A few times a year I dig into the data behind my blog page views and Google Analytics provides plenty of information to sift through. The key features I look at are engagement or time on page and raw page views or how many people visit a page. What I found intriguing about the above plot versus time was what it revealed about specific posts. A few posts attained high engagement and relatively significant page views over a long period of time driven primarily by search. The spikes in page views combined with time on page were driven by social referrals which I’ve captured in embedded images and text files below. I invite fellow data miners to compare your findings and discuss what you’ve learned about visitor patterns. Here’s the mp4 if you have any problems viewing the above video Average Time on Page vs Pageviews

Sharing Analytics, What’s most valuable?
The following are a set of images which capture a year of analytics for my blog. Please click through any images you are interested in reading to get a clear look at the metric data. I’ve also included csv files with the specific information if you’d like to play with it.

The first image represents the traffic sources to my blog throughout the year. Dominating referrals is news.ycombinator.com or Hacker News, direct visitors (bookmarks, typing in the url,l some twitter visits) was number two and search from Google was third. These were followed by reddit, feedburner, more twitter, and Fred Wilson’s blog avc.com.

The traffic sources csv data file.

Post views breaks down the visits by post or url. The clear winner this past year is holy crap minecraft!.

The views by url csv data file.

The above image is a beautiful castle constructed by 10-15 people over a few days within a single world node. I don’t have much time to capture the wonder and awesomeness that was my first hour of digging down to lava, or jump box laying up to the world ceiling, but building in Minecraft is truly a pleasure. It’s a simple but elegantly designed cube based game that places an avatar in a randomly generated world. The official blog for Minecraft is Markus Persson’s own Tumblog, The Word of Notch.

update July 22nd, 2011 F-18 buzzes airport with Zeplin Mod
(thanks to Matt Mastracci for this link)

update April 25th, 2011 Minecraft 1.5 imminent

The Minecraft Diaries, update April 24th, 2011
My friend Noah loves Minecraft (so much so that he yearns to fix their bugs) and has crafted wondrous tales of brave virtual adventurer Sean!
Sean aspires to build better bacon making machines and swim in oceans of pigs.

update April 23rd, 2011
Deathwing, Giant Terminator and the Colliseum

update April 7th, 2011
This Kinect hack was pretty awesome. Imagine converting 3D imagery or even regular pictures into Minecraft virtual worlds.

update March 28, 2011
Minecraft meets Lord of the Rings
Minas Tirith


Saruman’s Tower

Helm’s Deep

update Jan 17, 2011
My friend Tyler discovered this music video created with Minecraft:

update Jan 2011, Free swag for Sci-fi/Fantasy RPG fans
The Children of the Ark tabletop role-playing game open beta is out and available for download. We invite any and all gamers to check out the system, it’s a labor of love slowly baked over a decade of play testing and rewriting. My coauthor Aakin Patel is integrating changes now so we’ll periodically update the core rules which are available at this time for free. If we see sufficient interest we’ll begin releasing supplements with background materials and setting in small packages (app sized booklets).

update Nov 5
I’ve taken the content here and moved it to it’s own Squidoo lens, Minecraft Castle, where new discoveries will be appended to this info. There’s plenty of interest in blue prints and tools that aid crafting virtual worlds in Minecraft. I’ll keep my eyes peeled and update that source.

update Nov 1
Mark Trapp is working on the Giza Necropolis in Minecraft.

update Oct 28th 2010 fresh from Notch’s twitter stream, biome test.

Also came across an interview of Markus Persson from IndieGames

The Indiegames Interview

update the Columbia from Bioshock Infinite

update just came across this soothing video on notch’s Tumblog

another creative build

update: I came across hat-films.com what is minecraft page
They share a number of great YouTube videos as well as a nice high level description of “What is Minecraft?”.

Here’s the update to the Enterprise Project

another update
Looking for dynamic content each day with the latest Minecraft news? Paper.li’s got it covered with the Minecraft Daily.

