BrianBreslin.com

or why I haven’t continued building on the twitter platform

As many of you may know, my team at Infinimedia built one of the most popular twitter clients out there, Twitbin, which has over 35,000 users now. We were one of the first to build something along these lines (definitely not the first by any stretch), but we were clearly not the last or most popular.  Something interesting occured shortly after we built it: we stopped building.

You might be thinking, why is this even remotely interesting Brian? Well typically when we build something, we keep adding to it and improving it. With Twitbin, we have added a few things here and there, updated it to the latest versions of Firefox, etc., but we haven’t overhauled it or added anything major in a year. So we’ve been sitting on plans for a major overhaul + expanded offerings for something like 9 months, but we haven’t moved on it. Why? Well we couldn’t afford the time to something suffering from such instability. No matter how kickass we could make Twitbin 2.0, we would still be inundated with emails every time twitter goes down. If you’re building on someone else’s platform, whenever they are down, you are down. There is no way around that.

So will we ever start working on Twitbin2.0? Well thats a good question. We have a few options, but building something that makes money off of a service that doesn’t is inherently tough. We experimented with ads in our client, I think we made so little it wasn’t worth the annoyance it caused our users. But the underlying issue is reliability. We would love to invest the time and money in building out more creative and useful twitter tools, but at the moment there are other platforms which are more reliable and more money behind making them good long term bets.

I am not proclaiming twitter as a platform dead by any means. It will take ages for a plurk or a pownce to overtake twitter as far as utility (utility to me is the # of users on it x attention spent there). I am just thinking that its time to look back at the platform and all the platforms out there and measure their worth.  So I want to know what you think about twitter’s platform or any of the other micro-messaging platforms?

A year or so ago, Facebook unveiled something that has radically changed the landscape of the web and social networking sites in particular. As the first major and tightly integrated social network application platform (SNAP) to hit the market, Facebook was able to shift our expectations from what we had previously expected to get from a social site to something with theoretically endless possibilities. What emerged next, I don’t think even facebook had the foresight to predict.

I have a theory, and its that facebook didn’t want or expect the platform to become what it has. They had something else entirely in mind when they built it, and the upcoming changes to the metrics/engagement rules are proof of their original mindset. Facebook didn’t want disposable apps, they wanted people to add value, real value to the platform. Facebook was looking for people to find new ways to tie in the social graph data they were offering into new and useful tools. Facebook refers to itself as a social utility, not a network, and what does a utility do? It powers things. So what does facebook want to do? Power the web through social connections and relationships.

So what does the next generation of the platform have in store for us? Well to me it seems like they have taken a long hard look at the existing app usage, proliferation, and made a decision; one that many will find unpleasant. Facebook wants us to build things that improve upon their users lives: social shopping, social search, social recommendations, and maybe social gaming. Any activity that is improved by having your friends around is one that facebook wants to be a part of. So we’ll probably see this stuff percolating into existing sites as they adapt, but more than likely people will heed this advice and start building new sites that capitalize on it. And the apps in facebook doing this will ultimately be rewarded by Facebook through promotion and more functionality.

Now bear in mind that this is all my own personal opinion, I haven’t asked any of my friends at facebook about it. It is all based on my observations, and what I would want if I was in facebook’s position. So what are you waiting for? The social revolution awaits!

My completely speculative theory on the social operating system.

There is a battle for control of the next generation of the internet, and this revolves around my thesis that the current phase in the evolution of the web involves the connecting of people.  The battle is being waged by google, facebook, myspace, and a littany of others all vying for this control.

How we got to this point.
The first phase of this battle was about amassing as many users as possible as fast as possible. These users are your asset, they make your network exponentially more valuable. Facebook’s 70 million users are creating billions of unique connections, these connections each hold an intrinsic value in the grand scheme.   So they gave us developers a platform, a platform which is mutually beneficial.  This platform enabled them to double their user base, and at the same time offered the developers a simple way to tap that large and growing user base. 

So while facebook was giving us apps on their own, google was getting all the networks together to build their graph for them.  Google has seen this change coming for years. YEARS. They saw the evolution in social behaviors affecting the internet long before us common folk saw it. They just didn’t have the accounts to leverage it all (orkut has yet to take off here, and gmail isn’t massive enough in reach yet either), so they went to the 3-10th place networks and proposed a deal, that deal was OpenSocial.

