FastCompany Launches Social Web Site - Then Crashes

I have been writing a post about the new FastCompany web site and went to go look at it and this is what I see …

Oh well, maybe I’ll tell you how good it is later …

Fostering the Startup Culture

In my head, I always keep coming back to this question: What is it that fosters a startup culture? we are all well aware of the Silicon Valley and its impact on technology and startups. It is the measuring stick. But what brings this out in some areas and not others ? There is a great piece by John Markoff in todays New York Times titled “Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley”

As we have begun to see, Seattle is emerging as a new center for startups, just behind the Valley and Boston. The funding is there

Money is pouring in. During the last 12 years, venture capital investment here has more than tripled, to about $1 billion annually. Last year Washington tied with Texas as the third-largest destination for venture capital money nationwide, behind California and Massachusetts.

As I was reading there were a few things that stood out about Seattle when compared to Silicon Valley. The first was the mention of the University of Washington and how

It is fostering the entrepreneurial climate here the way Stanford University does in Silicon Valley ….

A crucial part of the chemistry is the University of Washington, in particular its computer science and electrical engineering departments. Washington State ranks first nationally in engineers employed for every 10,000 workers and in percent of total payroll in high technology

as well as the large talent pool living there as a by product of the presence of Microsoft and Amazon in the area.

As I read articles like this, my thoughts always drift off and wonder if the DC area has what it takes to allow this startup culture to grow and flourish. Of course we do have many great schools in the area, and the University of Maryland does a great job with Computer Science and Engineering, but of course I dont think we would confuse it with Stanford, maybe I am wrong though. The article also states the need for a startup ecosystem to include social networks and support businesses. I think the DC area has all of this, so far. However, one thing that stuck out to me was

a business culture that views failure as a badge of honor, not shame

I am not sure we are there yet when it comes to this last statement. Being a big government employed and support town, I do not see DC as accepting of failure as the other areas mentioned. This town is about results and politics, not necessarily in that order.

I am fortunate to be getting involved in the local tech scene and I see many great things happening here in the area. People like Nick O’Neill and Ann Bernard along with the crew from Mixx, Clearspring, and all the others on the “list” are doing really good things and working to make DC like the other cities mentioned here.

When Does Web Stuff Hit the Mainstream

I do consider myself a pretty early adopter of on many levels.  I live and breath technology and feel withdrawals when I get to far away from my laptop/iPhone.  I often wonder though when does a site or a service really hit the mainstream with regards to the average person knowing and using it as part of their online experience.  Of course everyone know Yahoo and Google, etc, and for some odd reason I figured a site likeflickr was getting pretty close.

That was until I came across this article, “Remote Control” on baltimoresun.com.  The “tag” line of the article was the following:

Many are storing and processing data online, a networking trend known as ‘cloud computing’

Then it hit me … there is A LOT of things that are still so far from the mainstream.  A friend of mine and I always try to put a percentage of people like us that are out there and after reading this, it has to be way low.  While we use these tool and services, like flickr, every day, many people are still content to get their pics printed out at the local Wal Mart and stick them in a album

So what are your thoughts?  When do you think a site hits that critical mass and it can be considered mainstream ?

Recap: Social Media Mayhem in DC

Yesterday was quite the day in DC for Social Media.  It all began with Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Breakfast and ended with the Media Rules Book launch Party last night.  Both events were a good time, but I had a great time at Jeff’s breakfast.

The breakfast was downtown at Busboys and Poets.  It was of course to see all my current DC friends and of course to meet new ones.  I finally got to meet Jim Long (@newmediajim) in person along with Rana Sobhany (@ranajune), Eric Litman (@ericlitman) of WashingtonVC , and Chris Parandian of MobileDiner.  I am still amazed how this online social media thing has lead me to meet so many great people in person.  The relationships I am building are great, it is a real sense of community bubbling to the surface here in DC and I am glad to be a part of it.  It was also great to meet other people.  Everyone has great things going on and I love hearing about them.  One cool thing Jeff had everyone do was to write their name and a personal tag line on the name tag.  Mine was “Passionate Technology”.  That could have been the line on everyones name tag.  Meeting those like minded people is great to be a part of.

