Monkey + Japanese Gameshow + Segway

It's been a while since I last posted on my favorite subject, Segways. And even though I like the technology of the product, I can't get rid of the feeling that everyone riding segways look kind of silly :)

Anyway, now I found the ultimate segway clip. I think it's safe to say that it includes everything that is important: A monkey, a japanese gameshow and a Segway.

Movie about Shoppinggatan

Pråmdagis ingen succé

Det var hösten 2006 som idén med pråmdagis presenterades som en lösning på långa dagisköer. Pråmdagiset guldfisken invigdes strax därefter med en besättning av pedagoger och sjömän.
"Pråmdagiset var inledningsvis en succé, dagiset fylldes av barn till båtintresserade och allt verkade bra.", säger Hans Axelsson på Stockholms stads fritidsnämnd. "Vårturen gick till Lübeck och vi träffade intresserade politiker från hela Europa."

"Det var först under vår höstresa till Newcastle som det började gå fel." Efter en otäck höststorm med ihållande regn, mitt ute på nordsjön, började personalen klaga och barnen få hemlängtan. Pedagogerna klagade på den farliga utemiljön och sjömännen tyckte att barnen var i vägen.

"Nu har alla barnen fått plats på våra vanliga förskolor, och samtliga pedagoger och sjömän jobbar kvar inom barnomsorgen", berättar Hans. "Det var en vacker dröm men som tjänsteman måste man veta när det är dags att kasta in handduken."

DN

Streaming movies in the browser, and What the movie industry should do about it

With the rise of the new site ThePirateCity, movie industry is yet again facing a though illegal alternative for movie watching.

ThePirateCity seems to be a flash movie player with a built in torrent downloader, allowing users to watch pirated (or nonpirate) full length movies instantaneosly from within his browser. This means that the last big threshold for mainstream users not to use the bittorrent technology is gone.

No more file browsing, downloading and unpacking of files before you watch them, just go to a site and start watching movies. And what is even worse for the industry, it's easy to embed the movie player on any site, social network or blog, so the technology and movies will spread like wildfire.

It was just a matter of time before we would see this technology, but I'm a bit puzzled by it. What can the movie industry really do?
They can't count on all the states of the world to protect their creative content, since that would alianate political parties from younger voters.
It's also hard to compete in terms of usage simplicity, since the user will se the movie of choice plaing from within the browser 10-20 seconds after entering the site.

So what can they do? I have some suggestions:

* First of all, make use of social networks. Movie watching is a social activity. Having that in mind and empowering people to watch and discuss movies just as easily on a major social network would be the best thing to do. People want to watch the movie in a social context, and they want to do it on the sites they already use, trust and where their friends are.

* Add extra value and live events to the movie watching activity. This is also spinning on the social aspect. Have movie stars watch the movie together with the crowd on the social network, let them chat and interact with the actor, and create interesting events. It doesn't even have to be the top star of the movie, chatting with anyone that was on the set would do. People would feel included and closer to the movie.
This would also work as extra content later on, people watching the movie later could see historical chat, notes and voiceovers as they are watching the movie. Compare this to the extra features and director voiceover that can be foudn on every dvd.

* Give people a special "badge" for watching the movie at a special event. Lets say you watched when it premiered only. They should then get a special badge saying that they did just that. Or the "I watched this movie with nn and nn" badge, who wouldn't want to show off their connection to an actor / actress? People define themselves and their lifestyle the clothes they wear, magazines they read and movies they watch. Help them manifest their choise of lifestyle!

* Lower prices and set up a new payment model. Lower price with commercials, give away three free movies to watch each month, unlimited watching of different movies at fixed price, different levels. "$4,99 to watch the movie, $9,99 for watching the movie at a special event."

There are of course endless opportunities, but what's important is that the movie industry embrace the thought of their product as a social product. What they're offering is a social experience as well as a lifestyle, and that is what they should use to monetize their great products!

Techcrunch is terribly wrong about the IPhone Store Policy

The blogpost over at Techcrunch telling developers to stop complaining about the IPhone App Store is terrible. They argue that you can either accept everything Apple says and develop for the Iphone, or simply move to another platform.

Of course, that is complete rubbish. We're living in an online world where people complain and discuss business practises in every thinkable way. If you're unhappy with a company, you complain, get a reaction, and then decides to stay or leave that company, product or service.

Smart companies appreciates this and have a very active relationship with their community, rendering happier customers and increased revenue.
Apple in particular is a company with a hardcore community where that act as Apple evangelists, and Apple nurture this relationship as much as they can.

