We Need Smart and Personal Streams, Not Just The Latest Updates

Once again, the tech web is aflutter about a proposed change in Twitter’s timeline — as they have finally made a choice to offer more than a simply chronological feed of updates displayed in the order they were posted. While a chronological order of tweets can be considered a hallmark definition of what Twitter is today, and truthfully, one of its most addictive features as each new Tweet rolls in, it’s also a detriment to those who aren’t ready to be constantly hooked to the information IV drip.

My 2010 Summary of a Personalized Web future

Twitter is 10 years old now. That’s fairly mature from a Web services standpoint. Its peers, LinkedIn and Facebook, are 14 and 12 respectively. The next generation? Pinterest is just over six. Instagram nearly six. Snapchat is five. And yet it often seems as people are still waiting for Twitter to make that big leap forward to properly sit at the adults’ table.

Twitter as a Media Network, not a Social Network

Ex Twitter PR and comms guy Sean Garrett, now running his own firm, commented yesterday that Twitter’s been done a disservice by being labeled as a social company instead of as a media network. Taking that summary seriously, it clarifies one of the major needs for a personal and intelligent ranking of content, rather than a raw feed of the latest updates. Media companies don’t just give you the very latest updates in order, with no external curation. Instead, they sort it, rank it and deliver them from the most important to least important — whether their medium is television, radio, print or online.

For the most aggressive media consumers, like myself, the idea of seeing content out of order may seem like pure heresy. We read every email, read every blog post in Feedly, and generally catch up on Twitter to the point where we left off. Scrambling that up seems abhorrent. But we’re not normal. We’re seeing that from the tippy top 1% of the bell curve, and hoping the rest of the world will catch up to us. But not only won’t they, but they don’t need to, and we should stop expecting it.

A successful network has an obligation to give its users the best possible experience and do it instantly. But surfacing the right updates for the right person at the right time is a tricky Venn diagram to figure out, be it based on the users’ topics of interest, their affection for the person posting the content, the recency of that content, and obviously, a mix of all those signals and more. Just sitting back and showing the latest stuff only solves for one of those qualities: recency — completely ignoring what I like, who I trust and so on.

Personalized Content Leads to Happier Users, More Usage

From 2009 to 2011, I worked with my6sense, first as a third party consultant, and later as the company’s VP of Marketing, before I joined Google. Their app surfaced content from your social streams in a personalized way, just for you, based on your own implicit behaviors — what you clicked on, what you chose not to, how long you read something, etc. The more you used the application, the smarter it got, and eventually, we would know your interest patterns so well, that we could take our user model and apply it to any stream on the web.

my6sense for Twitter

In early 2011, we delivered a Chrome extension for Twitter, which took the smarts we’d developed and displayed the results of that effort on the Twitter website — giving you two options: your standard timeline, ordered chronologically, and a smart, personalized timeline, from my6sense.

By no means were we the first company to try and bring sense to a social stream. In fact, in 2008, FriendFeed (RIP) offered users personalized recommendations as a feature to their service, aimed for those who’d been away and wanted to quickly catch up. But one aspect important to both of these examples is that they gave the user a choice. You could quickly switch between a chronological feed, which was the default, and the smart feed, personalized to your interests. You could always go back.

But as we found out, the more the user visited the app, and the more accurately we could determine their preferences (which we called digital intuition), the less likely they were to ever visit the unfiltered, unsorted feed. If you became accustomed to a curated feed tailored just for you, going back to one that wasn’t seemed unacceptable in comparison.

Quantity Isn’t Quality. Popular Isn’t Personal.

So imagine you’re one of the millions of users of Twitter (or Facebook, etc.) who doesn’t check in every day. On the rare occasion you do visit, you’re not seeing a feed of updates from people who matter to you most. You’re instead seeing a feed of updates from people who post the most. And quantity rarely was quality. When your selling action to those most likely to leave your service is to give them something low quality and off topic, that’s a problem. And yet, for many services, that’s the default.

Going even further, what many services provide as an option is a leaderboard of popular or “Top” content. It’s assumed the most engaged content is the “best”, but this alone is far from the truth. If you seek out a stream for intellectual curiosity and news, you won’t get that from viral videos and memes, jokes and celebrity news. But many people go to these services to turn their minds off or to relax, and their goal may be in direct contradiction with yours.