I met other passionate people like Joel Selzer who is President and CEO of Ozmosis

Ozmosis provides a new model for knowledge dissemination by enabling physicians to benefit from the collective wisdom of their peers. Ozmosis delivers access to that collective wisdom by aggregating the shared insights of the community and presenting the most relevant clinical and practice management information back to the physician.

It seems like a great project and I wish Joel all the best.  I also was fortunate to meet Jeremy Epstein of Microsoft.  We had a great talk about technology and about my side project MyDropBin.  As soon as he was home later he signed up, well .. tried to, we are working on that, so are the trails of a one person side business.  But we will get him going and I look forward to his feedback.  I know there are people I am missing, suffice it to say, a good time was had by all.  Make sure to check out the pics and Jeff’s Qik videos of the event.

The last night I headed back downtown for the Media Rules Book Launch.  It was another good time and got to meet some more great people.  I was happy to get to meet Anthony LaFauce.  I have been enjoying his writing on Nick O’Neill’s Social Times and was happy to finally get the chance to meet up with him.  I picked up the book and am looking forward to reading it on my new train rides downtown.

Again, what a great time to be involved in the local tech community.  Great people doing great things.  Good to see and meet all of you !

Twitter in the Classroom

I saw an interesting post today over at academhack about the use of Twitter in the classroom.  The author stated their initial concerns about digital communications through the internet:

I also worry about the way that they too easily lead to increasingly short space and time for conversation, cutting off nuance and conversation, and what is often worse how these conversations often reduce to self-centered statements. When I first heard about Twitter I thought, this was the example par excellence of these fears

They then went on to show how Twitter has come to be an important tool in the academic world.  Here are a few of the examples cited:

1. Class Chatter: The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class
2. Classroom Community: Once students started twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half
3. Instant Feedback: Because Twitter is always on, and gets pushed to your cell phone if you set it up this way, it is a good way to get instant feedback. I was prepping for a lecture and wanted to know if students shared a particular movie reference, I asked via Twitter and got instant responses. Students can also use this when doing their classwork, trying to understand the material.
4. Follow a Professional: Students can follow someone else who is on Twitter, who interests them. For example if they are thinking about journalism they should follow NewMediaJim who works for NBC and Tweets about being on Airforce One, covering the Middle East etc. This is a rare inside, “real-time” view into journalism. He is followed by over 2,500 people at this point.

The list goes on and I invite you to check it out.  I found some things a bit surprising, for instance, they said that Twitter is good for teaching grammar …. I would have never guessed this.  Why you ask ?

Because of its short form those who tweet often abbreviate and abuse grammar rules, developing their own unique “twitter rules.” This helps to demonstrate, both how all communication needs rules/structure and how important something like a comma or a period can be. (Some Tweets become really ambiguous because of their lack of punctuation.)

It is amazing to me how many great uses for Twitter we see cropping up all over the net, if the service could just stay up for a solid week it would be all the better.  But I love how Twitter continues to create communities, scholastic or otherwise.  What a great way to ask your teacher or classmates a question about an assignment and get instant feedback.  That way you don’t have to wait for the next classroom meeting to get your question answered.

And best of all ?  He mentions our very own DC friend and cameraman extraordinaire NewMediaJim !!

DC Social Media Maven @shashib Featured !

I was really excited a few moments ago when I got a message form my local DC friend Shashi Bellamkonda (aka @shashib ) pointing me over to a post he has been featured in. And it was just any post, it was Shel Israel’s blog Global Neighbourhoods.

It was a great read and I am really happy for Shashi, he is a very genuine great person that I have had the please of getting to know a bit here in the DC area. I too came to know Shashi from Twitter and we hooked up at a local Tweetup I set up a couple of months back. Since then we see each other regularly around town and always stay in touch via Twitter.

