amit klein

Social Data Portability allows you to bring your friends, interests and relationships where ever you go across the web.  For users, it means not having to create a new account on every site, and having immediate access to your network of friends.  For businesses, it gives you more demographic insight into your users, as well as let you leverage the popularity of existing social networks to promote activity on your site.   In this post I will discuss the strengths and differences between Facebook Connect, OpenSocial and Sign in with Twitter and show a few examples.

Facebook Connect

Simply put, Facebook Connect allows you to build a Facebook application outside of Facebook. You can integrate with Facebook’s authentication, retrieve profile information about your users, allow your users to find their friends who have “connected” with your site, as well as selectively publish actions to a user’s activity stream.   Developing a Facebook Connect application requires software development chops but gives you access to Facebook’s 200m users.  Digg and CNN both demonstrate different approaches to integration.

CNN
CNN offered a live video stream during Obama’s inaugration.  It included a Facebook Connect application which allowed users to sign in with their Facebook credentials and participate in a live global chat.

Chattin' bout Barry

The participation numbers are staggering.  According to Mashable:

1. 600,000 status updates posted through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed
2. Facebook averaged 4,000 status updates per minute during the broadcast
3. 8,500 status updates were posted during the first minute of Obama’s speech
4. “Millions” of people logged into Facebook during the broadcast

These numbers would’ve never been achievable if users had to register with CNN to participate.  Recently, the Whitehouse has taken a cue and announced a similar application for it’s live video events.

Digg
Digg’s Facebook Connect implementation allows you to link your Digg and Facebook accounts.  Each story you digg, shows up on your activity stream (for all your friends to see).  For Digg, the beneifts are immediate, more people will see that I am digging stories and click back to the site.

Signing Into Facebook Connect

Digg story on my Facebook activity feed

Facebook Connect is now also available for the iPhone.  This is huge and will create a whole new world of mobile social applications.

OpenSocial

OpenSocial is similar to Facebook Connect but allows you to build applications that run in orkut, MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Ning and Yahoo! and other 3rd party sites.

Virgin Global Row
The Virgin Global Row is a one crazy dude’s story about circling Antarctica in a boat by himself (and raising some money for charity).  OpenSocial integration allows you to login, connect with other people who have joined the site, and push your actions on the site to your various social networks.

Open social options

Google Friend Connect
Google has also release a set of plug n play widgets based on OpenSocial called Google Friend Connect.  Currently there are about 10 widgets available including sign-in, comments, polls, reviews, events and recommendations.  This is cool because it allows anyone to quickly and easily incorporate social elements to their site (no coding required).

Sign in with Twitter

Yep, you guessed it, sign in with Twitter allows 3rd party sites to publish activity to your Twitter stream.  One example of this is Spymaster (the Twitter game which equally amazed and pissed people off).

Spymaster
Spymaster is a game which allows you to go on missions, raise money, buy weapons and attack other spies (Twitter users).  Success is based on how many of your followers play the game and how often you send out updates through your twitter stream.   IMO the game is pretty boring although it is undeniably attracting a huge following and a really nice example of a successful viral campaign.

Bribing you to tweet about your activities

Real time spymaster activity

Conclusion

There’s a big battle over who will become the defacto social OS of the web.  In the future sites/widgets/apps will be social (and location aware), the question is where your data will be sourced from.  At this point Facebook is clearly in the lead, but Google has deep pockets and Twiter is making huge strides.  As Facebook and Twitter launch payment platforms, the opportunity to monitize through social ads and microtransactions presents a huge opportunity.  Got friends?

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain (RT will lerner)

A few people have asked me recently how I was able to find a job in India while living in New York.  I’ll share my experiences and give some tips which will hopefully be relevant for anyone looking for a job.

One day I woke up and decided I wanted to move to abroad.  It didn’t really matter where, on a whim I picked India because it sounded cool and Hong Kong since my parents had lived there and I had some contacts.  The first thing I did was the traditional job board seek and apply.

Lesson #1: It’s tough to evaluate and seriously consider a candidate from half a world away: The response rates I got from the job boards sucked.  I probably applied to 100 jobs and maybe heard back from 1.  Not very encouraging.  I realized that this wasn’t going to work, I either needed connections or to pack up my bags and move and try to apply for jobs locally.  I wasn’t quite ready for drastic measures quite yet (but I was getting close).

