In 2010, Facebook introduced their famous Like button.  Since that time, it’s found its way across the web.  Back in 2011, celebrating the one year anniversary of the Like button, HubSpot published statistics on its use to that point outlining “2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook (including more than 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites)”. Fast forward to 2012 and the time of it’s S-1 filing, Yahoo! reported that Facebook was generating 2.7 billion likes and comments a day…31,250 every second!  And that is only half the story, less than half.  Even if 10% of Like button impressions were clicked (which is a stratospheric number), that means the “Like” button is still collecting data on the other 90% of traffic.  Very rough math:  27 billions data collecting events from not only on Facebook but across the most popular sites on the web.  ClickZ has a good article of the gold mine that is Facebook’s Like button and cite:

the company creates an impression log every time a signed in member views a Like button or social plug-in on a third party site, regardless of whether or not they interact with it. That record, which is tied to members’ unique user IDs, includes information on IP address, URL, date, time, and browser, and is retained for a period of 90 days.

This is an amazing accomplishment.  Many in the industry including investors already know the power that this represents.  Facebook has an engine that is learning with every page view about users and for certain, is synthesizing it into a data warehouse that marketers can only dream about.  The possible use cases for such an engine are profound ranging from more astute targeting on Facebook with advertising and offers, to building an internet wide advertising platform (aka Beacon) that is every bit as powerful (if not more so) to Google Ad Sense.

Think about it from the perspective of a publisher on an online web site, for example, the New York Times or WSJ.  They strive to learn about their audience and their behaviors so that they have generate more online revenue.  However, they have an issue:  their users have to register and be logged in so they can tie the profile of their user to their activity.  Many publishers sit on a ton of anonymous cookie data that they cannot identify at a personalized level.  This is why online behavioral targeting and ad exchange solutions are vital to them.  In the case of the Like button, users have already registered at Facebook (you have to register to use the service) and thus an ID is in their system tied to an actual person.  Each time the Like button is sent somewhere on the internet, Facebook knows who is looking at that page.  A click on the Like button is just additional data.  So in this scenario, Facebook most likely knows more about the users behavior than the publisher themselves.

Plenty more to discuss on this topic.  If you are interested, the lastest edition of MIT Technology Review has an article entitled What Facebook Knows as its centerpiece.

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Here are some fundamental things to consider:

Basically treat all of your major work output as if it were going to be viewed externally. It is a great principle to have and allows you to develop the skills and producing great output for when it matters most: deliverables to senior management, customer presentations and demos, annual budget cycle, VC pitches, board meetings, etc.

Think Externally, Even Internally.

(disclaimer: this may not necessarily apply to when blogging from your mobile device which is what I am doing right now)

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So I am coining a new phrase: Boil the Puddle.

This strikes strong parallels with the Minimum Viable Product concept that in my view is the best way to get something new to market. Attack the effort in bite size easily consumable chunks. Establish iterative milestones so you can figure out what is working is working, what’s not, build on your successes, and get to failure quickly, learn and adapt. Let the team see success and most importantly, progress. Momentum breeds momentum. And your seemingly insurmountable and unsolvable task is suddenly…solvable.

Boil the puddle. Not the ocean.

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The quick summary is, from what I can tell, that Google will only synchronize fields that meet their standards (Home, Mobile, Work Fax), and most importantly, case sensitivity matters.  So if you imported from another address box, your fields may not be matching up even if they are named ‘home’ and ‘mobile’.  Those will be ported into Google Contacts as custom fields and custom fields do not synchronize.  This also applies for the field ‘other’ which seems to causing a lot of people angst as well.  Also note, that Google will only synchronize a certain number of fields such as phone numbers and email addresses.

Finally, I came across a post by Seth Jaffe (thanks Seth!) on a message board that outlined an easy way to make a lot of changes to your contacts in one pass.  I used the basis of his post to fix the issue for myself and thought I would pay it forward with a post outlining how to fix this for yourself if you are dealing with the same issue.  Note, this should only be a fix if you are synchronizing your contacts from Google Contacts to your iPhone (which you can learn to do at MacTalk or here at Google if you are interested).  Also, disclaimers apply.  Back up your data.  I don’t want you go from missing a few data elements to missing an entire address book!  Okay, here we go…

1.  Export your contacts from Google – Click ‘My Contacts’, Click the ‘More’ button and ‘Export’.  You want to export as a Google CSV file.  When it gives you a choice, most of you will want to pick “My Contacts” as the group you want to export as it will be where most of your contacts are.  To be safe, I recommend you do this process twice and also export as an Outlook CSV as well.  This way you will have a back up for either Google or Outlook if disaster should strike.

2. Save the Export to a file – You will need to save the export to a location on your computer and should end up with a file named “google.csv”, but you can name it whatever you want.  Just remember where you saved it.

