John Battelle's Searchblog

If you've been reading my musings these past few months, you may have noticed an increasing fascination with data. Who owns it (the creator, the service, both? Who has access to it - ISPs? Device makers? Marketers? The government? And how are we as an industry leveraging data to create entirely new classes of services?

Well, expect a lot more musing here, because (finally!) we're ready to announce the theme for the Web 2 Summit, 2011, and it's this: The Data Frame. From my overview, just posted on the site:

For Summit 2010, we noted that the Web ecosystem had shifted into something of a battlefield, with both major players and upstarts jockeying for lead positions around key “Points of Control.” Looking back at our theme one year later, it’s clear the game is still in its early phases – most of the major players have held their ground and continue to press into new territory. Meanwhile, the cycle of startup creation has intensified and compressed.

Given all this, we’re tempted to simply declare 2011 “Points of Control, The Sequel.” But we’ve noticed a constant uniting nearly all the battles around these strategic regions. That constant? How companies (and their customers) leverage data.

In our original Web 2.0 opening talk, as well as in Tim’s subsequent paper “What is Web 2.0,” we outlined our short list of key elements defining the emergent web economy. Smack in the middle of that list is this statement: “Data Is the Next Intel Inside.” At the time, most of us only vaguely understood the importance of this concept. Three years ago we noted the role of data when “Web Meets World,” and two years ago, we enlarged upon it with “WebSquared.”

This year, data has taken center stage in the networked economy. We live in a world clothed in data, and as we interact with it, we create more – data is not only the web’s core resource, it is at once both renewable and infinite. No longer tethered to the PC, each of us bathes in a continuous stream of data, in real time, nearly everywhere we go.

In the decade since search redefined how we consume information, we have learned to make the world a game and the game our world, to ask and answer “what’s happening,” “what’s on your mind,” and “where are you?” Each purchase, search, status update, and check-in layers our world with data. Billions of times each day, we pattern a world collectively created by Twitter, Zynga, Facebook, Tencent, Foursquare, Google, Tumblr, Baidu, and thousands of other services. The Database of Intentions is scaling to nearly incomprehensible size and power.

Of course, this fact raises serious issues of consumer privacy, corporate trust, and our governments’ approach to balancing the two. As we learn to leverage this ever-shifting platform called the Internet, we are at once renegotiating our social, economic, and cultural relationships – and we’re doing it in real time. How we interact with each other, how we engage with our government, how we conduct business, and even how we understand our place in the world – all has changed in the short two decades since the dawn of the commercial Internet. And all of this is described through a matrix of data, the power of which our culture is only beginning to recognize.

At the Web 2 Summit 2011, we’ll use data as a framing device to understand the state of the web. We know that those who best leverage data will win. So who’s winning, and how? Who’s behind? In each of our key points of control such as location, mobile platforms, gaming, content, social – who is innovating, and where are the opportunities? What new classes of services and platforms are emerging, and what difficult policy questions loom? And what of the consumer – will users become their own “point of control,” and start to understand the power of their own data?

These are some of the questions we’ll be asking and answering at the 8^th annual Web 2 Summit. We look forward to exploring them together.

Web 2 Summit 2011

The Palace Hotel San Francisco

Oct. 17-19, 2011

* And yes, we’ll be updating our “Points of Control” Map with a new layer – the Data layer, naturally.

Herewith and below:

Friday Signal: What's Yer 20? Apple and Google Know! »

Thursday Signal: War, Death, Skynet, Pot

Weds. Signal: This Is Your Brain, On Facebook

Tuesday Signal: We Were All Sophomores, Once And Again

Monday Signal: What *Is* The Future of Media?

One of my first "big books" out of college was James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science and it still resonates with me, though it's been so long I think I'm due for a re-read. In any case, the next book up in my ongoing self-education is Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. It's long. It's dense. It's good, so far. In fact, there's already a passage, a quote from Plato, that has struck me as germane to the ongoing threads I attempt to weave here on this site (even if all I'm really making is a lame friendship bracelet - pun intended, as you will see).

