Why the Enterprise Won’t Solve the Web 2.0 Revenue Problem
By charles | May 13, 2008
I’ve seen a growing number of posts touting the enterprise as the next frontier for web 2.0. Heck, when I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF a few weeks back, the vast majority of the companies I saw listed as major sponsors for the event were those whose principal business was enterprise software.
I’m having a hard time buying this argument that most social media tools are primed to take the enterprise by storm. There are three observations that lead me to believe this is the case today:
-Many of the web 2.0 technologies that would be appropriate for the enterprise (wikis, social bookmarking, tagging, web-based productivity suites, microblogging, etc) have relatively small followings in the general internet community. They are still largely the domain of early adopters.
-Most large enterprises are not populated by early adopters.
-Most people who work are interested in finding ways to get their work done faster so they can be done with work sooner and do other things. Learning to do new things is costly in the short term but can payoff in the long term (think about the decision to learn to type, for example).
If these observations are broadly true, I don’t see how the enterprise is going to prove to be a more fertile place for these technologies to take root. If they are to follow the more classic IT route, you’d expect to see productivity-seeking or otherwise curious employees bringing them into the enterprise without support from IT.
Historically there are a lot of technologies that have made their way into the internet via what I’ll call “workgroup initiative” - a small group of employees manage to get the technology into the enterprise by keeping the purchase below some key threshold that attracts attention. Over time, the success of the workgroup implementation spreads and next thing you know someone has an enterprise-wide deployment.
Worse than the fact that these technologies aren’t yet mainstream is the fact that the traditional “workgroup initiative” is not likely to succeed in this market. The reason is simple - most of the good collaborative web 2.0 tools are offered for free and the very small groups and companies who would normally form the bedrock of a larger enterprise sale are opting for the free versions of these products. And you know what? The free versions are pretty good. They’re so good in fact that I don’t think there are a lot of “freemium” or upgrade opportunities available at the moment. For the people who really want these products, they’re finding a way to make them work as is. They’re not waiting for IT to get involved. In some cases, the organizations are so small as to not need the two things that have typically been core drivers for the decision to move to the “enterprise version” of the offering.
-Support and integration to legacy systems. Ironically, there are a number of “web native” companies who are adopting these new tools and technologies and they don’t have a legacy backend with which to integrate. In other cases, these new technologies do not actually need to touch older systems - they’re designed specifically to avoid these kinds of interfaces.
-Security and authentication. Whether it’s due to more open authentication systems or a diminished perception for the need of security, this doesn’t seem to be a big sticking point hampering usage and adoption. Aside from people getting more comfortable with web-based authentication in general, I think the lack of ties into legacy situations also makes security concerns feel secondary.
So what’s in it for a company or workgroup to buy a more full-featured version of the offering, assuming it’s available? We’ve seen some early answers in web-based productivity suites, but that seems like an isolated case.
I’m stumped as to how most of these social media tools have a meaningful impact on the enterprise (from a revenue standpoint) in the short term.
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Women 2.0 - Beyond the Spark (May 10th)
By charles | May 8, 2008
The team at Women 2.0 is putting on a great event this Saturday. More details are available below, including a discount code:
Women 2.0 Presents: “Beyond the Spark” Conference
May 10, 2008 at the Stanford Grill
Meet entrepreneurs changing the world, investors supporting them AND the 5 finalists from the Women 2.0 Business Plan Competition. Interactive discussions and LIVE Pitches to top-shelf judges — join the fun and vote for your top choice via mobile phone.
Check out the Finalists here: http://www.women2.org
Get your ticket: http://beyondthespark.eventbrite.com
Save 30% for entrepreneurs. Coupon code w2sfbeta
Check out who you can have lunch with: http://women2SWIB.wikispaces.com
Limited tickets due to venue constraints. Tickets ARE going fast. Student pricing is available.
Can’t make it for the entire conference but want to come in the afternoon to check out the pitches? Yes we have a ticket priced just for that too!
Have yourself an interactive lunch on Saturday
Arrive a little earlier to the conference this Saturday and reserve your seat with one of our Lunch Leads. Meet Silicon Valley movers and shakers over an intimate lunch on Saturday during the conference!
Hear first-hand stories, have the chance to ask questions, and really dive deep into what you really want to know from these leading ladies (and a few good men).
Who’s coming for lunch?