There is an important thing to remember when it comes to these companies, they may give you something for free, but they are really making something from your data, so don’t feel bad for them.

What the next phase is:
Controlling the relationships and blowing them out to the entire web. Thats the central thesis behind the google friend connect, and the enabling of ajax api functionalities on facebook (that and the facebook friend connect thing too).  Once you amass enough users, and then tell the thousands of individual sites out there they can plugin your tool and become part of your network, you will have a massive amount of control over managing that network.

For those of you that have been following the teasers of Facebook’s redesign, the one coming july 15th, you might have noticed the shift to make it more like a desktop operating system interface (menu bar, footer/dock).  This is analagous to the concept they are working on to spread throughout the web. Why wouldn’t you install the facebook toolbar on your website if you could quickly and easily enable social relationships on a massive scale?  The quality of these relationships is important too, and that is where facebook has been trying to leverage its position as the social operating system. The Windows or OS X of your relationships.

So what can we expect?
Smart sites will foster this and try and grow with the two platforms, it won’t be easy, but they will be spectacularly worthwhile. Sites that don’t embrace it out of either fear or lack of technical knowledge will miss out while the smaller sites quickly grow past them. The sites that embrace these social levers will see the types of growth we saw on the initial facebook platform applications, but with the flexibility to grow their own loyal bases.

We will also start to see more emergence of open social graph standards spreading around like DiSO and others. Assuming developers can make these things idiot-proof, you’ll be able to move to any site and tap into your relationships wherever possible. The key there will be making them seamless to the user.

Ultimately this represents a major shift in how we design sites and develop their underlying concepts. The social “network” has become a feature or a commodity.

I had the pleasure of meeting German Martinez and Juan Pablo Scaletti on my recent trip to Lima at the local BeerTwit twitter and blogger meetup. These two guys are the brains behind Prezentit, a very cool new service that lets you build robust slideshows/presentations directly in your browser (without Flash!).

German was gracious enough to answer a few of my questions. (A spanish version is available here)
How did you start to work with web related business?
It all started with PreZentit, the idea of creating a web company from scratch seemed a fantastic idea, it was a big challenge and we learnt a lot in the process.

What do you think about the Peruvian web community ?
In Peru there is a large community of web users, but they use the web at a very basic level. They use the web more for fun than for work, the use of web applications has not yet become as widespread as in other parts of the world.

The number of web developers is growing little by little. Even though it is small there are people in Peru who are very well trained

What are the advantages/disadvantages of being a programmer/web developer in Peru?
The main advantage of being a web developer in Peru is that the cost of living and the price of web services like Internet are relatively cheap compared to the USA or Europe. This allows us to offer slightly lower prices than what is charged in those countries.

The great disadvantage is the lack of visibility. It is very hard to have your work become known in other countries. This is especially true about web applications such as Pre-Zentit.

Another disadvantage is the fact that most of the available information about web matters is in English. So it becomes essential for anyone who wants to grow as a web professional to have a good command of English.

How would you describe your Project, Prezentit , in l0 words or less?
The most user friendly online presentations editor.

Why did you create Prezentit
We realized that Power Point had many shortcoming when we wanted to create group presentations, so we decided to create an on line application that would solve these problems but keeping in mind our own needs.

What were your most important resources that you used to create Prezentit? What programming languages and libraries did you use to develop it?
We are big fans of Ubuntu and we created PreZentit using all kinds of free software. My partner, Juan Pablo Scaletti, was the main programmer. I think he is one of the best Python and JavaScript programmers in Peru. We used the framework TurboGears for Python and the library Mootools for JS.

In what direction do you think the Peruvian programming community is going to develop as regards the Internet?
I think web users are going to stop using desk applications and begin using more web applications.

The Internet will also become an essential work tool here.

What problems have you faced in working with foreign companies from Peru and in working with local Peruvian companies in Peru?
The greatest roadblock in working with foreign companies is the tools for payment. A large problem is not being able to link Pay Pal with a Peruvian bank account in order to receive payments easily. As regards local companies, they still do not realize the advantages that having a presence on the web gives them and most of them are not willing to invest in this presence.