Lesson #2: Use your network, but don’t force it: Next I started reaching out to trusted people in my network (family and friends) and asked if they had any recommendations.  I was put in touch with some interesting people, but nothing was a great fit.  50% of the people I spoke with seemed like they were doing me (or my connect) a favor by talking to me, and the other 50% I felt like I was talking to just because I had no other alternative (and didn’t want to offend my hook-up).  The best conditions for getting a job is when you have an “in” and you are suitably qualified and passionate about the job.  In my case I only had two out of the three.  I spent a few days thinking about it and decided on another approach.

Lesson #3: Forget a job profile, find a great company: Rather then looking for a particular job, I started trying to figure out which companies I would love to work for.   I did some research and came up with a list that included interactive agencies (based on my most recent work experience), web startups (including a local search company and an advertising network), VCs and various agile software companies.   I came across Deloitte’s list of Fastest 500 growing companies divided into region and investigated every company.  Finally I contacted the owners of special interest groups (like The Agile Softare Community of India run by Naresh Jain), asking for any advice.

Lesson #4: Go straight to the top: I did as much research about these companies as possible put together a list of the top 50 companies I wanted to work for, and rather then apply for jobs through the traditional channels, I found the name of their CEO and emailed them directly.  Emailing a CEO is a good idea: first off it shows some “chutzpa,” second if you are good, they can create a job for you, third when a CEO emails a hiring manager and says check out this candidate, they listen.  Luckily, CEO’s of companies are usually pretty easy to find, though their email addresses aren’t always.  The old “guess the email address” trick usually did the job.  Either find contact info for someone at the company and copy their email address format (first.last@company, first.last initial@company, etc…), or just guess a popular format.  I was able to hit the CEO for pretty much every company I found.  Response rates (especially for smaller companies) jumped dramatically.

Lesson #5: Land one interview: This is the hardest step.  In my case I got lucky, an agile software consultancy who I really admired (let’s call them ThoughSmirks), had offices in NY and were hiring in India.  Wow’d ‘em in NYC and they agreed to setup an interview with me in India.  Boom, just like that I had one concrete, legitimate interview lined up with a company I liked.  I setup a tentative itinerary and bought some plane tickets (on my own dime).  Now with travel dates in hand it was a easy to lock up other interviews.  Through the people I was in talks with and the CEO’s of companies I was emailing, I had a bunch of phone interviews and setup 7 in-person interviews for a 9 day trip to Mumbai, Goa and Bangalore.  The companies varied in terms of size, culture, vertical and location, and just like college I had some “safeties” and some “long-shots.”

Lesson #6: Get the offer – think later: When I got here and started talking to people my views totally changed. The company I was most excited about ended up being a little boring, something didn’t resonate well.  During the interview I started questioning if this was the right move for me.  The interview is not the place to think about this stuff: you’re an actor – smile, laugh, be smart, get the offer – do whatever it takes.  You’ll have plenty of time to think about this later.

Lesson #7: Money isn’t the most important thing: I was lucky and was able to get multiple offers.  This really allowed me to evaluate what was important.  Despite liking one company in Bangalore, I hated the city (you’re tellin’ me bars close at 11 and there’s no live music?).  Goa was awesome and the advertising agency I got an offer from was cool, but as my Dad said, even in Darfur they pay you more (Money isn’t everything but hey a man’s gotta eat).  In the end I really liked Mumbai and was really impressed by all the people I met at Directi although my role wasn’t exactly defined at the time of joining, 7 months later I’m extremely happy with my decision.

Lesson #8: Enjoy: In the end moving abroad has been a really great experience for me.  I’ve been challenged professionally and personally and feel like I have grown tremendously as a result.  I have many friends who have taken the plunge  (from teaching english in China, Vietnam, Peru, South Korea to selling ice cream in Thaland to peace corps in West Africa), and not a single person I know regrets it.  It isn’t for everyone, but those of you feeling pangs of restlessness, what are you waiting for, the time is now…

The long-held myth that web companies can achieve profitability through free products, services and content solely based on advertising is fading.  The diminishing rates of online ads, and the slowdown of venture capital and IPOs, has led to a realization that a sustainable business model for web companies must have multiple, diverse, revenue streams.

Over the last few months I’ve seen a growing number of companies offering alternative strategies to generating revenue.

Subscription Services / Premium Content (Blizzard, New York Times, GigaOM, Forrester)

The most straightforward revenue source is paid subscriptions. Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, absolutely crush it.

“if [their] 10 million subscribers were to pay the regular $14.99 month-to-month fee, then Blizzard would fill its pockets with almost $150 million every single month… that means a revenue-target of more than $1.7 billion for FY 2008.”

