Yo dawg, I heard you like news aggregation so I put a news aggregator in your news aggregator so you can read social media while you read social media.

People are using services that make Twitter a duct-taped-together activity stream. I prefer to hear people’s ideas instead of being carpet bombed with bot notifications from the social media service du jour. But this isn’t exclusive to Twitter, Facebook took this further with web-wide likes and Facebook Connect. Your activity on the web is a feature on Facebook and they encourage you to dump everything there. Fortunately I can’t control what other people do, but a little bit of the Web dies every time someone publishes that stuff. That’s how I feel, but that’s the beauty of the Web: It’s a playground for experimentation. Too bad it feels like there’s not that much experimentation going on except on the business case side of the Web.

I rarely cross-post what I share/do on the various services. I don’t assume you’re stupid, if you want to know what links I find interesting, don’t expect them on my Twitter feed but on my Google Reader. If you want to know about my runs, I’m on Nike+. If you’re interested in what I read, or something else – well, there’s an app that isn’t Twitter for that. Sure, that’s more work for you if you want to know about everything I do but I don’t expect you to be. I don’t have to promote myself on the web – I have a nice day job and as a Finn I’m quite introverted anyway.

Also, if you guys haven’t yet figured it out – Google’s social network is the Web. And it will fail on your usual Web 2.0 metrics, because people don’t want platforms – they want applications. This is what happened with Google Buzz.

I ran a mile! Then I spent two hours promoting it on the web.

As I alluded previosuly, people use Twitter and Facebook as a make-shift Activity Streams because they just work well enough. Google Buzz was an early attempt to the next gen, but it failed miserably. It was complex, it was a platform and no one got the point. It offered advantages over Facebook and Twitter only on infrastructure level, not for the user. I’m quite certain that Google continues on this path, because there’s no reason to make a yet another Orkut when it seems that the future of Facebook and Twitter are activity updates. Better to control those updates than the services where they are published. Also, most of that stuff is just noise. In the future, the real business is filtering and exploiting those little snippets of information, not just dumbly showing them.

This hopefully could also mark the end of the dark age of “social media”, where we ignored the complexities of human social behavior and assuming that before “social media” everything was asocial. When someone can go and say that the end of social gaming is near because all gaming will be social – are you fucking kidding me? At what point in time were games missing a social aspect? Or did these guys only play Solitaire and Minesweeper? The Internet is after all a tool. It’s a delusion to believe we have required social enlightenment through Facebook when a compelling case can be made be against it. Repeat after me: you are not how many friends you have on Facebook, you’re not your LinkedIn profile, you’re not your fucking tweets, …

For example, Facebook gives us just one identity. This is by design and Mark Zuckerberg believes this is the right way to go forward. He and Facebook prefers that identity is our most low common denominator identity, probably so that they can sell more eyeballs to “targeted” ads. That might be reason why Facebook is boring, everyone is just showing their most bland identity they are willing to show to strangers.

On the web, people don’t always want to be “themselves” – or even social. Play some multiplayer games, preferably a FPS on a console – like Call of Duty: MW on PS3 – and you’ll quickly see the dark side of human psyche, also known as Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Blizzard tried to solve the problem as an engineering problem and attempted to force people to use their real names, this was very quickly shot down by users. On the internet, some of us want to be DeathSpank, the Orc slayer.

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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But seriously. Facebook’s grab of their users is getting quite out of hand. Exposing more and more of stuff that could be argued to be personal information, pimping that stuff to other sites and companies… it’s not cool and it’s pretty dark in the grey area of abusing their users’ respect. The “evolution” of Facebook’s concept of privacy was best illustrated by Matt McKeon’s neat infographic.

You know these pics as lolcats, but majority of Facebookers just think they are cute.

If you look at the new things Facebook is developing it’s easy to start thinking what are the real benefits to users? It’s all just exploitation. But that’s just the business model for web 2.0 social. Companies are willing to pay a lot to know what their target demographics like and how they behave and lots of other metrics that supposedly make their marketing more effective. They also want to have “presence” on the “social”. I have no experience with marketing industry so I’ve no idea how well this works.