A little about the game of Minecraft

There’s a safe building mode with a variety of block types, and a more challenging game where creatures attempt to hunt down your avatar with limited health. The game is playable from within a browser and it’s also available for download. I found the browser based version to be super smooth. The developer of the game Markus Persson (Notch) and team have made a healthy amount of cash on the project since it’s inception. Recently Paypal limited Notch’s account which is now 600,000 euros on August 25th. Paypal reps say the account should be fine in a couple of weeks.

Here’s the background of Minecraft where you can see some of Markus Persson’s plans for it’s future:

About the game

Minecraft is developed by Markus Persson. It’s been under development since about May 10, 2009.

You can read the full credits here, or read about support and frequently asked questions here.

Origins

I started Minecraft after playing some Infiniminer with a couple of people from TigSource.
I realized that a game that simple yet that dynamic had a lot of potential to turn into a really great game, and kept coming up with things I wanted to change and stuff I wanted to add.
I had recently quit my job as a game developer to be able to focus more on indie game dev during my free time, and I was looking for a new game to develop. I had a few ideas floating around, but most required really long development times.

These two factors led to Minecraft.

Development and philosophy

Waterfall is dead, long live agile!

I’ve got a few plans and visions, but my only true design decision is to keep it fun and accessible. There’s no design doc, but there are two lists; one for bugs, and one for features I want to add but think I might forget.
I make sure to play the game a lot, and I’ve built my share of towers, and flooded my share of caves. If something ever doesn’t feel fun, I’ll remove it. I believe that I can combine enough fun, accessibility and building blocks for this game to be a huge melting pot of emergent gameplay.

I strongly believe that all good stories have a conflict, and that all good games tell a good story regardless of if it’s pre-written or emergent. Free building mode is fine and dandy, but for many people it will ultimately become boring once you’ve got it figured out. It’s like playing a first person shooter in god mode, or giving yourself infinite funds in a strategy game.. a lack of challenge kills the fun.
For survival mode, I’d rather make the game too difficult than too easy. That also means I’m going to have to include some way of winning the game (or some other climax) to prevent it becoming too exhausting.

But if it’s no fun, I’ll redesign.

The future

I plan on developing Minecraft until it’s a finished complete game, with a downloadable client (with fullscreen mode), custom key re mappings and possibly modding support.

For as long as people enjoy and purchase the game, I will develop extensions after the game is done. These will be free for anyone who has purchased the game.

Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I’m not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.

I was curious as heck about how it was done. Here’s some of the tech behind the game for you hacker types:

Minecraft uses the following technologies:
Java by Sun Microsystems
LWJGL (license) by a whole bunch of talented people.
“3d Sound System” by Paul Lamb
JOrbis (license) by JCraft.

Behold! The soft release of Nostat.us.

Nostat.us is social web communicating, without distraction.

We’d love you to sign up and try it out.

The perfect amalgam of microblog and instant messenger. The hybrid chat tool takes away every distraction and focuses the entire content area on the messages of people you wish to keep track of (public open follow model). At this moment the chief hacknical wizard of Victus Media is making some last minute tweaks to Nostat.us to get it ready for a wicked web design conference happening in Portland tomorrow: aka Web Visions.

To follow or unfollow type follow: or unfollow: in the message box. The public stream of all messages shows up when you’re not logged in.

Why is Nostat.us better than X?

• It can’t get simpler. Super intuitive and easy to use.

• No distractions. No funky avatars. No bells, no whistles. Just a lean mean raw message machine. Nostat.us supports real time chat and asynchronous message transfer

• It works beautifully on desktops, laptops, mobile devices and tablets

• The alpha was written in only a few lines of code, but it now leverages the most advanced and powerful web technology available. Combined with the ultra lean interface, it’s like giving laser guns to neanderthals to draw on cave walls. This anachronism makes scaling a joke.

• It’s html friendly, go ahead and add in an image link or href. Just had to catch and disable iframes as they auto loaded on mobile (iPhone).

