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Interview with Thomas W. Malone: Collective Intelligence, Privacy and Small Towns

In the newest issue of my video-podcast MIT Professor Thomas W. Malone talks about his reasearch on collective intelligence and the changing notion of privacy. Professor Malone is the founding director of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2004, he published The Future of Work, a critically acclaimed book about the impact of electronic communication on management, organizations and business. Before he started teaching at MIT, Mr. Malone was a research scientist at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. So enjoy the podcast which contains a short introduction, the interview plus two exlusive bonus tracks :pimp:

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Microsoft’s future biz visions

GermanThis posting is also available in German.

Stephen Elop is the president of Microsoft's Business Division – naturally, he's more interested in business innovation than in shiny customer gadgets. In this 6 minute interview, Elop talks about the deep-rooted change companies currently face as the underlying question “how do we deal with this vast amount of information in an efficient way?” is an ongoin project:

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How to impress a French girl

I'm not a big fan of Google in general: there services are not that great, but there's no alternative. But it regularly frightens me how this machine works. Today, European director Steve Rogers told an Austrian newspaper: “When a company gets bigger, it is seen as intransparent. But we try to be as transparent as possible.” Right after that Mr. Rogers showed what he really means when he answered the next two questions about Google's situation in China: “I'm not allowed to comment on this.” (Kleine Zeitung, February 9th 2010, page 29). Temper, temper! Read more

It can’t be that easy: Will Smith on success

I never was a big fan of Will Smith's music, but I definitely did enjoy some of his movies. Yet I had no idea that Will has such interesting views on life, ethics and success – take ten minutes and listen to the whole interview; it's worth your time, I promise:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLN2k0b3g70[/youtube] Read more

Dexter, Season 4: Dex vs. Trinity

If you haven't seen the 4th season of “Dexter” yet, then don't watch this video – not even the first few seconds, because they contain a serious spoiler. In case you already know how the cat-and-mouse game between Dex and Trinity ends, you are going to like this sitdown with Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B08pNlEL_JA[/youtube] Read more

Interview: Lo?c Le Meur on Seesmic and Twitter

During the World Blogging Forum 2009 us participants where quite busy, even during the breaks – so I interviewed French web-shooting star Lo?c Le Meur, who left Baguette et Bourdeaux behind and moved to Silicon Valley, in the bus, on the way to the conference.

Lo?c Le Meur was Excecutive Vice President of Europa, Africa and the Middle East for SixApart, the inventors of Movable Type. Before he took this job, Lo?c had already gathered reputation as a “notorious serial-founder” in France, having successfully sold two of his previous start-ups (RapidSite webhosting and Ublog blog-hosting). These success stories definitely proved helpful in the process of raising investor money for Seesmic. 13 investors, among them TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and AOL co-founder Steve Case, handed Lo?c Le Meur 6 million dollars to establish Seesmic as the prime service for “video-twittering”. But when user growth stagnated in a pretty early stage, Lo?c decided to change the strategy and threw the moving images over-board. Since the beginning of 2009, Seesmic is focussing on Twitter Clients. Currently the company offers two free producs: Seesmic Desktop is a windows client software (comparable to Tweetdeck), and Seesmic web offers a browser-based Twitter inbox. Enjoy the interview!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/7865227[/vimeo] Read more

Dear Mr. datadirt, we’re doing research

Journalism students from the Dutsch university of applied sciences in Utrecht are currently conducting a survey about the popularity of social media – if you run a popular blog, the questionnaire probably already arrived in your inbox. All interviews with social media experts will be published on the crossmedialab homepage – good questions, I'm really curious about the results of the study and my colleagues' answers, just mailed mine to Wolfgang.

How long have you been working with online social media and what was your reason to get into this topic?

The question is: which online services do qualify as ?social media?? I?ve started using the internet in 1994 ? out of mere curiosity. A couple of years later I started working as a web designer for APA (Austria Press Agency). At the same time, 3 fellow students from the department of science of communication and me launched the platform medianexus.net ? a community site for publishing ?grey? student literature about media-related topics. The project doesn?t exist anymore, the site is archived in the Austrian National Library though. The comment function was one our most important features back than ? and even though services like Facebook and Twitter were lurking in the far future, we used e-mail and mailing lists for discussion and organisation purposes.
To me, there is no clear-cut between ?Web 1.0? and ?Web 2.0? ? technologies have evolved, dynamic web applications did replaced static content. So the new tools fuel the use of social media, but the basic principle of enabling dialogue and connecting people has been one of the main strengths of the internet from the beginning. Read more

Video-Interview: Guy Kawasaki on the state of social media

Last week, Guy Kawasaki visited Vienna to give a keynote lecture about innovation and the art of the start. I was the lucky blogger who got the chance to interview Guy – and I enjoyed the interview a lot. Guy has always been a major influence for me, his ideas have inspired me for years. We talked about his impressive biography, his Twitter strategy (Guy has more than 160k Followers) and his current project Alltop.com. The complete interview is 33 minutes long – I split it into five topical parts for your viewing pleasure. I also edited a full version, so if you prefer to watch one clip, navigate to the end of this posting.

