community

Interview with Blippr founders Jonathan C and Chris Heard

September 17, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Two websites are currently showing the way the microblogging format can be used outside of pure conversation. But although the pair even have similar names, they take totally different approaches. I’ve previously covered ‘Twitter radio’ Blip.fm, but somehow I’ve neglected to cover the other major twist on microblogging, Blippr. (You can find me using it, here)

But what is interesting about the system is that it not only allows for 160 character reviews of entertainment (music, films, books, videogames), but the focus of the company behind it is concentrated more on the recommendation side of things than purely Twitter for reviews, which means they’re taking on some big names (Disclosure: It also means they play in a similar space to ditto.net, which I do some work with).

What is Blippr in 140 char?

(Jonathan): A community of people looking to discuss, discover and organize books, games, movies and music. In 160 characters or less, of course.

Your company Tag Team Interactive has a focus on social relationships and recommendations – what inspired this philosophy?

(Jonathan): My business partner and I just know and see the value in personal recommendations–the ones you receive from your family, your close friends, even just acquaintances. There’s an explicit amount of trust that you extend those influences in your life and you don’t need to come to understand. Recommendations across other platforms, like Amazon or Netflix for example, take time to train and come to trust. There’s this sort of “black box” effect. You’re not sure exactly why the item they’re recommending is a fit for you. However, if your good friend said “You have to see Pineapple Express, it’s hilarious”, it doesn’t require the same amount of learned trust. You already know you can trust that person. It causes even that much more drive to go out and see that movie.

Your company website mentions Blippr is your second application, but what was the first? Was it related to Blippr, and did your previous applications and websites have a direct effect on how Blippr was created?

(Jonathan): Our first was Judge-O-Rama, a site focused on enabling people to resolve their conflicts and contests in a head-to-head context. We like to think of it as our “practice app.” It was just something fun and entertaining, not quite as useful or focused as blippr. Judge-O-Rama was definitely instrumental in our working together, though, and at least serving as the inspiration to us starting to work together. In terms of how this served in blippr’s creation, I think this blog post will give you a good idea of how blippr started.

Who do you see as your competitors? Does it include Blip.fm? What are the advantages of Blippr?

(Jonathan): We don’t view Blip.fm as a direct competitor, per se. They’re doing the micro-thing, but we’re not trying to create a me-too “Twitter for reviews” application. That’s the obvious connotation most people make, given the review constraints, but we’re far more focused on developing the social recommendation and organization pieces than we are a simple micro-review platform. As such, we view our competitors more along the lines of Flixster, GoodReads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, iLike, Trusted Opinion, and a few others. Obviously one of our key advantages is our focus on not just one particular entertainment categories–movies or books or music or games–but on all of the above (we also plan on adding TV in the future). Furthermore, I think if you look at most of those sites, while they have solid communities, we’ve tried to make the participation process as simple as possible to encourage more participation. Also, last but not least, I would say that our focus on integrating with as many platforms as possible is a big differentiator. You can connect your blippr account with Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, Identi.ca, Tumblr, Facebook, Last.fm, GoodReads, LibraryThing, Amazon, and others, which is obviously a great opportunity for our users’ opinions and reviews. Those are some of the high level advantages, at least.

Obviously you’re monetising the site through Amazon, but do you have any further plans to drive revenue you can disclose? With traffic growing, was it a conscious decision not to include display advertising?

(Jonathan): We would say that commerce through various sites will definitely be a large share of revenue, but we do intend on eventually displaying ads that are relevant to blipprs’ userbase, as well. Obviously, the primary intent there is to offer entertainment advertisers a place to capture people who truly are interested in entertainment media and looking to make a decision. But we very much aim to make it a value-add to users first, then advertisers. Jeremy Liew, of Lightspeed Venture Partners, wrote a great blog post a while back on the topic of endemic advertising, which I believe really showcases blippr’s revenue opportunity.

Blippr users can cross-publish to Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku and Pownce. Do your users tie into the audience figures for those sites, or has there been any surprises? And is that the main word of mouth that is driving new registrations?

