Samples from Wondir.com

I like that word, that's actually an accurate term for what I feel needs to be created, a community of online communities so we're not all locked behind the walled gardens of our particular communities/friends networks, like documents before the web. Saw the word first at Ross Mayfield of Social Text's blog, and I think it was coined by their new programmer Sunir Shah at the Meatball wiki. I think Wondir will serve as a meta-community as it grows. Blogging about it as a sort of meta-social network here.

2004-08-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

P2P Threatened

This is pretty bleak. Was considering experimenting with the weme pool on a P2P network, although hadn't thought of it as a file-sharing network so much as a weme (wiki-meme) sharing network, although I suppose at some level it's the same.

2004-08-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

Meme Experiment

Just found this at Scobleizer, can't get it to format right though:

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!
This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to
show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are
connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most
influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will
be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for
the GUID for this meme (below).
The original posting for this experiment is
located at: Minding
the Planet --- results and commentary will appear there in the
future.
Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below)
and inviting your friends to participate -- the more the better. The data from
this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the
connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.
The
GUID for this experiment is:
as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst(this
GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all
blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that
participate). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please
publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto
the original post (see URL
above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal
animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this
meme.)
INSTRUCTIONS
To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire
posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own
information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below,
please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to
preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier
for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)
(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://www.sifry.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/162
(2) I found it via "Browsing the Web"
(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.blogspot.com
(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 08/03/04
(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 15:34:00
(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Seattle, Washington, USA
OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
(7) My blog is hosted by: Blogspot
(8) My age is: 31
(9) My gender is: Male
(10) My occupation is: VP Online Community
(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software:
(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Blogger
(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 06/01/2003
(14) My web browser is: IE
(15) My operating system is: Windows XP

2004-08-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Weme words

Working through the idea of a "weme pool," and I've latched on to the word "weme," short for wiki-meme. Here are some words that work with "weme" as I think my way through this idea:

Wemeware: open-source software built to access and engage with the weme pool.
Kweem: a "naked weme," or a weme that has no hair, no changes to it.
Hairy weem: a rather obscene term, maybe I should change that, but this is a weme that has been tagged with any of an infinite number of possible tags to help others identify it in the weme pool (category, preference, buddy tag, security tag, etc)

2004-07-27T16:44:00.000-07:00

Kaolin Fire

Got to meet Kaolin in Berkeley while I was in town for the BlogOn. Had some chai and walked around a cool part of Oakland. We talked about social software and played around with the idea of a sort of wikimeme pool, supported by a P2P network, whereby you could push any content, such as a question/statement/document/whatever into the weme (short for "wikimeme") pool, and others viewing the weme pool in real time could pull anything out of the weme pool, change it or respond to it, and push it back into the weme pool, thus creating this live pool of interactions.

2004-07-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

Technorati's Makeover

What do people think of Technorati's new look. Very clean, very green. Nice big bold "world live web," I wonder if I'm going to have to take down GlobeAlive's old "world live web" header, hope not, but see a "TM" next to Technorati's logo.

2004-07-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Alive Again

I've decided to revive this blog for freeblogging. At Wondir Land I'm representing Wondir and at the Daily Wondir I'm showcasing the best of Wondir, but here I can just blog about whatever.

2003-05-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

LinkenIn Launches

Seems there's a great deal of excitement surrounding the launch of LinkedIn. I joined and already have about 900 contacts in my personal network. The idea is that you only interact with people in your web of trust. You can't get spammed because if someone wants to interact with you in this network, they have to go through one of your immediate contacts, your immediate ring of friends, and of course your friends are not going to pass spam on to you. Seems like a solid system and I'm going to use it myself to meet contacts for GlobeAlive.

2003-05-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Inspired First Blog

Mark Carey, one of the most active experts at GlobeAlive, has started a Movable Type blog here. The first post is all about the conversation marketplace, and how it's changing things for the better. He was inspired largely by the Cluetrain Manifesto and Doc's markets are conversations thesis, which was itself the primary inspiration behind the creation of GlobeAlive.

2003-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Connections

GlobeAlive at its core aims at being the first opt-in, comprehensive, keyword-searchable database of people available for interaction on the web. By introducting The World Live Web, we hope to usher in the day when it is as easy to find and interact with relevant people on the web as it is today to find and interact with relevant documents on the web. Accordingly, there are potential tie-ins and partnerships with any concept or company that emphasizes the web's capacities as a personal-communications medium over its capacities as a document-display medium. Here are a few of the most salient connections:

