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| The Social Platform Race to My Contact List Posted: 16 Jul 2008 03:02 PM CDT Driving in my car today I came to the realization that the current race of the social platforms is still to own my contact list. How I got to this conclusion is slightly abstract but let me explain. Over the weekend I began using an amazing application called Remember the Milk. The application is a web based to do list. Not remarkably innovative in terms of their technology but what makes them so valuable is their accessibility. Within a day I had installed a Firefox extension enabling me to place my to do list within my Gmail inbox and access it via my iPhone in an easy to use format. Now there is no syncing for my to do list anymore. It is simply always there with me and always updated. Have you ever thought about all the other things you constantly need to sync? Building My Contact ListIf you lose your phone, often times you lose your complete contact list. If you are one of the lucky ones that has a smartphone and has synced their device to their computer, you will be able to recover from your loss. What if I never needed to worry about any of this information disappearing ever again? Technically I can, thanks to Facebook. I simply load up my Facebook application and there are all of my contacts all with updated contact information that they’ve updated, not me! This idea is not a foreign one to many who remember Plaxo but the problem with Plaxo was that they spammed your internet to get to your contacts. Facebook has instead developed a platform where so much interaction is taking place between your friends and family, you cannot avoid joining. Facebook is the first company that has realized the most important feature of their platform is to enable people to track and group their contacts. Today I track my contacts via multiple sources: my Blackberry, my laptop, my iPhone, Salesforce.com, Facebook and LinkedIn. The only things that are occasionally in sync are my laptop and one of my mobile devices. Contrast that with my to do list in which I am always in sync and can access anywhere. While Facebook has a platform for applications, I would argue that their “killer application” is still their ability to track your contacts, group them and have granular privacy features for each. Soon enough, any system that you grant access to will be able to call the Facebook API and get your contacts to improve your experience with the software or device you are interacting with. Rather than tracking all of my contacts in Salesforce.com, it would be easier to track sales information about specific contacts. This includes things like: when did I last contact this person, what was my communication history with that person, etc. In their current form, “social platforms” exist as websites in which companies can build applications like games and dating apps. I think that the existence of “social platforms” as websites in which we spend a large portion of our time on is simply a facade. Right now these platforms have enabled us to “waste time” and peer into our friends lives but during all of this time being wasted we have slowly build a more efficient version of our individual “social graphs”. The Future for FacebookNow was Facebook simply designed as a really elaborate scheme just to get all of my contacts? Perhaps but at some point the company got diverted. Users don’t want complex tools. They want simple ones that make their lives easier or more enjoyable. Just as Remember the Milk simplified my task list, Facebook could easily simplify my contact list and suddenly become the center for managing our contacts. Is such a tool worth $15 billion? I’d imagine so if you have the majority of the world’s population in your database. If a large portion of the world’s information (which Google has attempted to index) is worth around $165 billion today, Facebook should easily be worth a 10th of that. How about photo storage, video storage, application hosting and payment processing? I see those as separate entities for Facebook. The most important feature is the contact list. And as for the other social platforms, where do they fit in? I would suggest that most of the other platforms have a chance at competing but not even MySpace has an accurate representation of my social graph. Ultimately, the most valuable thing to the social platforms is the contact list. Without an effective contact list, these platforms are simply another distribution channel for content. While that’s not a bad place to be, it’s a completely different focus. |
| Posted: 16 Jul 2008 08:00 AM CDT There are a number of events taking place over the next couple months, so I thought I would outline some of the ones to pay attention to. If there are any missing on here please feel free to leave them in the comments! Twin Tech Party I've already covered the Twin Tech Event which is being held at Local 16 tomorrow. The event has officially sold out with over 600 attendees and there is now a waiting list. There is an overflow space at Chi Cha lounge next door. Anybody on the waiting list can network there and if Local 16 gets too crowded this will definitely be a good place to head over to. A lot of sponsors have hopped on board to make this event possible and it is sure to be a big event. Feel free to sign up for the wait list if you didn't register already. SWAT Summit
Facebook F8
At this point all potential announcements are completely speculation but if last year's f8 event is any sign of what's to come, this could be a monumental event. If you are going to be out in San Francisco for the event next week, please get in touch! Social Dev Camp Chicago
Social Ad Summit
Web 2.0 Expo NYCWeb 2.0 Expo "was launched to connect the builders of the web with the brightest minds, hottest ideas, and most valuable tools – and with each other." The event is hosted by O'Reilly and looks like it will be a pretty big event. Speakers include Clay Shirky, Fred Wilson, Arianna Huffington, Mmarc Benioff, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim O'Reilly and Jay Adelson. If you live on the East Coast this is definitely a great conference to attend. You can read more about the event on the Web 2.0 Expo New York website. Advertising Week DC
Interact 08
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SWAT summit is a conference looking at how agencies and brands can harness the power of social networks. I know a number of people that will be in attendance at the event tomorrow in San Francisco. If you are going to be in San Francisco on Thursday, there is still a chance to grab tickets to this event. I've participated in other events put on by Christian Perry (Room Full of People Inc.) and they consistently draw an excellent crowd. Check out the 
This is the must attend event in social technology. Facebook F8 will be held in San Francisco next week. I will be making the hike out to the west coast for this event as it is sure to be an amazing one. Tickets have been on sale for the past few weeks but just yesterday the event officially sold out. Facebook is expected to make a number of announcements at this event. Potential announcements include: launch of Facebook Connect and possibly an extension of Facebook's mobile offering.
The first ever Social Dev Camp was hosted in Baltimore a few months back. David Troy (Twittervision.com), Ann Bernard and Keith Casey, all participants in the local tech community, were all involved in the planning of the event. It went off without a hitch and attracted close to 200 people. The second SocialDevCamp is being held in Chicago on August 9th from 8:30 am – 6:00 pm at the Illinois Institute of Technology McCormick Tribune Center. For details about the event visit the 
Social Ad Summit is the first conference being held by the Social Times. It will be held September 15th and is an invite-only event for social technology executives, media buyers and advertising execs as well as media executives. Next week we will begin announcing the speakers and sponsors for the event on the 
Today I learned about an upcoming event which doesn't appear to have been officially announced yet. Advertising Week DC "celebrates the best of the marketing, media and advertising community with a week of networking, professional development and education." Current speakers include Chris Matthews (MSNBC), David Gregory (NBC) and Steve Forbes (Forbes). The website doesn't even appear to be complete yet but if you are in D.C. and don't want to make the drive up to NYC for Web 2.0 Expo, check out 
INTERACT 08 looks like it will be the biggest D.C. conference in a while. It is being held at the Ronal Reagan building and hopes to attract 1,000 attendees, 65 exhibitors and more than 35 speakers. There is a pretty amazing set of speakers including the Presidents of Digitas and Publicis, Marissa Mayer (Google) and our own Jesse Thomas who is the Creative Director of Social Times. If you are looking to attend the event you can get $100 off by visiting | You are subscribed to email updates from The Social Times To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner |
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