- Chris Shipley (Founder, DEMO)
- Christine Herron (First Round Capital)
- Katherine Barr (Partner, MDV)
- Sundeep Ahuja (Co-Founder, richrelevance)
- Susas Lucas-Conwell (Executive Director, SD Forum)
- Surya Yalamanchili (Director, Marketing, LinkedIn)
- Will Bunker (Co-Founder and Principal, WhiteSpace Ventures)
- Alka Gupta (Managing Director, Ojas Group)
….and many, many more
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Update on Social Gaming Summit - More Blog Posts to Come
By charles | May 7, 2008
I haven’t been blogging too much lately. There are three main reasons why this is the case:
1. I’ve been really busy at Gaia.
2. Most of the posts I’ve had about technology are mildy acerbic and I’m trying to decide whether or not to post them. I think I will but give me a few days.
2. I’ve been working really hard with Jeremy Liew (Lightspeed is a sponsor and a great one at that) and David Sachs on the Social Gaming Summit.
Oh, and it’s my birthday on Friday.
In news, I wanted to give you all an update on the Social Gaming Summit. We’ve done a ton of work to fill out the speaker lineup and the list of topics we plan to cover. If you read my blog, you can save 10% on the ticket price by using the discount code “CHUDSON” at checkout. More details on the updated lineup below:
The Social Gaming Summit is a one day conference focused on the intersection of casual gaming, immersive worlds, and social networking. Games are becoming one of the most popular activities within social networks and game developers continue to spend increasing amounts of energy figuring out how to leverage and apply the growth in social networking to the games they are developing. The conference will bring together leaders in the social networking and gaming spaces to share insights into the convergence of these worlds.
What: Social Gaming Summit (http://www.socialgamingsummit.com)
Where: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA
When: Friday, June 13th 2008
Register Here: http://socialgamingsummit.eventbrite.com/
Confirmed speakers already include the following list of folks:
* Dave Williams, Shockwave and AddictingGames
* Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
* Jim Greer, Kongregate
* Siqi Chen, Serious Business (Friends for Sale)
* Blake Commagere, Mogad.com / Vampires / Werewolves
* Erik Bethke, Go Pets
* Teemu Huutanen, Sulake (Habbo)
* Daniel James, Three Rings
* Cary Rosenzweig, IMVU
* Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain
* Nicole Lazarro, XEODesign
* Matt Mihaly, Sparkplay Media
* Shervin Pishevar, Social Gaming Network
* Mark Pincus, Zynga
* Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners
* Mike Sego, (fluff)Friends
* John Welch, Playfirst
* Matt Palmer, Stardoll
* Ted Rheingold, Dogster
We’ll be announcing more speakers over the next week or so - we’ve got some great people lined up and I think you’ll really get a lot out of spending the day with us.
I’m also including some brief descriptions of the panel and discussion topics we’re planning to cover at the event - you can read more about the details below:
Casual MMOs and Immersive Worlds
Many so-called “casual MMOs” and immersive worlds are casual only in the sense that the point of the game is not to bash gruesome looking monsters or the game isn’t set in a sci-fi fantasy world. The engagement story around existing and upcoming casual MMOs is real and very compelling. This panel will discuss what it takes to build a successful casual MMO that users love to play.
Asynchronous Games on Social Networks
There are a lot of interesting asynchronous activities happening on social networks. Some of them are traditional games, others are games in disguise. Join us and hear from some of the leading voices in this space share their views on how to build great gameplay characteristics into social networking applications and what opportunities exist for gameplay to take advantage of the social graph.
Building Communities and Social Interaction In and Around Games
Social networking and games go hand in hand. Whether it’s taking advantage of the relationship data in social networks to build novel gameplay or building community among people who play games, game developers are discovering clever ways to build real communities around the games they’re developing. Hear from our panel of thought leaders about what it takes to successfully integrate community and social interaction into the next generation of games.
What Makes Games Fun?
We all like to have fun, right? What is it about games that makes them so fun? Is it gameplay? Social interaction? Achievements and accomplishments? Our panel of thought leaders will share their perspectives on what it takes to build a fun game and why building fun into games is more difficult than it looks.
Monetization and Business Models for Social Games
There are a handful of viable (proven) business models for social games. How should game developers go about choosing the best business model for their games? Our panel of experts will share their thoughts on the various business models and how to think through the right one for a given game.
User-Generated Games in Social Networks
Curious about how social network users are creating games of their own within the context of existing game structures? This is the panel for you.
