Destructuring.Net

Social Media Standards - Live !

Today FindMeOn launched SocialMediaStandards.org

I haven't been this excited in years!

( Note: I had a crazy idea to do a performance based presentation @ the web 2.0 meetup -- where I get on stage and act really arrogant like a large Tech firm that forces people to adopt their proprietary standards... then become really nice and talk about Open Processes. That plan did not work out well after a few drinks and a rushed presentation setup. Apologies to all who didn't get the joke ).

For the past few years, I've been running around NYC, SF, BOS and DC -- meeting with agency executives, interactive shops, startups , brands and non-profits.

At first we met over FindMeOn corporate interests - sales, marketing, figuring out how we can work together. As time progressed and meetings turned into friends catching up, I began to realize that our clients and friends were facing the same issues we did: complete and utter chaos when it comes to the way Social Media campaigns are implemented.

From tech companies to advertising firms, and all the shops in between, we were all having the same problems - integrating projects with one another, and eventually with the large networks.

At FindMeOn , we finally decided to do something about this.

Over the past few weeks, I've been piecing together a coalition of Startups, Agencies, Non-Profits and Brands - the people who build and finance Social Media Campaigns, into a new industry group.

We're coming together under a single banner - and hoping others join us - to fix the industry. We're forming the Social Media Standards organization.

Today we live in an age where everyone wants to have a social media campaign - and everyone does. Everyone also has an Open Standard and a Platform API -- even we were one of the earlier people to jump on the trend launching the findmeon protocol and Open Social Network systems in 2006.

Being open is neat, but when everyone has an OpenStandard and API -- which is designed to advance proprietary systems -- being open is pretty much worthless.

In the past week we've seen a deluge of new open standards: MySpace Google Facebook all decided that they'd have the next new hot thing, and tried to outdo themselves. Good for them - but for everyone else, this is nothing short of a nightmare being formed right before our eyes. The fact that these systems are 'Open' does nothing for the fact that they are independent and multiples of one another.

Ever since Facebook's API started to gain traction, the top tech firms have gotten into a pissing match with one another -- each one trying to outdo the others. Every few months, a company announces a brand new "OPEN!" product that not only outdoes their competitors, and the last "open" product they released.

These groups *hate* being open: remember that only one year ago, the same social networks that are embracing DataPortability.org were blocking widgets, disabling accounts, and claiming ownership of user data and experience. To these interests, being "Open" doesn't mean empowering a user -- it means losing control.

Networks shouldn't be demonized though: they want - and deserve - credit for the added value they bring to user generated data. While I believe in Open Source, Open Standards, and that users own their content -- there is definite added value from these networks that undoubtedly belongs to the networks, and networks should be credited for: the metrics and analysis they offer, the modes of communication, the simple fact of friendship context - how a MySpace friendship is inherently different than a Facebook friendship (a notion that FindMeOn.com has been yelping about for years). So social networks want - and deserve - some amounts of control in these interactions.

What Social Networks don't deserve, is to be the only voice in these interactions. Social Media is, at it's essence, social -- involving people and communities. Social Networks actors like users and third party networks/applications are an integral portion of the social dialogue -- and voices that must be heard.

At Social Media Standards, we're setting some goals to bring order to the chaos of Social Media. We're hoping to better represent users and the third party interests in what has become an 'open platforms' and 'open apis' war.

We're not doing this as "FindMeOn" or any one company -- we're doing this as a coalition of companies that are defining the standards *together*.

We're also hoping to create a shared library of code that people can use as the building blocks for social media campaigns. We hope that with a common set of API calls / class structures / database tables, we'll be able to migrate our applications across networks faster when needed -- and be able to better create integration points between our apps.

We're also hoping to build off of each other's knowledge, experience, and expertise.

Our immediate goals are the following:

- Creating a new set of legal standards and agreements - in the vein of understanding and clarity as Creative Commons has introduced - for Social Media website usage.

- Defining a new set of standards for Application Design, Development and Deployment - along with integration points.

