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Network Services Vs Information Services

Sean Parker, co-founder of Facebook, argues that “network services” like Facebook and Twitter will trump “information services” like Google and Yahoo and that connecting people has more value that collecting data. Parker argues that the value increases almost exponentially as the “nodes” in your network increase.

What Facebook has argued in the past is that people want to know what their peers are thinking more than what an anonymous source or unknown critic thinks. For example, if you’re planning a trip to Paris, would you rather find recommendations from Google or through a close friend that has been there? Does a book review from the New York Times hold more sway than a book review from a trusted relative?

Check out Parker’s presentation –
Sean Parker’s Web 2.0 Summit Presentation

Two problems I see with Facebook; one is that you aren’t allowed to designate “relations” to your contacts. Is your Paris contact a close friend, a relative, a co-worker or an acquaintance? These differences matter. The second problem is the type of content that Facebook makes available to your stream. Most of it is entirely irrelevant and will continue to be if they don’t open up their application development platform. Plus it’s incredibly difficult to navigate through, though that’s an issue Facebook will be addressing in it’s next design update.

Digital Protest

This is almost a year old, but worth sharing -

On February 18, 2009, a group of NYU students calling themselves Take Back NYU (TBNYU) barricaded themselves inside the university’s Kimmel Center for Student Life cafeteria, the Kimmel MarketPlace. Armed with laptops and wireless internet connections, the group published a list of 12 demands, including disclosure of the university’s operating budget, assurance of fair labor practices for all NYU employees, the creation of a Socially Responsible Finance Committee, tuition stabilization, scholarships for Palestinian students and free public access to Bobst library.

Ultimately the student’s demands were not met but they did set a new precident in protest. So how was their protest different?

TBNYU entered the student center knowing they would have full internet access, and they took advantage of that…they published their demands and wrote entries about the scene within the barricade, all of which could be accessed on their web site…recorded the events on Twitter, offered a live streaming broadcast, so people outside could actually talk to those inside Kimmel, and posted photos…tipped off NYULocal, a blog that covers NYU news, and the site responded by installing a reporter in the Kimmel MarketPlace. The reporter, Charlie Eisenhood, liveblogged the events from the inside for over 30 hours.

This event was one of the most comprehensively covered protests in school history. Though their demands weren’t the protest had an impact on the community and the media -

1. Take Back NYU was able to garner greater numbers of followers, who either stood in solidarity or actually entered the MarketPlace.
2. The widespread coverage on blogging sites and campus media outlets certainly most likely encouraged administrators to use caution when removing the protesters from the building.
3. The sit-in attracted national and international attention.
4. Incorrect information about the situation in Kimmel reached a large number of people.
5. Things did get violent. Discussions on NYULocal and WSN chat forums became heated, and a large number of individuals stood outside Kimmel because they had read about or watched portions of the occupation on the internet.
6. The administration was easily able to sap much of the movement’s power simply by removing a connection to technology.

There are many lessons to be learned from the students tactics but ultimately the fact that they were very well connected to the outside world paid dividends for their cause even if they didn’t accomplish everything they had wished for.

Did you know?

Your Google profile address (mine is visible here) can now be used anywhere an OpenID login is allowed.

What’s an OpenID login? Well, it looks like this -

It’s basically a way to make logging into websites simpler and more secure. You have one ID and password hosted by an OpenID provider and then log into other sites with that profile as opposed to have separate profiles and passwords on multiple sites. The site you are logging in to then asks your OpenID provider to verify the login.

Google is now acting as that OpenID provider. You log into sites with your Google profile url and Google keeps your password safe.

To learn more about OpenID, go here.

[Note: You don't have a Google profile set up? You can set it up here.]

Did you know?

Starting today you can attach documents to messages that have been composed in offline mode. Compose your message, attach your document, send it and when you’re back on line, the message will be sent with the attachment included.

If you haven’t tried offline access yet, visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:

1. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
2. Click Save Changes.
3. After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new “Offline” link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don’t already have it.

You can download the mix here.

RFID and Embeddable Data

Flowingdata.com has a great video on what embeddable data might look like in the very near future -

Some of this will become possible with RFID embedded iPhones and Android phones. For example, you’ll be able to checkout of the grocery store with your iPhone, which will then upload your transactions to Mint.com and alert you to the fact that you’re close to your monthly budget for grocery items. It might also alert you to the fact that some of the items might higher your cholesterol, against your doctor’s orders.

Target Facebook Page Updates

You can easily target updates on your Facebook Page to locations and languages, eliminating mass messages that aren’t relevant to your entire network.

This is especially useful for when Idealist promotes Career and Grad School Fairs in certain locations, or if we want to update people about posts and happenings in and around NYC or if we only want to update Spanish speakers.

To use this feature -

[T]here’s now a pull-down next to the “Share” button with the option of “Everyone” or “Customize.” Everyone lets you post a message to all of your fans as normal, but Customize lets you enter in a location (all the way down to the city level) and/or a language to post only to those that the settings apply to.

Geolocation for Twitter Has Arrived

Twitter users can opt-in to have their exact tweet location included in their messages.

What does this mean exactly?

Third parties will be able to tap into this information to develop interesting location-based applications. readwriteweb.com has some interesting examples -

Crime – Imagine taking a map of tweets discussing criminal activity, or police misconduct, in a city and comparing it with a map of the same from local police agencies. Some places that warrant more official attention could be exposed.

Local news - Think local TV news and newspaper companies would be interested in a stream of hot topics in their local area? They’d be foolish not to; what a great way to discover breaking local news to report on.

Inventory forecast – If people in a certain city are twittering like fiends about a new product hitting the market, store orders, marketing and other parts of the supply chain could benefit from an earlier warning about it.

Politics – People in Oregon are sharing a Huffington Post article about today’s health care reform announcement a lot? In Seattle, Washington perhaps not so much? Political organizers of a certain persuasion could find that information actionable.

Want to know what news outlets are on the ascent with people of a certain political persuasion? Cross reference your shared links from users in a location and a map of political contributions for the last election.

How about unearthing Twitter users posting about environmental issues who also live in areas with environmental issues that an organization is working on.

Flu Trends – Think Google’s use of search data to map out global disease trends is cool? Why stop there? How about pro-active messages (via Twitter) when there’s an increase in messages about being sick in your area?

What uses do can you come up with?

Did you know?

There have been lots of cool developments over the last week, I’m going to run through the list of them -

• Google Image Swirl in labs – a creative way to search for similar images.
• YouTube Direct – a tool that allows you to embed YouTube’s upload feature to your site, enabling citizen journalist to send videos directly to your site while being hosted on YouTube.
• Google Sites templates – Google Sites has updated templates to help you get going.
• Breadcrumbs in Google Search – as opposed to urls in the summary, Google has provided better navigation to key site areas with breadcrumbs.
• Translate while you type – Google Translate lets shows you the updated translation as you type, instead of waiting for it to update.
• Google has bought Gizmo5 – what does this mean? This might mean a Skype-like integration with Google Voice and a possible Google phone with data only service…very cool!

Did you know?

Google first began integrating data from sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division in April of this year. Their point is to “to make statistics easier to find and to encourage debate based on facts rather than intuition.”

Continuing in that direction, Google has included 17 World Development Indicators from the World Bank within their search results. Some examples -

To see the new data, try queries like [gdp of indonesia], [life expectancy brazil], [rwanda's population growth], [energy use of iceland], [co2 emissions of iceland] and [gdp growth rate argentina].

Clicking on any of the results will display an interactive graph, for example -

To see a complete list of the include World Development Indicators, check out the Official Google Blog for more details.