(Jonathan): This is assuredly a large driver of how people are discovering blippr, but I wouldn’t say that’s the main word of mouth driving registrations. Email invites sent from users have also been a large driver. In terms of surprises, I wouldn’t say there have been too many. Most connections have been with Twitter and Facebook. The rest are pretty much equally spread.

Are there any of the cross-publishing sites which are easier or harder to integrate into?

(Jonathan) That would be a question for my co-founder and business partner, Chief Executive Geek, Chris Heald. Some have taken more time than others. Obviously Facebook takes far more time than any of the others due to building an application for the platform, which is much more than just a cross-publish opportunity. iPhone and OpenSocial integrations will be the next difficult pieces for us, but they are coming.

Does scaling prove as problematic for Blippr as it has done for Twitter? There seem to have been some timeouts recently when I’ve been using Blippr?

(Chris): I don’t think scaling is going to be anywhere near the problem for us that it has been for Twitter; our architecture and product design is a good deal different than Twitter’s, so we avoid many of the specific design issues that they’ve had problems scaling. We have had some timeouts lately, but those were due to some rather exceptional circumstances, and a lack of hardware to fail over gracefully to (in those cases, the problems weren’t scaling issues so much as our primary app server going down without a graceful failover – that’s since been corrected). We’re still getting this thing off the ground, so our infrastructure is very much in its infancy (though we’ve been working lately to address that!). However, we have built this thing with an eye towards scaling, and don’t foresee any major problems in doing so as we move forward. Of course, the proof is in the pudding, but we’ve worked very hard to build a flexible product, and hope to see it grow about as quickly as we can keep up with it!

Do you plan to focus on utilising a microblogging format as the logical mechanism for your relationship and recommendation applications?

(Jonathan): The main inputs for our recommendations are explicit relationships (who you follow), agreements with other peoples’ blips, and the ratings you give titles. (Chris): I don’t think the microblogging format could necessarily be described as the mechanism for our relational/recommendation tools – the other data we’re collecting drives that – but the microblogging format uniquely contributes to this aim in that it encourages extremely high levels of participation, and thus, results in more useful data being present in the system for us to draw conclusions from. It is absolutely a key component to the success of these other components that we have built, even if it isn’t the primary mechanism by which these processes work. Whether we’d use it in future similar applications, I can’t say, but we’re both big fans of the behaviors that it encourages, and would very likely consider it.

And are there any Blips on products which have really shocked, surprised or amused you?

(Jonathan): Good question. It’s hard to pare down to just a single blip or two. Seriously, I can say that I am the biggest fan of blippr. As a huge movie geek myself, I’m constantly reading through blips and finding myself agreeing, laughing, vehemently disagreeing, and more. While some people fault blippr’s micro-format and say that you can’t really know whether something is good or bad within 160 characters, I say, read for yourself. You’ll be surprised!

Sharing the music: The spread of the Web 2.0 rock stars

August 22, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Two months ago, my colleague David Cushman and I started compiling a list of ‘Web 2.0 rock stars‘. It was partly a bit of fun, but also to see if it might bring some attention to www.ditto.net (disclosure: Both David and I work at Bauer Media, who own Ditto, and know/work with the Ditto team). We also though it would be fun to see a public vote, rather than one created either by Google page rank, Technorati, or by a small group of people on an editorial team.

But there have been some really fascinating outcomes:

Being able to watch how people are using the voting tool on Ditto – some vote for their single favourite/some re-order the entire list.
Adding people that David and myself hadn’t encountered and discovering some cool people we might have missed. And we’re still adding more (Suggest someone/yourself in the comments, or email daniel dot thornton at bauermedia.co.uk)
And seeing how a list with minimal promotion (Mentioned only on this blog and Faster Future) has been picked up by lots of people, including several of the notables on the voting list.
And also turning it into a bit of a resource after David added videos to almost every rock star. It’s a good example of what the Ditto team are trying to achieve (You can see and hear one of the founders, Colin Kennedy via Dave’s writing on /Message)

So where did it spread to?