Twitter’s Success Really Isn’t the Topic of Debate

Now that Twitter has gone public and its financial success is being graded quarter by quarter, and Wall Street’s public vote on their valuation is there for the world to see, its success could be easily measured solely by stock price. Amid the hubbub of whether Twitter could sustain a billion person audience, like Facebook, or if it’s exceptionally valuable due to the role it plays in the world’s news dissemination and communication, the reality is that it has to do better both for its current user base and those yet to embrace it. And that requires change and evolution.

Twitter should be personal just for me. So should Facebook. And LinkedIn. And the web at large. And my phone and car and so on. If a dichotomy is set up between something that’s smart and personal against one that isn’t, I know I’m going to give the service a chance to give me a better experience — and if not, I should always be able to go back.

Disclosures: I work at Google, a partner and occasional competitor to Twitter. I’ve been an active Twitter user for eight-plus years. I was previously VP of Marketing at my6sense, which built a personalization engine.

What If We Redid the 2000 .Com Monopoly Edition for Today's Web?

In the year 2000, as the .com bubble was at its peak, it seemed new tech names were going to rapidly eclipse the old guard. Emails and downloads were new conversation topics, and if you weren’t still on AOL, debates would ensue over which ISP you should choose, or which search engine or portal was the best. Sun was the dot in .com and Linux seemed poised to take over the desktop. Obviously, not everything turned out that way, even if some of the names are still around, and even strong.

The 2000 .Com Monopoly Board

One of the fun collectibles that came out of this time was a .com edition of Parker Brothers’ Monopoly. Instead of properties around Atlantic City streets, you had websites. Community Chest and Chance were replaced with Email and Download cards. And you couldn’t buy property for a few hundred bucks, as everything was in the millions of dollars. Not too soon after the game came out (and of course, I still have it), the .com market was decimated, as the companies of the future weren’t built for the present. Now the game board itself looks like a relic of a short-lived era gone by.

The 2000 List of Companies and Categories

As something of a lark, and thought exercise, let’s consider who would take these 2000 era companies’ spots on the board. I’ll go first with my take on today’s cast of characters.

Dark Purple

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Sportsline.com and FoxSports

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Deadspin and ESPN.com

Commentary: Back in 2000, ESPN, as part of Disney, didn’t have a great approach at owning its web presence. It was part of the Go.com family, one reason it missed the original .com board. Now, ESPN represents sports on all media. Deadspin is an exceptional alternative with sharp commentary that is a must read for serious sports fans. (Apologies to SB Nation)

Light Blue

2000 .com Monopoly edition: GeoCities, Oxygen and iVillage

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Pinterest, SnapChat, and WhatsApp

Commentary: The 2000 edition definitely had a bent toward community. With iVillage and Oxygen, two of the three properties were focused on women. GeoCities didn’t age well and was retired. Pinterest, SnapChat and WhatsApp have become some of the fastest growing communities for pretty much all ages and both genders.

Light Purple

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Shockwave.com, Games.com and E! Online

2014 .com Monopoly edition: TMZ, Buzzfeed and Reddit

Commentary: Shockwave? Really. Let’s move on. For fun entertainment and burning hours of Web surfing, TMZ, Buzzfeed and Reddit can’t be beat. Reddit is a tough one to categorize, as it calls itself the Web’s front page, but it’s knocked off Digg, Slashdot and others for that title.

Orange

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Priceline, Expedia and eBay

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Square, PayPal and Yelp

Commentary: eBay could easily be a repeat in 2000 and 2014. Priceline and Expedia are still doing fine. But Square and PayPal are how the Web does business these days, while Yelp is often the place to go for recommendations on what to buy or where to go.

Red

2000 .com Monopoly edition: The Weather Channel, About.com and CNET

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Dropbox, Instagram and Tumblr

Commentary: About.com looks like a content farm, and while CNET’s still alive and kicking, there’s been nothing to talk about since its CBS acquisition. The Weather Channel? Please. There’s an app for that. And more than just finding content sites, anybody can create and share content globally with apps like Instagram, sites like Tumblr and share it on Dropbox. (Apologies to WordPress, Box and others)

Yellow

2000 .com Monopoly edition: eTrade, Monster.com and Marketwatch

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Wikipedia, LinkedIn and Twitter

Commentary: Monster.com and eTrade were monsters in 2000. I still use eTrade regularly, but they’re not known for their monkey-centric Super Bowl ads any more. Marketwatch is a snooze. Now, people get their financial and business data from each other via LinkedIn, in real time on Twitter, and check its veracity on Wikipedia. (Apologies to Seeking Alpha and StockTwits).

