EightBlack.

Charlene Li from Forrester interviews Max Levchin from Slide at the first Keynote of the Expo.

I only recently learned who Max was - which is probably the way he likes it. Fame and fortune came his way with the creation of PayPal and he gracefully exited PayPal with US$1.5 billon of eBay’s money.

Most entrepreneurs in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief when Max recounted the 4 failed start-ups and an obliterated credit history before finding success with PayPal.

He’s clearly excited about the future of Slide. Who wouldn’t be given the mass exposure their applications receive within Facebook. According tho the Slide website they reach 144 million global viewers each and every month and have 30% of the US internet audience. (Slide make those zany applications like Funwall and Superpoke).

Max strikes me as still the sort of guy who doesn’t really know what all the fuss is about, is clearly uncomfortable about the fame and attention and simply wants to get on with his quiet world domination plans.

Bravo.

I was hoping this session would erupt into a violent slanging match. After all, when you put very smart dudes from Faccebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut and Six Apart all together, disagreement is sure to take place.

But nothing. They were actually quite civil to each other. I blame Justin Smith - the panel moderator. His questions were far too polite. If I was ever allowed to moderate one of these panels, I’d get all the panelists semi-drunk at lunch and then promptly insult them right from the start. But that’s just me.

Anyway.

Most of us identify with with the 2 big social networking players - Facebook and MySpace.

Bebo is an interesting story (the name stands for Blog Early, Blog Often). It started out back in January 2005 by a husband and wife team, was “re-launched” in July of that year and just over 3 years later, ie March 2008, was sold to AOL for US$850 million.

Orkut is Google’s foray into the social networking pond. They’ve clearly got some very bright people working on it, but intelligence is one thing, traction and scale is another. It was name after the Google employee who created it, Orkut Büyükkökten.

According to Wikipedia, Orkut is the most visited site in Brazil. And the second most visited site in India. Apparently, Orkut was originally intended for the US market, but it obviously didn’t work out that way. Maybe Orkut the creator didn’t read the internal memo correctly when he built it. Maybe he’d had too many Turkish coffees that day.

Like a lot of the great things that come out of Google, Orkut built Orkut in his 20% time.

Interestingly enough, Orkut’s previous company, Affinity Engines, filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that Orkut the app contained 9 identical bugs from Affinity’s social app - InCircle.

Google’s finance department then got involved, cut what was probably a big enough check, and Affinity went away. Or something like that.

Ok, back to the session.

The questions still unanswered for me are these. Is there room for all these social networking sites? Who will be here in 3 years time and who will have bitten the digital dust? How does Corporate (you insert the country here) make money with social networking, What’s Google’s long term play with social networking? Because you can’t tell me that they’ll be happy with Orkut and being the number one and two site in places like Brazil and India.

The session went for 50 minutes but I’ve only posted 20 minutes here.

Something happened over this past weekend that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up and simultaneously, the blood drain from my face. I’ll tell you “why” in a minute. But first some background.

Some inventive 16 year old unwashed youth, who lives Melbourne’s outer suburbs - decided to have a party. No big deal. It is but the stuff that pubescent dreams are made of. Beer. Girls. More beer. A lot of swearing. And a lot of running around after girls, wondering why they won’t talk while being grunted at.

Mum and Dad were conveniently interstate. Which is sort of really where it all went pear shaped. Any parent, who leaves a 16 year old boy with access to the internet and his mobile phone and then says in the most sternest of voices on the way out “Now, listen, your father and I love you very much and we trust you”, is a complete moron. Saying, “Do not have a party and no more than 2-3 friends over to visit, okay?” is like asking Britney Spears not to do anything stupid when she leaves the house.

Or something as equally pathetic.

However this was no ordinary party. My take on it was that it was decided at the last minute. And all done with a few strokes of a keypad.

You’ve got to give the 16 year old some credit. Because he managed to get 500 of his closest “friends” to come over.

