The Innovationist » Technology

Adobe Pops Above Google to Flash Apple (and Opera) Users

James Fuller — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:57:01 +0000

Jesse Stay, brought to my attention earlier, with the screenshot below the code, that Adobe was activating pop-ups through Google Adsense; of course this shouldn’t happen, since Google doesn’t allow such actions, in their ads. I went to check in out for myself, and got nil. I immediately assumed that it was limited to Mac, and went in search of the User-Agent check, and found it after about 5 minutes.

Update: The rest of this article is a bit technical, if you would like a less technical description, you should go read Adobe and Google Sitting in a Tree.

Below is the source of the issue:


document.write('

Adobe pops up on a Mac

The interesting thing I spotted quite quickly is that it is also going after Opera, don’t ask me why, that’s pretty obscure. I immediately tested it out, just to see, and ended up getting the pop-up.

After looking at the code for about a half hour, I still don’t know what everything is, and exactly how it’s getting past Google, I also don’t know how ad’s are created, because I’ve never bothered to look at it. So I’m not sure, if this is something anyone could execute, or if Google is allowing it. So it’s possible that there is a vulnerability in Adsense.

What I can tell after looking at the code, is that they are targeting Apple, and Opera, users, as well as using javascript to activate flash, in the background.

First they are setting the DCid as either DCF0 or DCF224198296, this should always validate as false and the will set DCid as DCF224198296. Then, it goes on to check if the browser uses plugins and has at least any values, if it results in true it attempts to setup ShockwaveFlash and perform a version check on it, setting the variable pVM to the version number. If that statement failed, it assumes you are using IE and initializes using ActiveX.

I don’t understand exactly what is going on in the eval, so I can’t say much about it, besides it calls DCFlash with the DCid(“DCF224198296″) and the pVM(“Flash Version”).

I apologize if the rest of this is rushed for now, I’m getting a bit tired.

The DCFlash function then initializes an assortment of variables, before setting up the FSWin function.
FSWin checks to see if the window is already open or the DCid was set in error to DCF0, it then checks to see if the window is centered and gather your screen size for offsets on the window border. Following FSWin is the window initialization, which disables all navigation, in that window.

Next, is the User-Agent analysis, which first check to make sure that your current Flash version is at minimum Vers. 8, it then checks to see if you are using either a Mac or Opera, if you aren’t the value is less than 0, returning true, this then compares in with window==”false”, which is true, in an or statement, which will return false, if both are set. If this test of the browser conditions fail, either using an old version of Flash, or using a Mac, or Opera it will default to just the default hyperlinked gif. Otherwise, it sets up Flash to be displayed in the window pain.

During the course, of writing this the test ad I was using has disappeared, but I’ll see if I can gather any more of the code. One thing I found odd, is that the ad was stored within an iFrame, which I couldn’t find with any of Google’s other Adsense ads, I managed to find a representation of using an iFrame, after I woke up.

The Influence of Homogeneity on Choice and the Web

James Fuller — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:11:06 +0000

One thing that consistently occurs in markets is a trend towards homogeneity, it’s nothing new, it’s been happening for millennia. The occurrence in the web is a bit disturbing, however, because of time and focus. Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself, I should probably talk about the various forms of homogeneity, that occur naturally and in our daily lives.

Homogeneity, in nature, it is as common as a step in the evolutionary process. As species adapt, the mean difference, across the whole corpus of the species, becomes smaller, and the species pick up both positives and negatives, that affect the species future. The huge negative for homogeneity is that the corpus, minus the mutated(outliers), is that susceptibility to a common tragedy. A tragedy, by contagion, can be common, if a disease does infect one entity, it can easily spread to those that are also susceptible, though the entities with mutated genetics, assuming theses genetics, increase resistance or provide immunity to the disease, or any common tragedy. If the tragedy is large enough, it can cause the mean difference to go up, or even hit an maxima, which it comes back down from in favor of the mutates.

