NETWORK EFFECT

Now that Google provides an easily accessible drop down list of other services (gmail, reader, docs, etc.), I can now sweep most of these bookmark buttons off of my FF toolbar!

Assimilation is almost complete.

Google is up in your grill.

I can see it now, brand monitoring services brought to you by Google. I do, however, still see plenty of opportunity in mining the conversation deepweb.

We are now searching across citation\conversation trackers, but where can the entire conversation picture be found?

Today, we have a few different conversation platforms: blogs, user forums, web-enabled short messaging, and individual communtiies (YouTube, Digg, Myspace). All are interrelated as they represent the entire conversation ecosystem.

Conversations are generally surfaceable via a Google search (e.g. digg, myspace, some blogs results), but they are spotty and also aren’t as timely as going to dedicated search engines like Google blog search for blogs, or subscribing to individual search feeds in communities like digg (or youtube- waiting). Newspapers are also becoming communties like Digg that should provide their own feeds.

For user forums, we have Omgili and Boardtracker, which I do not believe Google is indexing. IRC does not get archived or indexed anywhere (unless I am wrong), so it disappears in the vapor.

Anyway, the Krytponite ballpoint pen hack fiasco started on the bike forums and later filtered up to the blogosphere , where it caught some real fire in the press, notably The NY Times. There is clearly a hierarchy. No journalist in their right mind is going to be writing an article based on an IRC chat or user forum comment, or are they? I am pretty sure we have newspapers going to the user forums for quotes on technical topics. Are user forums and IRC just for the hardcore?

Blogs are more mainstream, therefore they are closer to the mainstream news pubs that represent a wider viral launch platform\threat if you are in PR.

How do we create a lens that can monitor topics at each stage of the viral process? Third-party services do this for a fee and a lot of human filtering, but I want to build something for free. Each platform has access to different sized audiences, and therefore comprises a different threat level. Each level has it’s different caliber of contributor and audience.

There is a conversation deepweb. How can we put conversations in that context?

Tim Ferriss has caught fire all over the blogosphere lately with his “4-hour Workweek” book. I take his popularity to be a clear indication that finally the big guns over at BoingBoing, Lifehacker, Iwillteachyoutoberich, 43 Folders, Micropersuasion, and on and on and on, are getting a bit burnt out. Steve Rubel seems to have practically shelved blogging entirely in favor of Twitter. All hail Steve for branching out onto another platform.

Anyway, Steve got my attention today by posting Tim Ferriss’ interview with Robert Scoble on how he uses his newsreader to stay on top of 600 some-odd RSS feeds (Yeah right!), which is right up my alley. I am posting the video here also. As you are watching the video, check out the pop-up comments and tags. Not bad Viddler. Meebo is also doing something interesting in the video space with their Rooms. Can’t imagine that scaling too well with, say, a thousand teens talking about an episode of the Family Guy, so we should see a little more filtering going on (maybe even some geotags). Definitely a fun space to watch.

Notable: “Humans have a psychological immune system.” … “We synthesize happiness, but we think happiness is a thing that needs to be found.”

Good stuff. Harvard Professor, Daniel Gilbert, just won the Royal Society 2007 Prize for Science Books for his recent, “Stumbling on Happiness”. (found via BoingBoing.net)