While many media companies have experimented with paid subscription models, very few have been able to do it successfully.  The exception is research focused companies like Forrester which banks on corporates with deep pockets shelling out $700 for a 12 page report.  GigaOM and TechCrunch have also recently launched similar premium research and analysis services.

The New York Times recently released it’s TimesReader 2.0 Adobe Air client. While the client offers an improved user experience, I can’t ever imagine shelling out $3.45 a week for content I can get for free.  Though I would pay for their $3 iPhone app.

It’s possible that with the success of the Kindle, these paid content services will flourish in the future.

Freemium (Wetpaint, Pandora, Google Apps)

A variation on premium content services is the freemium model. Give away 80% of your service for free, and charge for heavy users who want more functionality or a better experience. Pandora, a music discovery product, recently launched a premium services which, for $36 a year, removes ads, provides higher quality streaming music and offers a desktop app.  A compelling offering for their top tier of users.

Wetpaint is another company that has found success through the freemium model:

“When Ben Elowitz formed Wetpaint in 2005, it was intended to let anyone create a Web site free… Wetpaint typically offers advertisers space on a few Web sites with a few hundred thousand visitors. But last fall, many of their advertisers raised their sights to publishers with more than five million readers, Mr. Elowitz said. Rates for leftover ad space fell to 25 cents per thousand views from $1… Now, Wetpaint charges its big company customers, like HBO and Fox, a fee in exchange for providing extra services like site promotion and moderating reader forums… Smaller customers can pay to keep their sites free of ads. Wetpaint plans to add more paid services, including additional storage for big files and personalized domain names. It is also considering selling virtual goods on its sites. “

Finally Google Apps is another nice example of successfully upselling premium services. The communication and collaboration platform is free for up to 50 users, but for $50 per user per year you get access to a whole range of services including: additional storage space, email security and archiving, video sharing, phone support and access to API’s.

App Stores (Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, Google Android)

It’s tough to argue against the game-changing success of the Apple App Store.  Rival companies like Google, Nokia and Blackberry have launched their own stores (the Android Market, Ovi store and Blackberry App World respectively).  A cursory glance on the Blackberry store only showed about 20 apps, and none of them were paid.  While they won’t be competitive with Apple (at least for some time), it’s at least showing that this model is profitable and worth pursuing.  I’m sure this is now central to how mobile handset makers and software developers plan on monetizing phones.

Interestingly this model is now being extended beyond just phones (and why not!).  According to the Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz:

“Vector is a network service to connect companies of all sizes and types to the roughly one billion Java users all over the world. Vector (which we’ll likely rename the Java Store), has the potential to deliver the world’s largest audience to developers and businesses leveraging Java and JavaFX.

Our runtimes reach more consumers than just about any other company on earth. That ubiquity has obvious value to search companies, but it’s also quite valuable to banks looking to sign up new accounts, sports franchises looking for new viewers, media companies and news organizations looking for new subscribers – basically, any Java developer looking to escape the browser to reach a billion or so consumers.

How will it work? Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search). As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience. “

I believe that a paid app store is also a viable business model for social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Microtransaction (Tencent, Zygna, Facebook)

Tencent, the largest Chinese social network, focuses on microtransactions as their primary revenue source.  Users pay for subscriptions, virtual clothes for your avatar, new weapons, cute pets, etc… From their ‘09 first quarter results:

Internet services (digital goods, game subscriptions, micro-transactions) – $279.9 mil (76% of total revenues)
Mobile Subscriptions – $64.5 (17.6% of total revenue)
Online Advertising – $21 mil (5.9% of total revenues)

Online advertising only 5.9% of their total $350mil revenues?  Impressive.

Another company successfully generating revenues from social gaming microtransactions is Zygna.  According to TechCrunch:

“Zynga, the online gaming publisher, is making a ton of money… [close] to $100 million. And clearly, it’s accelerating… There looks to be a bright future in the online gaming sphere and specifically around micro-transactions. That’s how Zynga makes most of its money. With some of its leading games on MySpace and Facebook, it charges users for playing time or for things like chips in poker. These small purchases which usually amount to only a few dollars at a time, start to add up quick. And that’s only with a small percentage of overall players opting to buy them.”

Facebook finally launched it’s much anticipated payment platform for testing.  Facebook hopes to be the OS for the social web.  They are banking on companies like Zygna figuring out what it the masses want and developing social applications on top of their platform.  App developers will be able to charge for subscriptions and create opportunities for in-app transactions. Facebook will get a cut of each transaction.  Cha-ching!

