Brian Grey Blog

Apparently the rumors are flying around that Facebook is next in line to roll out their own branded mobile phone.  Per usual, Techcrunch is out front with the info that Facebook is working on the software (not the hardware, nobody takes that on these days) to power a mobile device that would give iPhone and all those Android wannabes a run for their money.

Now we’ve heard this story before.  Big brand thinks they can go direct to consumer, bypass the mobile Carriers (e.g. Verizon et al) and become the gatekeeper to all revenues that flow in from said consumers.  Well, turns out it’s a little harder than that — just ask ESPN, Google or even the well funded upstarts Amp’d Mobile and Boost Mobile.  So why in the world would Facebook even have a chance to pull it off?

Couple reasons…or say 500 million reasons to start.

Talk about an amazing low cost promotional platform to upsell from, Facebook just has to get every marketer’s favorite “1%” conversion and all of a sudden they’re in the game.  Then there’s the not so small fact that a whole generation of digital users have shunned traditional email accounts for the Facebook inbox.  If this batch of Internet users is fine with the FB stream, wall and inbox as their communication threads, then a Facebook mobile phone will feel like an obvious extension.

And then of course there’s the insatiable appetite that marketers have to get social and be on the Facebook platform.  Imagine how Facebook can leverage this influence to pump out all kinds of co-marketing, cross-marketing deals with big brands to push the FB phone while at the same time seeding the FB Mobile Ad Network.  AdMob and Quattro what?

Ok, so the Facebook phone seems like it’s got a real shot, even if it’s not officially on the Facebook “to do” list.  Now how long until we get the specifications for the Twitter mobile phone?

The end may soon be near for Facebook.com — my mother-in-law just “friended me” on the massively popular social networking site.  That’s it — it’s all downhill from here for Facebook.  I mean, who isn’t going to be on Facebook pretty soon?  The cool factor is gone.

Yes, that’s right.  This past weekend, after spending two nights at our house, my dear mother-in-law had the audacity to not only sign up for Facebook, but she went so far as to friend me.  With, of course, the expectation that I actually confirm her as a friend.  There goes the neighborhood.

Seriously, my whole perception of Facebook has changed.  It was one thing when a couple of people from my Econ 101 class in college or the guy I worked with in a warehouse one summer tracked me down on Facebook, but my mother-in-law?  C’mon, that’s just not right.

Poof!  My last bastion of privacy is gone — the place where I could live my so called semi-professional and personal life shielded from my extended family.  A private club where I could relax in my smoking jacket, post some photos and throw inane comments up on my Status bar or my buddy’s wall.  It was a special secret life I was leading.  Even my wife wasn’t there — she had no interest in Facebook.  But apparently her mom does!

So now what do I do?  Do I dare “unfriend” my daughters’Nana.  Surely that is the definition of bad karma.  No, I think my special Facebook world is over.  What’s next?  Let me guess — it’s only a matter of days before I get a friend invite from MY mom!

Do you think my family would find me if I snuck over to Myspace?

Tonight I tackled the latest Web 2.0 mystery:  how to tie together the convoluted network that exists when one is simultaneously signed up for Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter.  What happens when you try to use each of these services to make your Web user experience easier and more fulfilling?  Well, you spend a lot of time clicking around to set and reset your settings, linking in to various subsets of “friends” and generally going through various phases of euphoria (“oh, cool, that’s awesome how that works”) and frustration (“what the f@&k is going on now?!”).

Alright, here’s my latest rundown on how these three sites have inserted themselves in my daily existence.

For several months I’ve been cruising along adding friends to my Facebook account and pinging on Twitter every once in awhile some of the same jibberish that I see so much of on Twitter (what I’d really like to see is Twitter to make Twitter Search more integrated and useful at Twitter.com — that’s where some of the useful filtering gets made discoverable to users).

Then, about six weeks ago I figured out that I could actually send an automated Tweet everytime I posted to my blog so I immediately installed the plugin in WordPress to do that.

Meanwhile, in the background I at some point had installed the Friendfeed app on Facebook — and actually set up Twitter and my blog as “services”.  So what happened then?  Well, not much.  Same user experience:  add friends on Facebook and Twitter randomly — with an occasional notice on Twitter that I’d submitted a new blog post.  But at the same time, Friendfeed would pipe in updates in to the News Feed on Facebook (basically resubmitting what was already being posted by Facebook), and oh, yah, I also installed the Twitter app on Facebook so that I could update my Facebook status via my Twitter iPhone app!

Confused?  Good, so was I.

So that brings us to this evening when I attempted to “rewire” my Web 2.0 life.