Early in the book, Gleick narrates the birth of the written word, which if you think about it (and he certainly has), is quite an extraordinary event. Turns out Plato, who was literate (and therefore quotable today), was not a fan of the written word. His mentor Socrates, Gleick reminds us, was illiterate. Well, OK, that's not fair. Socrates wasn't illiterate, he was, in Gleick's words, a "nonwriter." In any case, the passage that struck me is Plato speaking about the written word, quoted in "The Information":

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them .You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.

Nicholas Carr would be proud of Plato. But both would be wrong.

Definitions of wisdom shift as cultures shift. Now, of course, to be wise is to be literate. Then, to be wise was to commit knowledge to memory. Now, it's to the ability to lookup (to search, to find, to divine patterns). I've called this search literacy in the past, but I think we're moving toward something larger.

Consider the same passage, liberally edited to be a critique of the new medium of Facebook and social networking, rather than the new medium of the written word.

For this invention will produce disconnection in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice true relationships between people. Their trust in Facebook, produced by external connections which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own ability to maintain relationships.You have invented an elixir not of relationships, but of reminding one of relationship; and you offer your pupils the appearance of connection, not true connection.

When writing was new, it was strange, and it was hard to imagine a society based on the written word. At the dawn of digital connectivity, the same holds true. Are digital relationships real? Is the grammar of Facebook robust enough to hold all the nuance of true connection?

Probably not yet. But I for one am happy Plato learned to write. And I can also imagine a time - well after these words sink deeply into the sediments of history - when Plato and Facebook are united in a new technology of memory, relationship, and communication that eclipses anything we might debate today.

Last night I had the pleasure of interviewing Steven Levy, and old colleague from Wired, on the subject of his new book: In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. The venue was the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, and I think they'll have the audio link up soon.

Steven's interview was a lot like his book - full of previously untold anecdotes and stories that rounded out pieces of Google's history that many of us only dreamt of knowing about. When I was reporting my book,The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, I had limited access to folks at Google, and *really* limited access to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Levy had the opposite, spending more than two years inside the company and seeing any number of things that journalists would have killed to see in years past.

The result is a lively and very detailed piece of reporting about the inner workings of Google. But I was a bit disappointed with the book in that Steven didn't take all that new knowledge and pull back to give us his own analysis of what it all meant. I asked him about this, and he said he made the conscious decision to not editorialize, but rather lay it all out there and let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. I respect that, but I also know Steven has really informed opinions, and I wish he'd give them to us.

What I took away from In the Plex was a renewed respect for the awesome size and scope of Google's infrastructure, as well as its ambition. Sometimes we forget that Google is more likely than not the largest manufacturer of computers in the world, and runs the largest single instance of computing power in the world. It's also one of the largest collectors and analyzers of data in the world. All of this has drawn serious scrutiny, but I don't think even the regulators really grok how significant Google's assets are. They should all read Steven's book.

Levy only grazes the surface of Google's social blindness, unfortunately, and due to timing could only mention Page's ascendancy to CEO in his epilogue. But his reporting on how the China issue played out is captivating, as are the many details he fills out in Google's early history. If you're fascinated by Google, you've got to add this one to your library.

Federated Media is proud to present the sixth annual Conversational Marketing Summit, June 6-7 at the fabulous Hudson Theater in the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Times Square. The preliminary agenda is now up, more is coming, but you can get a pretty good sense of the lineup - it's amazing.
This year’s CM Summit will bridge the conversations of FM's regional Signal conferences on one stage, bringing together the topics of content marketing, location services, mobile, data, and the real-time web onto one stage.

See our initial agenda, now live on the site.

The rise of digital platforms present massive opportunities, but one significant challenge: finding the signal in an increasingly noisy ecosystem of sites, apps, and services. Audiences fragmented between usage on Facebook and Twitter are constantly faced with new services like Groupon, Foursquare, Color, and SimpleGeo. How can we, as marketers, help our customers find the signal that's right for them? CM Summit we will dive into a day and half of rapid-fire case studies, insightful one-on-one conversations, and dynamic High Order Bits that will help brands, agencies, and marketers better understand consumer trends, experiences and industry signals.  