The Social Software Alliance Nebulous and undefined as it may be, it's probably safe to say that at the very least The Social Software Alliance aims to create a much-needed infrastructure for the interaction of people on the web that will, we hope, one day rival the currently established infrastrucure for the interaction of websites on the web. GlobeAlive, at its best, could serve as the people-based search engine that enables one person within this interpersonal infrastructure to find and interact with another person or group within it-- matched by keyword/criteria/condition. Ideally, we could one day use GlobeAlive to find others participating in the web of people just as easily and accurately as we use Google to find websites participating in the web of documents.
Jabber Inc. & the Goal of an Open-Source, Universally Interoperable Instant Messaging Infrastructure GlobeAlive is not only a search engine of people, but allows one person to interact by instant messenger with another person found in the "people listings." But without a universal, interoperable instant messenger/chat client, this has proved to be a formidable and stifling task. We hope to partner with Jabber or otherwise use their open-source code to create a chat client along these lines. Furthermore, if Jabber (or AIM/MSN/Yahoo/IRC, etc) chose to include the option of participating in The World Live Web as part of the instant messenger download process, this would greatly enhance not only the richness of the GlobeAlive listings, but the value of the instant messenger being downloaded and used.
XpertWeb Britt Blaser's Xpertweb is an agreement, not a company, that allows participants to access each other to buy, sell and otherwise transact using self-hosted pages on both ends and thereby bypass corporate intermediaries-- all within an incentivized system that encourages mentoring and participation. GlobeAlive could both display XpertWeb participants in the GlobeAlive listings and provide current GlobeAlive participants with the option of participating in XpertWeb via a mentor. In relation to the topic below, as Blaser emphasizes, XpertWeb may also have the capacity to serve as the self-hosted foundation for a p2p identity management infrastructure.
Digital Identity There's a great deal of interest in the creation of a digital ID infrastructure with concentric layers of accessibility whereby our basic information, our likes and dislikes, as both consumers and social beings, is carried with us wherever we go on the net, and oneday the world in general. First, it would allow for single sign-in to all participating sites on the web, and (if we so chose) companies would know who we were, what we wanted and what we didn't want without having to ask us. If this idea spread to interactions with other people on the web, GlobeAlive could further enhance the benefits of participating. Part of creating one's personal ID profile could include whether one wished to participate in The World Live Web, and if so, under what conditions, under what keywords, etc, so that one could be "discovered" by people who knew the precise type of person they needed to find, but not their name. Important links in the Digital ID world: Ping ID (founder Andre Durand, Also see: Eric Norlin and Bryan Field-Elliot) Source ID, the Liberty Alliance, XpertWeb.
Google & the Standard Search Engines At first glance, GlobeAlive is generally characterized as a "live search engine," because it presents itself as such at the beta site: GlobeAlive.com. On the beta site, you run a search and you get people as search results, people that are often available for chat right now on your search topic. Because the "people listings" look much like website listings, they can be placed easily via an XML feed on any standard search engine. If Google were a partner, for example, and you ran a search on "social software" on Google, GlobeAlive people listings could come up as well. This way you might connect with people who wished to be found under a search for "social software." The same listing partnership could apply to any standard or specialized search engine.
Affero & Online Communities Affero "Rate. Donate." is a solid example of the kind of online community that could partner easily with GlobeAlive. If you're listed in an online community of just about any kind, from chat rooms to mailing lists, ideally, you can be listed in the GlobeAlive search listings as well, and according to your chosen keywords/criteria/conditions. Single-sign among partners is also a real possibility. Ping ID, for example, is already capable of creating "federated" sign-ins for partnering sites.
Blogging & Wikiblogging It has been strongly suggested to me that each GA participant's blog and/or wikis be included in the GlobeAlive search results, so that searchers can see what the people in the listings opinions are, and/or interact with them via a wiki, rather than simply seeing a static profile page and interacting offline solely by offline messaging. All three blog companies are potential partners: Movable Type, Blogger and Userland. Furthermore, the GlobeAlive search engine could search participants' blogs and wikis as a secondary means for finding search matches (provided the participant chose to be found in that fashion.) Feedster, a new blog engine built by Scott Johnson, for example, could possibly partner in this capacity. As a parting thought, Bryan Field-Elliot, mentioned above, believes that blogging software is the perfect foundation for housing a personal ID infrastructure.
Cell Phones & Palm Pilots GlobeAlive emphasizes standard instant messaging as the primary means of interacting with people in the search listings, but that's only because it's the medium that's easiest for us to implement right now. As a searchable database of opt-in people, it can be applied to any medium of interaction. If you want to be found under the keyword "wifi," for example, because you sell a related product or just like talking about them, chances are you're not in front of your computer prepared to chat at any given time, but are more often near your cell phone or palm pilot. Thus the connection. Telephony, etc. We're not there yet, but it's a natural evolution of the concept.
Other Tie-Ins Mitch Ratcliffe's strip-mall infomediary concept, file-sharing networks such as Gnutella, expert sites such as Google Answers , ActiveWords, smartmobbery, moblogging, The World of Ends (Doc and Dave Weinberger, ThinkBot, reputation engines and webs of trust. There are certainly more and I'll add them as I think of them.

All in all, GlobeAlive, although it is a company, is about participating in the World Live Web concept, which pretty much ties into every web application that emphasises the personal-communication aspect of the web as much as the document-display aspect of the web.

2003-04-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Flyblogger Gets High

Doc discovers spraypainted mountains.

2003-04-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

More on the SSA

Ross Mayfield of SocialText makes some sober comments on the Social Software Alliance BoF here. I hope the wiki is active. I should go there now.

2003-04-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Social Software Meets the Head Lemur

Some are saying it's all hype, but GlobeAlive is as social as software gets, and we're doing it, so I can say that much. Since I'm not a programmer, I can only talk about it, and listen to other people, and work on GlobeAlive's place in the social software alliance. The Head Lemur gets into it here

2003-04-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Can it Happen?

I wonder if it's going to happen. Doc talks a great deal about the possibilities of a digital ID infrastructure with concentric layers of accessibility whereby our basic information, our likes and dislikes as both consumers and social beings, is carried with us wherever we go on the net, and oneday the world in general. First, it would allow for single sign-in to all participating sites on the web, and (up to the point we chose to let them) companies would know who we were and what we wanted without having to ask. And so would other people if the idea spread into interactions with individuals on the web, ie GlobeAlive. Eric Norlin is all over this space. There's a lot of skepticism and the words not out yet, but Eric makes strong arguments for suspending disbelief that it's a real possibility. Digital ID clearly has tie-ins with the social software alliance as well.

2003-04-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ranking the Excitement

I was suprised that there was no mention of social software in Glenn Fleishman's top six most important messages at the ETCon. I agree that the swarm theory keynote was fascinating.

2003-04-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

Summing Up My Sentiments

Dave Weinberger accurately sums up my sentiments regarding the social software alliance BoF at the ETCon here. I blogged along the same lines on Friday I believe, that despite not being able to put my finger on why, the social software BoF was the most exciting hour or two at the conference for me. There's nothing we can sink our teeth into yet, but it's clear that something's brewing in the minds of a lot of very capable and ambitious people who want to change things.

My own two cents is that the web was made for documents, but its importance as a social medium is outstripping that original intent. I founded GlobeAlive because I didn't want websites, I wanted people, and there was no browser or search engine for finding people, no infrastructure that did for finding and interacting with people what the web had done for finding and interacting with documents. Here's some of Dave:

A small brouhaha is brewhaha-ing over whether "social software" is mere hype. (See Frank Paynter, for example.) After all, the category is about as broad as "software for people" and includes technology as old as holding hands.

And yet it's the thing I came away from the O'Reilly Conference most excited about.

First, I consider social software actually to be emergent social software. That narrows the field to software that enables groups to form and organize themselves. Yes, it's still broad but at least it's not coextensive with any software that has a user interface.

Second, it doesn't much matter to me whether the software is new or old. I'm excited about the fact that that type of software is now being recognized (i.e., "hyped") as important. And my question is: Given that most of the software is old, why is this category now becoming hot?

