Mike Butcher - mbites

I would have to concur with Marshall Kirkpatrick. I also now use Twitter as a working tool, not just for 'status upates' (which I don't really do any more unless I can say something vaguely informative or funny). I use it to interrogate and interact with my work and social contacts. It's now one big ongoing conversation which can help me in my work, and especially in writing stories. I also was one of those who broke the story about Google buying Jaiku, and I got that because of seeing a Twitter post from a contact. As Marshall says:

People laugh at Twitter, and they can go ahead and laugh for all I care, but I'm here to tell you that it can be invaluable. Aside from the personal connectedness and relationship maintenance it's good for, let's be honest - it's paying my rent. (Thanks Twitter!) I don't mean they've hired me as a consultant, though I would love that, I mean Twitter is great for news discovery.

When Twitter started out it seemed like a cool new web application to update your 'status' (what you are up to) for friends and, well, the world in general. Like Facebook status updates, but out on the Wild Web. But when people started having conversations via their Twitter status updates using the "@" symbol (e.g. "@mike Yeah, I thought that")I was initially quite annoyed. I even direct-messaged some people to tell them to stop it! Go get a chat room! This was not the proper use of Twitter, I told them.

How wrong I was.

It quickly became apparent that this was turning into the best use of Twitter of all. Not for long, winding conversations you might have on instant messaging, but short, to the point wise-cracks between people interspersed with a little status update here, a small observation on life there. Twitter was no longer about 'status' or 'what are you doing'. It was about conversation, 'what are you thinking', 'what are we talking about'.

The key difference is that people who say "take this conversation over into IM" don't get it. IM can't do what Twitter does. You can't instant message into "the cloud". With Twitter you can. You can shout or whisper whatever you want to say out into the ether and anyone online can hear you. And anyone following you, even if you don;t follow them, can reply - then you may well become connected.

Of course, the problem comes when people abuse this. They Twitter constantly. The worst are those who Twitter their status all the time (making tea, reading paper etc). According to one statistics site I saw, I Twitter roughly every 2 hours. Too much for a status update but about right for an ongoing conversation.

Status updates - unless they are funny - now seem irrelevant and boring. Status updates are dead for me. It's all about conversation now. I'm on Twitter here.

I HATE blog posts that apologise for the lack of updates. Like, who cares?! Either blog or don't blog. Just don't apologise. However, I do find that these days I update my Twitter microblog more than this blog! And I have been working on other stuff other than blogging lately. And thinking. However, I will be writing about the Brunch Bites event last week soon. This week I have been working with Seedcamp to help young Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 startups get off the ground and doing a lot of writing to profile the startups involved. It's been a fascinating experience. I'll publish more info later...

I write some other personal blogs I dub "Bites Media":

MediaBites.com - Media 2.0

tbites.com - Passing notes on UK Tech 2.0

I also contribute to:

The Virtual Economic Forum



New Correspondent

Where to track Bites Media Events:

Brunch Bites on Facebook

Brunch Bites on Upcoming

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...

I have written about security and terrorism before (in The Guardian). One conference I went to a few years ago in Dublin involved sitting around working out how to hack into WiFi. 'Black Hat' security is about things like 'reverse engineering' software to work out how to break into it. It's pretty useful both for governments and for companies to work out how secure their systems are. So I'm amazed this morning to find that a German hacker has been turned away from the US for carrying 'training materials' into the country. Here's a guy who has actually trained US government officials about online security. But after a 9 hour flight and a 4.5 hour interview they sent him packing back home. There's more on his blog here. Are we to take it that the US no longer wants to hear from people willing to educate its people? Roll on a new President...

In July 2004 I wrote a piece called Confessions of a social software addict. In the current wave of interest about social networking (or social software as we called it then) I thought it might be instructive to see that the same issues - like having to register on several sites to be part of all the networks - have not gone away, even as they get worse today. I am posting it here because today SoFlow.com says it is closing. RIP guys.

The so-called Social Software world grew even more crowded this week, with the launch of SoFlow.com. I have decided to go into therapy for hyper-connectedness. Here's my confession.

I'm a 35 year old man and I am a social software addict. Well, I must be.

For research purposes (famous last words, I know) I've registered on just about every online networking web there is. The latest to appear this week was SoFlow.com, the Friends-Reunited-meets-Friendster-meets-LinkedIn site.

Its backed by former Clickz.com founder Andy Bourland, and headed-up by dotcom veteran of these parts Robert Loch.

SoFlow wants to "create the most effective networking service in the world."

I wish them well. But they are going to have to join the queue.

I, along with all the other addicts, am already registered on LinkedIn.com, Friendster.com, Everyonesconnected.com, Ecademy.com, Tribe.net, Ryze.com, Plink.com and the Google-backed Orkut.com.

