[jozecuervo.com]

Web 2. Session: Comparing Social Platforms 4/23/08 8:30-9:20

2008-04-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

Innovations on the profile.
Facebook: Vague as always

Bebo: We've always been focussed on engagement. App charts via ratings. Shying away from emphasis on installs. Tangible Metrics. Encourage time spent and retention. Not throttling or sanctioning.

MySpace: Innovating on Home (private) and profile (public). News, Auctions. Early stages. IRC channel for dev community. Taking it slow. Makin data available to developers, Movie and Music data access. Making on site data stores more convenient to use.

Data Portability
Facebook: Intent is to enable user to take data with you wherever you go - both user and developer. Intentionally restrict access to contact information for spam purposes. As industry "our responsibility to work together".

Sixapart: Evolution of mashups into apps, opensocial. Next evolution, not one website inside of another, but two working together.

Google: OpenSocial is intended to be useful on the web in general, not just social network. Extensible, (hi-5). SN can expose additional services and api's. HI-5: Photos and presence.

Google: Facebook creating a new area. Standards can be beneficial because they can establish a market for everybody.

Deals before and after the launch of FB Platform.

MySpace: Open social extensions enable them to choose whenever they need to play along with standards or go their own route.

MySpace: Arrogant to think they can do better than the developers. As we expand music venture, going to make music data available to both internal and external vendors.

SixApart: Too much variation in API's for OpenSocial, photos in Flickr vs. MySpace photos.

Google: Api's for Apps on a platform!

Facebook: There are amazing Verticals that have not ben tapped yet. Sports, Productivity, etc.

SixApart: Our app competes with our own beacon notification.

FaceBook: Distribution is the big mess. Lots of rules to figure out.

Bebo: Building a marketplace. Looking into other verticals. How can apps help us and how can we help them? Partnerships cannot be to narrowly focussed, such as with a single video game company.

Facebook: Reputation system for Apps. User experience. Different types of distro opps depending on how users perceive the apps. Help users understand how to give feedback. Algorithmic as possible as opposed to taking an editorial role.

How are you going to change the mentality o developers to cooperation?

Bebo: Ensuring that viral channels work. Developers will try to game those channels. Promote and reward the most engaging apps. Focus on building a compelling product as opposed to trying to spam users.

MySpace: Lineage of people trying to game the system. App that sends external email to users. Mail spam is not like social spam. Apps getting chatty...

FaceBook: I think that in any system there's arbitrage. Same behavior in any market place or system. Our job to be in service of the user. Some apps do need to send a whole bunch of emails. EX: Causes is doing a positive thing and FB wants to encourage that. Some apps have a low threshold, others need to send a lot of notifications. How do we set rules and create incentives for the developers while maintaining a good user experience?

Google: Open social has a wide set of viral channels available. Each network chooses which channels to utilize. Google likes to se the word "organic" instead of "viral". Channels: Activity Stream and Messages

Facebook: Apps that focus on viral growth grow fast and die fast.

User Experience

Facebook: Apps often viral, but lacking social.

Monetization:

MySpace: Apps need a large install base. Focus on Self-Serve and hyper-targeting. Testing categories in hyper-targeting.

Bebo: Anyone trying to build a marketplace has to think about monetization. How can we ashare data that helps the developer monetize? Over the next year, a lot of cool new developments and innovations.

Facebook: 2008 a big year for monetization. FB working on social commerce. Commerce engine, payments. Fluff Friends, etc using virtual currencies.

Sixapart: MAKE IT EASY FOR THE DEVELOPER! Controlled extensibility. Far too difficult.

Google: BTW, We already have monetization, AdSense and Google Checkout.

Bebo: Downtime? Uh, downtime sucks.

Sixapart: We have FOAF and XFN woo hoo!

Facebook: What does it mean when a user wants to move data around? Should we be threatened? Trying to emphasize "privacy portability" as a way to make "data portability" sound risky.