Green

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista and Lycos

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Microsoft, Amazon and Apple

Commentary: In 2000, Search engines took the entire final row of the Monopoly board. But the positions of Alta Vista, Lycos and Ask Jeeves weren’t strong against innovators that got stronger in the next decade. Now, diverse infrastructure plays like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple (for many reasons each) occupy this highly valuable section of the board.

Dark Blue

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Excite@Home and Yahoo!

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Google and Facebook

Commentary: That Yahoo! was the Boardwalk of 2000 is telling. Excite@Home was a $6.7 billion megamerger in 1999, but by 2001 was pretty much in steep decline. Without intending too much bias toward my current employer, Google and Facebook are the 1-2 when it comes to the Web today, from the top destinations to hours spent, tools deployed, etc - and both play a role in discovery for everyone.

Railroads/Stations

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Nokia, MCI Worldcom, Sprint and AT&T

2014 .com Monopoly edition: Verizon, Comcast, Netflix and YouTube

Commentary: Worldcom? Whoops. Nokia? Whoops. Things change, and companies don’t always adapt quickly. The megalopoly of AT&T is now most like Comcast’s ISP/cable monolith, and Verizon (including their FIOS offering) is the big carrier to be dealt with. Fighting the good fight, and using a ton of bandwidth in the process are Netflix and YouTube, which are essential media mediums on every device.

Utilities

2000 .com Monopoly edition: Linux and Sun Microsystems

2014 .com Monopoly edition: WiFi and Cloud

Commentary: We’re still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop, and Sun is now somewhere in Oracle’s beautiful campus. But while you could take a stab at a language or a platform, like Python, Ruby on Rails, or even PHP, generically its best said that the storing of data and access to that data are the true utilities of 2014. Pervasive WiFi (or 3G/4G) and Cloud power every app and every site.

Summary: The Web is dramatically larger, and more global, now than it was less than two decades ago. This admittedly English-first version of the .com Monopoly for 2014 misses out on the international communities like Baidu, AliBaba and others. There’s no place for the Uber and Lyft rivalry, and while Tumblr was included, it’s hard to put Yahoo! on the board, which probably isn’t 100% fair. I wanted to find a spot for Spotify and Hulu, but failed. I’d be ecstatic to see if Parker Brothers was up for another run at the web centric board, and you know I’d buy it.

Disclosures: I work at Google, which is a customer, partner and competitor with many of the names on this board. Putting them on a Monopoly board is not an opening for the company (or any other on the board) being a monopoly joke.

Striving for Streams of Serendipity or Inbox Zero?

Nobody really likes spam - those unrequested commercial emails that join your email box. They interrupt you, distract you, mislead you, or maybe worse - trick you into giving up your money or personal information. And over time, most email services have been pretty good at determining just what is spam, and what's not, while we, as consumers, are getting better at refining just what content we want on all our screens, be it our email box, or our social streams.

With this experience, what we've labeled as spam now not only encompasses the obvious scam message, but practically anything that enters our view that we didn't explicitly ask for, or surprises us. Most of us living in a social media powered world have taken a lot of effort to refine our content sources, to the right sets of blogs, and the right friend groups on social networks. When we log in to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or anywhere else, we pretty much know what we're going to get.

Many of these social networks, dating back to the first blogs, are sorted chronologically, with the newest content at the top. With some effort, you can quickly scan to where you last left off, and feel complete. There's no more to read, and you can move on to the next thing. It's a permuation of the famed "In Box Zero", which says your task is complete.

But increasingly, thanks to pressure to fill streams of less active users, or to increase engagement from regular users, it's become more commonplace to push content that's not explicitly requested into user streams. This can be "Friend of a Friend" content, like we saw back in early 2008 when FriendFeed first introduced the feature, or more recently, items that your friends on Twitter have retweeted or favorited, that Google+ friends have +1'd or Facebook friends have Liked.

/via FriendFeed blog: See popular items from your friends-of-friends

It's assumed the more signals given to the network about what your friends like, the more likely it is that this piece of content is also relevant to you. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's a change, unwelcome to people who like to perfectly curate their streams - while possibly exciting to those who do want to take signals from the network - believing they aren't the one perfect arbiter on whether an item is interesting or not.

