““There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,”

Robert Scoble, in Steve Ballmer still doesn’t understand social networking:

“When I worked at Microsoft I heard this over and over and over again from various engineers and program managers who STILL haven’t competed effectively with WordPress, Flickr, Skype, YouTube, or any of the other things over the years I’ve heard this “we can build that in a few weeks” kind of arrogant attitude attached to.”

This echoes what I keep hearing from all sides: community building isn’t about features. Community building is about getting a group of people together who want to be there…who see themselves as part of a community. It has very little to do with technology.

Here’s an interesting question: when is the last time you heard two Windows (or Office) users actually having a positive conversation about their software? (I honestly can’t remember hearing one)

Ballmer is still suffering from the “if you build it they will come” mindset. And to his credit, that strategy (or MS’s version of it) has worked for almost two decades. But we’re in a different place now, and now Ballmer sounds like he’s betting against the Internet.

Here is a snippet from the Zune site:

Mama always said to share. Now you have an opportunity to do it with music and photos. With wireless Zune to Zune sharing you can send your favorite tracks and photos to friends.

Picture this: You’re walking down the street. Or you’re in a room with a bunch of friends. Or at a concert. Or at the airport. Or on the bus (you get the picture) and then you whip out your Zune and see all these other Zune devices around that you can choose from. Zap! You’re connected to your best friend and send the new song your band recorded in the garage last weekend. Another friend gets the hilarious podcast your kid brother made at school, plus that song you just downloaded from the Zune Marketplace and can’t get out of your head. And hey, lookee here, your friend wants to send you something that you might like and buy, too.

Best of all, the song you sent isn’t just a 30-second preview­—it’s the whole song! Your friend can sample the song up to three times in three days, flag it on their device and then, if they like it, they can buy it later from Zune Marketplace. It’s all connected.

It’s all connected! Wahoo! Doesn’t it sound like my friends are having more fun than me? Their happiness sounds much more important than mine here.

What the Zune folks could be talking about is how their device is personally valuable. In order for anybody to take the Zune seriously after the success of the iPod, the Zune has to be better than the iPod first. It has to be a better personal music player, period. It has to be better at storing and playing my songs for myself. And the online web pages that support the product (an interface mostly comprised of copy) has to reflect that.

Right now the iPod product page continues to do this well. The Zune product page, on the other hand, pales in comparison.

This is a case of the strategy being wrong, and thus the interface communicates the wrong message. (and yes, using the phrase “Welcome to the Social” is how they introduced the Zune if you can believe that). There is no way to communicate the right message if the strategy is wrong! Therefore, everyone involved is set up to fail.

Now, ask any designer and they’ll tell you that design is about communication. But, how effective can designers be if they don’t have any seat the table where the communication is being decided? (see How does Strategy Affect Design?) In the case of the Zune, designers would be able to provide valuable feedback to the strategists about how people actually listen to music, what they value in a music player, and all the other things that design research can discover for you. A quick ethnographic study done by the designers would have shown that music is a very personal activity…we identify ourselves by the music we listen to…and that you must nail that to the ground before you move into the social realm.

Don’t get me wrong here…I love the fact that the Zune folks are interested in and really trying to figure out the social aspects of music. But you can’t jump to that place without figuring out the personal aspects first. As I mentioned the other day a good question to ask here is…”Is this thing useful to someone even if nobody else uses it?”.

Now, it could be that the Zune is a great personal music player (it may be…I don’t know…its entirely unclear). But that’s not being communicated right now. When the Zune is a better personal music player than the iPod then, and only then, can its social features be touted. Right now the designers (and marketers, strategists, etc) are focusing way too much on the social, and not enough on the personal.

To win, all you have to do is to comment on a blog post. I’ll choose one commenter randomly to send the controller to. Go here for details…

(I’m doing this to get more familiar with my audience).

When I think of the word “video”, I immediately think of Youtube. When people want to upload “video”, they immediately think of YouTube. When people talk about where they saw the latest episode of the Daily Show, they talk about YouTube. When advertisers think of “video”, it’s all YouTube.

YouTube is what people think about when they think of the word “video”.

And because YouTube has top-of-mind, it means that people are not thinking about all the competing services out there. Google Video, Yahoo Whatever, or Microsoft Whatever, and the countless other video startups that want even a sliver of that ridiculous pie. Those services have very little top-of-mind share for the word video. (for the record, it’s MSN Soapbox and simply Yahoo Video).