Hyper-connectedness is a diverting pastime. But, like most addictions, it's getting a little tiresome.

Online networking / dating / Friends-Reunited-nostalgia-hunting, whatever you want to call it, is clearly of huge fascination to people.

Why? Because people are interested in people. It's in our DNA.

The Web has managed to revolutionise a number of areas since it's invention, and to some at least, online networking looks set to be the next big thing.

Yesterday, the tech news site Netimperative ran a sector seminar on e-tail at which delegates heard how e-tailing is changing retailing on the high street.

A similar paradigm shift is happening with online networking versus real-world networking.

What it has started to do is interesting enough. We've all read the stories in the newspapers about the divorces resulting from Friends Reunited members getting re-acquainted.

The Social Software area remains an academic debate, and many a blogger's favourite topic. And there are high hopes for its role in re-connecting communities, atomised by the modern destruction of the nuclear family and a mobile population.

But from a business perspective, social software sometimes seems more like a solution in search of a problem.

The business models of some of the latest social software start-ups remain a curiosity.

LinkedIn.com will (eventually) be a subscription service allowing users to input and manage their contacts and to search for connections. Right now it is quite grey and business-like. To some this has been an advantage, along with its relatively closed system of networking. But the jury is still out on how big a business this is.

Spoke.com is a deeply integrated enterprise solution which extracts contact data from enterprise applications (such as Outlook) to establish what connections you do have. There are more, like VisiblePath, Contact Network and SocialText, digitally mapping the relationships inside and outside corporations. These tools try to leverage connections, often through email traffic.

There are the beginnings of a useful sales contact tool here. Possibly. Though most sales people already know who their best contacts are.

ZeroDegrees is an Outlook plug-in and related service which inputs, manages, prioritises and searches your connections on email. If you like that sort of thing.

Then there are the online SocSoft businesses which vary from dating services to friends of friends sites, like Ryze.com, perhaps the original networker's paradise.

There's an online social network to suit anyone and everyone's taste.

But register on them and what happens. Usually very little. You invite your friends and contacts. You email friends using the system, with messages you would have sent on normal email anyway. You get testimonials from people you know you'd get testimonials from. Everyone slaps each other on the back and then what?

A few month later your registered profile is out of date, you've made a bunch of contacts who aren't on the system anyway and you're now being spammed by multi-level marketers who've found your profile and want to sell you something you don't need or want.

Outside of re-connecting with the odd contact you'd lost touch with, it all feels a little incestuous.

Worst of all, you get approached for connections by link-whores, trying to impress others with the size of their network.

Last week I had to contact LinkedIn.com direct because their system didn't allow me to break my connection with a prominent networking guru. This individual has over 2,000 connections in their personal network, a staggering number of contacts, which implies that a network so indiscriminate is actually pretty useless.

But after deleting him from my network, the emails started again in earnest: "Hi. I noticed that you are also using LinkedIn. I'd be happy to recommend you to the people I know. If you feel the same, please accept my invitation to connect networks. I'll only pass requests on to you from people I trust, and I hope you'll do the same for me."

Can this guy not take a hint?

His sheer connectedness suggests that the people who have chosen not to connect with him, are far more discriminating than those who have. (And that's how you insult 2,000 people in one stroke, BTW. OK, make that 2,001).

There are probably a few more, but I can think of two main avenues for business-oriented social software from here on.

The first is recruitment advertising. Knight-ridder, the US-based newspaper network has already made a strategic investment in Tribe.net. This was a canny move. They have realised that some day classified recruitment ads will start disappearing into SocSoft applications. They already are in an informal sense, with subscription services effectively replacing the classified model.

RealContacts.com, for instance, is a New Zealand-based company focused purely on allowing people to pass around information about jobs through friends of friends. It's model could have implications for recruitment advertising publishers such as newspapers and magazines.

Have you noticed the number of recruitment firm personnel registering on these services? I rest my case.

My networking guru's example suggests a second path.

It's wonderful to be able to see who the contacts are of my contacts. Oh, to surf other people's address books. Privacy? What's that?

But surely the really valuable people either won't go onto these systems, or will lock down their profile so hard, they'll be practically invisible.

History tells us that the most powerful networking communities have always been closed, not open. Have you ever seen the Mason's throw open-house drinks parties?

However, as I said. I'm an addict. So I will be registering on SoFlow.com.

See you in The Priory.

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.”

FYI: As I said here, from now on mbites.com will become my personal blog (stuff about me, what I'm doing what I'm thinking out loud etc) while tbites.com will be where I write in a more professional manner about tech startups, Web 2.0 and social media. End transmission...