In 2008, FriendFeed spoke to this change, saying, "Our goal is to make the most interesting shared items more prominent so your FriendFeed has a higher percentage of interesting stuff and active discussions." And it worked. If I believed +Paul Buchheit had high quality interactions, I could be alerted to items on the stream that he had liked. But FriendFeed also gave me the option to turn it off, and many people did.

In 2014, Twitter is a lot bigger than FriendFeed was six years ago. It's a world-recognized stream for real time communication, so their moves get a lot of attention. Every minor change in the stream is especially scrutinized. After already taking for granted the fact that retweets from friends would be sent to my stream, the occasional tweet now appears, simply because someone I follow added it to their favorites. Unsurprisingly, this experiment, which is easy to spot on their mobile app, set the tech blog debates abuzz again - trying to figure out how it worked, and whether it was good or bad.

Techmeme debates the Twitter favorite bumps.

It's widely assumed putting content in user streams benefits the service provider. Twitter should see higher engagement, higher relevance and more clicks. For the OCD "In box zero" types, these serendipitous pieces disrupt their worldview, and, unsurprisingly, those who write about tech and social media all day are more likely to be of this type than the general population.

When +Barak Hachamov and I were working on my6sense, we were more than happy to rank social streams based on your activity and implicit interests. The solution, in my view, hasn't seen an equal, even in the three plus years it's been gone from consumer's hands. We offered a stream based on relevance, with your interests playing a huge role, a toggle to view the stream chronologically, and yes, we promised occasional serendipity to deliver surprise - to get you out of a knowledge rut, which can come from seeing the same topics debated and shared by like minded thinkers.

Relevance vs Time in my6sense

What we've learned from the Web is that we tend to gravitate to people who reinforce our own views and agree with us. Debate happens, but we don't actively seek out opinions from those with opposing takes on political, religious or even sports. (I wrote about this in 2006: Blogging Bifurcation - A Web Divided) The Web, despite being especially diverse, leads to us forming cliques, with friends, with what we read, and where we choose to congregate. Our three social pillars are what I called out back in 2009: Technology, Community, Relevancy. Most of us active in social streams have bought into the technology, and crafted our community, assuming the community's thoughts are themselves relevant. And by seeing new content, we immediately question its relevance.

For the 95%+ of people who haven't put hundreds of hours into scanning their streams to never miss a post, and who haven't taken time to set up lists, form circles, or fully understand Facebook sharing settings, the serendipity of surprise is as important as what they've explicitly asked for. While those of us on the tech edges react to the surprise with shock, we should know this is something we give in exchange for participation in somebody else's stream. The only thing I'd ask is that, like FriendFeed, we always have the option to please, kindly, be able to turn something off. Then we'll all be happy.

Standard Disclosures: I work on the Google Analytics team at Google, which provides Google+. Various services from Google partner with or can be assumed to compete with products from Twitter and Facebook. Also, from 2009 to 2011, I had a consulting relationship with my6sense as part of my work with Paladin Advisors Group. Disclosures are fun.

You Don't Get Any Participation Medals for Just Showing Up

"I need some record of you being in this class," hissed my 8th grade math teacher, looking at me and pointing to my lowly 5% grade to date in his course after ten assignments, by far the lowest mark in the class. My not so glowing 50 points out of a possible 1,000 was the product of many days' not turning in homework, as my continued refrain of "I'll get to it tomorrow" started to become an impossibility to tackle.

Each day I told myself I'd eventually get to the previous day's assignments, taking a penalty for my lateness, but part of me knew I'd just float through the day to day and try to make it up on the tests. For me, it was proving I knew the answers - conveying mastery of the subject. Yet for my grade, it was proving that not only did I know the answers, but I was willing to do the work. Just showing up wasn't enough.

For the past 15 years, I've been working in Silicon Valley, and I've encountered an incredible mix of people who perform as if they are on different gears. Some work incredibly hard, and are driven to succeed at practically any cost, refusing to let traditional limits get in their way. Others seem almost crestfallen if they can't keep up with those gracing magazine covers simply by being in the right place at the right time. And the truth is that life's not perfect. There is an intersection of skill and luck that very often sees great employees at bad businesses punished for their career choices, while less impactful employees at incredible companies gain the benefit of their colleagues' work.

From the outside looking in, Silicon Valley might look like a technology-centric Disneyland, where the future can be experienced today, where dreams can get funded, and you can't walk down the sidewalk without knocking shoulders with millionaires. But every success story you read, and those people who become household names, be they Steve Jobs, Meg Whitman, Larry Ellison or Marissa Mayer, came not as a product of pure luck, but the application of effort against risk.