Join the conversation! This event always sells out.
REGISTER TODAY and get your early-bird pricing, available only until this Friday, April 22. Special thanks to our event sponsors: RIM, AT&T, Google, Quantcast, Demand Media, Facebook, Outbrain, Pandora, R2integrated, Slideshare, Yahoo!, AOL, Mobile Roadie, Spiceworks, Ustream; and our partners: IAB, Mashable, SMAC, and paidContent.
We look forward to seeing you this June 6-7 in New York!
Please visit our site for hotel booking details, a full list of speakers, and more event details.

For my next book (no really, I'm starting to work on it in my copious spare time), I've begun to read in earnest. I've got a rather long list, and I'm not sure I'll get to them all, but for those that I do read, I plan to do a quick review here, if for no other reason than to prove I read the damn thing, and had an opinion.

Because the next book is a report from the future, I figured I may as well start with the NYT bestseller The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman, a fellow who apparently is the leader of a consulting company his publisher calls "the shadow CIA". (And yes, that link is an Amazon affiliate link. I'm trying to make a few bucks to pay for the sorry state of publishing overall. Someday I'll write a post about the process of selling my next book, but that day is not today).

Anyway, this book (first published in early 2009) came highly recommended to me by a very well known person in the Valley. It's not a technology book, if anything, it's the equivalent of a geopolitical romp, if ever there was such a thing. It's reasonably well reviewed on Amazon, averaging three and a half stars, and I'll admit it's got some fun stuff in there.

But I have to say, it pretty much missed the entire boat when it comes to the impact the Internet is going to have on geopolitics, culture, and society over the next 100 years.

Now, I'm not going to do a classic book review here, but rather give you what I might say if you asked me what I thought of the book at, say, an industry cocktail party. And when I get to all the rest of the books, I'll be doing the same. Deal? Deal.

So the premise of Friedman's book is that certain geopolitical facts will never change. Nations need security, and those nations who can fend for themselves will attempt to defend that security. Some nations will fail and be dissolved into larger, more powerful neighbors, others will flex new muscles and create new (or in some cases very old) spheres of influence.

What makes the book so interesting are the author's predictions, the most radical being this: That by sometime mid century, we'll have a world war between two major sets of allies: On the one hand, the US, and the other, Turkey and Japan. Friedman lays this all out using a classic "past as prologue" approach, and I have to say, if you hold pretty much everything else constant, it actually makes a lot of sense.

But I find Friedman's analysis sorely lacking when it comes to the potentially disruptive nature of global connectedness. Friedman argues from essentially this point of view: Countries are always worried about borders, access to commodities, and preserving national identity. They will always act to protect and preserve all three. He makes compelling cases for this by pointing to many centuries of history, from the Ottoman Empire to Germany in the 1900s.

Problem is, to my mind, we're at a pivot point in human history, and I'm not convinced that national identity and protection of borders is going to drive folks to war in the way it has in the past. Until recently the human race has been bound by geographical regions of interest. Increasingly, the boundaries have more to do with intellectual (and commercial) regions of interest that are rather agnostic with regard to geography. They are, in a word, stateless. The nation state is not necessarily the end all or be all of how we are going to negotiate our political conflicts in the future. And we have the global Internet, still in its infancy, to thank for that.

Anyway, that's what the book got me thinking about. I highly recommend it, even if I disagree with some of its premises. It's a quick read, it's rather fun to speculate, and it'll get you thinking. Not a bad combination.

The next book I'm reading is In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy. I'm about halfway through, and better finish soon, because I'm in conversation with Steven, who I've known for a very long time, at the Commonwealth Club this Tuesday in San Francisco.