Sure, in part it's because consultants (like, um, me) and writers (like, um um, me) now have something new to flap their gums about. But, more important, I think and hope it's because the central idea behind emergent social software is now becoming acceptable: We're beginning to think that letting groups start without rules, letting people organize themselves as they see fit at the moment and in that context, is actually a good idea and not just a waste of time, a hippy dream, or a threat. Gosh, maybe a wiki isn't only an invitation to vandals but is a useful way for people to collaborate! But to think so means trusting groups of people to work well together even when their choke collars are undone.

2003-04-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

Britt on Doc on Mystery Man on Markets

Britt Blaser, the man behind XpertWeb, talks about the evolution of the Western understanding of markets as transactions, the old school mentality, to markets are conversations, the ClueTrain thesis, to markets are relationships, the epiphany Doc had when meeting the mystery man (can't remember the guy's name) on a plane after ClueTrain came out. Here's Britt:

Then the Internet clued us that the market is a conversation and money is just the punch line.

Doc reports that, soon after the ink dried, the Clue Trainers started hearing from people whose cultures had not lost the art of transactional conversation. They pointed out that real markets are more than conversations, they're relationships, crafted one conversation at a time, often over decades and generations.

2003-04-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

Alan Kay Has 4D Vision

Lisa Rein talks about the Alan Kay keynote at the ETCon. I was in the back, so I could see both of the big screens. One showed the 3D environment from Alice's point of view (as in Alice in Wonderland) and the other from the Hare's point of view, and they were walking through the links and interacting and each web page was a 3D world and we were all gaping at the possibilities. I was, anyway. Feasible? I don't know enough to know. He sure made it sound as if it was.

2003-04-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

Seinfeld at GlobeAlive (Almost)

Mark Carey, one of our most active new experts, 111 sessions in his first week, is a Seinfeld expert. He knows all the episodes. I tried to think of the most obscure episode I could, but he still got it. Despite our beta status, which brings in a horde of irrelevant traffic, he's having some solid sessions. Here he talks about what could happen if GlobeAlive takes off. I find his text-to-speech-to-mobile phone idea rather ingenious:

Ever since I signed up last week, I have been think about the concept of GlobeAlive, and I have been getting more and more excited. The combination of search and chat is a powerful one. The ability to search the Internet for information and be able to immediately communicate synchronously with experts in the field, who may be located half way around the world, could the "community" of the Internet to new levels. The power I see is not just in getting valuable, expert information relating to you search query, but in the communications that will begin to occur in the process. Imagine the people you will meet! Most Internet users don't have (good) reasons to meet people online - but everyone uses search. It enriches the the search process greatly when you are meeting people along the way. When I think about GlobeAlive, I see a person - in the not-too-distant future - entering a search on a computer. On the other side of the world, a mobile phone rings and is answered. The searchers question is played to the expert using Text-to-Speech technology, and the expert answers by voice. The world really is becoming smaller! I also see the possibility of the world's first peer-to-peer search engine, comprised of millions of connected users, answering each others search queries, the way they trade MP3s today -- and meeting people every step of the way...

2003-04-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Bernstein Gets it Right

Got an email from Michael Bernstein this week. His informal analysis of the current shortcomings of GlobeAlive makes perfect sense to me and is right in line with what Kaolin and I are proposing. Kaolin blogged about similar ideas here. The main difference is the web of trust addition, but my guess is Michael will support that. We'll have to see. Here's what Michael had to say:

What I was suggesting was not a complete elimination of GA as an
intermediary, as GA can still provide very valuable (perhaps essential)
value adds.

For users the value add would be anonymity. So, I would suggest that the
user chat client (primitive though it is) be retained, with only minor
modifications.

The user chat client connects to the GA chat proxy, which *behind the
scenes* connects to the expert using the preferred
protocol/service/account. The expert sees the chat session appear in
their usual chat client, be it AIM, ICQ, MSN or Jabber. The key here is
that the chat proxy is on the GA servers, not the user's desktop.

Importantly, the user *does not* see the expert contact info, just a
handle in the GA chat window.

So, the GA service provides the user with anonymity from the participants.

The participant, meanwhile can continue to use their preferred chat
software without having to download and install the GA desktop client.

Now, participants want to be rated honestly, and complete user anonymity
works against this (or so it seems at first). While the user conceivably
values anonymity from participants, pseudonymity from GA is most likely
all that is needed in most cases, so requiring a pseudonymous login by
the user in order to *rate* participants (or, as we discussed earlier,
to give their ratings more 'weight') would likely not be too onerous, as
long as the completely anonymous option still exists.

As another incentive for users to register, you could give participants
some more discretion over accepting user requests. Making it possible
for participants to opt-out of interacting with completely anonymous
users (as opposed to pseudonymous users) would be one future
possibility, but there are others.

The basic idea should be not to *require* registration of users, but
only to make it advantageous to do so, after they've had a chance to try
out the service for however long they like.

One further note. You said in your weblog: "[...]once the user and
expert/participant connect, they no longer need GA and will bypass the
engine in the future."

This is true. There is nothing you can do about this no matter what.
Don't fight it, or try to put in place measures that make this more
difficult, or you will only end up shooting yourself in the foot. Again
in comparison to Google, they didn't get to be the #1 search engine by
embracing a walled garden approach.

If a particular user/participant pair takes their relationship
'offline', Then to a certain extent, GA *has done it's job*.

However, participants already have a natural incentive to continue to
use GA (they want more good ratings), and users have an incentive as
well, (continued access to a deep pool of experts). Just because their
particular relationship is no longer being mediated by GA, does *not*
mean that they each don't still have a relationship with GA.

2003-04-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Getting Gamed

There's a hole in GlobeAlive. It's in the rating system and needs a patch. The ratings are too easily gamed, so our search results aren't valid. We've mulled over several solutions. Kaolin, in an email to me, as well as a detailed analysis on LiveJournal, suggested that only members be allowed to rate experts. At the conference, Peter Jones of SoundRatings.com (temporarily down, so link might not go through yet), strongly suggested employing a p2p "web of trust" reputation system. Many others supported the web of trust solution, including Lee Doolan of Affero.

