As I look back I have indeed done a lot. I’ve grown an organization as much as it has grown me as a professional.  I was given opportunities that I tried to take full advantage of and created a few of my own, including creating my own department — Interactive Services.  While I somewhat feel compelled to write a novel about my time at the ABA, I am not.  My passion was focused on making the ABA a better place, either through the website, our email marketing efforts, and ultimately the member engagement experience.  I feel I brought the ABA a long way in those spaces, but not without a lot of help from others.  I’d like to thank them here and now.  While this list won’t be exhaustive, they are the ones who stand out the most.  They include Amy Peebles, Joe Andrews, Chang Ahn, Hank White, Ed Adams, Jack Rives, Tom Howell, and my fellow ISD staff.  On the counter part of staff our some fabulous members who have supported me through thick and thin.  They include Tom Mighell, Dennis Kennedy, Steve Weiss, Vince Polley, Lucian Pera, and Bob Clifford.  Thank you to each and every one of you.

A reflection wouldn’t be complete unless you look backwards at what has past.  Here is a quick history of the different looks of the ABA website while I was there.  My direct involvement started in late 2005 through 2011.

I believe in the fundamental fact that you should always leave a place better than when you came to it.  Maybe it is part of that Boy Scout values, or just the values I had growing up.  I believe that I left the ABA a better place than when I first came to it.  I was not alone in the changes that were made during my time.  Thank you to the many who helped me along the way – from encouraging me to take the lead on projects to believing in me even when I didn’t sometimes.

I move on to bigger and better adventures.  Some of which will be described here in the next few weeks.  Needless to say I will be taking my passion, knowledge, and expertise and helping other organizations be successful online…making them better than when I found them.

Pick a niche. Successful websites pick a space to play in; they focus, and stick to it only adjusting when necessary.  When websites try to be all things to all people, either in a vertical industry, or just in general they will always have problems organizing their content in a manner that is acceptable to the visitor.  Visitors will become frustrated and leave.  Niche sites, on the other hand, can stay focused and deliver high-quality content in an organized fashion.

Examples of successful niche sites:

• Mashable – social media news
• TechCrunch – technology news
• Huffington Post – news, gossip
• VentureBeat – venture capital, start-ups, and entrepreneurship

And while theses are examples, they are not the only sites that fill these niches.  So there is indeed room for everyone. The only question is where do these sites provide a value proposition, or a differentiation factor.  Is it to break news?  Provide insights and opinions? Aggregate information into one site?

Value Proposition. This will vary from site to site and from individual to individual.  However, for a good website to keep visitors coming back, a value proposition must exist.  When that value proposition is around content, the content itself is the proposition.  It has to be well written, relative, timely, aggregated, and in some cases protected.  Sites like Wall Street Journal have had a content value proposition for years.  In fact they are one of the few last standing with that business model, though some like the New York Times will re-introduce a paid wall in January 2011.

I’m very partial to the types of sites that can aggregate industry news and information in concise ways.  That’s why I think sites like Mashable and TechCrunch end up being daily visits for me.  Both sites eloquently write about industry news about social media and technology respectively  Sometimes they break news, sometimes they share rumors.  I also really enjoy resource sites like MarketingProfs where it isn’t just news, but research, best practices, user community, and even a membership proposition.

For Project Trinity, let’s think about combining the best of both worlds.  The site will be specific to a vertical market that can build traffic based on that niche audience.  It will feature content, resources, and even a gated community of content and features that are exclusive to a subscriber base. So what industry should this site address?  What industry do you see right now that has a void that needs filling?  Give me some ideas in the comments.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing ideas about this website and the  process I’m going through in conceptualizing it. I’ll be sharing links to resources and tools that are interesting in providing value and a business model. Future posts will include:

• User Interaction Graph
• Privacy Concerns / Permissions
• Content Development and Support
• Engagement Strategy
• Features and Functionality
• Integrations with and Between Other Sites
• User Experience Design
• Revenue Sources and Models
• Platforms, Architecture, and Performance
• and much more

Maybe Project Trinity could be something real someday, but that isn’t the intent here.  It is to discuss the components of building a website that is full featured, engaging, social, and content focused.  In other environments I have to be diplomatic and receptive to ideas and decisions made by others.  Project Trinity is my project. It is how I would do it.   I hope you come along for the ride and participate in the discussion.

Evolution of Facebook Privacy - Matt McKeon 2010

In a world where being able to connect with old friends, family, co-workers, and connections is now the “norm” it surprises me when we start to see backlash as we are with Facebook recently. Especially when these are FREE services. However, everyone in the Internet age has been foregoing bits and pieces of their privacy for the convenience of connecting with each other and interacting in a social way online.