Herewith, for all you RSS readers of Searchblog, is that other thing I do every day of the work week, Signal. If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the FM home page (upper right box).

Monday Signal: What *Is* The Future of Media? (Today's Signal)

Friday Signal: What Is the Next Facebook? (Hint: The Answer Is Yes) (Last week's...etc.)

Thursday Signal: Internet Ads Set New Record

Weds. Signal: Is YouTube “Open”? Well, Compared to iTunes…

Tuesday Signal: Google’s Biggest Advertisers

Monday Signal: Wake Up, It’s A New Week

I took a ride today, and it was gorgeous as usual. That's not my story, but it's certainly a part of it.

As I rode I used the AllSports GPS app on my iphone to track my progress (guys, if you're reading, your upload is busted).

I knew I'd be able to see the whole ride on Google Maps later, which is cool. It also tracks stuff like distance, vertical, speed, etc. Tons of fun.

So that's one signal tracking me all along the way, kicking off tons of data as I went. Some of it I was capturing. Some of it, I'd warrant, was being captured by the app. And, if that app has a deal with Google or others for advertising, some of that data, I'd wager, is going to Google as well. I know this. Not sure most folks do, but they will. More on that in another post.

As I rode, I checked into a couple of trails I was on: Indian Fire, and Eldridge. In fact, I put Eldridge on the map of Foursquare, odd, but I knew it wasn't on there as I tried to check in before but didn't follow through on Foursquare's request that I add the spot.

This time I did. Another app has some of my data now. I'm happy to give it to them, in fact.

After about 45 minutes of good up, I found myself at this vista and sent it to Tumblr:

A happy place to be sure. I think I captioned it Beeeeeuuuuttiieee or something. This is the view looking Northeast, two-thirds up the Eldridge trail on Mt. Tamalpais. Oh, and a third app now has my data.

Of course, the iPhone also has all that data, and more. And AT&T has its fair share to boot.

We peaked (checked in natch), ripped on down, took more pics, including a video, and I got home to my new video/music/think out loud room. And I put the map and the pictures and the video up on the big screen, and played a bit of Muppets doing Dance Yourself Clean because, well, it was Friday after all.

My buddy left, and I went in to get something. I came back to check mail, and brought up my browser. Now, my home page is this site, and what do I see at the top of the site, in the ads which at this point had reverted to Google AdSense?

Well, I saw this image:

Well I'll be, I say to myself. That looks a lot like where I just was! And this was a Google Maps ad. Holy CRAP! Did Google get some of that data and, in near real time, show me an ad with MY PICTURE IN IT?

Funny thing was, I wasn't creeped out. In fact, I was thrilled....I love that place, and there it was at the top of my site!

Now there's much to say about this, but OF COURSE I CLICKED ON THAT BAD BOY.

Here's what I got:

The thrill was palpable - was I looking at a Northeast view from two-thirds up Eldridge? Wow! Now that's conversational media!

Well, no. I was looking at a beautiful vista in Ireland, in fact. Clearly the ad folks at Google thought it was a good shot to use. Packaged goods media.

It was all a coincidence.

But it sure as hell got me thinking.

Why *isn't* there a way to take all that data, and more, and make experiences that work for all of us? I wrote about this in the "Rise of Metaservices." I want me some, now. And not just so Google can serve me the perfect ad. The world is so much bigger than that (but if that pays for that world, I'm cool with it, as long as I have a dashboard which gives me control).

More to come.

