The reporting is on the trend of more and more people quitting social networks.  What spoke to me most is how much of a minority opinion this was. Here’s a quote:

Lucca, Italy-based Seppukoo helped 20,000 people erase themselves from Facebook after the site launched last fall. Two-month-old Web 2.0 Suicide Machine — where a noose dangles near a ticker tracking the digital mayhem (“181,898 friends have been unfriended, 329,908 tweets removed”) — has been used by 2,600 people. Thousands more are waiting to be accommodated by the site’s small server, says Walter Langelaar, 32, one of three programmers who created the “art project” for Moddr, a media lab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

20,000 people?

2,600 people?

Facebook has 400 Million active users. Twitter is in the mid 8-digits. Myspace is in the hundreds of millions.

With more users, you’ll have more attrition — I don’t think the “trend” being reported here is much to think about. Facebook has maintained incredible user-activation (50% of it’s users log-in daily). The examples in the article are clearly  from a minority.

My friend Ben Casnocha posted yesterday about privacy, RIP Privacy and Identiy Synthesis on the Web.  It’s a good read, and I would wager he would agree with my statements above, especially given his statement that: “many users do not understand how their personal information is tracked and displayed. But I do not think the majority mainstream users of any age care and I think no young people care. Young people will soon replace old people.”

Ben and I may be buying slinkys on this one, but the privacy argument is becoming moot.  Here’s my outlook:

1. There are still large risks associated with giving up privacy, but far fewer than decades past.
2. Our culture is clearly headed to sharing more, not less, information.

Bottom Line:  Privacy is dying. We are wasting our time trying to save it. Instead, let’s make the world safer for those who are living out in the open — because pretty soon, the majority of us will be.

It sounds radical, and full of the brashness of youth, but… I’m pretty sure it’s correct. I think that message needs to be spread wide and far. And I don’t just mean removing the risk to US Citizens like those profiled in USA Today above, I mean protesters in Iran. As Jonathan Zittrain noticed in a talk I attended last year, Iran could pretty easily/cheeply use Amazon Mechanical Turk to identify and persecute dissidents (starts at 32:45).  The safety of privacy will increasingly be an illusion that can be destroyed almost at-will by those with real power.

You want that in twitter friendly length?  No problem. Put this in your pipe and tweet it:

“Focus on making the world safer for living without privacy — soon, you won’t have any left.” /via @tylerwillis  http://bit.ly/bOdSSN

He thinks about the iPad similarly to me, which makes me pretty excited — when smart people come to the same conclusion as you entirely separately, you are on to something; and Paul is very, very smart.  I’m humbled and excited.  Here are excerpts from our two posts, back to back:

Here’s what I wrote:

The most impressive innovation, and the one that truly makes Ambient Computing possible, was the A4 chip.  That chip is at the hart of the new devices speed and responsiveness. While, I hope this new chip design extends to the iPhone in the future, it currently, makes the iPad capable of near-instant boot and it empowers applications to be incredibly responsive.  It removes all of the experience associated with computing other than getting into your desired program and completing your goal.

If Apple has built a machine that almost entirely removes the starting cost of completing an action on a traditional computer (which, even in good scenarios, often takes 20-30 seconds on non apple machines), then it has created a machine that’s much more capable of capturing cognitive inspiration from it’s owner – making you, as the user, more likely to act on your ideas.  Apple is already good at this (going from sleep/closed to working on a new macbook is generally a sub-10 second proposition), but carrying a laptop with you everywhere is a nuisance, and pulling a computer out of your bag for a 1 minute task in most situations is awkward (and often rude). Smartphones already handle these issues well, but they are generally sluggish and unreliable for anything but the simplest tasks.

…

If I was Scott Forstall, I’d be focused on empowering applications that resonate heavily with this crowd:  cookbooks come to mind, board games also, news/photos/communication will be killer (and already are on the machine), what else?

Here’s Paul’s take:

So where does this leave the iPad, with it’s lack of process managers, file managers, window managers, and all the other “missing” junk? I’m not sure, but one thing I’ve noticed is that I spend more time browsing the web from my iPhone than from my laptop. I’m not entirely sure why, but part of it is the simplicity. My iPhone is ready to use in under 1/2 second, while my laptop always takes at least a few seconds to wake up, and then there’s a bunch of stuff going on that distracts me. The iPhone is a simple appliance that I use without a second thought, but my laptop feels like a complex machine that causes me to pause and consider if it’s worth the effort right now. The downside of the iPhone is that it’s small and slow (though the smallness is certainly a feature as well). That alone guarantees that I’ll buy one to leave sitting next to the couch, but I’m kind of atypical.

