Rough notes for Stowe Boyd – The Revolution Will Be Socialized

Start with a joke that you need to apologize for (America and Japan).

Supposed to be rebooted, but hasn’t managed to do it just yet.

JJG’s presentation is a good “foil” for his talk.

He’s working a lot with web 2.0 companies. He’s very busy, seen a lot of business models. Trying to help them determine wether it’ll work or change it so it does.

“The revolution will not be televised” — Gil Scott heron

Stuff like Amazon’s is the future of online commerce.

“Revolution will be socialized”: opposed to that, it will be about social networks.

Old quote: from accidental change of social structures through software to social change through software by design.

Symposium on Social Architecture

• From somewhere they find something else, then read it or gesture (tag, comment, link, etc)
• User generated content (ugh), is like a gestural space
• People vs. machines

Engines of meaning

• We’ll need machines to manage the huge amount of data being created (Bruce Sterling quote).
• Means of sorting won’t be known
• “We’ll be trawling with engines with meaning…”

Revolution among the revolutionaries

• What does web 2.0 mean? Lot’s of battles going on.
• Core question: what’s worth building?
• Simple three step process to find social dimension in product
• Enterprise software lacks soul.
• An app is a collection of functions – this is wrong.

Example: wine sites

• Creating site based on functions: feels like a db
• Turn it sideways, introduce social dimension, functionality is secondary
• Things we do are largely not done as individuals
• 2nd step: looking at networks
• Last dimension: markets
• Most companies fail to create a large enough market

Online markets

• E.g. Amazon
• Last.fm – changed his life, counter to Amazon example, discovered he had the musical taste of a 23 years old British woman… Viable competition to Amazon and iTunes because of better experience due to human dimension
• What’s at thee market’s core? Case study: x:posted – brings bloggers into contact with people looking for blog content. You can take model to apply to business plan and find viable business.

• Problem with Basecamp: no federated identity. They did it wrong, because they didn’t go through the three steps.

• Social software (architecture) have soul
• Actual e-commerce will move away from algorithmic architectures to socialized interactions
• Successful apps will create a market

Questions:

Q Apps need bigger markets: the reason they’re keeping it small is because they built it for themselves. Social stuff inherently needs a small group… Social software doesn’t scale. A You can have a tight product and still take in the social dimension. You need karma etc.

http://reboot.dk/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Be_Socialized:_Social_Architecture_and_The_Future_of_Online_Markets