We're very excited to announce the theme and initial speaker lineup for our 6th annual Conversational Marketing Summit. The Summit will take place June 6-7th in New York City, at the Hudson Theater and Millennium Broadway Hotel.
Our theme is Finding the Signal. Speakers at our annual anchor event include Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest, Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora, David Karp, Founder of Tumblr, Antonio Lucio, CMO of Visa, and Judy McGrath, Chair and CEO of MTV Networks. And that's just for starters...see the full (and growing) list here.
We've taken our theme in the spirit of our regional Signal event series. Each Signal focuses on a key new area of digital marketing: Location, Real Time, Content, and Social. Finding the signal in an increasingly noisy eco-system of sites, mobile apps and services is increasingly difficult. At the CM Summit, we'll cut through the clutter and offer up the very best and brightest for two robust days of case studies, insightful one-on-one conversations and compelling introductions of new products, start-ups and services.
Please join leading agencies, marketers, platforms and entrepreneurs in our industry’s most rigorous and thought-provoking annual gathering, the Conversational Marketing Summit.
Early-bird registration is open until April 22. Don't wait, this event always sells out.
I look forward to seeing you in New York in June.
A very special thanks to our sponsor partners who make all this rich conversation and exploration possible: RIM, Google, Quantcast, Demand Media, Pandora, R2integrated, Slideshare,Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Roadie, Spiceworks and Ustream.

This headline caught my eye this morning: US VCs Raised $7.7 Billion In Q1, Highest Influx In A Decade. Of course, if you've been following the news in our industry, you know there's a raging debate on over whether we are in "another bubble." This news will of course be interpreted as evidence that, in fact, we are back to bubbly levels...after all, one decade ago was when we had our last big hurrah, right? When VCs gave mostly incompetent founders way too much money, and the whole thing came crashing down around us.

Well, yes....and ten years ago, there was no way our industry, social culture, or technological infrastructure was ready for the big ideas VCs wanted to fund.

This time, I believe, is different.

There, I said it. Now go invest those billions, VCs, and go spend them, entrepreneurs. It's about time we believed again.

Though, I must admit, the constant specter of the dot com bubble is a healthy thing - it keeps most of us focused on creating value, rather than simply scheming on how to make a quick buck.

Lately in talks and private conversations, I've been thinking out loud about the role of Facebook in our lives. It's an extraordinary service (and company), and deserves its extraordinary valuation. But its approach to our "social graph" is limiting, as I and others have pointed out quite a bit.

While in Mexico I had the chance to sit with a couple of entrepreneurs who have an idea I feel is deeply *right* about social networking, and it couldn't be further from how Facebook works today. I can't outline what the idea was, but I can say that it hit the same nerve, that we are on the precipice of entirely new ways of thinking about our relationship to others as leveraged over digital platforms, and while Facebook may well be the oxygen or the landmass of this ecosystem, it won't be the entire ecosystem itself.

To that end, this piece in TNW hits on some parts of what I'm on about. In it, the author writes:

Just as Google had early dominance in lighting up a portion of the web, Facebook has early dominance in lighting up a portion of the world’s social graph. But much like the Dark Web, there exists network upon network not yet graphed by Facebook, waiting to be mapped, organized, and optimized for communication.

I agree, and think there are many, many new places to create value here.

I'm a Guy Kawasaki fan, so this isn't really a "review" as much as an appreciation for his new book Enchantment. I read it over this weekend, it's the kind of book you could skim in an hour, or spend a lot of time with. I fell somewhere in the middle, stopping every so often to consider his advice and apply it to situations I find myself in all the time. (Disclosure: Guy works with my company FM in various ways, but I'm writing this mainly because Guy, in his enchanting way, asked me to blog my thoughts here.)

Enchantment is, in essence, a book of simple advice for succeeding in business, and I found myself agreeing with most of it. Guy is a folksy writer and he loves simple anecdotes, the book is full of them. I rolled my eyes when he encouraged us to "make a checklist," or to smile when meeting someone, and smile with integrity at that. But he's right, and I realized that every time I see Guy, or see pictures of him, he's got the real deal smile working, and it really does work to put whoever he's meeting into an open frame of mind.

Another little gem was his advice to get to know the public person you are about to meet with. I tell my sales team this all the time - nearly everyone in our business has a public face - flickr and twitter streams, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, etc. I'm always astounded when folks don't take the time to get to know the people they're trying to do business with. There's almost always a shared story, passion, or anecdote buried in someone's public lifestream, and taking the time to pay attention to that is always appreciated.