Risk Is Often Required If Something Is Worth Doing

I remember sitting around our corporate boardroom one afternoon ten or so years ago, as an account manager on our team explained why we had been unable to close a once-promising deal. He said, paraphrasing with some angst, "In his business, the IT manager's job is to reduce risk. At our stage, we're all about risk." And it was true. While our more established competitors didn't have all the whiz-bang capabilities our devices did, what they did offer was a track record of success, integration with top partners, security, and all those things that moved risk out of the data center. We had to look elsewhere to find customers more willing to take a bit and absorb some risk, in exchange for our differentiation.

Which brings us back to "just showing up".

I spent my first three years in the Valley working at two very small startups. The first didn't have any revenue, and some odd ideas. When the founder was let go, the sister company asked me to stay on, and we worked hard at bringing traditional office tasks to the Web. The work was good, and our customers liked our products, but we weren't growing fast enough. When we went out to raise a $10 million B round, we came up light, and that was the end of my tenure. But as we were plodding along with our incremental growth, it seemed like everyone around us was going public, making money and buying homes - which to us was pure fantasy. Some of our best engineers took other jobs, and spoke openly about the frustrations they felt when all their friends were getting rich, while we were still bringing our food in a bag lunch and eating at our desks.

Even in a bubble, showing up wasn't enough. At my next company, where I spent 8+ years, we had enough spikes and troughs to fill a novel. Maybe some day I'll write it. We scored several rounds of venture funding, several rounds of layoffs, and filed to go public, not once, but twice. The company eventually sold for a good amount after I had left, but not before a number of upstarts had soared past us, having much more profitable exits, at valuations anywhere from 4 to 5 what our exit had been. And while we could feel bad about not having hit a home run, I was all too aware of the many other players in our industry who had already gone bankrupt, or returned money to the original VCs, lacking a business model, and other former colleagues who had bounced from company to company in search of something that stuck.

I've always been raised with the mantra that nine out of ten startups fail. I've seen other ratios with different numbers, but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of small business concepts, even those with venture funding, don't have a positive exit, and it's a much rarer one that sees the founders and employees strike it big. For every market sensation like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tesla or Spotify, you have scads of others with software products few wanted, or website plays that have seen their URLs turn into dead links.

In the big race of keeping up with the Joneses, especially in an area ripe with exceptional people who have impacted history, seeing others' success can make it seem easy. Easy to start a company. Easy to start a venture fund. Easy to find customers. Easy to do practically anything. But it's not. I remember the wave of aspiring dotcom millionaires who came from around the country sporting MBAs, only to return when things got tough. And I remember the stories of former Business Development managers loading luggage at the airport when jobs were scarce. Success is not doled out equally and fairly, and the best products and best people don't always get rewarded. But the equation improves with incredible market study, exceptional effort, and the self-awareness to make change where it's required at the right time.

Do read up on the world's successful people, as I remember doing in college, checking out "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison" from the Berkeley city library. Do make yourself aware of their smart strategies and innovative products. But don't forget the hard work and effort required that set them up with a greater likelihood to succeed. Or you'll be like I was in 8th grade -- getting dressed down publicly by my teacher who questioned why I was even there at all if I wasn't going to do the bare minimum.

Disclosures for fun: I worked at BlueArc from 2001-09 and owned options, as well as stock acquired in the company's 2005 AA round. These converted to shares when HDS purchased the company in 2011. I currently work at Google, and any references to their competitors or partners are just part of the story and presented without intended bias.

Two Paragraphs, a Link, and a Cloud of Dust

Our platforms, and their limitations, are changing the way we communicate. Rather than accommodating the many ways we as humans like to share and engage with others, most of the online services we use have limits in how much we can share, how items can be staged, and how easily others can discover or respond.

While Twitter's 140 character platform is only the most well-known of these hard limits, there is an easily observable trend away from long-form content, analysis and conversation, and more toward a brief moment with an ephemeral interaction. Blogs are one of the last outlets we have where the container, like liquid, expands to contain all into it which is poured, while most other outlets are often trying to make us something we're not - be it photographers, clever headline writers or meme artists.

We've moved away from thousand-plus word screeds and dozens of debatable comments over a single item, with a permalink discoverable through search, instead to a moment in a stream that is significantly less relevant tomorrow or next week than it is today. We're valuing our content not in real activity, but in microactivities - be it +1s, Likes, Retweets or Favorites. We're trading points and counterpoints for vague notions of follower counts and popularity.

