Is Quora Becoming What Google Buzz Should Have Been?

Quora Logo

Which service is generating the most Buzz these days? Unfortunately, not Google Buzz.

In a succinct and well-argued post, Robert Scoble asked if Quora is the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years. I think it is more than that. Quora is becoming the go-to place for having intelligent conversations on any topic. This is what FriendFeed once aspired to be, with Google Buzz following in its footsteps.

Scoble pointed out:

Fifth, they learned from FriendFeed, Digg, and other systems that let you vote up things. If you watch a question that has a lot of engagement you’ll even see votes roll in live. It’s very addictive.

What is also important is what Quora learned from the mistakes that FriendFeed and Google Buzz made and how it circumvented them.

First, Google Buzz adopted the FriendFeed aggregation model, and failed to KISS. Quora avoided aggregation altogether. It has kept it simple, stupid.

Second, Quora avoided what Scoble called “The Chat Room/Forum Problem”. Tons of people chiming in with their 2 cents and devolving the ‘conversation’ into a flame war problem. Google Buzz faced it and didn’t learn from FriendFeed. The flip side? Quora Admins are moderating the site, which will lead to a few complaints. There’s a price to pay if you want to keep a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Third, Quora has understood and respected the fine line between designing for influencers and early-adopters. There is no way for a handful of influencers to dominate the service completely overshadowing others.

Fourth, the Social Graph built on the Follow model provides Serendipity, but it is complemented by the Interest Graph based on Following Topics, thus providing Personalization. Quora gets close to achieving Personalized Serendipity, the hottest space in the startup scene today.

Fifth, for Quora, Relevance is the most important guiding principle. When you follow someone whose tech opinions you respect, your feed isn’t unexpectedly filled with their kids pictures voted up by their adoring fans. The Interest Graph overrules the Social Graph. Pure Signal, No Noise. There is no other service on the web today with such a high signal-to-noise ratio, period.

Will Quora appeal to mainstream users? Among all the Q&A Services out there, if anyone of them goes mainstream, I think there’s a good chance it will be Quora. If you haven’t done so yet, join the conversation! You can follow me on Quora here, if you like.

Tagged with:
 

The Evolution from Numbers to Relevance

Social media and Businesses on the web today are driven by the numbers game – of traffic, page views, and follower numbers. But the trend I foresee is:

The web is evolving from a numbers model to a relevance model.

Paradigm Shift: What is the Relevance Model?

Historically, monetization driven by CPC/CPM based advertising has led to websites and marketers focusing on page views and traffic. This is partly the cause of social media being spammed by internet marketers, ranking algorithms being gamed for traffic, and so on.

Numbers Model

Relevance Model

# of Followers Context-driven Lists
# of Clicks # of Interactions
# of Page Views # of Returning Visitors
# of Ads Displayed Time spent on site
# of Ads Clicked # of Subscriptions Gained
Obnoxious Ads Relevant Ads
Influence Management Dynamic Social Graph
Sharing Orgy & Noise Curation
Information Overload Filtered, Relevant Information
Traffic Economy Attention Economy
SEO and SMO Personalization

 

The above table lists different attributes of this paradigm shift. The “Influence Management” entry links to a post by Mia Dand who describes how leveraging social media is often about using a handful of influencers (read: with large follower numbers) to spread your message. Contrast that with Dynamic Social Graphs as described by Robert Scoble, where influence is dynamically determined based on relevance and not just numbers.

The Facebook Kingdom was built on Relevance

The king of the social web, Facebook, was not built on numbers, but relevance.

The success of Facebook and why it has garnered over 400 million users is because it grew on a base of real-life friends who were relevant in the users’ social circle. Other networks have failed to challenge Facebook partly because they have tried to go the other way around – from numbers to relevance.Bullseye

Prioritizing numbers over relevance is putting the cart in front of the horse.

Even as its explosive growth continues unabated, Facebook has not compromised on relevance. It knows that its success depends on users finding relevant content on Facebook and is willing to sacrifice advertising revenue to avoid becoming irrelevant.

I’ve touched upon various aspects of this ongoing theme while tracking the Google vs. Facebook race towards a relevant real-time. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that relevance wins over real-time.

While Facebook has never been in the numbers game, other networks like Digg are now moving from the numbers model to the relevance model.

Relevance vs. Real-Time in Location Check-ins

Consider the hottest trend of check-ins via location services, such as Foursquare or Gowalla.