3.  Open in Microsoft Word – Because it is a .csv file, most of the time this will open for you in Microsoft Excel.  You don’t want to do that, for some reason it did not work for me.  (another alternative would be to open the comma separated file in a standard text editor as well)  In the case of Word, simply Right Click and open it with Microsoft Word instead.  Note, the information in the file will be comma separated and will be all jumbled, don’t panic, this is okay.

4.  Search and Replace – Now use search and replace in Microsoft Word to change a lot of the fields so that they are in the format that fit Google’s defaults and thus they will synchronize over to the iPhone.  Here are a few examples to give you an idea that I used:  Replace all instances of ‘mobile’ with ‘Mobile’, Replace all instances of ‘home’ with ‘Home’, replace all instances of ‘other’ with ‘Work’.  This should get your contacts file to be in the right format.

5.  Save the file – Save the file but be sure to save it as a different file name, like GoogleNew.csv so you don’t overwrite your original.  Microsoft Word will probably add the suffix .txt on the end of your file name if you save it in text format.  Just go to the file where you have it saved and rename it so it ends with the .csv extension only.

6.  Delete your Existing Contacts – You’ll want to delete all of your existing contacts in your My Contacts group because you want that folder empty when you import all of your clean data back in and avoid a duplication issue.  Again, make sure you’ve backed up your data before deleting.  You can do this by clicking “My Contacts” in Google Contacts, selecting all and deleting.  You’ll probably need to do this for several pages if you have lots of data but it is not that bad.

7.  Import your file – Once you have an empty “My Contacts” group, you are ready to import.  You do this by clicking “My Contacts”, then clicking the “more” button and then import.  Choose the file that you created. For example, GoogleNew.csv.  And then click ‘import’.

Once you do that, it should pull in all of your contacts from the new file into your “My Contacts” group and if already have synchronization set up on your iPhone, Google will begin synchronizing your data over to your phone almost immediately if you are on wireless.  You can make sure if works by going into a few of your contacts and you’ll notice the data fields showing up and synchronizing with the right information.  Hope this helps some of you that have been having the same synchronization issues between Google Contacts and the iPhone.

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Earlier this week I changed back to an iPhone from Android so I’ve spent that last few days loading it up with a bunch of apps.  One of the apps is Instagram, an app I’ve wanted to try and gave up waiting for it to come out on Android.  Anyway, downloaded the app, took a picture, picked my filter and was given my choice of channels to send it to.  So, in his case, I sent it via email to my wife, sent it to Facebook and decided to not put it into my Twitter stream.   Then I saw that I could send the photo to Posterous, a service I signed up for long ago but had used in some time, so I thought, send it there too.  And then software took over…

All of of sudden, this nice photo ended up on this blog and in my Twitter stream.  What happened?  I forgot that at some point back when I signed up for Posterous, I also said of course publish anything posted on Posterous I would also want to publish to Twitter and to this blog BUT I should be smart about it and only do it when I am the author (that way I can control it what cross posts).  So all software operated as instructed.  But things that I did not intend to happen at the time I published this photo did.

So it turns out that I now need two new services:

1. Service Tracker  -  A service that keeps track of all the services that I’ve signed up for.  This I’ve been wanting for years. At one point, I used Friendfeed for this purpose and it seemed to work well but I feel I need something specifically designed for this purpose.

2.  Service Auth Tracker – I would now like a service that tracks all services that I have authenticated and authorized to access data in other services or to cross-post.  This post demonstrates the cross-post issue.  Who knows how services I’ve allowed to use my social logins or to access my social data stream.

Okay, time to hit publish.  I wonder when these two new services will be built and by whom?  Where this post will now publish to is a whole other question.

Posted via email from loupaglia’s posterous

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Image by Rafa Puerta Photo via Flickr

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. Most of this blog is about technology. But make no mistake, we are under self-inflicted attack of technological warfare.  And we love it.  But we have to remain mindful of it. We have to be mindful of it because it is only going to get worse, because technology is getting better. Think about it…let’s take one device, the iPad, a device phenomenally designed so that you can comfortably have it on your lap and be plugged in. What a great way to immerse yourself in great apps, great content, your feeds, the news, books, videos…all while ignoring those around you when you are probably already interacting with them so well….watching the tube.

I’ve had a post like this sitting in my drafts folder for months.  Fred Wilson wrote a post a few weeks back talking about “Being Present“. Similarly Brad Feld wrote a post about his four minute rule that he has with his wife. So I thought it was a good time to dust if off, polish it up and hit publish.  It’s purpose is simply to make the three of you that read it to PAUSE and reflect, even for just a moment before going to the next items in Google Reader.