Ultimately, the real value of this device will be in the new things that people do once they have a fast, simple, and sharable internet window sitting around. At home we’ll casually browse the web, share photos (in person), and play board games (Bret’s idea — very compelling)…

I wasn’t a watcher, but I got to enjoy some of the more choice quotes through my co-workers (thanks guys!). However, yesterday my roommate threw a few episodes on during a lazy Saturday morning.

What hit me is how much I was reminded of a line from Goodfellas where Karen starts getting introduced to the culture of being a mafia wife:

“there was never any outsiders around, absolutely never… being around each other all the time made everything seem all the more normal.”

Any community that engages in activity that the general public finds unsavory, faces a lot of pressure to conform to the group. Avoiding the general public is an effective defense mechanism against this pressure, but ends up creating a feedback loop where that group becomes more isolated and gets less feedback from the general public.

Is isolation a requirement for counter-cultural groups?

Just to be clear:
The show has caught a LOT of flack for promoting negative Italian sterotypes. These 7 self-described “guidos and guidettes” are definitely pretty polarizing figures. It’s hard to justify their status as nationally televised personalities (read: potential role-models), but I’m not going to pass judgement on them. They are young party-goers who are not particularly unique in prioritizing the fun of a highly-sexualized party lifestyle over more socially redeeming pursuits.

My take is that any blame here fits squarely with the network execs who are exploiting the choices of these young adults through a slew of reality programs (Real World, Road Rules, etc.).

Today marked an historic announcement. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Obama’s first State of the Union, but rather Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the new iPad.  So, how has Uncle Steve changed the game? Let’s take a look.

A perfect machine for Baby Boomers

I’m convinced the iPad is the perfect unit for a selling into a large market that hasn’t been catered to yet, has plenty of disposable income, and is would benefit the most immediately from what we will all come to recognize as a new type of computer: Baby Boomers.

At the time of the 2000 census, there were more than 79-million Baby Boomers in the US whom are now starting to slow down the pace of their daily lives as they transition towards retirement. Their personal computing needs (outside the office) aren’t very intensive — they communicate via email, read the news, share photos, maybe use video chat and do light research.

So, it would seem that current laptop or desktop computers do far more than is necessary for this audience.  And since added complexity often causes frustration, there may be a better solution. What would the perfect “home computer” for a boomer look like?

That machine would be:
- Simple to understand and use
- Quickly capable of completing tasks (see below)
- Be available whenever and wherever a need to interact with the digital world arose.

Here’s what that computer should be able to accomplish:
- Email/Calendar
- Booking movie tickets or reservations online
- Looking up references (online recipes, fact checking, manuals, etc.)
- Video chating with their family
- Storing pictures of family trips or events
- Occasionally doing light amounts of work
- Online Banking
(note: this is not intended to be exhaustive list,)

When you think about a machine that handles those common tasks well, and does so in a very responsive and always accessible way, the iPad is really the first good answer (more will follow if the iPad is successful).

Apple creates Ambient Computing

This type of machine represents a new concept — Ambient Computing.  Ambient Computing is robust enough to handle most computing tasks but requires much less effort to access than a traditional computer.

The most impressive innovation, and the one that truly makes Ambient Computing possible, was the A4 chip.  That chip is at the hart of the new devices speed and responsiveness. While, I hope this new chip design extends to the iPhone in the future, it currently, makes the iPad capable of near-instant boot and it empowers applications to be incredibly responsive.  It removes all of the experience associated with computing other than getting into your desired program and completing your goal.

If Apple has built a machine that almost entirely removes the starting cost of completing an action on a traditional computer (which, even in good scenarios, often takes 20-30 seconds on non apple machines), then it has created a machine that’s much more capable of capturing cognitive inspiration from it’s owner – making you, as the user, more likely to act on your ideas.  Apple is already good at this (going from sleep/closed to working on a new macbook is generally a sub-10 second proposition), but carrying a laptop with you everywhere is a nuisance, and pulling a computer out of your bag for a 1 minute task in most situations is awkward (and often rude). Smartphones already handle these issues well, but they are generally sluggish and unreliable for anything but the simplest tasks.

