Sriram Krishnan™ Live

James Hong, one of the founders of the popular 6 year old picture rating site, came out and spoke about the reasons behind the recent overhaul of their business model. You’ll realise that it’s a piece written from the heart, straight to the point and without beating around the bush.

I have always admired James and Jim for their independence and simplicity…and now for their honesty.

James touches on two things: The state of the online advertising market and the general entrepreneurial setting. He also relates his experience regarding employee policies, hiring, and competitors.

Previous post about Hotornot here. Techcrunch coverage here.

Chris Brogan, of of the organisers of Podcamp Europe 2007, has gone berserk (in a good way of course and proposed several exciting, interesting social media projects for the summer period. If you’re free and always have something to say wrt this issue, pop Chris an email about it.

What do I think about this? It’s a fantastic initiative.

100 Comments Project- Someone starts a post, we fill up 100 meaningful comments. End result: **updated** Some good conversations (not doing ebooks).

Social Media Architecture Project - We’re plumbing out the network, and then tuning it for value. (Going beyond “having” a Facebook or MySpace page, and into actually making worthwhile USE of it).

Barnstorming Project - Let’s raise the roof on several new media properties. Let’s get Justin Kownacki’s Something to Be Desired sold or funded, for instance.

Grasshopper Factory - a small unconference themed on creativity, DO!-ing something, and community.

PodCamp Network - we’re going to bring the conversation all together in a distribution hub, sharing our best stuff, making sure we don’t lose the threads.

YOUR ideas - remember, I’m just starting something. It’s your game. What’s your idea?

If there is any better time to consider venturing into Singapore for any internet related web2.0 social media entrepreneurship user generated participatory business, the time is now. Yes, I study there and No, this is not a biased post. These are just based on facts. Enjoy and contemplate. =) AND yes, I am Malaysian. Grrr.

Excerpts from Kevin Lim’s blog post about Nexus 2007.

First, I shared some statistics on Wikipedia contributors, where the top anonymous contributor was in fact, a Singaporean (hat tip to Dan Li). Ms. Jennifer of STOMP chimed in with how Jimmy Wales has once visited Singapore to meet our avid contributors, and became pleasantly surprised when most of them turned out to be young Secondary school boys and girls. This puts Singapore in a unique position where we have a far younger contributor demographic compared to the rest of the world.

“Changing the status qou..changing things for the better..”

I would like to highlight this piece of research done by Danah Boyd, a doctoral student at University of California-Berkely, about friends, ‘friending’ and social networks.

Unfortunately and clearly, you can see (she also mentioned it) that the sample size was only limited to US based youths. Apart from highlighting the rather worrying online idiosyncrasies of US pre-teens, this paper gives you another perspective about the definition of ‘friend’ and puts that in context with social networks such as Myspace and Friendster.

“As a kid, you used your birthday party guest list as leverage on the playground. ‘If you let me play I’ll invite you to my birthday party.’ Then, as you grew up and got your own phone, it was all about someone being on your speed dial. Well today it’s the MySpace Top 8. It’s the new dangling carrot for gaining superficial acceptance. Taking someone off your Top 8 is your new passive aggressive power play when someone pisses you off.”

“When people first joined Friendster, they took cues from the people who invited them. Three specific subcultures dominated the early adopters — bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man [14] festival, and gay men mostly living in New York.”

I had a discussion with a few friends couple of nights ago regarding Facebook and Jaiku. We were carried away with the banter and one rather interesting point that was brought up was about seeking attention. This got me thinking about my usage of these services. Why do I use it in the first place?

I think we all have a need. A need to express ourselves. And part of this need will be satisfied by knowing that some other person (close friend, relative etc) will hear about our expressions or our routines, for instance. The other half, I guess, would be satisfied by purely expressing ourselves, whether it’s our views, emotions, thoughts etc. It’s about sharing as well. For example, knowing that my friends are also using these services ‘inspires’ me to update it regularly. Not to seek their attention, but to continue the indirect, (a) synchronous, non-invasive means of communication. Merely updating your Facebook account could also be a form of communication to, for instance,:

a) Let people know you still exist (a good/bad thing warrants another debate
b) Communicate with you
c) Allow people to remember you in their sub conscious mind

Some people may choose to express themselves in certain ways, some none at all or some in as many ways as possible. It’s unfair to classify someone as “attention seeking” if (s)he decides to use many avenues to extend his/her views/expressions/emotions/thoughts to the world. =)