This entry was posted April 22nd, 2010 and has 5 comments.
There is no doubt that the changes announced yesterday at Facebook’s F8 conference will have a major impact on the web, how it looks, and how we use it in the coming months and years. The prospect of an open graph with the ability to transport your personal interests and preferences around the web with you is quite intriguing. This could also end up being the tool marketers have been clamoring for for years. They may now finally have the ability to hyper-target potential customers online at a scale large enough to demand huge advertising budgets.
But you can never gain one thing without losing something else. The web experience at large may benefit significantly from this, but it will be at the peril of the actual Facebook experience.
First, let’s look at who comprises the majority of a typical person’s Facebook friends. Most of our friends lists include not just family and good friends, but also former and current coworkers, some people we went to high school with, and a few random people who snuck through our approved friend requests. Whatever the reason, we are connected to these people because we, at least on some level, know them.
The point here is this - Most people care about the things shared on Facebook not because of the content itself as much as because of who is sharing that content. For example, I don’t necessarily love looking at pictures of babies, but will gladly spend time looking at pictures of my cousins baby because I love her. What I am not interested in, however, is seeing every site my cousin ‘likes’ across the web that features pictures of cute babies.
This entry was posted December 8th, 2009 and has 1 comment.
Yesterday, Google announced that they were introducing real-time search. Essentially this means that Google results pages will now include information from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. as these updates are being posted. While Bing has already been including real-time information in their search results, it’s always big news when the market leader introduces a feature.
Perhaps the most important thing to note is that Google real-time search will differ from Twitter’s own search in that it will apply Google’s technology to deliver relevant results. This is key. It’s not just about delivering the latest updates, but about delivering the most relevant results to users. Google’s success has always and will always hinge on delivering the most relevant information possible.
I want to spend some time using real-time search before offering my full thoughts on it. In the meantime, Wired gives more details and insights on real-time search as well as some of the other products Google has announced recently. You can also read Google’s official statements about the need for real-time search coupled with Google technology.
Google’s example of how Real-Time Search functions:
This entry was posted October 7th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Even as I sit to write this post, I’ve been distracted from starting by emails, IMs, Twitter, coworkers’ questions and a ringing telephone. As vital as all of these means of communication are, they often keep me from truly ruminating on a thought, problem, or idea long enough to come up with a stance or solution. Lately I’ve even started becoming frustrated with myself and my increasing lack of focus.
As is usually the case though, I don’t believe the tools are to blame, but the user of these tools. My main question for myself and any readers is, ‘How do I balance my need to be connected with my desire to think through and find answers to complex questions?’
Some of these questions deal with work and the best solution for clients. But in today’s world there are so many other questions that I feel the need to be educated on. Should the government have gone for the $700B bailed out? I don’t know. What should be the focus of US foreign policy? Umm, not sure. Wait, did anyone reply to my last Twitter update?
Now, it’s not like anyone is waiting for me to come up with these answers. It’s not like G.W. is calling me in the morning for my final decision. But lately I’ve just felt the need to step outside of myself and my daily routine and think about some bigger issues. And more important, not just think about them for 30 seconds, but actually take the time to learn enough about a topic and think about it enough to form a full opinion.
So I guess I’m really just looking for suggestions. With the distractions that surround us every day, what do you do when you need to think about a question long enough to come up with an answer?
This entry was posted August 21st, 2008 and has 2 comments.
This week, John Berry penned a very interesting and thought-provoking piece for the Baltimore City Paper titled, “Press Release, The Sun’s Ever-Shrinking Newsroom Isn’t Good News For Baltimore“. In this piece Berry takes us through the last 10-20 years of staff cutbacks, branch closures, and formatting changes that have occurred at the Baltimore Sun. Berry makes many great points and shows why every major city needs a credible, well-researched, daily news periodical.
The vast majority of Baltimore citizens can agree with this. We need professional, full-time journalists to cover our city and bring all of the stories into the public eye. What Berry doesn’t discuss, and what many newspaper executives around the country are no doubt struggling with, is how do newspapers remain relevant and increase readership in the 21st century? How do newspapers grow and remain profitable so they can afford to hire and retain these journalists and run a paper that people want to read?
Advertisers are the major revenue stream for any newspaper. As all of us know, there has been an explosion of new media options over the past 5-10 years. Where advertisers used to only have to choose from TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers, their choices have been compounded exponentially by the options available on the web, mobile, and other digital platforms. Newspapers have been hit especially hard by the web and the accountability and tracking it offers.