Sixapart: FB doesn't care about portability, all talk. Not really - all talk about portability is just talk. True portability will come naturally.

NewTeeVee Live: Part 1

2007-11-14T12:45:00.000-08:00

Today I'm sitting in on the NewTeeVee Live Conference. Here are my notes:

12:15 PM - Search and Discovery Face Off
Finding what you're looking for, or what you aren't

Garrett Camp StumbleUpon
Mary Hodder Dabble
Adam Singolda Taboola
Tim Tuttle Truveo
Alex Vikati CastTV

This session pulls together a panel of experts from various video sharing sites and search engines to discuss making video search and discovery more relevant.

Mary Hodder estimates that there are 300 million videos on the web and 350,000 uploaded per day. "Discovery is 80% of the problem".

Evolution: from downloading video files to hosting a player to syndicating a feed of players.

Garrett: "People don't always know what they want", hence the notion of flipping channels.

Mary Hodder: Users characterize and describe videos differently than publishers.

Tim: Search and metadata has improved vastly over the last few years.

Signal processing, OCR is not practical on hundreds of millions of videos on a daily basis.

Garrett: Looking onto the Nintendo wii as a set top ITV box.

Tim: API's are powerful, but no developers have yet used them to to bring the Truveo experience to a set-top box.

Hodder: Youtube has gone from 50% at 100,000,000 views to 25% at 300,000,000 views. Digg - the percentage of videos coming from youtube has gone from 90% to maybe 10%.

Cast.TV: Fragmentation / Syndication is a headache/issue? The lines between search, discovery, browse are blurred.

StumbleUpon is the winner of the faceoff at 33% - audience poll of most likely to use for discovery. Truveo is 2nd.

My Opinion: Metadata is key and the exchange thereof will evolve to become a commodity exchange. 2nd tier video sites have a chance if they can find their niche and become relevant on distribution networks such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Bebo, FB, etc. These publishers need to provide as much meta-data as possible to the distribution networks and secure the return of metadata from those sites whenever possible. In Bebo's case, a publisher such as crackle should bring as much relevance as possible to the actual Bebo community based on what other bebo users are watching on crackle. How this is facilitad is up to both sides to build out API's, to swap data and yet maintain user privacy standards at the same time. StumbleUpon is on the right path.

Voices That Matter: Andy Clarke

2007-10-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I am sitting in a workshop with Andy Clarke, author of Transcending CSS.

Mentioned:

Ryan Carson, UK
Jeffery Zeldman, Happy Cog
Eric Meyer, Complex Spiral
Jason Santa Maria, Happy Cog
Dave Shea, Mezzoblue.com
Steven Champeon, hesketh.com
Nate Koechley, Yahoo
Microformats: Hcard

Intermission: had a cigarette with Andy, whose son apparently uses Bebo and not Facebook or MySpace.

Why would you use div[id="content_main"] instead of div#content_main?
To enable branching from older browsers to newer browsers. Exactly which browsers belong in which branch?

Getting into Specificity, apparently only a few of the designers in the room actually know what it is and how it works. This is an interview question that I use to test designers applying to Bebo.

Mentioned:
Specificity Wars

Using Attribute sub-string selectors to generate content:

E[foo~="bar"]
E[foo^="bar"]
E[foo$="bar"]
E[foo*="bar"]

Pseudo elements and classes:

li:last-child {}
p:first-line {}

and on...

Video Egg App Camp, Part 2

2007-10-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

Session 3: Next Generation Advertising on Apps

Television advertising is treated as a commodity, that helps the industry scale.

Marketing expert says:

Cross-platform standardization is necessary,
There are two types of advertisers - those who will take risks and the other 98%.
Try to think in all mediums, not just online (billboards, print, TV).
Standardization of: creative, cpm.
Reach and frequency are vital.
How do you engage and repeat the message in different and creative ways?

How do you reliably create word of mouth advertising?