While it can be a challenge to regularly upkeep an outlet like a blog or a news magazine, consider the permanence and discoverability of this content. One can, with a little effort, read an author's life as it changes, by poring through the archives. Authors can link to previous points and positions to make a deeper case for an idea, and show consistency or evolution of thought. And permalinks can serve as the point of engagement for us to talk something into the ground, or its natural conclusion - whatever comes first.

Consider, if you would, the last really important Tweet or Facebook post or LinkedIn update that you either made or saw. Where would that Tweet stand in the halls of history? While real-time is an amazing tool for the right now, it's not usually a great tool for the later or forever. There's no other solution out there for diving into the world's collective thoughts around television, sports and shared experiences, but it lacks for completeness.

Yet that's where practically all our effort is going.

The most visible entrants and quickly adopted mediums in the social sphere over the last few years are not centered around long-form content. Instagram, for the most part, is a photo sharing site with social interaction. Tumblr, despite the option for longer-form content, is usually a collection of photos or short excerpts -- links to links with the content on the other side. WhatsApp and Snapchat are different beasts altogether, focused on the right now, with the content never intended to have any true longevity.

So our thoughts and our communications are being forced into these neatly approved buckets, wrapping around the presentation of the medium. If you know your network looks best with a headline, a few hashtags, and a sentence, that's all you'll do. If you know it's a beautiful photo with three words at the top, that's what you'll do. Maybe you can make an infographic or a meme out of it and be the most shared image of the moment, only to fade into oblivion the next day.

That's why I'm optimistic about the plans for Ev Williams' work on Medium, as outlined in a dedicated piece for TechCrunch two weeks ago. We've also seen interesting attempts from Dustin Curtis' Svbtle network - a very well designed platform with hand-selected authors. I don't yet have accounts with either, as I'm quite loyal to my +Blogger platform and integrated Google+ comments, but both services seem to be fighting against the stream, so to speak, helping people with longer thoughts share in a better looking way.

I believe as social participants, we can and should do better than a picture with a few words, a tweet that summarizes a link, or a post with a headline and a paragraph. It may satisfy the right now, short attention span theater, but if that's all we have, then what do we tell history that we've done? Do we suggest that those in the future looking back on this age download our archived social stream to best understand who we were? Should they grok our automatically filtered photos and understand our taste for art, or see how many likes a post got to determine its impact?

I would hope we're not letting the containers impact our ability to share the entirety of the message. That's why even while I've got plenty of other work to do, the blog continues to be my foundation in a world of streams, which I first wrote more than four years ago and stand by. So if your favorite social outlet starts to reduce the number of ways you can express yourself, take it somewhere else. Don't cut yourself short, and become dust in the wind.

Usual boring disclosures: I work at Google on Developer Relations. Most of my work is on YouTube videos, short and long. This blog runs on Blogger and integrates Google+ comments. The post is not intended as a post in favor of or against our products or competitors' products. I also like writing long disclosures.

The Twitter Google Netflix iPad Dotcom YouTube Facebook Era

As technology has weaved its way into practically every aspect of our lives, it has become something of a challenge for historians, journalists and others to try and encapsulate this new era of near-pervasive Internet, dramatically reduced barriers to publishing, and obsessive gadget accumulation.

I grew up in a world where a whole generation of people could be summarized easily, defined by population bumps like the Baby Boomers, a shared experience in battle, as Tom Brokaw frequently cites in The Greatest Generation, or quite simply, by the assigned letter given to those born in a ten to fifteen year period, like Generations X and Y. Now, newsmakers and analysts alike are trying to explain just what this new era should be called. Is there one device or one company or one shared experience that defines us?

With some quick research, it's clear there are many players vying for the elite status of owning our tech-savvy era. I tapped into Google (disclosure: I work there) for a few examples. Let them play out and see if you favor one over another or have a better option. All screenshots current as of Friday, August 16th, 2013.

The iPod Era: 69,100 Google results

In context: "Considering the Book's Future in the iPod Era", "How Generation Y Is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era" and "Trade Protection in the iPod Era"

Represents: The iPod at peak was more than half of Apple's revenue, outpacing Mac and all software sales. The iPod was a cultural phenomenon representing fashionable portability of digital media and personalization of music listening.
Is it over? Yes. According to AppleInsider, the iPod Era ended in 2010.