This entry was posted July 16th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
If you are reading this blog, or have seen a computer, newspaper, television, or any other media device in the past week, you know that last Friday Apple released the new iPhone 3G.
The vast majority of what I have read has been in glowing praise of the new iPhone. Despite the major issues experienced at Apple and AT&T stores across the country last Friday, everyone who has one seems to love it. I have been suffering from a severe case of iPhone envy over the past week.
There are now also tons of very useful applications that you can download to your iPhone. Mike got one that allows him control his computer’s iTunes via the Airport Express directly from his iPhone. This is only one small example, but there are many out there.
Now, let’s look at my current mobile device situation.
This entry was posted March 7th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Anyone who visited YouTube today may have been a bit confused and asked themselves who or what is Sigur Ros? Today, Heima, the 97-minute documentary from the brilliant Icelandic band Sigur Ros, became the first feature-length music DVD to be available on YouTube. Sigur Ros also took over all of the Featured Videos space on the homepage as seen in the screen shot below.
My first reaction to this news is to be a bit shocked. Sigur Ros, while a beautiful band and one of my favorites, does not seem like the logical choice for something like this. That’s why this is so awesome. All Sigur Ros songs are sung in Icelandic and their music is a bit more ethereal than most popular bands. I guess I would expect a huge company like YouTube/Google to choose a more well-known or accessible band like Radiohead or Coldplay. Or, maybe I was expecting something lame like Fall Out Boy or Good Charlotte.
This entry was posted February 25th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Not only is Dustin Pfeifer a good friend of mine and a champion BSSC quarterback, but he is also an excellent web designer and developer. Dustin and I went to school together and also worked in the marketing department at our last company for about four years. During that time we worked on a lot of projects together, many of which I am still really proud of.
I left that company last April and in October, Dustin decided to work for himself full-time and focus on his company, Dustin Pfeifer Creative. He’s already done some great work that you can see on his brand new site, DustinPfeifer.com.
This entry was posted November 7th, 2007 and has no nomments.
If you haven’t seen 365 Shirts yet, well then where have you been for the past 141 days?
My good friend and roommate Mike had the brilliant idea to wear a different shirt every day for one full year. Each day he blogs about the shirt and whatever is going on that day. The goal of the blog is not only to be fun and entertaining, but also to raise money through donations, and awareness for Alzheimer’s research.
So, like I said, if you haven’t been to 365 Shirts yet, get over there and check it out. Then, bookmark it and visit daily.
Also, 365 Shirts is involved in a blog contest hosted by Behance. Behance is a very cool site that showcases great creative work and encourages collaboration and idea sharing among creative professionals. Their tagline is, “Make Ideas Happen.”
This entry was posted October 31st, 2007 and has 2 comments.
At this time 2 weeks ago, I was impatiently anticipating the arrival of my new MacBook. For the past 5 years or so, I had been using an eMac. Sort of a less-expensive cousin to the much more popular iMac, the eMac was a rather short-lived product for Apple. I believe it only saw one generation.
So, back to waiting for my MacBook. I ordered it online on Sunday. I know, I could have easily gotten in the car, driven 10 minutes to my local Apple store and not have to wait, but for whatever reason, I decided to order online. So on Tuesday, a few days ahead of schedule, a package arrived at my office. I was obviously very excited and thanked the FedEx driver. To my great disappointment, the box I opened only contained the MacBook case, not the MacBook itself. Quite ironic, don’t you think?
So, after 4-5 calls to FedEx and another to Apple, I figured out that the shipper (Apple) did not label the box properly and my MacBook had been sitting on the FedEx truck for 4 days. The second box finally arrived on Friday, and Apple was even good enough to credit me $50 for my troubles.
This entry was posted October 24th, 2007 and has 3 comments.
That’s right. The Wall Street Journal announced this afternoon that Microsoft has agreed to buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook for a cool $240 million. This values Facebook at a total of $15 billion. This move has been highly anticipated and talked about for months, but no one was sure whether Microsoft would win out over the likes of Google.
It is absolutely amazing how quickly the value of social networking sites have risen. Just 2 years ago, News Corp bought all of MySpace for $580 million. Even more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo just last summer. While many thought he was either crazy, or just an egomaniac, that move is looking quite brilliant today.
So, what could make a social networking site like Facebook possibly worth $15 billion? First, as nearly every media outlet has documented, advertising on TV, radio, and in print continue to decline while digital media has been growing tremendously. Most analyst expect this trend to continue as the internet and other digital technologies become more and more a necessary aspect of our lives. This means that large companies will be spending big bucks online.
