Mike Butcher

I am reminded of the days when Web access was banned by employers because employees would spend too much time on it. Now Facebook is getting banned by City firms. I mean you might as well ban email and the phone. Dennis Howlett has a good quote on this subject from a former CTO at Dresdner:

“I remember a time, it must have been the early 1980s, when it was common to ban phones with direct dial facilities. Why? Because people might talk to their friends and family during work time…Banning Facebook is the equivalent of banning coffee shops and water coolers and loos.”

Surely education is the answer, not banning stuff? Besides it’ll all settle down when people get bored with being bitten by Zombies or poked by strangers…(or will they…?)

Julian Bond at Voidstar has a great post on routing all your and your friend’s Status updates from Facebook to Twitter using Mario Menti’s excellent TwitterFeed service. Now, here’s my question. Is this not completely insane? Keeping up with Twitter feeds is hard enough. Adding Facebook status updates would hasten my “Twitter Bankruptcy”. At least with Twitter most people tend to keep in the back of their head that at least some of their key followers get Tweets sent direct to their mobiles via SMS. That means Twitter posts – which are also limited to 140 characters – tend to be much more concise than Facebook status updates, which can be even more throwaway that Tweets, if that doesn’t sound like an impossibility…

To illustrate, here’s is an example of my friends’ facebook status updates this morning:

XXXX XXXX is swapping one kind of chaos for another.

one minute ago

XXXX XXXX is pleased that there is finally some sunshine!

7 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is back once more like the renegade master.

11 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the other only caff on the A4.

30 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is hoping the weather at 5am this morning holdup for the rest of the week for the folks back home.

44 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is prodding Drupal with a sensitive implement.

49 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the office.

50 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is pleased to see that Mike Reid’s death is getting billed above Ingmar Bergman’s on BBC Online. That will probably change. Right? Runaround!

56 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is back in the office.

57 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the office.

about an hour ago

What I call ‘conversational status’ is a great way of just shooting the breeze, but the added element of mobile changes the character of the conversation to be pithier and often far more relevant to location.

Which reminds me of how one Twitter friend of mine recently said he was ‘pruning his Twitter friends’ down to just those in London. His Twitter conversation wouldn’t make any sense otherwise…

Today I’ve been reading Rex Hammock’s Weblog (thanks Voidstar for the link) who writes about how Facebook it’s not really the Holy Grail for either social networking or being the ultimate tool for collaborative working and tracking. He calls it’ “geek play”, and I agree. He says:

Facebook is not even close to being what will ultimately be that thing which alters fundamentally the way in which we relate and communicate. It may show us the way, but there are some important factors related to personal identity and social interaction that Facebook — or any platform that requires us to create community that is locked inside a wall — will not be able to overcome if it is to become the next be-all, end-all.

He also mentioned Ning which was previewed last year at Content 2.0 here in London when Marc Canter got up on stage and pointed out that MySpace users couldn’t own theor own profiles or move them around networks. Well guess what? here we are again with the same old issue all over again, this time with Facebook.

Meanwhile over here, “A VC in NYC” agrees with Jason Calacanis that “Facebook Bakruptcy” is where you have total overload of friend requests and incoming stuff to deal with. Plus FB is becoming so successful, startups are wondering if they should just build an application for Facebook rather than build out a whole web service.

My view is that building a site is a marathon not a sprint. If you can’t control your content then you have no business long term. Sure, market your site on Facebook – but don’t for pete’s sake put your whole idea into it.

It seems to me that something like Wordcamp should be done in the UK. The techies have their BarCamp. Why not something around content? And it doesn’t have to be just about WordPress skills…. (I use Drupal for instance).

Perhaps someone could provide a venue? People can showcase their skills/services. And I can learn how to be a better blogger!

I dare say there are a few other people we could bring together to make something happen…

Email me on mike at mbites dot com if you are interested.

Here are a few camphone snaps I took at the recent New Statesman New Media Awards. It was hosted by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent. It was held in some rather lovely gardens next to Westminster Cathedral which I daresay not that many people get to see. The guys getting their pictures taken are MySociety who won a couple of well-deserved awards, and at the bottom you can see the red trousers belonging to Guido Fawkes, the political blogger. Much fun was had by all, especially at the pub afterwards. I was a judge on the awards, ran the dedicated blog and wrote much of the awards supplement.

I’ve been kinda busy with other things lately (like, having a personal life) so it’s good to get back to some blogging on mbites (going since 2002, don’t you know?). Here’s a random list of things I’ve encountered recently.

• There’s a good article from Business Week on blogging, but you realise it’s written by an intern (it actually says this at the bottom) when they fail to check that TechCrunch UK is not running right now and implies Pete Cashmore’s Mashable makes all its money from advertising, when quite blatantly – and to be fair this is made quite clear – it is a front for his consulting services, which I dare say earns a tonne more money than the ads.

• Good piece from Last 100 on Microsoft’s future TV strategy: “There’s a reason Microsoft chose Mediaroom as the brand instead of simply Microsoft TV: they are looking to the future of entertainment, where TV is just one piece of the puzzle. Don’t be surprised if they eventually change “all your media in once place” to “all your media with you everywhere you go” because that’s where they are headed.”