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Social Networking Advertising - It Will Be Even Harder than we Think
By charles | April 20, 2008
I’ve had a few experiences in the past few weeks that continue to bolster my belief that monetizing social networks and communities will continue to be a lot harder than people think.
1. I posted a question on Twitter about the difference between two different sets of Bose headphones and got a lot of information back that ended up influencing a purchase decision.
2. I updated my Facebook status with a request for some restaurant recommendations and I got a lot of good ones, one of which I ended up using.
3. I updated my Facebook status to let folks know I had bought some tickets for a comedy show and two of my friends ended up buying them as a result.
In each case, I was part of a transaction that was socially influenced (as many were even before the advent of social networking sites). And in each case, I had a hard time envisioning how either of the services in question (Facebook and Twitter) could have laid claim to a portion of the resulting transaction. Judging by the activity I see within my own network, there are a lot of my friends using social networks as social Q&A systems to get input, advice, and recommendations in addition to just letting folks know what they’re up to at the moment.
Models that rely on capturing value based on social recommendations, particularly those models which want to tax those transactions by taking a share of the transaction, are going to have a hard time getting traction today. Two reasons why this will be a hard road in the short term:
Neither Twitter nor Facebook had any visibility into the resulting transaction as it all happened out of band from their perspective - the consumption all happened offline and outside of the networks they manage and monitor. I’m not sure how most of these models are going to work if the social networks only have visibility into online transactions and many of these loops close offline.
Even if these networks could demonstrate that they were driving referral behavior based on social interactions, why would advertisers want to pay for the resulting transactions?
Google can charge advertisers for AdWords placements because they are the intermediary that actually connects users and advertisers. In the social networking context, though, Facebook and Twitter aren’t actually acting as intermediaries - they’re providing a platform that allows for direct, user-to-user communication. If you’re not an intermediary, it’s hard to extract a fee. And if an advertiser doesn’t have to pay for the referrals they’re getting, why would they want to do so?
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Why the Google Apps and Salesforce Integration Doesn’t Solve My Problem
By charles | April 15, 2008
I was re-reading the announcement about how Google Apps and Salesforce will be working together more closely to make Google Apps and Salesforce work together more closely. As someone who has used a number of CRM products over the years, I welcome this announcement. I continue to believe one of the big things that hampers the overall utility of CRM systems is that it’s generally pretty painful to get data into the system. Even though Salesforce has built some clever hooks into Microsoft Outlook and other email systems, I don’t think this type of application coupling is really what will make CRM more useful.
My greatest frustration with all CRM systems is that they are fundamentally about structure and structured data when most of the data I want to put into the system is unstructured data (email, call notes, free text, etc). If you really want to make my CRM system more useful, don’t focus on integrating with more mail clients and web-based document systems - get better at taking my unstructured inputs and turning them into structured data the CRM system needs to function properly. My biggest complaint about systems like Salesforce is that it takes a lot of time to manually categorize new data (emails, contracts, documents, notes, etc) in order to put it into the system. At some point, this manual system begins to get tedious. I’m willing to do some of the training work required to get the system to the point where I’ve seeded it with some core data (accounts, contacts, opportunities, etc) - at some point, I’d like to see a return on my time investment and have the system get smart enough
to take my raw inputs and “figure out” where they belong. That would be an innovation. And it would make CRM systems a whole lot more usefu.
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Reactions to Fred Wilson’s Post on Liquidity - We Have a Price Gap
By charles | April 10, 2008
I enjoyed reading Fred Wilson’s post on how the VC market needs more liquidity options for consumer Internet companies. As much as I enjoyed the post, I really enjoyed the comments even more.
I applaud Fred for taking a different view and being honest about what a lot of venture investors must be thinking privately. There must be a segment of VCs out there who are asking themselves the following question:
What do I do with a portfolio of consumer Internet companies that are growing quickly in terms of users, pageviews, and engagement if the buyers aren’t buying and the companies can’t go public?
This is, I think, the question of the day. Imagine a spectrum with YouTube and Facebook on one end and an awful, ill-conceived web application on the other end. If you’re on either end, the answer is clear. The really poor applications will die quietly (or live on in anonymity) and the hottest properties with broad, mainstream appeal will always get interest from potential buyers.
Most of the companies out there, in particular products and services that I use and enjoy, are in the uncomfortable middle. They’re large enough that they have a demonstrated audience. They might even be dominant in their niche in the web 2.0 world. But they’re not huge companies yet and they might never be - the audience for what they’re doing might not be large enough to warrant a “go big” strategy at all.