• Post pictures by email once you’ve setup an account by emailing  tjk6xf@mailhooks.com

• There’s no routes to worry about (yet?). Gotta work out the simplest way to find and follow a friend or group.

• You can tune into friends or tune them out any time, just click on their name and a dialog opens.

• it’s all built around an API that’s natively read/write from the ground up. Expect simplicity at all steps. Pull your feeds into other readers or html pages with smooth javascript. Don’t like the font, hack your own CSS/Javascript

• It will remain as simple as it can be based on Tyler’s design (he sometimes considers my suggestions when phrased properly . Only mountains of money (big ones) will change his mind, so don’t expect feature creep. AppStores and spam are not for us. We believe a freemium model will more than enable us to scale to whoever wants to use the service.We’re on the fence about federation. Tyler thinks normal folks don’t want it, and it makes the service more complicated to have cross domain communication. I like removing the middle man whenever possible even if its me. We may or may not federate down the road, but we’re not there yet

• We don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money and months of waiting to give you a clean social network communication system. It’s live, now.

Most parents and many teachers believe that if middle-school and high-school girls show no interest in science or math, there’s little anyone can do about it. New research by a team that includes vocational psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) indicates that the self-confidence instilled by parents and teachers is more important for young girls learning math and science than their initial interest (from the flickr caption)

What’s “the Right Stuff” for Great Leaders

It’s my experience that the greatest leaders are not just charismatic, and wise decision makers. Beyond those desirable leadership traits they are capable of inspiring others to find the courage to lead.

An often referenced thought leader, Seth Godin has helped create a web business which to varying degrees has achieved leadership inspiration. Squidoo is a web publishing site where anyone can sign up and begin making web pages. The entire process is fairly straight forward, and while I’ve enjoyed creating over 40 lenses (each web pages name), there are far greater gifted designers than myself. The enlightened business model donates 5% of revenue to charity, 45% to Squidoo, and 50% to the lens crafter. Advantages from the business include a higher negotiated affiliate rate from Amazon, as well as some cross lens marketing, and an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful community. If you’d like to learn more about Seth Godin’s ideas on leaderhip, he convey’s his expert knowledge within his book, Tribes.

Each lenscrafter serves as a small community leader, for all those who visit their site. Comments can be left as well as visitor suggested information (links, votes, social media modules -Twitter). This simple model allowed me to discover a fondness for sharing information, which naturally lead me to blogging and social media.

The great leaders inspire us to trail blaze, and do so out of passion for their goals and their communities. Wisely they do their best to spread their vision to others collaboratively for no man is an island. What truly legendary leaders do is open up doorways for those who may not have considered spear heading their favorite cause. These gentle thought leaders humble themselves daily by keeping their views open. They show us that the only super power we need is relentless dedication and tenacious will. Their love for leading and inspiring positive change is infectious. Let’s ingrain the greatest leaders as role models within our culture.

This type of encouragement can begin early on in our education. Unfortunately, much of  modern schooling’s focus is on training people with valuable skills and knowledge with little consideration for what inspires them. By surrounding young folks with encouraging leadership from parents, friends, family, and education we can stack the deck in favor of their discovery of a profitable and deeply satisfying calling. We can all help to instill leadership qualities and self confidence by inspiring those around us.

Source article for image quote

Related articles by Zemanta

• My Experiences with “Thought Leadership” and Personal Writing and My Own Professional Development (sentimentsoncommonsense.com)
• The Seth Godin Interview: How to Become a Leader (copyblogger.com)

Shores on the road to Hope (Alaska)

The Tactics of Hope offers some inspired methods that illustrate how social entrepreneurs can connect with lenders and found businesses based on improving daily life. Pay careful attention to the financial loan structure described at 1min10seconds. Here crowd sourced loans support local businesses development and help people improve their livelihood and pursue their callings.

In previous posts I’ve mentioned Short Term Survival Trumps Searching For Our Calling, But Only in the Short Term, the Barriers to Social Change, and most recently the Agents of Change. But how do we move forward? This is the next concept in that series (tagged social change). It relates to manifesting the abstract ideas of making a difference by doing something you love. The goal is harnessing community effort into a real and positive societal shift.