Another interesting company in this space is Tipjoy, which facilitates small payments on Twitter. I haven’t seen this used effectively yet, but I imagine a micropayment based Craigslist Twitter app could be successful.

Trend Analysis (Twitter, Zensify)

It’s undeniable that Twitter has achieved massive popularity, but that doesn’t always translate to profits (see YouTube). I believe Twitter’s most effective strategy for monetization will be mining and performing trend analysis on the millions of thought bubbles created by users daily. Both companies and individuals would pay big money to answer the following questions:

• What are people saying about me/my product right now?
• How has the perception of my brand changed recently and in what direction is it trending?
• Geographically where is my biggest, rapidly emerging and diminishing audiences?
• Who are my biggest evangelists, in what demographic do they fall in, where are they located?
• Who are my biggest naysayers, how can I change their perception?
• What is the perception of my product vs. my competitors?
• What are the trending (in both directions) topics in my industry?

On a smaller scale the new iPhone app Zensify:

“Shows the user trends within your social graph in the form of a tag cloud of key words. In other words it brings a lot more intelligence to your social graph. Suddenly, you can see a big trending topic amongst people you follow… “Wouldn’t it be cool if “trending topics” were localized to the people who are followed by the people you follow.” Well Zensify does this… And it doesn’t just do it across Twitter. It does it also does it across updates from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Photobucket and 12seconds.”

I believe that providing a set of tools to monitor trends amongst your social graph (and public timelines), will be a huge revenue opportunity for companies looking to monetize on social and real-time.

Conclusion

When the internet was originally created the “page metaphor” mimicked the existing print industry. It followed that the way to monetize was through advertisements. As we move from pages to activity streams we’re starting to see entirely new, innovative ways to profit. We are still in the infancy of this new stream based revolution and while companies like Twitter and Facebook have achieved huge valuations no one (especially the Newspaper and Music industries) has yet figured out Monetization 2.0. Put on your thinking hats…

It’s been a busy month, I had a few friends come in from US and we took a much needed week off to go to Goa and Kerala. It was my third time to Goa since I’ve been here and I feel pretty comfortable there. I know my way around, I can recommend some good places (stay at Anjuna Laguna, eat at Fiesta in Baga, party at Shiros in Candolem) and I pretty much have the feel for what to do (eat mangos and goan fish curry, drink watermelon juice and vodka, lay on the beach and never, ever drink feni). The highlight of the trip was taking a bike ride to old Goa, I love riding bikes and if I wasn’t totally scared of the crowd in Bombay I would get a Bullet.

Although Goa is a great time, we don’t really get the “Indian experience”. The areas we visited could easily be any beach town in the world (northeast Brazil, Ibiza, Phillipines, Mexico, etc…), in the sense that it’s beautiful but it caters to a sort of generic, globe-trotting, hippy, crowd. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome, it’s just not culturally authentic.

We then headed down to the south east of India to Kerala. We first went to Periyar which is a big animal reserve. We got to see some elephants and monkeys which I was really excited about but unfortunately no tigers. Periyar was aight, but my expectations were too high – I was expecting to see some lion king shit and instead got a glorified zoo (the elephants were chained up). On a positive note – we stumbled into a martial arts show, which was surprisingly cool and involved rings of fire.

Next we headed to Allepy to cruise around the backwaters on a houseboat. Before going I was a bit nervous about this, what are we gonna do for two days on boat? We’re a group of young, slightly aggressive, attention deficient Americans, there’s no way we’ll enjoy this. In reality it was incredible, what’d we do? Nothing – played a lot of cards, drank a bunch of beer, ate gigantic tiger prawns, and observed life on the backwater. It was pretty surreal (one of those “I can’t believe I actually live in India” moments), and was the most relaxed I think I’ve ever been. It was a really beautiful place and I think almost anyone would enjoy it.

After my friends left, my good friend Aju invited me to his wedding. We took a 20 hour train ride (AC 3rd class) to Raipur. The ride out there was pretty intense. Everyone says traveling by Indian trains is something you have to do, though I’m not sure – it was a mess. The numberings for the seats were all wrong and there were people with unconfirmed seats also in our compartment. It was cramped and uncomfortable – I’m glad I did it, but it’s unlikely I’d do it again (unless you bump me up a class or two). The wedding itself was great though, I had no idea what was going on. I was told I needed to wear a kurta (traditional Indian garb), and bought one before I left Bombay. I changed into my clothes and went downstairs and everyone else was wearing slacks and shirts, I felt pretty ridiculous until my friends came wearing native garb as well. We also all got turbans… which was awesome. The wedding started with everyone on the groom’s side dance-marching to the wedding (20 min away) in a procession with a band, people carrying 70’s style colored lights and stopping every three minutes to light fireworks. Did I mention Aju was riding a horse? People kept trying to steal his shoes, and I think a little girl tried to bribe me. It was a really cool experience.

