LinkedIn should introduce IM chat Friday, January 09, 2009

An example of a social network diagram.Image via WikipediaI hardly ever use Facebook, occasionally logging in just in case anyone has left me a message. Yesterday was one such occasion and whilst I was online, I was contacted by an old work colleague who I'd "friended" on Facebook sometime ago via the online chat facility. Off the back of that chance conversation, we agreed to meet up to talk about his new business.

It struck me that LinkedIn should really look at doing something similar. Whilst it's not a "social network" site, in my experience lots of business stems from chance conversations and having the facility to drop a quick IM "hello" to connections who happen to be online would be a valuable feature.

Having already added an address book facility to add more info about a connection, it is perhaps a natural extension to allow real-time interaction on the site. Importantly for LinkedIn, it would perhaps encourage people to spend more time on the site and increase it's value to advertisers.

As an aside, I've also been using a service called SocialMinder lately which I intend to write about separately, but in brief it's a cut-down CRM hooked-up to LinkedIn. This is something LinkedIn should definitely buy or replicate.
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User heaven on a Blackberry Thursday, April 24, 2008

I confess to being a blackberry fan and have used one for about 5 years, finding it indispensable. For the last few years, I've also been free of the shackles of a large corporate IT department and hence able to determine what gets installed on my device [8820].

However, I've found relatively few applications worthy of installing other than
- the superb Google maps for mobile, which integrates well with the device's GPS capability, notwithstanding Google maps inherent capability to provide approximate location data via mobile phone cell information
- Gmail for blackberry which offers me a backup in case problems arise with the T-mobile blackberry email as well as to access old emails

Whilst I added Opera mini browser, I almost never have cause to use it, finding the native browser being adequate in most cases. This allows me access to all of my internet services when I'm on the move.

As for the Facebook blackberry application, it was installed and quickly uninstalled, matching my waning interest in that social network.

Lately, it has been great to see an increasing number of applications being developed for data synchronisation with the blackberry to the "cloud". The consequences of losing the device and related data has always been a concern to me.

For instance, Google recently released a free blackberry calendar synch application, allowing your device calendar to be directly synchronised with Google calendar. I'm not using it because I'm happy with my alternate configuration that I described here. Obviously, many corporate users will have real-time synch of their calendar over the air with their Exchange server, but very handy for SMEs.

Yesterday, I read about a blackberry synchronisation application for Remember the Milk, which is a task manager that also integrates with Gmail via a Firefox extension. Sadly this is a paid for application.

I was also excited to come across TellMe's offering. A Microsoft subsidiary, and only operating in the USA at present, its' blackberry application provides a voice interface to a location based search service e.g. find local services. My interest related to a start-up I dealt with a few years ago who were focussed on exactly this space but whose ambitions were inhibited by the widespread absence of GPS enabled devices and cell data. Right idea, but ahead of its time in infrastructure terms.

The sad thing, as ever, is that many corporate blackberry users are denied access to many of these superb offerings because of IT department inertia or paranoia. If you don't have google maps as a minimum on your blackberry you should definitely complain.
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LinkedIn - revitalised Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Despite having used LinkedIn for a number of years and built-up a large number of connections, I confess it was not a site I regularly used other than to periodically synchronise contact details of my connections.

However, my own use of the site recently picked up as I sought to hook up with various companies and individuals in connection with an initiative I'm involved with. I was therefore pleasantly surprised and pleased with the raft of changes that have been introduced.

The "river of news" regarding who's connected with who and what they are doing is helpful, as is the groups feature, which is exposing many more potential connection opportunities than was previously the case. Whilst these mimic Facebook features, I consider them more powerful in LinkedIn than in Facebook. For instance, for me the scenario of Friend A connecting with person B had little context on Facebook and rarely prompted a conversation - whereas on LinkedIn it opens up wider possibilities and conversations e.g. Connection A is dealing with the IT Director of X, perhaps I can assist them with an introduction to the same role in Y or conversely perhaps they can introduce me to Company X. If only there was a "friend wheel" equivalent for LinkedIn!

