farner(in)

…it had Google Reader.  Why not just a feed reader?  I’ll explain.

If I had to estimate, I’d say that about two-thirds of the reading I do takes place inside Google Reader.  And not just my own subscriptions, but also the content shared by others.  I get a lot of value from those shared posts because, let’s face it – I don’t have time to sift through thousands of blog posts a day.  This is why a plain feed reader just wouldn’t do.  Sure, I’d be able to subscribe to and read blogs, but I’d be missing all the shared content and the sense of community I get inside Google Reader.

The Kindle isn’t built for that, at least not yet.  Is it great with books?  Absolutely.  But the blog reading situation needs to be vastly improved for me to even consider buying one and, unless that happens before April 3, I’ll be purchasing a different product instead.

Before the Abuzz iPhone app, there was another Abuzz – a community site run by The New York Times.  You can check out a snapshot of the old site here, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Two things come to mind:

1. I will never get to own the Abuzz domain – The New York Times still has it on lockdown until 2012 and I doubt they’ll be surrendering it after that.
2. How ahead of its time was this site?

Launched in 1999, the NYT Abuzz site was “social networking” before sites like Myspace and Facebook took center stage.  There was a question/answer format (similar to Yahoo! Answers or Mahalo Answers), a discussion section (which isn’t that original – forums and USENET were around for years) and section for publishing commentary, such as book reviews, reactions to news stories, and so on.

On top of that, the site attempted what many sites are still trying to do today – filter information and deliver only what it thinks will be relevant to you.  Pretty amazing stuff.

As you can see here, the site shut down on September 2, 2004, citing limited resources.  The fact that the NYT has held on to the domain name long afterwards means they think the domain is a valuable asset (I agree).  Do they have plans to utilize it in the future?  Who knows.  If not, and if anyone at the Times is reading this, I’ll gladly take it off your hands. ;)

I launched Abuzz last Thursday and heard lots of nice things from those who downloaded it.  From the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of you. :)  The app was born out of my own need for it.  I actually went into the App Store one day looking for something like it and was astonished that it didn’t exist.  So I got to work – mapping out the app and its various features.  I brought someone in to put it together and, in three months, I had a finished product.

But I failed to get Abuzz significant coverage, and that is my fault and my fault alone.

Other than Louis Gray’s great write-up, I couldn’t get a single other blog to run with it.  That tells me more than anything that the app isn’t as polished as it should be.  I had considered pushing out incremental updates, adding features every few weeks, but it’s clear to me now that those would only be bandages on a much bigger wound.  So the next iteration of Abuzz to see the light of day will be 2.0 (it will, of course, be released as an update, not as a separate app – I’m not pulling any Tweetie stuff, here).

I’ve listened to feedback and had a lot of great ideas come my way.  The interface will get an enormous facelift.  The user experience will be vastly improved.  The app will stand on its own both as a social media search tool and as a Twitter client.  I don’t want to let too much slip, but I’ll say this – I’m going to make sure the app is everything it should be.

Be sure to follow @abuzzapp for updates.

Rumor has it that Hulu wants to squeeze more than just ad dollars out of its service.  It just so happens that I love kicking these ideas around in my head.  Put the two together and, well… here you have it.

If I ran Hulu, I’d charge $4.99 a month to subscribe to a show with ads, $7.99 a month without ads.  You’d get the newest shows plus the entire back catalog.  And, here’s a biggie – I’d let you watch it on your TV.

Short clips would stay as-is – the ones that go viral bring enormous amounts of attention to their respective shows.

I’d make a free iPhone app available so that you could watch the shows you’ve subscribed to on the go.

Now, it’s probably a longshot that you’ll see any of these moves made, at least not in the near future.  These would put Hulu head-to-head with the same cable companies that pay to carry the networks.  But if I ran Hulu, I’d worry less about maintaining the status quo.  I’d worry more about the future and I’d make sure my business was ahead of the curve, not playing catch up.

I’m confused as to why startups flood into new areas with little, if anything, to add. A neat little app or web service comes out and, like clockwork, it’s immediately met by a bunch of “me too’s”.

What’s the point?

If you come to play with something that’s only a *little* better than what is already offered, you aren’t making a very compelling case for users to switch. Most will stay with what they’re already invested in.

That’s why you need to go for the grand slam. If it means taking some more time to get your app out there for the world to experience, take that time. Make it something that people *want* to try out and *want* to stick with.

It’s either that or waste your time building the next deadpooled project. The choice is yours.

With Abuzz development winding down (after a small delay), I’ve been wondering what project I’ll take on next.  This isn’t to say that Abuzz won’t be improved upon and future releases won’t come out – the app will still own some of my life.  But what will own it after that?