When Dan Kimerling suddenly says that developers should stop complaining over the IPhone stores pretty strange application policies, he actually says that Apple is off limit. To me, he sounds like a dinousaur from the Mac/PC-wars of the 80's and 90's. Maybe he's defencive since Microsoft's latest ad campaign is pretty nice, or maybe he just can't cope with the fact that Apple is far from perfect. But it's weird to read this on a blog with a nice history of bringing light to high profile online customer power.

I just don't understand this. Maybe he's just trying to fill his Apple / Iphone quota.

I'm pretty tired of hearing about the IPhone. It has a nice interface and might be a great catalyst for mobile browsing, but I don't need to know every little detail on everything happening with the IPhone. Apple's done a great job promoting the phone, and Apple has created a nice Application store [although it's not that new, at least not here in Europe. I can send an sms and get ringtones, games and applications directly to my phone, and that certainly isn't anything new. The turnover of all the phonerelated sales of games, screensavers and ringtones has been considerable for quite a while now. The new thing is that they actually get early adapters to go to one central site for buying applications, and that they have a nearly perfectly closed developer/sales platform].

I like the IPhone, but as I said, I'm not excited enough to hear about it every single day and hour. I can't wait for the Google phone to enter the market, so that I at least can read about a product from a company that I not only respect (I respect apple), but also like a lot.


And last but not least - I really enjoy techcrunch, I'm reading the blog every day! This is simply my way of giving Techcrunch my feedback to them since I want their business and blog to be even better!

Amazingly inspirational video with Kevin Roberts

This is a truly amazing video with Kevin Roberts that I is very inspirational! Inspiration is important for us in the Internet startup business, so I place the video here for both you and me (I think I'll watch it many times!

Kevin Roberts blog is here and I found the video on the swedish blog Disruptive.

Blogloving - a RSS reader for the masses

Bloglovin (Blogkoll) is an online RSS-reader for the masses. That is, it's functionality seems to be almost the same as Google Reader, but they never mention RSS and focus their marketing on teen girls and young adults.

They have a nice little intro video which I think is great! It shows how effective video can be as a mean of teaching users how to use your service.

And, if you like them, feel free to digg them.

Now I know why I didn't by IPhone - I've been waiting for Android!

Now it's all clear to me - I didn't by an Iphone because I was waiting for the Google Phone. The phone itself seems really fun with GPS, compass, accelerometer, Wifi, 3g and all, but IPhone has almost the same features. But what I really like about the Android is it's openess! Since I'm a developer I've been waiting for the day when I'll be able to program everything around me - lamps, owen, fridge, tv, lock, phone and my car. This is suddenly a little bit closer since I'll be in control over my mobile!
I've done some Java applets for my SonyEricsson, and though it was pretty fun, it is a pretty tightly locked programming environment. With the IPhone it's the same: An extensive SDK but all the fun stuff locked up out of my reach.

The Android platform is all different. Change whatever you want, use camera, other programs, API's as much as you like, it just isn't a closed environment.

I'm no Mac person, and even though I was impressed with the IPhone (primarily for the touch interface and the nice screen), I must say I simply don't like Apple that much. I'm a PC guy, I've enjoyed putting together my own hardware playing around with Windows or Linux. I want to be able to choose freely what hardware to use.
Mac's are good looking and they seem to be great employers, but for some reason they can't reach my inner geek. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo can! I even liked the Seinfeld/Microsoft-commercial.

Now since I'm swedish I'm really hoping for a platform as open as Android for SonyEricsson.

Kaskado - Mobile coupons made easy

Imagine walking into a shop and your mobile beeps. You look at it, and it's a coupon for some clothes matching your personal taste in the same store, and hence increasing the sales of the store.

We're not quite there yet, but the scenario presented above just got a bit closer.
I've tried Kaskado which gives you mobile coupons for real world purchases. It's easy to install the java app (enter your mobile number and follow a link) and I was up and running in no time.

When starting I had to choose my location, and then a couple of offers in my city was presented to me. The interface is good and I might even try one of the offers later today. The number of offers where a tad bit low, only four of them in a city of more than one million (Stockhom), one from a coffee chain having 5+ locations to choose from.

So what does it take to make this service a success? The installation process was easy enough, but I still think it's hard to get the main stream audience to install the application with that few coupons. I guess that can be explained by the fact that the service is pretty new, but that needs to be improved.
I also would like to have it automatically positioning me, so that I get offers only really close to my location. That probably isn't very interesting until they've got far more offers.
It would also be nifty to have it running in the background, maybe as a cell phone provider service to keep the users costs low, and simply signaling me when I'm close to an offer that really interests me.