I suspect that use of sites social network sites like Facebook have had knock-on benefits for LinkedIn in that they have raised awareness of its' usefulness. Additionally, I suspect that many people have quickly realised that they actually want to separate their business and social connections, as well as related revelations, and hence are making use of LinkedIn for professional contacts and Facebook for friends.

LinkedIn still needs to improve in many areas but I'm pleased they have finally begun the transition into being a useful business aid.

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Notchup - The Spam backlash and LinkedIn hypocracy Sunday, February 03, 2008

I wrote about Notch-Up just over a week ago and commented that

It has been well positioned, since there's no downside to the individual in participating. However, I'm sure the person that sent me the invite may have been motivated by a 10% finders fee on any interviews resulting from people they introduce. Moreover, I suspect this may kick off a wave of spam unless there are some inbuilt restricters in the service to avoid duplicate invites being sent.

Oh well, it seems I was spot on with the forecast. However, the real accelerator to the explosion in user numbers was when Notchup added the ability for members to send invites to their LinkedIn network as described here in BusinessWeek.

Member growth timeline
Unfortunately, some people were getting duplicate invites and when those people are bloggers, the negative backlash is inevitable. This is a tricky design problem for any site. Obviously you want to eliminate invites to existing members but if people haven't signed up how do you deal with them being invited by others.

In a real life example, Andrea may invite Jenny to an event and she declines but when her friend Cathy invites her, she agrees. When handled by an intermediary, how is it to know who Jenny is receptive to, if indeed she is receptive to anyone? Is there a right answer on how to handle this?

Separately, I find LinkedIn's decision to block NotchUp from import contacts smacks of hypocracy, no matter what their T&Cs say. As a LinkedIn user, I am regularly presented with pages of theirs inviting me to import my contacts from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL services. LinkedIn has specifically grown on the back of this harvesting facility, yet seeks to deny others the same ability.

LinkedIn point out that users have the ability to download their contacts in a csv file and then do as they will with them. So, they have no objection to the principle of those contacts being my data but wish to make my life as a user more inconvenient by forcing me to go through several steps. Had others not been more generous in allowing the direct "harvesting" of data by LinkedIn, I wouldn't have bothered importing contacts to their service.

Obviously LinkedIn isn't alone in this hypocracy - Facebook is equally bad in making it easy to import contact info but almost impossible to export. It's a shame that equal access isn't mandatory.

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When is a complement still theft? Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Most Facebook users have probably heard of the Facebook application that allows you to play scrabble. It has rapidly become one of the most popular and regularly used applications on the social network. Unfortunately, the developers did not seek or get permission to replicate the game from its owners.

As a consequence, they have recently been issued with "take-down" notices from the toy companies who are asserting their ownership rights.

There has been much debate both in the mainstream press and in the blogosphere about why the companies that do own these rights are being near-sighted in closing the application down given the enormously positive benefits the Facebook version has generated in terms of re-popularising the game.

Whilst confessing that I have generally been someone that manages work programmes by forgiveness than permission and acknowledging that the two developers would have found getting permission upfront from the toy companies an impossible tasks because of a) the corporate bureaucracy they would have faced b) the huge credibility issue of being a non-corporate dealing with a multi-national and hence not taken seriously, it is patently clear that these developers have profited from copying an established game.

For the owners to have allowed such blatantly copying to persist would have been negligent on their part eg they already licenced electronic rights to the game to someone, who should reasonably expect them to protect the rights for which they have paid.

That they have sought to force the developers to give up their "innovation" for a pittance or on "harsh" terms is judged by many as being unfair. Yet, how else are they to set an example of "don't stray onto our property". That this may be a wake-up call to these companies and that they perhaps should engage with such developers to extend their offline offerings is unquestioned, but the alleged complement of copying the scrabble game is still theft of intellectual property.

UPDATE : Someone kindly reminded me via IM that the Scrabulous logo includes a trademark sign - obviously the developers were concerned about other passing off their good name and idea elsewhere. As if anyone would indulge in such practices.