- Create new Open Source libraries and frameworks to implement Social Media campaigns across platforms. Support DataPortability.org projects, and create integration points + inter-application protocols that work for us.

- Create new Open Standards for applications to interact with one another. This isn't a top-down approach of one company saying "This is how things will be!" -- this is a crowdsourced approach of finding consensus between the social media application producers.

Standards are only as good as the people who write them, and only as useful as the number of people who use them. We've been recruiting some of the top talent across industries over the past few weeks - and hope to have the full support of the Advertising and Agency worlds by years end. Over the next few weeks, you can expect to see some large names add themselves to the Social Media Standards project - and we hope to see many small names add themselves too.

From PHP and Python to Rails and .NET - we hope to have every platform covered with reference implementations and building blocks -- so Social Media Standards can be quickly implemented, and people can redeploy their projects across platforms when needed.

Ballmer to Yang: You're a fucking idiot.

Microsoft walked away from the Yahoo acquisition attempt cleanly, citing Jerry Yang's ineptitude as the prime example (though Steve Ballmer was quite more diplomatic than myself).

I didn't want to see the deal go through myself -- I think Yahoo is worth more in the long run, and a MS acquisition would have destroyed it through a clash of cultures ( will the employees like it and stay? will they have to migrate from an entire Open Source platform to .NET -- YHOO uses php and mysql extensively ).

In his open letter, Ballmer says what I - and many 'real' analysts keep saying - Yahoo is *fucking stupid* for working with Google on the search advertising front.

The quest for extra search ads cash is going to undermine their display and behavioral advertising systems - by putting a vote of no-confidence in their ad platforms ( panama, smart ads, etc), creating a new customer relationship touch-point with Google, and allowing Google to set pricing standards on too much of the online ads industry.

An MS acquisition would have been the death of Yahoo's promise, potential and spirit -- but the way Jerry Yang has avoided it has pretty much killed a lot of Yahoo's potential on its own.

DataPortability Podcast #5 Post-Chat Wrap-Up

Trent Adams and Steve Greenberg of the DataPortability Group were awesome enough to invite me to chat on their weekly DataPortability podcast. You can listen to it here:

http://www.mediaslate.org/wp/2008/04/25/dataportability-in-motion-podcast-episode-5/

We hit the specifics of the findmeon/opensn technology -- and our mandate for privacy to be covered by all portability standards -- but we chatted at length about the history of 'portability' and touched on the Google issue. I didn't get a chance to elaborate as well as I should have on some points , so here's a quick 'extension' of what I wanted to say:

A_ The History of Portability

When I started FindMeOn, and just until last Summer, people hated us. I mean they really and truly HATED us. We were laughed out of meetings with corporations, investors and pundits -- many of whom are now becoming 'active' in the scene. One amazing meeting had the seasoned veteran sitting across the table from me jump in amazement at the concept of porting identity , content and action: "No. No. NO NO NO NO NO. NO NO. NEVER! NO." Another meeting had one of the more famous tech icons look me dead in the eye and say "This is the worst idea I've ever heard of."

Everyone wanted data non-portability. The thought of creating doors or lobbing balls over the 'walled gardens' of networks was deemed heresy. This wasn't just from the investment world -- we spoke with representatives from many of the companies now evangelizing data portability: they all admonished the concept.

In March 2007, the 'technology scene' had this outlook on social networks and identity-oriented applications:

1- Content & interactions should be owned by the network. Play by our rules, or we ban you. Keep in mind: note even a year ago, MySpace and Friendster were disabling/blocking/stripping widgets at their leisure from member profiles. Remember when YouTube embeds or photobucket images would just disappear for days at a time, synchronized to negotiation talks on the front-page of Mashable/TechCrunch?

2- The only networks that matter are the large networks. There will probably by 6 major networks at any given time, and every few years a new network will rise and an old network will lose its place. All the other networks are irrelevant.

Today, things are much different. Companies that once held users and widget providers hostage, are now suddenly evangelizing open networks. People are similarly realizing that smaller networks - that cater to niche demographics - are exploding and important.

What caused this overnight change?

