The definition of Anecdotal Evidence, via Wikipedia:

(2) Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example “my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99″ does not disprove the proposition that “smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age”. In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.

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What a simple question, but one we don’t ask enough.

As you know, I have an entrepreneurial bent, so I love to figure out ways to solve problems, and then implement those solutions. But first, you’ve got to pick a problem out, one that bothers you.

I put the question to the Hacker News Community, and the response was immense: 183 replies, all of them either problems entrepreneurial developers wanted to see solved or comments on those problems. Here were the top ideas, scored by the Hacker News community:

IE6, for those of you who are not programmers or designers, is the bane of our existence. Rewriting CSS that works in Firefox, Safari, and IE7, but then breaks in IE6 is one of the most frustrating experiences possible. I’m certain that IE6 wastes millions of dollars each year in wasted manpower and design flaws. No, it’s not global warming, but it’s still a problem that causes massive inefficiency and stifles innovation.

A larger problem that millions of people are already trying to solve. But one I don’t think we’ll be solving before I’m in the grave.
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Update 9/9/08: I’m pretty sure I was wrong on some of the points of this article. Facebook agressively launches features, and despite the slow rollout of the new facebook layout, it’s created a small revolt which I expect to become a bigger one soon enough. Read on, I stand by my work, but know that I feel like I was off the mark on some points.




Two years ago, I was intimately involved in the Facebook News Feed fiasco. Facebook launched the feature, users (including myself) rebelled, Facebook had to code immediate changes to quell the revolt. The end result of the entire affair was a bruised but smarter Facebook. Since News Feed, Facebook has had more success with the Facebook Platform and prevented major rebellions over their failed Beacon launch. Oh, and Facebook overshadows its rival MySpace and continues light-speed growth.

A week ago, Facebook launched the beta of the Facebook profile redesign to very little fanfare. The response from the blogosphere and general users has been…

Well, there really hasn’t been one.

Sure, some users has opinions, but a lot of users have yet to switch to the opt-in system (I’m assuming it’ll eventually be mandatory to switch once the bugs are worked out). At least with News Feed, there was significant media coverage, passionate people on both sides, and the ideal outcome for Facebook: News Feed became a hit. The Facebook Platform had passionate people developing apps and huge adoption by users. But since then, things have slowed. Beacon has simply vanished without a second attempt (I still think it was a smart innovation, just an unfortunate deployment) the Platform has created user blindness to application invites and general application usage, and the new profile redesign has received little criticism, but as a trade-off, it has received no enthusiasm from its heart – the users.

Make no mistake: the Facebook profile redesign is not an innovation, but rather a reaction to the unintended side-effects of the Facebook Platform. To control application spam and reverse user blindness, they needed to do this. But while they were doing this, why not throw in a few innovations, like a FriendFeed-like interface? Or a publisher tool? Or a tabbing system?

But what if users don’t like it? Well, let’s slowly give them (and the news and blogosphere) information about it and make sure they aren’t shocked by the changes.

However, that solution has a side-effect: people don’t get excited. There’s been coverage of the redesign, but it’s been a slow and steady stream. The result is that lots of users hear about the redesign and, when it finally comes, say “eh.”

It’s important to get your users excited about new features and products. Sometimes it’s about buildup to a date (Facebook didn’t do any build-up) and sometimes it’s about surprising your users and delighting them (Facebook didn’t do this either). Facebook purposely lowered expectations about the redesign and never made any dramatics about the launch. The result’s well, nothing. No great fanfare, no great reaction, no great revolt.

The approach is simply too cautious - if you don’t keep your users excited about what you do, you become old and eventually lose them to hotter and smarter competitors. Facebook has been catching up to FriendFeed in features rather than leading the way in innovation. Facebook needs to take back its innovation mantle or it may see itself become the next MySpace.

One of Yahoo!’s gems is Yahoo! Answers, the wonderful service where Yahoo! users help answer your general questions. It’s a great service, but the community is young and sometimes not exactly who you want to answer your questions.

I’m a spur-of-the-moment type person, And I’m a FriendFeed lover. So while I was stuck without wireless internet for most of the day, I thought about all of this. The result is AnswerFeed, a FriendFeed room with the simple mission of allowing FriendFeed users to ask any question on any topic and get some answers (and some of that fun-loving FriendFeeder debate). The goal is to have the same type of help you receive from Yahoo! Answers, but from the more trustworthy FriendFeed community.