Many internet pioneers were against any first legislation involving Internet, because the Internet was somehow “different”. They felt that these laws would restrict the “freedom” of the whole Internet. Yet, it’s clear that at least our consumer protection and privacy laws are not good enough. The German Federal Minister of Consumer Protection sent a letter to Facebook where her threat was that she’d get out of Facebook if Zuckerberg and his company don’t start to respect users’ privacy more. Seriously, is this how toothless even European consumer protection agencies are against Facebook’s rampant power grab?

One of the weaknesses of Facebook is that they’re centralized. This is why Google, Yahoo et al are working hard on social web that’s distributed. The problem is that this is not a competition where the best technology wins. So what if “web industry leaders” are quitting Facebook? Most of the Facebook’s userbase don’t know who they are and don’t care.

The strength of Facebook at this point is that it’s what pretty much everyone and their parents know how to use on the web. Even otherwise computer illiterate people feel at home with Facebook, like the ReadWriteWeb’s article on Facebook that people ended up when they searched for “facebook login” on Google demonstrated. Whatever the pioneers, early adopters, or any other web power users do to create “anti-Facebooks” does not matter, especially on the short term.

The internet has always been a scary place for newbies and it’s a shame how easily scammers can use Facebook as an attack vector. All the groups and pages that advertise free Farmville cash or an iPad for just doing these simple steps that compromise the whole computer… The problem is that it is difficult to distinguish these from the marketing agencies’ competitions on who can create the most “liked” “viral” astroturfed page and also by the simple fact that people tend to trust their friends’ judgment so these scams can get easily spread through the “social”.

From the web power users’ viewpoint the future is either a more interactive web, or the wet dream of every SEO and internet marketing expert – a web that stinks and where its users are just a crop for marketing analytics. We are idealistic and tend to believe in the power of technology, but the web is a commercial venture. Google isn’t exactly our friend (not even using the web 2.0 definition of the word), but it looks it is in their best interest to push for the same cause – a more open web.

It’s not that Google and others are doing this out of kindness for web users. It just makes business sense for them, Google makes money when more people use the web. And it’s not like Facebook is inherently evil – the exploitation of their userbase is a natural progression for any social network business, especially because their users are not willing to pay for the service in any direct fashion.

We can’t bluff Facebook about quitting our accounts, because we are not going to hurt ourselves here and they know it. For its users, Facebook does add value. But, there are limits on how much they can exploit this fact. What Google and others are trying to do is make Facebook redundant, unnecessary – but they’re still far from this goal.

This is why I would expect more from the people we have appointed to take care of our personal information in the society, the different national and international data protection agencies. Not just empty threats like Mrs. Aigner’s.

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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But how good is this wave of mergers and acquisitions for the future? ( By future I mean upcoming innovation and future of Startups which target innovation not business)

Whenever your biggest competitor takes you over, it blunts the competitive spirit that can drive innovations. Thats what concerns me most, the spirit of innovation is somehow compromised because of takeovers.

Not always always a potential Merger or Takeover can be taken as a positive sign of ever increasing competition and globalization. And particularly not right now when it comes to web and social media startups, many of which are still more focused on innovation and building up audiences than on making profits. Rushing them into deals to fulfill long-delayed plans for an exit strategy could derail the evolution of a strong business plan.

From an investment standpoint, founders and venture capitalists have good reasons to cash out now. Market caps of public tech giants are rising — the Nasdaq gaining big time – and so are their cash stockpiles. For Instance Microsoft has a stock pile of about $49 billion in cash; similar is the story of Google with $24 billion. High-profile Multi Billion dollar deals like the ones we had in recent times have a way of spurring on other acquisitions.

TimeWarner buying AOL and eBay buying Skype come to mind. Even snapping up a hot startup for its technology or talent — Google buying Dodgeball or Yahoo buying Flickr – can lead to culture clashes, customer anger and other disappointing results.

I  tried to re-compile the list of some major takeovers which are substantial enough to change the future of computing.   We are talking about some multibillion dollar mergers and acquisitions, where the Big gets even Bigger.

