A blog exploring The Social Web – Learn. Explore. Profit.
Microsoft has kindly invited me to CESFest 09 in London tonight. CESFest 09 will focus on Microsoft’s CES announcements and more specifically the Windows Live and Facebook announcements. Sadly, due to other commitments, I am not able to attend.
However, Microsoft will be streaming the event via Ustream.TV. Take a look at the video below
If you missed Steve Ballmer present the CES Keynote, take a look at the video below
Wow. I wasn’t expecting http://home.live.com turning into a social network!
As ever, Joe Wilcox, provides some great commentary.
Somehow, Microsoft has pulled together disparate services so that they feel more like a closed network like Facebook. The social benefits are there, and many Facebook similarities, without much of the baggage.
Live.com becoming a Web 2.0 Citizen
Now about Windows Live as the good Web 2.0 citizen: Remarkable, shocking. Beat me with a stick so I wake up from the dream. No surprise, for Windows Live client software, the choices are Windows and Windows. But on the Web, the services break away from their Windows chains. I found the Windows Live experience on a Mac running Safari to be about equal to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 on a Vista PC. Get this: I used the service from my iPhone, too (Some features didn’t work, though). Windows Live Spaces still has vestiges of Windows legacy, but there’s a freshness everywhere else. Even home page customization features, which I was sure would be Mac incompatible, worked just fine. Please, wake up me up!
The best part of Live’s Web 2.0 citizenship: What Microsoft calls "Web Activities," which really is broad feed support. Pick a service. Twitter? WordPress? They’re there. Microsoft claims feeds from over 50 companies. I didn’t see that many. The larger list includes: Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora and Photobucket. Tempering my excitement, I noticed that in the private beta Microsoft exposed many more Live services than those from third parties.
But Microsoft has observed—and its my observation, too—that "people use more than one social networking service to connect" to friends and family, Chris said. "We looked at that as a real opportunity for us to bring something [different] to market. We’re really not believers in the walled garden approach."
Microsoft hopes that the new features will expose people to its services. "Our starting point are people who use one of the services already," Chris told me on Monday. Microsoft is betting that as existing users use the services, they will expose features to friends or family. For example, Microsoft has enhanced e-mail capabilities around photo sharing. Every time someone sends out a photo, it publicises the tools, he said, "They’ll ask, ‘How did you do that?’"
My early reaction is surprisingly positive, and I can’t say that the two earlier Live waves impressed me. Microsoft had the right concepts, but marginally executed on them. Wave 3 feels different and may follow the old axiom that Microsoft gets things right on the third version. The private beta was very fast—surprisingly so. Response was quicker than running desktop applications in Windows. That said, public Windows Live Wave 3 release will be the test. Can Microsoft data centers handle the load?
Download the full Live 3 Reviewers guide from here
Wow. I first heard of this tiny projector from a post on Engadget some months ago. The video above, (though in Spanish) shows how amazing this tiny projector is. The Optoma Pico Pocket Projector is the UK’s smallest and lightest projector of its type, and the first to use DLP technology to guarantee remarkable image quality. The Optoma Pico connects to a variety of media devices for projection of presentations, or digital media such as videos or pictures.
Small and light at just 115g, the battery-operated projector is primed for instant plug and play viewing on the move. The tiny machine will connect to a variety of personal media players, mobile phones, iPods, PDAs and cameras. With a very reasonable battery life of two hours, this should be more than enough to cover a meeting, or the projection of a movie
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The Optoma Pico Pocket Projector will be available from selected UK retailers and online stores from November 2008, priced at £249. Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on this device and take it for a road test. A definite item to add to Santa’s stocking this Christmas.
For more information, visit: www.optomapico.co.uk .
With just under 24 hours to go till the American Presidential Campaign, I thought it apt to review how Barack Obama’s campaign has been using social media technologies to raise funds and to engage with younger voters.
Obama has taken grassroots campaigning into the digital age by embracing Web 2.0 and using it as a central platform of his presidential campaign. From YouTube to social networking, Obama has navigated Web 2.0 and turned it into a major force within his campaign.
Obama and Social Media
The first rule of social media marketing is to put yourself “out there”. This can be achieved by becoming an active blogger, establishing a presence on the major social networks, and embracing new forms of communication. Obama has done just that. From social networking to his blog to his Fight the Smears campaign, Obama has made his Web 2.0 presence known. Obama is using a number of tools including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter
At the time of writing, Jeremiah Owyang compares Obama’s social media presence with that of John McCain. The statistics make interesting reading.
Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain
Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain
This personal activity in social networks allows Obama to quickly get the word out across multiple platforms.