The thing is that when we interact online we are always leaving a little digital signature of who we are, where we came from, what we did, etc. Part of this is an aspect of the Web in general through cookies and GPS coordinates. Another part is just by virtue of how the Web works and how analytics are tracking site behavior. While Web sites may not know who you are specifically (unless you log in), they will certainly get a good idea of what you like and deliver better content next time.

Free sites have to make money. Running Web servers, development costs, etc all costs money and no investor or venture capitalist is going to invest in a company without the potential to get their money back. So for companies like Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, (insert name of cool website with free service), they all have the same issue; how will they make money? For many, it will be in online advertising. Google does this with most of its products from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube. Facebook does it with ads and virtual gifts. Even LinkedIn does it with their online recruiting (job board), research arm, and advertisements. However, nobody really seems to care about it when it is advertising because most often it is what keeps the service free to use. Do you remember when Google first rolled out ads that were contextual to your search, or your email messages? Everyone was outraged, yet millions of people still use those services. When you go onto Amazon and you see products that are based on your behavior, your information you have shared and more. No matter what we do online, the more we want convenience of personalized information and use of free services we will have to give up a piece of our privacy. When you check-in at a restaurant using Yelp, Foursquare or Gowalla, you are sending out your location over the web. “I’m here!”

Surprisingly I?ve seen little mention of the possible reasons why Facebook has shifted their privacy policy. I was recently at Facebook?s HQ and the light bulb went off for me when it came up in conversation. Facebook doesn?t want to be a social network anymore, they want to be a single source of your online presence. They want to provide you, the user, with news, communications, and ability to interaction with all your social graphs (friends, family, co-workers, and brands). Facebook has become a platform and stopped being a social network.

The easiest way that Facebook, and other social networks, are integrating your personal information is via their authentication tools. In Facebook?s world this is Facebook Connect. It allows you, the user, to log into another website with your Facebook credentials. In some cases, like a registration for a site, you can populate certain fields and share your activity with this new site with your Facebook friends. This is where everyone is getting their arms up air over this privacy invasion. But if you want the convenience of not having to remember dozens of usernames and passwords, using one, like what you use for Facebook becomes convenient.

The other big discussion is around Facebook?s social widgets. These are actually less intrusive as one might think. They are what we call iframes, which means the ?Like? button that they just rolled out is actually a page within a page. The Web site that the ?Like? button is on actually doesn?t get any information about that person. So for me, I have the ?Like? button on this blog post. If you see other people who ?like? this post, I get none of that data. It doesn?t go into a database of mine, or into an email to me. Zip. Nada. What makes them attractive to Web site administrators, like me, is that it provides a level of personalization that I couldn?t achieve otherwise. And because Facebook is 500M strong, the chances are of that personalization working on my Web site is pretty good. The same goes for CNN and thousands of other sites which have integrated these new features into them.

The next time you think about your privacy and where your information is being shared, or even sold, think about he conveniences you have online when you use Web sites. You are giving up your privacy every day, but you are also willing to do so. In fact, if you really want to know who else is using your personal information just look into the fine print of the following:

• Your Bank
• Your Credit Cards
• Your Loyalty Cards (Grocer, Movie Rental, Book Store)
• Google Account (Oh, how quickly we forget about them)
• Professional Association or Trade Association

You may be surprised on what you read.

While I’m not going to get into all the details of this visit here (that will come out in other posts) I am going to quickly talk about work culture.  I’ve visited three major technology companies over the last few years: Microsoft, Google, and now Facebook.  Each experience was different and I think that has to do with when they were started, what their focus is on, and how they execute their product.

New School vs. Old School. I think there are clear differences between old school vs. new school companies.  Old school is hierarchical with office space, titles and corporate environment.  They have high-walled cubes and offices with doors.  Microsoft is old school.  When I visited Microsoft you didn’t feel the innovation happening.  Maybe that was because it was in a different building than the one I was in.  When I visited Google and Facebook the environment was much different.  They have open spaces, collaboration areas, appropriate levels of distractions (like FB has a Guitar Hero room and ping pong tables). You could feel the magic happening.  You could tell there were smart people in the room coding ideas, sharing thoughts, working towards common goals.  It was energizing to be around and just observe.  People were excited to be at work and working on their projects.  It could also have been the fact that people were in jeans, walking around with Macs, working on 40″ monitors, etc.

