I’m sure many people remember this. In the early days, each BBS was independent. This means that if you wanted to leave a message to a certain person, you had to visit that BBS and leave a message there. Pretty innefficient as you can see (compared to email).

Then came "network messages". There were various network message providers. Some very local which deserved many sites in a single city level and some were international. FidoNet is one that I remember. It was fantastic and please remember that this was back in the early 90’s…

Fast forward in 2008. Facebook, MySpace and all those so called "social" sites use local messenging systems that are not interconnected to each other.

History does repeat itself after all…!

With all those companies fighting for a larger userbase, are we entering a new era where there will be many “Internets”?

1. Wordpress – Twitter merger

Ah ha! Yes I know there are many widgets for Twitter but what I want has to be chronological and form one whole myoma. It should blend in with the other articles (instead of being lost in a sidebar, along with ads – where no one looks anyways) and be included in the RSS feed as well. Facebook has something pretty close where you can see which groups you joined, set your mood and so on. I don’t really care about moods but perhaps there’s a market for it (teens?).

2. Better MyBlogLog integration (aka turn all blogs in a big social network)

Allow to post using MyBlogLog’s user account and when possible, put a picture of the user who posted next to his comment thus encouraging users to visit each other’s blogs. Perhaps an expandable “last 5 comments” wherever the posts were made would allow users to find out even more blogs although I see some privacy issues here… Perhaps you guys don’t really want to know that I also post comments on a Coconut fetish blog. I also find it very hard to find good blogs so I tend to visit blogs of people who post but this could be automated somehow. MyBlogLog adds blogs you visit often but from memory, and other that “what’s hot”, it doesn’t suggest anything based on your preferences/behaviour..? Last thought: Facebook allows you to have a blog, so why not turn all blogs in a Facebook killer? Maybe OpenID could help solve this although it’s not a planned feature as far as I know…

3. Rateable comments

Not your everyday Slashdot/Digg style comments though. I want the top 5 comments to make it the front page AND the RSS feed. That way, you might get hooked on the great comments and read the whole article and the rest of the comments. I think everything in live should be “rateable” as no one likes to read crap and sometimes comments are more interesting than the actual article. So an article could get a rating/activity boost because of the quality of the comments. I often scan blog articles in my RSS reader and I’m sure I miss out a lot of great views/ideas/etc. Using a Digg icon just doesn’t work (unless you want to be featured on Digg) as the number of comments is not always an indication of the quality.

How about you guys? What would make your life easier?

I work in downtown Montreal and I often see newsworthy events like gatherings, accidents and (but rarely) small crimes, fires and so on. I often found myself in a position where I could be a “news reporter” and could report this to some local media. Then again I told myself that they couldn’t care less about a gathering or a protest. Big media companies like big stories. Perhaps they don’t care but I do. So that’s when I decided to talk to a few friends and all of them said the idea was good. None of them knew about anything similar so the opportunity was interesting.

Before I go on, I can already hear some people saying “Oh but there’s this XYZ site which is doing what you’re doing as well..!” Yes, there are a couple of similar sites out there, mainly NowPublic which I didn’t know until I started investigating for similar ideas. There are some other hyper-local sites as well, so let me explain you what YulNews is about and what it isn’t about as I believe I’m on something neat and new.

Without going in the details, YulNews is about social news but with a twist. I like to think of it as a “You Tube for news”. It’s multilingual and international. The plan is to support every city in the world. If a city is not in the database, any user will be able to add a new city.

YulNews is about individuals, ethnic groups, communities, businesses, schools and so on. Of course people can post their own news but what’s interesting is that others can participate and interact with the news thread, creating at the end some sort of timeline about that particular story. So the coverage keeps going on and is done by anyone willing to cover the story. You see everyone’s point of view, their side of the story and of course, their own media (the usual trio of audio, video and pictures). I guess this could be seen as CNN meets blogs where users can add their own tidbits about the story, thus making it more reliable, more interesting and thus bringing a new side to it (which the original reporter probably never thought of).

So for example, if someone writes about a public transportation strike, someone else could add to the news thread that schools are being impacted as well or that taxi’s revenues are skyrocketing and so on. I hope you now see the interaction possible between stories and how, in the end, this creates interesting, thoughtful news.