It’s clear that Obama is dominating the social media activity, this could because of two reasons: 1) Obama campaign moved quicker to social networking and social media, McCain only recently launched his own social network with KickApps. 2) The Social Technographics (behaviours to adopt social media) skew heavier towards demographics, yet these percentages are far greater than the margins shown in technographics.
Obama and YouTube
Barack Obama has done an amazing job of making sure his speeches sound as good on YouTube as they do on the evening news. Obama’s campaign has also gambled on YouTube’s audience by creating a strong presence on the website. Historically, younger voters have been high on enthusiasm but low on voter turnout. But Obama has been able to utilise the power of social media to challenge that trend.
The popularity of YouTube gives a global audience access to the entire speech, not just a brief segment chosen by the news editors. This allows the full power of the entire speech to resonate with the audience.
Obama and Social Networking
Obama’s social networking success can be attributed to Chris Hughes. Hughes, was one of the founders of Facebook and with Mark Zuckerberg. Hughes has the knowledge and the experience of building social networks and may prove to be a major factor in Obama’s Presidential success.
Obama is not the first to politician to use social networking. Presidential contender, Howard Dean used Meetup.com to become a serious contender for his party’s nomination in 2004. However, Obama also decided to build his own social network. which was simple to use, rally supporters and proved vital in fundraising. The jewel in the crown is My.BarackObama.Com
As a fully fledged social network, My.BarackObama allows users to create their own profiles, friend lists and the ability to write their own personal blog. They can also join groups, participate in fund raising, and arrange events all from an interface that is both easy to use and familiar to any Facebook or MySpace user.
FightTheSmears.com is Obama’s initiative to address the many rumours that circulate the internet about him.
Here’s an example:
If Obama continued to let these rumours spread and grow, they would become facts in the eyes of the voting public. By hosting the conversation, the campaign can respond to rumours on individual blogs and forums.
Obama and the iPhone
Obama’s campaign also released a free application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The application allows the user to organise contacts by key battleground states, and measures statistics to see how the user is doing compared to other leading callers.
The application provides information about the campaign via text messages and e-mail, offers coverage of national and local campaign news. The application also helps the user to find local events, share information by e-mail, view campaign videos and pictures.
Win or lose, there is absolutely no doubt that Barack Obama has changed the face of politics in America today. Now it’s up to the voters to decide if he will win the election.
Obama on the Web
[BONUS]
12 Viral Videos from the 2008 Campaign
Stowe Boyd presented and interesting talk on how the web needs to finds a better model to encapsulate discussion within social media.
Whilst there has been a lot of discussion around Web 2.0 – e.g. the rise of social networks. The foundations of social media seem relatively unchanged. Blogs are still pretty much stuck in a Web 1.0 timeframe. They are limited to a model of chronological posts with embedded comments and a variety of widgets in the margins that engage with other web communities, such as Digg and Del.icio.us
Bloggers today ultimately still retain full control over content posted on their blogs. Readers can leave comments, but usually can’t edit them or remove them. More often than not, The “blogger” gains an increased reputation, (within the blogosphere) from comments posted. However, what of the reputation of the person who left the comment in the first place?
Boyd also noted how the rise of RSS and RSS Readers meant that fewer and fewer people actually visited blog sites. This has the side effect of divorcing your readers from the comments. Boyd asked the audience, how many people had their comments accessible within their RSS feeds? The response was minimal from the audience.
Boyd argued that the ability to recommend and share content through RSS, actually created a further community of readers who were even more fragmented from the conversation. In other words, conversations regarding blog posts are occurring more and more in locations far removed from the blog post itself. Though the blogger may start the discussion with a blog post. The ‘social buzz’ of discussion may occur in various other communities , e.g. Digg, Friendfeed, Techmeme etc.
Boyd when onto state that "Flow" applications such as Twitter or the Facebook mini feed offer a possible replacement. He suggested that once you get used to these flow apps, it gets harder and harder to go back to blogs.
If the community all move to a flow service, you don’t lose your friendships”
If the current pace continues, will blogs become reduced to being just a publishing platform? While new commenting systems like Disqus and Intense Debate attempt to bridge this commenting gap, we are also seeing the arrival of video-based systems, such as Seesmic, that seem to offer a higher levels of immediacy and simplicity.
Picture Credit: http://berlinblase.de
Boyd shows us his “extended desktop”. He uses a number of Flow applications to engage in social communities on the web. He uses, Snackr (RSS feed aggregator), Twhirl, (Twitter desktop tool), FriendFeed and Flickr. These applications run everyday and automatically update in the background.