Session 5: Opening your API

Facebook platform is a "reverse API"
API: data, logic, presentation, control

The only way you get developers to use your stuff is to educate them and encourage communication and collaboration.

Application Gallery - very important for seeding ideas.

Developer applies for key (not by email). Key is initially limited, increased access later based on business logic.

Mashery competes with the internal CTO. Any company can build this, but development cost is about 3-6 months.

Userplane has an API, on over 200,000 websites.

Caching and load balancing can dramatically improve the efficiency of calls being made to an API.

The "secret sauce" is in the data or logic, not the presentation - Except for facebook.

Next: Open Bar, the only reliable development platform.

Video Egg App Camp, Part 1

2007-10-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Today I am kicking it at VideoEgg, drinking lots of coffee and sitting in on a few sessions - part of the VideoEgg App Camp. As an unofficial representative of Bebo, my goal today is to learn as much as I can about the Application Platform business that has boomed on Facebook over the last few months. Here are my notes:

Session 1: Monetizing Apps through Advertising.

Monetizing Apps through traditional methods:

Referrals / CPI
CPM / CPC
Leadgen?

Which app types are going to be the most successful, categorically?

casual gaming?
Media apps
Utility apps - no

Do different demographics like different apps?

Is Group-based app activity vital?

Groups are successful on myspace.
Groups platform not robust enough on Facebook
Integrating groups into the app experience can improve

Jerry Ablan, pogostick

Harry Potter App - Which character are you? 40,000 new users per day.
High Turnover = good for business?
Doesn't care about advertiser needs, why should he?

App developers may trade referrals from one platform for boosted distribution on other platforms...

Session 2: Valuing, buying and selling Apps.

Adonomics, valuation system/market for apps.

Dramatic Whitespace, $700
Favorite peeps vs. Top friends 10's o millions of dollars.
App developers will pay on average $0.50 per install

Developers often avoid using ads initially, but why?

Troy thinks that most users will not react negatively to ads.
Developers are leaving money on the table.

What is the critical mass for a Social Network App to become highly valuable?

Number of registered users
Number of active users
Number of page views or interactions
Growth rate

Central Coast Code Camp

2007-09-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

This weekend I am attending the first annual Central Coast Code Camp in San Luis Obispo at the Embassy Suites Hotel, presented by Softec. Here are some of the sessions I am interested in:

Building an XBox 360 game in an hour
Building Marketplace Apps using Amazon Flexible Payments in .NET
Game 2.0 - How the Web is influencing the game
Patent Portfolio Development and Use
Ruby on Rails
Social Media as Trading Cards

~jose

NOTE: this is an old post, for some reason it never went live.

Me and gramps

2007-08-16T16:05:00.001-07:00

Me and gramps
Originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

I miss my gramps.

2007-08-01T12:01:00.001-07:00

Going through the pains of installing all my software again.�

This posted from a google desktop widget.

Chanel Boots

2007-05-20T16:30:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

I'm teaching Jessica how to blog. This would be a sample posting about her Chanel boots.

Jessica Says I'm a rat...

2007-05-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

New Bebo Logo

2007-03-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

We launched a new logo for Bebo last night...

It doesn't look like such a dramatic change, but believe me, we spent a lot of time on it. Uo will notice that the type has become all lower case and the color has shifted in hue to a true red. Also, we removed the sub text on each of the product logos. Hope you all enjoy!

~jose

Bebo hits Alexa top 100

2007-02-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

Just this morning, one of my coworkers (Pete) pointed out that Bebo has broken the top 100 on Alexa! I wonder what the average employee to rank ratio is on Alexa...

Look out HI5.

Vlog Production Model

2006-10-13T02:14:00.000-07:00

This is a little diagram I created to help visualize the complexity of our new production flow, web architecture and sustainability model for burntwire.tv.

vlog production flow,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

Green lines are for monetization.
Yellow lines are stats.
Red two-way lines are monetized flash content.
Light grey lines represent creative direction.
Turquoise lines are non-monetized high-res quicktime files.
Orange lines are RSS feeds.
The light grey box is my server.
Darker gery boxes are other people's servers.

