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.

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.

Today with Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and similar services, you upload your photos and then anybody of your “friends” can see them. They comment, tag and share with other friends, I can see the excitement on your face. Some people like it, is part of their lives now to do so, however there is no “feeling” on those pictures. There is no way for you to tell people in a “entertaining way” how was that moment. In movies, soundtracks are an integral part on emoting feeling from the viewers. Why don’t we enhance the experience of those “friends”, didn’t live that moment with you?

Enter Animoto

Animoto is a services that permits you to create remixed slideshows of your pictures with music. The effects are cool, funky and entertaining, as well as “dance” with the tempo of the soundtrack you select . The site does all the effects and they claim that there is no equal remix, using an AI engine. (Regarding the last feature of going with the tempo of your track, it didn’t quite work that way as you can notice below.)

The free version gives your the ability to do 30 seconds shorts. You can’t download the clip but you can share with a bunch of social media platforms i.e. Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Blogger, WordPress. The service permits you to upload the soundtracks and pictures from your PC and import images from your Flickr, Picasa and Facebook account. Need more freedom and power:  like download, convert to High Def, create full length videos control pacing and do other stuff, will need to pay.

It doesn’t take much time, 12 images is the sweet spot on creating a nice video that will tell the story of a party or weekend. You can upload the images to your favorite social media site and then create the short. Those that want a quick glimpse can do it through the video and those that want to check how they look and relieve the moment through comments, can look at the album. If you ask me is pretty sweet.

[clearspring_widget title="Bay Islands Mix" wid="46928cc51133af17" pid="4987056da9a4dc88" width="432" height="260" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]

[clearspring_widget title="Animoto.com" wid="46928cc51133af17" pid="4987086c27385157" width="432" height="260" domain="widgets.clearspring.com"]

As you can see, the tempo of the images and the music don’t match.

Blogging and social media in general, is about the conversation. You post, others read and a few comment. Sometimes readers will discuss (or fight) about the topic. However, most of the time I see the author just speaking his mind and “talking”. Maybe the author is busy or he just is not arose intellectually by the comments to even bother. We are irrational beings so its a challenge to guess what is going through the mind of the authors and why they don’t comment much. However is ironic that people say that blogging is about he conversation, when authors are shouting. Its more like:

hellooooooooooooo!!!! I’m here..!! now that you know I exist, read this!!!! anybody please read it!!!!

You might think that is the case of G to The Square, since I don’t have much readers in my blog. However, in my defense, any comment I get a reply, although people don’t reply back, still its a “three way handshake“. I post, somebody comments and I comment back (see image bellow).

Three way handshake of conversation in blogs (too much net stuff in my mind )

Then again what is a conversation? Based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary a conversation is defined as:

oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas

In the Internet there is no oral exchange as traditional conversation, instead we have written words as a medium on exchanging our sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas. Apparently this exchange happens in less, traditional and immediate ways. Authors post their ideas and after some minutes, hours or days, readers who may be loyal, syndicated, occasional visitor or “stumbler” (thanks to a search engine, post a comment). When the comments hit the right tone then the conversation start. What I mean the by right tone? Conversation is not simply agreeing with the author or telling her that she is pretty, but actually expressing our:

sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas

And there is where the conversation is, in the comments: where there is substance, where at full throttle readers express their mind in a attempt to prove a point or simply to take a stand. On the other side of the coin, the author is just simply expressing himself, because he doesn’t reply to the comments just fills his pocket with the “ad money” and his ego offcoarse. And to those that really reply to their readers.. then I salute you, for honoring the essence of blogging: the conversation.

Reading “The Longtail Blog”, I found myself reading about copyright and free business models. Anderson (the blogs author) makes reference to a paper where the author suggests 14 business models for a world without effective copyright. I didn’t finish reading the paper, simply because copyright its just plain boring or being law related makes it unreadable. Maybe is my perception that copyrights, are old fashion, that we get a feeling that is boring. In contrast I find copying fun, even when you might be doing it every day or not seen as a big deal. There is just something fun about doing stuff that are suppose to be “illegal”.

