Tags:apps, innovation, instagram, Mobile, photography, Social Networking, startups.
I’m late to the Instagram party (I define late as discovering my first name has already been claimed as a username; if you’re curious I’m grabbed Tylda instead) and I’m hooked. Its simplicity makes discovering images a joy and its community is overwhelmingly positive, lacking the anonymous trolls that usually plague public comment threads.
And, while photos can be posted to multiple other social networks, those connections are not visible to other users, putting the focus squarely on photography. On Instagram, who you are is defined only by how you see the world, a refreshing departure from most social networks profiles.
Most people share photos and interact with others through comments and likes. One user, @assingm3nt, innovatively built a community around his account, posting topics for photo contests to his followers and highlighting the most interesting submissions with a followup photo:
Instagram might not have predicted this use case. That’s one of the fun surprises about building something: You never know how users will interact with your product. If you listen, you can find inspiration to improve, or just enjoy the innovation.
Tags:email, LinkedIn, Social Networking, study.
Degrees of separation: A variety of different social networks can be generated by altering how connections between users are defined. Credit: Yahoo
A recent study examined social networks inferred by how frequently people at a university and Enron employees e-mailed each other. This article asks whether social networks can be automatically generated based on data analysis of people’s communication habits. Google tried something along those lines with Buzz, though it failed to recognize that the people we e-mail most frequently aren’t necessarily the ones we are closest to socially.
Many social networks already recommend other connections based on mutual contacts’ social graphs. What if there were an omniscient social network with a perfect algorithm that only suggested people who were ideal matches every time? What if we stopped spending time networking with people we don’t know because they weren’t suggested as a match?
Recommendations, both from friends and algorithms, can save time, but can limit serendipity. There’s something delightful about meeting people you know nothing about and discovering common connections. Human nature, I think, will always have a need for that.
Tags:app, iPhone, Meet Gatsby, Social Networking.
I’ve been trying out Meet Gatsby for a few weeks. Its simple sign-up process asks you to type in a few interests. The service tracks your Foursquare check-ins and sends you a text message if someone with a matching interest recently checked in near you. If you reply to the message, Gatsby will route your message to them so you don’t have to disclose your phone number. You can text for up to an hour, after which Gatsby stops the routing service.
I liked it at first because it was cool to learn that people who shared my interests were nearby. It was a great example of how technology can make the world feel smaller and friendlier. A few days after I signed up, someone commented on my profile picture, to say it reminded him of his home in Ocean City, MD which, incidentally, exactly where it was taken. That was about the extent of our conversation.
Gatsby lost its novelty when every literally every check-in prompted an introduction. I realized I don’t always have time to talk with a stranger, regardless of how many interests we have in common. It would be handy to be able to choose whether or not to share a particular check-in with Gatsby, though I suppose that with the way it’s set up, that burden falls on Foursquare’s side of the court.
I also realized the interests I entered are pretty generic. This was illustrated by another Gatsby conversation in which some texted me “Two people on Meet Gatsby who like tech? How unexpected. Ha” My thoughts exactly. Neither of us had ever met someone in person with Gatsby’s help.
Finding people with similar interests who are also nearby is a great idea, and one I’ve been thinking about myself lately, but Gatsby has a while to go before it’s immediately useful. I’ll have to try entering more obscure interests and maybe I’ll be surprised instead of indifferent when Gatsby makes an introduction.
Tags:BriteMap, Business, Entrepreneur, Graham Lawlor, Interview, Q & A, Social Networking, Ultra Light Startups.
Graham Lawlor has been has been leading the entrepreneurial meet-up Ultra Light Startups for two years. Today, he is launching one of his own. Lawlor describes BriteMap, a social directory of companies, as a LinkedIn for businesses, pairing up service providers with the companies that need them. He spoke with me about his project:
Tell me about BriteMap.