I had the pleasure of a short facebook conversation with my good friend Howard from my college years. Once again I was reminded how daunting the task of changing fields can be to a family person with fiscal responsibilities. We become pinned down by the costs of providing our loved ones with the best we can offer. The experience of transformation from a labor that pays the bills, to a labor of love will likely require outside investment. I was challenged to invent a method for people to change their careers, lifestyle, and businesses.

My first solution was a type of venture capitalist that was not purely profit motivated. But how could this work? The best venture capitalists are rewarded financially by funding bright startups and mentoring their investment company’s development. This framework would need a different type of investor all together. Part of the problem is how financial rewards work.

Amongst other ways, businesses earn money by having a market share, and selling products at a profit margin (by having cheap overhead/costs). People earn money by doing work for businesses (or themselves), or governments. The key value point we are missing: One isn’t rewarded financially even though their efforts may positively impact the lives of a great number of other people. How can we correct this systematic inefficiency? Is it possible we under value life improvement on a large scale? Imagine no internet, no web, or no collaborative globally available encyclopedic information source. As an example, shouldn’t the creators of HTTP, TCPIP, and wikipedia be greatly rewarded financially?

It is my belief that we can leverage the form of social crowd sourced loan structure suggested in the video above into a way of fueling our most passionate work. Not only in the most impoverished areas, but within all walks of life. The Tactics of Hope is an organization dedicated to making real, the message I have conveyed through many posts: matching passion with our daily work.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Aid Realism for the Idealist (marginalrevolution.com)

Cool Picture Robert Scoble took of the CERN which has nothing at all to do with this post

Where’s Database Tech Headed?

This three part post starts with a simple discussion of databases and a tip of the hat from Fred Wilson to the Hacker News Community. The post discussed the link strength of HN for AVC (Fred’s blog) as well as the more important pooled intellectual attention (I keep coming back to HN for this). The database discussion Fred references, contrasts faster, simpler, column or indexed databases (key value store) versus the more powerful relational database options (SQL and the like). Commenters chime in to dissect the misinformation of the original post (No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam) and even non-techy readers can learn that the best database solution is likely one customized to the way users access the data (user behavior optimized databases). This was of particular interest to a project I’m working on which will have a user profile database and could potentially be very large. The lookup is easy enough for a key value store, but the strength lies gleaning trends and user patterns/clusters from the database.

Tim Berners-Lee, the originator of HTTP, has some new ideas on how data can be accessed and shared according to a common interface.

Death Makes Us Aware That Each Moment is Precious

Kevin Kelly inspired Death Clock appeared in Matt Groening‘s Futurama. The device predicts the life time of the user. Morbidly fearing our demise, or putting too much faith into a death clock, is not what Kevin suggests (or Matt Groening makes light of). While a rather short post based on Kevin’s standards, it’s message is clear. We only have so much time on the merry go round before we have to get off. Kevin has his Death Clock displayed in his desktop background, not as a grim reminder of his mortality, but that each of his moments is precious, and is a non-renewable resource. We are reminded that living like we have forever to accomplish our dreams can be a dangerous gambit.

Reality Distortion Fields, Caveat emptor

Finally Steve Blank warns us of Drinking the Kool-Aid. While an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (a sweet position by Steve’s standards) he experienced “the single most compelling speech” he and the VC he was working with have ever heard from fellow SuperMac veteran Peter Barrett. Not long after Steve was hired as the CEO of the $4 million dollar venture to be the “adult supervision and administrative overseer” of the startup and he was generous enough to share a few of his lessons learned:

• Your level of due diligence should be commensurate with your position in the company and proportional to the reality distortion field of the presenter
• Never join (or start) a company whose business model you can’t draw
• Subjects in which you are not a domain expert always sound exciting
• Sleep on any major decision

My comment back to Steve:

Reality distortion field isn’t that the basic technique covered in startups 101? I just assumed the distortion field must be propagated until it meets reality with widespread adoption. If entrepreneurs can’t imagine and convince us that we can achieve the impossible, who will?