With technology, we all know it is very tough to unplug and be present for the ones around you. I try to remind myself all the time of this when with the family and admittedly, don’t do the best job of it. The good news for me is have a family that will continually remind me so they keep it top of my mind…put the phone down, shut the laptop.  My personal favorite is my dad who says “Lou, is that phone attached to your hand?”  It is (or should be) obvious for most that balance is really important. This got me thinking about the pervasiveness of technology and how much it may be hindering our abilities to interact on a personal level with others, not just family but colleagues and strangers too.  Again pause and reflect.

I realize that anyone reading this post is instantly going to say that if anything technology has improved interaction with others.  The mobile device let’s you stay connected and reachable.  There is video chat like Facetime and Skype giving you the ability to communicate with others across the country and around the world.  Facebook keeps you in tune with the happenings of all your offline friends (if that isn’t a paradox in itself).  Twitter keeps me abreast of the news and what is happening around me.  And I get it, absolutely right.  That is why is such a tough topic and one that everyone has to figure out themselves.

Take a moment think about it, take stock of those around you and how they are interacting (or not) with others.  Think about the opportunities where you can interact with others and leave the technology aside for even a few minutes.  That is all you can do.  I’ve done it and here are some observations I’ve made:

• At home – talked about this above already.  Read Fred and Brad’s posts on it.
• In the city – As if not making eye contact and acknowledging a stranger in city was already a problem, now walk down a city street and take a look around you.  People walking and talking on their phones.  People with headphones on in their own little worlds.  People (pet peeve of mine) walking down the street and typing on their phone.  The most recognition you give is not slamming into them.
• At the local coffee shop – Starbucks recently changed their WiFi policy making web access even easier for patrons.  Think about that though.  The coffee shop where people used to go, sit down with someone else and chat.  In the past month, I’ve been in Starbucks in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.  Everywhere it is the same.  Everyone has a cup of coffee…and their noses into their phones or laptops.  Sometimes both, while ear buds in their ears while listening to music.
• At the airport – Waiting for my plane to depart, I think everyone at my gate was on the phone, on their laptop, charging their phone or laptop at the charging station or listening to their iPod.
• On the train and on the plane – Same thing.  Everyone immersed in the technology in their hands.  More rare is the occurrence that you actually meet the person next you.
• At the stadium – I was just at the Giants game this weekend.  There we are opening day, beautiful new stadium, huge crowds cheering their team, a game on the field.  What do I see?  A row of people on their phones the whole time!  Don’t get me wrong, I checked into Foursquare but then I watched the game, chatted with my neighbors and cheered for the team.

Again, I am the first one to say technology is fantastic.  I can’t stress that enough.  But we need to sneak some time back in for personal interaction…somehow.  For fun, take some time the next time you are out and take a look around you.  Pause and reflect.  Repeat.   Ok, time to go check what is on the DVR.

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My personal favorite was from Mr. Hart’s AP English class: Describe your view through an imaginary window. I am still slightly aggravated with myself to this day, or I should say, perplexed, that I didn’t just think to look out of an actual window in my house and describe what I saw. Instead I sat at my desk with the worst writer’s block, tapping my pencil against the desk, painfully trying to force an imagined view into my head. What’s funny is I think back now to the trauma of it all and really can’t remember what I wrote; I think it had something to do with icicles.

So it is with that in mind that I often think about how much the web changed the written landscape. Think about how many writers and content producers beyond traditional media (you know, the people who loved writing and creating the stuff even back in high school).  Many of them are a direct result of the advent of the digital pen. Much of the content produced may not be Poe, Emerson, Rand or Shakespeare but it doesn’t need to be.  Clive Thompson has an essay called The New Literacy in the September issue of Wired that focuses on this phenomenon and also reflects on whether the “digital pen” is hurting the overall quality if writing.

People are creating some of the best content on the web today. Blogging enables thousands to produce incredible content across genres. Think about a well-thought blog post that you’ve read recently. Descriptive title, subject statement, number of paragraphs backing up an argument and some type of conclusion perhaps. That sure sounds a heck of a lot like the type of assignment many of us ran from.  And that doesn’t scratch the surface.  There is the micro-content world that Thompson touches on such as Twitter and Facebook.  Look at the extent of content, solid writing at that, taking place in the enterprise in the form of business plans, emails and PowerPoint presentations.

Content creation takes place us around us all the time.  Writing is getting churned out like crazy. The digital pen has enabled us to publish our thoughts in an easy way.  Even those of us who dreaded writing our view through an imaginary window could rail something out in 20 minutes without thinking twice. I find this truly amazing.

And guess what, how’s this for an essay?  519 words.  Knocked it out the iPhone on the train ride into the city this morning.  Wonder if Mr. Hart would approve?

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So is Google Wave the New New Thing? Who knows? Scoble, Gray and many others probably have fair points. I have no idea if it is going to be successful. In fact, I haven’t even used it yet since I wasn’t opened to the system (not one of the worthy 100k, thanks Google!). I’d like to discuss a bigger question.

