When I  arrived on campus at the Univ. of Michigan in 2001, a group called Komposit dominated the party scene in Ann Arbor. Komposit was causing waves on campus, down from the Blind Pig, up to the Church on Church.  

Throngs of people flocked to their gigs so often that they should have earned school credit. The smell of vinyl burning at the DJ’s fingertips lingered in the air. B-Boys from Element One and dancers from Funktion and 2XS lit up the living rooms of house parties all around campus. An eclectic crowd who “thought they could dance” didn’t stand idle. They shouted in glee and ripped moves from their favorite music videos (remember those?) .  High on jungle juice and hip hop, these parties were spiritual to some.

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The proliferation of “feature” apps has caused a huge signal-noise imbalance. Check-ins, deals, status updates, photos and others offer an incomplete picture of siloed activities.

But organizing feature activity around time, makes activity streams more useful and easier to consume.

Take the new Facebook Timeline for example. I may post a status that reads “Just passed my exam!”. I also have a Spotify integration that broadcasts that I am listening to Celebrate Good Times by Kool and Gang. Lastly, I post a picture of me popping some bubbly via Instagram. As individual snippets of information, my friends may either be moderately entertained or generally annoyed at my frequent broadcasts. But when viewed in aggregate, each activity centers around a single, and much more palatable “event” plotted on an axis of time.

The timeline amplifies the utility of feature activity because of the added context. It’s not unlike a conversation about analog vs digital.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the marriage of social and time, which is why we think doingtonight is exciting. Stay tuned for some updates on how the app is progressing.

Every social app suffers from a chicken-egg issue, where density is required for the real utility of the app to emerge. As a result, many app developers use Facebook Connect to accelerate and simplify the process of adding social connections. But there is often some amount of manic push back from user’s who do not want Facebook all up in their business. 

I recently revisited a blog I wrote several months ago about social neutrality, and came across a section that I thought was worth reblogging. It may help clear up how and why app developers are using Facebook Connect.

The proliferation of Facebook Connect, and the success of sites using it, is slightly curbed by the hesitancy users have to share their information with an unfamiliar website in order to gain access. But this will change over time as people realize sites using Facebook Connect may be better stewards of their information. This is because the connection with Facebook is two-way. A user can allow Facebook to share certain information about them with the application, while the application can choose what information to share with Facebook. This means that certain behaviors, like announcing that you want to booze, may be better served originating on a different system that leverages your existing social graph on Facebook, but keeps those behaviors separate from that graph. read more

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When the sun is out and birds are chirping, everyone’s an entrepreneur. Days are spent filling pretty slides with buzzwords, hacking APIs, and reading TechCrunch. The kitchen is stocked and ping-pong table is polished. Good times, baby! The only question is, “Will I become a billionaire?”. This will last forever, right? A shake of the magic eight ball bubbles up your answer - “Don’t count on it.”
 
It’s a ten hour drive to the crossroads you don’t see coming. You are almost where you need to be, but your car is running out of gas. Progress is stalling. When you roll to a stop you will have two choices. Abandon the car and head home, or push it the rest of the way.

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