I don't have any insight in Kaskado's plans, since I just heard of them, but I'd say that a great idea would be to go for the operators and have the service preinstalled or at least having the link as a predefined shortcut. Operators are always looking for ways to get new ways of income as well as advantages over their competitors, so it should be pretty easy to make such a deal.

The future of video is... Animoto!

We've played around with video for a while here at 49lights. We've tried quite a few different video editors for our very simple material and after what I've seen I must say that Animoto is very, very impressive!

What's Animoto?
Animoto is a very simple online tool for creating videos from images. You select which images to use, select (or upload) music and hit "render". Animoto then analyze your media and creates a video. Pretty nifty effects suiting the music are used on your images as well as syncronized to the music. The outcome is a pretty nice video that you easily can download, embed or upload to Youtube.

I'd say that this is what I expect from future video editing. Select videos, images and music and get a nice little video. Add some interview parts or something, clip the things together and you've produced a somewhat "professional" video. It's obvious that tools like this will reduce the gap between professional video and amateur video.

Add some stock video footage to the show and at least news shows will have a couple of hundred thousand competitors. (Large parts of news shows are just expounded views on a Reuters telegram).

What really makes a difference when comparing Animoto to many other online tools for creating video footage or advanced slideshows is that they have extreamly good looking effects on Animoto.

Shoppinggatan - English video

Here's the English video for those who prefer that over Swedish ;)

Shoppinggatan goes Animoto!

Animoto is as you know a great tool for easy video creation that actually looks good.
We just tried it for a short presentation of Shoppinggatan, and here's the result:

I love Chrome but I got it to freeze

I tried Google Chrome today and I must say I love it. A big part of the Google Chrome Comic that we've all read today focused on its stability. However, I got it to freeze. Playing one of my favorite online games, Desktop Tower Defence, it sometimes froze when on keypresses. Keypress, long pause, and the game continued. When I got to the point where it froze for a couple of minutes I killed the process.

So google guys, please fix this so that I can enjoy my favorite online game in my brand new favorite browser! :)

Shoppinggatan.se enters beta...

Finally, Shoppinggatan.se enters beta mode. Shoppinggatan is a website for a more inspired shopping experience. It's all in Swedish, but please come and visit the site.

Hitta kläder, inredning och webbshoppar och inspireras av shoppinggatans guider och bloggar

Save the developers! Stop using IE6!

Save the developers! Stop using IE6!

Next time you visit your parents, sisters, brothers, friends and they're using IE6, upgrade to IE7.

Urbanshortcut.com helps WWF

The social conscience of the exiting new startup Urbanshortcut.com is big. Instead of spending their money on marketing, they'd like to donate money to WWF. Hence they've started a group on Facebook and donates money for every new member.

I really like this concept. A good cause gets attention and money, and an exciting startup as well. It's not new, but it's always nice to see people care!

Why Google is failing - Google "web3.0"

I just googled the term "Web3.0". Funny enough, the top ranked site (after wikipedia) is a blog post from 2006 telling us that Web3.0 is all about a three dimensional web. And I thought that web3.0 was all about personalization and the semantic web.

This is another proof that Google isn't really as good and interesting as it used to be. I hope that they'll be succefull in improving their search engine, because I really like Google!

Web3.0 definition from 2006.

SonyEricsson Xperia X1 an Apple IPhone killer?

SonyEricsson has launched their newest and cooles cellphone ever, the Xperia X1. It's pretty obvious that it is their answer to the IPhone, with a huge screen and tighter Internet functionality. On the technical side, everything seems really impressive: Better screen resolution than the IPhone, faster Internet connection, built in GPS and a better camera.

But that just isn't enough. The Xperia isn't near as attractive as the IPhone, no matter how impressive it's technical specifications. Because IPhone is cool and has a great interface. SonyEricsson is far from cool, and with a Microsoft Operating System, you can be sure that the interface wont be nearly as good as the IPhone interface.

Whereas Apple has one of the best brands in the world, SonyEricsson and Microsoft has not. Well, not when it comes to cool gadgets anyway. SonyEricsson are great for business phones, and Microsoft have a much better product base with Windows, Office and their servers, but they just aren't cool.

My guess is that the Xperia is an overpriced phone ju between the business segment and the young hip segment. And as always, branding is everything, not reaching any segment totally successfull is nothing.