But Kaolin and I were making a distinction between member users and member experts. This might be a necessary distinction, but then again it might not. Presumably, most member users want to be found in some capacity, just as they want to be able to find other people. So as part of the member sign-up process, not only could they choose how they will find people in the GlobeAlive database, but how they themselves want to be found-- by what keywords, etc. If indeed we can eliminate the distinction, at least upon sign up, than the web of trust may be more complete, given that the member users get to participate. Furthermore, the member could also choose not to be on the listings. Just got an email from Kaolin. He thinks it may be more trouble than it's worth. So I'll continue to search for a solution. Suggestions welcome.

2003-04-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Conferences are Conversations

For me, anyway. The keynotes were terrific, but the conversations were what I'll remember a year from now.

Affero was there. Henri Poole, CEO, was kind enough to hang out with me by the Affero booth for the better part of an hour. He explained to me how Affero was positioning itself in the new gift economy of the web. He explained that when someone gives you something of value on the Web, whether it's access to their online book, art, blog, etc, something that you appreciate, you find yourself indebted to them. And Affero helps you pay them back, whether it's by contributing to their favorite charity, or contributing to them more directly. Either way, you get to rate them. It works mostly with authors at the moment. Their rating system is very attractive, and GlobeAlive is trying to learn from them. There may be some partnership possibilities. We talked about the social software alliance and how great it would be if we could have a single sign-in web. Partnerships would be made infinitely easier and one could come and go to Affero and GlobeAlive and all the other member (or perhaps non-member) communities on the web that you wanted. Also had a chance to talk to Lee Doolan, the Affero programmer, who taught me about the intracacies of "trust metrics," "the web of trust," "reputation systems" and really strengthened my awareness of the need for systems of trust on the web, and more specifically at GlobeAlive.

Also met Al Chang, who runs Walmart.com. He was the one that told me about Affero and what they were doing. We were talking about the power that having the web at your fingertips wherever you are brings to conversation. As we talked he would surf the web to enhance the conversation. I mentioned GlobeAlive, he went there. I mentioned problems with our rating system, he went to Affero to help me find a solution. When I asked what he did, he mentioned Walmart.com, and went to the site. Having his live laptop right there enriched the conversation in a way that had never occured to me.

Speaking of laptops as conversation tools, I met Kevin Marks from Apple. As an amateur philosopher of science, I had lots of questions for him when I learned he studied physics at Cambridge. As we talked at a dinner party, he mentioned Wolram's theory of "computation." I didn't understand at first, so he reached below the dinner table and pulled out his apple laptop, pushed his plate aside and launched a program demonstrating Wolfram's idea. The idea fleshed out showed patterns of unpredictability that helped reconcile models of free will versus determinism and I realized there would be no hope of my understanding if he hadn't brought out his laptop and shown me. He suggested I read Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and The Blank Slate.

2003-04-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

Synthesis

Here is the first example I've seen of someone seeing GlobeAlive as a synthesis of instant messaging, identity management and personal interest profiling. Thanks to Stuart Myles for the insight.

2003-04-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

"Ambiguity is Good!"

I went with Blogger, I believe, because I found it first and it was easy to start. I may go to moveable type soon. It seems to offer more for prolific bloggers. But for beginners, as I still am, Blogger seems the easiest. Ev Williams, founder of Blogger, proved this to me at the Google booth at the ETCON conference. He setup Esther Dyson with a new blog in what seemed like two minutes. Here's a pic Doc took of the newborn blog. He also set me up with a more fully-featured blog and solved my Blogger issues with permalinks in a matter of seconds.

Interestingly enough, looks like Esther's very active with her 48-hour old blog. Already she's blogged a philosophical breakfast she had with David Weinberger, who I met for the first time at the conference. In the blogged breakfast, Weinberger starts out "Ambiguity is good!" Wish I could have met Esther for more than the split-second at the Google booth. Weinberger was a fascination.

2003-04-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

Social Software Getting Press

Looks like the buzz is getting around about social software. Nice to know that GlobeAlive is being associated with them. Didn't know we were on the SocialText mailing list, but glad to be. Looks like Cogworks found us there and checked us out.

2003-04-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

Social Search

Ross Mayfield of SocialText, who I met at the conference, used the term "social search" when I mentioned GlobeAlive. I asked if I could use that term, because it's exactly the idea and he was fine with that. I'm thinking of integrating the term into the language of the site.

2003-04-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

The Technorati Phenom

When I first saw Technorati, I thought it was a household name site, since there was so much talk about it and it was such an ingenious method. Turns out it just got started just a few months ago, but David Sifry, founder, told me at the conference traffic doubled last month. Really down-to-earth, authentic guy. Very vocal at the social software BoF. He didn't want us to talk too much about the project, but to get it started now, start doing it now. His urgency was contagious.

2003-04-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

Kaolin has a Blog

I just suggested Kaolin, the GlobeAlive programmer and part-owner, start a blog. He replies that he's had one for two years. Here it is. I'm going to go check it out.

2003-04-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Real People Genius

There was a lot of genius at the conference. But mostly, these guys were real. I can only remember one guy in a suit, and he really stuck out. People wore whatever, and just said what was on their minds, which was a lot, and that was the idea. Part of my fear going was that no one would talk to me because I didn't know anyone. But that didn't happen, the opposite happened. Everyone wants to know what you're all about, what's your idea. And I like that.

I got to have real conversations without about 10 people, but that was perfect.

2003-04-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

All about ETCON

Christian Vladimir talks about the conference. So many are talking about Clay Shirky's keynote, including Christian, that I really regret not being there for the whole thing. I think I was there for five random minutes of it. Marc Canter was really taken by it. And I'm sure what he had to say, based on what I'm reading, has implications for the SSA.

2003-04-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Social Software Alliance BOF

Possibly the most exciting hour or two for me at the conference was spent in the Social Software Alliance group. Mitch talks about it. I agree that hype or no hype, it's probably a good thing.

The strange thing about it was that there seemed to be no substantial agreements made, no consensus, no breakthroughs. I know of one person who even slept through part of it. What I found striking was actually not what was said, or any progress that was made, but the feeling that I had, and that hopefully some others had, that they were in the presence of something brewing, something still nebulous but that would be profound once concrete. I can't remember who it was, but someone made reference to the Manhatten Project. The reference was actually something of an attack, and the attack, I felt, and most others did too it seemed, was absolutely silly. Moreover, I don't think anything scary would come out of the whole thing, so the connotations of the reference should be categorically discarded. At the same time, the feeling of magnitude of what everyone is hoping to build is something that seemed very real in the room. I hope GlobeAlive can participate, and can't wait to see what comes out of this.