Homogeneity, in business and our daily lives, occurs quite frequently, and it is an influencing factor over choice. To look into the idea of choice and homogeneity, you don’t have to look further than skin deep, or in this case clothing. Every one of us has a desire to fit in, and this desire results in us commonly grouping, even, subconsciously with those who are like us. From this desire, we find ways to look, sound, or interact the same way; our desire also has a side effect, it removes the necessity of thought in many circumstances, just go with what everyone else is doing. Of course, there will always be a few who don’t want to be classified, or collated with others, sadly they create their own group, through these actions: non-conformists.

To see the corporate side of homogeneity, look into the restaurant/fast food industry, or supermarkets. Mom & Pop’s have been gobbled up by the McDonalds and Wal-Marts , because the layperson doesn’t know what they have to offer. If you go with one of these household names, you have a good idea that the food is going to be decent, or that the store will have what you’re looking for within its doors. This homogeneity, decreases local competition, but it’s okay, because it saved the average consumer time and money, because these chains get reductions for ordering extremely large amounts of goods. Of course, some people will stick to the Mom & Pop’s, to be contrarian, or because they know it just as well and it has become ritual.

When it comes to the web, however, the steps toward homogeneity become much easier, but there is even fewer checks and balances, than in any of the other cases. We interact with the web on a time basis, and this time is limited, so we find a subset of sites to stay in constant contact with, normally staying within a triumvirate: search, networking, and news-history. However, the common solutions for these problems are reduced to a common set of sites, there are alternatives, but it requires more rigor on part of the consumer. So what do we do, we choose, by what provides the most tools, where are my friends, and how can I find out more.

What happens when you’re playing this zero-sum game of choice, Louis Gray says there is no zero-sum game? You end up selecting those that might not be the best, but save you time and trouble. Want to use e-mail, read blogs, or just IM with friends, you can go use any random email host, any old RSS-reader, or link walk the sites, or anyone who offers an IM service, OR you can just use Google, and get all of these services simultaneously, plus several dozen other services. Do you see what just happened? Multiple services where just reduced, they were hit by a common tragedy, and now there is one hyper-efficient service provider, which most people are going to use because it’s simple, and they don’t have to think about where they are going to go, or what they are going to do. Where can I share images, discuss things with my close friends and family, and provide a set of personal information for people that people can use as entrance sources? Well there are a large number of services that will let you share images, and any number of places and ways to share that information, but to truly access everyone, without making them do work hard, and that site is becoming Facebook. The case is you don’t see a corresponding 1-1 gain loss, gains are primarily individualistic, while losses are primarily distributed, there are cases where the inverse occurs, but they are few and far between.

These companies are becoming goliaths, that are going to harm the web, if they continue to grow, it won’t happen immediately, but even now Facebook is trying to change the rules. And you can say all you want that there are other services out there, I’ll admit that, but when you’re playing a zero-sum game, based on how much time you spend interacting in different locations, you have to focus on where you’ll get the optimal return. There will always be alternatives, for those who truly want them, but for the general public, they don’t mind as far as they know, everyone does the majority of the same things on the web. Until, something happens that causes the homogenous species, to see what the mutates have already seen and adapted for we’re looking at an interesting ride for the next 2-3 years.

Graph Attention Profiles – GAP(ML)

James Fuller — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:12:57 +0000

This was an idea I had earlier this morning about how to optimize social ad placement services, (MyLikes (Aff. Link), Magpie, etc. ) These services work by placing ads into the a social stream , I like MyLikes model, they let you decide what to put into the stream based on what you like, but this doesn’t factor in what your followers like, the ad needs to be relative to them, not you*. Thinking about how to determine the relevancy to a group, I came up with an idea based around averaging individual APMLs(Attention Profiling Mark-up Language).

I haven’t thought it out fully, it’s only been a few hours, but using APMLs as the starting ground. You sum the weights, per topic, for all of your followers and then divide by #number of followers, to get the APML for your Social Graph, per network which I’m calling GAP currently. I see this as an extended OPML format for APMLs , handling not only weights of relevant interest, but also handling access to the APMLs monitored by the graph.

