Jesse Pickard's Thoughtstream

Oct 10

R.I.P. Good Times

Earlier this week Sequoia brought in all the start-ups they back and gave them the cheery presentation below. The first slide says it all…

CEO_ALL_HANDS_10-7-08_FINAL - Free Legal Forms

Text posted at 11:51

Comments (View)

Oct 8

Facebook integrates Live Search. Yawn

Facebook’s execution of Microsoft Live Search is ok at best. Given the power that Facebook has to mix up search, it was particularly disappointing to see such a standard implementation.

Here are 6 improvements that Mashable suggests for spicing up search on Facebook.

1) Show your friends’ searches in News Feed

Come on, who doesn’t want to know who their girlfriend or boyfriend has been searching for? There would be hours of entertainment just watching your news feed fill up with searches. Find out who has been searching for you or announce to the world that you’ve been searching that one girl you work with ten times a day.

Maybe on second thought…

2) Live search cashback for Facebookers

What college kid doesn’t need a little more cash on the side for…uh, books? For those who don’t already know, Microsoft offers a cashback program for searching and shopping through Live.com. It only amounts to a few bucks here and there, but to a cash-strapped college student? That’s a case of Bud Light, baby!

So come on Facebook, help out the poor college student. Give them a financial reason to justify their 4-hour-a-day Facebook usage.

3) Add Live Image and Video search

Facebook Live search functionality is very basic. Search for a term, come up with some website results. But often times we are not just searching for Web sites, but images, videos, and other dynamic media. Live search, just like the other major search engines, has the functionality to search for images, videos, news, and more. Why not extend this to Facebook? Facebook, as one of the largest photo libraries in the world, is a natural place for image searching. I’m hoping that Facebook will eventually offer it as well, because when someone updates their status about their new car, I’d like to quickly search for a picture of it.

4) Some space-themed search backgrounds, anyone?

I’m sorry, but I’m simply a fan of space, space exploration, the stars, you name it. I’m attracted to the very cool layout that Live.com uses as its homepage theme. Hover around the page and you’ll find information on NASA projects and more.

Now, I’m not saying Facebook needs to go all out, but some Moon action would be great to look at while I search. It will give Facebook Search some… unique flavor.

5) Suggest searches based on my friends and related searches

Facebook’s core asset and one of its best value propositions is its social graph. Knowing what your friends are doing and who they are connected to are invaluable pieces of information. Using this information to help suggest searches, just as Live.com does with related searches, would help people discover new and relevant content based on their social circles. Plus you can insert suggested searches into the news feed.

Funny. That sort of sounds like Facebook Beacon…

6) Allow users to comment and vote on search results

I couldn’t finish this list off without tipping my hat to one of our commenters. Oliver suggests that Facebook should allow users to comment and vote on search results. It’s an interesting suggestion that I actually envision happening in the future.

The reason this is possible is because Facebook already allows you to do this for your news feed and for ads you see. You can vote ads down and you can comment on any news feed item. It’s a little more complicated of a proposition to do it for search, but it is done by sites such as scour.com. The extra benefit to Microsoft is that it will have a mountain of user-generated data on their preferences in search. This can only help to improve their results.

Regardless of whether or not Facebook takes my suggestions and uses them, you can expect a lot more features to come out of Facebook’s new integration with Live search. And you can expect people using Facebook even more than they already do.

Text posted at 11:00

Comments (View)

Oct 2

Facebook Connect: Just The Tip Of The Iceberg So Far...

In the past two weeks we’ve seen the first live uses of Facebook Connect by Red Bull and The Insider

Although it’s great to see something live, I can confidently say that what you see at Red Bull and The Insider is just the tip of the iceburg.

Every time you log in with your Facebook connect account you are giving the website access to everything in your Facebook profile. This means your friends, pictures, interests, groups, workplace, videos, the list goes on. All of this is incredibly powerful information that will vastly improve web services. Its like a Facebook application, but with an ability to live outside the walls of Facebook.

For more details, check out my white paper A New Frontier of Social Influence: Portable Social Graphs. I co-wrote with Shiv Singh and Ray Valez. Pay particular attention to the scenario at the end to see what a diet site would look with Facebook Connect.