But this is just the basics. You can also create your own channels, but not only about your own news. It can be about any news you find interesting. Let’s say you enjoy environmental issues, you can create a channel and add your favourite stories to this channel thus making it an environmental channel. Think of it as a “blog of a blog” where your channel could be made entirely of other people’s news. Again, I haven’t seen this yet.

If you want to go further, you can create a group. A group can be anything from an end user to a multinational corporation. Let’s say you are a Spanish speaking person living in Toronto. You could create your own mini-portal where people could post local news in Spanish. In other words, this is the equivalent of the ethnic community newspaper but online. There are some independent local ethnics sites but as far as I know, there is no site where anyone can create its own portal. Then again, it’s not limited to ethnic communities. Schools, businesses, public organisations, cities and other entities can post their news online as well. Nothing stops the University of Harvard or the city of Montreal from having their own portal as well.

YulNews is also a lot about freedom of press where people are not afraid to discuss about sensitive topics. Some might say that the media is controlled by too few entities and perhaps a form of “self” censorship is required by some journalists. Basically, I want everyone to have his/her voice over what they think is important. Be it a Montrealer witnessing an accident, a soldier on a battlefield or a Chinese citizen complaining about local pollution. If it matters to you then I want you to “be the news”!

So what’s YulNews NOT about? Well it’s not a social bookmark site like Digg or Slashdot although you will be allowed to keep track of your favourite news and vote on the most informative or insightful news. Voting, along tagging are in my opinion unavoidable. Some people see sites like Digg as social media while I see them as social bookmarking site. There is nothing purely social about digg and definitively nothing local about it.

Well I hope everyone had enough information to feel what YulNews is about. The project is currently in “alpha mode” and I would like to hear from people wanting to experience it. Also, if you have any ideas, please go ahead as I’m open to feedback.

I probably know you won’t read me but here it goes. I promise to keep it short and sweet. Looks like both of you are working on some “secret social network” so here’s what I think about this.

1. Please don’t reinvent the wheel.

There are dozens of popular networking sites out there and there are hundreds if not thousands that are not so popular. You have a dog? There’s one for you. You’re a single mom, there’s one for you. You like to play tennis underwater in underpants? I bet there’s one out there jusssst for you. Sorry to say but Youtube won over Google Videos. Why? there were some factors (I’d say lack of innovation) but the mean thing is that Youtube won and that cost the Google guys a few billions. But that’s ok, you guys still have some cash left so let’s move on…

2. All sites require you to register and fill out this lengthy questionnaire.

I’m on a few networking sites and I don’t want to waste my time joining others. Will I join Yahoo’s or Google’s? Perhaps I will if they use the same ID and keep it short. It was a great idea to move Orkut to the centralized account but that should’ve been done a long time ago. Because of that, I never bothered migrating my Orkut account so it’s basically dead. I’m probably missing out on some things but I don’t know and don’t really care at this point. So a lesson: keep it easy otherwise people will move.

3. Build stuff people want.

First, I don’t care about what my friend’s music preferences are and I really don’t want to hear his/her favourite song while I visit his profile. I hate the music they like anyway! I’m very picky as far as music so I couldn’t care less about the fact that they like the latest Madonna album. In fact, I don’t really want to see my friends’ profiles. They’re my friends, I know who they are, right? They could be allowed to “push” things onto my profile (like shared pictures and such) but I shouldn’t have to visit their profile every day just to see if they uploaded new pictures. Lesson to learn: everything should be customizable. Not only your own profile but others as well.

Second, any network site around is just that: a network site. That really sucks! I beg you, please build something on top of it. As I mentioned in the past, Facebook started their “classified site”. This is what I’m talking about! Think global! Think Linkedin meets eBay meets Digg meets Monster meets rent.com meets CNN meets Facebook meets Expedia meets Delicious meets Youtube and so on. Why go to eBay when you can see who has what you want around you? Yes these things already exist but they are pointless and should be centralised into a giant site if you prefer. Yahoo!: you guys already have all this but spread all over..! Please fix this! Yahoo 360 is nice but it’s too complex even for a geek like me. Your services are still not integrated! Are you getting too big to act quickly?  Google: you guys have many pieces of the puzzle, keep working on it but hurry up..! Both of you need to hurry up as Facebook is expanding (that was a great move, but hurry up and get features!)