Oracle eclipses the SUN @ $7.4 Billion

This Merger can be coined as “father of all the Tech Mergers” announced last year. If the announced the deal went through, Oracle,  the industry’s largest database software vendor would get an entry into the server and storage markets worldwide.

The acquisition, still pending, was announced in April, and may even be blocked because European regulators are contending that combining Oracle’s technology with Sun’s open source MySQL database would violate competition laws. Lets see if this deal goes through.

Xerox snaps up ACS in $6.4 billion

Another major takeover, Xerox pays about $6.4 billion in cash and stock for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a large IT and outsourcing firm. With this merger Xerox hopes it will give it a bigger foothold in the business services space. While the deal will surely boost Xerox, investors wondered whether it overpriced the deal.

Calling the ACS deal “a game-changer” for Xerox, Burns, CEO of the company, said it would help Xerox “expand our business and benefit from stronger revenue and earnings growth.” The deal will triple the service component of Xerox’s revenue to roughly $10 billion annually from $3.5 billion, according to the company.

Dell – Perot Catch-Up Deal worth $ 3.9 Billion

Buying Perot was a part of Dell’s plan to expand its footprint in the IT services market, which was  a necessity in a time when hardware sales were falling. Dell offered a staggering $3.9 billion for Perot Systems, a 68% premium over Perot’s actual stock value. Dell’s purchase can also be seen as a response to rival HP’s $13.9 billion acquisition the previous year of EDS — another services company founded by Perot.

Cisco-Tandberg worth  $3.4 billion

Cisco, already a major player in collaboration products with WebEx and TelePresence, signed an agreement in October to purchase videoconferencing vendor Tandberg, which makes both video devices and network infrastructure products. The acquisition, if completed, could have both a direct and indirect impact on Cisco’s bottom line, because expanded use of videoconferencing may increase network traffic, letting Cisco sell more switches and routers.

HP Acquires 3Com For $2.7 Billion

HP launched a straightforward assault on Cisco in their own Game of Networks. HP’s increasing influence in data center networking and convergence markets will have a big boost with its purchase of 3Com, a maker of switches, routers and security products. HP says the acquisition will further its data center strategy “built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services.” The acquisition of 3Com also help to expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China thanks to 3Com’s strong presence in China. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

I have collected the figures and numbers from various sources including PCWorld, Gigaom and Wikipedia. Let me know if you have a suggestion or correction to make. Please forgive me for the grammar, I was always bad in Grammar since school

Article Previosuly mirror-posted by me at Global Thoughtz.

Anand

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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…Post-reporting from the “Creative Business in the Digital Era” seminar, in 01zero-one centre in Soho.

The idea in the CBDE was to bring together people from different walks of the creative industry (music, cinema, publishing, photography…) whose common point is the zeros and the ones: digital works and concepts.

…so as to exchange on intellectual property, open rights, business models, digital marketing, creativity, its stimulation, its canalisation…

If it wasn’t for Suw Charman-Anderson and Michael Holloway from the Open Rights Group (a growing NGO community focusing on Digital Rights Issues) I would have probably stayed home and the other guys may have crossed each other on the pub. So thank you guys for setting up and animating the whole day!

The project has a wiki, at our disposal beforehand – a great thing, given the variety of the people attending.

On Monday we warmed up with a notion-shower by Suw, then got in the shoes of Radiohead and their In RainBows experiment and finally had some real entrepreneurs of the digital era sharing their vision:

A great Tom speaker and Reynolds author of “Blood, Sweat and Tea” distributed under a Creative Commons Licence.

John Buckman, multi-entrepreneur, mostly known as Magnatune CEO and as Bookmooch owner.

And finally, David Bausola and Rob Myers, the principal conceptual stormers behind the project “Where are the Joneses?”.

What are the Joneses? Based on a series-like format, it is mostly a transmedia chameleon; the product is shaped by its environment and its audience, the significance changes depending the angle you choose to look at it.

Nobody knew in advance where the joneses were, the public decided the how-what-where, sending them around Europe to find their siblings, participating themselves in the scenario, in the acting etc.