The most vocal were probably Marc Canter and David Sifry. I'll have to check the wiki. One guy got passionate: "we've only got one chance at this, let's not fuck it up!" Well, many people got passionate, can't find the bof online right now though, so can't go through the people, although I'd like to. Anyone have a commentary/transcript on the bof?

2003-04-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Big ETCON Blogathon

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is just wrapping up today. Heavily blogged, and rightfully so. Laptops, mostly macs, filled the conference rooms and people were blogging and wikiblogging the events and quotes as they happened. Live blogging, really. The ETCON gave me a chance to keep quiet and listen to people much smarter than I'll ever be. Here's Doc's initial link list.

2003-04-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

"Open Source Never Had a Meeting"

Britt talks about why meetings are more problem than solution, and why. His actual quote is "Do you suppose that explains the success of Open Source? It's a huge operation that never holds a meeting."

2003-04-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

Cop Sees the Light

Two days ago the King County Sherrif pulled me over and gave me a ticket for going 30 in a 25. Then at 7am yesterday morning I get a call that wakes me up. It's the sherrif. He says he feels bad about the ticket and says he's not going to submit it, and tells me not to pay. "I really feel kind of weird about it," he says, "it was kind of an arbitrary ticket. Sorry about that. My bad." Or something to that effect. I hope this man teaches at the police academy.

2003-04-21T12:58:00.000-07:00

XpertWeb Explained

Here's a solid technical and practical description of XpertWeb, Britt Blaser's emerging enterprise.

2003-04-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

What's the Web For?

Doc talks about The World Live Web, an idea largely inspired by Cluetrain and his "markets are conversations" thesis:

I've become convinced, just in the last few days, that we've been limited in our understanding of the Web, and of the Net, by the real estate metaphors we use to make sense of it: site, address, location, home, delivery... Even commons. Those are all necessary yet insufficient to a full understanding of what the Web is for.

Yes, the Web is a place. Sure. But what do we do there? Is it just a place to put up sites? A place where we store and forward messages and publications to each other? Or is it a place where life happens? Is it a place where we can truly live?
The World Live Web first came to me as a one-liner from Allen when he was describing GlobeAlive (an idea he'd developed over the last two years without me knowing a durn thing about it). The idea of a search engine that would let you find people rather than sites — real human beings and not just their addresses — at first seemed audacious in the extreme.

But then I thought about the centrality of search to everything we do — not just on the Web but in life (from white pages to directories in the lobbies of high rises). And I thought about how the concept of a live Web brought together a whole pile of allied concerns and development efforts: digital identity, instant messaging and presence, markets for expertise, syndication, mobile messaging, social computing, P2P, directory and metadirectory services, strip mall infomediaries, weblogs... It put all these emerging technologies in a single new perspective: a live one. (Even if a lot of what happens is archived or stored and forwarded.)

2003-04-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

XpertWeb & the Reputation Engine

Britt Blaser , founder of XpertWeb, blogs about his new partner Kulikauskas Andrius, who is working on a reputation engine and "web or references" running on "kindwords." Britt likes the idea, but emphasizes the importance of a required rating system over and above a reputation engine:

If I'm looking for a Java programmer for a particular solution, and I need it by Tuesday, how do I use the accumulated kindword entries to find the perfect programmer? I want the kind words, of course, but I need quantitative ratings and average rating reports and numerical comparisons that act as pointers to help me get to the these little blocks of text. All of that info might be available elsewhere, but surely it will be captured on the site of the person with the reputation, (or in an RSS feed) so, that I can click on a link to an order form as soon as I'm satisfied that I've found what I need. The Xpertweb approach is to require the buyer to provide the kind (or not) words and a number grade (01-99%). Then we can look at all the Java programmers who have sold n or more tasks involving, for example, graphic representation of numerical data.

2003-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

The Simplest System

If The World Live Web were to reduce itself to its core conceptual foundation, the searchable live database, it would look something like this: To sign up, experts/participants would state their keywords and their handles for one or more instant messengers, or any other contact information. Users would run a search and all experts/participants who signed up for that keyword/phrase would show up in the results. Beside their listing would be their handles at various IMs, contact information, etc. The user would then have to plug that information into their own instant messenger, or make the phone call, etc.

The advantage to GA is obvious-- no chat software to create. The problem with this idea is that it's not anonymous, there is no rating system, it requires more work on the user's side and once the user and expert/participant connect, they no longer need GA and will bypass the engine in the future. So right now I feel that road is probably a dead end, but still fascinating in its simplicity.

2003-04-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

POGE

GlobeAlive may have something to learn from the Principle Of Good Enough, found at Doc's blog and commented on here. Mainly it appears to apply to protocols, but certainly could be applied to The World Live Web as a whole. We are constantly considering ways to add-value to the system, but we need to approach tantalizing new features with caution. The value is really in the "live search engine." Everything else has been done. So if we start adding live cams and white boards, push-paging, file-sharing, and so on ad infinitum, we run the risk of obscuring the invention in value-added features.

Ideally, GA is the live engine, and everything else is left to the parties on either side, who can use their messengers to interact any way they please, with the cams and IMenvironments and so on.

On the other hand, unless the model is changed, The World Live Web is still responsible for both the quality of the listings and the user's experience, so for now we still need to look for the point of diminishing returns when it comes to features that will entice experts/participants to add and keep their live listings, as well as entice users to prefer GA over conventional search engines.

2003-04-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Gnutella

Scott Knowles suggested I post the following question on my blog:

"How can p2p file sharing translate to GlobeAlive?"

Any takers? Scott likes the decentralized aspect of Gnutella. I'd never heard of them and will be sure to check them out.

I have just had a look, and it' s a very interesting concept. File sharing is certainly part of the long-term GA model, but I always assumed it would just be a natural extension of the instant messenger interaction, such as the "Send File" button on Yahoo messenger. But perhaps there is far more to it. Gnutella is anonymous, for one, which is a difference they emphasize.

2003-04-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Jish is Back

Jish is back blogging again and has helped me with my blog problems via Doc.