I'm currently writing an article about Twitter for New Media Age magazine. Given how much coverage they have had so far it feels a little daunting and I'm not sure I'll uncover much that's new (although I'll try, of course!). If you feel you are in a position to contribute to this, perhaps by commenting or passing me any inside information, then email me. For the record, I protect my sources (and have been for about 19 years now).

Here's quite a sophisticated (well, compared to 90% of it) bit of spam I got today. Not only does it leech off the tragedy of the London 7/7 bombings, but it also comes from a vaguely plausible email address. Plus it even has the usual legal disclaimer from a law firm. These spammers are really getting into spear phishing (targeted spam):

<snip>

From: "Anthony Singer-Singer"<anthonysingers@aol.co.uk>


Subject: Information For Your Attention.

Greetings from Guildhall Court Chambers!

Pursuant to our fundamental commitment to human rights, social justice and equality which still underpin everything that we do whether in the courtroom, or out in the wider world, we wish to seek your cooperation and guidance, if you could perhaps provide us with detailed information as you share the same last name with our late client who died on July 7, 2005 London terrorist bombing leaving no trace of his immediate family members information.

Over the years, we have worked indefatigably and uncompromisingly to locate any of the relatives of our late client and all to no avail hence, the need for this correspondence. We would be delighted to have you as the apparent heir of our late client hence, you share the same last name and could possibly be somewhere in his family tree. We have been mandated by his bankers to provide any of his family members to claim his lawful assets with the bank because it is legally incumbent on us to do so as the legal representatives to the deceased.

We have decided to take this chance with you as out last resort to have you stand as the apparent heir of our late client since you both share the same last name as we have secured an order of mandate from the Probate Registry to locate any member of his family to claim what rightfully belong to him and for this reason, it remains your legal right and responsibility to protect the interest of your family in this regards.

Contact me for additional information and to discuss the modalities of this brief. Your earliest response is imperative and shall be appreciated to enable us conclude this brief in good time without delays.

Thanking you for your kind attention in anticipation of your response ASAP.

Respectfully submitted,

Anthony Singer-Singer, LLB (Hons)
Guildhall Court Chambers
Lincoln 's Inn Fields,
London WC2A 3LS

WARNING:

The information contained in this e-mail (and or accompanying attachments) may be legally privileged and is confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient you are notified that any use, disclosure, copying or distribution of the information is prohibited. If you have received the message in error please notify us
immediately, delete the original and all electronic copies, and destroy any hard copies.

</snip>

It looks like OpenID is an idea whose time has come if this long and detailed post by Tom Coates is anything to go by. You see, it's all very well having the convenience of being able to log into several sites with one ID. In a phrase: big deal. Where OpenID could be really useful is in aggregating all the IDs of the real, trusted people, and thus distinguishing them from the fake, untrusted people created by comment spammers, robots and other entities trying to spoof identity online. Now you're talking. Now you have a possible system for reputation and trust, the like of which has not existed before. Of course, it doesn't exist yet, but if the standards behind OpenID are adopted and developed then a lot of the drawbacks which come with social networking and user generated content networks could be addressed in a big way.

On Vecosys today I have an exclusive story on Izimi.com, a UK-based P2P and instant messaging startup, about to relaunch with a social networking and file sharing strategy. They are a pretty ambitious bunch, aiming at the US market. It would be nice to see a UK startup take the fight back to Silicon Valley, for once.

For my money, Gary Hayes offers an excellent explanation and graphic. Key quote: "We are heading towards a rich media personal hub that points to and houses all of our ’shareable’ content. But the current 2D web, mostly linear to linear linking, is about to be enhanced by virtual environments in which we meet as avatars, interact as 3D moving objects that takes sharing, collaboration and communication to the next, predictable level."

Azeem has an interesting post about how Digg has now overtaken Cnet.

I'm organising an event for NMK, called My So-Called Second Life. It's an afternoon seminar on the opportunities for creative firms and investment in the new world of MMORPGs (massively mulltiplayer online role playing games).

Next week I'm off to Tokyo, where I'll be dunking my head into all things mobile, electronic and (I daresay) visiting the famed Akihabara area, famed for it's geeky fascination with technology.

One thing that struck me while I was in Los Angles last week was that the people I met kept saying the same thing: media, entertainment and technology are converging (yes, THAT word) on Los Angeles. The simple fact that the biggest music and Hollywood players are there, and the act that it is an hour's plane ride from Silicon Valley, and an hour's drive from San Diego (where the many of the big mobile firms are) means LA is ideally placed to become the physical manifestation of “convergence”.

AlwaysOn is not your typical conference. During the two and a half days it was on, it ranged from discussions about data to user generated content to venture capital to mobile. Quite a range. This was both a strength and a weakenss, but the audience handled it all with aplomb.

First published, Future Media, June 2006: Disney launched its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game back in 2003, the success of which has inspired the company to devise similar propositions around Lost and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Just what does the Mouse see in the MMORPG? Mike Butcher reports.