When I check-in at a restaurant, the real-time checkins of my friends in other places is irrelevant. What is more important and relevant to me is the tips from my friends who have checked-in at the same place as I am right now.

In all cases, my friends are relevant in real-time only if they are at the same location as me. My other friends NOT at the same location become irrelevant.

Relevance wins over real-time.

The Mobile View

While mobile internet access grows, the screen of mobile devices remains constrained by its form factor. This is a major factor driving this evolution. If the content on your screen is constrained by its display, it had better be relevant.

Lifestreaming and Aggregation

As I discussed extensively in my post on why Google Buzz should not simply be yet-another-aggregator, lifestreaming and aggregation have failed to take off and gain mainstream adoption. The reason is simple – lack of relevance.

Which is why, it is personally heartening to see the champions of lifestreaming and aggregation turn their focus towards relevance and disaggregation.

Startups focusing on Relevance

Quite a few startups are hoping to capitalize on this trend:

  • my6sense – recently introduced an ‘Attention API’ allowing publishers to deliver relevant content to users
  • Cadmus – auto-filters Twitter/RSS streams by relevance
  • Knowmore – surfaces relevant stuff from Twitter/Facebook
  • TwitterTimes – personalized aggregation from Twitter
  • FeedTrace – personalized aggregation from Twitter
  • VictusMedia – ‘Intelligent Media Manager’
  • MixPanel – tracking what I’ll term “Relevance Analytics” for publishers
  • Cascaad – personalized news stream based on social graph from Twitter/Facebook

From Around the Web

Here are related posts that further elaborate on this evolution:

The Centralized You: Chi.mp vs. StoryTlr

The news of FriendFeed being bought by Facebook does not change things for a large number of users who did not find it very useful. In my previous What FriendFeed Is Not post, I had discussed this section of disillusioned users of FriendFeed, who tried to use it as a place for centralizing their online presence. I suggested that these users were better off using Chi.mp or StoryTlr instead.

So how do these services compare? Both Chi.mp and StoryTlr:

  • Aggregate your blog posts, photos, etc. from multiple services
  • Provide a ‘Centralized Me’ home on the web
  • Lifestream your activities around the web
  • Provide an RSS Feed of your Lifestream
  • Allow you to backup / export your imported data
  • Support Disqus commenting
  • Support adding Google Analytics for tracking site traffic
  • Both are committed to open standards – you own your data
  • Your sites are ad-free on both services
  • Both allow you to automatically cross-post from other services to Twitter

Chi.mp offers the following unique features:

  • Open ID (This is the #1 requested feature under consideration at StoryTlr)
  • Free “.mp” domain
  • Sophisticated Contact Management – imports your contacts from various networks, allows you to group, manage, export them
  • ‘Personas’ – provides different view of your site/lifestream based on different groups of contacts
  • Supports importing from 7 sources – Yahoo, Flickr, Hotmail, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and any RSS Feed.
  • Minimal, basic mini-blogging support

In contrast, StoryTlr has the following, which Chi.mp doesn’t:

  • Lot of flexibility in page design and layout
  • Has a few useful built-in widgets, you can create your own custom widget
  • You can easily add ‘Pages’ to your site
  • Mashup your data into ‘Stories’
  • Exactly the same view of your site for everyone (unlike Chi.mp)
  • Complete control over CSS layouts of your site
  • Full blogging support includes all HTML including embed, script, etc.
  • Offers lifestream and story widgets you can use on your own blog
  • Browser bookmarklet to share anything directly on your StoryTlr site
  • Supports importing from 16 sources – Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, Identi.ca, Last.fm, Picasa, Qik, Seesmic, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Vimeo, YouTube, and any RSS Feed.

These are from my own observations, so do correct me if I’m wrong. I hope this comparison helps you decide which service is better suited to your needs.

I would love to know which one you prefer!

Posted via from SkepticGeek’s Posterous

Tagged with:
 

What FriendFeed Is Not

The first adjectives FriendFeed is introduced with are that it is an ‘aggregator’ and a ‘lifestreaming service’. I have seen many people and friends enthusiastically start to use the service and then quit after being disillusioned. These people are more like early adopters than the general public that uses Facebook. So what happened?

Since I like FriendFeed, I think it is important to understand what FriendFeed is not, as much as it is to understand what FriendFeed is all about. The first three descriptors below are on FriendFeed’s homepage, the last two are used by everyone else.