2003-04-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

Trillian Possibilities

Enough people have mentioned Trillian to me lately that I should probably consider its importance. There may be others, but Trillian is the only instant messenger I'm aware of that works with all other messengers-- Yahoo, AIM, MSN, ICQ and soon Jabber's Exodus, I believe. The suggestion, along the lines of what Michael Bernstein has argued, is that GlobeAlive use an interoperable chat proxy on the user side (something like Trillian) and let the experts/participants use their own favorite instant messenger, whatever it may be. This would dramatically increase both sign-ups, and more important, quantity of participants online at any given time, as there would be no GlobeAlive Desktop to download or keep logged on.

We're already working on making GlobeAlive compliant with a Jabber client to eliminate GA Desktop, but this will still require experts/participants to download a new messenger. If indeed there's a way to do it, it's certainly preferable to let the experts/participants use their own favorite messenger (which they already use regularly) to interact with their visitors at GlobeAlive. But Trillian, unlike Jabber, is not open-source, and without a formal partnership with them, we could not use their code on the user side.

I wonder if there is a Jabber client that allows users to chat with any of the other major IMs? In other words, a Jabber client that does what Trillian does? Conceivably one could be created from hacking a current Jabber client, but our programmer mentioned that creating a Trillian-type chat from scratch is an enormous undertaking and not one he's prepared to even consider at this point, which is understandable.

2003-04-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

Wiki Alive

Apparantly wikis, to some degree, turn blogs into conversations, which means they might have a place in the GlobeAlive model. Here's where I first learned about wikis and here's Joi Ito's wiki with a discussion about what it's all about.

2003-04-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Virtues of Jabber

We're switching the current GlobeAlive Desktop IM to Jabber, which is a big and necessary move for us. Here's Doc on the The SIMPLE case for XMPP, the initial core of the Jabber protocol:

XMPP and Jabber are taking off because they are (truly) simple infrastructural building materials that are highly compliant with the NEA nature of the Net.
SIMPLE is being pushed by IBM and Microsoft for a variety of reasons; but that very variety may be the core of a problem.
...Meanwhile, any company, any customer, can develop its own Jabber-based IM system. Countless numbers have done exactly that, including IBM.
SIMPLE may be a fine protocol when it's done; but it's not. And from the sound of what Microsoft says above, it risks violating POGE: the Principle of Good Enough. Without POGE we would have no TCP/IP, no HTTP, no HTML, no SMTP. In other words, no Net, no Web, no Net-based email. POGE also accounts for the success of XML and Linux. It's why XML-RPC moved faster than SOAP.

2003-04-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

The Word

Doc suggested I use Technorati to check out what people were saying about GlobeAlive. Found the following bloggers and here is what they had to say:

Scott Knowles:

Peoople. Globe Alive is Google for finding people: The World Live Web.
Not since I discovered blogging have I been as thrilled with a new idea on the internet as I am now with Globe Alive.

Daniel Von Fange

GlobeAlive - not yet primetime.

GlobeAlive is definitely still beta quality. Although there are great posts on the web about what it can become, at the moment it is not well implemented.

The Head Lemur

The Next Big Thing
Real time communication with folks who have information to share, expertise to offer, and are willing to do so on a one to one basis is going to revolutionize the way folks can use information to improve their lives, their business, and their society. Globe Alive is the next big thing.

Tom Maszerowski

Check out GlobeAlive, it's a search engine that finds live people you can help answer your questions. For instance, here's the results for homebrewing beer.

Christian Vidmar

Matt Mower: The expert web comes alive. Couldn't be more alive than this, after having read about GlobeAlive from Matt I went there and met...Matt! Live.

My thanks to those who think GlobeAlive has what it takes. I should add that Daniel Von Fange is right that we are not ready for prime time. Perhaps I need to put "beta" on the front page. We are certainly a grass-roots beta site without money trying to make it work with a small but growing following of people who just really like the idea. He's also right that the system defaults to "all experts online" when there are no matches, which means you get a lot of people asking you live questions you can't answer. This is a temperory measure that we plan to eliminate as soon as we have enough targeted traffic.

Hopefully, GlobeAlive will catch on and truly serve as a live alternative to the Googles of the world one day. Until then, please bear with us.

2003-04-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

Bernstein's Critique

I got an email from Michael Bernstein today. He makes a strong point.

I was interested in your weblog posting "The Difference". Eliminating
the barriers for users is obviously important, but you've still not achieved the simplicity of Google.

Here's the main difference: Google doesn't require you to register before they index your site.

Increasing the number of experts indexed by GA would make the service *much* more attractive to users.

The way to do this is to get webloggers to include an 'expert profile' in some XML format or other and link to it from their weblog, in much the same way that FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) files are right now. Then, you could crawl the internet looking for experts to index, or changes to profiles, much as Google crawls the net looking for pages to index.

Said profile could include information on IM accounts, and then, in order to continue to provide annonymity, GA would have to act as an IM proxy for users (and proxy to multiple IM services).

Notice that this also prevents lock-in, as anyone can index the same info.

If Michael is right and there is such a way to search live people/bloggers without having them sign up with GA first, it would make GA a true search engine, and make all the difference in terms of sheer quantity of live matches. There are complications, however, which may lead to a compromise solution, as Michael points out:

1) you need to get the IM account info from the participant in some way. Ideally without them having to do anything. The closest thing I can think of to 'nothing' is having them include contact info in an autodiscoverable way on their site/blog (like rss autodiscovery). I realize that this isn't *actually* less work at this point, because no weblog tools currently support this automatically, but it could certainly become part of the standard weblog setup/service over time.

Which leads us to:

2) Spam. How do users prevent their autodiscoverable contact info from being abused? I don't have a good answer to this, unfortunately. The same problem exists for email, and people have been becoming more reluctant to include an email on their websites and weblogs.

So, an easier solution for now might be to still require self-registration, but replace the GA Desktop download with a form field
that lets the participant register an existing IM account, to enable the proxying I outlined above.

