Category: Technology

Twitter’s Business Model

So, a session on Twitter’s business model. There is no idea what this is, so it may be an interesting discussion.

Twitter seems to be focusing on their traction. Andrew Parker is the presenter, or discussant. He did not introduce himself, so I asked.

He is starting to speak about different kinds of business models, such as generic and native business models. People are speaking about service charges for sending and receiving sms text messages.

I have no idea where this discussion is going. I will give it 3 more minutes before I change to another session.

Traction can precede a business model, and while Biz Stone has gone on record claiming that Twitter does not have a business model and is only working on traction, they have still gained funding. Twitter has a huge data set, and there was some discussion about what to do with this set of data.

Should Twitter be creating bots (such as weather), or should they continue to allow others to create these based on the Twitter data source? How about bots that bring data into Twitter?

How about if Twitter started adding ads, like Facebook has done? Facebook started this after the critical mass, and perhaps that is what Twitter is doing? Perhaps also they can have an ad every 20 Tweets or so, and then charge a few dollars a month.

I wonder if that would make people move to another service, as the next shiny object! Interesting how the different ways people access Twitter shows different business models.

Identity and the Future of Social Networking

What is wrong with social networks? There is a problem about having to move back and forth with identities and social networking.

The room is full, with people sitting on the floor. Glad I got a seat and an outlet at the beginning of the session. Do we need a protocol to fix all the variety of networks? He then asked 3 questions:

Have you heard of OpenID?

Have you heard of CardSpace?

Have you heard of Data Portability.org?

Many of the larger companies are going to begin providing OpenID’s. However, most of the companies are not accepting OpenIDs, thought that is starting to change.

How can I move my social networking information back and forth with me? This reminds me of the Robert Scoble issue when he was booted off of Facebook.

Thus, what can we do to fix this?

Is this really a problem to fix? Do people really care about moving around information vs. just starting anew?

Perhaps only simple solutions should be focused upon, such as changing the avatar and propagation of this.

Does this relate to data accessibility? Blinked Data is an example.

How can these things be linked together, especially with permissioning of information based on roles and multiple personas. OpenID is really about extracting identification and authentication.

Lots of issues about how these different systems are problematic, but solutions seem to be in short supply. There are some ideas here and there about possible ways to address these problems, though I have never heard of any of the sites or organizations that are being mentioned.

Looking around the room, I see 13 laptops in the room. A number of those are not open, though  a few are on and around Facebook. Interesting, I do not see many people liveblogging the session. I wonder why that is the case? Perhaps people would rather interact and speak and discuss rather than process and record? I wonder that a number of people do not even seem to have laptops with them, which is not something I would have expected when I came.

Passport is the authentication system for all the Microsoft systems and applications. 

The idea of variety of OpenID providers is good, but who will authenticate who these people are and why we should trust them.

Hurray – lunch break until 3:00! Hurray, as I did not realize how hungry I am.

Good discussion, but I do not have any solutions to any of these problems. More interest in them, and perhaps that is where the value is . . .

Does Liveblogging Add Value?

I decided to offer to lead a session. I do not have a presentation to give, as I do not want to use the one Robin and I presented at Northern Voice. I am much more interested in discussing this with other people. My session is scheduled to begin in about five minutes, and nobody is here yet.

Perhaps liveblogging does not add value?

For the life of me, I cannot get the projector to work in presentation mode. I had the same problem at Northern Voice, and am starting to wonder if something happened to my plug. Mental note to self–call Lenovo tech support.

Ahh, some people attended, and we proceeded to discuss liveblogging, Twitter, and the value and usage of the two.

I am convinced there is more discussion and research to do on this topic.

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WordPress for CMS

Took some doing to get connected to the network, but it was as if somebody flicked the switch, and the group of us waiting for the WordPress session to start are able to get on.

It is now 12:10, and the WordPress session that ends at 12:30 still has not started. Ungood.

William Stratus (sp) is from Toronto and came down for the day, and stated that he stayed with a colleague in Harlem. He then said he did not get mugged there. I found the humor a bit caustic, especially for an outsider.

There is discussion about how people use WordPress for things beyond just blogging.

He was then speaking about people, and mentioned Garth Turner’s weblog in Canada. www.garth.ca 

There then was some discussion about how people change WordPress, especially about templates for content management so WP does not look like a blog. There is some work done with using WP templates, where the line between CMS and blogging is a tight line. There are a lot of wifi network issues, and people are starting to leave as the presenter keeps trying to get the network to work.

Unfortunately, the speaker was so focused on trying to get wireless, that he could not role with the technology limitations and ended up not speaking about or presenting or discussing much.

Half the people have left the session by now, and I will follow . . .

Welcome to BarCampNYC3!

There was a welcome by somebody who did not introduce himself. He did seem exciting though, and then asked who has NOT been to a BarCamp before? Most hands were raised. Interesting.

Carl Skelton (cskelton@poly.edu), director of Integrated Digital Media at Polytechnic, then spoke. He is hosting a number of the other events like this, and he invited us to consider using Polytechnic University for these sorts of events. I hope this will be the same once NYU buys Polytechnic. He had some interesting slides, and then spoke about the NYU and Polytechnic combination. There are a lot of relationships between the two institutions now. 

I wish I would have remembered my camera.

There was then the thanks and recognition for the sponsors of the event.

There was the discussion about filling in the schedule wall, which is something that is common for BarCamp unconferences. If we find ourselves in a room that is not for us, such as the subject matter is not right for me, then leave and go to another one. We are all participants, so we should try to fix any issues that come up.

Put a red dot on our nametags if we do not want to be tagged. We then crowdsourced and named the rooms.

Cider and muffins are next.

I asked about the tag, and Eric told us that the tag is BarCampNYC3. There is wifi all over, it seems like a friendly start of the day.

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