Naturally, 500 teenagers, all battling puberty (lets face it, they have no clue as to what’s happening inside their body and some are just grateful for the ride), and all together in the one place, is a recipe for disaster. In this case, a teenage “Tsunami”.

And now the police are all up in arms because a couple of their cars got all beat up, the airwing had to be called, the dog squad, and a lot of other teams with long, politically correct names - all arrived to dispel the mistaken youths exuberance.

Our beloved Police Commissioner, who is connected to todays youth in much the same way as George Bush is connected to the english language, has launched a full scale investigation into how this could happen. The silly cow even wants to send the bill for the damage to the parents. In fact, the headline in todays paper read,

POLICE are investigating how social networking websites, email and SMS messaging may have been used to draw a crowd of up to 500 teenagers to a house party, hosted by a 16-year-old boy while his parents were interstate.

How it happened? You’re not serious.

It’s sort of why they call it social networking isn’t it. And you can bet Optus and the other carriers in Australia were laughing all the way to the bank as their SMS meters ran like they were powered by Uranium. The “Twitter” server in Australia would have been lit up like a Xmas tree on Saturday night…

But I digress.

The police are fools. What they should have done is when they first arrived on the scene, is to grab a couple of these pimple faced twats, given them a damn good thrashing, tied them to the bonnet of the police car and paraded them around the streets saying that there would be plenty more of where this came from if they all didn’t pull up their pants from around their knees and go home.

Or something like that.

And don’t lie to me - I know you’re all nodding your heads in agreement, even if in this politically correct world, you won’t admit it.

It was scary for me because I have a 7 year old and 4 year old. The 7 year old son is the easy one. But the daughter is the worry. This is the sort of stunt that she would pull. But she would invite 500 people round for the “before” party. Just to give her old man the shits.

Which is why we’re moving back to the US when the kids are teenagers. Because in the US, houses have things called basements. And basements have poles in them where fathers can handcuff their teenage daughters to for several years. And when they are 32, then, they can go and have a party. All 3 of them.

It’s hard for a teenage daughter to get pregnant on their first date when they’re having to talk thru one way bullet proof glass to their date…

Wish me luck. My wife reckons that I’ll be happy living on my own in a one bedroom apartment, sleeping on the floor…

I get Mahalo. (I think).

I get Facebook. MySpace. And any other “social networking” site out there.

I get Google Apps. I get Android. I get Ning.

In fact, I get (but perhaps don’t agree with) most “Web 2.0″ properties. I get why Google is prepared to spend a Saudi King’s ransom on wireless spectrum.

But here’s what I don’t get.

Twitter and Second Life.

Let’s take one at a time.

Let’s talk about Twitter. Now I know it’s caused a stir in the digital world and has become something of a darling within the social networking hemisphere with countless imitators popping up everywhere but I just, for the life of me, can’t get my head around it.

Maybe I’m too old. Maybe 41 is the wrong age in this industry.

Anyway.

Twitter refers to itself as a “micro-blogging” site where, by using what is essentially a text based interface capped at 140 characters, you tell people what you are doing every waking minute of the day. You can do it via the web. Via your mobile. Anywhere you are connected.

Here’s what my Twitter account looks like.

You could probably assume a couple of things looking at this.

One is that I’m a Twitter loser and don’t have many friends. In which case, you’d be right. The other is that my friends on Twitter are losers and need to get a life. Which is probably also true.

I get the whole communicating via SMS thing. Three years ago, we built an SMS gateway for a telco client. It’s still in use today and they have, quite honestly spent a small fortune on this, for which I am eternally grateful. And there is no better way, in this day and age to communicate with a large group of people instantly than SMS. Forget email. Forget calling. SMS wins hands down. Everytime.

What I just don’t get is rattling on about what I’m doing every bloomin’ minute of the goddam day. I mean, my own family don’t care what I do, so why would my friends?