2003-04-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

Ratcliffe Writes Again

Mitch Ratcliffe, an author who I met on the phone last week and the man behind the Strip Mall Infomediary concept, says that blogging made him want to write again. After years of writing short 600 to 1200 word columns, he found himself writing an 8,300 word article recently The Invisible Dogma (a sobering analysis of misconceptions surrounding the application of technology as a fix for broken human processes.) He is prolific again and feels blogging is largely responsible for his reinvigoration:

Something happened to my brain last week when I finished the draft of an 8,300 article -- you see, I'd been writing 600 to 1,200 columns for years, many of them each week and usually as a sideline to what I did for "work." It got so that I was unable to write beyond that limit with any real success. By the middle of 2001, I just stopped writing, because it had become formulaic and not fun anymore.

Blogging made writing fun again, largely because there was nothing to worry about: length, typos (though I am careful about this), or fees (I'd gotten to the point where if I didn't make a certain amount per word I didn't want to write, like a lazy star outfielder who has several years left on their contract). That article on Invisible Dogmas broke a barrier in my head and I am thinking about writing not just one but several books over the next couple years. I haven't written a book in almost 10 years, so this is a big thing for me. And I've been thinking how to use this renewed energy.

2003-04-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

Another GlobeAlive?

Just got an email from Alf Eaton, the creator of the alpha site Thinkbot. This is about as close as I've seen so far to another "chat engine." Alf says that we beat him to it, but his idea still sounds very distinct to me.

2003-04-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

Permalinks

Anyone know how to fix permalinks at Blogger? Just found the following so maybe I'm not the only one:

Now if they can just get around to fixing the Blogger permalinks which have been broken since the templates blew up on April 1st...

2003-04-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Kind Words from Strangers

Thanks to Doc's reference to GlobeAlive last night, GlobeAlive has been the recipient of many kinds words from strangers who hopefully will soon become friends. Perhaps the kindest words came from Head Lemur who had at the very least the kindness, and at the very best the insight and foresight, to call GlobeAlive "the next best thing." I sure hope I can prove him right. Here's some of what Head had to say:

Information without education is the old way of communication. Blind faith in the acceptance of news by organizations whose principles are being bent by ratings, marketshare, and advertising, are being examined and pointed out with increasing regularity by simple folks whose eyes are being opened to the potential of communication and discourse in near real time.

Doc's announcement of Allen's new enterprise, Globe Alive, points to the next stage in this revolution in communication. Globe Alive is the next big thing.

Real time communication with folks who have information to share, expertise to offer, and are willing to do so on a one to one basis is going to revolutionize the way folks can use information to improve their lives, their business, and their society. Globe Alive is the next big thing.

2003-04-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

Feedster

Just got off the phone with Scott Johnson, founder of Feedster, a search engine that specializes primarily in finding bloggers. We're exploring possible parallels between the Feedster blog search model and the GlobeAlive live search model.

Scott has modeled Feedster on the simplicity of Google. You can see from the Feedster front page that they're all about simplicity. We discussed the importance of being a one-trick-pony. Here's Scott on Feedster:

Feedster is a search engine for what is called an "RSS Feed". An RSS Feed is an XML tagged file which allows a website, news site or blog (actually any site) to provide to the world a list of its current contents. RSS feeds can contain all kinds of information from news to blog / weblog posts to stock quotes and more.

2003-04-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

The Difference

Britt Blaser, founder of XpertWeb, sent me an email today regarding Google Answers. I have actually never used that site, but I have been watching it since its inception and I'm glad to hear Britt is watching it too. He has precise stats on their traffic, their growth and their revenue.

Basically Google Answers is a first class version of the standard expert site model.

Non-live, blind-email based interaction.
Members only.
Pay per answer.
Choose category

To a degree, Google Answers is a success, but I think sticking to the restrictive standard expert site model is the main reason why Google Answers had only 500 users last week while the Google search engine had over 1 billion. Except in special cases, it seems people want the answer now, they don't want to be a member first, they don't want to pay for the answer before they have a relationship and they'd much rather use a search box than a directory.

What I was hoping to do with GlobeAlive was to not only have all the advantages of human response, but too keep all the advantages of the search engine format (at least for first-time users of the site):

Answers right now. How many people would use Google if Google got back to them with website matches within 24 hours?
Anonymous. How many people would use Google if they had to be a member first?
Free. How many people would use Google if it cost per search?
Search box based. How many people would use Google if it didn't have the simple search box format?

I would venture to guess that the answer to the above is about 500. About 500 users per week would still use Google under the conditions above, which is the traffic that Google Answers has right now. I think this is a very clear signal that the simplicity of the search engine model is the superior system, but what that search engine produces, websites, may not be what everyone wants.

The most important question for GlobeAlive is: how many people would still use Google if it listed live people, rather than websites, as search results? Live people that matched your keyword and could answer your question right now, free, anonymously, by chat. I would guess the number would be less than the current 1 billion per week, but still in the tens or perhaps hundreds of millions. At the very least, it would be a whole lot more than 500.

I hope Britt agrees with me. I do believe that people need to be paid for their time, but not before the first "hello." And I do believe that memberships are useful, but not before one has had a chance to use a site. I also believe that blind email-interaction is a good medium, but not as an exclusive. Live interaction, answers right now, is very often preferrable. A fast nickel beats a slow dime. Finally, I do believe that directories are important, but a database of people, like websites, also needs to be effectively searchable. The search box is the way people are now used to finding things.

2003-04-17T02:10:00.000-07:00

Like Father, Like Doc

Doc's "markets are conversations" thesis specifically, and Cluetrain in general, served as the initial inspiration behind the formulation of the World Live Web. I knew in the abstract that I wanted something along the lines of a live one-stop-world of people, not websites, but I didn't have any idea how to do it, or whether it could be done. My father's idea crystallized it into a formulation for me and the conversation-based, live search model (the world live web) came into being soon thereafter. The World of Ends is Doc's latest conceptual breakthrough and one which in many ways takes off running where Cluetrain left off. Apparently I'm not the first person to create a new model from Doc's ideas, and I'm sure the World of Ends will do for many people what Cluetrain did for me.

2003-04-17T01:51:00.000-07:00

Doc Speaks

My father, Doc Searls, known to many people as the co-author of The ClueTrain Manifesto , has been kind enough to offer his analysis of the GlobeAlive concept:

It's basically a 'live' search engine: one that finds human beings who might be available to answer questions in real time. There's a lot of synergy with what Britt is doing with Xpertweb, and what Mitch has been saying about the Strip Mall Infomediary, both of which also, like GlobeAlive, could stand to benefit from the kind of identity infrastructure I wrote about in Making Mydentity, and expect to see coming out of SourceID and similar efforts. There are also natural synergies with smart mobbery, social software, moblogging, and most of the stuff in Marc's blogrolling column. Even ActiveWords, to name another potentially interested party. And, of course, instant messaging with presence detection, which is why Allen and friends are currently developing a new Jabber-based client.