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Social networks revealed Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Interesting piece on Read/Write web today on demographics of social networks

Some highlights, followed by full details below from Rapleaf:

Facebook Users
- 2.6 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 63% female, 36% male
- 17% <18>45 yrs
- 2.9 major social networking sites used on average
- 62% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 10% are on Plaxo, 22% are on Hi5

Myspace Users
- 11.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 63% female, 36% male
- 20% <18>45 yrs
- 2.4 major social networking sites used on average
- 15% are on Facebook, 2% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 6% are on Plaxo, 17% are on Hi5

LinkedIn Users
- 0.8 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 38% female, 61% male
- 2% <18>45 yrs
- 3.2 major social networking sites used on average
- 16% are on Facebook, 25% are on Myspace, 12% are on Friendster, 16% are on Plaxo, 8% are on Hi5

Friendster Users
- 2.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 58% female, 41% male
- 12% <18>45 yrs
- 3.0 major social networking sites used on average
- 10% are on Facebook, 44% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 5% are on Plaxo, 26% are on Hi5

Plaxo Users
- 1.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 62% female, 37% male
- 16% <18>45 yrs
- 3.6 major social networking sites used on average
- 20% are on Facebook, 53% are on Myspace, 11% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 15% are on Hi5

Hi5 Users
- 4.5 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 60% female, 39% male
- 21% <18>45 yrs
- 2.8 major social networking sites used on average
- 13% are on Facebook, 43% are on Myspace, 2% are on LinkedIn, 13% are on Friendster, 2% are on Plaxo


Whilst this based on a sample using people they managed to identify, they are pretty sizeable sample sizes. I do wonder to what extent those people are active on multiple social networks rather than having simply left a footprint behind on sites they no longer use. The male/female ratios are also intriguing between the various communities - is it a surprise that LinkedIn is male dominated?

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Your facebook friends pics in Outlook Wednesday, October 10, 2007

If you live most of your life in Facebook (I don't, but know an increasing number that seem to), then you might like to try this windows freeware app that imports your facebook friends pics into Outlook and related devices, such that they will "pop up" whenever they communicate with you. I've yet to get it working on my blackberry 8800 or even in Outlook 2003 which it reportedly supports, but maybe soon :-(

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Can you see envy in my Face(book) Saturday, October 06, 2007

Dave Morin who is the "Platform Manager" at Facebook made reference to the following Facebook stats during his Future of Web Apps speech:

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Heck - oofabkce scrabble is top of the tiles Sunday, September 30, 2007

Scrabulous, The Facebook Scrabble game that I was introduced to by Helen Keegan has 256,705 daily active users comprising 33% of the game’s install base according to this report, which makes the Facebook app with the most active users and the highest retention rates.

I confess to being useless at the game - same as crosswords, but the app is incredibly well done and is fun to play in this way.

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Widgetbox accelerator for facebook Saturday, September 29, 2007

I've been assisting one of our ventures chatting to prospective partners and almost everyone asks "have you got a facebook application?". As it stands we haven't and that was a prioritisation decision. But when you press people about what their experience has been in launching a facbook application and the extent to which they think all applications can live inside facebook, then the supporting evidence of why it's a mandatory element then their cohesive argument simply fails to materialise, other than examples of iLike, Rockyou and a few others.

I remain of the view that Facebook is an excellent platform, but that a) not every offering is suited to it and b) just because everyone else is doing it, isn't a reason to divert resource - each business has to consider it on its' own benefits case, not to mention consider whether the user perception of "you" inside facebook will be enhanced or diminshed.

However, Widgetbox appear to have made the task somewhat easier if their claims are true, in their service which claims to make any widget into a facebook application. You still need to be approved by Facebook etc but from other posts I've read, it does appear that it can be relatively easy to employ. Worth a look.

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Concerns that 'in-person' social-networking could corrupt children Wednesday, August 01, 2007

As you'll know, it important for investors to keep up with trends in consumer behaviours to inform their investment outlook. Thus, I was intrigued by this story on NewsBiscuit

A controversial new teenage social-networking trend is emerging across the country, causing alarm amongst parents and community leaders. Rather than using the safety of computers or mobile phones to talk to each other, young people have started meeting up in person to chat, listen to music, share photographs and even form relationships.