One thing that would conflict with the APML format, which the GAP could stay very close to, is what is deemed Explicit Data. You aren’t the one determining relevancy, so it isn’t necessary. I’d either use or replace it for something that handles the APML list being monitored, the list becomes the explicit data for the weighting, but it also allows you to weight the APML’s individually as well, I don’t know that this is necessary, but it allows accessibility to possibly increase relevance to your graph, based on who is likely to interact more with you.

So this is just a thought, about a open-method for sharing graphs and relevance between services, rather than every service handling a proprietary model of the graph, and a proprietary model of relevant data. First things first, is that we need support for APML, which we have Chris Saad to thank for, then we can handle how we manage our networks relevancy.

One final issue with the GAP is that it has a specific use case, is that it is a way to share graphs and relevancy to exterior networks, but the file size for the GAP if it handled all the networks simultaneously it would become quite large, implicit data would be 1 line per topic, per network, and explicit data would be 1 line per person, per network. For early adopters and people with large following bases this could become quite large, even for a regular user on one network it would likely be 300-1000 lines.

*= MyLikes already uses a similar model, influenced by clicks per ad and number of ads you share. MyLikes Influence Rank

An Antithetical Post On How Narrowing Is The Key to Curated Data

James Fuller — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:12:31 +0000

So this whole thing about curation , has my head in a state, where I am seeing the data, meta-data, and users, as distinct entities in three-dimensional space. I’d love to provide an image of how they are related, but I can’t because when it comes to placing them in a 2-D or even 3-D state, there is warping and tunneling between these objects, outside of the third-dimension, to maintain proper relations.

Still here? Good. This post may be a bit vague, I’m going to try and keep it simple and understandable, for you as well as myself, I’m already a bit confused after several hours of trying to map this. If you would like to discuss this, for a more in depth, though possibly less coherent form, feel free.

To begin, we have three entities: data, meta-data, and users. These entities all have various ranges of relationship, which go from near to distant, and occasionally don’t exist. To describe the range as an example of friends, “Those best-friends, with very similar taste, are near(1), friends, much different taste(2), acquaintances, similar taste(3), acquaintances, different taste(4), and people you’ve never met(0).” We’ll approach range using this method, based on relational distance, between entities.

Data is, in my view, the front facing objects, whether that be text, images, video, or even tactile objects. Data itself exists in a weak presence, as far as to what value it represents, when coupled with meta-data, it becomes stronger.

Meta-data is data about data. It is the entity that is manipulated and understood, to provide us with relationship information, on any level. There are many forms of meta-data, temporal, location, authorship, topics, etc., that provide us with fantastic ways of connecting data, but often times it includes disparate entities, that aren’t necessary.

The user in my case is a human which interprets the regular data, and may create tags of meta-data, but can be a machine in which case it is likely to work with meta-data, either directly or in composition of meta-data from data sources.

Now that the entities are somewhat defined, I can get into the discussion of how these various entities are connected in creating relevant connections, both in basic terms, and user specific terms.

Often times, the simplest way to construct a relevancy map between data objects, is to use meta-data about the objects, social-bookmarking tools work this way by way of topical tagging, the distance between objects is the range of 4. Making the system a bit more complex you add methods, you take your tagged set, and add in user selection, by how much a user likes various items to manipulate what topics they are likely to see, this is in the range of 3 because it is still picking out items by topic which is a very wide. Or you can provide what your user’s friends have read recently, this is still in the range of 3, because by adding in what other people read, can narrow the area of focus, it’s possible to be in areas that the user doesn’t care as much for. If you add in what the user’s friends like, rather than just what they read, you get closer to the range of 2.

In order to get to the optimal range 1 you have to add two more things to your system: direct relations between data-objects and concentrated interaction between users, these can both be defined explicitly by users, and can be shown as a simple social-graph, with one object/user in the center, and the closest elements near by. Direct-relations, which are somewhat like Techmeme, can be created on a broad scale by a user-based system of bundling links to content, based on relationship. Concentrated Interaction is a bit more complex, because it requires an analysis of interaction, but presents an interesting system, helps reach the range of 1.

Note: If you treat Users like data-objects, which they are in a database, you can apply meta-data, to make the concentrated interaction, more specific by what topics the user is most familiar.