Which are your favorite web 2.0 sites? Which ones do you see growing more in Peru than others?
Right now I am a big fan of Twitter. It seems like a fantastic idea to me. I also admire You Tube and Flickr.

Recien tuve la oportunidad de visitar a Lima, Peru y tuve la fortunidad de poder encontrarme con el grupo de twitters y bloggers aya. Durante esta reunion conoci por primera vez a German y Juan Pablo de Prezentit, un nuevo sitio para armar presentaciones sin tener que instalar cualquier software en tu systema.

German me hizo el favor de responder a unas preguntas que tuve, y aca las tienes. (la version en ingles se puede encontrar aqui)

¿Cómo llegaste a trabajar en la web?
Todo comenzó con PreZentit, la idea de crear una aplicación web desde cero me pareció genial, fue un gran reto y aprendimos muchísimo en el camino.

¿Cómo ves la comunidad en Perú con respecto a la web?
En Perú hay una gran comunidad de usuarios de internet pero a un nivel básico, se usa mucho más para ocio que para trabajo, además aún no ha entrado con fuerza el uso de aplicaciones web.

La comunidad de desarrolladores está creciendo poco a poco. Aunque aún es pequeña hay gente muy capaz.

¿Cuales son las ventajas/desventajas de ser programador/desarrollador en Perú?
La principal ventaja de ser un desarrollador en Perú es que aquí el costo de vida y el acceso a servicios como internet es relativamente barato en comparación con USA o Europa. Esto nos permite tener una tarifa un poco más baja que la que usualmente se cobra en esos países.

La gran desventaja es la falta de exposición, es muy difícil hacer notar tu trabajo en el extranjero. Sobre todo cuando hablamos de aplicaciones web como PreZentit.

Otra desventaja es el hecho de que la mayoría de información disponible al respecto se encuentre en inglés, así que es un idioma obligatorio para cualquiera que esté interesado en desenvolverse como desarrollador web.

¿Tu proyecto Prezentit, como lo describirías en menos de 10 palabras?
El editor de presentaciones online más fácil de usar.

¿Como vinieron a armar Prezentit?
Nos dimos cuenta de que PowerPoint tenía muchas limitaciones y desventajas a la hora de hacer presentaciones en grupo, así que decidimos crear una aplicación online que los resolviera teniendo en cuenta nuestras propias necesidades.

¿Cuales fueron los recursos más importantes en armar Prezentit? ¿Que lenguajes de programación y librerías usaste para desarrollarlo?
Mi socio, Juan Pablo Scaletti fue el que se desenvolvió principalmente como programador, yo lo considero como uno de los mejores programadores de Python y JavaScript en Perú.Usamos el framework TurboGears para Python y la librería Mootools para JS.

¿En que dirección crees que la comunidad peruana va avanzar con respeto al internet?
Creo que los usuarios van a dejar de depender tanto en aplicaciones de escritorio y empezar a usar aplicaciones web.

El Internet se convertirá en una herramienta de trabajo indispensable.

¿Que obstáculos has visto trabajando con empresas extranjeras desde Perú? ¿Y con empresas locales?
El mayor obstáculo al trabajar con empresas extranjeras es el medio de pago, un gran problema es no poder usar PayPal con una cuenta bancaria de Perú para recibir dinero.

Lo que pasa con las empresas locales es que aún no entienden las ventajas que les da la presencia en Internet, además en su mayoría no están dispuestas a invertir en ello.

¿Cuales son los sitios web2.0 que te gustan más? ¿Cuales ves creciendo más que otros en Perú?
Ahora mismo soy un gran fan de Twitter, me parece una idea genial, tampoco puedo dejar de mencionar a YouTube y a Flickr.

I get this feeling that there are a lot of industries that don’t truly understand the sheer magnitude of social media. There are tons of industries where we rely on social connections in real life to either facilitate or enhance the business transactions, it seems only logical to extend this to the web. Granted this is a purely superficial look at these industries, and a much deeper technographic and demographic study could help build a more refined social strategy for each one.

Travel
Aside from business travel, this is usually an activity done in groups. So leveraging the power of your existing connections and social graph to find more information on potential destinations or deals would be an ideal solution. Whose opinion would you trust more, your cousin Bob, or some anonymous web troll when you’re planning that trip to cancun?

