James Senior's Blog

Looks like the TweetDeck crew have a money making plan and it consists of branding their Twitter client as reported by ReadWriteWeb.  Their first skinnable version is Blink182 and not only includes visuals but alerts from the band.

It reminds me of the Pandora.com approach to advertising where the whole page becomes an advert.  Pandora have more whitespace to play with compared to TweetDeck, but on the flip side people spend less time in Pandora. 

I’m not sure how I feel about my client app being branded - it does feel a little strange - but I guess I could get used to it.  It would be great if I could get exclusive content according to the skin I installed. For example, with the Blink 182 skin I get interviews with the band or a video download from a recent concert.  Getting content could be obvious but also be in the form of Easter eggs which make the user explore the app more to unlock the exclusive content.

Great to see how Twitter is being used in the classroom as a learning tool that not only allows the class to extend out onto the web for global collaboration but also to serve as a permanent record of what went on during the lesson.  It’s like having the ultimate set of class notes that everyone has been working on.

It seems like the University of Washington is amongst the leaders when it comes to the use of the social web in education.  Have you seen any other examples of this?

Here’s the full article: http://www.q13fox.com/news/local/kcpq-0517-09-twitterclass,0,1046366.story

It’s Seattle International Film Festival week at the moment and one of the movies doing the rounds is We Live in Public, a documentary about Social Media and how things get out of control.  Here’s the lowdown.

“Ondi Timoner is the first and only two time Grand Jury Prize winner in Sundance history, and her latest-winning film is called We Live In Public, the story of the Internet’s revolutionary impact on human interaction as told through the eyes of internet pioneer and visionary Josh Harris. As far back as the early 90s, Harris predicted a future dominated by life online and created the companies that were direct predecessors to MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. The tale turns ugly when his underground NYC bunker housing dozens of permanent “citizens” and outfitted with hundreds of surveillance cameras is busted by FEMA as a millennial cult — Harris decides to take the experiment a step further and in doing so becomes a media casualty.”

In the future, will we sacrifice privacy for our longing to be connected and have recognition?  Inevitably there will be those who will and those who won’t what is more clear is that privacy - and a user’s ability to configure who sees what about their personal information – is soon to become a killer app for the social web.

Check out the movie’s website: http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/

Tim O'Reilly’s recent blog post about the new Twitter Tees on Threadless got me thinking about social objects and how useful they are but also where they fall short in terms of connecting to a web version of the experience.

I first heard the term “social object” when I was working back in the UK for Steve Clayton and he unleashed the Blue Monster with the help of Hugh McCloud and started putting the stickers on the side of Stormhoek wine bottles and creating posters for people to hang proudly on their wall. Steve and Hugh called them social objects and claimed they started conversations with people, simply because they were interesting.

At first I’ll admit I was skeptical about the idea but since then I’ve actually realized that they can be very useful tools in many everyday situations. Possessing something that sparks someone’s interest and allows you to talk about your product or service -whatever that might be - is extremely useful as it gets over that initial awkwardness of not knowing a random person. It’s like an introduction from someone who is a mutual acquaintance except your inanimate social object plays the role of the connector.

With the Blue Monster, Steve had a tool that not only allowed him to have conversations about how Microsoft was changing, but he had a viral brand that spread across the internet rapidly. It gained such a cult following inside of Microsoft that people started including the blue monster image in their signatures and became so high profile that the marketing team in the UK had to tell people to stop using it.

Now consider social objects that aren’t even attached to your product or service - just everyday objects that are interesting – products that you buy from other companies. I’ve got a couple of them that are part of my social toolkit. The first is my wallet which is interesting because it’s made of paper and has a comic book printed on it. I’ve lost count of the number of comments people have made about it when I’m reaching for my cash to pay for something. Then there are my flip flops, complete with a bottle opener, they’re novel and also extremely useful – and if people are thirsty you can become very popular! Both are great conversation starters and successful social objects.

By making interesting products that fit into everyday scenarios the companies that make the wallet and the flip-flops become popular through viral marketing. Owners of the objects become advocates because it inserts them into social scenarios and the spiral begins, more people buy them and the spiral begins.

The golden leap is tying a social object back to the web so something can happen after the interaction.  Think of this as a social hyperlink that connects the physical object to the virtual world on the web.  There could be endless reasons why you would want to do this, share contact details, get people to a product page, sign up for an event etc.  Not surprisingly technology is the best social hyperlink around, and now that mobile devices are in the hands of everyone connecting from social objects to the web is easier than ever before. 

An example of this is Microsoft Tag, a barcode that can be read from any phone (with a quick download of their software).  Place this on any social object (my wallet for example) and get a friend to snap it on their phone and they are whisked away to a product page so they can place an order for their own wallet.

So there you have it, social objects connected to the web by social hyperlinks powered by technology – have a great weekend and remember don’t forget to take your social objects with you wherever you go!

Question for the comments: what are your favorite social objects?