Bridging the accessibility of a mobile device with the robustness and trustworthiness of a full computer, will appeal to the large audience generally — which will grow over time.  But, Apple’s best bet for establishing this device category is to put up impressive sales numbers for the first model.  There’s also a huge immediate ability to replace the standard machine for lightweight home PC users – like baby boomers, as outlined above — or families, as outlined by Kottke.  If I was Scott Forstall, I’d be focused on empowering applications that resonate heavily with this crowd:  cookbooks come to mind, board games also, news/photos/communication will be killer (and already are on the machine), what else?

Sure, there are fairly unacceptable limitations like no camera, no easy solution for printing/scanning periphery, and questionable support of other screens (TV) for media content, which will have to be ironed out in V2. There are also broader reaching issues that might cause trouble for Apple: like the lack of flash support and the inability to show and track most web advertisements in mobile Safari. But with the hardware improvements announced today, the content and consumer-billing relationships Apple has built, and the knowledge that they can improve over several generations (do you remember the first iPod?), I think we are looking at a large market that Apple has a good chance of succeeding in.

That’s why I’m bullish on the iPad. With the keyboard dock, this could be a full-on replacement PC for some non-power consumers (Think of  WebTV — and trust me, WebTV users didn’t need multi-tasking). For heavier users, this still provides a great “ambient computing” experience that can allow someone to act on their immediate thoughts with far lower effort (creating more personal value), while still having a more robust machine capable of handling more demanding tasks.

I’m concerned about the movement away from open systems, but, that doesn’t change the writing on the wall for this type of device need — kudos to Apple for seeing and defining a great first step at an ambient computing device that I expect to become a category definer.

Great job Apple.

Sending surveys is an important part of early customer development; it helps you test a hypothesis and delivers you “perception” data. You can track how a user interacts with your service, it’s harder to track how they perceive it without surveys.

Early on in development of a consumer facing product, I’d recommend sending out simple surveys at short intervals (1-4 weeks) to a subset of your userbase. Below is the advice I gave my friend, if I’m missing anything, please leave it in the comments (Hattip to Hiten Shah, Leonard Speiser, and Sean Ellis who heavily influenced my thinking on this through tweets, posts, and conversations on this topic).

Hey,

First thing is too check out this: http://venturehacks.com/articles/measure-fit (not shocking that Venture Hacks has the go to resource, is it?)

Then check out the tool that video is about: www.survey.io

But here’s my advice:

- Order your survey intentionally. Use early questions as eventual filters. If your second question is “how bad would you feel if you couldn’t use this product” that helps you sort later questions (i.e. my power users think this is the key feature, everyone else thinks it’s something else).

- When evaluating the data, you don’t want to optimize for the largest segment, you want to optimize for the segment that’s most engaged.

- Don’t ask any questions without understanding how you’d apply the data you’re collecting.

- Ask some open ended questions. The open-ended everything survey recommended in the post is a great way to start. But I like to have less than half my questions require typing — and it’s usually just an “anything else you think we should know?”. You get much higher response rates. But, there’s definitely a time and a place: open-ended questions are really useful for messaging questions and for early “discovery” surveys. Those questions also allow you to learn a lot more about the user (and how committed they are — you can tell a lot from the length and quality of their response).

- Ask for the ability to followup by phone, and do phone followups with every person who says yes. You’ll learn a lot in that conversation — and you’ll develop deep relationships with potential customers.

- On the subejct of developing relationships, provide an option for opting-in to the “elites” club — let them self select into beta testing groups. These elites can often become marketing assets. Yelp did a great job of this. David Barrett at Expensify is also doing this well right now. Survey’s aren’t just data, build a marketing asset.

- Ask for their reactions to the product, optional and freeform (limit text length if you would like to use in materials or on twitter). Ask “can we use this for marketing purposes?”  Another idea: followup and get a small photo, name, link, etc. — use these assets to personalize the testimonials when you put them online.

- Don’t put explanatory text in front of questions. It’s tempting to try and put people in the right “frame” — it hurts you in the long run. Don’t alter the answers they want to give you.

- Short surveys win.  <10 questions. <5 mins to complete.  half that is much better. Don’t write an SAT test.