Part 1: Guy Kawasaki's Bio and his e-mail inbox

His succesful career at Apple where he worked as a tech evangelist made Guy Kawasaki very famous. Few know though that he started his career in the jewelry business. In the first part of the interview, Guy talks about his biography and he explains how a web celebrity like him deals with tons of e-mails every day. Hint: purge everything that's older than 3 weeks!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6538754[/vimeo]

Part 2: Guy's Twitter strategy

On Twitter, Guy has more than 160.000 followers. In the second part of the interview he explains his micro-blogging strategy in-depth. For Guy, Twitter is one of the best marketing channels, and he is putting a lot effort into offering lots of content to create a vivid environment for his marketing messages.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6540038[/vimeo]

Part 3: Guy Kawasaki about Facebook, Social Traffic and Online Reputation Management

Guy told me that he honestly doesn't understand Facebook – in his opinion, it's a place to “pull” people as opposed to Twitter which acts as a “Push” media. In this part we talk about the benefits of social traffic and the two-sided coin called online reputation management: Don't be afraid, use Facebook to create the image that helps your career!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6540300[/vimeo]

Part 4: Guy Kawasaki about Alltop

Alltop.com currently is Guy's main project: the RSS site aggregates the most popular feeds on nearly 2000 topics. The site is not meant to serve geeks, but appeals to the mainstream user – Guy explains the concept and also has got a few tricks to offer for power-users.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6544551[/vimeo]

Part 5: Guy Kawasaki about blogging and entrepreneurship

In the last part of our talk Guy explains his thoughts about blogging and tells the true story of how he left apple and became an entrepreneur.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6544974[/vimeo]

Full interview: Guy Kawasaki on the state of social media

This is the full cut – same content, but edited into one video. If you prefer to watch our whole talk in one video, just go with this clip:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6545325[/vimeo]

What do you think?

Do you agree with Guy? What is your opinion about the future of Facebook and Twitter? Have you tried Alltop? I'm curious about your comments!

Guy Kawasaki: Interview Teaser

As you already know I interviewed Guy Kawasaki last week while he was in Vienna to give a keynote about the Art of Innovation. Those who know me well were able to predict my excitement! To make a long story short: Since I started blogging a couple of years ago, three web experts (and celebs :mrgreen:) constantly turned up on my radar, and I learned a lot from them. Let me explain my excitement in detail: Trust, every web 2.0 evangelist knows that, does not evolve as the result of a single action. Trust is an emotional state which is developed and fostered over time. And when you're a blogger, you're used to scanning gazillions of RSS feeds – it takes a while to figure out the truly important ones. There are three blogs (or RSS) feeds that I don't just scan, but study carefully, because they gave me so much inspiration and so many ideas again and again: Seth Godin, Jeremy Shoemaker and – yes, you guessed it right – Guy Kawasaki.

So I was extremely happy when I got the chance (thx to Zmary from BusinessKitchen and Gerhard Laga from WKO) to sit down with Guy at Vienna's famous coffee shop Caf? Sperl and ask him a couple of questions about his career and his thoughts on the current state of social media. I've edited the interview this weekend and will publish it on Tuesday (2009-09-15) – here's a teaser – keep coming back on Tuesday for the full package (including some brilliant Twitter strategy thoughts!):

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6550367[/vimeo] Read more

Guy Kawasaki says: Follow datadirt :-)

Today I met Guy Kawaskai who is currently in Vienna to give a keynote at Schloss Sch?nbrunn tomorrow. Thanks to Guy and Zmari – doing the interview was great! Guy is not only smart, but a very nice person as well. I'll edit the video next week and upload our complete talk by the end of the week.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/6504946[/vimeo] Read more

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 23/2009

Step in, ladies and gentlemen – welcome to the weekly Blogistan-round-up! It's my duty to entertain you (and sometimes maybe even piss you off), but who cares – it's all in the blog, st00pid! From Google Wave to the sluttiest brides in 2008, the blogosphere is here to cover your every information need.

