Sometimes it happens that I’m aware of an idea or concept, but I never put much thought to it. Until suddenly it hits me is that I start to ponder on it. It happened to me while trying to draft a post and for some reason I remembered the following dialog from the movie “The Social Network”:

Eduardo Saverin: So when will it be finished?
Mark Zuckerberg: It won’t be finished. That’s the point. The way fashion’s never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: What?
Mark Zuckerberg: Fashion, fashion is never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: You’re talking about fashion? Really, you?
Mark Zuckerberg: I’m talking about the idea of it. And I’m saying that it’s never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: Okay. But they manage to make money selling pants.

What Mark is talking about is not something new, but for some reason I never gave it much thought until now. So, my (almost) epiphany: any web venture or project needs to start as soon as we can. In addition (and not less important) we never have to finish it. The moment it is done, then is dead.

Why?

Constant experimenting, leads to constant evolution of an idea,  which leads to constant change. For some reason people fear or resist to change, but love to see it in others. Evermore, are delighted when they see new things or experiment new things in our environments.

Remember when you had a new toy and then you found something new and forgot about it. The Internet is the same: is a collections of toys, which embrace our inner child, by providing us with a new one every 20 minutes.

Let embrace the inner child and run wild.

So, facebook released the (public beta) of the “lite” version of their service, last week. Some think that facebook lite is just a response to twitter’s popularity and the trend of real-time web. Especially with facebook acquiring friendfeed and then releasing the code in a open source project called tornado. Still, there is more than just imitating the hot new kid on the block. Here is why:

Facebook lite is has two goals:

• Making the user experience simpler, by removing unnecessary functions or noise.
• Making the service usable in countries or places where there is a lack of broadband internet

Facebook needed to change this because it is too hard to use for most celebrities, as stated in this post about twitter being underhyped:

Other services are too hard for the celebrities to use, particularly from their mobile phones. I’ve been using the new Facebook app on my iPhone, but it has some severe limitations for businesses and celebrities.

Later Scoble states what are the problems with facebook today and it’s limitations:

Facebook has brand troubles. Most people like facebook for its private features (my wife can send me and a select group of friends our baby photos, for instance but the newer public features, like fan pages, are misunderstood). If I were Mark Zuckerberg I would split these two usage models into two: one usage model that’s kept behind the privacy walls. Another that I would call "facebook public" that would be all the totally public features, including search and APIs.

Twitter might rule Hollywood because of its simplicity, anybody can send a SMS. Also if you think about it, it gives celebrities a direct connection to their fans, eliminating the middle man: media. Even if they use ghost writers [link a ghost writers], they have more control than using media.

The above lead me to think that facebook doesn’t care about the average Jane or Joe posting on twitter, but getting the celebrities or public figures. They have been pitching to them (celebrities), to use the fan pages in facebook, but have had  little success compared to twitter. This is due to their complexity and ambiguity of facebook fan pages. With facebook lite, things might change, thanks to a redesign of the newsfeed (or stories). In the new design, we have three buttons to post: text, photos or video. Also we have nested comments, excluding the image of the friend that commented. And that is all, no more birthdays and other unnecessary information.

Still is very hard  to make celebrities do everything through facebook, even with the twitter facebook app.

If you think facebook is not going after celebrities and public figures, then just read this from the facebook blog:

Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who’ve created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible. Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities may want to put out calls for help to both their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers, all at the same time.

If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them. If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter.

As you can see, the idea is to bring celebrities and public figures on board of the facebook ship and from there they can take row boats (i.e twitter) to get to other places.

No Clone Wars for you

I must admit that twitter and facebook lite are very similar, it might even be seen as a upgrade to twitter (with threading and no character limits), still there is more than what meets the eye. First of all, twitter’s connections with others is loose: if your profile is public anybody can follow you or see your posts. In contrast facebook requires both parties need to agree (one sends the requests the other accepts) to be able to become friends. This difference between how people form “ties” or connections, is what determines how both services will be used.

Facebook original idea is to connect and keep in touch with people you knew face to face. The reason you may need facebook to keep in touch, rather than using traditional tools like Instant Messaging, Email, Phone, etc. Since you know this people you’re connecting with (because of the strong ties made while meeting face to face), in theory you want them to see and share photos and videos from trips, parties and everyday life. In the case of twitter things are very different, initially the idea was to test a new paradigm of communication, or broadcasting what are you doing and sharing ideas. Anybody could follow what where you doing and what ideas you are sharing, meaning that you could follow 20 people, while you are being followed by 4932. Soon it became a source of information (accurate or inaccurate) of what is happening, resulting in a representation of the real-time web.