During our discussion, Steve Greenberg brought up a great point - a lot of people in key positions right now are people who managed product & strategy of the instant messenger world when they had their all-out wars. The second he mentioned that, I started to have flashbacks to countless resumes/bios and articles I've read - indeed people from particularly the AOL IM product line are now CEO / CTO / VP of Platform at dozens of firms. So Steve might be right -- a round of hirings, promotions, and general chaos that resettled the upper ranks of tech firms may have contributed greatly to this...

But a bigger player, I would argue, is the critical mass that Facebook created through their API.

When we first started building the FindMeOn system, the Facebook API was well over a year away; when we launched, they were still 8 months away. Our system relied on a ton of Regex, proxy use, reverse-engineering network throttling triggers, and lots of other tricky features to help port data for our users -- APIs were not commonplace, they were frowned upon.

I would argue that when Facebook launched their API, everything shifted. My CNO and I were on-call to present at the NY-tech meetup, doing a modified version of what we had given at the Web20 meetup a month earlier, but James from HotOrNot showed up and we got bumped. (BTW, I was fine with that - he helped my friends get MochiMedia.com off the ground! ) James said some crazy things though... like people should stop building webapps or companies and just use Facebook's API: it was easier to build off of, gave you an audience, and virally integrated with their newsfeed.

As people listened to that message - from James and others - Facebook's API gained traction and other groups were left in the dust. Market leaders were now becoming market followers. Everyone started taking a side in the Great API Debate - with some proclaiming "This is excellent! We will follow!" and others downplaying the necessity and utility. For months stories of forthcoming APIs were debunked as vaporware, while many debated ownership rights and "What really is an Open API?".

In August something big happened... not the Brad Fitzpatrick manifesto, but a leak that Facebook was ramping up into the advertising game, and would have some big announcements at Ad:Tech. All of the sudden, rumors started to fly that Google was getting in the game -- a few hirings happened, and Valleywag/Techcrunch/et al reported a few behind-closed-doors meetings occurred with 'key players in social networking'. We soon found out that Google had a top-secret 'Open Social' program, which was aligning everyone against Facebook. How do you combat a proprietary API? With an Open API used by their nemesis. At their gala / product launch, Google quickly announced "We've been working on this for almost a year!" - thought it became clear to everyone in the technology scene that it was a brand new initiative. Instead of a full-fledged product launch, we began to see barely 2-3months worth of software development and immature product design, while 'key partners' quickly built their own APIs as the Google-led initiative flailed.

So why did all these firms who were anti- 3rd party applications and anti- data_portability and anti- user-data-ownership take a 180° turn in their beliefs? The open source advocate in me says "because its the right thing to do!", the historian concedes to Steve's point that "the new people in charge did not want to repeat their mistakes" - but the cynical bastard/businessman in me says "because if they didn't open up, they risked falling too far behind Facebook".

B_ A clarification on the FindMeOn/OpenSN(Open Social Network) vs Google/OpenSocial issue:

We launched the Open Social Network standard publicly in October 2006. We couldn't get OpenSocialNetwork.org, but we could get OpenSN.org - so we ended up with that domain, and began using both terms interchangeably.

We were more than upset to find out that Google decided to create a product so similar in name and function. The situation was only exacerbated when we discovered their attempt to trademark the name. Not only had Google never contacted us, but they declined to respond to dozens of our attempts to contact them -- something we found really odd, since we were at the top of their search rankings for related terms and would have been caught by any due-diligence team.

We are indeed committed to opposing any and all of their attempts to lay claim to "Open Social" as a trademark for software. However, Reports that we have filed suit are completely inaccurate, written by bloggers and reporters who were misinterpreting text in a CNET article -- the only organization that actually ever spoke with us concerning the matter.

There are portions of Google's OpenSocial implementation and related projects (like the Social Graph API) that are covered in exact detail (not vague interpretable text) in USPTO patent applications we filed long before they began work on their product. We tried many times, without luck, to contact them on this matter and open a dialogue. We never got a response. Will there be legal issues stemming from this in the future? Most likely. Will this affect Open Source developers and networks? Absolutely not.