2003-04-17T01:11:00.000-07:00

Blaser's "Commander Data"

Britt Blaser very succinctly sums up the value of both XpertWeb and The World Live Web with the notion of "Commander Data." Blaser's own words:

You know what I want? I want Commander Data. I want him in my coat closet, using no resources until I have a question and then he activates, solves my problem and goes back into stasis (he might be expletive-activated and then expletive-deleted). Because he's Commander Data, he does everything almost immediately, so I'm willing to pay him a lot per minute.

I'll bet that's what you want too: an expert on the software you've got, not more software for you to be inept with.

2003-04-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

Possibilities

Had a conference call this morning with the always interesting Britt Blaser and his close friend Mitch Ratcliffe, who I met for the first time today. Both are entirely out of my league in terms of Internet mileage and insight, but they were kind enough to listen to the idea behind GlobeAlive and offer suggestions on how to make it work.

XpertWeb Model

Britt and Mitch are exploring some new ideas for XpertWeb that may bring a new dimension to the money-making side of the XpertWeb model. The idea centers around a third-party trust account that works as a unique form of insurance for both parties involved. Beyond that I neither know enough nor have license enough, probably, without their permission, to go into further detail.

2003-04-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

BlogAlive.com

Looks like Britt Blaser likes the idea of the BlogAlive.com and has taken it upon himself to purchase it for us. I'll be thinking of ways to give bloggers their own live niche in "the world live web." Maybe Britt will have some ideas in connection with his upcoming XpertWeb as it rapidly approaches completion this year.

2003-04-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

Emphasizing the World Live Web

We made some substantive changes to GA today. We're attempting to emphasize the "world live web" idea over the GlobeAlive name. Richard Moose built us a nice "world live web" logo on our front page with a lunar look to the GA logo in the background. He's also experimenting with some chrome looks and some new icons.

Seeable Search Results

We've also made changes to our search results page which now has a clean white background.

The Importance of Being Generic

Maybe the most significant change is in the names of the participants. We've stopped calling all the participants experts and have opted for "participants," the most generic term available at the moment. We don't want to ciphen off any interested group, given that GA works for almost any real-time communicative interaction, not just asking and answering questions. All the front page links and sub-page references were changed.

2003-04-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Blogging Alive

It's possible there's a connection between GlobeAlive and the blogging movement. Blogging is about people-- their opininions, their lives, their interests, their position on the day's events. Bloggers want to be heard, and they want to be plugged in to what other bloggers are saying. GlobeAlive may be able to help that happen.

Bloggable Search Results

In terms of connecting people, GA could help connect bloggers, so that the GA search results would include bloggers as another subset of the "people results," which now include the categories-- experts, business owners and conversationalists. But that's not particularly revolutionary, as Google and other search engines may already do this better.

BlogAlive?

It's more likely that the GA chat-based search engine has more to offer bloggers in terms of live blogging, a BlogAlive. I see that BlogAlive.com is not taken. There are several possibilities on what this would be like and I have to think about them.

2003-04-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

XpertWeb

After listening to Britt Blaser, founder of XpertWeb, I'm beginning to see how his model fits in with GA and with the Identity project.

The XpertWeb Advantage

Britt has created a simple agreement that will allow XpertWeb to grow without any corporation behind it. Every transaction would involve two self-hosted pages, so that no third-party would serve as the go-between. Anyone who buys or sells products or services, which is of course everyone, could join XpertWeb. One would not be joining a company, but merely participating in an agreement.

2003-04-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Live Search Engine

We just broadened the front page concept at GlobeAlive to include the business owners and conversationalists as well as the experts. I hope that helps return to the idea of a live search engine rather than an expert site, which GlobeAlive is not.

2003-04-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

The World Live Web

The original idea of GlobeAlive was even more abstract than the current site. It was the "world live web", an entry point where the user could tell a live person what it was they wanted or needed, whether it was information or a product or service, and the live host operator would connect the user with a live person who had the answer, the product or the service. A live, one-stop-world.

2003-03-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

Testing a link. This should be a link to my father's blog:

2003-03-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

GA and Identity

There may be a deeper parallel between the mission of GlobeAlive, which is to create a search engine of live people, rather than websites, and the mission of PingID, which appears to be to create a data set for each individual on the web that automatically tells advertisers, companies (and perhaps other people in general) what they're interested in and more importantly, what they're not. GA could help if this concept was extended to person-to-person interactions.

The Core Concept of GlobeAlive

In it's most abstract form, GA intended to help do for people what the Internet did for information. Right now, if you want a piece of information, you can use a search engine and get it, thanks to the web. But if you want a person? The WWW links websites, but it doesn't link people. Not really. If I want to talk to a person, I have to go to chat rooms, or find out a phone number/email address/Yahoo ID, etc. But how do I know in advance who I need to talk to? All I know is that I need an answer, a problem solved, and that search engines aren't helping me. I know that someone out there online right now has my answer or my solution. I know the kind of person I need to talk to, but there's no way to just punch in a keyword and find them.

How to Be Discovered

The idea is that the internet might be a better place if everyone online had a profile of keywords (or any other form of data set), etc that they chose to describe themselves/their product/service, etc. Then their business (or in some cases personal) contact information, whether it's chat/phone/email could be found through a search engine when people punch in their keyword(s). Of course, one of their preferences in such a profile could include whether or not they'd want to show up in such a search result at all. But if someone is selling a product or service, or would like to meet people that share one's precise set of interests, than it would make sense to be in the "people's" search results. GlobeAlive has already used this model to make a "chat engine" so that anyone who is available for chat on the search topic at hand shows up in our search results.

2003-03-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

We're considering getting as many of our experts at GlobeAlive.com to join the blog movement. It would help visitors know which expert to choose and help experts talk to the visitors when they're not live. It would enhance their profile page enormously. Do bloggers chat much? If so, we should probably try to find ways to bring as many bloggers on board with GA as possible.