So I’ve discussed 5 ways in varying levels of implementation to reduce the range of relevancy.

The use of tagging to create a quick reduction in the range of relevant data.
User selection to narrow down what topics the user likes, or aggregate content that the users friends are looking at.
Further narrow it down by what these friends like.
Allow Bundling of content that is directly related.
Analyze the concentrated interaction graph to narrow down trust sources.

I’m sure I’ve lost someone in this antithetical pile, as I had to get this off my head it was driving me crazy, and I’m going to call it the beginning of a new arcling, to be adjusted down the line. So if you are interested, I’m sure that we can possibly make it a bit clearer by having a discussion.

The Future Of Privacy Is Full Publicy

James Fuller — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 06:26:12 +0000

Zuckerburg was right, “privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’,” being public is the new social norm, though most people will still tend to reject reality, even myself. I’ve finally gotten over about 90% of privacy issues, I might get upset by/at them, but even if there is something exposed, I’m preparing for it now. Anyone under the age of 21, within the US, who has ever used the internet has already lost their identity, so why should they worry, about what any company is exposing about them? It’s time to get over these feelings and accept the change that is coming, a ton of privacy isn’t worth an ounce of knowledgeable protection.

Just the other day, Facebook, proposed an update to their privacy policy to allow third-parties to have access to your data, some point in the future, and with this comes, yet, another wave of criticism, some. People are jumping all over Facebook, because they feel people will be paranoid that their data is vulnerable, and that their data shouldn’t be given out willie-nillie to just any third-party site that Facebook comes to agreement with. You would think people would be used to this type of position coming from Facebook, by now, this is their fourth or fifth slip up, but still people complain for a few months and then calm down, until it happens again.

Our most personal data in the US, social security numbers, is insecure, especially if you were born after 1988. The numbers can be defined through 2 data points, date & location of birth, and a little brute forcing. So for the younger generation, nothing is private, not even our government provided personal identification. If we aren’t protected in that regard, should we really be worried about those images from last weekend or who our friends are, what our opinions are? I think Eric Schmidt said it best, in an interview where he discussed privacy, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

I know I jumped on Facebook, but they aren’t the only sites that have huge inventories of data on their users, in hopes of adding relevancy, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al. Facebook is the simplest site to jump on because of it’s repeated transgressions in the area. Google has faced it as well, though, when it didn’t take enough discretion in opening up their Gmail users privacy through Buzz. As the web keeps advancing, privacy options are going to be set to off on default, it will be up to the users to change the settings to keep themselves private, this has been called ‘publicy’.

Are you prepared for the next generation, the age of publicy? Are you ready to get dirty mucking around with settings to protect what little privacy, you will have in the future? Will you let everything go, and change how you interact on the web? These are questions that we will all face, but I think I’m prepared to be completely open in my environment when it comes to social matters, they aren’t anything compared to my financial information or my social security number, which can apparently be brute forced by a bot-net of 10,000 machines in ~1.27 seconds.

Update: Tyler Romeo’s latest post, Why I Dislike Facebook & Foursquare, makes a great point in contrast to the opinions I made here, I agree with quite a bit of what he has to say as far as respecting your users and offering secure protocols, to help protect your users. Take your time and go check that post out.

Social Geo-Location Is A Weak Medium

James Fuller — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:21:59 +0000

Earlier, I was watching an Iron Maiden concert and realized that any decent medium can be used to express a story or culture. Social Geo-location might be able to pass a story, but the majority of the usage I’ve seen, thus far, doesn’t. This is just one of a few issues that make social geo-location weak, there is the issue of user base, barrier to entry, and application of the data.

I feel that the location services aren’t proper for expressing the story. They don’t describe the why and what is happening the majority of the time, and when they do the data is extremely condensed to fit within the minuscule boxes of Twitter or SMS. Twitter is hard enough to express a story through, though you can still manage to get it or a cultural message across in one tweet. Sharing a cultural message through one of these locations is likely even harder, with the exception of religious establishments.