Is being “illegal” the reason its fun? Well for the daredevils out there it might, but at the end of the day copying is fun because we share. Humans beings are social beings and share is a act of being social. Sharing creates some type of conversation where we comunicate our ideas, feelings, frustrations and dreams, and that “ladies and gentlemen” (also a song by Saliva) is being human and … fun. Ponder on the following: do think people spend hours sending emails, SMSs, messages, poking, chatting and in social media just because they don’t have nothing better to do? Neither they do it because its their job (maybe a habit), but since its part of being human and humans are social and being social is fun. You share it with a friend, in a torrent or a neighbor and a bet some sort of conversation is born, either because you comment on the media being shared or because serves as small talk for bigger things. And the beauty of it that we do it so effortless and natural,  even if they is wrong, it just feels good. So go ahead and have fun and continue being human….copy

By the way, I almost forgot to tell you, there was something interesting from the copyright paper: a graph that illustrates a relationship between the Per-capita income vs. fraction of software pirated, where lower per capita GDP countries trend to have high levels of piracy.

[source: "Copying and Copyright"]

For more on piracy stats check this report by the Business Software Alliance ( check your countries stat ).

Since I’m already in kind of a side note, I will like just to say that although piracy, based on the old standards is “stealing”, I’m not against it and I encourage it. The report from the BSA likes to show how much billions are lost every year, because people use “pirated software” instead of buying it. That is just a stupid number. I don’t have no all the facts, just my common sense and it tells me that most of the people that use pirate software does it because they can’t afford it. And if a person can’t afford a software, how is that a “sure sale” that transforms into a loss when the person uses private software. However the report doesn’t show how many lives were change because they had access to doing something productive with there computer. Also how are they sure that this people will buy that software? How is that a loss? Of coarse its easy to say this when is not your “intellectual property” that is being copy, but at the end that is a good thing. Its means that if the yare coping it you are doing something right.

Have you ever asked yourself what will happen to the world if you died today? It kind of interesting question if you think about it and insurance companies offer some products if you really take it serious, but most people buying this product will have money and have a family that depend on him or her. However what if you are fewer than 30, don’t have much money around or collaterals (cars, house, apartment, business). What if you have a website, a blog with valuable content or web startup? What about your subscriptions, email, social network profile, etc.? What about your users, partner, monthly bill?

Doesn’t matter if you fit the profile or not but if you have “stuff” of value on the web you should consider it very seriously if you died today. It will make it really easy for your family, spouse or partners. If you think this is bogus, unreal or just stupid, please take your time to read this forum post about animewallpapers.com, and how suddenly one day it founder and owner died. Read on how it was stolen (from a dead person) and how they got it back, and what his mom decide to do with it. It’s a very interesting story that should make you consider that there are more responsibilities, on your “stuff” on the Web, than you thought. Also, that your parents or family memebers may ignore that a “digital you” exists. (In my case my parents don’t know I have a blog, I don’t even think they understand social networks.) So, its important to consider people who are competent enough to deal with your “digital you”.

(A interesting thing to consider “how to explain my parents the purpose of a blog and my social network profile”).

If you don’t have the money to pay a layer or do a will, just do a letter that empowers somebody you trust to get access to it. In it you should include passwords (which you should update regularly), instructions, etc. You can call it your “digital will” for your “digital you” for the “real world”. Even if you don’t want to write it you could make a video of it. Where to store it, and how for it to be delivered “automatically” when you died, well if you are an entrepreneur…. that might be a business opportunity.

Honduras is a very entrepreneurial country. People have to be that way if they want to survive. In the streets we will sell you everything, from cell phone and car accessories, to cell phone prepaid cards, entertainment (people playing with fire or doing tricks with a mice), those DVDs of movies that are still in the theaters. Stores will open (and close when failing) at malls and any place possible. Food it’s another common way to get an income or make a living. Tacos, “carnitas”, “baleadas”, everything will be sold, especially when clubs close for the night.

In High tech or ICT, there isn’t much going on. Yes we have programmers, web developer and designers doing from web pages and portals to accounting programs. But most of the it people are hired and don’t have the time or energy to start a veture on the side. Also any company works locally and nothing will spill over to the world as facebook, skype, and many other ventures had done. You will not find  vetures worth millions, especially when market is so small; our Internet penetrations is close to 5% (of 7.5 million).

So I was very happy when a friend showed me this post in CNET, about a social site call TuBabel. Tubabel is a social dictionary of “slang words” in Spanish. You see, Spanish unlike English has a lot of “slang” words in every country that is spoken. So it may be hard for a Mexican to understand a Colombian or a Argentinean to understand a Honduran. We just express ourselves in such a unique way, that yes we speak Spanish but our cultures are so unique that we transmit that through our language.

Honduras has its web 2.0 company generating some buzz and that is catracho cool.