• Marketers are abandoning Second Life. Why? Because inside the game they are purchasing genitalia but not, for instance the shoes that Reebok markets inside the world. Linden Labs claims it has eight million members but actual visitors to the world clock in at about 40,000 *regular* playing members. And many of those are members who do not pay a dime to SL. Meanwhile stores like American Apparel have been attacks by members. Not fun for marketers. The alternatives are going into worlds like There and Entropia Universe which are a great deal more structured than SL and don’t allow the sale of body parts. There is a long article investigating the whole issue over at The LA Times.

• This piece over at the NY Times seems to suggest Twitter is the new thing for marketers, but only today I’ve been reading about Twitter starting to struggle against Facbeook status updates. Conclusion? The market is in flux right now and there are no clear winners yet, especially in the realm of “expressive presence”.

• Content targeting is what Google has built its business on with AdSense contextual advertising. So by working out how to capture TV sound on a PC, Google can identify the TV show being watched and use that information to immediately return personalized Internet content to the viewer. This project is still in very early R&D stages but it is almost certain to happen. Does the TV industry have ANYTHING in response to this either via traditional broadcast network or IPTV? I doubt it. And it turns out ad-skipping could actually help TV networks to improve getting their ads in front of people who actually want to view them. Who knew?

• London is the Facebook capital of the moment, with more people here on the social networking site than in any other city. But without realising it most are now being unwittingly locked into a system that is going to be very hard to leave. Facebook’s locked-down approach is profoundly anti-Web 2.0 and utterly against the open standards the Web was heading towards. But as I keep telling people who wail about this stuff, this is exactly what works for the Average Joe. In just the same way Apple made digital music easy by instituting its own DRM (Fairplay) and eco-system (iTunes, iPod, Mac), Facebook is locking us all into its own application-friendly system. And we’re all biting. Facebook is now a Black Hole, sucking data into its inner core. Watch and learn.

There are some fascinating lessons to be learned from the closure of BackFence.com in the US. I think the most salient come in the comments to this story, namely that:

• “Hyper-local is about utility and networks of people, not citizen journalism”

• “they approached the problem from the top down rather than working to organize and shape existing natural local networks and chatter”

• “See the existing 72,000+ public ‘neighborhood’ Yahoo Groups (and who knows how many private groups) and the fast growing Facebook Regional networks as proof points of scalable hyper-local models…and the focus of these services isn’t even hyper-local!”

It’s clear to me, having watched the debates about citizen journalism (effectively ordinary people acting like reporters) on the one hand and social media (like MySpace, Facebook, even YahooGroups) on the other, that in every scenario social media wins. Why? Because of time. The simple fact is most people don’t have time to create content around their local area. Believe me, I’ve done it (professionally as a local newspaper journalist, and privately as a local activist). It’s a pain!

The only thing that makes it easier is being able to do it in “gulps” as in “Here’s the local phone number for this service” or “here’s where you sign up for this”. That’s it. Most people can’t do much more and those that could don’t have the time. Microblogging and Facebook status updates are literally a gift from heaven in this scenario.

That’s why social networks which give local people the tools to connect and create knowledge selfish/selflessley will win in this game. That’s also why local newspapers are potentially screwed.

Am video blogging from the Chinwag Party in London tonight. If you want your startup to be on tbites.com, call me – 07720291095

Piece this together from my Twitter feed. The storm clouds of weather and terrorism combined…. :

15:31

technokitten getting very bored of the rain. Maybe a cup of tea will help!

16:02

Suw @drewb: I’m in N7, but there was just the one rumble. Wondering if we’ll have more.

16:02

drewb Heathrow closed, all flights cancelled! All over the TV. A package has been found apparently. Got to be a big package to cancel all flights

16:21

Thayer Watching the very large fluffy and yet ominous clouds coming towards London. Woooo storm tastic!

16:33

Suw Dammit. Roofers now not coming til 8am tomorrow morning. They better bloody turn up!

16:51

Thayer Check out the storm clouds gathering over West to East London, taken from the Chinwag Roof Terrace http://www.flickr.com/photos/thayer18/

17:08

Thayer Lol, thanks for all the cloud suggestions Tweets I think the alien spacecraft wins Dog with long nose a close second! *giggle*

17:18

Suw Thunder and lightening on TV at Wimbledon; thunder outside. Funny how exciting it is. I mean, it’s just weather!

17:40

drewb Watching from 22nd floor as ‘planes fly through the lightning in central london. It’s like night has fallen

18:13

Cybersoc Heading north from kings cross thameslink on fcc to st. albans, luton, beds? no u aren’t. closed…

18:15

drewb @cybersoc: Kings Cross station going north west is closed? grt. bet Paddington’s crazy again

18:41

bowbrick Rainbow in the spray right next to my car on the M25!

18:47

bowbrick A triple rainbow!

19:33

Suw ooh, a rainbow! pretty!!

19:48

Cybersoc On a bus. Not supposed to be on a bus. In Hatfield. Not meant to be there either.

As described in Wired Magazine today: “TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz … and Cash”

“Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to “get the fuck out.” But he quickly realized they meant no harm. Clad in white business suits and speaking English with a Dutch accent, the apologetic men looked more like dandies on their way to a garden party than criminals.”