How you connect with people and how the customer pain was solved, is what makes facebook: facebook and twitter: (you guessed right) twitter. Even if facebooks clones the User eXperience of twitter, facebook will never be a replacement of twitter. However we never said that twitter or any other service out there, could become a extension of facebook, now that is Google scary.

Wikipedia states that Progressive Enhancement principle:

uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing those with better bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page

This is the best example I have found of how Progressive Enhancement is applied:

This is serverfault.com and site still works without JavaScript. However they politely inform that if I enable JavaScript, the site will work better (See the red bar in the top “Server Fault works best with JavaScript enabled”).

In other words, don’t discriminate visitor because of the browser they use, be polite and at least provide some functionality.

The “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” on Youtube, is the viral video of the moment (if you want to see it, scroll down to the end of the post). At the moment of the writing of this post, it has 1,613,403 views. When I first saw it, like an hour a ago, it had 1.4 million plus views. Means that the current rate is 200,000 views per hour, which will be interesting to check if it double by the end of the weekend.

Is crazy if you see the graph [on the image bellow], how the video exponentially went up in views in the last day or so. If you see in the graph around the 23rd of July the video started to get traction and then suddenly it when up. My first question is what happened, what was the catalyst?

[source youtube.com]

The answer to the question is the demographics that go interested on the video, which is shown in the image bellow: Females from 35 to 54 years old. Women around that age already have been married (or divorced), have kids and generally have great social network of other moms.

[source youtube.com]

Women at this age share a lot and support each other, so it is natural that if they love this video, they will share it. I guess, to them this is a act [by a couple] that really wanted to make it a special day. In other words it was romantic gesture, that wasn’t disrespectful and had a catchy song (adding the modern twist). This way finding it appealing and sticky, therefore trigger them to share it with their other women friends.

Without further ado the famous JK Wedding Entrance Dance video, big kudos to the couple:

In the WordPress world, Contact Form 7 is “the king of contact forms”. It has (as of today 9 of July 2009) 543,600 downloads, a average rating of four stars (of 279 ratings). Also it has been translated to over 30 languages and  2 years of being in the plugin directory. Those are impressive numbers so, I decided to give it a test.

Contact Form 7 is a nice plugin, works and is flexible. Still I didn’t feel quite satisfied with it, there was something missing in the user experience. I guess is (although old school is cool) it is a bit “Too Old School” for me. Today I searched for a new one and found something interesting called Visitor Contact Forms.

Visitor Contact Form has 1,161 downloads, has a rating of four stars and a half, in 2 ratings (I gave it five and it had a four star rating before) and apparently it has been on the WordPress plugin directory since 24 of June 2009. As you can see, “it’s the new kid on the block” that  hasn’t pass the test of time as Contact Form 7. Nevertheless I decided to take it out for a rid and let me tell you it was fast.

The Test Drive

First you can install the plugin, then go to http://www.visitorcontact.com/ sign up (which it actually takes seconds) and then it directs you directly to a page where you create your first contact form (See image bellow).

Here you write the name of the form, the website where it will be displayed and used, as well as the email where contact emails will be sent. Then you can write physical address information (in case is important for people to know where you are physically), see image bellow.

If you decide that it is important, write them down because it will show to the right of your form, a Google Maps pointing to you. Finally you can add your Skype Id, phone numbers and twitter username, which are posted bellow the map and become other ways to contact you. The Image bellow shows how the contact form will looked with all the additional information filled in.

Once you finished with filling up the information, you can custom the color of the Sticky Button, finally you can press the “Create Form & Get Button” button. Contact Visitor then will give you two sets of javascript code to publish your new contact form.

Note:

Although I used it in WordPress, you can use the form in any website, you just need to add the script as you will add any other javscript code. Contact Visitor gives you instructions on where is the best place script in your code.

First use a contact button that will be on the side of your website (or better know as Sticky Contact Button). The Sticky Button will be always “there”, no mater where in the website your visitor is. When he presses that button, the background will get dark and a form will show up. Is a nice action script if you ask me and is convenient because the user doesn’t navigate out of the page where she/he is. The second  is (a more traditional way), having it embed in a page in your website.

The image bellow shows the two types of scripts in action contact button to the left (in red) and the embedded contact form.

Bellow is the contact form that shows when you press the Red Contact Button.