How social can you really be with these applications? These applications all have tiny user bases, even after quite a bit of promotion on large blogs and a period of time. Foursquare, which is one the most publicly discussed ones, only has half-a-million, even after breaking out at SxSW, last year. Compared to Foursquare, few of the other services come close in size comparisons. The problem with low user adoption is that without your friends, how relevant can the product be, which I’ll discuss a little later.

The barrier to entry for nearly all of these services, is that they are limited to internet enabled phones, or smart phones. In fact, only one service of the several that I’ve looked at, had a entry level that wasn’t quite restrictive of it’s base, and it’s none other than Foursquare, with SMS check-in’s, which still appears to be hit or miss. If you’re reducing your initial growth capabilities, immediately, in a social market, you’re damaging your product.

The services use the location data, in their own ways, but I don’t know if they are applying it where it would actually be of value, as an addition of context. If you can take the data from these products and connect it to events and people as they occur, you simplify the enrichment of the story. It’s still pretty easy to just say where the event’s took place, with the addition of maybe 2 dozen key strokes, as I write this at my house.

Another issue is that the product might not be relevant to users, especially, when people begin using them to check in as they leave. If I were to use these services, it would be to let my friends know where I am, so now you have users undermining the principles of your product, way to go. You’re app actually ends up being even more irrelevant than it already is. The likelihood that your friends are even on the service is an anomaly in the first place, unless you live in a metropolitan area(e.g. New York, San Francisco, LA, Portland, Miami, etc.).

I give all the people who work on these applications props, though, because they discovered a great system. They created a user-promotion based advertising system, which you encourage by having deals with various venues to reward the heavy users, and little trophies for reaching little milestones for the rest of the users. They have also brought the idea of geo-location to the fore, which sometime in the future will be used to add context to real stories or cultural messages. So I would like to thank all the people, who work on these apps, for their work, but you guys apparently don’t understand geo-location, it is better served to add context to other mediums, than as an independent social medium.

Splitting the Web Markets

James Fuller — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:27:54 +0000

I’ve been looking into the web, trying to figure out what it’s going to look like in a few years. I’m still looking at various scopes, but I decided to analyze some of the more generalized markets that we have right now. You’re not going to find anything new here, just 5 areas of the web we will see changes in, and the coming monetization of the web.

Infrastructure = Hosting & ISP’s

Data Resources = Data

Data Access & Storage Protocols = API’s

Services = Applications that modify the Data through use of API’s to provide a value

Directories = Provide the ability to find what you’re looking for quite rapidly, can be pseudo-static or dynamic.

Each of these different markets can and most likely will be monetized within the coming years, most likely coming from the users themselves. Hosting & ISP’s have already done it. Directories that aren’t fully dynamic can do it with advertising, and even some of the dynamic real-time directories will be able to use the advertising model. The Data & DASP’s will be subsidized, for the most part, by the initial service’s charges, or possibly the service will be subsidized by external developers paying for access to the data, or just the data itself.

The benefits we will see is that our data is more stable, at least in the sense that the company isn’t going to go belly up, services should be better, and there will be more positions, hopefully. We all walked around expecting everything to be free, when we should have been asking how can we help make more services. Maybe the free world was just the accelerant for innovation to get the initial business models developed, promote an open generation, and allow everyone a shot at getting their ideas out there, it’s easier to pick up users, for a simple service, when you’re not charging them after all. The problem that we had with free is that we all became so jaded by it.

Focus on one of these markets and how you can change it. Each one is easily branched into another, you can traverse up or down that list from where you started. Look at Google, they exist in each of these markets. They started with a DASP that collected vast amounts of Data, then used initially used this data to create a Directory Service, along with quite a few other services, one of which is AppEngine which exists to share their infrastructure.

As the web evolves we’ll see these markets split and converge on each other time and time again, we may even see a new general market pop up. Just as an example of the splitting a market look at the services, there are so many sub-markets that exist within it that it would be hard to categorize them. For an example of convergence you just have to look at the various projects being developed to better connect the web, one of the most recent one’s to pop into my radar is Salmon, which is working to pull comments back to the original source and re-disperse them with the source feeds. Time to watch the ebb and flow, and maybe enter one or more of these markets.