This is also an opportunity to do some research and learn about the possibilities and limitations of Q&A within the FriendFeed interface. Does the comment format spurn more discussion than the Yahoo! Answers interface? Does having AnswerFeed appear in your feeds make you more likely to answer questions?

I’m going to watch the room as it grows. After 5 minutes, it already had 8 members and I hope it will grow ever larger to facilitate Q&A and discussion.

Oh, and if you are interested in being a moderator of the AnswerFeed room, drop me a line at my AIM (YGRPG).

Update – 10 hours in, 48 members

I usually talk about internet tools for business, but they also should be made and used for pleasure and personal fun. And by analyzing these types of tools, we can learn more about what works and what doesn’t for online business as well.

This time, let’s talk about the most popular of personal pleasure tools: dating websites. Whether it’s because we don’t need them, don’t want to be seen as needing them, or are just horribly annoyed by them, they have become one of the mysterious creatures of the internet. eHarmony for those looking for a serious relationship. OkCupid for those looking for something simple and free. Adult FriendFinder for the horny guys who can’t get any the traditional way.

Okay, okay, I’m getting off topic. Let’s talk about Youniverse now.

Youniverse is a bare-bones dating/social meeting service. I say bare-bones because some of the major functionality of a dating service (like the inability to select sexual preference) is missing.

Despite that, however, Youniverse gets several things right. First of all, it creates an interesting and engaging quiz and personality profiling system. Instead of answering dreary and dreadfully similar personality and love quizzes, youniverse spices it up with image surveys, which allow you to choose images to represent your thoughts and feelings.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a very visual person, and it was actually fun to go through some of the great images they have for their quizzes.

The rest of youniverse you can imagine: match you up with people similar to you, browse other profiles, ask people you don’t know out on dates and seem creepy in the process. But imagini, which built youniverse, has taken a step in the right direction.

But hell, they have a ton to do. OkCupid works as a system because there’s a neverending series of quizzes and questions made by users that narrows down the choices of “potential” dates little by little. Youniverse simply doesn’t have enough questions to do that. Allowing for user-created quizzes and for more of the general features of a dating and social meeting website will do youniverse good.

Youniverse received mostly unnoticed coverage on Mashable and Techcrunch today. I think Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch does get it right when he says that imagini hasn’t launched a true dating site. But the potential is there and I think the “imageDNA” model may very well be copied by other dating services and even other businesses. When you ask your audience to participate with your website, it has to be engaging. Visuals (so long as they load fast) are central to that march.

In the meantime, you’re welcome to visit my Youniverse profile, though I have this feeling I’m going to regret ever posting a link to it on my blog.

- Ben

Your thoughts? Is Youniverse really any different than other dating site?

Sometime in early June, Facebook will roll out its newly redesigned profiles. The clutter of 3rd party Facebook applications and the risk of becoming as messy as MySpace, among a myriad of other reasons, sparked the change. A lot is coming with the new profiles, so I’m here to enlighten you with 10 things that you should know about the new Facebook profile redesign.

So here are 9 things you should know about the new Facebook Profile Redesign:

1) Mini Feed: Now Front and Center

When you click on a friend, the first thing that appears isn’t their contact or personal information, but their mini-feed. The change is meant to make it easier for friends to see the updates, new applications, and changes they make in a more dynamic and prominent way. From Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook VP of Product Marketing:

“We see this big trend. People are publishing feeds all the time, and the point is, people are increasingly telling a narrative, and we want to make that easier for our users to do. And we want people to consume that narrative more easily.”

Overall, Facebook’s new design, as you will see, encourages people to tinker and change their profiles more and thus add more items to their news and mini feeds. So expect much more news feed in your life.

2) Tabs – The Reorganized Facebook Profile

Information is divided into tabs now, rather than the boxes of old. Tabbing has become the standard of web browsers and thus tabs are intuitive for most users. It also divides information into more manageable pieces. I’m very pleased with the tab organization: it’s clean and uncluttered now.