Location, Location, Location. Maybe it is just being in Silicon Valley that is the biggest difference.  Both Google and Facebook are miles away from each other.  In fact, Facebook is practically in the middle of a residential district just outside of Standford University.  However I’d be willing to bet that HP, which is around the corner and was in the building Facebook now occupies, is a little more old school.  Microsoft, on the other hand, has a campus that has a highway that runs right down the middle outside of Seattle.   Impressive, yes, but still corporate in nature for sure.   However, it may not be your location.  I’ve also visited Total Attorney’s offices in Chicago and their set up is very similar to Google and Facebook, so maybe the Valley isn’t as critical as one might think.

Focus. While Google and Facebook haven’t been around for a decade yet, I think that is actually one of their prime reasons they are as successful as they are.  They are focused.  Every employee who works there knows how their project fits into the grand scheme of their company.  These companies have a focus (beyond profits), and that is something their employees embrace and motivates them.  They want to be the best, breaking new ground in their industry, and setting trends, not fads. Google lets their employees work on pet projects for 20% of their time.  This is how products like GMail, Google Talk emerged.  Those have then taken Google into directions they initially didn’t assume they would get into — office tools.  Facebook has a focus on transforming itself from a social network to a profile management and communication tool.  Products like their lists which help you categorize your friends helps you manage who sees what and what you communicate to whom.  It has opened a whole new door to the Social Graph for them — and how we communicate and share information.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is very diverse in their product lines.  They have several divisions: Search, Gaming, Office, etc.  and from a conglomerate standpoint, the act and operate like a big corporation — each division responsible for their own bottom line.  While Google has several product lines as well, their delivery vehicle is the same — the Web.

Photos from Facebook HQ

Photos from Google Visit

So while one may wear a tie to work and the other scoots around on a skateboard, think about how your company works.  Is it effective in producing your products and services?  Does every employee know how their project fits within the overall strategy of the organization? What changes could you make that would allow for better work product, focus, and commitment from your employees?   Maybe business casual is OK everyday.   It may depend on the profession you are in.  It may depend on experience and longevity of your management team.   My biggest take away from these visits is that your work environment and culture is very critical to the success of your company.

• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas (COMMENT: I wonder how this will change next year with the iPad out)
• Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second

Here is the latest video.  What do you think about the stats?  Anything jump out at you?

I will have some thoughts on this and other Facebook stuff soon.

For me, I use Twitter distinctly different than Facebook.  What I share with these distinct audiences is different, and purposely set up to be different.  In fact, I’m more likely to connect my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts than I am Twitter and Facebook.   You see, I use Facebook for personal reasons.  I don’t have two accounts like many people do (which violate their terms of service, you know that thing you agree to when you create accounts on sites that you most likely never read).  I leave my personal / professional network to Twitter and LInkedIn.  I often see people using the convenience of tools like Tweetdeck,  FriendFeed,  or even just built in integrations between Twitter and Facebook (with a Facebook App) to update a status once and let it go to many social networks.  I think that is a mistake.

I know I’m not alone when I find a tweet in my news feed on Facebook annoying.  Twitter uses different protocols for replies and use of hashtags for topics.  While Facebook has attempted to incorporate the @ symbol as well, to be frank, I just think that audience doesn’t get it, and that’s why it isn’t used.  I also think the way people tweet, at times linking people to other content, websites, or replies to people is different than how people publish status updates on Facebook.  This makes for a very disjointed news feed.  It has gotten to the point that I’m about to “unfriend” all my Facebook friends who integrate the two together.  I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work for me.

Presumably you use your networks differently as well.  Maybe not to the same degree I do, but the people you friend on Facebook may not be the same people you follow on Twitter or connect with on LinkedIn.  So why send them all the same message?  Just like marketers have to segment and target their messages to get the most return on their investment, you too should be conscious about what messages you send to your networks.  You will have stronger networks in the end who will pay attention to what you have to say, not ignore you because the last 10 tweets had nothing to do with what you talk to your friends about on Facebook.

I never found out the answer to my question regarding how many Facebook status updates were really Tweets.  Maybe someone will publish that stat someday.

Twitter and LinkedIn Apps for BlackBerry

Recently the BlackBerry device was delivered two important apps for business users to their app store, Twitter and LinkedIn.  For the last year the iPhone has been the dominant device for most major app development with Android becoming a distant second.  BlackBerry devices seemed to be falling by the wayside.   Which strikes me as odd seeing how BlackBerry devices are very dominant in the business world and growing in the consumer phone world as well.   I know the easy answer is that the touch screen and just plain sex appeal of an iPhone is better than owning a BlackBerry (myself included), but I think these two apps will start to change that thinking.  The reality is that the BlackBerry codex is more complicated and thus the apps cost more to make.  However, as a business user, my BlackBerry rules and I need apps for it.   After I recently had my BlackBerry upgraded to the Curve 8900 I started to look at apps not only to see what they looked like and how they worked with an eye to something we might build for my organization, but also just to see what was out there.  Not much existed.  While there are plenty of apps, nothing was ringing the same way my friends who have iPhones would talk about their apps.   Hey, if we “bump” our phones together, we can share contact information.  But maybe that was the point – the BlackBerry market is just different than the iPhone market.

