Google announced their new Friend Connect today and will be demoing it tonight at the Google Campfire event. While I won’t be present at it, I’m sure there will be plenty of bloggers covering it. Throughout the day I’ve been discussing this new service with other people in the industry including Frank Gruber who asks “How does Google Friend Connect put users in control?”

The reality is that it doesn’t give users much control as Marshall Kirkpatrick points out. The problem is that all applications are placed in iFrames which isn’t really a great solution for anybody. Personally I have high hopes for the upcoming Facebook Connect service but the problem still remains, users don’t really have the control. For Facebook Connect, Facebook gets to be the center of a user’s control. The same thing goes for Myspace’s new program.

But we are the users and we still want control. Well thanks to Snap!, I’ve got the power (hint: you too can have the power by watching the video below) but I don’t have control. This is a great move as all parties move forward. Unfortunately all parties are moving forward in parallel and with their own standards. They each want to control a user’s social experience on the web.

Myspace, Facebook and Google all may succeed at retaining some control but unfortunately it doesn’t make things easier for website owners who will have to choose which platform they will accept until someone makes it possible for all of the systems to work together. The next twelve months will be marked by the opening of these new standards and the launch of a variety of applications but it is still a short-term solution.

We are going to need to make these platforms work together if we’re going to succeed. Who do you think has the power with these new systems?

Last week, Myspace and Facebook both announced the extension of their platforms to the web in general and acording to Mike Arrington, Google will be making a similar announcement on Monday night. These announcements mark a trend toward the abstraction of social features as whole on the web. Over the past 12 months we have seen the launch of a number of social platforms each containing their own application directories.

Now that many of those features will be extended outside of the platforms I’d imagine that we will see these directories begin to display all external facing applications. The closest thing I can think of that mimics the functionality of this theoretical directory is the Web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel and Eyal Shahar.

The idea of a social web directory is similar to the concept of what Yahoo! originally launched as, a virtual web directory. Having the ability to categorize all websites that leverage social data is extremely useful. While most of these sites focus on communication, practically any website can leverage social data. I’d imagine one of the first tools to leverage the new Facebook, Myspace and Google external social platforms will be a MyBlogLog competitor.

Can you think of any other interesting uses of the recently announced Myspace Data Availability initiative, Facebook connect and Google friend connect?

I recently have been playing with the idea that good social media can turn action into voice. This is the idea that when used properly, social media can your everyday actions into an advocate for your personal brand. The problem comes from when you think that voice falls on deaf ears.

Being a PR pro I am typically concerned with two things when it comes to messaging: Reach and Return. Reach and return have to do with if you message is reaching the right people and if that message is returning a positive image on your brand.

With typical media these are very easy to track, you can see if an article or report was written about you and then apply some simple tools to see if the article was positive or negative. You can also create programs or events that create a positive image and gauge the public’s reaction. With social media the tracking becomes a little more difficult.

Often your connections in social media do not show you an immediate return. Building a network of social connections is time intensive and can be a discouraging process if you fail to keep a realistic goal for social media program in your mind.

When performing social media on a professional level this lack of ROI can often dissuade your clients from choosing to act on social media program. To combat your client’s apprehension I suggest adopting a social media scale that your client is comfortable with.

People new to social media often fail to see the little things that make it work. New comers expect every message to change the world, every post to be dugg or make Yahoo buzz, and every video to be the next ‘Will it blend?’ In reality most of your work with social media will only create small changes with long term effects.

When working with a client or trying social media for the first time for yourself try and create a realistic set of goals that you can reach over a period of time. Don’t write goals like, “make the front page of digg in the first week” or “get 10,000 hits on new viral video.” Instead write goals like, “find 500 friends” or “increase my comment level by 10 percent.”

By creating a set of manageable goals you will become less discourage by the time investment that social media entails. Your clients will start to see ROI because you are managing their expectations and you will be able to grow your online presence in a manner that best suits your needs.

What are your goals when working with social media on a professional level? Do you do client work or do you manage your personal brand? Do you have a system of goals in place? I am always interested in hearing how others use social media to promote themselves and others.

