My personal favorite was from Mr. Hart’s AP English class: Describe your view through an imaginary window. I am still slightly aggravated with myself to this day, or I should say, perplexed, that I didn’t just think to look out of an actual window in my house and describe what I saw. Instead I sat at my desk with the worst writer’s block, tapping my pencil against the desk, painfully trying to force an imagined view into my head. What’s funny is I think back now to the trauma of it all and really can’t remember what I wrote; I think it had something to do with icicles.

So it is with that in mind that I often think about how much the web changed the written landscape. Think about how many writers and content producers beyond traditional media (you know, the people who loved writing and creating the stuff even back in high school).  Many of them are a direct result of the advent of the digital pen. Much of the content produced may not be Poe, Emerson, Rand or Shakespeare but it doesn’t need to be.  Clive Thompson has an essay called The New Literacy in the September issue of Wired that focuses on this phenomenon and also reflects on whether the “digital pen” is hurting the overall quality if writing.

People are creating some of the best content on the web today. Blogging enables thousands to produce incredible content across genres. Think about a well-thought blog post that you’ve read recently. Descriptive title, subject statement, number of paragraphs backing up an argument and some type of conclusion perhaps. That sure sounds a heck of a lot like the type of assignment many of us ran from.  And that doesn’t scratch the surface.  There is the micro-content world that Thompson touches on such as Twitter and Facebook.  Look at the extent of content, solid writing at that, taking place in the enterprise in the form of business plans, emails and PowerPoint presentations.

Content creation takes place us around us all the time.  Writing is getting churned out like crazy. The digital pen has enabled us to publish our thoughts in an easy way.  Even those of us who dreaded writing our view through an imaginary window could rail something out in 20 minutes without thinking twice. I find this truly amazing.

And guess what, how’s this for an essay?  519 words.  Knocked it out the iPhone on the train ride into the city this morning.  Wonder if Mr. Hart would approve?

The article discusses the concept of Anonymous social software and goes on regarding research that has found that using data mining techniques on your social network, one can be personally identified. Pretty interesting. But not surprising. So let’s go back to the concept: Anonymous Social Software. I am not sure I really “follow” the concept. (pun intended).

People who blog anonymously. This I can understand. You can write all on your own, not disclose it is you to anyone and take active steps to not get identified. A great example is Fake Steve Jobs who had quite a run writing a blog without being personally identified. However, without fostering a commenting dialog, I can posit that blogging is not social software, it is simply a publishing platform. Once you begin an interaction (a conversation) do you really enter the realm of social software.

So, can people really be anonymous and use social software. People who want to remain anonymous take strides to not release any more information than they have to not give themselves away. In most cases, this is precisely the opposite of what one tries to accomplish with social software. The point is to interact, to follow. And of course every connection in of itself is additional information that narrows the focus on who you could be. Back on the Fake Steve Jobs, even Daniel Lyons couldn’t not remain anonymous. His writing style alone eventually gave him away.

Another subtle point is the article discussed security and anonymity as if they are one in the same thing. However, security and anonymity are not the same thing nor should they be. Whether identified or not, people want their system and data secure. I am not anonymous writing this article but I want the article to be secure. The same goes for my newsfeed on Facebook or my stream on Twitter. If you want security, use the web privately, private rooms, storage, feeds, etc. Yes, there is the raging “security of cloud computing” conversation going on but that is fully another topic and one which I believe will resolve itself.

The big question people should be asking themselves is why are they trying to remain anonymous? This issue has existed since the days of mainstream message boards and chat rooms. You are going on the web and posting information fully out in the public. A “handle” isn’t security. CEOs of publicly traded grocery store chains even know this.

My view is if you are venturing out and going to interact on the web, you have to have a comfort of living in public. Fred Wilson had a great commentary on this. It is something that everyone posting information should consider. It is much more about your own personal attitude and approach than whether the software/meme should be maintaining your anonymity. Sure many will disagree with me. I’m just not sold that you can have one without the other.

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Quick take on first glance:

1. Can’t blame the Friendfeed team.  They built a great product and an exit to Facebook makes good shareholder return sense.  The fact the price tag was $50M really shows how bad the economy has taken a toll on liquidity.  I would think based on recent history, Friendfeed would have gone a higher price tag even sans revenue.
2. Can’t blame the Facebook team.  As Scoble mentioned, Friendfeed was a lead innovator in the social stream space and Facebook was “borrowing” many of the innovations coming from them.  They are acquiring a great team that knows how to execute that should only continue to help them build their continually improving platform.

Personally, even while it may make sense for both teams, I can’t help to be a bit negative on this one when I probe into it a bit more.  Some of my concerns can be remedied with time, some not.