Why so negative? (Said another way, a very provocative question is “Why be so quick to judgment?”) Who knows what the future holds? In the beginning, Twitter showed no purpose to me. I have a personal post to prove it. I made the mistake to be very quick to judge the service at the time and quite honestly give the thing time to ferment. I later remedied my incorrect early impression. I think people confuse how they look at the service now as opposed to the service we were all looking at it when it first came out. And that quick rush to judgment has bigger negative consequences.

When Friendfeed switched to a real-time interface, I came very close to making the same mistake. It was blistering fast, hard to follow and there was a lot of noise in the channel just like when you follow tons of people in Twitter and just watch the stream. Very valid points BUT to a certain extent, it is the wrong way to look at things. It took a few months, but once I got used to the service, I couldn’t even go back to “refresh mode”, I loved real time. Back in August,I reflected and was honest with myself as to what I thought at one point no longer was valid…for me.

The goal or premise of Google Wave was to re-define what we mean for collaboration and by folding into the framework the concept of real-time, public and private conversations, threaded and nested conversations: really the merging of email and IM/chat which has been the standard collaboration conversation paradigms of the past couple decades.

Some say, impossible, there is too much email lock-in to change the way people communicate in an email like channel. Why? Are we actually saying that we will not advance from the email we know today? That cannot be. With that attitude, we are set collectively to never create anything game-changing and new. Again I reflect, back in the 90′s, a little search company came out and I laughed (negatively) and wondered if these two guys didn’t understand that Yahoo! owned the search market. We know how that story ended. And that is why I don’t say things like “don’t come out with new search engines, you cannot beat Google, they have too much share and power.” Is it daunting? Of course it is. But not impossible. Microsoft, a gorilla, is under threat in the enterprise and the office productivity space. We would never have thought such a thing could occur, many still don’t.

Building good enterprise software (often regarded an oxymoron) is hard and often failed but that doesn’t mean we will not continue to innovate in the space.

I close this post tying it back to Google Wave. Will it be successful? Who knows? What I can say is that it shows an enormous amount of vision, positive vision about how it can change the collaboration and real time communication world. It is so early in the evolution, let’s see where we go, viable use cases, incremental improvement, additional feedback loops incorporated into the product. And finally, let’s not lose sight on what huge factor: the open development community will harness some real power and value in this ecosystem. Just like what happened with Twitter. Twitter evolved from a simple user interface with a white box to type “what are you doing”. It would be no where near as pervasive today with the significant developments around its API and the community developing apps with vision on how to leverage a one-to-many communications framework.

Let’s give this some time. Let’s give it a chance. That is what makes innovation so great. Building and investing in things that do not seem possible, initial ventures that are seemingly dumb and improving the status quo.

Guess I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning.

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The article discusses the concept of Anonymous social software and goes on regarding research that has found that using data mining techniques on your social network, one can be personally identified. Pretty interesting. But not surprising. So let’s go back to the concept: Anonymous Social Software. I am not sure I really “follow” the concept. (pun intended).

People who blog anonymously. This I can understand. You can write all on your own, not disclose it is you to anyone and take active steps to not get identified. A great example is Fake Steve Jobs who had quite a run writing a blog without being personally identified. However, without fostering a commenting dialog, I can posit that blogging is not social software, it is simply a publishing platform. Once you begin an interaction (a conversation) do you really enter the realm of social software.

So, can people really be anonymous and use social software. People who want to remain anonymous take strides to not release any more information than they have to not give themselves away. In most cases, this is precisely the opposite of what one tries to accomplish with social software. The point is to interact, to follow. And of course every connection in of itself is additional information that narrows the focus on who you could be. Back on the Fake Steve Jobs, even Daniel Lyons couldn’t not remain anonymous. His writing style alone eventually gave him away.

Another subtle point is the article discussed security and anonymity as if they are one in the same thing. However, security and anonymity are not the same thing nor should they be. Whether identified or not, people want their system and data secure. I am not anonymous writing this article but I want the article to be secure. The same goes for my newsfeed on Facebook or my stream on Twitter. If you want security, use the web privately, private rooms, storage, feeds, etc. Yes, there is the raging “security of cloud computing” conversation going on but that is fully another topic and one which I believe will resolve itself.

The big question people should be asking themselves is why are they trying to remain anonymous? This issue has existed since the days of mainstream message boards and chat rooms. You are going on the web and posting information fully out in the public. A “handle” isn’t security. CEOs of publicly traded grocery store chains even know this.

My view is if you are venturing out and going to interact on the web, you have to have a comfort of living in public. Fred Wilson had a great commentary on this. It is something that everyone posting information should consider. It is much more about your own personal attitude and approach than whether the software/meme should be maintaining your anonymity. Sure many will disagree with me. I’m just not sold that you can have one without the other.

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