Alexander Vanelsas has written a great post in which he analyzes the pros and cons of a free business model as well as the “freemium” business model. Alexander proceeds to list out a variety of things that result from having a free business model. Here are a few of the things that Alexander highlights:

• Free leads to destination sites with walled gardens
• Free makes the network more important than the user
• Free leads to forced attention on advertisement
• Free leads to customer lock in instead of customer freedom

Many of his examples make a lot of sense and just by taking a look at the highlights you can guess what companies Alexander is referring to. The main point that Alexander makes is that free is not for everyone. This is a great point and I would argue that for most, free is not ideal. As the onslaught of free services continue, it is too frequently that we register for and quickly forget the services that we’ve used.

Only a few stick. The reality is that charging for your service can actually provide an advantage. The buyer immediately perceives some sort of premium offering when you charge for it. They will also check reviews and try to determine what sort of experience other paying customers had. One of the best parts of charging consumers is that you actually get paid to make changes that customers request.

My belief is that as we see an influx of free services that claim to provide valuable solutions, users will continue to maintain high expectations. If a large portion of free software doesn’t meet their expectations, they will simply pay for it. I’ve done so myself and I’ve worked for companies that will pay for perceived reliability even if the paid solution doesn’t provide it.

As our time becomes more valuable and we waste more time on our free services, we will turn to paid solutions. It’s as simple as that. Conversely, if your free solution ends up really being a “solution” to a lacking feature on a Web 2.0 site, it really may not be worth paying for. An example of this would be a social network with a better user interface than Facebook. This really isn’t something people will pay for.

While the solutions to lacking feature sets isn’t the best way to build a paid model, you can generate revenue by building solid products that truly provide value for users. As Alexander points out, it is our job to discover solutions that truly find value. Do you think the free model continues to make sense or does the paid model finally make more sense?

Everyday you can go take a look at Techmeme and find at least one conversation that’s absolutely useless. Today’s useless conversation surrounds the decentralization of Twitter. Me taking time of day to write about how useless the conversation is quite ironic but then again I too have the luxury of speaking from the ivory tower.

Many people spend hours discussing theory and philosophy while taking down a glass of their favorite latte. I can’t criticize them for that, because it occasionally leads to execution, but it makes me realize how blessed most of us really are. The reality is that none of the people discussing this decentralization are really going to put this into action. In theory it makes a lot of sense the same way that decentralized blogging makes sense.

Are the geeks of the blogosphere going to suddenly create an uprising against Twitter because they occasionally suffer some downtime? Seriously this conversation is absolutely ridiculous. We should have decentralized social networks before we have decentralized Twitter. If you are one of the people reading all of this conversation, please feel free to put your feedback in the comments. In general, I think the conversation is a waste of time but then again, I can take 5 minutes out of my day to discuss it.

Do you think the decentralization/open-sourcing of Twitter makes much sense? Do you even use Twitter? Why the hell can’t Silicon Valley stop buzzing about Twitter?

Continuing with the generational meme that I started this morning, I decided to post about an article that I came across on the Navigation Arts website. The article paints a portrait of what Graziella Jackson calls a “dot teen.” It describes Meghan as a 17 year old girl that is frequently on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and iLike.

Practically every large “Web 2.0″ site that you can think of, Meghan is on it. While I don’t consider any of the sites mentioned as the early adopter phase, one thing that stood out to me is that Graziella claimed Meghan (the dot teen) is twittering regularly. I found that to be surprising given Kara Swisher’s description of most people not being aware of Twitter. Nobody that Kara spoke to at a wedding in Washington, D.C. knew what Twitter was.

While Kara clearly wasn’t hanging out with the rest of us at Tech Cocktail DC, she may have a point. Most people don’t know what Twitter is even though the “dot teen” does as well as the rest of the early adopters. So approximately what percentage of teens are dot teens? Unfortunately this article doesn’t say but the article did provide few general statistics about general technology usage among teens.