Top-of-mind share is really interesting because it has the potential to be so transient, yet isn’t. We’re talking about what web site comes to mind when you think video, and right now that site is YouTube. Couldn’t that change in an instant? Couldn’t some other service easily eclipse that overnight, and tomorrow everyone will simply have another site in mind when the word video pops up?

Google doesn’t think so. That’s why they spent an unimaginable amount of money on a site who they compete with directly with their own video service. Google already has much of the technology. It’s not like they’re just blindly entering the video game…they’ve been trying! And in one year YouTube has rebuffed their attempt!

Google is making a huge bet that YouTube will stay top-of-mind for a long time to come, at least long enough to gain much of their money back on advertising and search-related ventures.

Google, of course, has top-of-mind for the word “Search”. They have for several years now, and probably will for several more. Even in an age where Microsoft can redirect you to their search engine simply because you’re using their crappy browser, Google has conquered the Search top-of-mind. So, even if other companies come up with better search than Google, it will still take years before they wrest away top-of-mind.

The importance of top-of-mind cannot be understated. If a web site has top-of-mind, it is the first thing people talk about. Like MySpace in social networking, Netflix in movie rentals, Microsoft in monopolies, Macintosh in fine computing.

And now YouTube in video. Even the founders of YouTube realize this. Check out Chad and Steve’s personal message about the announcement. They acknowledge their dominance in video, saying that “two kings have gotten together, the King of Search and the King of Video”.

Susan Mernit has a great piece on the YouTube deal. She’s looking at it from the perspective of what Google Didn’t Buy. And what Google could have bought but didn’t, in her estimation, is a little company called the New York Times. She points to the staggering implications of this, and what it means for social media:

“The point here–just to kick it a little harder–is that this is yet more evidence how social media platforms that are shifting the paradigms in a profound way–Not only does YouTube have a mass market, it’s video on the web appeal that the more high-brow Times will never have (Is YouTube the next MTV?). Furthermore, it’s a platform that gives Google the opportunity to morph into a multimedia MySpace ecosystem, way beyond what Orkut could ever be–and most cruelly, it’s something that teens and twenty-somethings care about, which may no longer be the case for The New York Times.”

In case you missed it, here’s part 1: The Lifecycle of Design: Part 1

“the integrated DLA platform wars have begun!”

“We don’t want to waste our time getting pats on the back.”

Here’s a screenshot:

From the short demo given by Sanaz Ahari at Search Champs, the initial functionality appears to be a recommendation tool, whereby people can rate TV shows on a 1-5 star scale. After users rate a show, their recommendations are updated appropriately to a new, more personalized set. This is not unlike the powerful recommendation system for movies on sites such as Netflix.com, which I wrote about extensively here: Which Movie to Watch? An Overview of Recommendation Systems. In addition, Sanaz showed another feature whereby you can with a few clicks of the mouse actually remotely schedule the recording of a TV show on your media center box at home.

There are three reasons why this feature could be a game-changer:

1. A Showcase Application for the Platform
   This feature is a great example of the possible value of the platform that Microsoft is creating. Up until now, the widgets weren’t that exciting, and basically replicated the widgets of other portals. This widget, however, shows the real value of platform that other developers can get excited about. It takes what was previously an uninspired platform into new territory.
2. Solves a Real, Unsolved Problem
   Recommendations are nothing new, but recommendations for TV shows are few. So this effectively helps to solve a previous unsolved problem, and a potentially powerful way to get adoption by people who don’t see the value of live.com. (if you’ve read me at all, you know that I think recommendation systems are the future of the Web)
3. Leverages Microsoft’s Media Center Platform
   By allowing communication between remote users and their home computer, this feature leverages the Media Center platform, functionality that can’t be readily provided by Google, Yahoo, or Apple. Recent rumors suggest that Apple is working on a DVR-type device incorporated into their Mac Mini desktop, however.

I’m really interested to see how this widget is adopted. If it’s easy to use, quick to set up, and provides valuable recommendations, then it could be a big boost to the nascent live.com site. However, we’ll undoubtedly soon see something from other companies, most particularly Apple. Any Dashboard widget developers working on something similar?

