Are you in Sydney or the Bay Area? If so - come join me, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur and our host Ross Dawson at the Future of Media Summit 08. A Cross-continental conference.

Otherwise track #fom08 on the various social networks.

Following up from my last post about bubbles, this time from people who know what they’re talking about - VCs (hah) - are joining in the discussion.

Check out the Wall Street Journal’s discussion between VCs.

Here’s a quote from Todd Dagres about why he thinks we are indeed in a bubble.

Web 2.0 is a bubble for 3 reasons: 1) There is far too much money chasing Web 2.0 deals. Too much money means too many companies getting funded at higher valuations. 2) There are virtually no barriers to entry in Web 2.0 and therefore the ability to develop a unique solution and sustain a competitive advantage is virtually nil. Therefore, it’s difficult for Web 2.0 companies to build long term value. 3) There is very little liquidity in the market for Web 2.0 companies.

There are some great arguments for and against. In the end though, as I said previously. If you have a business plan and are solving a real pain then you can worry… less.

Everyone said Twitter was cool - but I didn’t really get it.

Jaiku gets it though. They are Twitter++. They call it a ‘Presence Stream’ (which I love) and they allow you to publish all events about your life to a unified stream. Very, very cool.

In fact, they are a perfect partner for Touchstone. Just like AIM/Skype/MSN does a popup toast when a user logs on, I’d like Touchstone to alert me when any event occurs in the life of one of my friends/contacts.

Based on the event importance, it could be routed in various ways and to various devices/platforms.

I love it.

Via Library Clips

Imagine this:

Touchstone is a Personal Relevancy Engine. This means it can automatically calculate which Digg stories are the most ‘Personally Relevant’ to you.

Therefore it is conceptually possible for someone to write a Touchstone ‘Output Adapter’ that:

1. Checked incoming Touchstone items to see if they came from the Digg RSS feed.
2. If they came from Digg and they are rated, by Touchstone, as very personally relevant to you, the adapter could execute the ‘Digg’ command for that story on your behalf.

This way, Touchstone could automatically Digg stories for you.

Automatic Digging…

Update: I’m not sure if this is useful or even appropriate for Digg - it was just an idea that struck me - if nothing else it is an interesting application of Touchstone Technology. Feel free to comment to let me know your thoughts.

If you are interested in creating this adapter, contact me and I can get you started.

If you want to know when the adapter has been made so you can try it out, sign up to our mailing list (on the left hand side of the page) and we’ll let you know when it’s done. No spam I promise - I hate spam.

Google shuts down Google Answers - losing out to Yahoo’s competing service…

I’ve said it before and I will say it again - Google should stick to math’s and automation instead of trying to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft at what they do best - community/applications/platforms.

The only two things Google has ever hit out of the park were search and advertising. Both involved automating the process of people finding stuff. Automation being the key ingredient. They are great at math’s.

But when it comes to building communities like with Google Answers Yahoo or Microsoft seem to win every time.

Google should stick to what it does best instead of getting distracted by the other 2. If it plays to its strengths then it would minimize it’s growing evil image and decrease its wasted efforts.

I guess for now they have the cash to burn, even if all they achieve is keeping Yahoo and Microsoft on their toes.

Touchstone was mentioned on an Australia TV show called ‘A Current Affair‘ last night at 6:30.

You can check out the behind the scenes photos on flickr.

I will try to get a recording posted on YouTube at some point too.

Thanks to Sean who made it happen and Nik for all his help!

Update: Here is the video (I’m just after 2:20)

I am finally home from our trip to the US. It was a fantastic visit - the first of many. You can see some of the pictures at Flickr.

But back to the real stuff:

Disclaimer: I am using the terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 pretty heavily here. I am aware of the buzzword fatigue that they are attracting these days but these terms give me an invaluable shorthand for referring to different bubbles/iterations/movements/waves.

Aggregation (not Content) is king.

I’ve been saying this to people for a while but have not really had a chance to blog about it. It actually came up a few times at conferences such as Web 2.0, Web 2.2 and StartupCamp while I was in the Bay Area.

The common misconception these days is that services like YouTube are Web 2.0. This is only partially correct. Uploading your work to a site, rating it, sharing it - these are not new concepts. Sites/Services like DeviantArt have been doing it since Web 1.0.

People are talking about the word ‘Community’ like it represents the spirit of Web 2.0. Community was one of the buzzwords of the Web 1.0 bubble. It is not new.

The new part is that YouTube lets you embed your video on other sites and access their content via RSS. These are both forms of syndication.

So if syndication is the main new feature (and not community or user-generated content) then the main new tool must be aggregation.

But aggregation is a means to an end. When a user is able to access content on their own terms another much more fundamental trend reveals itself. Personalization.

Every feature typically associated with Web 2.0 (blogs, syndication, rating, digging, ajax) is actually about allowing greater Personalization by putting the user at the centre of their experience.

However the current set of aggregators (with a few exceptions) has a long way to go until they give a user ultimate personalization. Allowing them to choose the feeds they want to read is the most basic form of personalization. There is so much more room to innovate.

While most have focused on the boring folders/items metaphor, and others like Microsoft have created useless 3d representations of those same folders and items, the real opportunity lays in recognizing that aggregation + true personalization is actually the holy grail of this latest web iteration.

Over the last few days we have been at the Web 2.0 Conference and the Web 2.2 Conference (apparently there is an upgrade coming out!) and by far the coolest thing being demoed (besides Touchstone of course) is Microsoft’s Photosyth research project.

This thing is amazing.

Today at Web 2.2 we talked about community building and how tools can influence, build and disband communities via various subtle and not-so-subtle influences.

My main contribution was the sentiment that the ultimate community building ‘tool’ right now is blogging. Blogs are many pieces loosely joined and that model is at the heart of the Web 2.0 movement.

We also talked about how applications like Touchstone can model interests in the community to build a profile about which components (people) of a community contribute the most, even when the contribution is only passively received.

Very academic!

One of the important distinctions that we often have to make for Touchstone is that a personal relevancy engine is very different to a recommendation engine. It does forma part of the puzzle, but we feel that there is enough recommendation engines out there, but not enough engines which filter down the noise, based on many of the same principals.

Let me share a brief story with you:

Touchstone shares its office with another development team (a start-up doing other…stuff). We all get along very well and the teams work play nicely together. Today I started conversation based on an alert I got from Touchstone. During the conversation (about a possible cure for AIDS) someone asked:

“Where do you get all your medical news? Because I’ve got my Tech news covered, but I am interested in Medical Science, but don’t ever get exposed to it.”.

And I honestly had no idea.

I had no clue, because it was actually Touchstone that told me, and like many other’s when Touchstone is doing its job (which is infrequently because I am always running the least stable and most experimental version available) I couldn’t care less about the “source”. I don’t feel I NEED to know. I replied “I don’t know, umm, prolly Reuters?”

This got me thinking. Does the source matter? How and more importantly should Touchstone suggest new sources of information to you over time? Where does Touchstone stop being a personal relevancy engine and start being a personal recommendation system? Should it start tracking new sources with or without your permission?

Hey everyone - I see that Ash has been a very busy beaver on the blog and with the builds while I have been away. Thanks for that Ash!

Also while we have been over here, we have been mentioned on Read/Write Web in a list of top Australian apps and Real Software Development as the best of the best. Big thanks to those sites.

Here are some pics for you all to see from our trip so far.