Me.dium Courts Controversy With Extreme Social Networking, Launched At DEMO
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Last year at DEMOfall a
company called Vapor Stream generated a lot of
controversial press because it introduced an email system capable of completely erasing
any trace of your communication. This year, one of the contenders that may generate a lot
of controversy is Me.dium - a Colorado based startup
that meshes up attention, web surfing and chatting to deliver extreme, real-time social
networking, right in the browser.
The idea behind me.dium is to let you see and communicate in real-time with your friends and other people online who are "close" to you, based on what sites you are visiting on the Internet. Implemented as a browser add-on, me.dium continuously captures your locations on the Web (i.e. which sites or services you are using), sends this data to the centralized server and computes a map of other sites and users that it determines is relevant, based on your context. Here is a screenshot of it in action:
The map above is displayed using a network-like visualization, where distance between your site and other sites represents the inferred level of relevance.
The users are displayed at the sites - and the
more popular the site, the more users you will see. Your friends are color coded
differently from other people. Since these displayed users are actual people, me.dium
takes the next logical step and embeds a chat window which allows you to chat with these
users in real time.
The thinking behind me.dium
This product was inspired by real-life examples. According to the company web site, often our decisions are influenced by the decisions of others. Whether shopping for a car or choosing a movie or a restaurant, we often rely on the judgement and recommendations of others. Geographical proximity plays an important role, as we often strike conversations with complete strangers in order to find the "best deal". So the founders of me.dium asked the natural question: Why not do the same online?
Can this really work?
The idea is intruiging and so is the product, but can it really work? The key question is: Is it useful to be able to interact with other people who doing/looking at similar things? We think that yes, it is useful - but not all the time and not intensely. It is important to remember the lessons of the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics - if you interact with the system, you change it. While sometimes it is interesting to ask people around you what they are thinking, you can't do that all the time; otherwise, instead of doing what you are doing, you are just talking to other people about it.
Also the current implementation, particularly UI and user experience, need to be improved when letting the user request to see the sites and people nearby. Particularly, a control that would say: just show me my friends (vs. everyone else) would be really useful. Also, to facilitate the right interactions, it is important to reveal more details about the other sites without much drilling. Perhaps a list of sites with descriptions would be a good alternative user interface, as the moving network of nodes is just too distracting.
Privacy concerns
The success of me.dium does not just hedge on the level of the user interest and the interface. Handling of privacy is a big part of the acceptance equation too. Right now, the tool immediately starts collecting all the private browsing/attention data and storing it on a centralized server. The company claims it is safe, because they spent a lot of time thinking about security. But a lot of privacy advocates will be upset when they hear about their browsing data being collected and stored somewhere. Overall, it seems to me that the tool takes a fairly aggressive approach to data collection. The key counter point from the company is that they need all this data in order to deliver the service and utility.
Conclusion
In its current re-incaranation, me.dium appears quite intrusive - both from privacy and activity point of view. It does not mean, however, that this idea is bad or that it cannot succeed. On the contrary, I believe that it has a lot of potential and with a bit of tweaking can take on and spread virally. The key things that need to fall into place are: user experience and (perhaps more importantly) full, fine-grained control of the user information by the actual user. As it stands, me.dium is bound to generate a lot of controversy and discussion. So please jump right in and tell us what you think.
1 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1932
FOLLOW RWW ON TWITTER
RECENT JOBS
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
I actually blogged
about this yesterday.. I think it is has a chance to really catch on as well.. I think that a educating potential users to all the security features is key.
Posted by: Blendah Tom | February 1, 2007 3:31 PM
Like the idea and how it ties in to themes like "crowd sourcing" etc. GUI is an issue, as are "security considerations". Just love what sxipper have done around the log in and password area so that should be surmountable.
Posted by: Paul Sweeney | February 1, 2007 3:50 PM
David and Robert of Me.dium have talked with me in the past few months about my experience with AttentionTrust.org and developing the Attention Recorder -- a much simpler service but with similar controversy. (Plus, they're just down the road from my new company, Lijit Networks.) I can say that they have thought a *lot* about privacy and attention data issues. They'll find a way to make it work.
Posted by: Stan James | February 1, 2007 4:08 PM
i, for one, cannot wait to be able to share with all of my close friends that i'm on this website called Google Reader. and i'm sure that they, in turn, will be quite excited to share with me that they are on Google Reader. it's going to be quite an enjoyable and elightening experience for all.
Posted by: Peter | February 1, 2007 6:13 PM
Sounds very cool & an area that needs to be addressed as far as improving the Communication capabilities of the New Web2.0 Social Networks*
;))
Posted by: BillyWarhol | February 1, 2007 11:00 PM
I've been part of the Me.dium beta test and it's pretty interesting just to see when you are or aren't on (or "near") a popular site. What you don't mention, however, is that any time you go to an "https" secure site you are automatically hidden so that the Me.dium network doesn't receive reports of where you're visiting, and that there's a "live chat" window where you can leave notes and share thoughts with others who are visiting a given site. I believe that both are pretty cool features and that if they only worked with Safari (hint hint) it'd be a great app for Mac users.
In terms of privacy, it's trivially easy to disable or pause Me.dium at any time with a single mouse click, and it's quite overtly obvious that you are or aren't reporting your current location to your friends or everyone (you can switch this).
Still a work in progress, though, and I agree that being able to filter by just your friends, colleagues, or other slices would be quite useful!
Posted by: Dave Taylor | February 2, 2007 8:41 AM
How do you think Me.dium compares to Dai.sy (http://dai.sy)
In my biased opinion, Dai.sy truly captures the "Human Side of the Web"
It not only allows P2P Meeting, But also includes Blogging and File Sharing - and it does all this without the need of a Sign-up or Membership of any kind.
True spontaneous interaction occurs every day when people bump into each other at shared spaces, like a train or a bookstore. Last time I checked, neither of these areas required a User name or a password.
What do you think???
Posted by: Federico ViCadi | February 5, 2007 5:11 PM
Are there any competitors of me.dium? Would it be possible to create something similar but use Google APIs instead to incorporate GoogleTalk as the chat mechanism?
Posted by: bblinx | February 7, 2007 6:31 AM
Competitors include: Itzle, Gabbly, Geesee, ChatSum, Weezu, Dai.sy, Peekko Chat, and probably others too
Posted by: ventilo | February 13, 2007 12:43 PM
Tried it. Hated it. Not only do I have to trust its privacy (which I don't) but I have to convince my friends to switch to Firefox and trust company privacy, and tell them they should turn it on/off when they don't want others to see what's going on.
Posted by: jazz | February 21, 2007 7:39 AM