Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Always Be EchoSign

I'm blogging this on the last working day of Q4, the busiest sales day of the year. And I have the time to blog this because of a seriously great deal execution web service called EchoSign.

This morning I had a deal to be done with someone who doesn't use Word out of principle (hey, we are wiki guys and all for it), threw away their fax machine when spam ate all the ink and paper and didn't have access to a scanner.  Another person was on vacation and I didn't want to burden them with the manual labor or a Kinko's run.  I signed up for a free account, uploaded an agreement, sent them, tracked progress during the day and got counter electronic signatures.  CCd the lawyer in the process.  Deal done hassle free.

I can't think of many reasons not to do business like this.  There will be some larger enterprises that will need to be sold on the process, but the mid-market is ripe for this.  And the good old fashioned signing ceremony for big deals won't go away.  But at the very least, the Valley should work this way, from VCs to Law Firms to Boards to Sales teams.

They happen to be two doors down from Socialtext in Palo Alto 2.0 and the funny thing is I first met them when they bought an AdWord on our brand. I walked in and complained.  Next time I checked they bought a new ad supporting our Wiki Wednesday event.  Cool.  Now we wave while they get refreshers from Peet's.

If you want to try it, send me your email address and I'll send you a license agreement to buy a wiki anytime.  Happy closing.

The Search for Trust

Blake Ross of Mozilla chides Google for giving preferential placement to their own apps as "Tips" in search results.

The tips are different―and bad for users―because the services they recommend are not the best in their class. If Google wants to make it faster and easier for users to manage events, create a blog or share photos, it could do what it does when you search GOOG: link to the best services. To prevent Google from being the gatekeeper, the company could identify the services algorithmically.

If you guess where I am going with this, you are probably wrong.

Blake's argument is right, in that Tips subvert Google's mission statement, is a breach of trust, degrades the relevance of search, is outside being a customer of their own advertising and amounts to a new age of bundling with the deception of choice.

But wait, there is more.  This could be seen as a commercial interest defining a default.  As much as it pains me to point it out, doesn't the Firefox browser offer the Google browser as the default due to revenue incentives?

TIP: the answer to the above question is provided in comments

I believe search and access to search should be a democratic function.  Whenever markets are left to their own devices to determine access to information, the result is arbitrage conditions that hamper innovation, yield profit to the few and stunt principles as core as freedom of speech and assembly.  Such freedoms are not to be trees in a walled wood.  You have a right to make what you say and the group you form accessible and discoverable.

Search today is not democratic.  Anchor text is a tool of anchor tenants. PageRank is in the hands of a growing few.  PigeonRank is a minority species, of similar size to algorithm inclines.  Social search is not yet a function of using search.  In search relevance will always be representative.  But we are still playing by electoral college rules.

Wikiasari was launched before fueling, but over time it represents a more democratic web.  Social search, with a full feedback look between results and the ability for a user to be resultant, has yet to be fulfilled.

We will have a search engine powered by they very users it employs, and empowers.  When spam like Tips are advocated by a spending empowered minority, the larger body will be empowered to correct.  Even the default of accessing it.

5 things

I got tagged by J.B. Holston, David Quiec and Dave Rosenberg -- so there is no avoiding this meme.  Here are five interesting things you might not know about me:

1. I use a 3 1/2 floppy disk as an ice scraper
2. I play soccer twice a week twice a week in the same pickup game as my Dad (still kicking) and co-workers.  Also play in a league on Sunday and I'm pretty damn good.  In college I played Volleyball and Lacrosse, but so thankful to have a lifelong sport.
3. I ran for student body president at Foothill College, but lost to my roommate.  So became the Editor of the newspaper, got the girl and wrote scathing editorials.
4. Our fraternity got shut down during my last year at UCLA because a party got out of hand
5. My vice is cigarettes, picked up in Eastern Europe, but hopefully not for long

That, and it is after 5pm on the Friday before Christmas weekend, and I'm still at the office which says something, unfortunately.

Tagged: Andy Lester, Luke Closs, Casey West, Chris Dent and Jonas Luster.

Wiki Eats Google

The number 6 search in Google's Zeitgeist this year is Wikipedia and number 10 is wiki.  This may mean two things.  First, Sunir Shah's clear statement of a popular theory is that Wikipedia Eats Google.

because Wikipedia is the Internet's encyclopedia, many of the articles have included resources from the Google searches on that topic. Over time, Wikipedia has been slowly eating the entire Web's knowledge base until it becomes itself a faster, better, and -- most critically -- unspammed reference matter of what are the relevant and valuable resources. And unlike mere link directories, it doesn't simply list links, it tells a story about them.

The second point, which supports the first, is people are adding these terms to their queries to get better results.  People may prefer results not just validated by link count by others, but with edits by others.

This is the flip side of social search, where not only relevance is are improved through social means, but results.

UPDATE: Jimmy Wales launches Wikiasari social search

Polar Rose

While at Le Web 3, Nikolaj Nyholm told me about his new facial recognition startup, Polar Rose, which just launched.  Users can 3D map a 2D image and assign metadata to a given face using a browser extension, and developers can use an API to incorporate said data into their photo sites. 

While inevitable, this all gets scary in a panopticon kind of way. I'd expect the killer app to be a persistent feed on your boyfriend to see what party pics he ends up in.  But get used to it.  In the short future, if you go outside, you are liable to be on the web.

Person of the Year

It ain't me babe.  I decline this award and am calling for a detraction.

2007 Predictions

Last time I can say I was right in saying 2006 would be the year of video.  I think I scored well (not as well as YouTube, but you get the idea).