Bijan captured some talking points from Chris Liddell (MS CFO) the other day in Boston and he outlined Microsoft’s acquisition strategy. Whilst there’s no guarantees that if you follow these points you’ll get your startup snapped up, they do provide some interesting insights into how the cogs work in the machine back in Redmond.  Factoids you might find interesting:

• Microsoft acquires around 15-20 companies a year
• Microsoft spends roughly $10bn on R&D
• Microsoft spends roughly $2bn on acquisitions
• Dan’L Lewin’s team works closely with startups and are the guys to impress (check out their website, they are super friendly)
• Microsoft acquires companies to grow share in new markets, it won’t normally acquire in markets it already has presence in

As well as Dan’L’s team there’s also a tremendous amount of work done around the world by Microsoft Evangelists who are big networkers at startup events and other tech shindigs.  They often introduce new and interesting companies they come across into the likes of Dan’L’s team and product teams so it’s worth getting to know your local Microsoft Evangelist – there’s a lot of them out there.

The best place to hunt them down is via our MSDN or TechNet websites where you can get in contact with them:

MSDN (developer evangelists)
TechNet (IT Pro evangelists) 

For international evangelists the best place to head is the homepage for MSDN and TechNet where you’ll normally be presented with the contacts of your local evangelist in the developer connections portion of the page. (http://msdn.microsoft.com http://technet.microsoft.com)

Another great program to be aware of is Bizspark which provides startups really cheap Microsoft software, professional support and other great resources to get you started.  The program is run by Dan’L’s team out of the valley and is a great place to get noticed.

Related Links

• Check out Bijan’s notes from his meeting with Chris Liddell.

Check out the cool Live Services Hackathon poster featuring a custom Microsoft Tag I built using my own hands in 5 mins using PowerPoint (yes PowerPoint).  You can get started creating your own tags on the Microsoft Tag website.  Once you’ve logged in with your Windows Live ID you can get the website to generate a custom tag which you drop into PowerPoint and then put your own picture behind it.  For the Hackathon I put the Windows Live Messenger logo in – sweet!

So now when people see the poster or flyer they download the Microsoft Tag app for their phone (they support a load of devices) and they can snap the Tag and get registered for the event.  Nice.

Download the app from http://gettag.mobi – you can even use it on this blog post – point and click and register for the Hackathon!

Congrats to the Windows Live teams who picked up a trophy cabinet full of awards at this year’s Webware 100 awards.  The competition is pretty tough starting out from 5000 websites and services, so it’s a great feat to pull off so many wins.

• Communication: Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail
• Infrastructure & Storage: Windows Live SkyDrive
• Search & Reference: Live Search
• Location-based services: Live Search Maps
• Editor’s Choice: Windows Live Sync and Best Exit: Farecast

Here’s what the team had to say about it: The people have spoken! Windows Live wins Webware 100 awards

These of course are the consumer facing experiences but there’s a whole developer platform underpinning what goes into Windows Live, check out the APIs here: http://dev.live.com

One service that rocks is Windows Live Messenger.  Messenger has been around for about 10 years now and it’s amassed 320 million users worldwide to become the number one free instant messenger service across Windows, Mac, Windows Mobile and Xbox 360. 

We’re going to be down in San Francisco next week on Wednesday night with the team so why not stop by and learn how to integrate Live Messenger APIs!  There’s free beer and pizza and Mark Ruxin (Chief Innovation Office) from McCann WorldGroup is presenting too!  Registration is here – it’s free (BillG is picking up the tab) but spaces are limited – hurry!

With Live Services, it really doesn’t matter what platform your web app sits on or what language you use you can just drop in the Messenger Library (all client-side javascript) and enable some superb social experiences!  Here’s a video showing what you can do, and check out the sample site: http://pulse.mslivelabs.com (takes a couple of secs for the server to spin up – it’s test m’kay ;-) )

Check out the learning page for the Messenger APIs – they rock!

The redesign of my blog and my personal rebranding has been six months in the making.  Since I moved to the US and into the world of the social web to become the Live Services Evangelist at Microsoft, I’ve helped to launch some new APIs – the Messenger Web Toolkit, run some events (Live Services Hackathon – tickets still available), been in far too many meetings and more broadly I’ve been assessing the shape and feel of the technology and business landscape in this area.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences, meetings, virtual events etc. and sat down with a lot of interesting people who in some shape or form are involved in this thing we call the social web.  These people include valley hipsters, angels, venture capitalists, standards guys, open source advocates, competitors, partners, politicians, customers, agencies amongst others.

One thing they all have in common is that they are pathfinders.  When it comes to the social web, we are only five minutes into the first quarter of the game.  People are trying new things.  We’re plotting uncharted courses into technology and business models where the future is uncertain.

We are seeing what sticks and what doesn’t, and actually that’s ok. That’s the nature of the web, and the wonderful thing is that users are vocal and use the tools we’ve created for them to us know if they don’t like something.  It’s a delicious irony.  As an example take a look at the changes that Twitter made last week to the way replies work.  Users were up in arms and let the Twitter founders Ev and Biz know via (you guessed it) replies on Twitter.

When it comes to the social web we are very much active whether shaping the future by working in the Open Web Foundation on standards like OpenID, OAuth, Portable Contacts etc or with APIs for Messenger, Contacts, Alerts etc.  It’s just the start though, and as I mentioned it’s very early days, there’s some exciting stuff to come, especially from Microsoft.

On this blog you can expect to see content about the the social web as well as Microsoft’s web platform overall including things like our Web Platform Installer.  For now, this is just a first introduction, a handshake and a nice to meet you.  I’m the Microsoft Social Web Guy and it’s really great to meet you.