Using Friendfeed's Imaginary Friends as a Master Aggregator

Like lots of bloggers, my latest fascination these days is Friendfeed. The site, which opened up to everyone about three weeks ago, has been on fire. It aggregates the various streams of all your friends from across all the big social sites into a flowing river organized by date. You can find my stream here.

However, when you dig into Friendfeed, there's much more than meets the eye here. Using the site's Imaginary Friends feature you can turn it into a powerful, master aggregator.

First, sign up for a Friendfeed account. Then head over to the settings page where you can create an unlimited number of imaginary friends. Each of these can collect any number of feeds or streams that you tell it to. I have two for starters. One that tracks all of my in-bound links and Twitter replies and another that tracks my favorite RSS feeds and news. These are private and they work great on a mobile devices as well. In addition, the headlines (not the full text) are also searchable.

I am sure we can dream up even more creative applications for Friendfeed's Imaginary Friends feature. For example, it's easy to create a mashed up stream of news feeds and then to re-syndicate it out elsewhere. If you have ideas share them in the comments.

The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites

Remember The Graduate when Benjamin Braddock was advised to go into plastics. The clip is here. It seemed like a safe bet at the time - and it was.

Today the web maybe "the new plastics." It seems like every brand is building a new site or microsite. The Internet feels like Dubai. Some are big, ambitious projects. Others are smaller initiatives like a blog that a small group can manage themselves.

I don't expect organizations to stop building sites anytime soon. However, the Picture-in-Picture Web (what some would call the web services promise of "Web 3.0") is coming on strong. And I believe most brand web sites may not matter in 2012 - unless they have satellites that make the mother ship stronger. The Attention Crash (or what Iconoculture calls "choice fatigue") is accelerating the pace of change. Fred Wilson has a similar point of view.

The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.

These are the leaders. But everyone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.

If Everything Else Asks for Feedback, Why Not Ads?

Asking for feedback is in.

Virtually every journalist solicits feedback by posting their email addresses. Some even ask overtly.

As Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang recently noted, companies are inviting comments - yet far more slowly. Notably, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer invited everyone at Mix 08 to email him directly. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

So what about for advertisers?

Advertising is not exactly known as a two-way paradigm. However, the web changes that. Digital creative can and should be able to not only solicit feedback but to adjust in real-time like mood rings to what people say back.

CNET and AOL Networks both invite consumers to give feedback on their banner ads. Above is one from American Express I found on AOL's site. The surveys ask respondents to rate ads for relevancy, emotive content and ability to move the user to purchase. However, that's as far as they go. The scant data I assume they collect somehow goes back to the advertiser.

Weblogs Inc. - before it was owned by AOL - took an even bolder approach with their Focus Ads. They allowed advertisers to solicit reader comments on ads. However, the program seems to have been abandoned.

There's a lot of room for innovation here. Advertisers can and should be opening themselves up for input. Further, the media companies should help them do so. Will they? I would be surprised to see it happens. Advertising is the last safe haven for one-way communication. Marketers won't rock the boat. Plus, it has a place in an emerging mix of strategies.

links for 2008-03-11

• 
  
  Girls and young women are now the most prolific web users - Times Online
  
  
  "The internet began as an almost exclusively male preserve. Now young women, from primary school age upwards, are now making it their own"
  
  
  (tags: culture demographics digital women Trends teens)
  
  


• 
  
  B.L. Ochman's weblog: Internet marketing strategy, social media trends, news and commentary.: Top Bloggers Essential Research Tools - How Doc Searls Stays on Information's Cutting Edge
  
  
  Doc: "I am more interested in subjects than sources."
  
  
  (tags: research rss personalknowledgemanagement)
  
  


• 
  
  The world's 50 most powerful blogs | Technology | The Observer
  
  
  (tags: Blogs 2008 lists)
  
  


• 
  
  When the Red Phone Rings: Three Questions to Ask in a Crisis - Harvard Business Online's Conversation Starter
  
  
  (tags: CrisisComms PR)
  
  


• 
  
  Conversation Agent: 14 Year Olds May Think You Are Cool
  
  
  (tags: Marketing PR Microsoft)
  
  


• 
  
  Youth Beat: Five Ways to Stay in Touch with Today’s Youth
  
  
  (tags: geny Trends demographics research)
  
  


• 
  
  NewsClipper.org - Video news the way YOU want it - À la carte
  
  
  Neat video aggregation site.
  
  
  (tags: aggregation Video Journalism TV)
  
  


• 
  
  FreeScreencast.com
  
  
  (tags: Screencasting Tools)
  
  


• 
  
  oobject » items to build an apple store
  
  
  Make your own Apple Store - in your house!
  
  
  (tags: Apple Design Retail culture)
  
  


• 
  
  The Web 2.0 Résumé - Shifting Careers - Small Business - New York Times Blog
  
  
  New concept: the social media resume.
  
  
  (tags: resume Careers Web2.0)
  
  

Startups That Fail to Invest in Trust Will All Die

Web startups need access to talent. Often they need capital too (and a smart strategy for managing it). But I am going to argue here that their most essential currency is trust. However, a lot of emerging companies in particular tend to ignore it.

Here's a great example. Coding Horror (via Read/Write Web) has a tale about a downloadable software application that should send a shiver down any consumer's spine.

The story goes like this. Allegedly the developer hard-wired malicious code into the software that harvested the Gmail username and password of every single one of the application's users and forwarded it to his own email account. Whether this is true or not, I can't confirm. However, it's as good as time as any to re-raise the trust issue again.

This is what scares me about the wonderful Twitter API. A lot of these little applications may have access to your Twitter username, password and (in some cases) cell phone number. But how do you know they are trustworthy? You don't.

In a mashup world where web services and APIs rule, if you're going to create a business that in some way or another touches data you must invest in building trust. Every gaffe like this one raises the bar for the rest of the boat. B2B companies that hope to court firms to store their data in the cloud have an even higher wall than most consumer-facing sites.

No startup should launch without at least three things: a) deep insight into how people feel about the particular data they plan to collect, b) a clear strategy on how to build trust (often this includes following certain third-party guidelines) and c) a plan for dealing with company-specific issues and macro industry blunders.

VC Fred Wilson argues that an expensive PR firm may not be worth it. He's right - sorta. It depends on lots of factors. However, often you do get what you pay for and a talented group of PR people who know how to work with the media and the community can help you build trust by factoring in all of the above. Larger firms have deep access to insights, data and relationships that can help here, but obviously working for Edelman I am biassed.

For more on the subject, check out the 2008 Trust Barometer - an annual study conducted by my employer.