Take for instance the writing of this blog post. I’m sitting in a trendy pub, glass of wine in hand, listening to the thing called “life” going on around me, while connected to the internet, writing this. Now some would argue, you ARE a loser, sitting on your own in a pub, the week before Xmas, looking into the screen of you MacBook.

Perhaps.

But the last thing I want to do is tell my virtual Web 2.0 friends what I’m doing. Hell, I’m grateful for the peace and quiet. No email. Can’t hear the damn phone over the desperate “touch rugby” wankers trying to pick up drunk women. Just peace and quiet in a sort of noisy Thursday night, Prahran pub type of way.

Those Melbournians who read this will understand. Those of you who are in the US, will just have to imagine your favourite bar, with the Cornhuskers playing Texas A&M the on the big screen. Same women. Same drunk “touch rugby” wankers or their equivalent.

Or something like that.

Look, if I have a screw loose, then email me and tell me. No doubt, my 7 year old son gets Twitter. But I don’t. So there.

Right then. Let’s move on to Second Life.

Look, all I’ll say is that I have enough trouble coping with my first life than to worry about a second one. This is one gig I clearly don’t understand. Maybe don’t even want to.

You go into the site, take on the persona of someone else, interract with other people who do the same and use the word “avatar” a lot. Whatever the hell that means. If you ask me, it reminds me of marriage. Ok, that’s a bit cyncial. And I hope my wife doesn’t read this. Strewth!

Here’s the official description of the site:

The insane part to all this is that people buy and trade just about everything, from real estate to cars to commodities, in their own currency, called “Linden dollars”, which apparently can be converted into US dollars at a Nigerian Currency Exchange booth at your local flea market.

Madness!

In a year where Google got stronger and bigger, Yahoo! got smaller and more confused, Facebook became the overnight $15 billion dollar darling, and the VC’s got smarter and ran away, some things still continued to perplex even the most rational of people.

That’s Second Life. And that’s normal in this digital day and age.

As 2007 draws to a close, maybe it’s time to look back and reflect at what the internet has created. The sad thing is this. Perhaps only 20% of business really gets it. One things for sure. Digital properties like Twitter and Second Life might last and they might not. One thing is certain though. They’ve ruined every textbook case study out there about creating niche markets .

Which promises for an exciting year ahead, don’t you think?

Click To Play

Ok, this is the last of the video series from Blogworld Expo. The hard disk space on my Mac is about to run out! And my digital camera is exhausted. The session, titled “Going Global With New Media” was presented by Des Walsh (an Aussie) and Rich Brooks (A US based internet marketing consultant).

For those of you who were there, I edited out the start - where Des and Rich were mucking around with Second Life and they couldn’t quite get the demo to work. Frankly, I can’t get my head around Second Life. To be honest, I have enough trouble with my first life to worry about another one.

There were some interesting questions from the audience, and the whole one hour 20 minute presentation was more like a group of friends sitting around having a dinner party conversation. Which was a whole lot better. Except for the fact that we weren’t drunk.

I was intrigued by a question from the enigmatic Scott Allen. He asked “Since we’re talking about global, what do the non Americans in the room think of they way Americans do business”. Or something close to that.

I pulled out the question in a separate clip.

Click To Play

I bit my lip. You have to remember that I’m married to an American and I learned long ago that if I wanted to have any sort of sex life at all, I had better be careful of what I say about the “mother land” and the gun slinging Texan of a President. Actually, my wife thinks he’s a buffoon, but let’s not go there.

(Now look what’s happened, I’ve just committed the cardinal sin. Blog etiquette says that you’re not supposed to talk about sex or politics and I’ve just mentioned both in the same paragraph).

Anyway.

Des Walsh is a fountain of knowledge and Rich clearly knows his stuff. It was interesting to note that before their presentation in Vegas, neither Rich nor Des had actually met, forcing them to depend on the technologies that were at the very centre of their presentation to this audience.