This dangerous new craze goes under many benign-sounding names including, ‘hooking up,’ ‘hanging out’ and ‘seeing my mates,’ making it difficult for parents to realise that their children are embarking on a risky pastime.

If borne out, this would mark a worrying development for all internet Social Networking sites and could result in dramatic falls in their current valuations. It may well be the reason why Facebook opened up its' community to adults who have lost the ability to have a real social life and hang out at the Amusement Arcade, as well as to developers who have a new reason to stay in coding.

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Get your friends round on Friend Wheel Monday, July 02, 2007

I long wanted to uncover a mechanism for seeing which of my friends/contacts is connected to which others on LinkedIn, but the site just makes it to hard - you have to go through each one individually and there is no way I'm even going to try doing it manually.

So it was with some delight that I came across Friend Wheel, which maps the connections that you have on Facebook and their links to each other. Mine is below.

As you can see, my Facebook contacts clearly split into so notable clusters (or none at all).

What a fabulous tool for a bunch of reasons
- when planning a party, you can easily see who already knows who.
- you can see relationships you perhaps never knew existed
- you might introduce friends to each other who you think would hit it off

C'mon LinkedIn, kindly keep up.

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Does Murdoch have shares in Facebook? Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Times ran a story yesterday that Murdoch is offering MySpace to Yahoo in exchange for 25% of Yahoo. This would put a valuation of $12bn+ on MySpace at current prices, not bad for a company bought in Summer 2005 for $580m.

The general consensus is that Yahoo would be mad to accept the deal at such a crazy valuation. But more interesting is how such a proposed price makes an alternate purchase i.e. Facebook, look such a steal at say anything less than $3-4bn. I've blogged in the past about how by introducing a competing item at a crazy price can influence choice.

So, let's assume I was sitting in Yahoo HQ. I might now conclude that I should go buy Facebook, as this will be a better deal than accepting Murdoch's terms. Why, Murdoch has already commented that he is worried about Facebook growth affecting his portfolio.

However, Murdoch is not stupid and you can see how he might win in many ways here

- They accept his offer and acquire MySpace for $12bn. RESULT. What a return on investment.

- They reject his approach and buy Facebook. Great, coz he just forced them to probably pay more than they needed by putting an overly high valuation on MySpace that upped Facebook's perceived "value". Moreover, the price Yahoo pays re-enforces the value of MySpace i.e. if Facebook sells for $3bn, then MySpace must be worth more, and so must Murdoch in turn!

But an additional cunning plan might be that he has persuaded an investment bank to sell him a synthetic long position on Facebook's value or, better yet, a synthetic pairs trade with a long position in Facebook and a short position on Yahoo. Such a deal would give him a payoff if the value of Facebook went up and the value of Yahoo declined. Consider how he could do this:

- Buying an interest in Facebook. An exising holder could "sell" their interest in Facebook at a pre-agreed price (call it $2bn equivalent price, which would have appeared to be a good price a week ago) thereby locking in the price they will receive. Murdoch "buys" at $2bn and keeps any upside above this, when it eventually sells. Putting this trade on ahead ahead of his manoeuvres this week would create an impressive profit.

- Selling an interest in Yahoo. Yahoo is a quoted stock, so getting a short position would be straight forward enough either through the options market or selling and then borrowing the shares. He clearly only profits if the price falls. It might do so if Yahoo buys Facebook at a price considered over the odds. It seems certain to fall if they accept the MySpace deal. In this latter case, if Murdoch took the 25% of the company shares and they fell in value, these would cover his short position and crystalise his short. As it happens, Yahoo could even look bad if they do nothing and see their stock price fall!

Has he really done this? Probably not and if he had it might be questioned whether he was insider trading. But what a strategy!