To use it in your WordPress webiste/blog then you just install the Contact Visitor Plugin. Then go to the settings and write the number of the form you created in visitorcontact.com. (See image bellow) Here you also have the option to use the Sticky Contact Button or Make a Contact page with the form embedded. I chose both to give it a test.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day the killer feature is User Experience. Contact Form 7 appeals to a international crowd that need to customize the fields, those are the only advantages it has over Visitor Contact, because the only customization offered by the Visitor Contact is the color of the Sticky Button.

On the other hand Visitor Contact gives you a form that works, with modern feature like a Sticky Button, maps and Skype button. It also gives you a account where you can manage all the contacts of the emails received, as well as get location information of the sender (sales people will like this). Finally as stated before you get a better user experience and a service, not a plug-in that can work with other websites. Visitor Contact gives you more than just a plug-in, it actually uses the plug-in so you can get to know and use a good service.

Still I have a question: how the guy makes money? I ask this because the service is for free, so if I’m dependent on it. how do I know that tomorrow it will disappear? Yes, he can receive donations for the WordPress plug-in, but the “magic sauce” is not the plug-in but visitorcontact.com. How do I know he will charge me later, when I have various sites using the service? I guess maybe he is doing it for love and experience, or he is waiting to get enough users and then offer premium services. This last one sounds reasonable, because other people will like customization, remove the visitor contact logo (and add their logo), change colors, etc. He can even provide a newsletter service like Mail Chimp. Who knows I guess I will have to contact him and ask him. In the mean time I will enjoy a great service/Wordpress plug-in while it lasts.

On Sunday I saw that Kathy Sierra posted (in twitter) a recommendation to a talk from Webstock 09. It was by Ze Frank (first time I heard about the guy), which is a shame because he has done some interesting things (apparently a  lot).

I recommend you to take 52 minutes of your life and listen to this guy, really even if you are not into “web 2.0 stuff”, its worth it.  Now, he states that if we recommend something to people that knows us, we don’t have to explain why we recommend it. As result  I don’t have to tell you why you should see it, since you already know me. However now that I think about, I see the challenge that you might not know me (since I’m not well known). So, here is why I loved the talk:

He gives various examples of how virtual communities interact and felt each other. In all the cases, he is the catalyst of this interaction of people over the internet, however is the community that is responsible of creating the cool stuff. Is like he become a mentor of a virtual community.

For me, the internet and the virtual audiences feeling each other, is the true face of globalization, crowd sourcing and everything in social media. In this talk I get to see some examples of that, sure many of the stuff is just happening in English, now imagine what is happening in other languages and cultures?

Finally I get to see people interact and feel each other through 0′s and 1′s, not because of profit, but through self motivation, interest and social instinct.

Enjoy:

Update: click on the link below since they don’t permit to embed the video

Ze Frank at Webstock 09 from Webstock on Vimeo.

Although most are trying to figure out what exactly the Web  3.0 will be, I like to take a moment and show you what the business model of Web 2.0 was and what is happing today with web a.k.a Web 2.5.

The best way to explain what was the predominant business plan of the Web 2.0 companies, let take a look at this clip from the South Park episode called Gnomes (or “Underpants Gnomes”):

Finished? Cool stuff how the Gnomes business model and Web 2.0  look alike. Here is the comparison:

The success of Google gave “permission” to a bunch of VCs and companies to launch a “cool” or “innovative” way of using the web, getting a bunch of registered users and then (if no big company wants to buy them) try to figure out how to make money i.e facebook and youtube. Being  twitter and friendfeed  the last famous companies of the batch to use Gnomes business model.

With the economic recession [in other words realizing that we can't just waste money on promises and bet on money we don't have], it’s harder for web companies to get funding, if they don’t have clear revenue model (other than advertisement). So, today in the Web 2.5, companies like Vimeo, Animoto, Userfly and Mailchimpp, offer a trial or basic version of the service for free. If you want or need more advance features you can pay a subscription fee or paying as you go. Generally the “pay as you go” is for occasional users. What is interesting is that this is not a new business model, its basically the same used by companies behind  famous “shareware” software. But because the trend is to provide “software as a service” hosted on the “cloud” then, they took the principal of the shareware model and applied it to services. It will not be called the “shareware” model because its not software that you download and installed ( you just log and run it in your browser). The contemporary name is “freemium“.

Finally what is Web 2.5, well here is my kind of chaotic definition:

• Use freemium (or any variation) as their business model
• “the design style is really a re-emergence of the pre-web standards era of the late nineties”
• refocus on mashups and APIs
• target is less mainstream (as a result of a focus on making money)
• better user experience
• transition phase, were the lessons learn from web 2.0, are applied.