We start with a high res widescreen quicktime clip (480x270). The editor uploads it to our server while the writer prepares copy for the blog and saves as a draft in blogger. The editor then uploads our quicktime to revver which converts it into a flash clip (320x240) and gives us a URL. The flash URL and quicktime URL are pasted into the blog post and sent live. Users can now visit our site burntwire.tv and view our videos in revver flash or download them in high quality quicktime and leave comments on our blog.

Revver offers revenue sharing, which means that every time one of our clips play, it is followed by advertising - we get 50% of the ad revenue. We also get ad revenue from the google ads displaying on the burntwire.tv website. We do not generate revenue from YouTube, google video, Yahoo Video, iTunes or from people who directly download the videos. To monetize on those channels, we would need to sell brand sponsorship or get noticed and bought for a broadcast distribution.

Next, we paste the Revver code into our MySpace profile and Bebo. Hopefully revver does not get blocked by MySpace. Revver pasting should be available shortly as a feature at Bebo.

We then upload our quicktime to google video, youtube, yahoo video and blip.tv. We take the time to go through each different community to tag and categorize our content appropriately and then communicate to other users via messages or comments. This is primarily for exposure, though it is difficult to drive traffic back from any of those sites. Our comments, ratings and views end up stuck within their walled gardens.

We also have a side feed for photos coming in from Flickr. Feedburner can combine our flickr feed with our blogger feed to create a single optimized RSS feed that has text, photos and video together. ITunes and other RSS aggregators will display our photos and videos and provide the option to sync with the iPod. Feedburner adds the appropriate information to allow iTunes and the apple music store to be able to read the feed.

Feedburner provides statistics about how many people consume our RSS feed including the software they use and the content they are grabbing. Google Analytics provides statistics about what pages are being viewed on our site and where our traffic is coming from. Other viewing statistics are gather by hand from each site featuring our content and compiled into an excel spreadsheet which is used to inform content decisions and sell advertisers on sponsorship.

The Vloggies

2006-09-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

The vloggies is coming up here in San Francisco and I think the burntwire.tv crew is gonna be there. Here is the event listing on upcoming.org - seeya there.

bebo

2006-09-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

bebo,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

Yay, I got a job... and the one I wanted.

Monday morning, I start working at bebo as a web designer. If you haven't heard of bebo, check it out. Bebo is a social network site like myspace, friendster, facebook and hi5. I will be working on custom profiles for advertising clients and contributing to the overall maintenance of the site. Please go to bebo and add me as a friend.

Angelina, Rest in Peace

2006-09-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Angelina, Rest in Peace,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

Last week on 9-11, one of my good friends, Angelina Pollock passed away at the young age of 25. Angelina was recently engaged to her boyfriend Angelo and is the proud mother of the most beautiful one-year old girl named Madison. Angelina was like a little sister to me and I will miss her dearly. We hung out frequently between about 1997 and 2002 with our mutual friend Chelsea. Angelina was a beautiful girl with a distinct laugh and mischievous smile. She rarely liked going out or partying but loved the company of friends and family. Her mom and brother were super cool. I used to hang out at her house for dinner and just watch TV with the family. They really made me feel like part of the family and I will always cherish those times. Angelina's funeral service took place on Thursday September 14th in Los Osos. This is the third friend my age whom I have lost in recent years, but really the first that I was this close to. It is difficult to comprehend how long the rest of my life may be and how short a portion of it I was able to share with her. So many opportunities must now go un-lived. I'll miss you so much Angelina. Peace be with you now.

Captain George

2006-09-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

09-10-06_0351.jpg,
originally uploaded by GBFOX6.

This is a production still from an upcoming buddy cop noir comedy action feature film that we are producing.