BrightMap is a project I’m just launching, although it’s been in development for he greater part of a year. The web site has been in development for a month. It’s a directory of companies that’s built like a social network. Whereas on LinkedIn, which is a professional social network, there’s a social network of people meaning that Graham has a profile and Matylda has a profile and those may be connected, and the connections between people form a social graph. In this case, companies have profiles, like Ultra Light Startups and Social Media Week. Each company itself has a profile and those may be connected. This helps build client-vendor relationships.
For example, a law firm’s profile would list that law firm’s clients and vendors. Service providers like web site designers, law firms, accountants or PR firms can create profiles, so you can browse thou this network and see companies in this industry and who their clients and vendors are.
The purpose of the site is to match clients and vendors of business-to-business services. If you’re looking for a vendor or clients you can see who their accountants are. It helps narrow your search and acts as a reference. It’s also useful for web designers, office space providers, etc. as a way for them to market their services.
What sparked the idea?
Ultra Light Startups is a meet-up for tech entrepreneurs that I’ve been running for close to two years. We have events which startups and service providers attend, and people have routinely approached me and asked “can you recommend a web developer or accountant?” I do that a lot though my position as a leader in the tech startup world and though perhaps there’s a way to automate this and make it easier to customers and service providers. The idea occurred to me of a social network that validates connections.
What were some of the challenges in the processes from idea to launch?
In the early stages, it was a feature of Ultra Light Startups’ web site. BriteMap is now separate project. At first, I was going to add a directory feature to the site where members of Ultra Lite Statups could connect.
I was trying to figure out what revenue model and what features people would use. An approach that I took, which is a common one in this space, is do a certain amount of usability testing. I originally hired a designer and then did design work myself. I would mock up the site, or what they call wireframe, and show those to people in a very scripted, regimented way. I would ask questions about what they’re looking at and certain functions. and ask questions like “would you refer friends?”and “how much would you pay for it?” Through this rigorous usability testing, you go back to the drawing board, test again, ask different people and they give you more feedback. I did 70 or so of these individual Usability tests. Each one was face to face and lasted about an hour. I got a lot of great feedback and the design iterated.
Some people offered to build it for me and I took that as a sign that I was going in the right direction. Then I partnered with a CTO who built the site that is now BrightMap.net. I started talking to him in December and he pretty quickly came on board. Some other things were talking to lawyers, coming up with a name, first features, a marketing plan, budgeting, and things like that. Now the site is online with some content on it and some companies talking about it. We’ll do events at Ultra Light Startups and Sunshine Suites so we’ll launch in two places on the same night.
How do you see it evolving?
What’s out there right now, is what is called a minimal viable product. By that I mean the smallest piece of functionality that’s actually useful to somebody. It’s missing some of what the wireframes and mockups had. For example, there’s no way to pay for anything right now and the sign-up process needs to be streamlined.
The revenue model is associations and providing a way for companies within associations to network with each other. That part is not yet built and we will be building those especially in the light of feedback that we get from the minimal viable product. Building more based on feedback is something that we’ll continue to be doing forever.
What has been the greatest thing you’ve learned though the process?
I learned a lot. In terms of the amount of time spent on this project, the greatest has been on usability testing. I think I learned how to do usability testing, how to mark things up in wireframes, test scripts, and see what people think of your site before you spend time and effort building it. Building a site is an expensive proposition, especially one with as many functions and as interactive as this one. You want to learn as many lessons as you can before you build and there’s a lot of lessons to be learned there.
For example, in its early days, the direction was that it was part of the Ultra Light Startups web site. After a certain amount of these tests, I got feedback like “it’s a great feature but I’d never bother to list myself here or search the directory for companies. The companies I want to meet are not Ultra Light Startups, or not startups at all, or big brands. Therefore I wouldn’t sign up nor look for companies here.”
This told me that rather than the feature being the problem, the problem was the brand, so it wouldn’t be good as a feature of the web site. Coming up with a different name made it more general use and much more useful.
