Interesting nugget from Reuters:

Some 75 percent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog -- sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook -- as more deserving of their trust than those that do not.

This fact should be shown to sceptics who chafe at Twitter's 'exospheric' ($1bn+) valuation, and are constantly asking to see the business model. True, it doesn't (yet) have much of it's own business model per se, but heck it's providing tons of value to the businesses that use it. 

To take some very simplistic and crude, but B.I.G. numbers: the collective value of the world's top 100 brands is estimated to be over $2 trillion, so if the Twitter-effect accounts for just 1% of that goodwill, the thing's generating (though obviously not capturing) $20bn of value. Not bad for a poor man's email. 

One of the quaintest garbled Finglishisms from my time in Helsinki, and there were many, was when my colleagues would warn of the dangers of a backlash, and call it a backslash. Don't know why, and maybe it was a localized phenomenon, but it conjured up in my mind some kind of fevered robed, masked assassins scything at a cowering hoard of alphanumeric symbols. Anyway, this is the season of the backslash.

At the macro level of backslashery, Obama is shooting fish in a barrel, with his $500k top rate salary for officers of companies taking public funds. Though an admirably attractive idea for mass market politicos seemingly frustrated that stocks are no longer a valid punishment for errant execs, this is unlikely to be effective, since the most capable executives will presumably head elsewhere, leaving a second division in charge of doing the right things.

More to the point though, are the upcoming backslashes in the worlds I inhabit - social networking and mobile. Within hours of it being launched, colleagues and friends were inviting me to share my location with them courtesy of Latitude, Google's considerably important foray into mobile social networking. Hundreds of other startups have been trying to be The Network for mobile social networking, not realizing that there's very little point in having a separate network for mobile social networking that involves other people than in your other networks.

Unsurprisingly, privacy advocates have been jumping up and down. Google has done some elegant things to make it easier for people to not be too obvious about their location, enabling people to lie about it (something that my friend Janne has always maintained was a crucial essence of humanity that social networks would avoid at their peril). The problem however, is that people are inherently lazy, and the middle ground of people like me are most at risk. The youth have time on their hands and care not a jot about privacy - happy to bare all to any who stumble across their myspace page. The old fogies will be appalled and won't use it. Those in the middle such as me will fancy playing with the technology, then forget they left it on (it asks you if you want to keep it on when you leave the app, but out of sight, out of mind). We'll then be embarrassed by it - not necessarily today, but at some later point. This level of discomfort willbe magnified the first time there's an abduction or murder linked directly to it. Google up to now has been a B2B play, with their only customer interface a plain white box. Let's hope they ramp up their service with a smile.

The other backslash coming our way was something i just glimpsed on CNN. The case shown was a family guy whose Facebook account was compromised and a hacker changed his status updates to say he urgently needed help. This hacker than contacted the victim's friends saying he was held captive in London, and one friend obligingly wired over $1200 to get him out of trouble. The same kind of thing can happen on any network. However, as Facebook becomes the most relied upon identity layer for many people, they'll need to rapidly scale their capabilities to deal with the aftermath of the life-wrecking that happens when something so intimate goes wrong.

The massed ranks of users and their backlslashes will probably prove to be a force more humbling and educational to these pillars of the new Internet economy, than even Obama's majesty is to the pillars of the old.

Just gave this presentation on mobile social networking to the Mobile Social Networking Conference here in San Francisco.

The deck lists 6 big ideas that I think will shape the space:
- Intimacy not irrelevance
- Push not pull
- Filters
- 3D not 2D
- Marketing not advertising
- P2P = Pocket to pocket

Are you the same person online as you are in real life? I'm not talking about the 43 year old geek guy pretending to be a 15 year old girl, but the more subtle question about whether you use the web to support or substititute for real life. This post won't be relevant for the latter category. And in fact, it might give you pause for thought: soon, everyone will know you're a dog.

Nokia's Sensor app is/was a rather cute bluetooth-only social networking solution. People liked it but commented how much better it would be with an online component too. Well, thanks to a chat with Nikolaj at DLD, it seems that the team at imity (as in proximity) have done pretty much that: take the sensor concept to the next level, and allow you to interact with people whether they are in the real world, or your online world.

So, what does it do? It combines blueetooth scanning with online social networking, so it can tell you if there's someone in the same room as you who reads your blog or other online site. Or you can see if there's someone visiting your blog who you were with in that bar last night. Here's a deck from last year's Reboot when they were still closed beta. The new site's only be open to registrations for a week or two.

It's interesting that the digital traces we leave as we meander around the web (e.g. MyBlogLog) are becoming real world. So, think twice before you write that rude blog comment; you might find yourself on the sharp end of a non-virtual fist.

I imagine before long they will extend the model to the other dimension: to allow you to trace the shadows of your Second Life pesona and their respective interactions with others. In fact, they ask for a SL name on sign up, so this is probably already underway if it's not out yet. I hope they allow you to automate the meta-matching, so that as you / your avatar / your online surfer passes others, you can tell whether they share your taste in music / movies / books / locations etc. with federated output data of lastFM / Netflix / Amazon / Plazes etc.

