As those of you who follow me on twitter or friendfeed know FFStream – which I began discussing in this post – has evolved into FF-Filtered. The changes are not dramatic, but they are significant.
FF-Filtered is now focused on providing “your friendfeed – filtered” – and as that implies what it does is filter your friendfeed (home feed to be specific) by a list of keywords. If these keywords match the post title, comment, or user you receive the update in real time – in the browser or via IM, including GTalk, Jabber, AIM and Yahoo.
It isn’t track – as I’ve been repeatedly and vehemently told by the “community” over the last 5 days – more on that later.
Additionally – for the mobility set – we’ve added like, comment, post and filter updates via a mobile web page. If you click on the link in the IM from a mobile platform you get the following mobile web page:
I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve – so look for more changes this week including a name change.
Now for the second half of the post… I’m going to talk about Track again… so sharpen your knives (or tongues) and get ready to revel in your abject disdain for my refusal to “go along” or shut up.
Let me say one thing first – if you want to attack my positions and opinions go for it. If you are here to attack my motives or me personally – GO AWAY NOW.
The last 5 days has been very illuminating for me – both in terms of the fervor of the “track community” and in terms of their point of view – which at times verges on dogma.
Let me attempt to “play back” what I’ve heard and then explain – as clearly as possible given my limited skills – my point of view.
Track – by the definition of the “track community” as led today by Steve Gillmor of Gillmor Gang/News Gang Live, is defined by the “fire-hose”. This fire-hose is the complete unabridged stream of posts occurring on any social media site. In the case of Twitter, this is the entire public timeline published in real time.
This is an important distinction – because it states that “track” can not be achieved without the “fire-hose”. More on this latter.
The second component of “track” is the ability to keyword filter the real time stream and deliver the filtered content in real (or near real) time.
The third component of “track” is the ability to insert posts into the public timeline from the same user interface you are viewing the stream in.
Those four things collectively comprise the “holy grail” of track.
I’m sure you will all let me know exactly how wrong I am… but I think those four capture the broad brushstrokes. Ok?
Before I attempt to explain my point of view – let me clarify one point. Regardless of my agreement or disagreement with the track community on any given point, there is one thing we vehemently agree on:
There is massive value in the ability to discover and participate in the social media stream in real (or near) real time. Our objective where that is concerned is the same.
When I consider track – I consider it in terms of the problems it attempts to solve. To me, track is an attempt to solve 2 very important problems:
- Real-Time Information Discovery
- Real-Time Participation
Any solution which solves those two problems would – by my definition – fall within the scope of a “track” service.
Now let me explain why (take a deep breath… you can throw something at me later). Where I differ with the “track community” on this issue is on the scope of the track-able data not what happens after the “track service” receives it. As importantly I fundamentally agree that the wider the scope of the data being tracked the more effective the track solution will be.
But, consider this – not every user wants to track the entire social media universe. To the contrary – most IMHO simply want to track their friends, family, co-workers, brand, market makers, influencers, power users, etc.
For those users a limited scope is a good thing. Beyond consideration of the scope of the data being tracked this service solves the exact same problems.
- Real-Time Information Discovery
- Real-Time Participation
So apply the duck test. It walks like a duck… it quacks like a duck… why isn’t it a duck?
It is my opinion – and you can feel free to take issue with it – that the track communities’ obsession with the “fire-hose” has actually retarded the growth of alternative track services. The obsession with scope has prevented the creation of useful (if limited by their limited trackable data) solutions under the banner of track – and that is a shame.
Every developer that seeks to solve the two problems should be embraced, encouraged and supported.
The real battle here is one of leverage. And the way to get the social media services to both open up their data and participate in the creation of a standard for doing so is to create a win-win. I believe track services that are useful and solve real problems (e.g., real-time brand monitoring) can and will provide the leverage that causes the change the community has been seeking.
If Twitter wants to pretend they ARE the social media universe – let them. It is abundantly clear from the success of friendfeed that no single service is or will be the social media universe – any service that ignores this will fail.
When compelling and broadly adopted services exist, which demand real-time un-scoped access to multiple underlying services, the individual services will have no choice but to “open their kimono” or face massive user defection.
So stop complaining about the lack of a “fire-hose” and figure out what those services are, who needs them the most, and how to drive that value to as many users as fast as possible. If you do that – you’ll get what you want… not today, not even tomorrow… but relatively soon.
I had intended to discuss standards, what I believe the high level components of an open track environment might look like, and why friendfeed is in the best position to lead standard development… but this has already gotten too long. I’ll set those subjects aside for another day.
If you’ve disagreed with everything else I’ve said – please remember – I share your goal. I’m not saying the outcome you seek isn’t valuable – I am just proposing a different course of action. I hope I’ve done so respectfully and without denigrating anyone or their point of view.