It is true that many of the largest potential exit opportunities (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) are not as aggressively buying companies today as they have in the past (or at least it feels that way). But why should they be, especially at the valuations that many companies are beginning to achieve? If there’s no threat that the companies in question will go public and none of them are really ramping like a YouTube or Facebook, what’s the impetus to buy now? I’d argue that most of the large Internet buyers simply don’t feel any pressure or need to buy companies right now.
I don’t believe it has anything to do with post-acquisition integration success or failure. Sometimes companies get bought because the buying company likes the product and the team. Sometimes it happens because the buyer likes the team and would frankly rather redeploy that team on some other project where they feel the new team can infuse some start-up pixie dust and make things work better. Seeing acquired products “die on the vine” is sometimes intentional and sometimes due to poor execution - and most companies don’t feel compelled to follow up on what happens post-acquisition for smallish tuck-in acquisitions.
I think this is really simple - buyers and sellers are way apart on price right now. It’s not that there aren’t attractive community sites and properties out there that would make sense as part of a larger organization - there just isn’t broad agreement on what they’re worth. Bridging that gap is going to require that sellers grow into their valuations or buyers redefine what strikes them as fair prices. Maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t really think it’s any more complicated than that.
And right now I think buyers hold the upper hand. And it’s likely to stay that way until some of the emerging star companies either get on a path toward building bigger businesses or the valuation gap closes. Many consumer Internet companies are finding ways to achieve “lifestyle” run rates (and nice lifestyles at that) but aren’t (yet) showing a path to revenues that make an IPO conversation feasible.
Disqus at your leisure in the comments section below.
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Social Gaming Summit - June 13th, San Francisco, CA
By charles | April 6, 2008
I’m way behind on blogging and here’s why:
I wanted to give you a heads up on an exciting event coming up in June. I’m working with Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed and David Sachs to organize a one day conference on social gaming in San Francisco and I hope you can make it out for what will be a great day. For those of you who were able to make it out to last year’s Virtual Goods Summit, the Social Gaming Summit will continue to advance the conversation around engagement, business models, and social interaction online by examining what’s happening in the world of social gaming.
We have a landing page up for the event right now but I wanted to give you a sneak peek of what we have lined up before we post more details about the event. I hope you can join us - feel free to share these details with friends and colleagues.
What: Social Gaming Summit (http://www.socialgamingsummit.com)
Where: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA
When: Friday, June 13th 2008
Register Here: http://socialgamingsummit.eventbrite.com/
Confirmed speakers already include the following list of folks:
* Dave Williams, Shockwave and AddictingGames
* Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
* Jim Greer, Kongregate
* Siqi Chen, Serious Business (Friends for Sale)
* Erik Bethke, Go Pets
* Daniel James, Three Rings
* Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain
* Nicole Lazarro, XEODesign
* Matt Mihaly, Sparkplay Media
We’ll be announcing more speakers over the next week or so - we’ve got some great people lined up and I think you’ll really get a lot out of spending the day with us.
I’m also including some brief descriptions of the panel and discussion topics we’re planning to cover at the event - you can read more about the details below:
Casual MMOs and Immersive Worlds
Many so-called “casual MMOs” and immersive worlds are casual only in the sense that the point of the game is not to bash gruesome looking monsters or the game isn’t set in a sci-fi fantasy world. The engagement story around existing and upcoming casual MMOs is real and very compelling. This panel will discuss what it takes to build a successful casual MMO that users love to play.
Asynchronous Games on Social Networks
There are a lot of interesting asynchronous activities happening on social networks. Some of them are traditional games, others are games in disguise. Join us and hear from some of the leading voices in this space share their views on how to build great gameplay characteristics into social networking applications and what opportunities exist for gameplay to take advantage of the social graph.
Building Communities and Social Interaction In and Around Games
Social networking and games go hand in hand. Whether it’s taking advantage of the relationship data in social networks to build novel gameplay or building community among people who play games, game developers are discovering clever ways to build real communities around the games they’re developing. Hear from our panel of thought leaders about what it takes to successfully integrate community and social interaction into the next generation of games.
What Makes Games Fun?
We all like to have fun, right? What is it about games that makes them so fun? Is it gameplay? Social interaction? Achievements and accomplishments? Our panel of thought leaders will share their perspectives on what it takes to build a fun game and why building fun into games is more difficult than it looks.
