http://tymesaid.com" rel="me"
http://yoscrivs.com" rel="co-worker"
http://domain.com" rel="sweetheart"
http://www.diaryofawebsite.com/" rel="friend"


The process is automatically performed when Google’s spider crawls a site. If one would like to clearly define sites and relationships, the owner of the site can use XFN or FOAF to describe relationships linked on a site. A relationship can be removed by removing the link from the site. Google’s spider will pick up the change the next crawl. The individual can submit for a re-crawl if he/she does not want to wait for the next crawl. This YouTube presentation by Brad Fitzpatrick explains the API in more detail.

The one thing I like about this API: the relationships are starting to have meaning. As we talked about in the last 3by9 podcast, most social networks give equal weight to “friendships”. If social networks implement this API then perhaps they will adopt levels of friendship to allow multiple forms of communication with friends.

One caveat that came to mind: just because I am friends with someone on MySpace doesn’t mean I necessarily want them following me on Twitter as they are different services with different goals (one might use one for professional reasons and the other for personal). In Brad’s presentation he mentioned finding a connection between profiles with completely different names (oopsies if the person did not want the connection known). Because of this, I would strongly suggest deleting old profiles and 3rd party blogs in the event those companies decide to participate.

Keep in mind normal links do not count, so I decided to play around and see what I would find for 9rules for “me” links. The following results came up:

lutrov.com
pownce.com/9rules
twitter.com/scrivs
flickr.com/photos/34943008@N00
randomconnections.com

Pownce, Twitter and Flickr are valid. I raised an eyebrow on Lutrov and Random Connections. Here is what I found in the source code for Lutrov:

http://9rules.com/" rel="me" title="Highlighting the very best web content in the world, and packaging it in a nice bow for you to unwrap."

This is what I found on Random Connections:

http://9rules.com" rel="me" title="This is one guy's collection of websites, all extolling the virtues of CSS and standards compliance. He is also the founder of Moveabletype.org, great guru of weblogs. Sections of particular interest are Whitespace and the CSS Vault."

Who knew Scrivs started MovableType? Note the “me” links are the only ones Google picked up as the guys and I do link to 9rules on our sites. Perhaps the generous use of “me” links are automatically generated by the software they are using, who knows? You might want to check and see who is claiming to be you.

Interesting approach. It will be interesting to see if this catches on.

Since Mike Arrington came up in the comments of the previous discussion, let’s use Mike as an example. He is considered “big” in the Web 2.0 arena so it is very natural that someone wanting to start a site in this niche would look at his site as an example of perhaps a minimal standard of what is needed on a Web 2.0 site. TechCrunch has links in the top navigation area, content on the left side, and links on the right. Very common set up. Now let’s look at it a bit closer.

Top Navigation: With the exception of the FeedBurner badge showing how many subscribers he has, all the of links point to TechCrunch or one of his other sites.

Content – Easy to follow (with graphics) entries.

Sidebar – Ads and more links. Some links are to his other sites that do not fit on the top navigation bar. There are links for his advertisers which are outbound links. The other outbound links are to his hosting company, the company that optimized his site and a counter that displays how many people are online at a time.

Let’s look at another example – Engadget. By far a dominating site in the technology niche. Their layout is somewhat similar. They do not have top navigation but the content (with graphics) is on the left, links on the right.

The copycat looks at these sites and thinks: Cool, links at the top, content on the left, sidebar with links. They might decide to be creative and put sidebar on the left, content on the right. This is when the copycat makes a mistake trying to be big when he/she is not.

Look at the links.

On both sites the links in the sidebar are advertisers, links to other content in their network (or other sites they own), links on how to subscribe to their site and their partners. Let me be blunt: the only way a different outbound link gets on their site is if they write an entry. They do not have a bunch of outgoing links on their sidebar.

The copycat thinks “links” but doesn’t have a network, doesn’t have advertisers and no real way to fill the sidebar. What do they do instead? Fill it with stuff they DO have – their MySpace, Virb, Facebook, etc. profiles, their Flickr photos, Twitter, bookmarking profiles, etc. They successfully fill up the sidebar. There is just one problem.

There are more outbound links to draw people away from the site than reason to keep them there. Mike has a Twitter profile that he keeps up to date and has a large following. So does Engadget. Do they link to it on their sites? No. Mike will link to things to test it out but they don’t stay long. Why?

Because the “big” site makes people pay to get those outgoing links with the exception of those linked in their entries and they are picky about who they link to. The copycat encourages their readers to leave, the “big” person understand the value in them staying.

If you are one to watch traffic, are you inviting people to leave your site?

Most sites don’t have streams so how does one keep up? Even if you did, are you really absorbing what is truly being said? Are you really listening? Does the person really want to be heard?

Are you able to block out the noise and focus on the important things?