What if you had to prove (through actions) that you had already provided real value to someone, before you could “friend” them?   What would a social network look like if  every one of your “friends” was guaranteed to have listened to your advice, in a meaningful way, at least once in the past?

Social Networks evolve in a way that demonstrates how people use different tools for interacting:

1. with their closest friends (email/sms/fbmsg for me)
2. with their core audience (RSS/4sq for me)
3. with their broader but still relevant audience (RSS/Twitter/FB for me)
4. with the people they want to denote social relationships with (LinkedIn and Facebook for me).

What tends to happen with successful social networks is that they have a core value to the first user and some incentives to connect with friends (LinkedIn is better than traditional resumes and you look more valuable with better social proof).

But, after reaching a core network size where the product is optimized for relevant information or connections, the incentive continues to push growth; the network starts to signal relationships over information and becomes less relevant.  That’s happened to LinkedIn and to Facebook.

Facebook’s investing in games (and other platform apps), to maintain the users attention and keep them motivated in the quest for ultimate “connection with everything.”  As a result, Facebook’s got a broad ownership of your entire social graph (how you connect broadly to companies, products, people) — it’s probably going to win there.

So, if you want to build a social entity, don’t compete on the broader data play — ask yourself what niche information can you get detail and clarity on that either users or marketers care about?

Back to the original question — I’d find a network that shared the people that are influenced by the people I influence (Think LinkedIn, back when you only had 150 connections).  I could understand whom you actually have a good relationship with, so that I could ask for good quality introductions from you, or discuss relevant people with you.

There are a lot of other niche plays available to us out there. That’s where the hustlers should focus right now.

It’s been a Reasonable Doubt day on my headphones. Say what you want about Jay-Z, but this album has some great lines, some of which are applicable to building your startup.

Some of you don’t believe me, but Jay is an entrepreneur through and through, and, like any good entrepreneur, he shares his hard won lessons with a younger generation of up-and-comers.

To celebrate the end of another great week at Involver, I give you…

Eight startup tips from Hova:

1. “For the dough I raise, gotta get s**t appraised, no disrespect to you, make sure your word is true.” (Politics as Usual)

Ronald Regan said it best: “Trust, but verify.”  Your word should be your bond, but it may not be the other guys, do your due diligence.

2. “If every homie in you clique is rich; yo’ clique is rugged. Nobody will fall, cuz everyone will be each others crutches.” (Feelin’ It)

Surrounding yourself with people who can pick up the slack when you miss is important. You need to surround yourself with the best people and work to make sure they succeed as well.

3. “Even if ain’t sunny, hey, i ain’t complaining, I’m in the rain doing a buck 40 hyrdroplaning.” (Feelin’ It)

Sometimes you gotta play a bad hand, find a way to make the best of the situation. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

4. “Nothing to gain, and a whole lot to loose, you still singing? Fool.” (Feelin’ It)

Know when to walk away, not every game is winnable, or even worth playing.

5. “What, you’re broke, what the f**k you gon tell me? (22 Twos)

Consider the source of advice, choose carefully who you listen too.

6. “We offer our lives, what do you bring to the table?” (Can I Live)

Every entrepreneur should remember this when raising money or working with large partners.  You are making the ultimate commitment, don’t let other stakeholders devalue you’re stake because they have the dollars.

7. “I see his hunger pains, I know his blood boils. He wanna, run wit me, I know this kid’ll be loyal.”  (Coming of Age)

Find hungry proteges and teach them.

8. “The percentage who don’t understand is higher than the percentage who do” (Can I Live 2)

No explanation needed.

Humans like to evaluate at round numbers, we find milestones give good reminders to review behavior.  So, why do I blog?

Here are the 5 reasons I came up with:

1. Shaping my own thoughts – writing makes you clarify. Someone once said: “If you can’t write something, you don’t understand it.” Spot on.
2. Sharing ideas – I think often about topics outside of my expertise.  I share these thoughts because I probably won’t be able to follow them (focus is about saying no).  Also: you help me evolve the ideas, that which is deprived of sun does not grow.
3. Sharing best practices – I am helping establish the best practices of social marketing. I learn everyday from people who are kind enough to blog about the things they are knowledgeable about, I’d like to share my knowledge, like this and this.
4. Define myself – If you are meeting me, it will be helpful for you to know who I am, how I think, how I talk, what I like.  My twitter, tumblr and this blog give you a good idea.
5. Recognize amazing achievements, important thoughts, or other significant moments – The attention economy works because we like sharing significant ideas or moments with each other. We should all recognize when people make awesome things.