Street Image from Hitta (Sweden) and Street View Google, are online services that gives you the ability (through a web browser) to see the streets of a city, as if you were there in a car or walking . Sometimes it feels like you are in the back side of a war vehicle, in first person shooter game. In the image bellow you can see the print screen of what you see when using the services.

[Near Sergels torg,Stockholm]

[Rome, in front of the Coliseum]

Google was first to offer the service in many cities of the world, but is yet to come to Sweden. Being available in cities Paris, Rome, Tokyo and Sydney, it seems that is targeted tourist (You can see the Street View main page if it’s available in a city near you. ). In the case of Hitta, it is only available in the main parts of Stockholm.

UX

User eXperience, is the reason that Hitta’s Street Image is better than Google’s Street View. Google is to restrictive and doesn’t give you the freedom that Hitta provides. Sure Google was first, but Hitta went a step further and enhance the experience for the user. Also, by provide better quality pictures than Google does, we can enjoy the city in a different way.

The UX is seen the first time you use the service. Hitta’s solution permits you walk at your own pace, providing you with blue circles which gives you a accurate sense of where you can go next in your journey through the streets of the city (see image bellow). So, if you want walk fast through the street of Stockholm you go the father circle in front of you, if you just want to take small step, then click on the first circle (and so forth). This way you get a sense of control, and feeling that the movement is continuous and not frame by frame.

[Hitta's Navigation Circles]

[Google's Navigation Arrow]

In contrast, Google just give you one arrow to advance and moves. It doesn’t permit or informs in advance where the next “view” will be. So, when you click on the arrow and advance, you may get a felling that you are missing on something and we are traveling in a worm whole.

Hitta doesn’t provide you with a full screen mode like Google, instead you can resize the views as you find it fit. Again here Hitta gives you freedom and let you personalize your experience, since some cases it might be better to have a big map, in other a bigger image or view. Overal the it’s just more enjoyable and as it was said to me in Blipea “. I could explore the city for hours”.

The killer feature that both are missing is permalinks to each spot. Yeah it could be a challenge, however Hitta could provide a permalink to each blue circle, so if you wish to share it with a friend it will be easy. Don’t know about Google, you can link to some photos by typing the exact address, but still is not that easy to remember.

Blurring

Google Street View  blurs people faces and car license plates, that is because of all the privacy concerns. Imagine the Street View Car catches people in places and doing stuff that can get them in trouble. So, to hush the critics Google has an algorithm that blurs faces and license plates. As you can see below

[Faces being blurred]

[License plates being blurred]

Hitta’s Steet Image doesn’t blur anything, it gives you high qualities pictures. I guess in Sweden this is not a problem or maybe Swedes had a chance to complain.. As the image below shows, the Hitta car go some nice poses (click to see a bigger image).

[Stureplan in the back you can see the Spy Bar]

Final Thoughts

This shows you that when you dedicate yourself to do just one thing, most of the time the result will be very good. Opposite to what Google is doing: trying to be everywhere, launching mediocre or BETA products just to say they where the first and scare any smaller companies. Then again being the first is not always a good thing, it means other can learn from your mistakes. Especially when a company like Hitta is faster than than a big company like Google.

Hitta is a example of how sometimes the local solutions or “clones” are a better choice, mainly because they have to watch out for the big companies, know the market and the local culture.

Next: is to make this service really useful and not just “cool”. Maybe virtual tourism is a use, also for providing direction or integrating with GPS devices and phones for tourists, at the end is about if it drives revenue in a direct or indirect way.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world”, Mahatma Gandhi.

If you visit Mininova site, you will see some ads to the right, but other than that have a nice clean layout. The site has a Web 2.0 air, with soft colors that come easy to the eye. It will not get the same good PR as other Web 2.0 sites, because is a BitTorrent index site and the protocol is seen as bad and only useful for piracy. However BitTorrent is more than that, is a way of distribution large files without incurring in high bandwidth costs, since we download from other peers that have the file, not a server, this way distributing the load among the peers. Everybody knows that BitTorrent can be use for distributing “legal stuff”, still nobody has done anything about it, until Mininova.