I know that BlackBerry is more complex to write an application for.  It has a different user interface and that can’t be simple to compensate for a lack of touch screen as an input (well there is the Storm(2).  But I’m hoping these two apps start a push;  a push for more apps to be developed.  The Twitter and LinkedIn apps are important to me because I use them for professional purposes.  And while I like looking at Facebook updates on my BlackBerry, I really have ignored my professional network on LinkedIn…until now.  This app is a much needed upgrade from their mobile site, allowing me to do much more to monitor or share with my professional network.  This is good.

Twitter App

Before upgrading to the new Twitter app I was using Über Twitter.  Uber Twitter was nice at the time because it did more than just going to the mobile site of Twitter.com.  However, it had ads that I found annoying, even if they were minimal intrusion.  Now that Twitter has an official BlackBerry app, I’ve bailed on Über Twitter.  I have to try the official app.  According to the BlackBerry site, Twitter for BlackBerry features include:

• Get your Direct Messages as soon as they arrive
• Reply to tweets, re-tweet and send Direct Messages
• Post a link from your BlackBerry® Browser
• Take a funny picture and upload it

After a few days of use, I like the interface.  I find the integration into my inbox for notifications useful.  One of the downsides right now is that you can’t integrate multiple Twitter accounts or access them without logging out.  The latter is something I like about Über Twitter.  Also, you can’t edit a re-tweet in the official BlackBerry app.  I will live with these two cons for the additional pros of accessing trending topics and overall Twitter search.  Right now I have to find a balance between monitoring my Twitter accounts when I’m at my desk vs. on the go.  Desktop monitoring is done via TweetDeck, which doesn’t have a BlackBerry app yet.  The jury is still completely out on the official app, but it is a good first step.

LinkedIn App

LinkedIn is a different beast in and of itself.  Similar to Facebook, but also not.  LinkedIn is really the defacto profession network.  While specialty networks will still arise, like MH Connected for lawyers, LinkedIn really addresses the business world as a whole, no matter what industry you are in.

Again, according to the LinkedIn blog, the app features:

• Network Updates. View and share crucial business intelligence and updates with your network.  Perfect for those spare moments between meetings.
• Search. Search across over 60 million global professionals, and get the answer back in seconds. We’ve implemented a unified search across both your direct connections and the entire LinkedIn network.
• Connections. LinkedIn is your address book in the cloud.  Get quick access to any of your connections to get their up-to-date profile information, and the ability to send them a message immediately.
• Invitations. Why wait to get back to your desk? Accept outstanding invitations immediately.
• Messages. Messaging is one of the reasons that BlackBerry owners love their devices, and we’ve worked hard to integrate your LinkedIn Inbox.
• Reconnect. You can’t leverage your network if you don’t build it.  This module brings suggestions for new connections to you anytime.  Now you can build your network from anywhere, in seconds.

These are great features that I have started to use.  It reminds me a lot of the Facebook for BlackBerry app, but better.

Taking Advantage of the Platform

According to the announcement blog post, the LinkedIn app also takes advantage of several native BlackBerry applications.  These include:

• Contacts.  Integrate your LinkedIn connections with your BlackBerry address book, and view the profile of any contact directly on your BlackBerry.
• Messages.  LinkedIn invitations and messages will now appear in your BlackBerry Inbox, just like any other email.  You can also view the LinkedIn profile of the sender of any email you receive.
• Calendar.  You can now view the LinkedIn profile of any attendee of a meeting on your BlackBerry calendar.

I can’t stress the importance of integration with the native features of BlackBerry OS.  If you are going to use these third party networks, integration is key and this is one of the great aspects of the LinkedIn app.  Going from the mobile site which was really basic and clunky to this app is like going from a pinto to a corvette.  Nice job.

Overall the BlackBerry market needs to get a kick-start.  Mobile professionals, while migrating to the iPhone and probably the Droid phones now too need apps for the BlackBerry.  I’ll be frank in saying the pure interface of a BlackBerry is one of its biggest challenges.  Whether it is the roller ball, the touch pad, or even the touch screen in the Storm(2), developing for the BlackBerry can’t be as easy as the Android and Apple devices.  But here is to hoping. Hoping that more business applications come out that support good business use on the BlackBerry device.

Further Reading:

Twitter Blog Post re: BlackBerry App

LinkedIn Blog Post re: BlackBerry App