Facebook chat is online for me

Just fired up Facebook (while not procrastinating..:)..) and noticed Facebook chat is now available for me. Most people are probably going, "oh yay! Yet another IM tool" However this is a bigger deal than you might realize and in my opinion will be a major draw for facebook.

Why is it I have accounts with Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Gizmo etc etc...?

 Because I have different groups of friends in each.

So what is it that facebook has that none of these apps have?

My social network.

All those non-techy people who usually look at me with that quizzical smirk when I start talking twitter & RSS have, for whatever reason, been drawn to Facebook. Most are probably passive visitors. If someone posts something on their wall or sends them a message, then they receive an e-mail alert and consequently log in to Facebook to check it out. A few others are hooked on Scrabulous, Chess, some other weird app, or use it as their online photo album. Nevertheless, the fact that I can now chat with a lot of these people without having to poke them, message them or write on their wall is extremely attractive. Of course after the initial fad wears off many of these people will end up as someone who I just see online and never talk to, but the very fact that I now have the opportunity to engage in conversation with people who I haven't talked to in eons, and would never pick up the phone to chat with, is kind of cool. It will certainly add another dynamic to my procrastination!

If Facebook allows people to take advantage of the social demographic they have built within that environment they will have a very big future ahead of them. Unfortunately, I just haven't seen any strong indicators they are going to allow people and developers the flexibility they need to develop some truly exciting interactive and life streaming apps.

However, I'm reminded of the reach of my Facebook social network daily even among those I interact with on a regular basis. I often post a message to my personal twitter account, which automatically updates my Facebook status, and is usually about something that probably wouldn't come up in regular discussion with most of the people with whom I associate. Nevertheless, I almost always get some comment during the day referencing that message. Just today I had someone say: "so how ya feeling? Saw you had a couple of late nights marking there?". See how the language has changed? It is is no longer "I heard", but "I saw". As social networking moves beyond the techies and the youth and into the mainstream crowd who, when asked, would never have time for that techie stuff, even this asynchronous form of communication via twitter and micro blogging will allow for an unprecedented awareness of those around us.

I like to take the optimistic perspective of the socially interactive web (hey I didn't say social networking!) and truly believe in the potential of this technology to enrich our lives in both work and play.

OSTEC Silicon Vinyard Awards

Went to the silicon vinyard awards tonight and saw a keynote from Paul Kedrowski. The common thread that I've noticed between many of these VC's, from keynote speeches to podcasts with the likes of Robert Cringley, is that these guys have an incredible ability to simplify the complex.

Paul talked about the qualities that make up the entrepreneur. The importance of optimism and the ability to pursue the quest for a questionable answer to the right question as opposed the definite answer to the wrong question. It kind of messes with your mind when you first hear it, but the more you think about it the more it begins to make sense. To be successful as a start up you must have the ability to look at things from a different angle as opposed to following the 'herd'. I heard this great joke today that illustrates this point perfectly:

"When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the drivers side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. 'Hey,' I announced to the technician, 'its open!' His reply, 'I know. I already got that side.'"

Sometimes the most obvious solutions are just a small step away.

I'm also on the board of ORIC and would certainly be doing an injustice if I didn't congratulate Peter Haubrich for the Member of the year Award tonight at the OSTEC Silicon Vinyard Innovation Awards. He has worked tirelessly to make ORIC what it is today and the future is certainly looking very bright. I'm excited to be part of a such an young and innovative group.

Friendfeed, Twitter & Pipes

It looks like FriendFeed is really taking off. Just saw a video by Scoble interviewing the founders and got a good feeling about the company. The management of our personal social networking environments is a little hard to manage and Friendfeed is a great way to help keep on top of what your own personal network is up to. I'm still using google reader for the most part to sift through the big news articles of the day, but use Friendfeed to monitor the social networking activity of a few specific individuals and contribute to the comments and discussion surrounding that activity. That is the true power of social networking and Friendfeed is currently the best way to centralize the discussion of all one's activities. I read a blog on allfacebook by Nick O'Neill mentioning how Facebook could incorporate this into their minifeed very easily, but they have kind of fallen off there. They really need to open up the MiniFeed.

Anyway, back to my original point. One of the issues I have with Friendfeed is trying to filter out the noise generated by items such as twitter. I don't believe there is a soln currently available on Friendfeed, so I found a great post by Mike Sansone through some other blog post I was reading on how to use Yahoo pipes to filter this information.  I had heard about this app, but never really took the time to take a look at it. Now that I have, all I can say is that it rocks! You can use all kinds of filtering capabilities to customize what you want to see in an existing RSS feed, then re-publish the feed with your custom filters applied. So I've now created My Pipes with filters that allow me to see friendfeed without twitters and with twitters and then simply subscribed to those feeds in google reader. The number of filter and fetch modules likely allow you to customize for almost anything.