Mr and Ms Jones, if you came to France you might have recognised Laurent Godard as your sibling : he’s the father of Flateurville, a “discussional” building of a village to finally come up with a film. How? Through regular interactions with the audience, in a “salle de jeux” every Thursday evening. More to discover “sur place” if you happen to be in Paris.

The whole experience made me more aware of the fact that prediction is a quite autistic procedure in digital business, you’d better keep it away if you want things going on smoothly. Well I suppose that it had always been like this, long before I woke up, but in digital business where cycles are faster and faster, prediction seems really outdated.

So, just for the pleasure of philosophizing a bit, prediction may have been only a temporary solution for the industrial first era of business, serving to bridge the gap of the missing dialogue with the “consumer”.

John Buckman made this quite clear to me when discussing on his Magnatune and Bookmooch activities where he applies a trial-error-adaptation schema.

“listen” and “reply” in a way that makes sense, seem to form the principia of digital business for those who do it. The commercial transaction being replaced by a commercial natural language dialogue? trial and error this question as well…

Shall this be confirmed, does it mean we’re finally moving on from Industry to Internet? spring feels good…

(to be internetically correct, if someone who reads this is on the south hemisphere, enterring fall, please replace the season by the metallic mecanism as far as spring is concerned, it also feels good)

To get back to last Monday,

My personal favourite gadget presented that day is CCMixter, a pool-tool of music creativity on a “molecular” level : you can post and find samples, remixes,  a capellas and build on them since they are licensed under creative commons. Quite solid concept, as it connects the two extremities of the 2.0 value chain: the artist with the user. Plus it teased some of my memory parts referring to other music tools, like C-sound. I wonder what applies in the case of music-code copyrights…

Cheese.

Accuse me of writting cheese, “come on Georgia, stop name dropping and all”

Nope nope, cheesy or not, the sensation of this seminar was like a cute baby incarnating the taste for openness, the playfulness of creativity and the cosiness of legally-correct digital business.

loved it.

Cheers.

Georgia

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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So, how often will it switch jobs? Every 3 years, two times a year, each month or…. why not several times a day?

Assumption: A job may less and less be outline of your style, status and skills, THE choice that you make in your self-creative youth and pursue with passion until your hands have shrunk and you mumble wisdoms on professional resilience to your children.

It seems (to me, to you too maybe?) that jobs get more and more project–centric, existing-skills based, time and locality indifferent.

with Theme-generated-tasks’ accomplishment  transforming into task accomplishment around a theme.

The digital business field, where change is well in advance, brings up a strong trend on segmentation of the classical notion of job.

Two examples on the internet can tell the story:

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

and

Innocentive

These two companies propose a per task remunerated employment, amazingly different as regarding necessary skills.

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk mostly addresses the non qualified workforce and Innocentive the ultra specialized scientific one. The concept on both is that you’re hired on a per project basis, for a translation, to prove the Fermat Theorem or to fill in the ISO forms.

It is then highly important to have a personal job management system to handle contests you participate and your prizes, puzzle your profile and communicate with trusted professionals.

A sort of e-mployment survival kit to prevent you from e-xploitation.

This vast talent pool of potential Mechanical Turks, scientists and everyone between, also creates opportunities for providers of meta-HR services to aggregate and compose job particles into a real job.

Providers such as advisors, agents and therapists:

social engineers, serial trendsetters, legal timing planners for fringe technology testers (“get the trial before the action is criminalised with a law”), real life rehabilitation mentors (“get rid of Wii gestures when in the grocer’s”), tec-addiction therapists, viral marketing therapists/ digital image makers (banal already maybe), mini-krach recoverers, startup estate agents, other (attention, this is not a generic term, it can be a job where you are paid to differentiate and foster evolution), and so on.

A combination of a middlejob with a classical one or the mix of various middlejobs could result in a steady plus variable income, mental coherence and growth, an optimised planning and a life-job balance.

On the “which?” the question is open. On the “how many?” 2 jobs maybe ok while 3 or more could definitely assure the statics of the e-mployement construction. …

Job- memo for my pizzababy: Exercise with 3 or more jobs, with an hourly basis frequency, vary the status. In case you need help call your agent.

After it was digested I went back to work.

Georgia

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

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