He really was baptised by fire after taking the Social Media position with Network Solutions and he handled it incredibly better than I would say 99% of us would have. It was a very inflammatory situation in which he kept his cool and responded just how he should have.

I have my own story about Shashi. We were recently going to meet at a local Metro station for a ride downtown to attend the DC Blogger Meetup. I was glad to ride with him, and what struck me the most was how he said he was happy to ride with me and be able to get 45 minutes of uninterrupted attention from me while on the subway. In my head I thought “Wow, we are in the midst of a “virtual” social media world and Shashi wants to talk to people and hear what they have to say”. It was refreshing. We talked about the front running thing going on and I gave him my 2 cents worth.

Great job Shashi, keep up the good work. See you around town my friend.

hellotxt.com: Cross Platform Posting

As our platforms we interact with continue to grow, our needs to connect to those platforms also grow. But it is becoming more and more difficult to have to log into each one to submit status. I was online this AM and saw a post from a friend @troyturner asking if there was a way to post to both Twitter and Pownce at the same time. As I noted in an earlier post as well, Twitter has been very unreliable and people are looking to new ways to keep in touch and status their friends and followers.
Enter hellotxt.com. It is a great service that llows to to interface with twitter, pownce, facebook, jaiku, tumblr, as well as some others. Here is a shot of your dashboard to send messages from:

Found a Camera Lately ?

Have you ever been out and about and come across a camera or maybe even a media card that someone left behind ?  Now with the site Found Cameras and Orphaned Pictures you can maybe help that camera or photos get back to the rightful owners.

Its a pretty cool concept.  Now if you lose your photos, head over and check to see if your recognize any of the photos online and email the site to see if you can get them back.  It is a new site with only a few posts, but I can see it being a useful tool in those times of need.

PownceMeme: Whats Hot on Pownce

I have recently began heading over to Pownce a bit more as Twitter has been becoming more and more flaky.   Since Pownce added a mobile interface a little while back, it seemed to be a viable alternative to twitter.  Anyway, we are aware of the great Twitter tools for tracking all things Twitter, sites like Twitter100, Tweeterboard, Favotter, Tweetmeme, and our local favorite Politweets.

Well now the Pownce crowd has its own Meme tracker, its called PownceMeme.  It is a site tracking the hot stuff taking place in and around Pownce.  Not only is it tracking the popular threads, but also photo and links, which is one thing Pownce has over Twitter.  They even have RSS feeds for each type for you to follow along as well.

I think that the arrival of tools like this revolving around Pownce may signal a shift toward Pownce as more of a Twitter alternative.  What do you all think?

Utterz vs Seesmic: Two Services with the Same Goal ?

Of course I have been hearing a lot about Seesmic lately, as many of us have. I finally received an invite code for Seesmic in my email the other day and finally got around to checking it out.  It seems very easy and intuitive, although I must say I need to do a bit more exploring to really get what it is all about.
That being said, I also logged back into Utterz for the first time in a bit and was pleasantly surprised to see video Utterz being posted.  A quick look over the the Utterz blog and I saw a post from Jan 23rd announcing the video capability.

So this got me to thinking a bit, is Utterz like Seesmic, or vice versa, and if not what is the difference?  It seems to me that both are vying for the “social” video microblogging thing, would you agree ? Seesmic seems very conversational from what I can see so far whereas Utterz seems a bit more of video blogging.  While it is true Utterz has channels and also a Topic of the Day where people respond to, I am not sure it seems to be built around a conversation as Seesmic is.

As is stands now, I think Utterz is a bit more mature, I understand Seesmic is in Alpha mode, but it is has been much easier for me to find friends and search for people on Utterz.  I watched this post on Geoff Livingston’s blog tonight where he used and commented on Seesmic and how he has been impressed on how Seesmic has grasped the development of communities through the use of video.  Utterz does have “My Circle” where you can see who you are following and who is following you.  The more I look into this, the more I am starting to see pretty deep similarities.

I am really curious to see how this all develops and plays out.  How about all of you, whats your take on this?

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