So, what will my 100th post be about?  Mostly #4 above this line, and #5 below this line.

I read “The five things I’d tell my entrepreneurial self” by Jon Bischke today.  Jon gives a 5 pieces of advice that are lessons best learned early, and one of them was so good I wanted to share it here:

Simply put, if you want to succeed, surround yourself with people who (a) are succeeding and (b) expect you to do likewise. That simple piece of advice will do more to put you on the path to success than anything else I can think of.

I couldn’t agree more, the people whom I choose to be friends with or work with are all great at what they do, quickly improving at it and expect the same from me.

I’m not an elitist on this — you don’t have to be impressive and driven for me to like you — but it’s easier to get value from high-octane people, so I try to encourage more of my interactions spent on high-octane people; it’s a primary reason I work at Involver.

There are probably a dozen people that actively help me improve by virtue of challenging me; without calling you all out individually — thank you!

Adopting a framework is generally the best path to success.  In building a successful startup, you can holy-war over what the framework should be (e.g. Viability, Feasibility, or Desirability), but at the end of the day any framework is better than no framework. Building a successful life is no different.

This thought is something I’ve discovered while I’ve been exploring a framework for personal success the past few months (standards project), and I’ve executed some experiments in quantifying my life:

1. In Iceland I tracked a ton of personal stats about our trip, all food/drink we consumed, how many steps we walked, etc.
2. I tried Facet of Life to track data through email.
3. I added health goals to my standards project, to keep track of promised outcomes.
4. I used dailyburn/iPhone to track sleep, caloric consumption, stress, weight, exercise and energy levels on a daily or more frequent basis.

I like these experiments, I also really like tracking things — it appeals to my inner data-geek[1]. I’m competitive, so I feel a need to improve what I measure; I now unconsciously optimize for: Diet, Energy, Sleep, Exercise. Yep, pretty good list.

Experiment #3 above taught me a bit about how to build a framework that utilizes my own nature to increase the likelihood of good outcomes.

• I’m competitive, so I feel a need to improve what I measure.
• I’m also “lazy” — meaning I like to conserve energy.

I realized that my tracking can be difficult when I don’t have control of food preparation. Standardizing my intake around a core group of meals would greatly help me spend less time concentrated on tracking. So I just choose 6 meals and ordered enough food to make them for 2 weeks from safeway.com — this wasn’t a difficult decision, it was an efficient one. It also improved my health. My framework made it easy to make a limiting choice that was positive on my health.

Lesson learned for my standards project: I will focus more on frameworks that utilize a desire to be awesome + a desire to conserve attention to encourage efficient/scalable improvement.

[1] It also offends my sense of uniqueness, none of us like to feel like we’re robots, and I feel a certain elegance to living life unpredictably. But, at least for me, growing up is about accepting that choosing to put yourself in a routine isn’t the same as having a routine thrust upon you.  Embracing chaos means remaining ever-vigilant, that’s hard. Choose routines that conserve energy, and use that energy for chosen moments of chaos embracing.

I’m writing this at San Diego State University, where I’m about to give the last talk at the BILPIL conference (an un-conference version of TEDMED, an event that celebrates conversations on innovative health and medicine). I’m officially the least qualified person here — and seemingly the only one not involved with healthcare, but one of the organizers recruited me to speak after reading my post from last month, “A plausible future of health care.”

I readily agreed, because the speakers are unreal talented (Joe Trippi, Aubrey De Grey, Dr. Ben Goertzel, Dr. Philip Steven Low, and Jen McCabe).  The schedule today opened with Dr. David Rosenman from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation and closed with me.  Yep, that’s how I like to roll.  :)

Lately, when it comes to healthcare, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dr. Jay Parkinson’s focus on creating a market-based solution for better doctor-patient relationships without accepting the handcuffs of working with insurance companies. He seems to have given up on public reform — in face of the immensely bad odds public reform faces, I don’t blame him, but I have arrived to the conclusion that public reform is still necessary.  This presentation is my effort at exploring both of those tracks (private market solutions and public reform) and figure out how they work together.  I’m still learning this stuff, so please give me your feedback!