We started as a group of people advocating some really big changes in online interaction, and fighting an uphill battle to educate people on concepts they weren't quite ready for. We made a lot of guesses on the direction of social media and the necessary technologies, which have all ended up being right. When someone new came into the market, instead of trying to work with us, they ignored out outreaches and have behaved pretty-much-like they're trying to work against us. The names and sizes of companies shouldn't matter, neither should the fact that we're both offering 'open source' parcels of our technology... What does matter is that at the end of the day, our Karma is really high... and I'm not really impressed by theirs.

Congestion Pricing Plan is Dead in NYC -- A GOOD thing

The NY Times reports that the congestion pricing plan in NYC is dead.

Good.

The plan was a complete mess. While it would lower congestion in lower Manhattan, it did so at the expense of the other boroughs.

Should NYC residents in Brooklyn pay an additional tax to take a cab ride over a bridge? Should companies in the Bronx give up on deliveries to lower Manhattan? Why is there no provision for those that own/park cars within the zone - which encompasses most of the wealthiest parts of NYC?

The NYC Congestion Pricing Plan was just a euphamism to tax city residents in the outer boroughs. Taxing people access to neighborhoods in their own city -- particularly business centers -- is an insult, not a solution. The plan creates an impetus for an exclusive transit-economy 'within the zone'... where there are higher priced deliveries of goods, and outside firms lose their incentive. We can easily imagine cab-drivers who will no longer travel outside the zone, because they don't want to worry about fares (only 3 years ago, cabbies would refuse drives across a bridge to waterfront communities like Brooklyn Heights/Dumbo/Williamsurg/LongIslandCity ).

If you've spent enough time in NYC, you'll notice that people in the boroughs avoid driving into manhattan as much as possible. The real issue with congestion in NYC isn't from people in Brooklyn or the Bronx... its people from suburban communities in Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut -- who are causing congestion THROUGHOUT NYC, on their way to the city center. These are the people that take long drives in hours of bumper-2-bumper traffic, because they don't want a monthly commuter rail pass... or they prefer to drive. If you work in NYC, you know all-too-well that these people are disproportionately more than the others.

NYC residents already pay city, employment, housing taxes which go in part towards our roads and infrastructure... non-residents may/maynot pay employment taxes ( depending on how sneaky their employers are)... but aren't as taxed to the same extent.

If you want to fix congestion in NYC... and not just in the 'city center' but in NYC as a whole... the city should tax car owners and also tax the border arteries: NJ: Holland & Lincoln Tunnels, GW Bridge; LI: GCP, LIE. These arteries of commuters are where the greater problem starts, and where the solution should be applied.

Lots of people bring up London as a good example - I think its bad comparison. Manhattan is an island cut off from the other boroughs, most of which have become middle-class residential neighborhoods for those who were priced out. I've lived in Williamsburg for 7 years now? The L & JMZ lines fail far too much, and the bus system can't handle the overflow. Once I broke my toe and couldn't walk for a month from complications; I had to take a car service in every day to work. Under a congestion pricing plan, I would essentially pay a tax every day for living in Brooklyn. If I lived just 1 subway stop away, I would fall within the zone and not have to pay congestion surcharges for crossing 'into' the zone.

subverision^2

I've had a really bad habit when using subversion since I first started using it in 2004: I like to write fictional stories in the commit messages

It started as a training exercise to write better comments. Then it quickly became a way to do blogging/creative writing at work.

Depending on the project, I'd take on different personas. For a particularly awful project I was working as a PM/co-Developer on, I recall writing every commit message as a mentally unstable contractor who just got his first job out a vocational school. My character was paranoid and delusional... hearing voices and always scared that people would find out he has no idea what he's doing.

Integer? Y the fuck dn't thy just call it NUMBER???

On another project, I wrote as a middle-aged midwestern Sr. Developer. He was always missing his daughter's plays, and worked in a nondescript cubicle in a cliched office tower. He often felt guilty that his dreams of seeing the Sun /not/ just on his morning commute began to catch up with his desire to spend more time with his family. His boss looked like Dilbert.

