DMEC

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a long summer, and after a brief hiatus it’s time to get the ball rolling on the new look for this year’s >play conference.

The organizing committee has decided to run another vote on the play logo. Please review the following three choices and cast your vote! (be sure to click on the image for a larger view)
Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

 Loading ...

I’ve been thinking about Jason Calacanis’ criticisms of his Facebook experience. Jason has pointed out some limitations of Facebook. Facebook was not designed for people trying to maximize their audience – it was designed for people to communicate with people they know.

Jason complains about having to process thousands of friend requests. Not only have most Facebook users never faced this problem – they never will. The problem is specific to audience-maximizers. Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution: if audience-maximizers want to accept all friend requests, they could outsource the acceptance process (hire someone to click the accept button). Sure, it’s the equivalent of hiring someone to manage your garden. I enjoy a well-manicured garden, but the gardening does not sit high enough on the priority list for me to do it myself. Alternatively, Facebook could provide an option to automatically accept all friend requests.

If Jason would prefer to limit his use of Facebook with only those he actually knows, he could keep his account private from searches (or maintain a second account only for use with those he actually knows). I feel that would provide him with the experience Facebook attempts to offer.

I do agree with Jason’s feeling that the Facebook experience can be a bit overwhelming. When life is so busy as it is, am I really expected to be interested in so many details in the lives of my friends/acquaintances? Do I really want to know every time they install (and immediately uninstall) an application? I see the overwhelming nature of excessive data points as an opportunity for better aggregating and prioritizing of information. The order I read email does not appear in the interface. I want to sort by sender, but not alphabetically – I want to sort by how likely I am to want to read something from that sender.

Interestingly, Jason’s comments on Facebook share two posts with comments on comments (by others on Jason’s blog). I expect that once he’s feeling better, Jason will find solutions to the problem of unwanted comments. Again I think the solution lies in tools for prioritizing information beyond chronology. He could require authentication from commenters, enabling him to programmatically reject comments from those he disapproves. Alternatively, he could crowd-source the problem, allowing readers to provide feedback on comments for the purpose of filtering (digg-style). Or, he can keep comments off his blog, pushing the conversation elsewhere, along with the content and traffic.

The >play 2007 team invites folks interested in the future of digital media to a happy hour at Hukilau’s Tiki Room in Palo Alto on Thursday, August 2 at 6pm.

Please let us know if you can join us, either at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/224158 or at valley@berkeleydmec.org

Thursday, August 2 at 6pm
Hukilau
642 Ramona Street
Palo Alto, California 94301
(1 1/2 blks south of University Ave, close to the Caltrain station)

Best,
the >play 2007 team

p.s. Don’t forget to add >play to your calendar: Saturday, October 27

I love experiments with online advertising. This is the first time I’ve seen an ad inserted into a RSS feed. I approve of paidContent clearly labeling the advertisement as such. I’m curious to see if others follow suit, or if readers will reject ads being placed where they expect news stories. For example, the sponsored entries in GMail’s WebClips drive me batty. I find it ironic coming from the same company that receives praise for clearly delineating ads in their search results. Of course, I think much more effort goes into their Reader service. With WebClips’ limitation of 40 subscriptions, it’s hardly a serious service. Maybe that’s why Gmail’s still in beta…

In case you haven’t seen the ads overlaying YouTube videos, check it.

Send me an offer if you want to place a sponsored post in our RSS feed…

UPDATE: apparently the entry I’d posted originally is no longer up (?). Here’s another example I found online: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/sponsor-post-funmobile

I caught the second half of this month’s BayCHI program and saw the presentation by John Buckman (of Magnatune and BookMooch). John led an entertaining interaction reviewing the evolution of applications he’s designed and built.

I was previously aware of the interesting approach MagnaTune takes toward selling music, but I left very excited about BookMooch, a service for trading in books you don’t want anymore, in return for credit that can be used to get books you do want. I have a ton of books stacked up that aren’t worth my time to sell. I’ve long-intended to give them away to friends, but that’s time-consuming as well. Trading them in for books I haven’t read seems even better. Has anyone else tried BookMooch?

Services like BookMooch, LaLa’s CD-trading service, and Netflix (essentially the world’s largest DVD library) take advantage of inefficiencies in other markets, impact demand for both physical goods like books and CDs and digital goods like e-books and mp3s, and provide customers alternatives to limitations on their media experience effected by DRM.

I wish I could figure out some sensible way to work John into the >play conference, as I thought his presentation style was fun and engaging (I’m guessing the audience members who kept interrupting him agree). Maybe we could talk him into scheduling a visit with us in Berkeley during the school year (please let me know if you would enjoy talking with him).

P.S. The anal-retentive side of me loves how he thinks about all sorts of little things, like using http://bookmooch.com by default instead of http://www.bookmooch.com. It’s never been clear to me why so many sites include the “www.”