Many of you have no doubt seen one of Matt Hardings videos, here’s an update from his more recent travels around the world.. this time in beautiful wide screen in “high quality” on YouTube..

What is so fascinating about Matt’s story and strategy is how allowed large number of people to participate in small ways, enriching the quality of the video (go ahead, tell me you don’t feel something when the other people rush in!), and enriching the quality of his marketing.. Each one of the people who are in the video most likely sent the video to all of their friends, who sent it to all of their friends, and so on… which makes the video register on the most viewed videos of the day.. which ensures that Matt’s video gets millions of views instead of thousands..

He coordinated the production and distribution of his videos through social networks, empowering people to be the creators and the medium upon which the video rides..

November 25th, 2008 | internet people, online video, social networks, ugc, youtube | View Comments

Some of my more conservative colleagues keep choosing to ignore Facebook and Twitter as business networking platforms.  Like a religion that has overstayed its welcome in a secular era, they ardently believe that social networking is just something that the kids do.  They may soon be surprised to discover that they already belong to the world’s largest social network.

Google and Yahoo have both been struggling to find their way in a world where time spent online is the new metric.  Google searches take seconds, and then we are off their pages.  Yahoo is basically a big email application (so proud of my Oddpost pals!!) with a few special interest landing sites (Yahoo Sports is a giant).  How can they induce us into an hours-long hypnogogic state the same way that Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have?  Why not turn the whole web into one gigantic social network?

Many critics have lambasted the Google spin-off Open Social as hopeless simply because it is not in the interest of Facebook, MySpace, or any other existing social network to join the foundation and open their data and users to third parties that would steal away their users.  What if Open Social doesn’t need those networks?

The next great social network will not be born from a migration of one of the existing networks, but more likely will emerge from the sea of services and data that make up our personalized experience of the web. Older demographics have been complaining about filling out registration forms and duplicating data for a long time (haven’t they heard of autocomplete ?).  Having all of your favorite web properties, contacts, messaging networks, email, and media all behind a single password is motivation enough to drive the vast majority of people to push their favorite services to join the Open Social Foundation or move their attention to services that belong.

Open Social, Open-ID, and other initiatives are still early in development and in political will, but don’t blink.. its inevitable.

November 24th, 2008 | community, facebook, myspace, social networks | View Comments