First, I actually went in to Friendfeed to see if there was more there than just a switchboard for routing stuff I do on other sites.  And actually there seems to be, though I need to put in more work to subscribe to what my friends are doing and to set up “Rooms” and special groups of friends so that I can order the conversation a bit better.  What I still don’t get is how to source meaningful “conversation” from Friendfeed — especially when what might be really meaningful is being said by people who I haven’t identified as my “friends” somewhere else.  For example, how do I find out about a really interesting conversation that’s going on about who the Phillies are going to sign before Spring Training?

As for Twitter, I’m still struggling to find the real value here.  I follow people, see their posts — many of which are like somebody shouting at me in short, inaudible snippets.  I do the same type of posts and imagine people are out there seeing them saying “so what?”.  I guess it’s a decent distribution channel for letting people know I’ve updated my blog — but most people get the update when they see my Facebook status updated (via Twitter of course).  I am going to keep trying to find the value in Twitter — as I said above, there is value in Twitter Search in the filtering that can be done and the corralling of meaningful conversation.

And what about Facebook.  Well they have made many iterations to the service in the past year.  Not the least of which is becoming more “Friendfeed” like.  Though piping in outside services like I can in Friendfeed seems harder to find and do on Facebook.  The real value with Facebook for me is in the fact that I have 600 “friends” on there and when I am on the site I can get a good, cursory update on what my friends are doing and saying.

So, where did I end up tonight?  Here are my conclusions — take them as a work in progress because I am sure that the way I have set everything up I am going to be blasting out multiple updates across these services in a way that will piss off my friends and get me accused of being a rogue spammer (kind of like my friend “EarnCashOnline1″ who is following me on Twitter).  That all notwithstanding, here goes:

1. Friendfeed is worth spending some time with — but I’d really like to use it in a way that allows me to follow and participate in conversations that I care about, like sports, managing, certain topics in digital media, etc.  Today it still just throws in a bunch of “activities” that come from the lives of my friends but doesn’t necessarily add a lot of utility to me.

2. Twitter is the “what’s happening now” platform — but I’d really like to see them invest in bringing the filtering that they are able to foster via Twitter Search in to the core Twitter experience.  Otherwise I suspect that the other guys out there like Friendfeed and emerging services like Twingly will co-opt the “conversation” spaces that exist within Twitter and render Twitter as just the pipes that deliver the messages.

3. Maybe what’s really happening here is another Bernie Madoff scheme.  Could it be that Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter (along with Digg, Tumblr and the dozens of other Web 2.0 features) are actually in cahoots in all of this confusing interplay?  Any time you spend time on an additional one of these sites you de facto increase the time you sink into trying to manage your Web life at the expense of your real life.  Maybe the guys at FB, FF and T are actually Facebooking, Friendfeeding and Twittering in the background new and devious ways to get all of us to intertwine their sites with our lives (how’s that for a visual?).

Nah, that’s crazy talk.  Now I gotta get back to www.FaceFriendFeedTwitterBookDiggMixxTumblrStumbleBook.com to make sure all my auto updates are, well, up to date!

I have been thinking lately about the swinging pendulum that is the Myspace vs. Facebook battle. It seems like just yesterday that Facebook was the darling, getting all the press for growing it’s global audience beyond Myspace’s and everyone was writing off Myspace as a flash-in-the-pan. Now, seems like the “Mo” belongs to the guys in LA.

So what gives? Myspace throws better parties.

Listen, everyone likes the guy who throws a party. Myspace always finds a way to throw a party when there are (influential) people in town ready to party. The latest, greatest example was Myspace’s party at the Web2.0 conference that featured Lionel Ritchie (no Nicole apprently).

Now I can’t recall the last time Facebook threw a noteworthy party.? And add to this the buzz around Myspace Music and fact that Myspace appears to be getting more traction in the ad space and it seems like late 2005 again for MS. So Facebook might have the “better” product, all the Valley pedigree when it comes to Stanford engineers and big time investors, but something as trendy as social networking relies on the perception vs. reality dynamic.

Right now, MS has the perceptual edge over FB. Oh, and for those who say the better product will ultimately win, do we need to revive the Apple vs. Microsoft battles of yesteryear?

Lots of coverage around the f8 developer conference this week and MySpace’s initial roll-out of OpenID support.  I’ve commented earlier about how much overload confronts user’s online today (at least users who try to keep up with everything happening).

So what’s so great about the evolution of trends like OpenID support and FB Connect – basically this represents early attempts at herding the proverbial Internet “cats”.  Giving users the ability to define their persona in a single (or at most a couple) locations and then port that persona with them as they move around the web, increasing the collection of content, commerce and social connections that are most relevant to them.  Again, I’m just trying to find the solution that keeps me from having to open 20 tabs in FireFox!

Business Week’s Catherine Holahan has her take on Facebook becoming Portal 2.0 – of course last time I checked there are still a few major registration based destinations (e.g. Yahoo!, MySpace) that can take advantage of this evolution.