I don’t think most people do. I think people spend so much time talking about stupid stuff they miss the important stuff. Just because text is flying back and forth doesn’t mean people are communicating effectively. I think the chit-chat gets in the way. The chit-chat takes away the time for the important things.

Because many people are missing the conversation because they don’t know where to look.

It’s a shame these things happen but I want to point you to a comment made on her site which sort of puts a double whammy on her open wound by Yada (and I apologize for taking so much of this comment but I want you guys to get the picture):

You get an ungodly amount of attention on flickr for two reasons; you are a very talented photographer, and you are a beautiful woman. As such, your work – even the so-so stuff – is viewed and favorited at an insane rate.

Once, just for kicks, I counted the views as you posted an image. Within twenty minutes it had skyrocketed and people were favoriting your image non-stop. And, while some of your images are truly good work, this particular image was nothing special. And yet, the amount of attention paid to it was HIGHLY skewed in your favor, and far from anything a normal flickr user might get for a photo that was even better than yours.

I hold no grudge, and think it’s great for you, but it does illustrate just how much “beauty” matters in this world. While your images are great, you would receive half the attention, and have half the articles if you didn’t look exactly like you do.

Thus, when you run into a little problem like this – one I’ve heard countless people on flickr run into – the supporters come out of the woodwork to wish you well and damn flickr. Again, it’s nice, but it’s an illusion. The average user doesn’t look like you, and no matter how great their work and how bad they got ripped off, they would never receive the support you do.

My point… Count your blessings and let the thing go about being ripped off. If you post images on the Internet, and they are as good as yours are, you can count on them being stolen. Period.

She got the support because of her skills, not because of her looks. Now don’t get me wrong, did her looks draw male attention? Of course it did, particular some of the more sexier images she put up. Would those people have stayed if she wasn’t talented? No. Are they showing their support because she’s cute? No. They are showing their support because what happened was wrong and I’ll even throw in the more greedy notion of some people wanting Flickr’s behavior addressed before it happened to them.

See, the company messed up by using someone popular. Yada is right in the aspect that there are may talented artists/photographers that don’t have the following that she does that 1) might not even realize they are being taken advantage of and 2) if they did would have a harder time than she did. It’s up to them to create that community like Rebekka did. We all have tools available to us…it’s the wisdom to use them.

Drawing the crowd is easy. Maintaining their attention is very difficult.

I’ve fought the battle of being female and hearing I accomplished what I did based on looks/gender/race. Yeah, I have a triple whammy. To avoid that battle, one that seems endless, I avoid pictures like the plague…sort of like the heavier person only showing face shots or conveniently putting a barrier between their body and the camera. I realized I was doing it in the past year but the real reason why is new to me.

I shouldn’t have to worry about gender issues but I do. It is something women will have to face because people like Yada are out there. And I don’t think that will ever change.

Another pointless discussion is the lack of business models for Web 2.0 businesses. I would expect this discussion from kids, but adults? Grow up.

YouTube was an example of a company without a business model. WRONG. YouTube originally had 3.5 million in funding to money wasn’t much of a worry at first. “YouTube has an advertising revenue model and plans to augment its infrastructure, as well as develop sales and marketing, to expand the company globally.”

Yeah, so much for no business model kiddies. What will be interesting is if all the people who have embedded videos on their sites will want ads appearing in the videos. Ads they have no control over. It makes more sense to have the ads in the videos since they can be viewed away from the YouTube site but only time will tell. Of course this will take some careful planning because usually people don’t like others making money off of their content without getting a piece of it. A video takes time and effort to make. Would you really want a company making money off of your video (especially if it is being downloaded thousands of times) in exchange for free bandwidth or would you being wondering if you could monetize it in some way? YouTube might not be as popular once the ads make it in. Matter of fact they might be better off offering a premium service like Flickr.

But they have a plan…get it?

The less brainy and more pressing problem is that with tag clouds, topics either gain immediate, widespread traction with the public, or they disappear from the cloud. Once they disappear, it is as if they no longer exist. Few users will ever find them. Network effects being exponential, what is immediately mildly popular quickly becomes artificially very popular, while what has yet to become popular never will be.

I am not a fan of tags, which is why I rarely talk them here. In Jeffrey’s post he writes the exact reasons why I lean away from tags. I’m not saying not to use them but they aren’t always efficient. I honestly thought it was my research background that was swaying me to shy away from them. If one is looking for a popular topic it’s great. For unpopular topics it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

It amazes me sometimes how mass amounts of people are quick to jump on the newest fad, without giving the first thought to how to improve it. Tags are cute but not efficient for accurately and efficiently locating data. In my opinion, tags should not be used as the primary navigational tool for a website/blog.

Let’s look at an example. Amazon has a Cordance feature that shows the top 100 words in a book. I picked one at random. I never read the book and never heard of the author.