Des had also just presented at AdTech China, along with Corporate Blogging Guru, Debbie Weil.

This was a good session to immerse yourself in. It’s worth watching the video in its entirety. It’s solid in content and Des and Rich presented well together.

Let me know what you think. And more on Des Walsh here and Rich Brooks here and here.

If you thought social networking was just a passing fad, you might want to think again. I haven’t got my head completely around Google’s recent announcement regarding Open Social quite yet, but here’s a good place to start if you want to sink your teeth into it.

According to Google;

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. Using standard JavaScript and HTML, they enable developers to create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

Titled “Google Campfire One”, it’s hosted by Vic Gundotra, the new head of Google’s Developer Programs. Gundotra used to be a Microsoft Evangelist, but jumped ship around 18 months ago.

It’s just under an hour long, so best grab a glass of wine and wait until the kids are in bed…

It was a deal Microsoft virtually had to win. (And I think they got off cheap).

Does it make sense? Not sure yet. Too early to tell. Apparently, negotiations were going on as late as Thursday/Friday last week when both Steve Ballmer and Mark Zuckerberg were in San Francisco attending the Web 2.0 Summit.

There is no doubt Ballmer would have gone “ballistic” if this deal had fallen into Google’s hands. It was probably the reason why he allegedly handled the final negotiations himself. They always had the upper hand in one sense, because of the existing ad relationship that was in place. That was always going to be a hurdle for Google to jump over.

And last week at Web 2.0, Mark Zuckerberg struck me as the sort of young man that wasn’t easily as influenced with the standard job spiel enticement from the Google HR folks (ie “Mark, dude, come to Google, free food, great facilities and technology and you get to work on the coolest shit in the world”). Zuckerberg’s response would most probably have been “but I already am…”

The cash injection of US$240 million for a 1.6% stake values the social networking at US$15 billion.

Apparently, the funds will be used for infrastructure, hire more super geeks, make acquisitions (of more super geeks) and help with international expansion, which is where the growth lies for the barely 3 year old company.

From today’s Facebook-Microsoft conference call with reporters: Microsoft needs the international ad agreement because Facebook says nearly 60 percent of its 50 million active users are based outside of the US. Facebook also claims to be gaining 200,000 new users per day, worldwide.

The deeper issue here is not that Microsoft won and Google didn’t - although its psychologically important. The bigger issue is that Facebook may have cracked the “AdCode” and found a very viable alternative to the absolute market dominance of Adwords and Adsense.

If, as is reported at VentureBeat -

Yesterday, reports also surfaced a new Facebook ad product, apparently trademarked “SocialAds,” will be previewed November 6 to some of Facebook’s closest advertisers. Conde Nast, Nike, Apple, Sony, General Motors, Coke, CBS, Chase and Verizon have paid $300,000 each to be “Landmark Partners,” meaning they are the first advertisers to try SocialAds, according to these reports, none confirmed by Facebook. When asked for comment, a Facebook spokeswoman responded: “Facebook does not comment on speculation or rumor.”

The idea of the deal is to focus on “demand fulfillment” by taking advantage of Facebook users’ high engagement with each other, Facebook VP of product marketing and operations Chamath Palihapitiya was quoted telling FastCompany.

Facebook has a unique set of data about users that may be able to provide more relevant targeting, more often, possibly putting Facebook in competition with Google’s Adwords and AdSense programs.

You can be sure that the “courting” has only just begun. Microsoft’s deal simply gets them a seat at the table. Sort of like a rich uncle coming to dinner.

Google will scramble to push MySpace as quickly as they can now and the sooner MySpace opens up its API so the world’s development community can get to work, the better. Momentum has shifted to Facebook of late, but I for one, wouldn’t write off Murdoch and DeWolfe over at MySpace just yet.

According to this chart (courtesy Commscore and WSJ), MySpace still have more than double the unique visitors, but the percentage change with Facebook’s numbers is what should be worrying Murdoch.