The iPad Era: 132,000 Google results

In context: "The Role of Computers in the iPad Era", "Building Magazine Architectures for the iPad Era" and "5 Options of eLearning in the iPad Era"

Represents: The first successful tablet computer disrupted the old way of doing many things, and picked up where Apple's iPod and iPhone had left off.

Is it over? Probably not. The iPad Era launched in 2010. Debate from AdAge questions if it's done.

The Google Era: 259,000 Google results

In context: "Newspaper Ad Revenues in the Google Era", "The Google Era of Computing", "Communicating With Residents In the Google Era" 

Hey look! A book: Getting Organized in the Google Era

Represents: Near-instant retrieval of information, and a reduced need to memorize. Ability to scale.

Is it over? Nope, unless you think Business Insider is onto something.

The Twitter Era: 401,100 Google results

In context: "Campaigning In the Twitter Era", "Customer Loyalty in the Twitter Era", "Losing Our Literary Legacy In the Twitter Era"

Represents: Near-instant ability to communicate and a real-time medium.

Is it over? No.

The Facebook Era: 1,040,000 Google results

In context: "Understanding the Facebook Era", "Buzzfeed, the Ad Model for the Facebook Era", "How to Get Over Your Ex In the Facebook Era"

Hey look! A book: The Facebook Era

Represents: Increased connections with social ties, and ease of discovering personal information.

Is it over? No, although one Huffington Post contributor thinks so.

The myspace Era: 59,500 Google results

In context: "Research Ethics In the Myspace Era", "An Indy Film for the Myspace Era", "Checking References In the Myspace Era"

Represents: Like Facebook, only earlier, more personal information online, simple creative sharing.

Is it over? Yes. Absolutely. This dude missed the whole thing.

The Blogging Era: 150,000 Google results

In context: "What are the classics of the blogging era?", "Living in the Blogging Era", "Individuals who started off the blogging era have changed the way the web 'Ticks'."

Represents: Ability for anyone to publish, in long form, at no cost.

Is it over? Getting there. In 2004, this guy claimed 2014 would finish it up.

The Android Era: 297,000 Google results

In context: "The Android Era Beings With T-Mobile's G1", "Walkman Stumbling Into Android Era"

Represents: The entry and rapid adoption of Android as a smartphone OS. 

Is it over? No.

The YouTube Era: 210,000 Google results

In context: "Teaching Animation In the YouTube Era", "User research self-reporting in the YouTube Era", "Supreme Court Enters the YouTube Era" 

Represents: The ability of anyone to publish video and have it be seen around the world. Also represents casual video consumption relative to professional 

Is it over? No.

The Dotcom Era: 1,490,000 Google results

In context: "Biggest Fails at the Dawn of the Dotcom Era", "Buoyant Tech Shares Recall the Dotcom Era", "Every Single Idea from the Dotcom Era Was Correct"  

Represents: Referred to as much as a bubble as an era these days, the first rush online by traditional services and businesses. Many did exceptionally well. Many more disappeared. 

Is it over? Yes. At least the first round.

The Microsoft Era: 423,000 Google results

In context: "First the IBM Era, Next the Microsoft Era, Google Next?" "Windows 8 - The Renewal of the Microsoft Era"

Hey Look! A book: Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and End of the Microsoft Era

Represents: The last few decades of a world where personal computing was dominated by Windows PCs and Microsoft software.

Is it over? Many people think so. In fact, a "Post-Microsoft Era" has been discussed.

The Steve Jobs Era: 67,900 Google results

In context: "Four Design Lessons from the Steve Jobs Era", "Visualizing the Steve Jobs Era", "Top Ten Apple Ads of the Steve Jobs Era"

Represents: Steve's personal impact on the world of technology, design, marketing and one of the most successful companies in Valley and tech history.

Is it over? Unfortunately, yes, as Steve passed away, but his impact lives on.

The Netflix Era: 41,600 Google results

In context: "Financing Films In the Netflix Era", "How One Small Video Store Manages to Survive in the Netflix Era"

Represents: On demand instant access to a wide variety of films and TV shows, and the business impact for those in more traditional markets. A disruption of Hollywood.

Is it over? No.

So what era are we in? If you went by total numbers, the Dotcom Era had the most Google results, but that's historical by nature. The Facebook Era is in second place, with Google properties, including YouTube and Android having nearly as many when combined. The iPad era is still strong, with Twitter putting on a good rising show, and Microsoft being high in the rankings, given its market penetration.