1. I would have liked to see Friendfeed to continue to evolve with more runway, they were doing some great stuff even if their penetration was only into the real early adopters.  It would be neat to see if they could cross the chasm just as Twitter did.  But perhaps they understood that it was too complicated for the mainstream.  This one we’ll never know, the writing is on the wall that Friendfeed will be absorbed fully.
2. I am concerned regarding innovation and also the number of players.  Louis Gray made a great point when he expressed a concern that there could be four major players, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.  We need more independent companies doing stuff in the space.  Time will play out here.
3. Friendfeed never developed into a business model (perhaps this is why selling makes sense).  I always thought that their platform while fantastic for consumers had a great revenue opportunity for the enterprise, there is big revenue in the B2B collaborationa and communication space.  No one has won there yet and current market toosl do not satisfy the need fully.
4. I need more than one stream in my lifestream.  As Rubel comments, lifestreaming is upon us with this acquisition.  Here I am not so sure.  I need more than one “sub-stream” in my lifestream in Facebook.  Fred Wilson removed everyone and made Facebook his private lifestream for exactly this reason.  For him, Facebook is personal and Twitter is everyone.  For me, I am going through the same conflict.  I have personal and some business people (that I actually know) in Facebook.  This creates a gray area between Facebook and LinkedIn.  I don’t know (in person) many of the people I interact with on Friendfeed; I don’t want them becoming “friends” yet on Facebook.  Already, I don’t like the fact that former business colleagues can see on Facebook what my former high school friends are posting in my news feed if I comment on it.  This whole area is an issue and is ripe for innovation.
5. Facebook permissioning.  I know many of you are going to jump on point #4 above and say “Lou, Facebook has good privacy controls and you just need to manage the groups”.  Okay, maybe so but it isn’t clear to me on how to do this.  Is there a manual?  If you need one, there’s the first problem. It needs to be easy and straight-forward, right now it is not.   If I haven’t figured this out yet how can I expect my mom to creating multiple lifestream groups in the Facebook system.  One “newsfeed” to rull them all does not work.  Facebook may be the one to crack the code here in lifestreaming but it is beyond what they are doing now and is beyond what Friendfeed was doing too.  There needs to be innovation around easy management of the “different faces of one’s life”.  I will write another post fully on this.  But suffice it to say, the Friendfeed integration could get messy for many.  Time will tell.

So, time will tell on where this heads.  Not only for the integration of Friendfeed and Facebook functionality and follower lists, but also in the entire lifestream space in general.  Time will tell on where this puts Twitter and how quickly they potentially move to Google as Kara Swisher outlined yesterday.  Look out, lots going on and much more to be on the look out for.

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People simply do not have time any more to read 140 characters. Classic good stuff.

Putting a business hat on for just a moment, I can’t believe Slate didn’t name the parody company on a URL that they own and could market around in some way. Re-direct to a betting site?

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What struck me is something quite simple: It takes practice. If you are trying to build a serious social media oriented brand, personal or business, it doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve spoken to a number of people who have thought of starting their own blogs or even video blogging themselves. I’ve even thought about doing a few video posts myself. Often (I assume like people early in TV careers but who knows), there is apprehension of getting in front of and speaking into the camera. Writing for me was just easier to jump into, it feels more protected. But video blogging is very interesting and adds a whole different dynamic. It certainly makes it more personal.

Anyway, whether you are writing or using video as your medium, it takes practice. Just like everything else. Because the web makes everything easier, I think we fall into the trap that everything on the web is easy. Starting a blog, building a business, writing an iPhone application. If you want to be good (and gain a comfort) doing something, you have to practice and put in a good deal of effort. And for some, it comes naturally easy and they need less practice. For others, they need more. Just like everything else in life.

Last Thursday night, my wife and I were watching the BCS Championship game and a pretty good commercial for the Big 12 came on.  The next day, my wife wanted to know the song that was played during the ad but couldn’t seem to find it.  The next thing I know she’s on the phone calling the station and then following up directly via email with a contact at the Big 12 conference.  I immediately jump in and say there is a much better way to come to that answer, we need to just drop the question on Twitter and Friendfeed, surely someone knows and can tell us immediately.  So that is what I did here at Twitter and the follow-through on Friendfeed, and Facebook status too.

To my surprise, not only did I not get the answer but not one response in either medium.  This was really shocking.  And sure enough, my wife received a very warm response from the Big 12 this afternoon.  I should also say kudos to them for such sound customer intimacy to reach out and reply to the request and in a timely manner.

This test is, of course, a small sample size and obviously not one where any conclusions can be drawn.  Perhaps it was this particular question and 9 out of 10 times, I would receive a response in a flash.  Perhaps it was the way in which I asked.  Perhaps no one knew the answer (or watched the bowl game because there is no playoff system).

Or perhaps even in a world where social tools and social media is getting so much hype, we really cannot lose focus on the value of personal dialog and one-to-one communication.  I do not believe any of us have lost sight of the value of personal interaction, not by any means.  But there are times where social media (in our echo chamber) seems like the panacea for information gathering and dissemination.

This was a good reminder for me that each have their place and can be used effectively together.

I love posts like Fred’s because it continues to de-bunk the theory that you are being unproductive is you blog, the hypothesis that you are cutting into work time, hurting the company image, etc.  The conversation still takes place. In fact, I had this conversation with several teammates at SnagAJob just this week.  I remember when I first started blogging, I read a tip that went something like this: “be sure to blog in non-work hours, set your publish time outside of work hours too to dismiss any notion of impropriety”.  I’ve heard less of it lately but it is still there.