Stowe’s “Web of Flow” is a social web where we continuously watch multiple streams of social interaction, live as they happen. Our eyes gaze over communities of conversation. We then exercise our choice to ‘dip in or out’ of the conversation as we see fit. Often, we may never even venture near a blog post.
[Bonus Videos]
Hat Tip http://blog.whoiswho.de
Boyd, continues his discussion regarding the emergence of Flow apps and their effects on Social Media.
BerlinBlase interviewed Stowe after his talk and asked him why email was broken?
Email is dead – Stowe Boyd from dotdean on Vimeo.
Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin brought a firm focus back to reality. At recent conferences, the mood has been dampened by current economic conditions. Funding for web start-ups is vanishing rapidly for businesses without sustainable business plans. However, responding to critics suggesting that the Web 2.0 bubble was bursting. O’Reilly asked the rhetorical question, "Do you really think that we’re done yet with exploiting this huge change [of disruptive technologies]?"
O’Reilly suggested that the ‘web winners’ in the years ahead are those businesses that are involved in:
Using the example of the PC industry in the early 1990’s. O’Reilly cited the early years when there were hundreds of PC manufactures. However, through a ‘natural consolidation’ process, the number today is greatly reduced. He then made the conclusion that the current economic problems accelerate the consolidation process – The business with robust business models will survive. Those that do not will die.
O’Reilly advocated the use of building business that deliver value, concluding with the strategy:
"Work on stuff that matters"
Citing the example of the Berlin Airlift and the innovative efforts required to achieve it, he stressed that his point that:
"Great challenge = Great opportunity"
O’Reilly finished the keynote, urging the masses to use Web 2.0 innovations to address today’s important problems. The world doesn’t need another another “Me too” application. However, web applications that deliver “real value” are the ones to lead the industry out of the doldrums.
Keynote Video and presentation slides follow below
Hat Tip http://media.vascellari.com
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2expoeu08 web2expo)
Interview with Tim O’Reilly at Web 2.0 Expo 2008 Berlin from DigiRedo on Vimeo.
Warning! Cringe factor VERY HIGH.
Hat Tip to David Brain
However, having heard Ballmer speak yesterday, my views on his leadership have changed. He is an amazing, passionate and a strong leader with a sound business plan for the future. The question is, whether there is a silver lining in the ‘cloud’ for Microsoft, only time will tell.
Frank Gillett of Forrester speaks about the cloud envy of various companies who jump on the cloud computing bandwagon by rebranding existing services. Whoa! new buzz words here, “Cloud Envy”, “Cloud Spray”, and “Cloud Washing”.
Is it me, or is Cloud Computing just getting too confusing? Especially as Steve notes, all of the the ‘xxxxx as a service’ platforms taking shape. Software and hardware vendors are going to have a to do a good job on making this ‘white fluffy’ stuff easier to understand. Though perhaps, Cloud Computing is nothing but smoke and mirrors? Old services being rebranded with new “fashion” labels as Larry Ellison points out.
Anyone who know of a simple guide to Cloud Computing? Perhaps the chaps at Common Craft could create a great video?
The second instalment of the Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld video, promoting Windows Vista has just been released. The series of videos are designed to help counteract Apple’s Mac bashing PC videos, which have received much praise in recent times. Microsoft has remained fairly silent in response to Apple’s video campaign, until now that is.
Microsoft have enlisted the help of the American comedian, Jerry Seinfeld for their videos. There’s something in common with the humour of the Microsoft ad campaign and with the American comedy, Arrested Development. I wasn’t sure about the first video release, but the second one above is fantastic. See below for the first ad.
So where’s the relevance? Well, Microsoft are doing something both interesting and exciting with these videos. The ‘Bill and Jerry’ effect is causing a lot of discussion within the blogosphere. There’s almost a Marmite like quality to the discussion – You either love the videos, or you you hate them. They have created, what Seth Godin describes as a ‘Meatball Sundae’
"A meatball sundae is the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas. The meatballs are the foundation, the things we need (and sometimes want). These are the commodities that so many businesses are built on. The sundae toppings (hot fudge and the like) are the New Marketing, the social networks, Google, blogs and fancy stuff that make people all excited".
If Bill and Jerry are the foundation ‘Meatballs’. The ‘Sundae’ surely is how the videos are going viral. Microsoft has aided this by creating a YouTube page to help the masses watch the videos and more importantly, to help bloggers embed them! The point here is that the videos are memorable, people are talking about them whether they like them or not. The videos provoke a discussion. So far, there’s been no mention of Windows Vista which I feel is deliberate.
It is too early to tell whether these series of videos will be successful in changing the public feeling of Windows Vista. But, used as a tool to start a conversation about Microsoft and to continue that conversation, these ads are creating the perfect meatball sundae.