Trip planning. Nothing is as much of a pain as trying to plan a trip with a group of people. So why not figure out a way to simplify things. Look at how dopplr and tripit are starting, and take it from there.  These are areas where the airlines and travel sites should be dominating.

Another key area where travel is failing on social media is in the post-trip/re-engagement phase. Why aren’t travel companies leveraging all the content these travelers just created (EVERYONE has a digital camera of some sort)?

Real Estate
Part of what you buy when you buy a home or condo is the community, a large part of it to be exact. So developers, realtors, and real estate information sites need to build the tools for connecting the property owners/renters to the community/web.  The stronger bonds that can be built through these networks, the stronger the physical community becomes.  This also plays well into the buying/selling of a home through the web, as it gives potential buyers access to the value-add that is the future neighbors and their wealth of knowledge.  Also correlate the value of where my friends might be living now, as that would definitely play a role in my house hunting.

There is a wealth of information out there today that is just waiting to be mashed up: photos (geocoded to boot), maps, zoning info, crime info, transportation, shopping, etc. This is definitely an example where the sum is more valuable than all the parts individually.

Apparel Shopping
Women’s fashion is built on one thing: what other women will think about each others outfits. Women don’t buy clothes to impress men, its to impress other women.  Women also tend to shop as a social activity, so why isn’t anyone translating this to the web?  Where are the sites that let people share fashion ideas, fashion tips, or deals? There are tons of visual tools out there that are just waiting to be pieced together.  I think a key component to this is for the fashion industry to understand what is driving web use, then see how these things can be leveraged by social utilities.

The branding potential in social networks for these brands to leverage is amazing. Its the ultimate use for social ads and leveraging personal recommendations. (Think, what do my friends think about this shirt, etc.) Imagine seeing on a shopping site “Your friend Jane bought this in red, you might also like the black.”

Entertainment
Last but certainly not least is the entertainment industry (movies, music, tv, games, etc.). The entertainment industry could stand to gain the most of all from leveraging social graphs and social media in a way that benefits both them and the consumers. Instead of running away scared of the beast that is the consumer and user generated content, they should take a page from Chamillionaire’s book and go to where the fans are.  Help them find/discover (like ilike or last.fm), help them create (video, audio, whatever), and help them make it dead simple to evangelize your product.

Realistically entertainment is one of the most powerful industries for leveraging social. Most of the activities we do in relation to this industry is social in nature (going to the movies, playing games, watching tv, and listening to music. They are all things we can do as individuals, but for the most part are improved when we add friends. They all also tend to be things that people use to identify themselves with (rocker, hip hop fan, jazz fan, anime fan, etc.).

Now this all may seem very superficial, and it is, but this post was really intended to spark the discussion within your organizations, not give you all a clear cut roadmap (that would make it too easy).

After my blitz trip through lima this past weekend it came to my attention that there is huge amount of underlying potential for the web in this part of the world, but its missing key components needed to grow. I spoke with a number of very intelligent and very in touch people who understand many of the changes going on in the social media and web2.0 sphere, and frankly came away with mixed emotions.

At my first South American Twitter meetup ever, over 40 people were there! Lots of people in this crowd were what we would call the early adopters here. Whereas in the US an early adopter of something like twitter is typically 6 months to a year ahead, there they are 2-3 years ahead of mainstream adoption. The main reason being that the infrastructure (SMS, Telecom, Internet) isn’t there for the majority of the population, and is still prohibitively expensive for many.

But here is what I see that made me really glad to have gone down to peru (from a developer/strategist perspective). There is a large group of people who are genuinely interested in these new emerging technologies, who have great skills in programming and development, and are really just waiting for a great project to come along. There isn’t the same entrepreneurial mindset there is here in the US, but there is a spirit of creativity. I spent hours talking to the talented team behind Prezentit about how to make the greatest twitter experience possible. How we could extend something as simple as the 140 characters of twitter and build a robust community around that social object.

Some of the things that Peru lacks from a web perspective: capital (not that much is needed, things are relatively cheap), someone with the balls to experiment on a number of things and put their $ where their mouth is, and people talking about the community as much as possible. The local paper El Comercio is doing a great job on this last part already (my visit is even mentioned here ) There are also a number of cultural issues that can be corrected, especially at the youth level (the same point where much of this development can occur).