Thoughts are Evolutionary: The Idea for Arclings

James Fuller — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:27:01 +0000

Do you really want to keep pushing ideas out, but have problems fleshing the concept out fully? Or maybe you just want to express the basis of an idea really quick, get feedback, and iterate. The problem with current systems is it’s hard to keep track of the evolution, if you post a lot of other stuff around it.

Micro-blogging lets you throw the idea out there, but doesn’t allow much room for the idea to evolve, or tracking this evolution.

Blogging in the conventional sense is much too concrete(though I’m doing it right now). I find the preconception of blogging to be you must push out a full thought. Why?

I propose a release quick, release often blogging structure and build arc’s as your story develops, making branching trees using link structures. Let the ideas build over weeks, or months, rather than waiting for one single burst of insight, and fleshing it out on the spot.

I propose using story arcs, along with links to the latest preceding events in the evolution, and trackbacks to the succeeding story events. Though this is possible in the current evolution of blogging systems, it’s complicated. I want an Arcling platform that makes the connection process easy, if not intelligent in managing the tracing of the structure.

A Few Innovative Ideas for Short URL’s

James Fuller — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:51:50 +0000

Over the past 6 months or so I’ve seen numerous posts raise flags with the idea of URL Shorteners. Each of these focus on several issues, security issues, non-relative link titles, no pass through for SEO purposes, and the possibility of data loss. Each of the problems, have at least partial solutions, but these solutions are still not effective enough. Here are some of the modifications that I plan on working to enhance the service.

Pretty URL’s – Security & Relative Titles

Making the short URL as human-readable as possible is a plus, however, with the shorteners on the market, they are quite hard to get because every user’s URL is an ID that can only be linked to only once by the service. My solution to this is to embed user data within the link, this abstraction reduces actual URL location to 1-3 characters(b62 range, 62 – 238,328), and you can store the User data in between 4-6 characters(b62, 14,776,336 – 56,800,235,584) at the end. This means the minimal length required for a link is 5 and the maximum is 9. The benefits of applying the User encoding is that it provides the ability to parse the users links, along with any meta-data associated with the link, such as a secondary access to the url, via a user specific vanity title, e.g. http://examp.le/URLxUser = http://examp.le/SteveJ/apple and http://examp.le/XbUser = http://examp.le/LarryP/apple. The User encoding also allows the linking system, to be used as a quick account review if there is any suspicion of malware or spyware being sent by a specific source. One requirement of using the User encoding, is that you define the length that the User data takes up and where it is located. I feel that 5 characters(~1 Billion unique id’s) is optimal at this point in time, and that placing this in the very end of the string is slightly simpler to parse, but that’s just user preference. However, at no point can you change either of these choices without destroying the entire system of links that have been spread over the internet, so you must choose wisely before you begin.

Multiple-Links – More Data, Less Space

Allowing users to batch related content, reduces the total length per link to 22/n to 24/n, where n equals # of links. Applying link specification to the API will extend the length, but also make large batches more usable for sharing data, (e.g. http://examp.le/XbUser?link=1,3). Next topic of discussion for this is how to handle statistics, because regular statistics become a bit blurred by having the ability to access multiple links at the same time. The most accurate collection is only the inbound links to the page, outbound is much more complicated, as it is multiple-permutations on exit paths. The best that you can do is calculate clicks for links, and measure selection for the Open All button by counting all active links. One benefit to the multiple link structure is that it encourages users to become link curators, this provides plenty of data for machine learning, as well as providing associations that aren’t easily discernible to machines, such as what the user likes. It also makes the system an active aggregation center for real-time data. An example of a multi-link(Safari 4 has issues and will open windows instead of tabs) http://lnkr.hiphs.com/socialme

Data Storage – Open Access, Uptime, and Redundant Stores

After, stories such as Ma.gnol.ia’s data loss, Cli.gs hacking, and various services shutting their doors, link rot becomes a very big concern. So I’ve looked into various solutions and one that sticks out is based on work by Directeur for use in federated real-time systems, Socnodes, and the Oruboros & Lamaean Hydra problems that he had to solve. His solution to the Oruboros was using Atom Feeds UID’s with service title to allow the systems to check against themselves. The usefulness of the Socnode layout is you can store and update remote databases with your data, creating a remote redundant store, but also n-ary accessible domains. Assuming you use separate data storage sites, DNS’s, and build otherwise independent systems that operate with the same data in parallel.