My 2007 Predictions, keeping it simple:

1. 2007 will be the year of offline web applications. 
2. The consumer Internet will peak
3. Sense of ownership will be a primary social software design principle
4. DRM will become a mainstream issue
5. The traditional technology events business will either embrace the ad hoc, or collapse
6. Enterprise 2.0 will mainstream with acceptance, while a new category emerges to complement blogs, wikis and RSS
7. The IPO window cracks open just as we get the beginnings of SarBox reform

I'm not explaining these in-depth, to leave myself little qualifiers.

Castles Made of Sand

Jonas Luster blogs his own points on how Second Life is Not a Game, from a panel the future of gaming at Le Web 3:

• Second Life is not a game in that it does not have environmental challenges and progress within its ecosystem. All progress is measured outside the ecosystem and mostly social (whom you met) and commercial (how much you sold).

• which follows - Second Life can not and won’t have the retention and draw games like Halo2, World of Warcraft, DaoC, and others have, even though Linden loves to cite those numbers when outlining the future of their baby. Frankly, I believe for a glorified 3D chat system with build-your-own backend, SL isn’t all that bad. For anything people come back into, I might not be suitable, at the moment.

• Second Life lacks internal rules and controls which will come back to bite Linden and its users in the hiney. Already we see issues of disappearing (expensive) virtual property and Linden Labs disclaiming any and all responsibility to preserve or restore such property, citing the “we just run the servers” excuse.

• which introduces a host of legal issues with regards to property, ownership (DMCA claims are a good way to calm down investors, they’re useless in disputes between a Swede and a Japanese player), and liability.

And if SL isn't a game, pay particular mind to Clay Shirky's post where he questions the user numbers, infatuation of ordinary stories (or stores, without measuring return) by a press ignorant of history and questioning the castle made of sand.  Perhaps Clay is coming around to Jonas' point about an ecosystem without challenges from a different angle, that from the numbers SL isn't so sticky/engaging, nor different:

...virtual reality is conceptually simple. Unlike ordinary network communications tools, which require a degree of subtlety in thinking about them ― as danah notes, there is no perfect metaphor for a weblog, or indeed most social software ― Second Life’s metaphor is simplicity itself: you are a person, in a space. It’s like real life.

One interesting thing about this simple model was shared by Steven Farrell of IBM on our panel at >play.  He noted that after a business meeting in Second Life, participants don't just hang up, but wander a bit into subgroups and informally continue the conversation.  This is a lot like real life, and the side conversations in the hallway can be where stuff really gets done. 

This isn't that new either, it is as old as, well, meetings.

Transparent Media and Wikify Everything

Chris Anderson is on a roll about transparency  and six tactics for transparent media:

1. Show who we are.
2. Show what we're working on.
3. "Process as Content"
4. Privilege the crowd.
5. Let readers decide what's best.
6. Wikifiy everything.

An interesting thought experiment is not only would this work for Wired, or a media company, but would it work for any company.

Expounding upon the reactions to his post, Chris clarifies:

These techniques works better for relatively short-form web media than they do for the print magazine. That's mostly because magazine features tend to be long (2,500-10,000 words)  and wrapped up in a package heavy with art and design. Long-form journalism is more about narrative and story arc, which is really best done as a close collaboration between a writer, editor and designer.

Actually, an interesting question is if you could make the short form more like the long form.  Many a time have I been interviewed by a writer and then had a photo shoot with someone that had little or no idea what the article was about.  Photo editors don't give a lot of art direction, especially to freelancers.  Wired features are more collaborative than the norm, but I have to ask if tighter collaboration could be fostered for short form stories.

At Ziff Davis a while ago, this process between the art director, writers and editors was made transparent through a wiki:

In order to put a story together, Art, Production and Editorial departments have to work together. The Editorial team is on the 8th floor, the Art team is on 9th floor and someone is always out of the office.

The team and department heads realized they could use Socialtext for day-to-day coordination, scheduling and requests. The groups need to communicate to each other what's needed for stories in progress: Art, HTML requests, copy, all in a back-and-forth conversational style. The groups set up a page for each activity, posting requests as they come up, and tracking fulfillment of the request. A structured approval process wouldn't address the need for iterative communication. "Because its not always a regular process, we can communicate when something isn't clear and coordinate getting it done," said Kennedy.

But the interesting question to ask with any process, especially an ad hoc process, is what would happen if we increase the scale and transparency through a wiki?

Chris suggests this is possible by wikifying everything.  But I'd suggest that for most newsrooms there is a preliminary step of internal transparency, and then involving freelancers.

Le Pile On

Just got back from Le Web 3.  Of course, a pan-European pile on happened, with people upset that the second day of the conference was overrun by politicians.  While the content could have been structured better, consider the greater context.  France's presidential election is this spring, they only happen every five years, and this is the first to be impacted by social media.  During the last US presidential election, had one of the candidates speak at one of the usual conferences, we would be ape-shit with glee.  Even if he spoke in French.

But perhaps because the politicians were speaking in French, and less to the former audience than the current one through TV cameras, bloggers from other European countries were offended.  Upstaging other good content with an already overbooked schedule was a real tradeoff.  But again, I stand by my friend Loic's decision to break the mold of the event.

Personally, my panel was the worst moderated experience I've ever had.  Frustrating given the amount of travel time to have someone added to the panel during the panel, have someone moderating that didn't know the topic and have it steered to events in general and social marketing.  There were good themes to explore in Reid Hoffman's talk, so much to explore with the enterprise topic, and I think we got in some valuable comments regardless.  I noticed my panel was an exception.

I'm sure few can complain about the value of the hallway conversations.  And for folks coming from afar, Paris is always a wonderful experience.  I'm pleased with the Socialtext Unplugged feedback, met some good people and spent some great time with the usual suspects in unusual places.