GoCatGo!

It’s the community.

We may be at a tipping point for a curated internet again. The internet is too big. There is far too much information, there are far too many social networks and photo-sharing services for anyone to absorb, to digest, or to evaluate. When one considers that there are over a trillion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web, it’s impossible to make an informed decision about where to go, what to read, see, and hear. Where is the best content? To whom do we turn for guidance or advice? Curators.

Curators are people who, or systems which, apply expertise to a topic to select the highest quality data for the user’s consumption. A simple definition, but the implementation of such a system is quite complex and difficult. The “who, what, where, when, why” involved in creating a system can be daunting. Many services create an infrastructure, and leave the actual input to the community. Create an environment and let the conversations happen. YouTube is a perfect example of this, as the users rate the content, but this often results in a popularity contest as opposed to assigning relative quality to the content.

We already have curators: friends and family, Facebook friends … any individual or group who’s opinion we respect, at least as it may be associated to the subject at hand … but, how qualified are these amateur curators and part-time “experts?” Uncle Fred probably has an opinion about which riding lawnmower you should buy, but what about the best online photo service, or highest-rated investment advice?

In the 1980s, most users viewed a curated internet: a subset of the internet vetted by whichever online service the user chose. What does the curated internet look like? America Online is probably the most familiar example for those of us who have been on line for a while. Prodigy was another “walled garden” of data, providing selected news and information to their customers.

Quote: “The promise of the Internet-as-Alexandria is more than the rolling plenitude of information, it’s the ability of individuals to choreograph that information in idiosyncratic ways, the hope that individuals might feel invited by the gravitational pull of a broad and open commons to ‘rip, mix, and burn’ — to curate.” - Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Harper’s Magazine 2007

Thoughts: Popularity and high quality are not synonymous. I doubt we’ll see the same level of isolation as we did with AOL, et al, but we are likely to see curation services growing in number and popularity. Rock and roll radio deejays were curators.

Questions: Will services be built around Facebook or Twitter … or something like Tumblr? Or are they more likely to be independent like GetGlue or MyLikes? Or, possibly, connected blogging like Tumblr? How will interoperability be addressed? GetGlue has an interesting approach.

Reading: Official Google Blog: We knew the web was big… The Curated Web (and Tumblr) | The American Prospect …

Review: recommendation engines …

Intent on securing a CEO position, Ron Johnson left his post as Apple’s Vice President of Retail after 11 years to take the top spot at J. C. Penney. Those of you familiar with the story behind Apple’s retail stores are likely to be familiar with Johnson, the man Apple lured away from Target nearly a dozen years ago to help design, launch, and run Apple’s retail stores. The success of Apple’s retail initiative is legendary, and Johnson has received much of the credit.

Johnson’s initial at strategies at J. C. Penney would seem to serve as confirmation that Steve Jobs was the real visionary and creative force behind Apple’s bricks and mortar effort. The first evidence of Johnson’s plan for J. C. Penney range from a remarkably annoying television campaign featuring screeching “consumers,” to a bland and unimaginative new logo; from a seemingly impossible-to-manage new concept detailing 80 to 100 separate “Main Street” specialty shops within J. C. Penney stores, to an “everyday low prices” mantra (sounds oddly familiar, no?) … J. C. Penney seems to be desperately grasping for an identity. If this approach is the best he’s got … it looks like a race to the bottom to me; they can say that they aren’t competing with Walmart all they want.

The new identity is dreadful. It reminds me of the recent Gap logo disaster. The implementation may help a bit … I’ve seen some of the work, and the logo looks somewhat better in place … but it does not work on its own. “It looks like an 8-bit butt-hole pooping a blueberry …” -Michael Henderson, commenting at Brand New, UnderConsideration.com.

The new commercials? Cringeworthy. I can’t hit the mute button fast enough. Stop. Screaming.

The forecasted 100 “merchandise shops” will be a real challenge to manage. It looks overly complex and will require an army of merchandisers. I won’t be surprised to hear that shopping at J. C. Penney becomes increasingly frustrating and time-consuming.

Photo: Aimee Groth, Business Insider

Thoughts: Is it a coincidence that Target is implementing a “shops” merchandising strategy also?

Quote, Question: “The difference is that Penney’s goal isn’t to undercut competitors, but rather to offer customers more predictable pricing.” How is their intent relevant? Customers won’t see this high-minded purpose on the price tag. All they will see is whether or not the product is priced lower than it is at Walmart.

Quote, Question: “Customers will not pay literally a penny more than the true value of the product,” Ron Johnson. By what mechanism will they determine a product’s “true value”? Isn’t that what J. C. Penney pays? I’m being a bit facetious, sure … but … I’d love to know.

Reading: Business Insider on Ron Johnson’s plans for J. C. Penney

One thing I find interesting about the Instagram story is how the app has blurred the lines between application and platform. The initial success enjoyed by the Instagram team seems pretty modest from here in 2012 … users take pictures, add a clever filter preset, and share the photo with friends and family members. Instagram did this very well, but there was more to come.

One gap in Instagram’s feature set is the lack of a web interface and community. One now wonders if this wasn’t by design, as Instagram users now enjoy support from a variety of third parties in this regard. There’s something comforting about having a variety of web interfaces from a variety of coders as we get to see several different takes on photo browsing.