- Performance tuning: Updated the SQL abstraction layer to better use function indexes - I hear its a beautiful outside today. Thanks to a calendaring mistake in the head office, I won't be able to see for myself. Did I mention that my daughter is in a play on Friday, and I'll probably have to miss it? No one reads this stuff, do they. No one. Am I alone here?

Sometimes I would write Haikus

Sometimes I would create new accounts under different names, and write out a dialogue between two committers... much like a screenplay.

Every so often, I would write in a 'nervous' message from an unnamed contractor:

I got you the proof of over-billing and rigging the machines. Get me out of here, NOW. I think they're onto me.

With that all said, subversion can be a really great way to relieve the monotony of your day... and fuck with your colleagues.

Democratic Party Delegates: Florida & Michigan

I commented on the "ABC/Facebook Politics" debate a few weeks ago on the Florida/Michigan issue. Someone had asked something to the effect of "Is it fair to victimize the Florida/Michigan voters", my response ( reposted below ) is that calling the voters victimized is a huge oversimplification of the situation.

Voters in both states were told before the elections that the contests were deemed illegitimate and votes would not be counted. The issue at hand isn't the invalidation of valid votes - it is the validation of invalid votes. Voters were told in very plain language, "Your votes will not count." "Your votes will be invalid."

With that information coming directly from the Democratic Leadership, many people specifically decided not to vote. Again, I reiterate-- before the election, the contest was deemed illegitimate and people were specifically told that votes would not be allowed to impact the national results -- so people stayed home.

You can see proof of that in the voting patterns. About 750,000 Floridians voted in the 2004 Democratic primary; 1.7M voted in the 2008 Primary -- a 2.27 multiplier. That's a remarkable voter turnout and improvement on first look... but many other states received 4x and 5x multipliers on their voter turnouts from 2004. Researchers using regression analysis have suggested that somewhere between 2.3M and 3.1M Floridians would have voted in a primary that was known to be fully valid.

With that said, forget about the issues of 'fairness' to the candidates and campaigning vs name recognition... The winners and losers in politics are the people, not candidates - and this situation is no exception.

The core issue is that a group of people were specifically told not to vote in an election... that the election itself was unsanctioned and would be unofficial and disregarded.

Deciding to retroactively count the votes of those who voted, while not giving those who specifically decided against voting a chance to vote is a form of voter disenfranchisement.

Florida and Michigan are both simply awful situations: the DNC can either suppress the voice of those who voted despite a nullified status of their election, or suppress the voice of those who wanted to vote but were not given a reasonably fair chance.

At least in keeping the states nullified, the votes of one group are not prioritized more than any other group. It's sad that the best current solution is to rob everyone of their voice - but the choices are literally reduced to 'disenfranchise some people' or 'nullify it all / disenfranchise everyone'.

Personally, I think that Democrat Party owes the people of Florida and Michigan a fair chance to be heard. They should spend some of the MILLIONS of dollars in campaign and party funds to find a way to give people in both states a chance to cast votes in a fair election that is advertised to all as "Yes, your vote really WILL count". I could care less about exposure and campaign dollars - I only care that people are told "yes, we really are having an election that counts"

LinkedIn - Missing the obvious

LinkedIn is apparently missing the most obvious and basic function of a social network: email based search.

I couldn't believe this when I realized it the other day.

I was looking for the resume of someone who contacted me online, only to find a handful of possible matches to people with the same name in the same industry in the same city. I figured I'd just enter in their email to get to the exact one.

Surprise: the keyword search field on LinkedIn don't scan email. ( though if someone puts their email in their bio, it will).
Surprise 2: there is no email search field for LinkedIn.

That's just silly, I thought.

So I contacted their customer service , and this was my response:

"You might opt to initiate a new Introduction through another user of our
business networking website.

It was our pleasure to help you with this issue. If you need greater
assistance with your future service issues, please feel free to respond
back to us. Thanks for being a valued member of the LinkedIn
community!"