During a meeting today at the Microsoft Search Champs Conference in Redmond, WA, Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of MSN Information Services, discussed the recent blowup involving the U.S. Government’s subpoena of personal information from major Search Engines including MSN, Yahoo, Google, and AOL. This was not the first time that the U.S. Government has requested information from corporations in this manner. It was, however, one of the most talked about, spurred on by a press release from Google, who announced that they had turned down the request. Soon after, it was revealed that both Yahoo and MSN has complied with it, casting an instant shadow over those companies. In response, Ken Moss, general manager of MSN web search, provided a few relevant details of the case on the MSN Search Blog.

Today, Mehdi added some detail concerning what actually happened when the request from the Government was made. First, the Government had asked for information that could identify people on an individual basis (most likely, an IP address). Microsoft declined this request, and instead handed the Government a watered down version of data, which Mehdi made clear did not include personal information. The information provided by Microsoft, Mehdi said, consisted only of a sample of search terms and their frequency, as well as a random sample of pages in the MSN Search Index.

Update: Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager, MSN Search, sends along a clarification: the DOJ didn’t ask for personal information specifically, they simply asked for logs.

This was a very hot topic the entire day today at the Conference. Not only are there differing viewpoints about what Search companies should and should not do, but the very relevance of data was in question. Is this a non-issue given that Microsoft didn’t hand over personal information? Did Microsoft make an error in giving in to the Government? What information did they actually give? Given that the Government has final say, does any of the MSN posturing matter? And finally, does the average Joe really care about all this?

To help answer these questions, a few members of the Search Champs crowd gathered tonight to record a podcast. The podcast members were:

• Joshua Porter ( Me – Search Champs Attendee )
• Thomas Vander Wal ( Search Champs Attendee )
• Chris Pirillo ( Search Champs Attendee )
• Dion Hinchcliffe ( Search Champs Attendee )
• Fred Oliviera ( Search Champs Attendee )
• Alex Barnett ( Microsoft )
• Brady Forrest ( MSN Search Team )

Update: Additional Coverage:
Alex Barnett (Photos)
Thomas Vander Wal
Dion Hinchcliffe
Fred Oliviera

And Robert Scoble has a writeup of the meeting: Search Champs Grilling MSN execs

• Dick Hardt is Founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, and is well-known for his Identity 2.0 talk he gave at the OSCon and Web 2.0 Conferences.
• Kim Cameron is the Chief Identity Architect at Microsoft, and is well-known for his Laws of Identity whitepaper.

Both Dick and Kim are amazing thinkers and way out ahead of the curve on Identity. They’re doing great work on Identity, and will certainly be close by the solution to our Identity problems when it finally takes hold. It was very fun to talk to them, or rather to try to keep up with them!

The podcast is in two parts:

• Part 1 (28MB), including what’s the biggest problem we have to solve in identity? (notes)
• Part 2 (26MB), including ruminations on what e-commerce sites might want for attention data (notes)

Interestingly, for this podcast I was using Skype, while the rest of the folks were using landlines/cellphones. As you’ll hear, I lost connection for a while, but isn’t it really cool what we can do with technology now? I think so. Also, thanks again to Alex for doing the legwork on the post-production!

Here I was imagining that Google would try to create a content platform with Google Base. Cringely, on the other hand, thinks Google is planting 20ft hardware boxes at 4.5 petabytes each at locations all along the Internet, to co-opt everyone’s data and put every other company on a platform below it, effectively taking over the Web. How do they do this? With their black fiber, of course!

That whole Google Office thing? That’s a laugh. It will be a small piece of their world-dominating technology. And he’s got links to get you thinking that he may just be onto something. I would love to be there when Larry or Sergei (the Google Guys) read this.

Cringely is either crazy, brilliant, or both. Whatever he is, he’s fun to read.

Who would you rather have keep a database of your attention metadata: Microsoft or a complete stranger?

For me the answer is easy: not Microsoft.

You see, Microsoft has so damaged my trust over the past decade that I won’t consider them as a viable alternative for anything until they’ve proven to me that they’re sincere about making the World a better place, one that includes customers as desirable people for whom they want to do great things. Forget better software, forget innovation. I never once considered them as a potential keeper of my financial information with their Passport initiative, and right now, with their latest release of Windows and Office Live, all I see is that they’re trying to create more tie in for me to wish I was out of.

And it’s not just that I like Apple’s products better. It’s that I trust Apple Computer to not screw me over. I have a small personal budget to spend on hardware and software, and I’ll gladly give it to the company who I trust the most. When I go into an Apple store with a question or problem, I’m treated as if they want me as a customer. At the end of the day, it is this that keeps me there. You only feel tied in to something that you want out of.