Guy wraps up all his advice in the concept of being "enchanting," and I get the idea, but it seems to me it comes down to another simple rule: Be a good, highly engaged person, and expect those you work with to be the same. He ends the book with a warning about how not to become enchanted by those who seem to follow his advice, but are in reality just snake charmers. As we all know, there are plenty of those folks out there as well.

Many would benefit from reading Enchantment solely for Guy's chapter on managing Twitter, he's clearly a master at it. He follows that with advice on most of the other major platforms (Facebook, blogs, etc), and these alone would justify the purchase, to my mind. Get Guy's book, it's worth the investment.

Today I spoke at Sony HQ in front of some Pretty Important Folks, so I wanted to be smart about Sony's offerings lest anything obviously uninformed slip out of my mouth. To prepare I did a bunch of Google searches around Sony and its various products.

Many of these searches are what I call "head end" searches - a lot of folks are searching for the terms I put in, and they are doubly important to Google (and its advertising partners) because they are also very commercial in nature (not in my case, but in general.) Usually folks searching for "Sony Tablets" have some intent to purchase tablets in the near future, or at the very least are somewhere in what's called the "purchase funnel."

I was struck with the results, so much so I took a screen shot of one representative set of results. In traditional print, we used to watch a metric called "Ad Edit Ratio" very closely (as did the government, for reasons of calculating postal rates). Editors at publications lobbied for low ad edit ratios (so they'd get more space to put their content, naturally). Advertising executives lobbied for higher Ad Edit ratios (so they could sell more ads, of course). We usually settled somewhere around 50-50 - half ads, half editorial.

Google is way lower than that, on any given search. But not for head end searches. In fact, as a percentage of actual "editorial" (organic search results) versus "paid", it's pushing towards 35/65 or more, at least when you measure the space "above the fold" on a typical screen.

Then again, in the case of AdWords, one could argue the ads are contextually relevant and useful.

Just felt worth pointing out, if for no other reason as to add a page to the historical record of how the service is evolving. Once "media" adwords start taking over, this picture may well change again, and it might not be a change that folks like much.

Google today did something smart in social - they offered a human way to do something they had already offered - the ability to indicate your approval of a search result. Previously, you could push a result up or down, but that action was not social in nature. Now you can "+1" a search result, so as to indicate the result was good and/or valuable to you. That recommendation is then translated to others in your social graph.

Cool! But I sure wish it integrated with Twitter, at the very least. And man, it'd sure be powerful if it worked with Facebook. Wouldn't it, now?! But from what I can tell, that will NEVER happen.

Instead, "+1" is going to become Google's version of the "Like" button from Facebook - the post is very direct about this:

But the +1 button isn’t just for search results. We’re working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site.

Because it's directly tied to Google's most powerful asset, search, I think this move has some serious legs. Site owners will want to put the button on their site - even if they have no idea how or even *if* those "+1s" will aid ranking in organic Google search. I can tell you this: Spammers will have a field day with this one, though I imagine the button will be gated in some way (perhaps to push it, you have to be logged into a Google account). In any case, it's a smart way to leverage Google's core strength.

Game on.

(BTW, over at Boing Boing, we've used "+1" as a way to indicate agreement in email threads for years, a remnant of older email systems long since forgotten. That practice is alive and well at FM as well. Funny how Google picked up on the same notation.)

I've fallen down in my promise to RSS readers out there (all 250K+ of you). I told you I'd post summaries of my Signal work each week, and it's been more like each month. Well, here's an attempt to rectify my failure, below, the past seven Signals. I'll try to do this more often.

Monday Signal: The Moral Corporation?

Friday Signal: TGIF, no?

Thursday Signal: Yahoo's Not Done Searching; Why Color Matters

Weds. Signal: Don't Sell Out Your Twitter, Man

Tuesday Signal: Eat Yer Bran, Folks

Monday Signal: And Then There Were Three

If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s RSS or email newsletter on the FM home page (upper right box).