Either LinkedIn outsources their customer service to India , or their staff is high.

I'm still in awe of this *extremely* simple omission.

US Primary Politics, Illustrated

Note- This is a first draft and quick notes; I will edit this document properly as I have time.
----

I decided to make a visual guide to the U.S. Primaries right now, as I constantly find myself explaining this to friends and family who don't keep up with Politics.

The political spectrum should really be a circle (to be exact, a 3d sphere, but lets keep things in 2d!)... Why? On a circle we see an endless array of polarized beliefs on the edges, with a lot of space for common ground and shared viewpoints in the middle.

The United States has a very special political system. The dominance of two parties (a concept despised by the country's "Founding Fathers") has resulted in a narrow spectrum that fosters polarized ideals and divisiveness. With only two choices, the populace is essentially captive to aligning themselves with either group. The two groups tend to find 'hot button' issues such as the abortion debate or public services, and use them as rallying points. The party leaders create and push policy platforms that try to maximize the appeal to the polar ends of the spectrum, while drawing support from some more moderates.

This system fosters what is essentially a 'vicious cycle' as well- when one party gains legislative or executive power, it often enacts policy that is meant to undo the actions of the last party and re-centralize the government to favor their party. In every election, power & policy shift from one extreme to the other. The term "Partisan Politics" refers to fervent and overzealous support of these polarized platform ideals.

Because the United States has this extremely polarized political system, each party can count on a group of voters to always vote 'The Party Line', regardless of Candidate. I've identified those people in this diagram.

Important to note about this diagram is the following:
1) There are small ultra-polarized groups that may jump to independent/small party candidates with more hardline views. We often see 'conservatives' push for a Evangelical candidate (someone who runs on Christian ideals and tries to fuse Church with State), and 'liberals' push for a Socialist candidate.
2) These circles don't represent the registered base of democrats/republicans.. just those people who will always vote on the party lines.
3) There is a huge void in the middle... this is where elections are won & lost. These 'swing' voters are the independents/unaffiliateds, and those who have declared affiliation to one party but may vote with or switch to the other party depending on the candidate.

In this diagram I've plotted each of the candidate's recent appeal ( mid January 2008 - platform, policy, rhetoric, charisma) against voters who always vote the party line. This isn't a mapping of popularity or support - merely a mapping of where on this spectrum the candidates are pulling their appeal from. As we grow closer to election day and narrow the primary candidates into general-election candidates, the chart will change into two large circles.

There are two incredibly important things to note in this diagram in relation to the current frontrunners:
1) Obama and McCain show strong appeal to Independent voters... this is appeal that transcends their party's dedictaed voters
2) Clinton and Huckabee have strong appeal within their party base, but don't necessarily appeal to independents and swings.

This is important because we often hear media pundits - and losing candidates - talking about appealing to the 'Party Base'.

The 'Party Base' is a weird term. There are many competing definitions for it... Some consider the base to the the core population of the Party, others consider it to be the group that consistently identifies with and votes for the Party - regardless of candidate. I am using the latter definition- The 'Party Base' are those Democrats & Republicans who will always vote for their party's candidate, regardless of who runs.

With that in mind, Primary elections are not Federal elections - they're party elections. Since they're party based, the state party delegations/leadership decide if they will be closed (only party members may vote) or open (anyone can vote, but must join the party at the polling place). This varies from state to state.

Appealing to the Party Base is extremely important in closed primaries, because they make up a larger percentage of the eligible voters.. and consequently have greater influence on the nomination process.

In open primaries, the electorate is free to choose which party to vote with... which decreases the importance of the party base, increases the importance of the swing voters, and gives a much better understanding of how the candidates would fare against one another in a General election.

Recent primary results and exit polls have resulted in these notable facts:
• Obama has been gaining ground with the party base which typically went for Clinton, the establishment candidate. Clinton has not been converting the independents or swings.
• McCain has been gaining ground with the party base that typically went for Evangelicals ( Romney, Huckabee ). McCain has ben converting independents and swings.
• According to CNNs 2008-02-12 exit polls
- - Independents have been going for Obama and McCain at significantly higher numbers than Clinton or Huckabee
- - Obama has been wooing more independents than McCain
- - Obama has gotten more Republicans to switch and vote for him, than McCain has convinced Democrats to switch.

