A VC - Latest Comments in The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:52:12 -0000

Yeah. Sign on with twitter is pretty sweet

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Jevon — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:23:32 -0000

I was thinking about Open Source and then you got me thinking about how aggregation+filtering+streams could be how Open Source tools work together and get ahead (I am thinking inside the enterprise,..)

http://www.fastforwardblog....

ps: Logging in using Twitter oAuth is all kinds of awesome.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:39:39 -0000

If by 'these services' we mean blogs, blog comments, twitter, and facebook, then I think they are surprisingly open and will remain so. Facebook is working to become more open, not more closed

As for monetization, we've seen some successes, most notably social gaming, and I think we'll see more

All these platforms understand that their sustainability is in their platform, not their service

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Guest — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:21:26 -0000

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Simeon Simeonov — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:11:15 -0000

Fred, I'm wondering what's your take on the state of openness and/or standards required to truly enable a thriving ecosystem of services on top of the primary social media channels. IMO, the current solutions barely pass the Ecosystem Test http://blog.simeonov.com/20... (it is easy to build solutions but hard to make a meaningful amount of money).

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Mindaugas Dagys — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:05:31 -0000

Filtering often = search. And search in realtime land is track. The one that T*itter does not release for future „monetization“ hopes.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:26:30 -0000

I'm not so sure Mike. Its going to be their call not mine. But I think its important to monetize a thin piece of the overall value and leave most of it for others. That's the most sustainable platform based business model

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Pranav Bhasin — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:23:24 -0000

I think aggregation and filtering is a good start, but not good enough to sustain in the long run. A service needs more meat on top of it to add value and that in my mind comes from inferences driven from aggregated data or showing how diverse pieces of data are related to each other in some manner.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

vcmike — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:18:01 -0000

Fred, I totally agree with your concluding paragraph. The really interesting question is the extent to which the underlying platform companies themselves offer the most valuable services. My two cents is that they should and will. You?

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:39:12 -0000

I can't comment on that :)

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:38:57 -0000

I read your notes last week. Awesome that you did that and posted it

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:38:24 -0000

I'm still commited to trying gist

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:38:22 -0000

I think most media will be social

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:37:39 -0000

I see disqus as a channel and friendfeed as an example of a service occupying the next layer on the stack, aggregating and filtering

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Kiam Choo — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:12:19 -0000

Definitely agree on "aggregation and filtering" as the next layer on the social media stack.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Mehdi Ait Oufkir — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:35:35 -0000

totally agree with every that is said here. There is already a lot of competition in this market. I guess the one that will succeed is the one that will remove the noise and will automatically organize the content.

Google was the one organizing the web... We need somebody to organize our social chanels.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

David Gillespie — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:03:49 -0000

@John - so perhaps the solution there will come at the source from the likes of Mozilla or Microsoft; I struggle to see a scenario wherein the latter embraces Open ID, curious to see if and how Google tackle this with Chrome.

@fredwilson It is definitely reliant on a learned behaviour and not a currently natural one. I'm not familiar enough with the platform nuances to speak with authority, I would however be curious to see if Facebook's backend would allow applications to communicate with another public server and subsequently receive inputs from alternate sources.

My thinking is a popular game on Facebook could potentially be extended into the browser and played when not actually on the site. Yes it is the long way around, but I think the fix will arrive via a combination of it being relatively easy to do AND having it heavily incentivised. Games, photo-sharings apps etc. already with a large audience on Facebook seem to be like the most direct path at this point.

Maybe your team at Zynga are already looking into this?

---

Also as an aside, are there plans for Disqus to incorporate the email replies even when logged into Twitter? As John seems to have come in via another source, I didn't get notified via Twitter of his reply. Would be nice to see the various logins tied together, with perhaps an email notification of replies being default regardless of the type of login.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

kskobac — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:14:32 -0000

Fred- it was great to have the opportunity to hear you speak in person; not sure if you were able to stick around the whole morning, but I thought it was really one of the more valuable programs I've attended in a long time. To add to the collective content coming out of it, I posted my takeaways here if anyone is interested: "15 Insights From the Social Media Boot Camp" http://bit.ly/info/huGsF

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

tamccann — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:50:37 -0000

I totally agree that aggregation and filtering are the next phase. Once we provide the filters, users can more easily parse what is important and relevant and then take the next level of interaction, which is usually sharing or commenting.

Some big questions are around how and what you aggregate. Is it all around messages (email inboxes + activity streams + tweet streams...) or people or keywords or service types (tweets/tweetdeck) or all of the above. I am an active user of Tweetdeck and like it very much and am using it to aggregate activity streams from Facebook, Twitter and a few keyword searches, which is useful as a CEO (marketer).

With Gist (my company), we are aggregating content around people and companies and combining all the messages, blog posts, news articles, tweets...but for the specific business purpose of building better and stronger business relationships. So the aggregation and "next actions" game is also factored by the use case.

But, Fred, you are right that the next layer on the stack is about aggregation, filtering and then some form or directed action with the content.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

William Mougayar — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:28:31 -0000

Are we assuming that all media will be Social?
Yes to aggregation, filtering + personalized knowledge dashboards.
On filtering- different types are needed: 1) people-filtered content, 2) own-filters, 3) unfiltered, 4) social back-channels. Smart aggregation brings it all in-one and enables jumping point into the social media, so it's bi-directional.

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:11:54 -0000

Right. But if you build it on top of a portfolio of services, then there is less risk

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

fredwilson — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:05:15 -0000

Dashboards are the first step to interaction

You have to find the conversation if you want to participate in it

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

swalkergibson — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:15:59 -0000

In my opinion, the issue here is that by building a service on top of another service, you have to rely on the host service's business and technological practices in order for yours to be viable. I mean, as powerful as all of these web services are today, who is to say what they will be like in 10 years?

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

chartreuse — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:03:54 -0000

I agree. Howard is slick!

Re: The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack

Guest — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:22:15 -0000