Failed concepts require the courage to recognize the need for business redirection. I’m sold on people, not their favorite idea of the moment. If long term investors fall prey to UBER pitches, at the very least their investing in a master salesmen- leverage that brilliance in another tractable venture.
Ps: my limited perspective comes with self recognition of a lack of hands on experience

What I take away from this:

• due diligence is up to the investor
  • as an aspiring entrepreneur, I’d like to think I’d do the due diligence of a concept before even approaching outside investors
  • better still, if the venture didn’t require any outside funding
• I’d like someone with the passion and persuasiveness of Peter Barrett, to be giving the pitch of a solid concept I help put together

Related articles by Zemanta

• Enthusiasts Convene To Say No To SQL, Hash Out New DB Breed(tech.slashdot.org)
• NoSQL? (dbms2.com)
• Tim Berners-Lee and the Birth of the World Wide Web (time.com)

The Flow State Mirrors Aspects of Taoism

After reading a few books that try and capture the concept of Taoism I’ve found the best way of describing it is orchestrating your life to be in “the flow” maximally. Considering what defines the human condition lead me to believe it is related to an experiential factor. We like to learn, interact, taste, puzzle, challenge, coast, and fly. We’re drawn to so many different interests, topics, and areas. And there’s nothing quite like seeing a person shining “in the flow of the moment”, except of course, being that person.

I can feel the flow and I recognize it not just as an optimal work state, but as a way of living. We shouldn’t let our fear of wasting time, or working too hard, or missing out on something, or just sitting still, to prevent us from enjoying every moment that we are able to. It’s frustrating and a little sad sometimes because we can’t always remain in this frame of mind. As much as we try, we are grounded by deadlines and responsibilities that beckon our attention, as well as an unending number of distractions.

There are some issues that we may not necessarily be happy about (our reliance on constantly seeking income for starters ). But we have to figure out a way to deal with them. My solution includes seeking out the things I enjoy and leveraging them towards a rewarding financial future. I’m passionate about sharing my ideas, writing has been a great way to connect with people. It’s tough to transcribe all of my thoughts down into a meaningful (blog) format, but I really like the way a blog is laid out and how open it can be. People in the future (perhaps even long after I’m gone) can search for topics, and may come across some of my ideas. It’s a great way to share, to meet people, and to interact. This is at least one great way one can make serendipitous discoveries.

Practicing What I Preach

Recently I decided to “practice what I preach” and begin implementing an idea developed on this blog (with great input/feedback from friend Vladimir Vukicevic, and software assistance from Eli Sacks). I have shared a number of posts describing how the future of advertising and web content is going to be highly personalized and customized. Education is one realm where personalized and customized information does and will continue to shine. This particular application is matching advertisements to what users are most interested in. No longer shall we be subject to banner or bland topical ads. The internet will learn about our wants, interests and what we are willing to purchase from public social media and comments. There’s some more details included in the audio below.

Thanks to TopRank Online Marketing for the Image

Decision Methodology

Let’s start off by considering the time that it takes to make a decision. How much time do you spend thinking, learning, or researching about a choice before you force yourself to make a decision. There are some different schools of thought here:

• your first instincts are usually your best
• to deliberate:  learn as much as you can and let time give more information
• a continuum of various mixtures, that balances between those first two extremes

A balanced solution for important decisions should serve us well, and for simple choices our default response is fine. So the right answer depends on the type of decision we have to make.  If it’s an important decision we might want to sleep on it, or do a little more research.  If there’s something small that requires a choice, and doesn’t have a lot of impact we can go with our gut and keep on moving. Discerning between the greater impact of any decision is a vital skill, that requires forward thinking.