Google announces Wave

The buzz is on – Google has announced the release of their newest project called “Wave” later this year. The stakes are high, as Wave claims to redefine the way we communicate and collaborate on the web. E-Mail, contacts social networks – Wave will tear down the boundaries between documents and dialogue:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Google posted a couple of screenshots, future beta testers can sign up here. This in-depth presentation from Google I/O waters my mouth; and btw: Wave will be completely Open Source.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ[/youtube]

So much for Twitter's trending topics

“But all good things, they say, never last”, sang prince. And now TechCrunch is saying the same about Twitter's trending topics:

Up until recently, Twitter?s trending topics – which are prominently displayed on their Search homepage and now also in the sidebar when you?re using the Twitter website – were an awesome way to get a feel of what was buzzing on the Web, in a way that virtually no other web service was able to do.

+

But then came the pirates and Michael is really pissed!

Today, when you look at Twitter?s trending topics, you?ll notice that the large majority of trends are memes started by a single user or a group of users, with the main goal offering entertainment rather than spreading information. That?s all fine and dandy – no harm in having fun – and I realize well that Twitter?s trending topics are not necessarily required to be giving you and me an overview of stuff that really matters, but I can?t help but think it?s a pity that that list is starting to turn into the top 10 of chain letters people used to circulate through e-mail messages in the late nineties.

Oh dear gosh, I wish more people would recognize that manipulating social media platforms is so much more fun than obeying their “laws”…

The real name problem

Many native Indians have names like “Robin kills the Enemy”. Their name is in their passport, the same applies to people with exotic names like Lisa Strawberry. But if your name sounds like made up (but actually isn't), you might have trouble keeping your Facebook account. An article on Spiegel Online [in German] reports that a couple of users got deleted without any previous notice. Facebook's policy requires you to use your real name, and with the ongoing success of the platform a lot of users are running multiple fake profiles with strange names. Removing these might be a good idea for FB in terms of scalability and reliability, but the collateral damage has become so big that the group Facebook: don't discriminate against Native surnames!!! already has more than 4.000 members, among them the likes of Linnie Birdchief, Carl Fourstar jr. and Sandy White Hawk. Facebook speaks person Barry Schmidt admitted mistakes, and the said accounts have been reactived, but the waiting period is quite long as only 850 people are on the payroll of the world's largest social network.

Russian investors buy a share of Facebook

New York Times reports that Russian internet investment company Digital Sky Technologies acquired 1.96% of Facebook for the sum of $200 million:

Digital Sky won because its founders Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger have strong experience running Internet properties in Eastern Europe and Russia, and “a deep, advanced understanding” of social networking technology, Zuckerberg said.

We all know that FB is burning money at an amazing rate, but Zuckerberg still plays it cool – after all, he is running the largest social network in the world. Yet still numbers have gone down: when Microsoft purchased 1.6% in 2007 they had to pay $240 million – during the last two years, the overall value of the platform has decreased from $15 to $10 billion despite the growth in user accounts.

Happy B-Day, Mr. Shoemoney!

Jeremy Shoemaker turned 35 this week – congrats, man! I love your blog and there you're the person who taught me the most valuable lessons about online marketing and blogging – thx for your excellent posts and keep up the great work! You definitely got a fan in Vienna :mrgreen:

This week's href=”http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/05/29/friendshirtme-free-shirt-friday/”>T-Shirt of the week is also definitely worth a look: it was printed by Friendshirt.me. And the comments say it all… when I saw this app I instantly had to order mine!

What is a Micro-Scobble?

Robert Scobble is a tech evangelist and twitter legend. Disqus blog published and interesting interview with man responsible for the tweet-frequency-unit “Micro-Scobble”:

I grew up in silicon valley, I had no choice. My Dad was an engineer and I grew up in Cupertino about a mile from Apple Computers. I had an Apple Computer in 1977, in my junior high I was in the first computer club , and I got a tour of Apple when they were one little building. So yeah, I?ve always been around tech.

My bride is not a slut. She just looks like one.

Judith sent me this great article – thx! Take a look at the Top 5 Sluttiest Wedding Dresses Spotted In 2009! Even though is nearly breaks my heart that Miss Carey is no longer single, I have to admit that with this elaborate sense of taste she'd get a job in any brothel in the whole world:

The Mariah Carrey slutty wedding dress certainly doesn't leave anything to the imagination. Fully equipped with garter belt, stockings, and a main fashion piece better off worn under the dress or on the wedding night, this dress starts us off with its moderately tame slutty fashion.

Video of the week

This one goes out to the Open Source Community – I usually don't publish ads as the video of the week, but in this case Redhead has done a fantastic job – and with over 3 minutes, in these short-clip times this is almost an online feature movie. Congrats to Peter Novak on this fantastic job!

Pic of the week

New to my weekly round-up: starting this week, I will publish a “pic of the week” – no special topics whatsoever. Since I started digi-SLR myself my appreciation for those perfect shots has grown immensely. Choosing the proper pic wasn't easy at all, but this Manasquan Reservoir by Joisey Showaa is one fantastic shot:

manasquan

And that's about it for this week – thx for visiting my blog, see you again next week!

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