There will be a point that URL’s aren’t going to be nearly as important and I see this as a step to reaching it. These steps toward ease of access, safely securing the data, through redundancy, encoding and embedded data, and review systems, and the ability to collect related and relevant data are steps in the right direction.

The Social Web: Defining Real-World Social Factors

James Fuller — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:26:56 +0000

I noticed this a while back, while watching FFundercats, as they discussed the possible loss of the service, with founder Paul Buchheit. They also discussed why Friendfeed captured the audience it did and why most of the users hate/dislike Facebook. It’s the content and community that exists on each, and what value you receive from them. I ended up breaking the real-life social experience into 3 fields, to try and explain this.

Introduction

Commonality
A shared interest in similar items, friends, or favorite places to hang out or eat. It should be easily distinguishable to find a similarity to begin with as your mutual friend introduces you or you end up at the same location at the same time. You may both go to a place to enjoy a hobby you both share, and make a connection from that.

Mutual Experience
You have both being through an incident or event in which you share similar experiences, this could fall under commonality, but it is something that isn’t common enough that you would normally share with a stranger. It could be your profession, a disease that has affected your life, or going to an exclusive event. It is a personal connection that randomly comes out and creates an initial connection.

Notable Interaction
This is the kind that is often used in movies, but occurs quite often in life also, the cliche in films is when someone drops there books and gets assistance from someone. It’s just an accident that creates an opening for introductions. In real life this could be any unplanned event where people share some information about each other, whether it be a car accident, being stuck in an airport due to a delay, or any accident that causes people to offer assistance.

Acquaintance

Re-occurrence
The event that any of the aspects of the Introductory Field reoccurs often enough that you begin to know each other on a more personal level, than you would on a one-off meeting.

Mutual Shared Personal Knowledge
The information that most people don’t want you to have if they don’t know you very well, their birthday, their relationship status, where they’re from. It’s the most basic of info that provides accessibility to each other and also a little detail about one’s current state of affairs.

Caring
The use of Personal Knowledge to express yourself to the person. You can wish them a happy birthday, with out it being to awkward, or provide condolences when they lose something/someone very dear to them. It is the ability to express without being perceived as fake that you are willing to be there for the person in the moments they need support.

Friendship

Deep Interaction
The point in which you can discuss things that matter to you, that you might not share with people you don’t know very well. Discussions which involve personal knowledge to be gathered that isn’t public information. It is the ability to trust the other person with more personal information.

Experience
The effect of Deep Interaction is that you are begin to know more about the person. You have inside jokes, can pass on interests, and know how to change their mood for the positive or negative. The insight that comes with being a friend allows you to interact more fluidly with the other person.

Ease of Access
The ability to start a conversation with a person relatively simply, you make time for each other to have a discussion. It can also be, likely is, the provision of multiple channels to reach the person for such discussions. Having such ubiquity helps further and accelerate, the relationship.

Catalysts

Real-Time Discussion
By now we should all understand what this means, but I will clear the meaning up for those that don’t know. Real-time discussions are fluid interactions that happen rapidly enough, within a short period of time, that they can be seen as a seamless conversation.

Randomness
The spark that can ignite a friendship. It is the driving force of introductions and fosters connections. You see someone grasping something that you like as well, you have an accident, you trip. It is the key to mutual experiences, and notable interactions. It also keeps everything interesting, you may come across something new, at any time.

Currently, I haven’t found an online service that offers all of these qualities, but the top few have hit some sweet spots that make it much easier to manage socialization on all levels. Below I posted a chart of what factors Friendfeed, Facebook, and Twitter have become useful for. And I’m not saying that they don’t have ways to do all of this, it’s just not simple, if it’s not simple to manage the social factors, it’s useless.