Tonight is the second part of his wedding in Bombay, more pictures to come soon…

There’s been a lot of talk the last few days about Google’s rumored “late-stage” acquisition talks with Twitter. While current consensus is that they are merely discussing mutually beneficial product strategies, it doesn’t mean that this deal isn’t being thoroughly considered and dissected by executive committees (not just of Twitter and Google, but MS & Yahoo as well) and tech pundits alike.  In this post I will briefly give some background, describe the potential best and worst case scenarios for both Google and Twitter, and give a final opinion.

Background: Why is Twitter Important?

Microblogging (whether it be Twitter, Facebook Status’ or anything else), was always thought to be about about marketing.  The business appeal of social media is that you can have a two way conversation with customers directly, at almost no cost, and let them do the dirty work of promoting your product “virally.”  Personally, our iPhone-toting, attention-lacking, cause-of-the-day promoting, have-it-your-way generation thinks our opinions are important and should be heard…now.  Equal parts narcissism and genuine interest in enhancing communication.

Now that Twitter has achieved mainstream popularity people are no longer think of it as a niche, social network.   If it’s possible to organize, make sense of and data mine these millions of thought bubbles, Twitter becomes an incredibly powerful, real-time, social, search-engine.  In this light, it is obvious that Google wants a piece.

Why Google Needs Twitter

Although Google dominates search and remains increasingly profitable, there are still a number of factors which could contribute to a Google’s fall.

With the belts tightening and infinitely high expectations, Google is struggling to find their next big source of revenue.  YouTube has the viewers, but no revenue.  Other products like Lively (which always felt very pets.com bubbly to me), Jaiku (microblogging) and Dodgeball (location based services) were all killed off.  Not only is Twitter (real-time search), a natural compliment to Google’s core product (static search), but Google also has the knowledge and experience to monetize this effectively.  The sticking point is the cost.  Twitter turned down a $500mil offer from Facebook a few months ago (though mainly in overvalued FB stock).  Right now, a compelling offer from Google would have to be in the $750mil – $1bil range

What if Google Buys Twitter?

Best Case Scenario: Google develops an Ad-Sense for Twitter, and is able to elegantly incorporate Twitter into its search engine.  Twitter-sense comprises a significant amount of search revenue,  the real-time search offering creates a huge gap between Google and it’s closest rivals, and the perception of Google’s superior innovation and foresight lives on (profitably).

Worst Case: Twitter is unable to live up to the hype, a true monetization plan never pans out and people finally realize that no meaningful information is actually contained in a tweet.  Investors are angry that Google paid a $1.65bil for YouTube and $1bil for Twitter and haven’t made a dime back.  The next new thing is all the rage, Twitter is left to journalists, b-grade movie stars, politicians and retro-nerds.

What if Twitter remains independent?

Best Case Standalone Twitter:  Twitter remains open and partners with Google, Facebook and every other major site on the planet to publish conversations streams on every page of the web.  IM, SMS and newspapers die.  Consumers and brands are able to interact directly, in a powerful way to improve products, services, politics and communication.  Twitter is able to effectively generate revenue through a mixture of paid services for corporates and search monetization.

Worst Case Standalore Twitter: With VC money drying up, web valuations plummeting, and no clear revenue model Twitter collapses under it’s own inability to scale it’s services to meet demand.  Eventually sells to AOL for $50 and a cheeseburger.

Final Thoughts

Biz Stone and Evan Williams are already rich (having previously sold Blogger to Google), have funding from VC’s who don’t care about revenue (yet), have a product that’s generated popular, mass appeal and has the potential to change the world. The product is still in its infancy though the concept has been validated by the interest generated by the big players (FB and Google).  Just like Google can be called an operating system of the static web, by remaining open and allowing 3rd parties to develop useful, innovative businesses on top of Twitter, they can become the foundation for the real-time web. I say go for it, roll the dice, take the mystery behind door number two and build Twitter into a real value-adding, sustainable business.  Then again, there’s a lot you can do with $1 billion dollars…