The tabs are as follows:

• Feed: This is your starting point on any profile, and it shows the individual’s mini-feed, fare more than just the most recent 10: the mini-feed goes back several days.
• Info: Your personal information, interests, work experience, etc. is placed into this section of the profile. It’s interesting that Facebook has not chosen to make this the default tab when visiting profiles.
• Wall: Your wall is bigger, better, and more prominent.
• Photos: Photos and your albums get prime placement. Read about it in item #3
• Boxes: All of your Facebook applications are placed here in order to avoid the clutter. It’s divided into a narrow and wide column, just like the current Facebook profiles (although the narrow column has flipped to the left-hand side now).

3) Photos are getting their own tab. Here’s why:

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Welcome to Part 3 of my 4 part series on the next generation of social networks. I’ve been talking a lot about social networks in the last week, so why stop now?

• In Part 1, I talked about the definition of a Web 3.0 Social Network and how it could be useful to us.
• In Part 2, I outlined the key components of social networks and explained the potential of that information.

So now let’s get to the fun stuff. What should the next generation of social networks include, and how should they work in our lives? I can only give you an overview of my thoughts on what the next social network should include because, well, it could take me days to write down all the features I’d personally want, and I’m not about to give away all of my ideas and secrets.

Overarching Design of a Web 3.0 Social Network

Remember, the goal of a Web 3.0 social network is to help solve a greater range and depth of world issues, often by analyzing the data at its disposal and making good use of synergies with other services and products.

So what are the key components of the Web 3.0 social network design?

• Utilizable for both business and personal use: The next great social network cannot only cater to one or the other: it must have the ability to be used for both. LinkedIn is business; Myspace is personal. Facebook is the closest we have to both, but it still falls into the personal side and it’s not simple to divide your personal contacts from your business contacts. There has to be easier division of use in this area.
• Integration with search: I agree with Robert Scoble that integration with search could be a killer application. I do think that a combination of search and social network can improve search relevancy. Facebook search is an abomination, I’m sorry to say. Searching people, fine. Searching for applications, groups, people with specific interests? Eh, not so much. Better search = more efficient use and less frustration.
• Integration with time and task management systems: Some people use the events they’re invited to on Facebook as their own calendar of events. Integration of these with an actual calendar system so we can better manage our lives is going to more and more prominent. If Facebook automatically filled in my RemembertheMilk task list with events from Facebook, or if it had its own advanced calendar and task management system, you’d see me using Facebook even more.
• Data Portability: It must be compatible with services like Google Connect or OpenID. Linking my friend list from LinkedIn or Facebook to Digg so I can find out which of my friends are Diggers is a far better method than going through your email. This also allows us to link data to academia for research purposes.



• Mobility and GPS Location: What do I mean? I mean that your phone is integral to the network. I mean that you can know whether or not any of your friends are in the city you’re visiting by simply opening up the social network. I mean the ability to get some data on the client you’re about to meet while on the train. ReadWriteWeb links us to four services to watch. Expect one of these services to skyrocket into prominence, and expect more to be acquired and integrated with existing social networks.
• Recommendations: The Web 3.0 social network has to be able to extrapolate from our patterns and likes/dislikes data that will help us manage our lives. That means ads that say this movie is coming out (i.e. it knows you’re a sci-fi fan) or knowing that you HATE religious events (it’ll give you the option to ignore all of them).

Clearly I only gave you a few, but the thread in all of these is data integration and data portability. Integrating our data with other services or creating those services within the social network interface should, and probably are, going to be features of the next generation of social network.

In the last part of this series, I’m going to do my favorite thing: try to predict the future.

Coming in Part 4: My predictions about what will happen in the world of social networking.

Tech rumors are always fun to follow. Today’s tech rumor is that Microsoft will buy Yahoo!’s search business and ALL of Facebook. And as you may have guessed, there has been nonstop chatter on the subject.

