My thoughts on “Youth and the News” circa 2006

In early 2006 I was kindly asked by the Canadian Media Research Consortium to give the opening talk at their Youth and the News conference. At the time I was editor at Dose. 

My talk went down about as comfortably as an, um… enema with the mostly older crowd of publishers, news directors and other execs (I had some support from the students). Anyway, obviously a heck of a lot has changed in media and technology since April 2006 but it’s fun to look back. I hope you get something out of the slides, even if it’s just a laugh. 

How to build a successful Facebook application – insights from FacebookCamp Toronto

Last night the GigPark crew, a handful of my friends and what seemed like most of the Toronto tech community descended on the MaRS building for FacebookCamp Toronto.

FacebookCamp was part of the Facebook Developer Garage series and focused on strategies and tips for developing a successful application on the Facebook platform.

The highlight of the night for me was a presentation by Meagan Marks, a platform manager from Facebook. She offered some great insight into user behaviour on the site, clearly laid out all of the ways you can integrate with Facebook and offered some strategies for making sure your application benefits from “the Facebook effect“.

I was going to write up my notes but Joey deVilla has already done a much better job than I would have over on the Global Nerdy blog (thanks Joey!).

The key points I took away from the event were very simple:

1. Successful applications offer self promotion for users (on my profile as well as other areas of Facebook) and social comparisons based on actions (am I smarter, hotter, better travelled… than my friends?)

2. Successful applications often integrate very deeply into Facebook (apparently some developers have found up to 14 different ways to integrate: messages, profile actions, the wall, share buttons…)

Happy Facebook developing everyone!

Thanks for lunch eBay

I was lucky enough to go to an eBay Canada event today to meet Jeffery Cole from the Center for the Digital Future. Jeff spoke about the research he is doing on the social, cultural and media implications of internet usage and showed slides from his 2007 Digital Future Report.

He mentioned all of the points you’d expect in a presentation about internet usage:

Growth of user generated content:
> 21% of teens keep a blog, share photos or maintain their own website.
> Internet infrastructure not set up for all of this uploading – 6 megs per second download speeds and almost nothing up.

Significance of social networks:
> 43% of people on social networks say that their online connections are as important as their offline connections; 49% for teens.
> “MySpace are not going to keep their teenage users. For teenagers a social network is like a night club – when the uncool people show up they leave.”

The Internet influencing politics:
> 40% of Americans online feel they are gaining political power because of the web.

I asked if he thought we would see the same culture of star political bloggers in the 2008 presidential campaign or if he thought we might see something more widespread and grassroots. He talked about politicians needing to be more careful of what they say (i.e. citizen journalists are everywhere) but I’m not sure he answered my question.


I thought the two most interesting points he made were the most basic.

1. The ‘always on’ culture of broadband is changing how we use the web: We don’t log in now – we are constantly logged in. In fact, logging out now takes more of an effort. This completely changes our relationship with the digital tools around us.
2. Internet penetration is at 100% of those willing: His point was that today not having the internet at home requires more of a decision than having it. Penetration in the US and Canada still isn’t at 100% but it’s not because people have been slow to adopt, it’s because they are making a conscious decision to keep the web out of their homes.

Happiness project

Earlier this year Adrian G. White of the University of Leicester attempted to plot happiness on a world map. I couldn’t help download the image and sift over it, comparing countries I’ve lived and countries I’ve visited.

This takes me back a few years to when my wife and I decided to leave London. We were trying to figure out where to live next and to help make the decision we plotted weather patterns, proximity to nice beaches/hiking/snowboarding, scores in the recent ‘quality of life’ surveys and a handful of others things. After all the research we settled on Vancouver – it pretty much has it all – and enjoyed a fantastic year living there.

It was a strange experience doing the analysis. It might have been the first time in my life I really, intently, thought about what makes me happy and what might make me even happier. How often do you think about what makes you happy?

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the link to the map.

Is this how you kill interest in a public Beta?

I’ve loved the idea behind Spanning Sync since the day I read about it (essentially it’s a little application that syncs iCal with your Google Calendars – very handy!). So, I’ve been watching their blog daily looking for them to announce a public beta.

Yesterday my prayers were answered but then a few hours later (before I’d had a chance to register for my account) they closed the doors again. Having a customer chomping at the bit to get their hands on your product is a great thing. But making them wait, and wait, and wait – not so good. Hopefully I’ll get an account over the weekend, then I can post about how it was worth the wait ;)

I’ve been reading a lot about running a good beta test in the last few weeks. It’s something our little startup is planning for right now. Michael Arrington wrote a great post about it this time last year, but my best research has been just watching other sites launch their beta products. The way you announce your launch, which browsers you support and your responses to customer problems all say so much about your company. People form attitudes about you over this time that might never fade, so it’s an important thing to get right.

An great resource for entrepreneurs from Harvard Business School

Lately I’ve been looking at a number of different business models for the startup I’m working on and doing a bunch of competitive research. I’ve found a lot of useful resources but none as good as the cases from Harvard Business School.

Each case looks at a different business and an important decision they needed to make. They often go into detailed category analysis and give you background information that isn’t easy to find (I think each case is prepared with the help of the business being discussed). The best bit?… the full searchable list of cases are available on the HBS website and they only cost $6:50 US each. We’ve brought a few, and I tell you they are definitely worth it!