» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

FriendFeed vs. SocialThing!

jelewis8 — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:56:19 +0000

I think it’s in. FriendFeed vs. SocialThing! is the new HD vs. BluRay, Beta vs. VHS. With my limited knowledge of both, I’m going to make a prediction that FriendFeed will come out on top, leaving a very limited number of SocialThing! users who will cry into their corn flakes every morning as they aggregate their feeds on the one social networking platform everyone seemed to like, know was better, and adopted early (they even gave VC to the project), yet did not adopt. Why the war?
Competition is the Web 2.5.

Kona and Content

jelewis8 — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:22:59 +0000

I asked my local roastmaster AJ what he was drinking behind the counter, and he told me it was Kona coffee from the Greenwell coop in Hawaii. He’s not offering this coffee on the menu currently, because it’s so expensive. $35 a pound for green beans. AJ is a specialty roaster, so this coffee is great for small batch customers and those willing to pay more for a cup of coffee roasted to perfection.
But AJ gave me a cup and I’m drinking it–black, which isn’t how I normally drink coffee (I’m a cream and sugar kind of guy)–because you gotta drink Kona black. And it got me to thinking about content for the web.
Good web content is like good Kona coffee. The value that comes from powerful content packaged through a recognized and established site (or co-op) is valuable only to those who recognize the power of such information. Information well packaged and provided to discriminating users will always be profitable. One, they are customers who can afford to pay for top-notch content. Two, they recognize your leadership in providing that content, and thus are more likely to return for more. Three, they are looking for a return on that investment, which means that value-added content is expressly tailored to their needs.
This is what the web is moving toward–more niches, more small-growth, selective and paired with ideas that have the potential to revolutionize how people work, play, and interact online and off.
So when AJ offers me a private cup of Kona coffee, I appreciate the cup for its smooth, rich flavor, the aroma and bold approachability. And the beautiful thing is, I can browse content-rich sites as I drink, giving site owners my repeat business (in terms of patronage and interaction and potentially payment in exchange for services or deep content).

Feeding My Urges

jelewis8 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:41:30 +0000

I have been playing around quite a bit lately with feeds and social networking. Twitter is one app I’ve come to really enjoy using, mostly because it appeals to my personal coda of less = more, e.g. one can do massively more if one does massively less in this new web 2.0 space. RIA (Rich Internet Applications) afford a great deal of usability, but the sheer numbers have a bit of a crippling effect on my personal productivity. I am also not interested in achieving a kind of notoriety in my online habits.
Twitter scratches me right where I itch. Its microformat limits the amount of time I can legitimately spend on it, and it has what Stephen Jay Gould might call a punctuated evolution to its information flow–because messages are limited to 140 characters, information is necessarily reduced to quanta. I like this because it forces me to rely on pure data to adequately convey my thoughts, actions, and intentions.
Which is what Twittering comes down to. And I see it can be used for numerous information outlets: advertising, blanket quick-info blasts, timeline-ing, recruitment, and assisting users. Earlier today, I purchased a domain on behalf of a Tweeter whom I’ve never met. That’s the kind of 2.0 interactivity and give-and-take that I want. Short form relationships, I think, are best in this environment.