Undersky is one such web portal into the Instagram community. Very clean presentation of popular images, your feed, and your own uploads.

The Webstagram “Instagram Web Viewer” provides a little more than Undersky, allowing the visitor to switch between list and grid views, view a photo of the day, what’s “hot,” and more. The site is operated on a shoestring budget and is occasionally down … but I admire the effort.

A little twist is provided by gramfeed (sic) is the display of a user’s avatar in the corner of Instagram photos … it would seem to make frequent posters a little easier to spot. A map-based location search is also provided; it seems to work quite well. Speaking of mapping, once you are logged into Instagram through gramfeed, a map figures prominently on the “My Feed” and “My Photos” pages. Try it … pretty fab.

Now for one of the prettiest ways to view your Instagram photos on the web: Insta-great! Presenting Instagram photos in a filmstrip metaphor makes exploring fun. Flipping through “Popular Photos” with your track pad or scroll wheel is entertaining and, when you find something compelling by another Instagram photographer, it’s easy to switch to their stream of images with just a click.

There have been others, but one big downside to dependence on third-party support for functionality is that they sometimes go away. Try one of the sites listed here … and Google for more.

More to come; I’m not done with Instagram … not yet.

As a Chase Jarvis fan, I was using his Best Camera app when Instagram was released. Initially, I thought Instagram was a bit derivative, actually; there were quite a few photo apps for the iPhone, and I didn’t see anything particularly special about this new entry.

Almost immediately, Instagram became the hot iPhone photo app, and I wondered why. Best Camera was established, had similar functionality, and boasted an active web community (something Instagram still lacks, although some third-party services are filling this gap).

I downloaded Instagram. I connected to Twitter and Facebook. I took some photos, applied filters, got bored, and moved on. I found the filter presets to be “almost” what I wanted in every case. So close, but not quite right. What I didn’t see was that this very lack of complexity was a big positive for Instagram. I was being too particular. I wanted more control, but most users want the particulars hidden away. Why fiddle with four different settings when tapping a single preset will do it all for you?

Looking at the two photo apps now, it’s a little clearer to me why Instagram caught fire while Best Camera is largely forgotten. For starters, Instagram’s workflow is much more straightforward. Sure, Best Camera is more flexible, but users seemed happier letting the app make some decisions for them if it meant getting their photos in front of their friends a little (maybe a lot) faster. There really is something to be said for simplicity.

Then there’s Twitter. And Facebook. Folks love to be creative … almost as much as they like showing people exactly how creative. Instagram feels seamless when posting to social networks. Enter account info for each network, and you’re posting your stunning creations all over the internet.

Now, here’s a killer difference: Best Camera is $2.99, Instagram is free. The adoption rate for these two apps could be very much the same if not for the lure and safety of “free.” There is very little risk in trying a free app. One could argue that an app costing $2.99 is pretty damn close to free … but $2.99 isn’t twice as much as “free” … it isn’t ten times as much … or a million times as much. That $2.99 for Best Camera is an infinite multiple of Instagram’s “free.” And that seems to have made all the difference in the world.

So, I’m revisiting Instagram. I think they understand the social aspects of the smart phone photo app market better than anyone, and that makes it worth a second look.

Instagram

I think it’s time to start using Tumblr again. I’m going to do my very best to minimize posting directly to Facebook over the course of the next year. I’m not planning to abandon Facebook … I’m just making it less of a focus … a lower priority.

For many, myself included, Facebook has been the default, must-use social network for quite a while. I’m planning to de-centralize my social net presence to reduce my dependence on a single platform. Let’s face it, Facebook can change the rules at any time, making the service much less appealing. Facebook could suspend or delete my account, and I may have little recourse. Facebook could simply screw up … losing everything I’ve entrusted to them.

So, going forward, I’ll be using a photo-sharing site, my own website(s), Google+ … and Tumblr … much more.

Common sense makes good sense most of the time; it keeps our fingers out of the fire, right? So often common sense prevents us from harming ourselves or others. Common sense is most valuable, until it becomes nonsense. Interviewed for the September 2010 issue of Wired, author Simon Singh says …

“Science has nothing to do with common sense … Inject somebody with some viruses and that’s going to keep you from getting sick? That’s not common sense. We evolved from single-cell organisms? That’s not common sense. By driving my car I’m going to cook Earth? None of this is common sense. The commonsense view is what we’re fighting against.”

What most people regard as common sense … “sound practical judgement independent of specialized knowledge” … can be creatively restrictive. And, if what experts are saying is true … that creativity is the currency of the twenty-first century … we had better think about the relative value of automatic responses to sets of data, as this is when we behave most like computers … and we are not machines. Common sense thinking is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it inherently good. It is an operational state of the human brain … and we need to know when to turn it off.

Quote: “Common sense is that which tells us the world is flat.” – Stuart Chase, quoted in S. I. Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action (1952)

Quote: “Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen.” – Attributed to Albert Einstein in Mathematics, Queen and Servant of the Sciences (1952) by Eric Temple Bell

Thoughts: What was valuable to hunter-gatherers may not apply in the industrialized world … at least, not entirely.

Question: Is extrapolation a big factor in common sense thinking?

Reading: Author Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science | Wired Magazine

Reading: Common sense – Wikiquote

Reading: Common sense – Wikipedia

So many social networks and networking tools. What to use … what to leave behind? Testing Facebook updating from Tumblr.