While 93 percent of American teens use the internet only 63 percent own a cell phone. 90 percent use a family computer though suggesting that parents may have a substantial amount of control over teen computer use in the house. So as for my initial question: are most teens web geeks at heart? Well unfortunately the article doesn’t answer that question.

My interpretation was that those who are granted frequent access to computers tend to spend more time leveraging the tools that help them avoid information overload. Do you have a dot teen or know some? Are they any different than the early adopter web community? How do you think they differ from the majority of teens or are dot teens the majority?

I just got back from a great lunch with a local executive who helps run a mobile application company. One of the primary things they are specializing in is building mobile social networks and helping other companies plug into those networks. We had a great conversation about the future of mobile and social networks and the challenges that social networks currently face in entering the mobile arena.

It is also common knowledge that social networking sites already face a challenge within their businesses to effectively monetize their sites. So far, nobody has been extremely effective at it. Facebook has been pulling in new executives to try and make an attempt at new monetization strategies but ultimately working to monetize a site which I argue will not be a central destination point a few years from now is relatively worthless.

Instead, the social network sites are going to turn to mobile as one of the central locations for monetization. Text messages and subscriptions are the norm on mobile carriers. This leads me to believe that perhaps social networks will potentially become a subscription service. The only counter argument to this is that Twitter is not currently monetizing their site aside from one ad that’s displayed on the Japanese version of their site.

While there are no answers as to what will happen in the future, I think a lot of potential for social networks exist on mobile. The real question is if the mobile applications will be monetized or if Twitter is destroying the opportunity for future players. How do you think social networks and mobile will work together?

Mike Arrington has a post up about how Twitter may not have to survive downtime. He argues that he is now locked into his network on Twitter and that downtime can’t prevent him from using the network. For many users (myslelf included), over the past few days the updates of many friends haven’t been appearing in their Twitter stream.

Definitely not the end of the world but it has had an impact on usage. Conversely, if you take a look at the most recent Alexa chart, the site has been growing at a greater than average pace recently so it doesn’t appear to be stopping user uptake. At this point the real question is if there is another microblogging service that can take over Twitter. While there are sites like Pownce, Jaiku and Friendfeed, none of them have been successful so far at gaining as much user adoption as Twitter.

The only service that I can currently foresee taking over Twitter is Facebook. Users on the site are absolutely addicted to status updates. They update their status regularly and check in on what their friends are up to. The only thing currently lacking is the ability to reply to other users’ status updates. If Facebook added a similar service as Twitter it would instantly stop much of Twitter’s growth. Most of the people I’m connected to on Twitter are already on Facebook and I am connected to them there as well.

While the hole discussion is much ado about nothing, I figured I’d throw in my two cents. Do you think there are any other services that will be able to compete with Twitter?

An article posted today in Popular Mechanics asks if social may end up defeating search. Are they suggesting that social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others could actually defeat a multi-billion dollar company like Google? Yes and I completely agree. How do I know this? Well I found this article through my Twitter feed thanks to Alice Marshall. Honestly, over the past few days a large percentage of my news sources have come through Twitter.

Is there anything wrong with this? Andrew Keen (who I’ve been blabbing about for most of the day) would argue that yes there is a problem with this. The lack of editorial oversight is damaging. When I’m linked to a source that has been processed by an editor, I see nothing wrong with it. What’s wrong is when our group of people is made up of a network of uninformed sources. Thankfully, I am networked through a group of people that I perceive as informed individuals.

The article states that “what may turn out to be the strongest signal of all is the footprint you make with your online identity.” I couldn’t agree more. Just take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk’s book which has become the 85th most popular book on Amazon in under 24-hours all because of word of mouth. Whether you like it or not, Gary has one of the strongest digital footprints on the web.

What we want to avoid is mob rule and while we do occasionally see mobs result (as took place at the Sarah Lacy/Zuckerberg interview), much of the time the collective is more then happy to share information in a rational way. If we build our networks large enough we can leverage the power of them to find solutions for us. Don’t have a large enough network yet? No worries, you can leverage one of your trusted friends that has an effective network. That’s already how hiring takes place, why not use it for finding information?