• Robert Scoble really got the ball rolling when he started theorizing on the synergies of such a deal, primarily that Facebook’s information would help lead to more relevant searches. Also, Google would have no access to all of this information, putting Microsoft at the advantage.
• A lot of people think Scoble’s theory is a bit out of whack. Nick O’Neil of the social times and Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch are critical of Scoble. Schonfeld makes solid arguments as to why Scoble’s theory could be done without buying a piece of Yahoo! or Facebook. But I think Erick’s missing some of the other synergies of Micro-hoo-book!, such as the ability to better target advertising on Facebook (and thus up revenue) with integrated search data.
• ReadWriteWeb frames the showdown: Microsoft/Facebook (plus a hearty side of Yahoo!) vs. Google. Or, in my opinion, Microsoft + shiny new weapons vs. Google

Why Micro-hoo-book! has potential

Short version: Synergies

Long version:

• Better search: Searches can become even more relevant as social data helps target our results towards our likes and preferences
• Better advertising: With Google’s Adsense, you visit a website and the content of that page creates the relevant advertising. Now imagine Microsoft advertising on a site (or in its search results) with Facebook’s data on you. Facebook weeds out dislikes and will make the advertising more relevant by catering to your routines and your preferences.
• Better advertising on Facebook: Search data from previous searches on Microsoft improve the relevancy of ads on Facebook. Plus smarter ads that work on better algorithms
• Facebook integration with other Microsoft services: Better email, search the web from Facebook, IE web browsing integration with Facebook, etc.
• New customer segment from Yahoo!: Increases Microsoft’s market share, can integrate Facebook features with Yahoo! search as well

Why Micro-hoo-book! seems unlikely to occur

Short version: Facebook

Long version: I seriously just don’t see Zuckerberg and the Facebook team selling Facebook just yet. I also don’t see them selling the rights to one of the key components, their data, over to Microsoft without a hefty price or something substantial just yet. Yahoo! will probably sell the search business and part of its brand. Microsoft, though it won’t gain any great tech this way, it will gain brand and new customers. Facebook, though, is still growing, they still have aspirations of an IPO, they still want to be independent. Unless Facebook believes its business is hitting a ceiling or going south, I just don’t think Facebook will (or should) sell.

Why Micro-hoo-book! reeks of disaster

Short Version: A slow and uninnovative behemoth that closes off its data and creates an odd competition between Microsoft and Google that will distract both companies from making new innovations and serving customers.

Long Version: See the short version. This week’s going to be interesting.

- Ben

A few days ago, I wrote the first article in a series on the future of social networks. Last time, I framed it within Web 3.0. If you haven’t read part one, a quick recap of Web 3.0: Web 3.0 (or whatever buzzword you like) is about taking the information we have on the internet, in we are currently sharing with each other, and using and integrating that data in order to solve problems.. At least, that’s how I define Web 3.0.

Facebook, MySpace, and current social networks are great for sharing, but still haven’t been used to solve many problems beyond boredom. By problems, I mean anything that will help save individuals or society save time, money, or energy. I not only mean solving global warming, but the problem of your computer breaking down or your food being too expensive and taking too long to cook.

The Components of a Social Network

First, though, I need to break down the components of a social network. The interaction between the main components of a social network are what make them tick. Robert Scoble, in an article about Facebook not allowing Google to access its information via Google’s FriendConnect, does most of the breakdown for me. And yes, I split information into three components. You interact in completely different ways with each, so it makes sense to me.

The Components

• Your Personal Information: This is the info you willingly put into a profile. Name, age, likes and dislikes, phone number, relationships, work and educational info, etc.
• Your Friends’ Information: This is the info all of your friends put into their profiles. You have access to most of your friends’ information
• Strangers’ Information: This is the info anyone outside of your social graph. Unless you are Facebook friends with me or work at Facebook, you probably don’t have access to this information.
• Your Social Graph: This is perhaps the most important component of a social network. This is the actual map of who your friends are and your relationship to them and to their friends. This is how Facebook knows both you and Jimmy are friends with Nancy, or that you might know Eric. It tells who is 2 degrees away from you (friend of a friend) or 3 degrees away (friend of a friend of a friend). See the picture above? That’s part of my social graph, specifically who is connected to who.
• The Interface: That would be how you see this information. That’s Myspace.com or bebo.com. This also includes things like Developer platforms, so I include Facebook and other 3rd party social networking applications in this component.

It’s the interaction between these components that allows for you to find friends and keep connected. But it’s also the interaction that could allow for an integration of this data in order to solve problems and make life easier.

What can all of that Information do?

Now for the fun part. What can we do with these five components? Let’s try a story example. Say you are a psychologist who is trying to figure out the key characteristics of individuals that become suicidal, especially teenagers and college students. Currently, you take thousands upon thousands of surveys, the answers to which you can never fully rely upon. You pour across data that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars before you come up with your results.