Now let’s expand this. What if Amazon did this for the popular words used in the title of a book for each category as a way to aid users to find books of interest? If the author used the popular buzz words at the time the author’s book might do well, but buzz words change over time. What if the author didn’t use a word that accurately describes the book? For example, books about privacy use words like “protect”, “invisible”, “secret”, etc. which is fine when grouped with the other words in the title. If I was looking for the tag “privacy” I would miss it. If I looked under the tag “protect” I could have all kinds of books, many of them not about protecting my privacy. A popular book could get lost in the shuffle because the title doesn’t have a word that is the flavor of the moment. Or worse, what if the title did have “privacy” in it and so did 1000 other books. What good is that to me? Just because a tag is popular doesn’t mean the content within is good or what the user is looking for. Example, Flickr has a popular tag cameraphone. The tag is for pictures taken with a camera phone, not about camera phones themselves. That tag is essentially worthless because everything is in there…unless you want to look at pictures taken with a camera phone. What’s missing? What type of phone was used – the “parent” tag. Then it would be useful, especially if I was shopping for a camera phone. I could see the quality of the pictures and perhaps make a purchasing decision based on hundreds of different people using their phone. That would be efficient tagging power.

Give the article a read – Jeffrey makes very excellent points.

So what changed? Towards the end of the work day I find out Technorati received some feedback about the image. I was surprised since no one had contacted me directly or left a comment on Flickr or on my weblog. What I had previously perceived as corporate paranoia became a reality as I saw the feedback channel did not pass through me.

Rule #1: Don’t think you will aways be told when you mess up. 90% of the time they skip right over you and go straight to your boss – the person who can do something about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I failed to comprehend the effects of my actions on Technorati. I have always operated under the assumption that until I reach executive status at any company I work for I remain an individual voice and do not represent the organization. Just as weblogs and corporate transparency changed the world we love to interact with daily, it has also changed the way we see corporations. We establish relationships with companies through their engaged employees for better or for worse. The voice and actions of individuals become associated with the companies and organizations of their employ.

Rule #2 – that’s what usually happens – not being able to forsee the consequences of your actions.

Finally someone gets it! What might seem harmless to the employee can be damaging to the employer, which is why employees don’t have the right to do whatever they want, however they want and expect no consequences from their actions.

The end result in this case is that I have much more respect for Niall and Technorati. I think they handled the situation well and learned from it. If you live long enough eventually you’ll make a mistake. How that mistake is handled makes all the difference. Niall’s post is written very well and explains what happened, what his thought process was and why his thinking was skewed, along with the end results from those actions. He apologized and shared his experience…I highly suggest reading his post. Companies can benefit from this on how to handle situations like this and employees can learn from it so they don’t end up in the same situation.

Now, someone will fire back a comment or email to me that says “if you don’t like it, opt out”. And that’s a valid option. But I want to participate in the loosely-connected information ecosystem. I just want to know that people building platforms on this stuff are thinking about the cultural implications of the choices they make

Those are some of his thoughts on a post Rebecca made about finding offensive content via MLK Technorati’s tag page.

She mentioned something interesting:

I called Technorati to register a protest, but was informed that Technorati had no mechanism available for removing the photo other than turning off the entire Flickr feed. Worse, I was met with polite protestations that Technorati is not in the business of editing the Web, just delivering it. I was also given some vague heebee-jeebee about “community standards” and how “the community would decide”.

That’s a problem. People can upload anything to Flickr because it’s their space (ok not anything there are copyright issues). What they upload may not be appropriate for Technorati and it will reflect negatively against Technorati. The problem is not Flickr’s – it’s Technorati’s. According to Rebecca’s conversation with Technorati, they don’t feel the need to be bothered.

What will end up happening? People are going to talk about the possibilities and it will force Technorati to take a stand, either do something or accept the consequences. All it takes is for a couple of photos like this to come up when doing a search for something simple…like “girl” or this when doing a search for MLK to tick off enough people to protest the service because they feel the usefulness is gone.

Anil makes a good point:

But how can we hold an author or creator accountable when their creation is removed from the technical context, and more importantly, the social context, in which it was created? I say things on this site knowing that the sarcasm will be understood by all of my readers except those who email me. If someone applies an “anil” tag to the post, and someone views the “anil” tag aggregation page, will that display convey the fact that I’m being sarcastic? What if the “anil” tag page is the first Google result, and someone who’s never met me and doesn’t know my sense of humor finds that first?

Read Anil’s and Rebecca’s perspective and make your own mind.

My opinion? I think culture will dictate Technorati make a change. Most people would feel the photos are appropriate at Flickr but may not integrate well with Technorati and if these two services must be merged together, then there ought to be some sort of control mechanism. Otherwise that’s like driving a car with no brakes…it’s only a matter of time until you crash and burn.