What is particularly important to note here is the voter appeal in Obama and McCain
• both are getting their parties behind them
• both are doing stellar with the independents/swing votes
• both are convincing voters to switch sides, when possible/measurable

If you look at the Obama and McCain circles, they're the largest areas for their parties -- despite election results showing their races to be fairly tight. This is because primary voting is often limited to the registered party members / loyalist base. The size of these circles doesn't mean that they are leading their party -- it simply covers their appeal among party and non-party members. The party races are tight, because Obama and McCain both appeal heavily to non-party voters who are more moderate in beliefs, and are fighting for the party support among polarized party members who are more extreme.

Based on voter appeal alone, we can draw these conclusions ( which match with exit polls ):
• Obama vs McCain will be a tight race
• Clinton vs McCain or Obama vs Huckabee will likely have a wide margin on the win
• Clinton vs Huckabee will be a polarizing election, with many dissatisfied independents.

In terms of a Clinton vs Huckabee[/Romney] lineup... this is probably what NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been silently waiting out, and would enter the race to easily capitalize on as being a moderate.

Some notes on primary elections...
• When primaries are 'open', Obama & McCain have a clear advantage.
• The battles right now are for the party base, and convincing them to end decades of heavily partisan politics to search for some middle ground that offers compromise and unity. The party bases are very reluctant to let go (but moving in that direction) - they are used to voting for a polarizing candidate who advocates [often unattainable] ideals and delivers on few promises; they are having trouble voting for attainable and likely-deliverable goals such as those advocated by Obama and McCain.

Yahoo launches Live! - buggy version of Mogulus

From yliveblog.com

For viewers: How is Y! Live different from other online video sites? That’s simple: it’s live. What you’re watching, right now, is what other people are watching, right now. We wanted to create an experience that takes us back to live television, where things are happening now, in real time.

Different from other online sites? Sorry - Stickam has been doing liveblogging for a while, and Mogulus has been offering a full-fledged production studio for almost a year now.

Breakfast of Champions

I've discovered the most delicious breakfast ever... if only I could find somewhere in NYC to serve it.

The Drink - Cortado
I've been making these for years at home, a recent trip to a local coffeehouse gave me the name. A Cortado is halfway between a macchiato ( espresso with a splash of steamed milk ) and a latte ( espresso in 2-4 times the volume of steamed milk - it's somewhere between a 1:1 and 1:5 ratio of espresso to steamed milk. At home, I usually make it with 2 double ristrettos ( ~3oz of espresso ) and 3oz of milk; the *wonderful* Oslo Coffee shops in williamsburg make it with 1 ristretto in a half-size latte cup. It's not on the official menu, but all the baristas know how to make it.

From wikipedia:

A cortado is an espresso "cut" (from the Spanish and Portuguese cortar) with a small amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity. The ratio of milk is between 1:1 - 1:2, and the milk is added after the espresso. The steamed milk hasn't much foam, but many baristas make some micro foam to make latte art. It is popular in both Spain and Portugal, as well as throughout Latin America, where it is drunk in the afternoon.

The Pastry - Pastéis de Nata

These are like little cupcakes from heaven. My mother was born in the Azores, so I unfortunately grew up around the less-than-pleasant cuisines of Portugal. I often say that Portugal is responsible for some of the worst looking, smelling, and tasting foods in all of the world... and that is all forgiven by the invention of these little treasures. Pastéis de Nata are little egg-custard tarts that are baked in a puff-pastry shell. Imagine a créme brulée in an tasty & edible dish. Now imagine a plate of them sitting on your table.

I only know of a single restaurant in all of New York City that makes Pasteis de Nata. They always sell out. Take home? Not an option.

iPhone Lost/Stolen? AT&T/Apple: Fuck You!