I love that Facebook is testing real time conversational advertising. In short, the idea is that the right ad shows up on someone's Facebook page when they declare some intention. As the Ad Age coverage puts it:

Users who update their status with "Mmm, I could go for some pizza tonight," could get an ad or a coupon from Domino's, Papa John's or Pizza Hut....With real-time delivery, the mere mention of having a baby, running a marathon, buying a power drill or wearing high-heeled shoes is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through "likes" or user profiles.

Sounds great, but hollow - kind of like a 4/4 beat missing a bass drum. And what's the bass? It's the consumer, of course.

Allow me to explain. If I'm a consumer in Facebook's real time advertising world, and I notice that the ads change based on my status update, I may decide to intentionally declare my desire for a pizza, or a pregnancy test, or some cool shoes, because I know the ads/offers/coupons/deals are going to come my way. In other words, it's advertising's version of the street finding its own use for technology. Advertising isn't one way, Facebook. It's conversational, and the biggest mistake one might make is to assume your consumers won't game that system for their own uses. In fact, I'd suggest you design your product around that assumption.

If you do that well, you just might have a hit on your hands.

I read with interest about Color, a new social photo app that was much in the news today. The main angle of coverage was the size of the pre-revenue company's funding - $41 million from Sequoia and Bain. Hell, the company isn't just pre-revenue, it's pre-product....at least for now. Tomorrow the actual product launches.

If it works as advertised, it may well be the first truly execution of augmented reality that truly scales.

I for one hope it works.

The service's founder, Bill Nguyen, is the real deal. He has a particular ability to see around corners, and is a veteran of more than half a dozen startups. So why am I fired up about Color's service? Because I think it bridges an important gap in how we use the web today. And please know that my definition of "the web" is in no way limited to "PC based HTML". When I say web, I mean the digital platform through which we leverage our lives.

OK, now that we've clarified that, what does Color actually *do*? Well, let me explain it as best I can, based on a great piece here by Bruce Upbin (OK and this piece and this one too).

In short, Colors combines the public social graph and instant sharing of Twitter with the "capture the moment" feel of an Instagram or Path. But the real twist is in the service's approach to location. To my mind, Colors has the opportunity to be the first breakout application fueled by the concept of "augmented reality."

Now, let me back up and remind readers of my oft-repeated 2010 maxim: Location is the most important signal to erupt from the Internet since search.

OK, that said, what Colors does is offer up a visual public timeline of any given location, in real time. Every single image captured at any given location is instantly "placed" at that location, forever, and is served up as an artifact of that location to anyone using the Colors application.

Put your brain to that idea for a second, and you realize this is one of those ideas that is both A/ Ridiculously huge and B/ Ridiculously obvious in retrospect. And pretty much every idea that passes those two tests only has to pass a third to Be Really Big. That third test? Execution.

Wait Battelle, you may be saying. What are you on about? I'm not getting it?!

In short, if Color is used by a statistically significant percentage of folks, nearly every location that matters on earth will soon be draped in an ever-growing tapestry of visual cloth, one that no doubt will also garner commentary, narrative structure, social graph meaning, and plasticity of interpretation. Imagine if Color - and the fundaments which allow its existence - had existed for the past 100 years. Imagine what Color might have revealed during the Kennedy assassination, or the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, or hell, the Rodney King beating?

But that's just the stuff that's important to us all. What Color really augurs is the ability to understand our shared sense of place over time - and that alone is mind-bendingly powerful. Back in 2008 I was struck with a similar concept, which at FM we turned into Crowdfire - a fleeting, early antecedent to the Color concept focused on music and festivals.

To me the key here is plasticity. By that I mean the ability to bend the concept of "social graph" beyond the inflexible "one ring to rule them all" model of Facebook to a more nuanced set of people you might care about in the context of place or moment. I love these kinds of steps forward, because it's just so damn clear we need them.

Trust me on this. If Colors fails, it will be due to execution, and someone else will get it right. Because the world wants and needs this, and the time is now. (By the way, I'm not encouraged by the website, which focuses on group sharing and such. I think the service is way bigger than that. But I guess you have to start somewhere...)