Why is Widsets so slow and how should it compete with IPhone?

I recently wrote about reinstalling widsets on my phone, and now that I've been using it again for a while I am still a happy user. However, with the last update, it freezes for a couple of seconds while starting (and loading new content), and it also feels a bit slower than before. Of course, it might be just my phone or my connection, but I've never had this problem before.

Recently I also thought about building an app for a professional site where I'm a part of the development team, but I figured that the user count is still to small.
The API however, seems really good, so here is what I'd like to see:

1) More users: Partner up with mobile operators, making the widset program preinstalled and hopefully even with a shortcut. The advantage for the mobile operator is obvious, the preinstalled user could then match their needs, and have a operator custom background etc.

2) Better incentive for content partners: When a widset widget is developed to provide content to a site, widsets should provide a "stand-alone" version of the program to the developing partner. The stand-alone version would then be installable and maby even branded by the third party site, containing only content from the third party.
Everyone would be happy then, the developing partner gets a branded javaprogram that he's happy to market on his own site, plus all possible users using the normal widsets program. Widsets on the other hand, will get more content for their software, making it more popular, and a large database of potential customers.

Web3.0 - How the semantic web will bring you more visitors

So you've got loads of user generated content, you have connections to foreign APIs as Flickr, Twitter and their likes. Now what do you do with it? This is what the semantic web is all about: Bringing order two the information overload on the net.
When people ask me about the symantic web I usually say that without it you have data, with it you have information. By standardizing content tagging and publishing it on every site, web content becomes a huge information database.
Publishers may gather information from various sources, arrange the information and integrate the content on their website.

Example
Let's say that you have a travel site where users write a travel diary. People write about where they lived, where they ate and where they partied. In a perfect semantic environment another service (let's say a vertical search engine as urbanshortcut.com) could then use this data as an extension of their own. A query could be "Show me restaurants liked by people who doesn't like Burger King", with results from the travel diary.

What's in it for me?
Well, hopefully you can enhance your own site to get more and happier customers. And hopefully people using your content as a database will give you credit for it, or even kickback based on the quality and amount of data.

Is the semantic web really exciting?
In the long run the semantic web is extreamly interesting for all of us, since it will totally change the way people gather information. But as for now, the usability of the semantic web and information tagging is a bit limited. What every publisher should do is to mark their content as much as possible, preparing the web for more advanced usage.

Web3.0 - Why every website should focus on personalization

Where web2.0 was a lot about services talking to each other, user generated content and social networks, web3.0 is mainly about making the web personal. By generating custom content for each visitor, based on their own and matching peoples historical interests, the web experience will be richer and more interesting than ever.

Incentive for websites
The main incentive for websites to make their content personal is obvious - Increased revenue.
Personally matched content leads to longer visits, increased pagecounts and a better match to advertising. Of these a better match to advertising is the important one.

Example
Say that your current great content meant 3% ad-clicks per 1000 pages shown, a better targeted advertising could very well mean an increase to 4% ad-clicks. Since your content is also better matched than before, it's not unlikely that pagecount or visiting time increases with 5%.
These numbers aren't exagerated, but gives you a revenue increase of 40%.

Branding is everything - Future of media networks

In the age of user created content, free distribution and easy-to-copy application development branding will be more important than ever.
For trusted sources like morning newspapers this is a matter of survival: Aggregate the best content fitting your niche, create in-depth content and gather a social network around what you do best, and brand that content and network or loose your visitors and subscribers to another source. The origin of the content wont matter, only the quality and the critical view. Any source will do as long as you remain true to your brand.

This is a very big and difficult situation for TV-networks and newspapers. In five years, when distribution is a non issue, they must compete with every person on earth with a good taste and good reputation, in an environment where their brand is more vulnerable than ever.

OpenID - continued...

Well, since I'm a blogger I wont apologize for jumping to conclusions. Anyway, I just went back to a OpenID-site and hey, now it was a pretty great to be connected through OpenID - since I was allready logged in to my OpenID-provider, I actually just had to fill in my OpenID username to login. No password to remember, that is pretty nice!

Plaxo, Propeller and OpenID - Much ado about nothing

Ok, so now OpenID-sites are starting to pop up, this time alone I've found myself register on two sites supporting OpenID. Great, hah? After entering my OpenID, I've been transported to my OpenID-publisher, logging in there, then pressing "let them access my data forever" and going back to the registry process again.

