Yesterday XYDO, the service that curates users' Twitter and Facebook streams and adds a layer of social bookmarking a la Reddit or Digg, opened up to the public. After trying it out for a little while today, I realized that something felt wrong, and then it came to me - when I click on a title, I don't get taken to the website hosting that content, I get taken to a page within XYDO that hosts the content.
It's like XYDO has taken my friends' recommendations, let people vote on them and then, right when I go to click on it, stepped in and said "Here, take this instead." But what exactly is wrong with this?
Last month, rumors hit the Web that TweetDeck, the multi-columned, much-preferred desktop client of hardcore users, had been acquired by Twitter. Today, TechCrunch is reporting that the deal has gone through, with Twitter snapping up the company for $40 to $50 million.
While we don't want to be melodramatic, we're afraid that this deal could be the beginning of the end and here's why.
Earlier this week it was announced that Yahoo is selling social bookmarking service Delicious to the founders of YouTube and their new company called Avos. After the announcement was made, the companies told everyone who had ever had a Delicious account that they needed to log in and opt-in to having their data transferred over into the new company.
You should go do that right now, even if you're not a big Delicious user anymore. It takes 30 seconds to do and is something good to do for yourself and for the good of the Web. If you don't, that data will disappear. Philosophically, that's bad because all your "data exhaust" like that is going to become an important currency of the future Web, an important asset whether it seems that way today or not. Practically, though, there are three important reasons why you should go take a moment to make sure that data is preserved.
I think it was about a decade ago now when I downloaded my first camcorder movie off the Internet and a love affair was born. Why bother going out and renting something from Blockbuster or forfeiting your first born for a movie ticket and a bucket of popcorn when you could nearly replicate the entire experience, for free, on your couch with Orville Redenbacher at your side?
As time went on and peer-to-peer file sharing grew - and the movies went from shaky, "down in front!" home movies to near-DVD quality replicas - it only got worse. And then, suddenly, it all came to an end. "Cold turkey," as they say. But why?
News of a new coupon service from Facebook, called Facebook Deals, emerged last night and was unveiled early this morning. We looked at all that Facebook had to offer and said it could blow Groupon and Living Social out of the water.
Now that the product has been unveiled and Facebook PR has sent us multiple emails letting us know that things I presumed would be features of the service will not in fact be present at launch - that changes things just a little bit. I still think that the fundamental value proposition of Facebook is clearly the strongest in the field: structured and verified user data, the friend network and the newsfeed. But there are a few details to clear up about the product and it looks like it's going to be less ambitious at launch than I suspected last night. It still looks awesome, though.
Facebook will unveil its group deals program tonight in 5 US cities according to an embargo-breaking slip-up by the New York Times caught by TechCrunch. Facebook Deals launched 3 months ago in Europe. Tonight, according to reports, the feature will go live in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco. This, after learning from the early rocky roads traveled by competitors and Facebook's own tests in Europe. Update: Facebook PR contacted us and clarified two things noted below - and the updates are a little surprising to me.
Comparisons to the mega-successful (if dreadfully boring) services Groupon and Living Social are inevitable. But Facebook Deals is going to be much, much more interesting for everyone - especially for retailers who will offer deals. (Who likely won't have to pay a cut of the revenue to this deals platform at all.) If Facebook can execute this feature well (and there's no guarantee it can) then it's hard to imagine what some of today's fastest growing businesses on earth are going to do to compete. Look at what Facebook Deals has to offer, below. Groupon and Living Social are seriously at risk of being roadkill.
Twitter is facing a lot of scrutiny by the business press this week, its founding myth has been called deeply into question (news: not founded by angels) and its management characterized as dysfunctional and ineffective.
Yet the Tweets keep flowing, the lists listing, the replies replying. No one has Direct Messaged me yet this morning but I'm sure that still works too. All this business scrutiny makes me want to pause and be thankful for Twitter's best assets - simple technologies too often unappreciated by a media world too accustomed to its own power to feel moved by the growing communication power users derive from Twitter. Do users care about drama in the executive suite at Twitter? Not as long as the tech fundamentals remain functional, they don't. What are Twitter's most important assets? As a dedicated user of the service, I see three.
A bipartisan bill limiting what companies can do with online user activity and profile data may be introduced tomorrow by Senators John McCain and John Kerry, according to reporting first in the Wall St. Journal and then today on marketing news site Clickz. The Journal's Julia Angwin, citing anonymous sources, reports that the bill will require that sharing of user data between companies be opted-into by users and that users be able to see what data about them is being shared.
That might not sound so bad on the surface, but in a new world of fast-developing technology - it's good to think hard before making laws based on what might seem like common sense. The internet is a young thing and legislation like this could cut deep. Leadership on the issue from John McCain, who less than 3 years ago thought it appropriate to run for the Presidency without ever having used the internet before, seems particularly inappropriate. This is an issue that needs to be looked at from a pro-technology perspective, at least in part.
The US Department of Justice appears to have made a deal with Google that would allow it to acquire ITA Software, a company that provides airline data to travel search engines, for $700 million with a list of conditions.
One of my favorite websites in the world is now in Google's hands. Built as a side-project by ITA engineers, Needlebase is a point-and-click data extraction tool that recommends merges and allows for data to be visualized in multiple ways including as maps. I am not a technology blogger because I am moved by news that air travelers may have to pay a few hundred dollars more per year. I'm moved by technology that puts formerly inaccessible skills into the hands of everyday people to create beautiful things, like Needlebase. Needlebase is the WordPress or YouTube of data extraction and manipulation and if Google kills it I'm going to be very upset.
Twitter is growing fast and now sees an average of 155 million messages posted to the network each day, the company said today. That's up more than 3X from the company's report of 50 million daily messages just one year ago.
"I think we should expect continuous acceleration for years to come," predicts Alex Iskold, a smart Twitter observer and founder of fast-growing entertainment check-in service GetGlue. "We are, as a society, continuing to create staggering amounts of information and Twitter is a perfect information routing bus." GetGlue helped its users publish an average total of 10 Tweets every second during this year's Oscars, for example. What might an explosion of Tweets from many different sources mean for our lives and work? We asked some of the smartest people we know and their answers are below.