4. Build something fun, new but interesting.

Tag not only images to events, places and so on but also people to images. If I read critics about a restaurant or some travel destination, I should be able to see pictures people took while over there. Same goes with profiles. If I see my friend’s pictures, he should be able to tag people in the picture so that I can visit their profiles. That way, your network grows easily as you can search not only your friends’s friends, but also their friends in their pictures. Now that’s something new and fun, no?

Why not make a social network of social networks? For example, I like cats so my front end should be about cats (sort of like catster). My friend like motorcycles? Well he should have a bike front end (sort of well… you get it). When I search for friends, I would see their “cat view”, meaning I wouldn’t really know they have a Kawasaki bike, but I would see they have a brown tabby named “Brownie”.

Micro blogs are also a neat thing. Add micro blogs to anything you can think of. From pictures to restaurant ratings to travel destination. Now something important!

Build something interesting and long lasting! I’m pretty sure Myspace will be deserted as soon as the latest trend pops out. That remains to be seen but knowing the current generation, their attention span is not very long and if the word is out that Myspace is sooo 2006, people will move on. What do you get from Myspace? Not much… It is really the convenience store from the 90’s but now online. People are still hanging out and wasting their time…! Now this also brings in a serious question: who is your market? Lots of pre-teens and teens with no money? Middle-age people with lots of money to spend and don’t know where to spend it? That’s a marketing issue that I will leave up to you to decide but remember: build something for everyone. Even my mom should be able to enjoy this place. I definitively don’t see my mom using Myspace. No way.

5. Hire me :)

Just joking (well maybe not), but you see, this is only 1% of the ideas I have in mind. You guys need to listen to the early adopters and start building something new and useful. I haven’t seen anything innovative coming from you guys lately. Perhaps those two projects will make me go “Wow!” but I’d say the drag and drop map thingy on Google Maps was the greatest thing in the last few years or so. Smaller players are catching up and acquiring them doesn’t always work out as you want (Where’s Dodgeball now?).

6. Good luck

Will there be a “winner”? I doubt, it’s like TV stations. You need all kinds of TV channels to keep everyone happy but you need to keep everyone happy. Some people don’t like when I say that but I think “niche” is a nice way of saying that you failed with mass market.

I know this is an old topic but I still don’t understand why MySpace is getting so much attention. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not the type of person who’s jealous of someone else’s success. Of course I admit that I would like to have their traffic hitting my blog. Even 1/10th of one percent would be nice. But traffic is not the point. Their offering is. I see their social platform as a foundation, something you use to build services over. They simply offer it as is. Basically, it’s like if all of us had toolboxes and were allowed to peek at each other’s toolboxes. People would envy your toolbox or perhaps you’d envy someone else’s. But that’s it. You wouldn’t be allowed to build anything with your toolbox. Of course, you could rearrange the tools inside your toolbox and change your tools’ color (regardless if you’re colorblind or have no taste). But basically, You would simply display it for everyone to see. Is this really what people want? One could say yes considering the sheer number of users. Again, we must agree on a proper definition of users (registered users vs spam users vs duplicate accounts and so on.)
 
MySpace recently released a news service and again, I wonder who came up with that idea. Let’s face it, MySpace is popular among teenagers. Do teenagers really care about what’s going on around them? If it’s not in “their space” then no. I’m not a marketing guru but I can tell this new service is going to crash unless they seriously redesign it around something more “teenish”. On the other side, Facebook introduced a new Marketplace and I believe THIS is going to be a hit. Why go on eBay when you can find people in your own school selling what you want? Wanna pick it up at the local bar tomorrow? Fine, done deal. No eBay fees, no Paypal fees. Who knows, you could make a new friend at the same time. Do you know anyone who made any “eBay friends”? How about PayPal friends? Not me. I think Facebook’s got it.

Watch out MySpace, don’t let the old media people try to steer you away from success…!