I’ll write more in the future about south america and its role in this emerging global network of web development, software, and online culture. But for now I’d like to thank all my new twitter + facebook friends down there. Saludos a todos.

So this friday I will be meeting up with twitter users in Lima, Peru for BeerTwit. The concept of meeting up with virtual friends in real life is one that intrigues me, and I see it gaining lots and lots of steam in the near future. Its really amazed me that users are finding each other and connecting across disparate regions of the world and using the social bond that twitter provides them to connect in real life.

Apparently this trend is happening all around the world according to my friend Diego. Twitter meetups are sprouting up everywhere from Madrid, Mexico, Sevilla, Barcelona, Argentina, and tons of other places. Those are just the spanish speaking places too!

There is even a Tokyo twitter group! 2 seconds of quick searching also revealed meetups in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Huntsville, Buffalo,  and Venice, Italy!

So if you know of a tweetup occuring, post them in the comments.

So you might be thinking, why on earth would this be a good deal for either party? How can two also-rans of the internet fit well together? How can they compete against the all mighty goog? Well this harks back to my theory on the evolution of advertising and the shift to behavioral advertising.

At the moment, Yahoo is probably the number one player in this field. AOL is distant second, but the two are definitely the leaders in this market. With a combined effort on their part, they can merge the patents and IP advantages they each posses and come out with some amazing ad solutions. AOL’s Platform A initiative is already strong, but what it really needs is the massive pageviews Yahoo! has. Yahoo’s behavioral targeting is good, but could benefit from some of the stuff AOL has + AOL’s extra pageviews, the social network they just bought (Bebo), and more.

What would Yahoo get out of buying/merging with AOL?

• Bebo - 3rd largest social network in the US and Europe
• Platform A/Advertising.com - One of the largest behavioral and display ad businesses on the net. Reach to millions of sites, which Yahoo! publisher network never was able to do (probably because they never accepted anyone!)
• Netscape - Still millions of browsers out there, tons of traffic.
• AOL Mail - LOTS of additional users to be migrated into the Y! Mail platform
• AOL dialup business - something they could quickly sell off to recoup some cash
• AOL Blog Network - these are a great fit for Y! content offerings. Esp. Y! Finance

What does AOL get from this deal?

• No more Time Warner! This has been a deal that dragged them down so far, its embarassing
• Stability - Y! has lots of cash on hand and TONS of traffic, and is less fickle than TW
• More reach - again Y! traffic
• LOTS of cost savings - data centers alone would be consolidated
• Cross promotion
• More data for their ad programs.

So to me this seems like a great fit, even if Microsoft does buy Yahoo, it would cost them another $20 Billion to get it done after an AOL merger. To me this seems like a great move, even if Y! does outsource the monetization of some of its search traffic to Google. I see them as a better fit together than Y! + MS.

What? Twitter can be a feature in my app? How can a web service like twitter be a function of my app?  If you look below the surface of twitter, it is a pure web service, and I mean service from an API perspective.  Lets keep that in mind as we explore this further.

So how can twitter the web service serve me in building my applications/sites/widgets? Well quite simply twitter gives us a truly portable social communications tool that is really, really flexible. Twitter should be seen as a support for your services to make them more portable and accessible.

So what do I mean by portable and accessible? Well first you need to cast away the notion that a website is only to be seen through one container (www.yourdomain.com for example). RSS, APIs, and a litany of other platforms should have changed your mind years ago.  Twitter gives you access to a number of things that are potentially useful for your endeavor:
Mobile Integration: A solid mobile platform (let them leverage the costs, last thing you need to do is pay $2k/month for an sms number + thousands in sms fees)
Jabber/IM Integration: Instant messaging based commands and controls (bots?)
Social Graph: A very flexible social graph and the ability to leverage relationships
Users: Roughly a million of them

The key to this is the ability to quickly and cheaply integrate mobile controls for your application, something no other platform is really offering at the moment.  Why not let your users post to and retrieve data from your site using their mobile phones? Why not let them interact with your application through instant messenger?  The possibilities are endless folks, you just have to look for them.