Web Design Portfolio

2006-08-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

eyecandy.ucsc.edu mockup,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

I have recently compiled and uploaded some screenshots of websites that I have worked on. I decided that Flickr was the best way for me to store and share these images on the web.
Web Design Potfolio on Flickr

The Best of IPTV

2006-07-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Aoka just found this clip on google video of one of our biggest fans. Thanks Jon!

The Best of IPTV including

1. burntwire.tv
2. Court TV Online
3. Eyewitness News
4. go_open
5. Hardware Video Reviews
6. HomeStar Runner
7. Inside the Game
8. MobuzzTV
9. NBC Nightly News NetCast
10. On the Spot

these are all great show!!!

stupidity unleashed

2006-07-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

unleashed,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

Today is the day of the day.

No Bullshdio wins 3 awards!

2006-07-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Jona receiving award,
originally uploaded by jozecuervo.

Thursday July 20th, at an outdoor screening at Dolores Park, No Bullshido won three awards at the 48 Hour Film Festival. Best Choreography, Best Sound and Best use of Required Character.

Caught on Flickr

2006-07-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

Flickr Member ...jozecuervo -1,
originally uploaded by Violentz.

Here is a photo of me that was taken in Boston at the CTC conference by Flickr user Violentz.

Bad Haircut

2006-06-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

Here is an animation I put together for fun. It's called BAD HAIRCUT.

48 Hour Film Fest

2006-06-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight kicks off the 48 hour film fest in San Francisco. I will be working with several friends including Colin Murray. Stay tuned for an awesome film, due to be released Tuesday night.

Vloggercon 2006 Wrap-up

2006-06-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

The weekend before last was Vloggercon in San Francisco. For those not in the know, a vlogger is a video-blogger. The convention was held at the Swedish American Hall in the Castro, a short bike ride or 20 minute walk from my house. Tickets were sold out about a week before the show, so I was the only member of burntwire.tv (my experimental video podcast collective) to attend. Some of the awesome peeps i met or ran into again include: Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi, Josh Wolf, Irina Slutsky, Steve Garfield, Zulma, Mary Ann and many more. For the $50 I spent to get in, this event was definitely worth it. For those who did not get their tickets on time, there was a video webcast and an IRC backchannel for the show (freenode/#vloggercon). Ryanne is prepping all of the video for an online archive that anyone will be able to access. Unlike so many of the enterprise-oriented-business-suit conferences out there, this is an open conference that anyone can contribute to. Vloggercon attendees are still uploading photos, videos and blog posts about the event. You can search for these by the tag "vloggercon2006" on Flickr, mefeedia, blip.tv, technorati and fireant.

Overall, I was very impressed with the conference. Some people had complaints about the noise overflow, but the internet video streams, wiki and IRC room were very useful to both attendees and remote participants. The sessions varied somewhat from the technical to the political, but the best two in my opinion were Net Neutrality and Brainstorming the Future.

The net neutrality debate was inevitably one-sided with this crowd. It seems pretty obvious that nobody at the conference is happy with what the bells are trying to do with our internet. AT&T and Verizon would like to compete with the cable companies for video content delivery. Seems fair, (they own the fiber) but unfortunately they want to split the internet into two tiers (fast lane, slow lane) to do this.

Currently, every bit of information on the internet is treated equally by the switches and routers and trunks that are the backbone of the net. We call this "net neutrality". If it were not for net neutrality, the internet never would have been able to flourish as it has. The dotcom boom never would have happened. But it did - and now apparently, they are tired of us using their fiber at our own discretion. If the bells get their way, they will (IMHO) ruin the open model of the internet.

The bells want to jump into the video franchising business without any checks and balances from local government and they have the money to lobby their position. I think for now, that they should have to jump through just as many hoops. Almost everyone at vloggercon produces their own content. Vloggers are only one of the groups which stand to lose their voice if the bells get their way. We need big companies like google and yahoo to stand up for us now. They should either match the lobbying dollars or ramp up their involvement in becoming ISP's.

I'll see you next year at Vloggercon.