Blogs:

AFP Mediawatch

Doc Searls

Euan Semple

Joseph Jaffe

Jason Calacanis (in the comments of Rich Millington’s post)

Stowe Boyd (written by David Cushman)

Jonathan MacDonald

Wikinomics

Comments:

Shel Israel, Corvida, JP Rangaswami, Veronica Belmont and Doc Searls all appeared in my blog comments (which I suspect wouldn’t have otherwise happened!), or contacted me via Facebook. As did Jonathan Yarmis, Stephanie Frasco, Josh Bernoff, Brian Solis and The Kaiser via email. (Jonathan’s inclusion apparently made his mother very proud!)

And it also created even more debate and mentions on Twitter and Pownce:

ciaranj

enikao

technofeliz

j_mac

(At which point Twitter Search broke)

And despite a relatively ‘niche’ subject compared to ‘The Best Movies of All Time‘, it’s still ranking as one of the most popular lists on the site!

All this was possible for two reasons:

1. Cush, myself, and the Ditto team (Especially John!). Between the three of us, it probably took 1-2 days to have the list at the stage it is now.

2. The desire of people to discover, share, link and contribute. From the first post I made, people were contributing great suggestions (I forgot to include Cory Doctorow, for example) And even though no-one was taking it seriously with a title like ‘The Rock Stars of Web 2.0’, almost everyone was happy to be included, supply pictures, correct information, and link back (even if they were embarrassed to be included, eh Euan?). And it was a pleasant surprise to find a namecheck from Doc Searls today.

And none of this was broadcast to anyone. As David examines in more detail, we didn’t email anyone to publicise the list. We didn’t prepare a press release, or even use Bauer Media’s global brands. We both blogged and tweeted about it in an honest and fun way, and waited to see who discovered and contributed to it. And all the rest of it occurred naturally, as people self selected whether they wanted to be involved, and whether they wanted to encourage voting from others. It didn’t make Techcrunch or Slashdot, or the front page of Digg. And judging by the timing and tone of many of the posts, people were discovering it individually, and passing it around their social networks, but it hasn’t been bridging the gap across them as you might imagine. (See Slide 4 in Cush’s excellent presentation on the future of PR)

And the great thing is that it’s an ongoing thing. We’re still adding more and more people – and the voting never ends. Unfortunately submissions are via a slightly clunky ’email daniel dot thornton at bauermedia dot co dot uk with name, details and a headshot’ method but we’ll work to get everyone online as soon as is possible. Voting is rather slicker! At regular intervals we’ll keep everyone up to date with the results at the time, further learnings, and how we’re continuing to be surprised by the wonderful thing which is humans interacting.

Oh, and if you’ve contributed/suggest for the list, or allowed the use of your photo via Creative Commoncs, then many, many thanks. It’ll take me some time to list everyone that contributed via me, but I’ll happily list anyone as they remind me (or whinge in EaonP’s case!)

How social media can turn us into babies

August 19, 2008 By Dan Thornton

It’s been a long day, but one of the main things that has kept me going is my son. He’s just a few months old, and he’s at the stage where he’s just realised he has feet (and other body parts). Every so often he’ll look amazed as this thing on the end of his leg comes into his eye line, and he’s able to control it (with varying success!).

By the same token, I’m constantly fascinated by the unpredictability of social media marketing, and how making even small changes can have a big effect on whether something drives links, referrals or conversions. It’s something Malcolm Gladwell outlines in The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference. One of the case studies Howard Leventhal’s experiment by creating a ‘high fear’ and ‘low fear’ version of a booklet describing the benefits of tetanus shots for university students – although the ‘high fear’ group were more convinced about the benefits, they weren’t any more likely to get their shots done. Instead it was the inclusion of a timetable and a map showing where the university clinic was located that suddenly raised tetanus shots – a clinic most of the students would have already seen and walked past every day!

By the same token a small change in a headline or a phrase can have a big effect on how well an article does on one of the websites I work with – but even with website analytics, buzz monitoring, Google trends and a tinfoil hat to pick up brainwaves, there’s still an element of chance and surprise when dealing with humans!

And this isn’t about Neuro-linguistic Programming or trying to seduce or trick people – it’s about how to let people know something is available for them to use, share, or remix. To quote Mark Earls ‘forget doing stuff To folk; do stuff WITH them’. But doing stuff with them can be hard, particularly if you’re used to writing and interacting in a broadcast style, rather than a conversational one.