Oh, and note to Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare: If you don't get this feature into your service, pronto, you will more likely than not be rueing the day Color launched.

Look at these two headlines coming off my IWantMedia feed this morning. Sheesh. Talk about Points of Control.... we forgot to put the lawyers' offices on the map....

I've agreed to be a judge in Intel's Visual Life contest, the details of which can be found here. Intel has been a partner and supporter of both my work as well as Federated's for as long as I can remember, and I was honored to join my former partner Chas Edwards, among many others, as a judge of the content.

The contest invites folks to upload visuals of their life - either photos or videos - and will have HP prizes in multiple countries for four different categories. I'm looking forward to reviewing them all. The full rules can be found here. I'm a bit late to the game, entries are due in just a few days, so get on it!

As I noted earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to speak at a GM conference today. I was asked to peer into the future of the "app world," and deliver any divinations I might discover.

I like a challenge like this, as it forces me to weave any number of slender threads of my current thinking into a more robust and compact narrative.

Below is an updated version of a slide I presented today. As I thought through why I have a negative gut reaction to the world of apps as they currently stand, I realized it's because they violate most of the original principles of what makes the web so great. And when I thought about what those principles are, I realized that a list already existed - in the opening presentation Tim O'Reilly and I gave at the first ever Web 2 Summit, in 2004.

Tim codified those principles in his seminal paper "What Is Web 2," first published in 2005. For my GM speech, I extracted the core values which comprise the underpinnings of Web 2, then graded them in two categories: The Web, and The App Economy. For each I have a check or an X, depending on progress made since we originally outlined those principles seven years ago. A check means that, in essence, our industry has solidified its commitment to the principle, in particular as it relates to the most important party: The person using the web or the app. An X means we're not there yet (and perhaps we won't ever get there).

I think the results speak for themselves. After the image (and a quick break), I'll offer some thoughts on each.   

* The Web Is A Platform. There is no doubt that this is true on the open web (by this I mean the legacy HTML web). Anyone can put up a site, without approval by anyone else. This is simply not true in the Apple app world, though it's more true for Android. I could write further pages on what it means to be a platform - certainly iOS and Android are platforms - but what we meant by "The Web Is A Platform" went deeper than the idea of a closed ecosystem controlled by one company. The beauty of the Web was that anyone could innovate on top of it, without permission. This is simply not true in the App World, for now.

* You Control Your Own Data. I have a very long post in me about this, and I spoke about it at length today at GM. But suffice to say, I don't think either the web or app world have checked this box. But I see it as coming, very soon, projects like The Locker Project and others are hastening it. It's my belief that soon consumers will demand value from their data, and that the web will be a place where that demand is met. Apps? I'm not so sure they'll lead here. But they will have to follow.

* Harness Collective Intelligence. I believe the web has delivered on this concept, in spades. But I believe App World creates islands of disconnected experiences, most of which fail to share APIs, data structures, or insights.

* Data Is the New Intel Inside. I agree with this concept, which is truly Tim's innovation. But I don't believe either the Web or App World have delivered this power to us as consumers. As with "You Control Your Own Data", I think the Web will lead, and Apps will follow.

* End of the Software Release Cycle. The Web has totally checked this box - when was the last you checked what version of Google you were using? Meanwhile, we still have to update our apps....

* Lightweight Programming. The web has excelled here. Apps, not so much. I have a lot of hope for Telehash, however.

* Software Above Level of A Single Device. When was the last time you wondered whether the web worked on a particular device? Oh yeah, when you tried to use Flash on an Apple product....enough said.

* Rich User Experiences. This is where apps kick the Web's ass. And man, it's a compelling ass kicking, so compelling we may be willing to give up all the other principles of Web 2 just to have a great experience. But I believe, in the end, we don't have to compromise. We can have our App chocolate, and get our Web peanut butter to boot.

What do you think?