I’m very excited by the possiblity of Facebook Connect and surprised that more people aren’t buzzing about it. Stay tuned for more from me on this subject soon.

Text posted at 7:56

Comments (View)

Sep 29

Loopt Mix is a great strategic move. Instead of focusing on creating a network of known friends, they are now surfacing anonymous people around you with Loopt Mix. You can search by gender, dating status and age. Loopt is betting that the upcoming location-aware apps from Facebook/Myspace won’t touch unknown friends. Good bet.

Photo posted at 1:06

Comments (View)

Sep 16

Take a look at MTV Backchannel, a multiplayer social game that was just launched for The Hills. What’s interesting is that the games are only available during the show’s air time. It’s great to see MTV build a unique experience around watching tv while surfing the internet.

Here’s a short video explaining exactly how it works. http://backchannel.mtv.com/how_to_play.php

Photo posted at 10:12

Comments (View)

Sep 3

Nokia to release lifestreaming mobile app LifeviNe

It will geotag photos, videos and music and automatically publish it everything to the web. Sounds simple, but nobody (including the iPhone) is doing this well.

The need for an app like this is huge, so if Nokia can nail the experience I think they’ll have a winner. Expect Lifestreaming, whether through LifeviNe or a different service, to explode in the next couple years.

Photo posted at 12:02

Comments (View)

Interesting stuff. I wonder what Ubiquity will look like in a year.

Video posted at 11:40

Comments (View)

Aug 25

I need your votes!!!

I’ve submitted a presentation to South by Southwest this year and I need all the votes I can get. The topic of the presentation is “Why Gen Y won’t friend your brand”. I’m going to propose a bunch of next-generation social media marketing tactics that will work with Gen Y. It’ll be magnificent, I promise.

All you have to do is click here, do a super-quick registration, and then rate my topic. Thanks in advance.

Text posted at 10:59

Comments (View)

Aug 15

Sprout continues to innovate with the launch of FanKits

Widget builder Sprout has been a favorite company of mine for a while. Not only do they continue to innovate in the sometimes-boring widget space, but they do it all from the beaches of Hawaii, where their company is based.

Here’s a widget describing their new FanKits product. Fankits allows consumers to fully customize branded widgets using both Sprout tools and a host of third-party services (including Imeem’s powerful music library api).

When fans create their own unique instance of a widget, they will be much more apt to share it with their friends and embed on their blogs and profiles. Nobody wants to be a brand advocate that just shills for the company by sharing standard branded widgets. It also results in a better experience for the viewer because they are looking at a widget that represents their friend as well as the brand.

Text posted at 1:49

Comments (View)

Aug 6

» An Evolving Cultural Curiosity: We Need A Fake Follow - Uh...no we don't

Michael Arrington says Twitter (and Friendfeed) needs a fake follow. What is a fake follow? “The Fake Follow looks like a normal follow to the other person, but to me it’s like I didn’t follow them at all. This solves the ego stroking issue (and related problems) that so many people have, and it keeps the content stream clean and usable.”

I think this is a terrible idea. When Twitter says that someone is following me, I consider them an audience for my tweets. I will then write tweets based on the audience I think is listening to me. I lose confidence in the Twitter service if I think some of those people are fake following me. Maybe I assume most of my audience is fake following me and I don’t think my tweets are worth sending. The fake follow brings an unwanted element of deception into Twitter that will cause many problems.

Social technologies should always be as transparent and authentic as possible. The same goes for social media marketing.

Link posted at 12:18

Comments (View)

Jul 28

Brainstorming 2.0

I desperately want to give this a product a try during the next pitch I work on. It could be really helpful for big group brainstorms.

Video posted at 1:03

Comments (View)

Has anyone else seen the vampire viral marketing all over the place? What is the product?

Text posted at 3:40

Comments (View)

Jul 24

Las Vegas local news station features “punch you in the face” product placement. These McDonald’s ice coffee are fake, undrinkable models that are designed to always look icey fresh.

Photo posted at 5:23

Comments (View)