Enter Mininova in 2007, with there new distribution service. The service offers, to the owner ( or the your company) of the copyrights of quality content, a tool to distribute the content for free, if it promises tol not upload DRM protected content or spam and not charge for content. And this is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation because:

• the owner of the content can distribute their content at no cost (unlike other forms of hard media or self hosting)
• the fans get quality content at high speeds without paying extra money (other than their internet connection)
• Mininova (and BitTorrent community) because shows that the protocol is good for legal distribution

At first glance, it might not be seen as a big deal since there are similar services like Jamendo, where artists can distribute their content under Creative Commons. Also, in recent news the Norwegian State TV launched a tracker to distribute their TV shows,  BBC also is experimenting with torrents, by providing downloads under creative commons of their TV shows, starting with R&DTV. All is great stuff and I wish more media companies join the BitTorrent bandwagon, still Mininova is offering a platform and now includes a way to monetization. Yes, now artists can distribute their content digitally and offer their fans the option to buy the album (see image) or donate to the artist using paypal (kind of pay what you want scheme).  They also offer fans a 20% discount if they seed the albums.

The Dutch record label Beep! Beep! is one of the firsts of first to partner with Mininova, uploading all their discography. Given that Mininova resides in the Netherlands, is natural business move for a small local record label to use the service. Permits them to deal face to face and smooth out any rough edges. When you click on the buy now button, it will take you to a shopify page where you can do finalize the transaction. The service, can also provide new fans of the band, with concert tickets and merchandise of the band. You can see all the Beep! Beep! releases here.

Beep! Beep! and other record labels can differentiate from the big labels using Mininova as a Partner. They get some free PR and can be subject of viral marketing, which is welcome when you don’t have the big resources of the “big 4″.

Contrast of Styles

Although in mainstream media The Pirate Bay (TPB) is the best known BitTorrent entity, with their trail and raids, Mininova is the king of BitTorrents. Mininova is on the top 100 most visited sites in the world, it was recently reported that it had its 8 billion download and is constantly changing and adding new features. In other words, Mininova has become the place to look for media (as Google is for information).

The Pirate Bay shakes the world aggressively, they are the biggest BitTorrent tracker, don’t care about copyright material on their site, and where the protagonists of a spectrail (which will soon dominate the news again). They don’t care how they do it, they want to change the world with a bang (and apparently they are successful). On the other hand Mininova has a more passive approach try to be under the radar. They even have a friendly copyright policy, here is a fragment of the copyright policy page:

Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website. The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way. However, we offer a service to remove torrents from our website if the copyright holder of the content requests so.

In contrast TPB publishes the emails asking them to remove torrents, in a section they call “legal threats“. Also they promise no torrent files will be taken out, never ever.We need both them, kind of a God Cop, Bad Cop scene, so the media industry understands that they have to give in.

Change is already here and there is no way to go back to the old practices of tell us what to consume, nop now is our turn. If you had to give this two entities a character although not accurate, you can see The Pirate Bay as Richard Stallman (idealist, crazy, funny and loud) and Mininova as Linus Torvalds (quiet, is about business, has a plan and takes a step at a time).

Step at a Time

Mininova are playing it smart, trying and experimenting. Slowly but surely getting more people involved and cleaning up the act of BitTorrent. They want to change the world a torrent at a time, gently rocking the music industry (as well as movie and TV). They don’t just want to be a trend setter and then fade out into the horizon, while others take all the glory. Time will tell us what will be of Mininova and TPB, still today they are forces of change.

The question I have been asking myself is “where are the software companies, whose cracked software can be found on the p2p networks?”. Software companies figure out long ago, that they can fight these phenomenon. Slowly, they had changed, now big companies offer basic free versions of their products, understanding that $$$ is “Business to Business”, and not with consumers. You see, if Microsoft gives out free software to students, is because they know that when this students graduate and get a job, they will ask for the software they know how to use. As a result Microsoft now offers “Express” version (in other words basic version) of many developing tools. Future developers ask for this tools when they join the workforce (or can earn enough money to buy them).

The story is different for Media companies, because they think that they depend on consumers they do anything possible to charge consumers. That dear readers is just being lazy and comfortable. They been like this for such a long time, to the point of forgetting other life than selling to consumers. For example, why don’t they focus on merchandise, spectacles, limited edition products and concerts. Let people hardcore fans by feeding the thirst for music. That is no the case, instead they turn into bulling down, any wave of change.

Wonder why the Soundcloud is not in trial? They even charge for you to upload and share music on their site. Yeah I forgot they are a new company that provides a service.

Like they used to say: lead, follow and get of the way. So I get out of the way for the recap by Torrent Freak Day Four and Five. They do a better job than most of us.