Posted by Mike Bijon February 27, 2006
Today Scoble added to the wild speculation about Microsoft’s Origami product by pointing out that Microsoft hasn’t done anything to let its bloggers know about the product release plans and that the product can’t help but fail with expectations getting so out of control. I agree. While “the best companies underpromise and underdeliver” it seems that lately the best bloggers overhype and underreport.
With so little information on Origami available, 99% of what’s cluttering Memeorandum right now is just hype and neither Microsoft-generated buzz nor productive discussion. This is both Microsoft’s fault (like Scoble says, for not better managing their own bloggers and the info-flow) and the fault of some bloggers who turned the conversation from “What is Origami?” to “What would I do if I ran Microsoft?”.
Hopefully someone in Microsoft’s PR department will both read Naked Conversations, within in the next year or three, and realize what a great resource their own already-employed bloggers could be. Unfortunately, they’ll probably badly misinterpret the book and attempt to force their bloggers to either use pre-approved copy or have their posts screened before posting …sometimes I just I love “creatives” and how they do run their corners of the world.
Posted by Mike Bijon February 21, 2006
The GAMEY group of companies - Google, AOL/Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, and Yahoo - have been grouped based on their growth by frequent buyouts and other acquisitions. Recently all of them have been criticized for a lack of creativity and execution ability, both for the strategy of growth by buyout and for building poorly thought products with no clear track to profits. Especially with the enormous prices placed on them, it’s easy to think of Flickr, Picasa, Skype, and Weblogs, Inc. as branded assets that carry “extra” value based on market-share, user count, etc.
I disagree that there are market-cornering strategies and “brand value” behind the new acquisitions and products. The execution behind new products like Google Blog Search and Windows Live Ideas appears to be as much about throwing something new at the wall and seeing if it sticks as it is to complete the master plan of a team of MBA’s. Those business decisions may seem haphazard, but the truth is that the internet and GAMEY in particular are growing up to be more like brick-and-mortar suppliers and less like the razor-focused, genius-run companies they’re often cast as.
I see a close correlation between GAMEY’s recent behavior and the typical behavior of large consumer goods companies. Frequent test products, new brand launches, and acquisitions are typical of packaged consumer goods companies, like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever. Long-standing brands are still used to create a relationship with customers, but they’re extended with new versions, advertising, and a willingness to make false starts. Buyouts even acquire products that compete with existing in-house goods - often to gain production efficiencies (maybe traffic and server efficiencies for GAMEY) and products that appeal to different classes of customers. This comparison makes the reasons Yahoo bought out so many “Web 2.0″ startups, how Google can continue to add new products when current ones aren’t even monetized, and even why Amazon would build its own search engine and a music player & store to compete with the iPod & iTunes seem much less glamorous and a lot more buttoned down.
Posted by Mike Bijon February 13, 2006
Yesterday I proposed the idea of creating a trust-system that would allow people to build and display credentials. Then Scoble posted on Kim Cameron’s implementation of Infocards in WordPress. Infocards store and authenticate digital identities, from Kim’s detailed description of the InfoCard system:
Digital identities consist of sets of claims made about the subject of the identity, where “claims” are pieces of information about the subject that the issuer asserts are valid. This parallels identities used in the real world. For example, the claims on a driver’s license might include the issuing state, the driver’s license number, name, address, sex, birth date, organ donor status, signature, and photograph, the types of vehicles the subject is eligible to drive, and restrictions on driving rights. The issuing state asserts that these claims are valid. The claims on a credit card might include the issuer’s identity, the subject’s name, the account number, the expiration date, the validation code, and a signature. The card issuer asserts that these claims are valid. The claims on a self-issued identity, where the identity provider and subject are one and the same entity, might include the subject’s name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address, or perhaps just the knowledge of a secret. For self-issued identities, the subject asserts that these claims are valid.
This is interesting because the idea behind TrustBacks is to build a detailed electronic identity and social system. InfoCards already authenticate an individual’s identity, one of the keys to showing a relationship is truthful and keeping the system spam-free. Then a TrustBack could be tied to an InfoCard identity making the trust portable and confirmable.
Posted by Mike Bijon February 12, 2006
The original TrackBack system has been a boon to bloggers. It has created a deeply interlinked system of sites and generated incredible search rankings as a result. Despite the impressive results, the crediblity being generated by trackbacks is somewhat biased toward authors and “regurgitators”, bloggers who just build lists and link to outside posts (aka: human aggregators). I think it’s time to extend the system to promote individuals and skills instead of just web sites and prolific writing (no, it’s not because I want higher rankings myself, I’m already very happy with two Memeorandum links after just 16 posts here at Moogle1).
I’m calling the extension of the trackback system a “TrustBack” and think it can be used to show credibility on and off the web - basically a set of credentials that’s generated from all interactions with people and not just by authorship. Trustbacks should work the same way that trackbacks currently do, but they will require some additional storage, provider, or invitation system to bring non-bloggers into the mix. Also, I should be able to maintain a skill profile for my trustbacks to better show the credibility of my skills and to avoid the “list of my friends” that seems to be the core of most current social networks (Myspace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.).
Trustbacks should be listed on a single page about the author instead of being displayed on the single linked article like trackbacks. That should be easy enough for people running their own CMS (WordPress, TextPattern, MovableText) to handle already and a simple, free service for personalized search engines (Technorati, del.icio.us, etc.) or existing social networks to add. Unlike a trackback though, a trustback should be portable from place-to-place on the web, so either a notification system for trustback “senders” or an identity system will need to be created. This leaves even more user authentication/spam filtering to handle, but will nicely marginalize service providers who filter trustbacks from outside their own system. Since trustbacks are basically an identity and authentication system, with a big enough network, negative trust should push out anyone trying to fake a set of credentials.
A trustback invitation system wouldn’t be much different from the current invite systems used on social sites (like MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.) except that they should not require registration and should be pre-filled by the person sending them. An example would be that I take a friend’s dog out when he gets stuck in terrible LA traffic, then I can send them an invite to “trustback” me and fill out the basic info up-front (ie: name, date, city/place, and what I did). All my friend needs to do is to click on the link in the email they receive to approve or edit the trustback. My trustback service provider can invite them to join, but I won’t stay with that provider for long if they either force registrations or spam my friend later.
Mike Bijon: I'm a development manager and technologist for a smart, small marketing strategy company, 