Monetization and Business Models for Social Games
There are a handful of viable (proven) business models for social games. How should game developers go about choosing the best business model for their games? Our panel of experts will share their thoughts on the various business models and how to think through the right one for a given game.
Questions? Speaker suggestions? Want to sponsor the event? Just leave a comment or mail me directly.
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My Early Experiences with My Dash Express GPS Unit
By charles | March 30, 2008
I was one of the beta testers for the Dash Express GPS unit, a very cool GPS unit from Dash Navigation that includes a Wi-Fi radio, a GPRS radio, and all of the features you’ve come to know and love from modern GPS units. This is the first and only GPS unit I’ve ever owned in my entire life. I’m including a few comments about the device and the market below. Overall, I think it’s a great device and I hope the next generation pushes the envelope even further. I have a bunch of comments below, organized more as snippets and thoughts than organized prose.
Form Factor - My one minor “complaint” about the Dash Express is the form factor. It is larger, bulkier, and heavier than most of the other GPS units I looked at buying - specifically the Nuvi series. I chalk the larger size up to the fact that the device has a lot on the inside - aside from being a great navigation unit, it has radios for Wi-Fi and GPRS connectivity. That has to add to the bulk. I am mildly jealous of my friends who have slimmer form factor GPS units, but they’re all envious of the connectivity I have in my unit.
The screen is bright and easy to read, especially at night. A bit more anti-glare treatment would help, though - I sometimes find the screen to have a lot of glare during early afternoon driving if I don’t have it angled just right. I am also really glad that they beefed up the on-board battery in the device - it can now work without being plugged into my cigarette lighter, which is key when I need to charge other devices.
User Interface - Overall, the user interface is clean and easy to use. I like the touch screen functionality and it generally works well. I found typing using the keyboard to be a bit of a challenge, largely because the keys are really close together on the screen and I frequently hit the wrong key when typing. Also, I wish the UI were a bit “zippier” at times - some times there’s a notable lag between key entry and when the device responds to said input. The menu system is easy to navigate and learn.
Navigation Accuracy - Overall, the Dash GPS does a very good job at its core tasks, which are providing good driving directions and accurate time of arrival estimates. There are a few things that plague this device, though. I find that it constantly gets “lost” in the Financial District in San Francisco. I’m guessing this is due to the challenge of getting an accurate GPS signal in tight quarters. I also find that I often wish that I could force the device to find and maintain a GPRS or Wi-Fi connection. There are a great deal more places available via the Yahoo search interface than the device has in its onboard memory. I haven’t yet figured out how to force the device to connect to look up a location. Sometimes I end up using the Google Maps app on my Blackberry to get the address before entering that same address into the device.
Should Dash fear Google Maps and Telenav? I don’t think so, actually. Even if I could mount my Blackberry in such a way that I could easily see it and use it as a navigational aid, it doesn’t beat a dedicated device. However, what is the “killer combination” is having a passenger with a Blackberry. If you, as the driver, don’t need to see and operate the device, having a passenger with a Blackberry who can navigate and provide directions is a reasonable substitute. Until the display and interface for such devices is larger, I think there’s a strong use case for a dedicated device.
Send-to-car is an awesome feature. My favorite feature is send to car. It’s a huge time saver to be able to send addresses for upcoming appointments directly from my desktop computer while I’m working and know that those addresses will eventually show up in the list of navigable places on my device. It’s also cool that I can have friends / co-workers send addresses to the device as well. I do, however, wish that I could send addresses to my own device via SMS - that would be a very nice feature to add.
What About Voice? This device needs a voice interface. It simply isn’t safe to try to interact with the device via a touchscreen UI while driving. A voice interface with some very simple commands like “find alternate route”, “new address”, etc would really help. Bay Area traffic is dynamic and I wish I could safely interact with the device while driving.
Feels like TiVo - This product reminds me a lot of TiVo. Everyone I know who has one (including me) really likes it and tells lots of other people about how much they like it. But right now it feels like the audience for a connected GPS unit is fairly niche. Like TiVo, the company has a business model that combines an upfront hardware cost and a monthly subscription fee. I’ll be interested to see how the business model evolves over time.