The issues here? The data can’t be fully trusted (someone taking a survey will change answers, even unconsciously, in order to “give” the results they believe the researcher wants), it costs enormous amounts of time and money to get the data, and the same size is still relatively small.

Now, what if you could tap into the likes, dislikes, and behavior patterns of nearly every teenager and college student in the country with a simple program? See where I am getting at yet?

No, it wouldn’t be perfect, since people leave a lot out of their profiles, but this hypothetical researcher would have access to far more information than ever before. Hell, let’s go a step further. You could create an algorithm that highlights a red flag when a user deletes certain information from their profile, adds certain information, changes their behavior with their friends on MySpace and Facebook, etc. It’s not just about the information on a profile: wall posts, the changes to a profile over time, and messaging habits are all important information as well.

I’ve only given you one example. You can collect data with a voluntary Facebook app on energy usage to pinpoint which products need to be made more efficient, you could integrate the information of a social network with your email to prioritize it and filter it, etc. Some of these things are already happening, but a combination of protectionism and a lack of technology hinders these efforts.

But I’m only thinking of today, with what we currently have in our social networks. We, with the help of social networks, are capable of so much more, and that’s what I’ll write about in Part 3.

- Ben

Coming in Part 3: Designing the next social network, plus what it could do to solve problems. (did someone say mobile?)

A few days ago, I wrote an article asking how you would rebuild and change Facebook given the opportunity. It got me thinking some more, so I wanted to share my thoughts on the future of social networking, Web 3.0, and what role both could play in our lives. Sorry, but I’m doing this one in parts. Otherwise I might be up all night.

So let me start with three statements:

• I believe that social networks have the potential to transform how we manage and run our lives.
• I believe there is the opportunity for a new social network to compete with MySpace and Facebook as the top dog or “the Google” of social networks, but that it may never come to fruition. I think Facebook especially is nimble enough to seize on the opportunities.
• I think the next great social network will be tied strongly with mobile phones and even GPS.

Take my statements as you will, I intend to walk you through my logic in four articles on Web 3.0 and social networks. But we’ve got to start by talking about Web 3.0.

Web 3.0: Making Social Networks Useful

Really quickly, I need to define Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 for you. I’m going to use the Resourceful Idiot definition, because it explains it in terms of progression.

• Web 1.0: Turning “Hard” data (books, movies, opinions) into Digital Data. Examples include Netscape, Geocities, and AOL (they were all ways to post content online or gain access to that data). There were rudimentary ways to share this data (i.e. sending a link to a friend). But we knew we could do it better, so…
• Web 2.0:Taking that Digital Data and finding better ways to share it. Facebook shares data via a social graph, RSS Feeds and News Readers sends news and data from other sources to one location (my Google Reader for example), flickr and YouTube shares photo and video data by integrating the data with other websites and APIs (application programming interface). Basically, we found better ways to share data in Web 2.0
• Web 3.0: Now that we’ve shared the data, let’s do something with it. Let’s figure out trends, let’s integrate two service to make a better one, let’s solve problems with all of this data.

Now how does this relate to social networks? I’m using Facebook as my example. What do you use your Facebook for? Talking to friends, promoting events, seeing what they are up to, wasting time. This is nowhere near the potential of Facebook’s uses, but this is what most users use Facebook for. You’re sharing experiences and data, but you’re certainly not solving the world’s most pressing problems with it, yet (unless you could activism, but it’s only a tiny fraction of how Facebook is used)

So let’s talk about a Web 3.0 Social Network. As I’ve defined it in this article, the Web 3.0 social network not only allows you to share information, but allows you to take that information and do something useful with it. It save you time, it saves you energy, it saves you money, or a combination of the three.

Facebook saves time, energy, and money in some respects: We exert less energy keeping up to date with our friends and we don’t have to spend as much time doing it. But it’s not leveraging the information to, say, figure out where we can go next to network, prioritize our relationships, or use our combined knowledge to save the environment.

The next social network will be able to do all three. The next social network will be able to take all of the information it gathers on you and your friends and will be able to use it to prioritize our lives, save us time, and use our combined knowledge to solve social and world issues.

Facebook and MySpace don’t yet meet these criteria.

Coming in Part 2: How a Web 3.0 social network could transform our lives (with examples!)