So how do you decide which decision deserves your time and energy?  The significance of this question determines the nature of our response. The best solution is an optimal efficiency tradeoff between your time and decision making ability. Unfortunately, our choice of resource management may only be reviewed as the effects of our decision are occuring. A surprising notion discussed at length by Malcolm Gladwell in blink is that we make decisions based heavily on first impressions. While often very effective, this type of instant cognitive ability can easily be tricked and Malcolm goes on to detail the nuances of this mental process.

Making continued choices may also impair our ability to make quality decisions. Many small or minor decisions actually cost us future decision accuracy (Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control).

There’s a telling TED video of Dan Gilbert discussing delayed decision making and it’s affect on relative happiness. If a decision is made but we are able to change our mind later on, we tend to agonize over it. We can’t help but wonder if the alternative unselected option was the better choice.

While out walking I’m fortunate enough to combine free thinking for hours. While my mind wanders, many decisions I’m debating have plenty of processing time. This usually leads to more questions, and further research, and can lead to being distracted. I’m a big fan of sleeping on really important decisions, because we have this whole other mental state, the sub-conscious state, to help us process information. Psychologists and Neurologists can give you much more detail about the subsconscious than I. But in my experience sleeping on a difficult problem can clear up a solution.

When it comes to making a decision your subconscious state can actually search potential futures. By simulating virtual worlds in dreams, we get a glimpse of what could be. When dreaming we believe they’re our reality. We experience a simulated reality and respond to it with true feelings. These genuine feelings are in contrast to the irrational and bizzare choices we make within dreams. While much of the time we don’t remember our dreams, I’ve been lucky enough to remember a few vivid ones.

Some techniques to using our subconscious state to help with important decisions:

• Upon waking a fleeting idea may still be fading from our mind. Jot a note to yourself for later review. Our subconscious is adept at picking out interesting topics or areas.
• Our perception changes a little when our subconscious is active. We simply see problems in a different way.
• Our mind can prepare us somewhat for tragedies, by experiencing nightmares
• Concentrating for a good length of time, directly before sleep. Many times, that will translate over to your subconscious the powerful background process to help

We don’t understand the nuances of neuroscience yet, but we do recognize there are massive networks of synaptic connections between neurons. The activation waves within the network are likely candidates for our conscious perception and also our subconscious experiences. Why not make the most use of all of our mental resources when confronted with challenging problems?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce (www.ted.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell Challenges the Idea of “Free” (tech.slashdot.org)
• Gladwell, Anderson, Godin, and Bad Brains (idiomag.com)

Imagine Your Group’s Structure as a Binary Tree

The focus of this design concept is agility for larger organizations. It’s merely a thought experiment.

Here’s a simple example. You start a volunteer organization by yourself. You find two folks that share your vision for how best to proceed in working on a problem. You can spend plenty of time working with just two other people to ensure the group vision is clearly agreed upon between all members. Each of them in turn find two other people that share the groups mission with and so on. Each member of the community will be very familiar with the responsibilities and duties of anyone at their level, anyone a level above them and anyone a level below them in the structure.

The leader of each group of three is not assumed to be all knowing or a dictator. They simply do their best to provide information down throughout the tree. Their responsibility includes working with their two supporting staff members to make the best implementation decisions which can be fed up, down and sideways through the relationship structure.

Your community grows quickly and specific responsibilities usually involve only a leader type and two folks that work for/with you. For larger efforts sections of an entire tree level can work together. The idea is to minimize the amount of meetings necessary to precipitate intelligent action. Broadcast communication is another advisable channel (see microblogging) for ensuring broad understanding of general organziation directions. But highly complex issues, related to specific departments, can be focused on by targeted groups.

Since responsibility is fairly well distributed through the organization how would pay structure be best implemented? Some linear bonus for those higher up in the structure but nothing extraordinary. Or perhaps a much better solution is to completely decouple pay with tree rank/position. Pay based on results, and feedback from those above, below and at a complimentary level in the structure. A formal crowd sourced pay scale with upper and lower boundaries. Commission or results based incentives could be unlimited.

Limitations

An odd number of equally important areas would require shoe horning one into another groups sub-tree or simply having a leader with one supporting staff. This is an opportunity to group three lower demand subtrees under one leader/manager.