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Why High Start-Up Valuations Don’t Bother Me One Bit
By charles | March 26, 2008
I’ve been fascinated by some of the large web 2.0 financings that have either gotten done (Slide) or are rumored to be on the table (RockYou, Meebo, etc). I am a bit perplexed about some of the grumblings about how start-up valuations are out of line with reality. I tend to disagree, but for different reasons than I’ve heard articulated by others. My thoughts below:
Valuations based on actual market transactions are never “wrong” - they reflect prices at which buyers and sellers were able to get together and get a deal done. Saying that private market valuations for web 2.0 companies are “wrong” is like saying that $4 gasoline is “wrong” - while both prices may be hard to understand or justify, high web 2.0 valuations and high gas prices are both reflect the price at which a seller and a buyer were able to agree and complete a sale.
The gasoline analogy is imperfect, though. A portion of the people who buy gasoline at $4 are doing so not because they expect the price to appreciate but because they actually need it. That is to say that some portion of people buying gas aren’t investing or speculating – they need to heat their homes and put gas in their cars and will pay a market price. In the case of web 2.0 valuations, the people are explicitly investing, so the price paid must reflect what it takes to get a deal done while leaving some reasonable upside for the new money into the deal. There is an inherent upside expectation in any equity investment and web 2.0 investments are no different in that regard.
Unlike public equity markets, private markets don’t get “marked to market” every day. This is a simple point (I think). Whereas public market valuations get tested and re-evaluated on a minute-by-minute basis, private company valuations only really get validated when a company looks to raise money. This isn’t to say that investors don’t mark private investments up or down on their own books in between financings. It is to say, however, that private company valuations can best be thought of as snapshots – they give you some sense as to what the market will bear at any given point in time. Companies that raised money on a given set of terms 6 months ago might get better or worse terms tomorrow. In private companies, timing really is important as you get relatively few opportunities to re-validate your worth.
Like public market valuations, valuations for web 2.0 companies will correct if there is a pricing issue going on. It’s important to note that while many companies are raising or seeking to raise rounds of financing at pretty high valuations (north of $100 million) relative to the revenue they’re generating, relatively few of them are actually getting bought at these prices. This imbalance will correct itself of its own accord. Either the companies raising money at these high valuations will continue to grow and justify their valuations to the point that an acquisition or IPO is possible and a liquidity event pegs the valuation or they won’t. In the event that they don’t succeed in growing, we’ve seen what happens – companies have down rounds or are bought out at lower prices than previously imagined. Many times, the pain is borne most heavily by founders and employees. I see no reason to suspect things will roll out differently in this case.
I wonder if the people who are investing in these deals at $100 million+ valuations (many of them are not traditional VCs – they’re corporate, strategic, or financial investors) know something we don’t know. With Google’s stock price being a bit muted and the Yahoo / Microsoft saga unfolding, there don’t appear to be a ton of ready buyers looking to use cash or stock to pick up these companies at the prices required to close deals. With the notable (and I mean notable) AOL / Bebo deal, we haven’t seen a lot of big-ticket M&A happening from traditional web players outside of the ad network space.
There are two scenarios I can envision that would create a very ready market for these deals on the M&A side. One would be Facebook getting aggressive and starting to buy up some of these companies and integrating them into their core services. The other would be some strong investment activity from the media folks (Viacom, Sony, Walt Disney, etc) in snapping up web 2.0 talent.
As is always the case with markets, if we wait and see, we will wait and see.
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4 Things I Hope the FriendFeed API Enables
By charles | March 19, 2008
After hearing about FriendFeed’s upcoming API, I’ve been thinking about the kinds of features and functionality I’d like to see enabled once the API is available. At the end of the day, I really like the conversations that happen on FriendFeed and I hope the upcoming API offers folks a way to share those conversations with a wider audience of people and allows those conversations to follow and live with the content itself.
Develop a plug-in that pulls blog entry comments from FriendFeed and puts them on my blog with the original post
The conversations that happen on FriendFeed are really interesting. I would love to be able to pull those comments out of the system and have them live with the original content.
Take comments from my blog and have those show up in FriendFeed
In the same vein as the point above, I’d like to have comments left by folks who read my blog show up in FriendFeed.
Develop an desktop application for FriendFeed that works on my desktop
Sometimes I don’t want to go to a web-browser or an RSS reader to see what’s happening on FriendFeed. A small desktop app (similar to the ones that have been popular for Twitter) would be a great way to follow the conversations as they happen.
De-duplication and popularity leaderboard
Similar to Techmeme, there are a lot of stories / posts in FriendFeed that I see shared by multiple people. Not everyone points to the same source feed as the next person and I’d love to see what the most popular, fastest-moving, or commented / liked items are in FriendFeed. Ditto on the people whose posts and content are generating the most activity.
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