One things for sure, the social networking “fad” as many people were referring to is no longer one of fiction. It’s here to stay.

And Microsoft, to their credit, are now a serious player.

Round One to Microsoft.

Ok, I’m a bit behind with posting. Man, there’s a lot going on. Here’s a quick snapshot and I’ll elaborate in more detail later.

Straight after Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Marissa Mayer from Google gave us an overview on Google Health. This brief session was disappointing - and I’m a big fan of Google as readers will know. I’m also totally convinced that Marissa is a great presenter (and apparently not a harder worker you will find within Google). However, this wasn’t her best day.

Anssi Vanjoki from Nokia was up next. He was one cool customer and a serious heavy weight within Nokia (Executive Vice President and General Manager of Multi-Media). There’s something about the finnish accent that enables you to listen to them all day.

In many respects, Nokia had to be given ample opportunity to pitch their product and their company, given that they were the Platinum sponsor of the Web 2.0 event. Vanjoki talked about the mobile phone needing to be “context aware”. Can you imagine that Nokia have shipped over 1 billion phones already. In typical Nordic understatement, Vanjoki regarded this massive number as only just the beginning…

Next Evan Williams, the founder and CEO of Twitter. I don’t quite get this mini social networking phenomenan yet, but I reckon it’s here to stay.
Questions he posed to the audience, “What can we add to make something better?” and “What can we take away to create something new?”
Twitter in many ways, is a blogging app.

Evan is ex Google, worked on Blogger. Very smart. Very unassuming. Key message: “What can you create by taking something away?”

Mike Moritz, Sequoia Capital (and Mike was one of the early investors in Google, along with John Doerr) and a Google Board Member for many years. Key quote, when talking about the search behemoth.

“I wish that every company that we had been involved with had made the mistakes that Google had…”

When asked “What makes them great?”.

He responded with…”The leaders of the company worry all the time – and this is one of the great things about the company. This is not a complacent group of people. They never rest”.

Quotes I’ll remember and use for a while…

“We’re going online because that’s where our customers are…” Philippe Dauman, CEO, Viacom

“The Platform race is over. The internet has already won”. Jeff Huber, VP Engineering, Google.

More to come as soon as I dissect everything. One thing I have noticed since the start of the year, the corporate giants are starting to wake up to the internet and Web 2.0. Nokia, HP, Viacom, NBC, and a whole host of other Fortune 500 companies are all here. And apparently, all now listening.

When I was at Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year - there was something that kept catching my eye. I don’t really know why.

At one of the hallways into the session rooms, there was a lonely plasma screen, displaying “Twitter” messages. To be honest, I never really got the hang of it but due to fear of missing out, I duly created and set up a Twitter account when I got home.

The first thing that impressed me is that that creators of Twitter quickly understood that there were other humans living to the west of San Francisco and to the East of New York. They enabled Twitter to handle international mobiles.

But let me back the truck up a bit.

Just what the hell is it?

Okay, according to the Twitter website:

“A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!”

For some strange reason, the Web 2.0 evangelists are in love with Twitter. And while it’s still in early adoption phase, the thing appears to be growing like an outbreak of the ebola virus. But then again, there’s a lot of techno geeks out there.

Here’s how it works in plain english.

(Side bar - if you are a techno phobe, hate mobile phones, hate texting, and long for the good old days when teenagers could actually string a real sentence together or would actually use a phone to talk on - then Twitter is going to tip you over the edge). You will, most probably, by the end of this post, lose the will to live entirely.

Anyway, here’s what happens.

The basic tenet to Twitter is it assumes you have friends. Or at least people who acknowledge you exist and who pretend to care about your meaningless life.

For example, I have just logged into my Twitter account and can simply write a text message into the 140 character message box that says: “I’m writing a blog post about Twitter”.