As a rather boring 'supplementer' I find the collision of these worlds very exciting. In its current format, it probably won't be that attractive to those who want to maintain the shroud of alternate reality. I'm looking forward to a S60 3.0 version, a critical mass of local users to make the bluetooth scanning work, and the surfacing of many really interesting questions and services that we've not even begun to think of yet.

One of the ironies of today's social networking services is that the device that can deliver these services directly to the users wherever they are, and has access to the kind of information that could be Royal Jelly to the providers, is shunned and relegated to a poor relation. Not to my surprise, today's high-profile panel on social networking had little to say on the subject, but contained some interesting tidbits nonetheless. The panel was moderated by Jamba-founder and one of Germany's entrepreneur-wizz kid brothers Oliver Samwer, and consisted of Matt Cohler, Strategy VP at Facebook, Lars Hinnrich, founder of Xing (formerly OpenBC), Erik Wachtmeister, founder of aSmallWorld (aSW), and an old-world-business model legend, Arend Oetker.

Mobile industry: need not apply
The only reference to mobile was made mid-way through by the eminent Dr. Oetker, who seemed to say that 'handys' were obviously not compatible with these kinds of service, because emotion was so important and emotion was clearly impossible on the small screen. Cue my rant from yesterday about not even needing screens, although to be fair Dr O. was the self-styled non-technologist on the panel. The deafening silence on the subject of mobile throughout the rest of the session was a telling indictement of our industry's ability to reach out and enable these services in a more meaningful way than basic WAP links. The lack of a great mobile client for aSW seems particularly problematic for the users (given their openness for real-world interactions), and something like an updated version of the bluetooth-optimized Sensor could make a whole lot of sense for them. Time ran out before I was able to ask the question about 'what is stopping you from having great mobile experiences of your services', but I'm sure the answer would have been the same as when I asked it during the social networking panel in last year's Next Web Conference. The answer then was high and non-transparent charges, which I expect is still gripe #1.

No new business models
There weren't many breakthrough insights re business models (nor were we expecting any). Business models were generally advertising subscription fees or commissions on ecommerce (aSW has 265 yachts on sale, together with thousands of job listings, though no detail was given of the amount of fees charged). Admittedly, Xing noted that they had revenues from day 1, and have recently been floated (valued at $160m). At this stage, Dr. Oetker's baby-food-and-things-you-can-touch business model is looking the healthiest.

aSmallWorld: real world exclusivity brings real value to members
It was interesting to listen to Erik W. in person - he's clearly a bit of a legend for the 100,000 aSWers whose glitzy lives he has helped make glitzier. As a proud member (though not one of the glitzy ones) I can attest to the value of the site - it provided the chance to meet some fascinating and friendly locals during recent trips to Morocco and Miami, providing a much richer experience for the itinerant traveller. That kind of welcome wouldn't have been likely by trying to connect with MySpace members (yikes), and is testimony to its focus on real-world, trusted social relationships. aSW is unique among these services in terms of its rather paternalistic approach - 6 webmasters moderate the community, and can ban misbehaving members (sending them to aBigWorld) for such crimes as trying to 'conect' with cute Swedish women you don't actually know (this is dubbed the 'Italian syndrome'). Erik's presence here seems indicative of a new activities brewing: he announced they may bring in subscription charging soon and will be bringing out a new version of the software to allow groups.

Helping people make the web more manageable, and real.
One interesting idea was Erik's response to the 'next big thing' question. He said there will be lots of opportunities for helping people bring order to the chaotic nature of the web (one of his major USPs for aSW). This theme is echoed in a piece in yesterday's NYT:

Get ready for a lot of opportunities to join all kinds of networks — and, one hopes, some appropriately Webby new way to politely say, “No, thank you.”

This alludes to the Danah-esque annoyance with these clumsy social structures - the inability to bring the same nuance to online social networks that we can use in real life (for example, feigning that you've forgotten your business card / have an important telephone call or are stricken with a tremendously debilating and infectious disease).

Faithful to their customers or their community / market segment?
Esther Dyson asked the best question (as she generally does) to Facebook: Are you going to mature your service offering as your customers grow, e.g. graduate from college and become young professionals. The answer was a bit vague, but this is a fascinating issue. What proportion of sites are designed to facilitate better interaction of predefined communities (e.g. golf club, company networking tools) rather than individuals (with aSW and MySpace being clear examples)? And what attributes should a community-focused network have compared to an individual-focused network?

From real-world communities to online, rather than vice versa
Although not really dicussed in this session, I'd suggest that the natural evolution of things seems to be taking us down the Long Tail - more niche communities created to align with existing real world communities. And I'd doubt whether any of the existing mass networks are the place to start for this. For example, I'd love to have a more powerful online community component to my sailing club, but it's unlikely that any one of these networks will have critical mass in these real world communities to be feasibe (MySpace is not big in Suffolk). The real-world community itself will determine the technology connectedness of its members, and 99% of real world communities have no internet presence. So, presumably there's a viable business opportunity for a multi-platform community-service provider offering community services to these communities. If I was a betting man, I'd suggest that enabling these communities will be the next disruption to the bloated mass market social networks that are already showing signs of churn.