Binary splits on organizational sub-structures might require some regrouping of existing business areas. This could be an unnatural partition of responsibilities. You may have several responsibility areas that are of equal value to your business (all vital). Even though you’ll have to make broad groupings of these areas, what you gain in focused attention will make up for any loss of simplicity.

Slow at math on this recording, please forgive the neural failure.

Should We Give Our Best Away for Free?

For several months I’ve been persuading readers (preaching) to discover work that compliments their passions. My fear is that the process of monetizing detracts from our best message. Any truly great work, be it art, functional or a mix, that comes from the core of our being and needs to be passed on has great value (at least to ourselves). But the manner of trying to cost that, profit, or putting a price tag on our creations may tarnish the work. It’s a healthy fear to keep in mind, as it channels creative energies towards coming up with revenue streams that doesn’t sully our integrity, honesty, and genuine judgement.

raw recording of some thoughts on giving our best away for free:

As you might have guessed, I’ve spent (insert large amount of time here) thinking about different monetization models for internet content/products. One of the core concepts is centered about “how best to connect internet communication tools to businesses”. The importance of this priority has been recognized by Robert Scoble. His vision for building43, manifests the principle clearly “make it easier for businesses to use the internet to improve their business results“.

The post from Fred (click image for link) got the neurons firing (thanks to Jonny Goldstein)

Fred Wilson’s #140conf conference talk

My response to Fred’s post suggests “an advertisement window/column (very Googlish) based upon the meta data (semantic) of passed links” :

Very excited about monetization potential for not only social media (facebook/twitter/friendfeed) but for web content in general. The economy of the internet is evolving. I labelled gratitude as the virtual currency in social media, but that is usually shown with thanks and a link.
I’m worried about one hiccup. If passed links are the currency, how will advertising piggy back on them. Anytime I’m paid to refer something, my genuine recommendation has had all it’s value removed.

A series of comments and replies lead to this early idea of mine:

I agree the contextual advertising isn’t there yet. But imagine if you will, updating your status on any social media you frequent. Now imagine a small box off to the side with pertinent advertising targeting the semantic meaning of your status update. For an analogy, I can lookup up dentists on Google and find one locally without ever looking at their ads (above or on the side). The same can be done within social media, I can search for a preferred dentist and ignore any ads they may have (above or on the side), plus I can get first person descriptions and feedback. The technology is rapidly developing and Google, twitter, facebook amongst other businesses are doing their best to match the semantic meaning of your searches or status updates to an appropriate advertisement/business (if they’re not they should be). See my comment about where pageviews are coming from to my blog, they’re almost all (95-100%) social media sourced referrers. Advertising dollars will follow the link passers.

Thanks to the creator of balsamiq for this awesome mockup (big thanks Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni)

Maybe the ads should be personalized to only the users updates/status. Mixed feelings on this, if you’re reading Scobles lifestream you might just be persuaded to get a Prius. I’ve wanted one for a while (4years) but Robert’s great feedback could be the tipping point. The advertising algorithm will have to “know me” in a historical data sense. Data a virtual assistant would have easily be able to provide.

Check out 18.5minutes in to Fred’s Friday chat with Howard Lindzon for some extra thoughts on where twitter may go for monetization.

This concept has been extended to a Notional Framework for Monetization Web2010

If you’re really interested in this topic feel free to read up on how my ideas developed, and by all means share/comment your own concepts. Previously, I wrote up thoughts on monetizing and design potential for social media:

• The Democracy of Attention, an Economy of Minds
• Ad Money Will Play “Follow the Leader” to the King of Links
• Intelligent Advertising for Microbloggers: Who will be first to swim in the riches?
• What Can Be Accomplished With Twitter
• twitter is on the verge of eating Google for breakfast, here’s why
• It more than makes sense for Google to acquire twitter, it makes money
• VCs building sand castles that float
• Social Media Will Be the Dominant Design Focus of the 21st Century