Adam Smith Was Right, Specialization is Key
Adam Smith suggested that economic growth is rooted in division of labor. In the digital world, that division is rapidly becoming the specialization of knowledge. I mean aren’t most of us already information workers anyways? If we all specialize in a specific topic, we can each provide others with the information they are looking for. I’ll ask Gary Vaynerchuk for a good wine and ask Frank Gruber for the best tool to install polls on my blog. While this works much of the time there are a number of conflicts which arise from social knowledge sourcing:

• Challenge of balancing pleasure and work - One of the primary conflicts in an information age where we leverage specialized social knowledge is the conflict of socializing for work and socializing for pleasure. We’ve already begun to see this conflict arise and you can watch it take place all day on Twitter.
• Plethora of disinformation - It is all too often that we cite one source as our source for information and use it to make judgements. This is because we assume that the other end performed due diligence. I would argue that this is easily defeated in a world of social knowledge by simply having multiple social knowledge experts on the same topic that can give us multiple references.
• Lack of access - If you aren’t plugged into the network (as most of us are), you aren’t going to be able to easily find information. For this I think of my friend who’s dad gets all of his sources via the newspaper and library books. While perfectly acceptable and most likely accurate sources (since they went through an editorial process), he does not realize how quickly he could access certain information. Luckily anybody with a phone will have access, they just need to be aware of services.
• Details - There are a bunch of other issues that need to be worked out and unforseen issues that will arise.

So is social already beginning to substitute search for you? Do you think we will get the majority of our information through social instead of search?

Last night I was reading “Cult of the Amateur.” The book discusses how truth is being redefined by the new social technologies that we use daily. Early on in the book the author, Andrew Keen states “it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.”

If you want more details behind the debate, check out the video “The Truth According to Wikipedia.” Much of what is argued make a lot of sense but to say that I have been completely convinced of Andrew Keen’s argument would be inaccurate. There is a valid point made though. At one point editors determined what truth was. You had to get Wired magazine to find out the truth about Technology. Today, Techcrunch and Techmeme are defining what is technology.

The news is now frequently defined by mob mentality and that’s what Techmeme has become. Last night, the big technology news was that Facebook had created a new feature to enable users to share their del.icio.us links, Flickr and Picasa photos and Yelp! reviews. Yes world, today I bookmarked 9 articles via Del.icio.us. Let’s be honest, most of these things don’t matter but when 20 influential people say it does … it does.

Andrew Keen is accurate when he states that the loudest and most opinionated individuals survive. Honestly Andrew Keen may be one of the most opinionated individuals around but he does make a good point. I am a product of this model. I was able to produce a large volume of posts on Facebook and suddenly AllFacebook became the largest blog on Facebook and was at one point one of the top 50 blogs on Techmeme.

What suddenly stuck with me last night was that those individuals at the top of Techmeme are frequently controlling the conversation. Take a look at the Techmeme leaderboard and you’ll see who are the top creators of the conversation that has taken place. The media has become the conversation and the leaders on the Techmeme leaderboard are those that are currently guiding the discussion. Is this wrong? Not necessarily but what if you don’t want to be part of the technology conversation?

Right now you need to use Twitter, Facebook and other resources to determine what other conversation is out there but so far technology, politics and gossip are the primary categories that have benefited (or suffered depending on your perspective) from memefication (I just made up that word). The bottom line is that we want to have interesting stories aggregated around different content and Mixx.com is a perfect example of aggregating diverse information.

The only problem is that it requires everybody “mixxing” their content rather than tracking what people are talking about. Enough of my written diarrhea. My main point here is that the Techmeme effect that we have seen take place over the past couple year or two can only be sustained for so long. People will get tired of “conversing” with the same people and go elsewhere. That’s why there has been so much discussion recently (as there was yesterday) about new alternatives.

Will everybody leave? Not necessarily but once somebody comes close to duplicating the Techmeme technology I could see it rapidly used for other conversations with other participants. Do you think the echo chamber can be defeated? Perhaps my solution of creating more echo chambers doesn’t make as much sense.