If you have friends - or people in your network via your Facebook, MySpace or Linked In accounts, they can see what you are up to, minute by every freakin’ agonising minute. And don’t worry, if you actually step outside of your window-less room, you can keep “twittering” on your mobile phone. You can link you GMail account, connect to Facebook and there are a heap of other applications developed or being developed by the day.

Unfortunately, social networking is here to stay. Whether or not I get it (at 41 years of age) is completely irrelevant. My 6 year old will. As will his 4 year old sister. And they are both sure to laugh at me - actually they do that already.

One thing is for sure, the mobile operators will make out like bandits with applications like Twitter because most people will use it when on the move. It will drive SMS/Text revenue through the roof. Kids have already figured out that a carrier with a good text plan rather than a voice plan is way more important to them. Kids I know (the ones that can still speak English) are capable of texting 30-50 messages a day. Not once though did they actually pick up the phone and press the send button. Which I think is utterly bizarre.

Twitter also has a very important local search spin to it - and perhaps this is what the founders of Twitter (and other apps like Pownce, & Frazr) are hoping is their big pay dirt moment. If you’re in a new city and looking for a restaurant, you can simply post the question to your network of “cyber friends” and hopefully get a response. It works if you are a famous blogger with a wide audience. But to the average Joe, you might go hungry. That’s when the “Almighty Algorithm” steps in (Google) and offers you suggestions. Voila, problem solved and Larry and Sergey are yet another click closer to nirvana.

Actually, one of the smartest things the lumbering old carriers could do is to acquire a Twitter like service (before a search company does). They have a subscriber base, an ability to scale (when they want to) and any application which drives revenue across a sunk cost infrastructure is highly desirable. The challenge is, I used to work for the big telcos, and many of them have a lot of senior people older than me, who struggle to switch on their PC’s in the mornings. Go ask them what the “zeitgeist” is and they’ll look at you with a blank expression, or say it is a Steven Spielberg movie about the Holocaust. Or something like that.

Reluctantly I think, Twitter will continue to accelerate. It’s the future (or a big part of). For some strange reason, there’s a generation of folks who want to communicate this way, and who feel the need to tell other people what they are doing at every waking moment of the day. Obviously, these people don’t have children. Or aren’t married.

But I just can’t wrap my head around it. When I’m in San Francisco next month at Web 2.0, I know everyone will be “twittering” like crazy. I promise to try and embrace it - but I’m warning you that it could all go pear shaped.

Maybe it already has. For me at least.

I seem to be knee deep in start up’s lately. And proudly, all Aussie. Well, actually - that’s patriotic nonsense. In fact, I would argue that it’s much harder for a start-up to get traction downunder than it is offshore. Our funding sources are too limited. As is the talent pool.

If you put down on your tax return “Venture Capitalist” in the box occupation, 2 guys in a government vehicle would come around, put you in an immigration detention centre and a very unpleasant women with a rubber glove would proceed to crawl up your arse with a very large toilet brush.

Or something like that.

Before you start wailing, I know there are always exceptions to the rule.

I reckon Hippo has legs. Thats why we’re delighted they’re our newest client. I think Chris and Johnny are on to something. And I definitely think Mark and Rob are going to give the search industry a run for it’s money.

We’re also having a crack at something ourselves. Too early to tell but I’m listening to Marc Andreessen and reading this post by Rich Skrenta and Uncov.

God, I pissed myself laughing when I read this on Uncov. Open the page. And then look to the right hand corner. Exactly.

I remember being at Guy Kawasaki’s Garage.com conference in New York back in Web 1.0 (or whatever you want to refer to it as). I remember being interviewed 3 times by PeoplePC and contemplating moving from the midwest to San Francisco with a 4 month year old son. God, I’m glad I didn’t.

Remarkably, PeoplePC is still alive.

The crazy thing is that even amongst all the hysteria back then, people’s logic sort of went south. I know mine did. I got carried away with the internet dream without understanding the most important thing.

Who are you going to sell it to? (the”it” being the product, the service, the application).