Connected Conversations Politics, technology, et cetera

Sold out! Part III

Here’s a link to the slides from the other presenters from our facebook expo. Lots of interesting ideas and data, even if it’s a little decontextualized without speakers’ notes.

Sold out! Part II

Here’s a nice outline of raw notes of the 2hrs of demos that we presented yesterday. It may or may not make sense to you if you aren’t involved in the space, or if you didn’t actually attend the event.
One other note: Facebook changed it’s status function by removing the previously mandatory ‘is’. [...]

Sold Out! 10 million in 10 weeks

Look ma! Someone decided to post a video of my presentation last night on a prominent facebook blog.
My Stanford class on facebook apps is wrapping up. As a class of 80 students, we created 40 or so applications that run within facebook’s social network. As of last night, more than 16 [...]

TokBox

This video conferencing technology is quite good. For some weird reason, iChat has been the only even slightly passable video chat technology. Skype kinda works, but it is too complex. Well, TokBox has had the simple idea of hosting video chat on a web site — and it seems to work pretty [...]

A Framework for Engagement on Facebook

I argue that (1) there is a hierarchy of identity, and (2) that engagement increases as you move up this hierarchy. Furthermore, (3) your identity has two distinct but interactive components: social and personal. These three claims suggest a framework that we can use to map activities, both from web 2.0 and the [...]

So true!

This video simply captures silicon valley life for the past ten years perfectly. Hat tip to Madhu, Nat, and the others who bombarded me with it…now it’s my turn to be on the sending end of it.
Here_Comes_Another_Bubble_-_The_Richter_Scalesby kingofdoper
[I had to change the embedded video because YouTube took down the original version. It's so [...]

Youtube is down!

I’ve gotten intermittent errors from google over the years, and that’s somewhat startling. But youtube is just plain unavailable right now. At this moment, most video boxes on my site are missing since they are provided by youtube. Here’s an image of the cryptic error (”Http/1.1 Service Unavailable”) that I see when [...]

NY Times is selling our product, VGT

Sunday’s Public Editor had a great column talking about what voters want in campaign coverage. A few choice quotes:
“The public wants to know more about candidates’ records, their backgrounds and where they stand on issues — and more about lesser-known candidates.”
and later:
“the fundamental point about the 2008 presidential election [is] the degree to which [...]

Voter Guide Toolkit

I’ve put together two short screencasts about a neat election resource that I help run called “Voter Guide Toolkit.” We’re recruiting a campaign leader, so I created two short screencasts to help inform the great applicants that we’ve received so far. I think they came out pretty well, so I thought that some [...]

Why facebook is killing “web 2.0″ apps

Facebook and Open Social are currently the “next big thing.” In a way, they are taking over the mindshare previously occupied by the vaguely defined “web 2.0″ crowd. For example, Kleiner Perkins has publicly stated that it isn’t interested in web 2.0 companies. First, let me define those two concepts and then explain [...]

Peanut gallery or agenda-setters?

Blogrunner.com has been relaunched. Blogrunner shows the same stories that appear in the NYTimes.com site, but it gives you convenient access to lists of the bloggers who are linking to the stories in the NY Times. In a real way, it is outsourced letters to the editor on steroids.
What blogrunner does is turn [...]

Ode to facebook

It’s not quite as good as the previous video on super poke, but I still found it amusing.
Via this post from a smart friend of mine who is worried that we are putting too much trust in facebook.

No one knows you’re a dog…

I guess it’s hard to have an original idea anymore! Here’s a cartoon from June 23, 2007 that is remarkably similar to the idea I posted about earlier this week (”Can you be fooled by a dog on facebook?“)

And more follow up. Here’s a story about a political blogger who posts under the [...]

Open Social vs facebook

Google has announced an amazing new standard for social networking called open social. How does facebook stack up with open social? Let me summarize Marc Andreessen’s great post on the subject.

Similarities: Both platforms allow developers to create applications like Slide and Rockyou that work with social networks like facebook, LinkedIn and Ning.
Differences: facebook’s [...]