I still think things can be brilliantly written, and inspirationally presented, despite coming in at the same level as the people you’re trying to interact with. And that can be anything from Kevin Smith’s Clerks to Mike Leigh, or Robert Johnson, Christy Moore, and Bruce Springsteen.

That’s what makes the job fun, as we try and figure out how things are apparently connected, and how we can improve what we do to be more useful to others – and also makes us into toddlers as every time we think we’ve got the hang of it, our foot suddenly comes into view!

* Baby feet photo is by photosavvy on Flickr, and used under Creative Commons. If you think I’m waking my son up for a blog post when he’s finally napping, you’re very much mistaken!

Is your online identity in your control?

July 23, 2008 By Dan Thornton

This post was inspired by a request by an individual to be removed from the voting on The Rock Stars of Web 2.0 list on Ditto.

We quickly complied and I want to make it absolutely clear that there’s no malice or irritation at someone wishing to be removed. If it had been an article of a blog post which was in the public interest, things would have been different, but the list is intended to be an interesting bit of fun, nothing more. Although I’d always suggest polite responses will get a quicker reaction.

But it raised some interesting questions about online identity, as the reason given for removal was that the profile listing (Image, name and main claim to fame) ‘was not approved’ by the individual in question. It’s lead me to wonder if anyone can really hope to control their online appearances to only those which are officially approved, especially if they have any level of internet ‘fame’.

A quick Google search for the name reveals many thousands of mentions, images, quotes etc. Are we right to assume that all of these have been individually approved? Or are they seen as valid if they are on established sources, blogs, or media sharing sites? Is it the voting mechanism which prompted the request?

And how would I feel about a similar situation? I’d be happy if I was considered a ‘Web 2.0’ celebrity (which I’m blatantly not), but what if I was at the bottom of the list? (Luckily at the moment it’s Jason Calacanis, who never seems particularly fussed about risking negative sentiment online).

And what happens if it was a list which I found distasteful or offensive? Something which was racist or homophobic for example? Would I even know it existed in the first place, if it didn’t pop up in a Google alert, or someone didn’t bring it to my attention somehow?

So:

How do I reassure myself I can find every instance in which I appear online?
Do I need to check the context of every appearance?
Should I expect to give my approval every time I appear somewhere?
Should I expect to be able to request my removal and have a prompt response?

The first task is tricky. A Google search will pick up a lot of things, but not all of them. There could be some bizarre story or rumour about me, hidden away on a tiny un-indexed website, that could, theoretically, suddenly make the front page of Digg at any time (It’s pretty unlikely though!). If my online identity and network are what I base my career on, one big article, image, or video could have a big effect on the people that know me, and a huge effect on anyone seeing me or my name for the first time.

That’s why I do tend to check the context if I see or hear my name mentioned somewhere. It’s not about checking mentions are always positive, and getting upset if they aren’t (Like famous actors, I never read reviews!). But checking that things haven’t been mis-attributed, taken out of context, or words put in my mouth.

But I definitely don’t expect websites to seek my approval before they publish anything about me, or for them to necessarily remove it if I complain. And a removal request wouldn’t be triggered by a positive or negative response. It’s dependant on whether the mention is truthful, although I would expect a right to reply for a negative response, and they should be asking for my response before publication. It’s good journalistic practice and also good from a legal standpoint.

And anything I do online is done with the knowledge that it could be re-used, re-compiled, or twisted with, or without my knowledge, and that although technology and good working practices should mean I have a chance to respond to any damaging mentions, hopefully I’m now findable enough that anything out of context will be obviously so, by comparison to my blogging, twittering, facebooking etc. There will be rotten apples online as well as offline, and having control of a brand, even a personal one, will have a limited impact at best.

At the end of the day, perhaps the best way to ensure a consistent online identity is to be open, and swamp anything out of character with quality insights into what you and I are really about?

I’m really interested to hear what other people think, although I’d like to stress this is about identity rather than a place to spam online reputation management services…

(Funnily enough I just logged into Flickr, and found a message asking to use one of my images for an article on lolcats. Having to register to agree to let them publish it, and in the process having to sign up for emails as part of the Ts and Cs is pretty rubbish, but hey, I’m always interested in crowd powered media. And lolcats.)