Other good options I either didn't run or tested but cut so this post isn't a mile long... "The Yahoo! Era", "The Amazon Era", "The Google Glass Era", and more... it's all fun. Can you think of others? What's the winner in your view?  

You Have Your Tech Routine. But It Will End.

In 1995, as a freshman in college attending Cal, I was rapidly trading emails with my friend from UCLA in a heated conversation, hitting “Check Mail” in Eudora, eventually changing my settings to automatically retrieve email every minute. One of my roommates, annoyed at my behavior, suggested I just pick up the phone and call him instead. But I didn’t. 

Obviously, in the near twenty years since, I have expected my messages to come in practically instantly, and to immediately have my attention - so I’m on top of it. But there might come a day in the future, if you can imagine it, where I send my very last email. For just as we’ve “always” done something one way doesn’t mean we always will. The pace of tech, and one’s changing lifestyle, practically commands adaptation.

Switching to a separate firehose of electronic messaging stimulation, we’re nearly a decade deep into the hyperconnected social media phase. We’re long past the time for education and evangelism, for the most part, on blogging, social networking, tweeting, and YouTube - and you’ve got routines.

While not everyone uses every service, and different people have different approaches, there’s a good chunk of you who can’t imagine doing things a different way, and stopping what you’ve always done. You can’t imagine never tweeting again. You can’t imagine never checking in to the office on Foursquare when you arrive at work, and maybe you can’t even remember the last time you had lunch and didn’t take a photo of it to share on Instagram or Foodspotting.

But it will all end.

My First Tweet from January 2008

I often think of that, especially as I’ve reduced pace here... what would my last blog post say? How will I know that I’m done? What will be the reason I would possibly walk away from thousands of posts in the archives? Could I really close down my Twitter account, or delete my Facebook, or even FriendFeed?

And that goes for offline activity too. In my recent adoption of Fitbit, and regular walks to keep my stepcount high, I think about how long I’ll keep the routine. Will this be the last night I’m walking around the block to get a few thousand steps in, for tomorrow, I’ll be back in front of the television instead, having let my Fitbit power down?

On other occasions, the choice is seemingly made for you. In 2009, I once said I wouldn’t stop using Google Reader every day, even if you paid me $25,000. I guess the joke was on me, of course - for it wasn’t really all that long after I joined Google that yes, Reader was closed, and I’ve turned to Feedly to get all my RSS feeds instead. So outside of my control, one day, my routine of opening Google Reader was no longer there. If Reader had remained, I’d probably be in my same routine, as I always had been, consuming content and sharing it, just like I’ve been doing for about six years.

Meanwhile, the removing of Google Reader, and yes, Google Buzz before that even, meant ranking my social content in my6sense no longer was needed, so I found myself deleting that app from my phone last week, despite our history.

Even when it’s not the company or the service shutting down, it could be a simple measurement of priorities for you against what benefits you’ve seen from the app. For the last few months, I’ve thought about this a lot, as I’ve checked in on Foursquare at places big and small, for the important travels and the mundane.

Am I really a Handmade Hero? No. Last Badge...

While my badges and points racked up, the real world benefits were exceptionally rare. I’d met a few people, and saved a few dollars, but today, I deleted my account. No drama. Just decided I was done. That should save a few power bits on my phone, and a few minutes of each day.

As much fun as it has been to play the role of early adopter and use every service to its fullest, I believe we’re well past the mania time of social networking, services and apps. Being on a platform isn’t the same as using the platform well. And if you can’t find measurable or emotional value to participating in a place, there’s no harm in calling it quits - or continuing to have your eyes open for what’s next, so you don’t find yourself entrenched in the way things have always been, while missing new experiences.

Sometimes that means never joining in the first place, analyzing what you’ve seen and deciding if that makes sense for you. Even though I was an early trial user of Burbn, I never got an Instagram account, and I lived. I never got into GetGlue, and won’t. I never liked Turntable.fm, and I’ve never done a Snapchat. Maybe it’s the graying hairs on my head, or being closer to 40 than 30, but I know time is valuable.

Someday all of this will stop, and when I pick up my head from the computer monitor, will I feel as if I’ve missed something, or will I be happy with the results of what I’ve done?

Disclosures and Disclaimers: Yes, I work for Google, in the Developer Relations team. This post is not intended to represent them or favor their services in place of any of those I just mentioned, obviously.