But hey, in both cases I've been asked to fill in my email and loads of personal details. Then why use OpenID at all? Sure, my password is a little bit better protected, but the registry process, which isn't that fun to begin with, has only been prolonged by OpenID.

Of course, I get that I'm a sort of early adaptor, but I'm still a little bit disappointed. I thouth that with OpenID using sites where I'm not registered would be like a simple login-process, and registry pages a thing of the past.

I'm really looking forward to the day when I can download my Google or Yahoo OpenID manager, keeping my registry experience is a simple popup complete with a "trus this site with your OpenId?"-window.

Anyway, I'm still happy that both Propeller and Plaxo uses OpenID, since it definitely makes the web easier to use!

Share - it's fair!

Swedish politician Carl Schlyter has launched the site iwouldntsteal.net in response to music and media businesses large lobbying efforts on sharing media. Where media companies compares file sharing [of copyrighted material] with stealing. That comparison is fundamentally wrong, it's said on the site, since file sharing is based on someone creating a copy of media that he (or she) has bought. Another main concern of iwouldntsteal.net is that the lobbying groups are using their huge profits (they are very profitable) for lobbying, imposing laws on people that are totally unreasonable.

It's an interesting site on file sharing and piracy, complete with a pretty fun video.

Common Sence Search Engine Optimization for Web2.0 startups - SEO is neither good or evil!

In my contact with many companies there is a lot of talk about SEO, search engine optimization. Everyone knows that Search engines as Google are incredibly important to your sites success, but many seems to focus solely on SEO.

So here is my thoughts on Search engine optimization:

Follow standards
Be aware of how SEO works and follow optimize titles, keywords and styles when developing your site. Google should have index every dynamically created page of your site, and they all must have effective page titles.

Get external links to your site
Optimize your PageRank by getting links from sites with high PageRank. When submitting news, do it blogstyle and ping bloggindexes such as Technorati and others. Use Digg and digg-clones to get coverage of your blognews. Convince other blogs to write about you.

Focus on your users
Design your site for your visitors, not for Google. Don't focus too much on the SEO, a great site will get a high PR anyway, and happy users are more likely to link to you than unhappy ones.

Use the Long tail
Take advantage of the Long tail effect - when writing news, avoid general titles and try to be unique. It's probably easier to show up on the first Google result page for "Alchemists in Lithuania" than it is for "USA".

MeeboMe - maybe not so great after all

Well, I tried Meebo Me widget here on my site, and now I'm not as impressed.
Of course, the Meebo messenger was pretty nice to use, however it was hard to get notifications of new chats. But what was more annoying was that the javascript actually hanged my Internet Explorer after only 30 minutes of usage (yes I'm using both ie and firefox). That isn't acceptable.

I gave it a chance, I am still impressed with the site's interface, but I don't think I'll try it again for a while.

It would be interesting to hear your impression of the Meebo service.

Meebo - chat enable your blog!

Well, since they just got a crunchy award you've probably tested this service.

I am extremely impressed! If you don't know, Meebo is an web based messanger service, which is very useful if you're using Internet at a cafe, a library or at work where MSN is disabled. You log in with your msn, aim, yahoo, google talk or meebo account, and voila, you get the normal messenger experience as with a regular, standalone browser.
If you log in using a meebo account, you'll get all your messenger accounts in one window, which of course is pretty useful.

The service is very well designed and easy to use, every view and button does just what you expect it to, and the setup of the service is fast.

Moreover, meebo has a widget called Meebo Me that let you chat enable your blog. A few clicks for customization, and the embeddable code for your site of choice. As you can see, I've "installed" the widget here on my blog, so now all you fans out there can finally chat with me, and I don't have to give you my msn-login. Good for your privacy as well as for communication with visitors of your site.

So the service does what you expect it to, the interface is flawless, and they have a great widget feature. But what can be improved?

I have three requests for the Meebo team:

• Adobe Air functionality
  
• Gateway between your ordingary messanger acccount and the Meebo Me widget
  
• Mobile phone integration through widset or a similar service
  

The Adobe Air functionality is pretty easy. I think the one instance / all chats is great but at home I like to have a separate window for my chat, so the Meebo window is highlighted (blinking or something) when new messages is delivered.
Also, to make Meebo Me a successful service, I need Meebo to be my messenger of choice, autostarting on windows login.

Making Meebo acting as a gateway between the Meebo Me and your messenger service would be great; I want it to work even if I don't login to Meebo. This might be a tricky one to accomplish, but the Meebo team seems to be pretty good, so they can solve it ;) When Meebo releases their Air functionality this feature wont be as important either.