I'm new to the new music scene of "Emo" (Emotional Punk, apparently), but following a link from a trends site I found Mylocalbands.com. From here you can find the site for Fall Out Boy. Here, fans can post pictures they've taken of their fave band and find out where eachother are for meetups etc. This seems to me like a fantastic mashup idea and pretty much confirms my view that most social software is pretty pointless until it's applied to a content environment. In this case people are able to network around being a fan and into music. Similarly MySpace did well out of music. And of course, Last.FM. And last night I heard about a start-up that will apply social networking to people who like Wine. It's a natural fit. So, while everyone works this out for themselves, enjoy Fall Out Boy's latest offering.

An impromptu party organised by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch.com fame attracted upwards of 100 people to a central London bar on Monday night this week. One of the issues on people's minds was when is the bubble on this latest Internet boom going to burst? Chatting over a beer Arrington said "When the market falls out of US house prices. Then people will start watching what they spend and the advertising market will drop." He thinks its the ad market which is driving a lot of new Web start-ups. And he's right, to a large extent. Look at YouTube / MySpace etc. ALl media plays.

Stumbling through London the other day after a long session at the Powerbook, I realised I just had to turn into a pub for a pint. Put it down to the call of nature. Incredibly, but who should happen by but Peter Nixey of Webkitchen. We got chatting over a jar, as you do, and he mentioned a new Web 2.0 project he was working on.

Now, before you scream "We hate Web 2.0", just listen. His idea was to create a site which uses "no server-logic and stores no data of its own." Very Web 2.0, I said.

The result is Eventsites, a true mashup of Google Maps, Flickr and a calendar API. This means anyone can create a web site for an event, with a map to the event and associated photos. All very easy and simple.

Now, I know you are going to say - that's been done before. But the point is, it's not been done in this way very often before, and the interesting thing about it, is that it took just one young guy who lives in South West London to do it.

Peter Nixey has a longer explanation on his blog about how and why he did it, but I just want to say that this kind of thing is, to me, what Web 2.0 is all about, both in culture and implementation.

Regarding the latter, if you read Dion Hinchcliffe's quite interesting definition of Web 2.0, Nixey's site fulfills pretty much all of the criteria. To quote:

"Key Aspects of Web 2.0"

- The Web and all its connected devices as one global platform of reusable services and data (Three APIs - Check)

- Data consumption and remixing from all sources, particularly user generated data (See above, plus Flickr pix - Check)
- Continuous and seamless update of software and data, often very rapidly (APIs updated as they go - Check)
- Rich and interactive user interfaces (Check)
- Architecture of participation that encourages user contribution (Flickr pix and comments - Check)

Regarding the former - culture. What I mean by that is that Web 2.0 represents the rise of very small teams, capable of implementing useful things very quickly and developing them in a continuous manner in concert with user participation. In this case the 'team' is just one guy. That's why the Web 2.0 movement has so much potential power I think.

Can we get a Podbop for the Uk please? Anyone out there interested?

How about this? A Web 2.0 Innovation map:

"The Web 2.0 Innovation Map grew out of an interest in how Web 2.0 development is distributed geographically. Using the lists of Web 2.0 applications from various sources (see listings) and a bit of elbow grease to locate addresses, the Innovation Map was born. The locations listed here have come either from a WHOIS lookup or the contact information from the web site itself. Locations are not guaranteed to be accurate."

Cary Marsh, Mydeo.com

Paul Munford, Monty's Mobile Gaming Outlook

This week Mbites.com brought together Cary Marsh, co-founder of consumer streaming video start-up Mydeo.com and Paul Munford, editor of must-read weekly mobile industry newsletter Monty's Mobile Gaming Outlook, for the first in a weekly series of podcasts.

Hosted at the cool London private members club, Adam Street, the podcast covered recent events at 3GSM, the global mobile conference and whether we really think the current hype about mobile video "has legs". Download the MP3 file here (approx 16MB, 15 minutes long).

"They stole our revolution. Now We're stealing it back". So runs the tagline at the end of the weekly email newsletter for technology geeks, NTK.net. And although the slogan has been running since 1997, in 2006 the slogan has never been more appropriate. Standing outside a cold London town hall, watching hordes of mostly fresh-faced young men (I counted six women among 800) file in to a conference on the future of web applications, "stealing back the revolution" feels like an appropriate phrase. It's a long way from an autumnal day in San Francisco, Oct 2004. But was this dawning of the mythical "Web 2.0" movement in the UK, or another false dawn for the Uk internet industry?

I'll be at 3GSM in Barcelona next week. See you there if you're going!

There's nothing like being surrounded by 800 Geeks. You start talking in code - Ajax, RSS, tags, XUL.