IansStreamOfConciousnessResponse
From The Vision Thing
IanSays (March 28th early) :
im waiting for the hardproblemstosolve post :)
There's a lot of froth that people who desire not to be poor (err all of us?) kinda wouldn't mind being in on.
I think of froth as nearly everything that non-geeks wouldn't use. Twitter: definately froth... Google: definately not.
Flickr: Potentially not (photobucket and facebook still serve more pictures i think; real normal people don't get this whole commenting on things?).
Upcoming: potentially not froth, but still mostly geek users?.
FB cut me off at 1000 chars, so the rest is below Paul's response.
Paul Robinson at 5:21pm Mar 28
I disagree. I think twitter is a very clear, very focused very direct app that helps tacit experience exchange (i.e. it's about people talking to other people, it's almost as good as SMS), whereas Google Calender is just *dumb*.
Upcoming and flickr I won't discuss: owned by Yahoo. They can go and fester in their own indifference.
There's an idea here you know... "froth or not" which in itself would be froth :-)
Anyway, for now: http://visionthing.vagueware.com - watch that space
IanSays (March 28th, later than 5):
Facebook: judging by the amount of vampire/ninja requests everyone gets this is firmly adopted by the non-geeks, and therefore isn't froth. Has potential for further evolving. They seem proactive on stopping spam, and on the privacy issue. But £15billion USD. On yer bike. Will it evolve into something that will make it reaaaally easy to organise a night out. Will the sub-apps start to make money ? I notice the travel ones have started making ties with travel companies - they've got to be making money. But the ones just showing ads for other fb apps.. on yur bike. Ill give you £20 for your app. To take it foward they're going to have to make it much harder for 20 invites to be sent out, and much easier for people to remove it.
Blogging: not froth. But my god there is soo much shite out there, and its getting really hard to find the good stuff (google searches are contimated with them, making it really hard to find facts... blogs are often disjointed points of view, not fact!)
RSS: Feeds are not the be all and end all. Feeds of event data with dates in are useless unless going into a cal (into google cal is great) - think about what happens when events change/update data. Not froth, but yet to really reach potential outside of geek usage?
Mebo: Clever stuff, but froth. IM aggregation is good, but is prob better suited to the desktop i.e Pidgin. Trillian was something I would pay for mind, but Pidgin has almost caught up now. Mebo is ueful for those who work in companies 'clever' enough to block MSN - but they'll block mebo too eventually.
Skype: Not froth. Even with great IM, people still prefer to talk. Network and device capabilities are still catching up really though. VOIP generally will be reduced to 2 or 3 players after the forthcoming shakeout. Once VOIP is integrated to all mobile devices, it still is a mobile voice network killer.
Ebay: Not froth. It's not web2.0 though. Its a bit shite in fact. But it is the dominant force in online auctions. They will have plenty of competitors in the next 2-3 years, but ultimately will have the money to do a rebuild, and blow their competion away again - but probably in the process loosing their near monopoly.
Mobile Video: People wont EVER watch films on their mobiles. But the odd funny video clip or football goal. Yes. (Small laptops however, that's a different story).
Basically web2.0 is a pint of beer with 90% froth at the top. If you were served it you'd laugh, and think people were taking the piss. After the shakeout (or within a couple of years) 5-10% of the companies will be left.
/end original fb post
IanSays (March 28th later):
+ Not entirely sure how google calendar is dumb ? Ever since I gave up on using Outlook I've been looking for a replacement I can use at home and at work. It's pretty much fitted the job the last year or so. When I finally realise (and I admit Im a bit slow on this) I could import feeds from my facebook events, and upcoming events feeds I really started to like it. I share my calendar with one mate, but when there's a decent fb app to show your next weeks agenda to selected mates then Im another step further on... there is one, but it doesn't seem to work..hey ho.
I like the idea of a frothy app called 'froth or not'... upload 'pretty pastel logo here'. Vote. :) Oh I don't like SMS either. Mostly caus of the typical shit phone interface. Going to have a go at writing a small app to send msg's to mates though via the clickatell api...sometime.
Andy Mitchell (7:30 Mar 28) says: Second (third?) the FrothOrNot app idea. Nice little meme with just a sprinkle of irony thrown in for good measure. This Ruby on Rails (not froth, more like treacle) thing might make it easy to create :)
Twitter I love, even if I don't use it so much. Web 2.0's other great success (after reduced costs & two way medium) is new forms of efficient/expansive communication. Twitter is global communication at it's purest.
Digg: good idea (restrict data overload) ruined by people. Fail simply because it harnesses people into a giant Mechanical Turk (damn, that's what I missed in my article - that's the other viewpoint of Web 2.0).
What is the poster child for froth? Needs to be something iconic yet ultimatley pointless.
I said in an email to Paul/Steve -> for me this Cause/Manifesto is really a crop burning. I think we're all starting to sense the shit we've emersed ourselves in. We need to burn it off to create the fertile land for the next wave. For me that means creating a small group of people who genuinely are hellbent on doing something amazing and improving their inter-connections; and seperately, igniting the spark that makes the industry self-aware of where we're at, so it can ultimately self-correct. Hence the need for an accessible meme. The problem is, I already think I'm being a tosser by even suggesting we can just 'create' a meaningful meme. The good stuff happens by accident and irrespective of any single group's intention, and it happens because the time is right. But granted, it does need people to make that 'accident' more likely :)
Andy Mitchell (7:45 Mar 28) says:
We need a way to make this an easily accessible awakening; without preaching to people. I.e. finding a way to let it evolve. We need some kind of nucleus to gather around - FrothOrNot + Manifesto (wiki?) - but also a way to capture how people respond to it and see it grow - a NorthPack on thevisionthing tag.
+ We need to do a better job of defining froth than we did defining Web 2.0 itself. That way if we end up in a trend toward soul destruction again, we can spot it earlier and divert away from it. In the same way that these days we are anti the failed aspects of Web 1.0 culture (excess in capital and excess in spending).
+ Web 2.0 is the blackhole in the room that is sucking the vision out. Or to keep up the ridiculous analogies, it's the shiny baubles that distract us so we can avoid asking ourselves the hard questions, the hard questions about where we're actually going. Once we face up to these questions, we can actually start partaking in a new environment that will once again yield the good stuff. We - the industry that is - need to close off Web 2.0. Or at least tidy it up and put it in the cupboard.
+ Another thing I've just realised I forgot is the ridiculous point we've reached where business plans & revenue (i.e. the plan that forces us to create real value) are almost frowned upon. The handful of successful businesses always saw the potential of a plan; but the 80%ers just see the headlines "no need for a business plan, get bought!" and believe it; perpetuating the outpouring of crap.
Maybe it's always been this way and we just forget the crap of the past. It's possible. Still doesn't reduce my desire to rage against it though.
+ A final track switch before I stop pissing all over this wiki and go to the pub... More towards Paul's base of "big vision". I maintain every great Web app (from Google search to Twitter via Flickr and Wikipedia) is about smoothing the friction in communication. I.e. if you abstract it far enough, the thing we're all engaged in since '95 onwards is better global communication. And if you subscribe to the idea that one of the greatest ills in the world is a lack of empathy, then anything that improves communication between two disparite groups is of a huge importance. Just don't do a Zuckerburg and try and claim Facebook is the answer to terrorism, drug production and world peace ;)