The Mobile phone integration isn't as important as the other functionality, but I still think it's a pretty nice feature. There are loads of free messenger services for your cellphone, but I'd still love the idea of just entering my cellphone number at Meebo, receiving a sms with the download link for my phone, and be up and running. An alternative would be to create a Meebo widget for Widsets, the mobile phone widget service.

Another thought would be to integrate Rebtel, EQO or Jajah functionality into Meebo - that would be a pretty nice Mashup.

So in conclusion: Meebo is a great service with the best interface I've seen. Try it out!

Steve Jobs 90 minute keynote in 1 minute - Apple, MacBook Air, IPhone :)

This is really cool, and you probably read about it on Techcrunch. But it is really cool, and I want that on my blog!

Anyway, Steve Jobs keynote speech at the Mac conference is not worth 90 minutes of my life. It is, however, worth one minutes attention. The Daily Manolo was kind enough to compress the speech for the rest of us, and here it is:

Urbanshortcut.com - web2.0 startup now in open beta!

Urbanshortcut.com is a brand new site for finding interesting places when going to European cities. It's a great site to visit before travelling to one of the featured cities (London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen) - you'll find places in four categories, Stay, Eat & drink, Shop and Nightlife, and all places are ranked by it's relevance to your profile.


Your profile is created with a two minute image test, and matches your profile to that of local residents of the cities you choose to look at.

I think it's a great tool to use before any trip to a European city! Why not try it out before the Next Web Conference 2008 and search for a cool nightclub or bar in Amsterdam!

Social networks of the future - personalized social networks...

In a near future, OpenSocial will come to a site near you. And this is how it will work:

1. You come to a social site because it's all about your niche interest. The site has great content in the niche, a professional editor picks the best of user generated content (blog posts, news, videos) and combines it with custom made material.

2. It's a great site, so you decide to join the network. When you join, you use your OpenId identity - no new password to remember, and you import personal data of choice from other sites that you use.

3. When your account is created, some standard third party applications are installed for you on the site. It's a messaging system, news aggregator, a forum, a niche marketplace, and a calendar, all picked out by the site editors.

4. Once in the network, you continue to take part of and create new niche specific content. When you create content, you can also share it on other sites where you are a member, but only if it's in the interest of that site and your contacts on that site. As you are registered, the niche site creates a profile for you, so that you get even better matched content (and probably better matched ads) each time you enter the site.

5. When visiting friends profiles on the site, you'll notice that some of the applications they have added on their profile page are of great usage for that niche. Some third party applications are used more broadly, and as on Facebook, you'll add some of them to your own profile. Applications spread viral, as on Facebook, but this time they are actually relevant to your interest rather than lowest common denominator applications.

Now the site is perfect for you, great content, relevant third party applications, and you only share with the crowd of your choice.

7. Four years later, your no longer interested in the niche (you don't play WOW anymore ;-)) and you choose to delete your profile from the site. You can save your settings to a private file, if you want to rejoin the site later without loosing your history. Your posts are still there, but once you delete your profile, the site owner can no longer access your personal data or email.

The next big thing - Not a single social network...

It's pretty obvious that Facebook has lost its charm of novelty by now. Superwalls, vampires and comparison tools aren't as interesting as they were for a few weeks back in 2007.

So what is the next step in social networking? Just as before, most people will continue to use Social networks based on the social site's niche. If you're interested in music, you'll go to a niche music site and communicate with your likes there, if you need to communicate to your real life friends, you'll be using a messenger service, and if you want to stay in touch with school friends you'll use a site as classmates.com.

What people don't want is to communicate to all contacts and friends in the same way. I don't want my professional contacts to see me in a picture drunk and I want to be able to create a online persona in my own niche not influenced on my status in say, High School. I also want to feel special and interesting, which I do on a niche network, but not on a very general network (lets face it, Facebook is as niched and interesting to be part of as the telephone directory). So the online behaviour of people will shift back to the one prior to Facebook.

At the same time Facebook and others has made us very spoiled - networks should be as easy to use as Facebook, people should be as easy to find as on facebook, and third party applications are great, even greater for a niched market.

OpenSocial and other related ventures are the answer - you'll get the best parts of the facebook / myspace phenomena, but you are the one in control. Simplicity with single login, single messaging tools, but different content, third party applications and active friends for each of your network. And even more important, not a single, powerful owner of all aspects of your social life!