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Facebook wrongfoots its competition Monday, June 04, 2007

The recent announcement by Facebook regarding their Developer API was greeted with delighted, astonishment and horror by different constituencies.

Facebook with its 20 million+ users looks to be a heavenly place in which to build a business, and is reminiscent of the early days of the AppExchange from Salesforce. It too launched with what was then a free and open API with few restrictions on what use developers could make of this service.

However, as Ivan points out on Vecosys, the T&Cs raise some potential issues that could be exploited down the line

1. Facebook can limit you or terminate you at any time at their sole discretion (Section A.3)
2. Facebook reserve the right to impose fees at time and in any manner (Section 3)
3. Facebook can copy and distribute your Application, and analyse the content in order to target advertising (Section 4)
4. Facebook may create similar applications to yours, with no obligation to you (Sectition 4)
5. You can’t use any name or domain name address containing ‘facebook’, even at the third level, eg.g “facebook.xxx.com” (Section 6. C)
6. Be careful what ID you use for your developer account - IDs can’t be transferred or sold on, but nor do there seem to be corporate IDs. (Section 7)
7. Facebook can change the Terms and Conditions at any time, your only recourse if you don’t like this is to STOP USING THE SERVICE
(all sections below)

A cynic might suggest that Facebook could exploit the R&D being undertaken by developers and simply replace the most popular widgets with Facebook ones, and thus avoid their own experimentation. Obviously this might create a serious backlash, but as you may recall it didn't stop MySpace turning off Photobucket widgets recently, albeit as a device during negotiations to buy Photobucket.

Certainly, and as I forecast at its launch, Salesforce has now commercialised the AppExchange and shares in the revenues generating by those offering services on it. For Facebook, why shouldn't they share in the success of those companies that might make great revenues within their realm?

In the meantime, the most immediate question for other social network sites is how to respond - should they maintain "walled gardens", copy Facebook or muddle on with ad-hoc arrangements/facilities. Whilst the first of these provides maximum control, it may leave their users disappointed / frustrated with the offering. The second leaves them looking "me-too" like yet will require considerable effort to implement in most cases, whilst the third suggests lack of managerial vision/clarity (not a quality investors generally seek). A couple of such sites I've spoken to since the Facebook announcement privately concede they were caught on the hop and have yet to determine their strategy.

Do Social Networks really need to engage in an arms ("widget") race? Will users be likely to hop networks for better facilities? Certainly there are barriers to migrating (getting your friends to move too), but increasingly, and as I found recently on Facebook, most people already belong to many such networks and so there's a good chance that you'll find many of your friends already belong to "better" sites.

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Is Facebook creeping up on us Sunday, April 29, 2007

I met up with Paul Lomax last week and we got onto the subject of Facebook, which sometime last year opened its' gates to all comers, instead of the college communities it had formerly focussed on.

In London, it now has nearly 365, 000 registered users. How many of these are active it's hard to assess from the outside.

Venturebeat reported in March this year that Facebook claimed to be seeing about 1.5 billion page views a day, up from about 1 billion daily views in February 07. Facebook is now at more than 20 million registered users, up from 7.5 million users last July. Finally, it has more than 1.3 billion photos on the site, more than the 1 billion last month.


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Facebook is still motoring Monday, March 12, 2007

Kulveer Taggar provides an interesting summary of a talk Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook co-founder, on the business that included:

1) the biggest growth demographic is 25-34
2) there is big growth in the 50+ age group
3) facebook serves 70,000 photos a second. A SECOND.
4) they have 700m news stories generated (per month I think)
5) they are adding *half a million* new users each week, which should mean 50 million users by the end of the year
6) they are guesstimating they have 1/10th the number of search queries Google does worldwide internally on facebook
7) over half of their users log in daily (compare to say, 15% ish for MySpace, if they're lucky)
8) 1% of all internet time is spent on facebook
9) At any given time, there are maybe 1-2 million people online, that's larger than most US cities

This is a remarkable internet titan but which is still derided for not having sold out when it "had the chance". Yet, it's hard to believe that an internet property like this wouldn't command a staggering sale price.

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