1. Why FriendFeed: It’s Simple?
FriendFeed is not simple to use for many people. The interface is both intuitive and non-intuitive. Uh? Well, what I mean is, the interface is unlike any other website. There is no single place for all settings. In the beginning, you will learn something new each day you use it. While this is true of most networking websites, with FriendFeed, the learning continues for a longer period of time, in my experience.

2. Why FriendFeed: It’s Conversational?
FriendFeed is a great place to have conversation. But if none of your existing friends on other networks are on FriendFeed, and everyone on FriendFeed is new to you, don’t expect conversations immediately on everything you share. Because FriendFeed does not have the level of mass adoption like Facebook, it is likely you will find new friends rather than meet old ones. And like with every new connection, friendship on FriendFeed takes time.

3. Sharing with Family, Sharing with Co-workers?
If you want to share your photos, videos, vacation posts, there are better ways to do it than FriendFeed. For e.g. Posterous, Tumblr are popular. I’m not sure how many co-worker groups are using FriendFeed to collaborate.

4. Lifestreaming Service?
Steve Rubel uses Posterous for his lifestream. Orli Yakuel uses StoryTlr. Most people who are curious about Lifestreaming are bloggers. When they are introduced to the concept of an aggregator and lifestreaming service, their conception is as follows: Wow! What if not just my blog posts, but my Flickr photos, favorite YouTube videos, etc. were all ‘aggregated’ automatically at one place! Wouldn’t it be a great place where all my blogger friends can find everything about me and what I’ve shared?

So they sign up with FriendFeed and a few hours or days later, are disillusioned.

5. Centralized Me?
What they’re actually seeking is a service that aggregates and centralizes all their activities across the web. They want to refer old and new friends who may or may not be web-savvy to this place. This place is to be the gateway to learning everything about the person on the web.

FriendFeed is not the best place where you create your centralized identity. While it is indeed possible to just follow a single person’s lifestream on FriendFeed, it is not built with that objective in mind, so it doesn’t make a very good impression that way. StoryTlr, Chi.mp and even Posterous can be better options.

So there. This can help you make a more informed decision and prepare you if you’re joining FriendFeed. Should you? Absolutely. Approach it as a place where you will make new friends, have lots of conversations. There are plenty of non-techie folks – from photographers to philosophers – so you will definitely find something you’re passionate about. Give it time and patience. If you want to, be friends with me.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via from SkepticGeek’s Posterous

Tagged with:
 

Aggregators as Scatterers and Why It Matters

Services like Friendfeed are commonly referred to as Aggregators. This is because they allow you to pull in your blog posts, pictures, videos, etc. from various sites into your stream on that service. But from another perspective, that I think should also be noted, aggregators enable fragmentation of the discussion surrounding a topic. This is what I've actually seen happening:

  1. The original blog post leads to comments and interaction on the blog itself.
  2. RSS subscribers use feed readers like Google Reader. They share the article if they like it. Some add their notes as well.
  3. Subscribers 'aggregate' their shared feed items on Friendfeed. These appear as multiple posts on Friendfeed, each leading to individual, separate likes and discussions.
  4. Friendfeed users in turn set their posts to be automatically posted to Facebook, where Facebook users like and comment on the Facebook post.
  5. Friendfeed users also auto-tweet their posts. Their followers on Twitter re-tweet, adding their own individual micro-comments.

In the earlier days, a blogger used to get all feedback on his post, right on his blog. Now, the poor chap doesn't know who is liking, sharing, commenting, and talking about his post. Unless he is a super-savvy social tech geek.

You can integrate Friendfeed comments with your blog, but no such luck for the millions who use Blogger and WordPress.com. On the one hand, services like Friendfeed are making the blogger's post reach a much wider audience than he could have imagined. Unfortunately, he may not know it at all.

Is this aggregation? It may be from the Friendfeed user's perspective. But from the perspective of the original author, this is scattering of feedback.

To be fair, Friendfeed allows you to link to the original author's blog post (if you've set it in Options). But when tech heavyweights share original authors' ideas via Friendfeed, the community often wants to payback their 2 cents on the topic to the heavyweights – not the original author.

When you are proposing an idea, or an opinion, or a strategy, or a technique, scattered feedback is a big deal. An author likes to get ALL feedback – easily. Today, this is getting more and more difficult.

Posted via from SkepticGeek’s Posterous

Tagged with:
 

Switch to our mobile site