It all comes with respect and balance.  Respect your company.  Respect your co-workers.  Understand that your writing affects both your personal and company brand no matter how many disclaimers you put up.  And also have your priorities balanced so that you aren’t missing your obligations and deadlines.  The more bloggers and social media professionals out there, the more the blogging work dilemma will be de-bunked.

Below is a great video about why we have a major data portability problem on our hands and why data portability is needed. I find myself not wanting to investigate or join some of the last new ventures coming out simply because the thought of entering another userid/password, profile and clicking to follow another set of people (who are the same people) makes my blood boil. The latest example is BackType, great concept, aggregating all of your comments everywhere, even aggregating the aggregating blog comments systems out there like Disqus.  So I went halfway, I sign-up and claimed my profile.  But I am not going to go and follow Scoble, Fred Wilson and Brad Feld yet again.  Twitter, Tumblr, Dopplr, Facebook, Disqus or Intense Debate, etc, etc, etc…  No way.

There are ventures trying to clean this up like openID but it is not happening fast enough. Or I should say it isn’t happening anywhere near as fast as new services are hitting the web. I don’t have any doubt that we are collectively going to get there. The question is when. This can not be one of those topics like the FCC opening the wireless spectrum, the promise of mobility or the nirvana of the digital home that will and does go on for years. It has to happen fast. Without it, if I’m getting frustrated with it, then the services we all sing praises about are never going to cross the chasm into the mainstream.

DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut on Vimeo.

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I cannot add anything to the second Tissue, others have blogged about the technology and architectural framework issues that Twitter is experiencing. Ironically, Tim O’Reilly messaged his interest in blog post detailing some hypothesis about Twitter’s issues via a tweet itself. I definitely recommend reading it. Anyway, technology is one major Tissue, let’s leave it at that.

Secondly, micro-blogging has taken hold. This is also a major Tissue. Quite simply, there are so many things in the world you can convey in 140 characters (the character limit that Twitter allows in a single message). Anything you can think of, even notifying others of earthquakes, can fly in seconds over Twitter.  Because of this dynamic, many are shooting their thoughts over Twitter instead of blogging.  I find myself tweeting much more than blogging because I find I can convey much of the thought in two sentences so why ‘go on’ about it.  So we are witnessing a change in human behavior or at least the behavior of early technology adopters, we still must admit most of the world doesn’t blog or tweet.

Anyway, one could argue this dynamic is basically causing Twitter to slowly but surely handle all of the messaging load from every blogging platform out there, a major Tissue. In fact, now even when people blog, they shoot a note out via Twitter that their blog post is posted.  When they use FriendFeed, Tweets are fired out.  When people reply, Tweets are fired out. So Twitter’s success, adoption and use cases is what is causing all of the Tissues to begin with and could lead to Twitter’s downfall, the ultimate irony.

It is this irony that I find the most fascinating of all.  I’m personally rooting for Twitter.

BTW, I could have used Twitter to convey much of this via Twitter instead of blogging. In fact, I did to make a point.  And don’t forget to find my tweet notifying you all that I published this blog post .

My view before getting to the solution, we must get back to purpose of blogging or participating in social media in any way. Is it to become a destination yourself? Or is it, as Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say, to “execute on being you” and building your personal legacy. I’ve always thought of it in terms of the latter, to participate and being part of the conversation, but never the ultimate destination. We must put ourselves in the role of the consumer, centralizing them to go hundreds of locations to consume content. This is why RSS is so popular to distribute the content and why aggregation is so dominant to bring it back together for them.

Which brings me to my next point? Loic stressed centralization as the solution but one of his primary reasons is because the conversation is happening in all facets of his social media life and he cannot keep track of it. My hypothesis to solving this is not that each blogger become a content destination at their blog but rather a solution must developed to solve that problem. Perhaps FriendFeed and Disqus are two early solutions attacking this problem; the space certainly needs to evolve further. Brad Feld discusses the notification solution proposed by Josh Kopelman which I found very provactive.

I tent to agree where this discussion is heading. I want to be social media involved in a number of places, not have everyone come one place to get it. However, I DO want to manage it all in one place. I would love a “notification dashboard” that is perhaps built upon web services against all the APIs available. I’m imagining a social media Bloomberg of sorts but fully interactive. Here are some of the things such a dashboard could do for me:

• Tell me when I being replied to in any venue?
• Provide me an aggregated bio or links to information on who is “friending” me.
• Notify me when a friend or someone I often have discussions is actively taking part in a conversation, where and in context
• Let me reply back to conversation directly from my dashboard but in context like Disqus
• Use attention data to provide me a priority on what I should look at first versus the less important
• Use semantic techniques to provide me with relevant content and similar conversations
• Use sentiment on the conversations so I have knowledge about where there is agreement or disagreement in the conversations
• A method to “educate” or send things to my dashboard when I stumble upon something interesting so I can have things waiting in a queue for me

Anyone interested in building this, let me know. Should be simple. Just a merging of all of the latest technology trends into one central application. But let me manage centrally but participate everywhere.