeed, though certain provisions apply. You're still beholden to the landlord.I remain a fan of all of these services. However, the big question on my mind of late is this: where should we invest our time and sweat equity online? Will people continue to build equity in sites like Twitter that have community today, but most likely will be gone one day? Or should we look for hybrids like Friendfeed where we can take control? If the marketplace for online equity is as cyclical as the real estate biz, then change is a given.
Photo credit: Really Simple Syndication by Shira GoldlingThe following is also my column this week in Advertising Age.If you think there's already enough to distract you in your life, just wait. With Americans spending 100 hours a year commuting, according to the Census Bureau, the internet is coming to your car in a big way -- and not just to the front seat either.Dashboard navigation systems provide a natural entry point. Year-over-year unit sales of GPS devices grew nearly 500% during the 2007 holiday season, according to NPD.Several GPS manufacturers such as Tele Atlas, which supplies systems to the automakers, already display the logos of nearby fast-food restaurants' gas stations. However, the screens are quickly getting more useful -- or cluttered, depending on your point of view. Navigon's high-end model, for example, features helpful restaurant reviews and ratings from Zagat.Soon, devices that can both send and receive data will hit the market. Dash, for example, is integrating Web 2.0 crowdsourcing into its systems, allowing cars to send information back to the company to improve traffic calculations. As mobile broadband becomes more ubiquitous, it's conceivable that these devices will soon talk to your cellphone via Bluetooth and, thus, talk to social networks as well.With send/receive capabilities and overall bandwidth improving, local contextual advertising, perhaps rich-media-based, is just around the corner. Google already allows users in Europe to send directions from the web to maps on connected dashboards. Microsoft is working on a system through its Sync technology to provide ad-supported, location-based information for which users would normally pay. (Disclosure: Navigon, Microsoft and Zagat are clients of Edelman, my employer.)The back seat offers perhaps more immediate promise for TV advertisers in search of new venues. In March Sirius and Chrysler launched an in-car video network called Backseat TV. The subscription service carries kids programming from Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network. Kids weaned on the service will surely demand more as the technology gets more sophisticated, perhaps to the chagrin of parents.And therein lies the rub: Marketers will need to strike a careful balance to protect privacy and to not push into a space that many consider sacrosanct. However, given the size and captive nature of the in-car audience, the digital-advertising potential is becoming very clear.
Over the last several weeks I have become utterly addicted to Friendfeed. If you're not tracking me there already, you might want to. You can pick up the feed here or just hit this page.Friendfeed aggregates all of my content, including my Twitter updates and Google Reader shared items. I am also using it to share my favorite YouTube videos and Flickr photos, something I haven't done elsewhere. It's basically the mother of all social networks because it can capture everything from you and your friends - real or imaginary.While some complain about the noise, I have found that Friendfeed can be very helpful f you keep it confined to a small group of people who help you accomplish what you're trying to do. Part of this lies in hiding certain social sites and taking full advantage of the powerful but simple feature set. In my case, I use it to keep up with my colleagues and people who generally share valuable links.Still, as great as Friendfeed is, there's a question that keeps gnawing at me: are we looking at the next Twitter or the next Jaiku? What I mean here is Friendfeed going supernova or is that that we are simply bored and looking for the next big thing. Remember, we have a habit of this!I posed the question over on the site this morning: Is Friendfeed the next big thing or are we just bored? Discuss. Eager to hear your thoughts either here or on Friendfeed (or here or here, or wait, here - yikes too many comments in too many places).