So instead of Microsoft, would you give your attention metadata to Root.net, an AttentionTrust approved service? (more about AttentionTrust here)

I have been giving my attention metadata to Root.net for the last few days, and I must say, it’s a very cool web application. After writing about the trust I decided to become a member, not because I’m dying to give my attention metadata to someone else but because I wanted to know how it all works.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the steps to do so:

1. Sign up for a Root.net Vault account
2. Download and install the AttentionTrust Firefox plugin
3. Restart Firefox
4. Change the AttentionTrust Recorder setting so that it sends my attention metadata to Root.net
5. Browse around like you normally would, allowing the plugin to gather your attention metadata
6. Go to your account on Root.net to see what they’re collecting

(By the way, if you don’t change the setting to send your information to Root.net, it will store the information on your hard drive anyway.)

Here’s a screenshot of what my Vault account on Root.net looks like after a couple days of sending my information there:

You can see that my attention has been recorded along 3 axes:

1. Trends
   Let’s start with the trends, because we can easily see what it is tracking. You’ll notice that my time was mostly spent on 5 different domains: cnn.com, root.net, mads.com.com, news.com.com, and cl.cnn.com. The problem is that I never visited two of the domains (mads.com.com and cl.cnn.com). These domains simply served up ads or served as passthroughs for the domains that I was on.
2. Topics
   The topics are pretty confusing to me. The sites I went to (CNN, News.com, Root.net) don’t seem to be related to these topics at all, although I noticed that “Archives” showed up as I was browsing CNN. This needs some more explanation. Also, I noticed that this here blog shows up under the Topic of “Literature”, and I chuckled. Jorge Luis Borges writes literature. I write a blog.
3. Checklist
   Checklist is simply a list of the URLs that I that accessed.

Put together, this is a sliver of my attention metadata, and even though it only captures my surfing behavior over time it would be a LOT of data!

But the question remains: do I feel comfortable storing my attention metadata on my Root Vault account? They’ve pledged to be good about it, and their application, though it’s still getting its legs, is very interesting and I didn’t notice a slowdown in browsing. But why wouldn’t I just store it locally and wait until the attention market matures instead of storing it elsewhere? Is there a benefit to storing it elsewhere?

Imagine, for example, if someone sold their attention metadata tomorrow for $40.00 to some company who wanted to use it to better understand their target population. That would certainly change things for the day after tomorrow, as large numbers of people would then clamor to sell their attention. But I also imagine the speed and veracity of people creating fake attention metadata to sell as well. There will have to be some verification function built into all of this.

In his Disruption Gang podcast, Steve Gillmor, President of the AttentionTrust, leads a very interesting conversation about how important attention metadata is becoming.

Here’s my interpretation of the issue as discussed in the podcast: Search has worked in the last few years because we can approximate what people pay attention to by looking at what they link to. This worked very well because it allowed Search engines to give very relevant results by assuming that what we pay attention to is valuable.

However, this doesn’t work perfectly. In the longer term, this only shows us an average value of things, not a personal value (as I wrote about). Combine this deficiency with splogs and millions of false links, and the noise starts to drown out the signal, and Search begins to suffer (as well as the advertising goldmine that is associated with it)

To improve on the “linking means attention” idea we would need a better way to measure attention. This is what the Attention Recorder attempts to do, even though its reach right now is limited to our browsing habits only. (a great start nonetheless). Eventually they’ll probably add other axes of attention, like who our contacts are, who we chat with, who we email, etc.

The most interesting bit of the podcast, however, was when Robert Scoble, the attention bunny, said that he was fighting for Microsoft to take the lead, join the AttentionTrust, and make attention metadata a high priority within the company. He sees it as a very valuable place to be in the coming years.

Doc Searls agreed, saying:

“I think there is enormous room to reinvent advertising, and I think attention has enormous promise there and if I were Robert (Scoble) I would go to the people at Microsoft and say ‘Look, you want to beat Google at the game where they’ve leapfrogged the whole entire advertising industry, leapfrog them again with something that gives people what they know they want…and attention has that promise’”

That’s a pretty bold claim. Let’s assume for a moment it is true, and attention is all it’s cracked up to be and Microsoft tries to take the lead…why should I trust Microsoft with my attention metadata when I don’t trust them with anything else?