I could do another iPhone app.  I have some ideas I’ve been kicking around and it doesn’t look like anyone else is doing them.  Plus, after Abuzz, I feel confident that I could manage such a project and do so more smoothly.  That route is open, but I’m currently looking in a different direction.

I want to do something disruptive.

I thought I had a finished version of Abuzz, the iPhone app I’ve been diligently working on since the beginning of October.  However, I suddenly realized that I’d be putting something out that I wasn’t totally satisfied with.  There were a few features I was going to have pushed out in an update later, but why go that route?  Why not wait a bit longer and include it all?

So I pushed it back.  I’d rather have the app include all the functions I want on day one.  It really kills me to do it – I’d love to get Abuzz out there – but I know it’s the right thing to do.

First tough decision of the year.  What else will 2010 bring?

This post takes a look back at my 5 ballsy social media predictions for 2009 post, written on December 20, 2008.

Needless to say, there will not be a predictions post written for 2010.  I am clearly not Desmond Hume (come on, LOST nerds).

1. Twitter will be bought. Nope.  They did, however, get a huge boost from Oprah.  Oh yeah, they also negotiated a few search deals and started *gasp* making some money. (0 for 1)
2. Plurk will disappear. Ahh, Plurk – the little microblogging service that should have quit a long time ago.  Instead, they persist.  I logged into the site for the first time in a year only to find that it looks exactly the same.  And by the same, I mean creepy. (0 for 2)
3. Louis Gray will surpass Robert Scoble in blog traffic. I thought this one was a slam dunk.  Robert thought it could happen.  Where did it all go wrong?  The two were separated by as few as 16,110 uniques in May 2009.  But in June 2009, Building 43 was launched and Robert blogged a bit more often.  When FriendFeed sold to Facebook in August, it was game over.  Scoble returned to his blog fortress and made me wrong yet again.  (0 for 3)
4. Pandora will all but kill Last.FM. Bzzzzt, incorrect.  Last.FM lives on due to the fact that, well, it works outside the United States.  Pandora does not.  In my own life, Slacker Radio has taken the lead – I suggest you give it a try.  And if you haven’t Groovesharked yet, please do it right now. (0 for 4)
5. The labels will introduce a mixtape service. Can you say “oh-for-five”?  I could have cheated right here and counted Apple’s “compile a bunch of songs in a mix and buy them for a friend” feature as a mixtape service but the labels had little to do with that.  (0 for 5, in case you forgot)

Do you have the results of your own predictions?  I’d love to see them.  You could not have done worse than me. ;)

Well, it’s an iPhone app. :)

Abuzz lets you search Twitter, the blogosphere, the forumsphere (or whatever it’s called) and Digg.  It lets you organize your keyword searches into campaigns so that you can keep your related searches together.  You can search all the supported services at once or customize your search to include results from just one or two.

What’s really cool about Abuzz is the built-in Twitter client.  It’s lightweight (just like the rest of the app) but gives you everything you need – you can tweet out, send replies, send direct messages, view profiles, follow/unfollow and so on.  You can interact with the tweets in your own timeline and your searches, which frees you from having to open another app if you want to take action on a tweet you’ve found in a search.

Let’s say you work for Apple and want to set up searches for the iPhone and Macbook.  You could open the Abuzz app, create a new campaign called “Apple” and add keyword searches for “iPhone” and “Macbook”.  It’s that easy.  You won’t waste a lot of time navigating through a dedicated Twitter app to set up searches or browsing through Safari trying to search blogs, forums and Digg.  Abuzz is social media search, plain and simple.

So where’s Abuzz?  We’re squashing our last round of bugs at the moment and we’ll probably have an App Store-ready app in three or four days. Keep your eyes peeled two or three weeks into January!  And if you have some search services you’d like to see available inside Abuzz, let me know!  Shoot an email to features@abuzzapp.com.

T-shirts are fun little conversation starters.  If I’m not wearing something utterly ridiculous (my “I <3 Hot Moms” shirt, for instance… that photo isn’t me, by the way), I’m probably wearing a shirt from a Podcamp or one with a Web 2.0 company’s logo.  When it’s the latter, I’m essentially a walking billboard for that particular company.  I don’t mind though – hell, I got a free shirt.

You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked, “What’s socialmedian?” or “What’s Strands?”  A guy behind the counter at a gas station in Hershey once asked me what BarCamp Harrisburg was.  And because I love this stuff, I don’t mind talking a bit about it.  Have I sent potential users to any of these sites?  I really have no idea.  There’s no Google Analytics for real life.  The potential is there, though.

So send more shirts out to more people.  Don’t just give them away in the Bay Area – send them everywhere.  You’ll generate some good will and possibly create an evangelist for your product.  If you want an example, look at this post.  I was more than happy to link to a few companies and I’ll be more than happy to talk about them in the future to anyone who asks.

How much did it cost them?  One t-shirt.