A close friend just had her iPhone lost/stolen. It's hard to tell which: it was there one minute, gone the next... and no, she wasn't drunk. What we do know, is that within hours of it disappearing, calls were placed by the new possessor, and her voicemail was replaced with what sounded like two drunken men chanting Bollywood tunes.

Her experience has shown me how abysmal AT&T / Apple support can be in situations like this -- and why I'm leaving them the second my contract runs out.

When she went to AT&T, they basically said (I'll paraphrase here):

That sucks. I'm sorry. [voice turns evil] As you know, we offer no insurance policy for the iPhone ( though we do for every other phone ) - so your option will have to be a new iPhone at full price. Or you can get another PDA like a Blackberry.

Much like every other person I know who bought an iPhone, she regretted not getting a Blackberry and jumped at the chance... only to hear:

Even though you never got a discount from AT&T on your iPhone purchase, you are ineligible for the hardware discount because you already have the iPhone contract. You'll have to pay full price on the Blackberry too.

Her response: "Fuck that" - she paid the $175 termination fee and got a Blackberry from Verizon for $150 ( $325 total to switch, instead of $400 to stay ).

AT&T customer service was awful is in this situation: flat-out refusing to give her any sort of discount to stay, and waving over her head "You're only 2 months into a 2 year contract. Ha ha ha." They wouldn't give her a reason to stay, so she gleefully left.

However... the more compelling issue is how amazingly inefficient and uncaring the combined AT&T and Apple services are at processing a stolen account -- and that based on countless similar reports on the internet, this is pandemic. I attribute this to both companies, because they'll both shift users across customer service lines saying "Oh.. maybe the other company can handle that".

Since AT&T/Apple offer no insurance policy ( aka a vested interest) on the phone, they really don't care about any sort of recovery or loss prevention. Stolen phone? They'll freeze the account / cancel the SIM card. That's it. No one can make new calls on the account, so they feel satisfied. I don't.

This is why the dialog is really: "iPhone Lost/Stolen? AT&T/Apple: Fuck You!" and not "iPhone Lost/Stolen? AT&T/Apple: Tough Shit!"

The AT&T/Apple policy just means "We'll do loss prevention on the service, but not on the hardware. Toss in a new SIM card and activate, and we'll be happy to take new money." AT&T/Apple offer no ability to kill or track a stolen phone's ability to activate - even though they easily could. Unlike other cellphones, the iPhone activation is handled through Apple and involves transmitting the serial number. While the SIM card can be replaced, and the software/firmware reset, it is far beyond the scope of the average user/thief to alter the serial number or circumvent it in the activation process. With a TRIVIAL amount of work, Apple & ATT can alert owners that a stolen iPhone has been re-activated, and alert the police with information on the new registrant. That new registrant is likely either: 1) someone who has had their credit card stolen, 2) someone who purchased the stolen phone off eBay/craigslist and can point police in the right direction, 3) the thief themselves. The phone could even be permanently blocked from activation through iTunes - the technical requirements are all in place; the only thing missing is the corporation caring.

After talking to both AT&T, and Apple... and having this escalated up the support chain several times, I learned that the only chance for us to make sure a new possessor of this phone is traced, is to keep calling Apple and seeing if someone has re-activated the serial number... and then calling the Police to have them investigate and get a subpoena for records on the new person. Brilliant. The policework is now outsourced to the victim.

I think this is extremely important, because it shows that AT&T/Apple really only care about getting the monthly bills - they don't care if someone is activating a lost/stolen phone; they don't care about putting a marker/flag on a phone's serial number to alert the police that a potentially stolen item has been activated; and they don't care that their customer has been victimized.

What annoys me most, is knowing that in order to put any common-sense theft-control practices like this in place, it would take less than a single day of programming.

With all that said, I've constructed the following guide.

What to do when your iPhone is stolen:

1- Call your iPhone. Hope the new person wants to return it.
2- Check your AT&T account online for activity. Calls post within hours, text-messages post within days. You might be able to find someone they called.
3- Call AT&T to suspend your account.
4- Go to AT&T and cancel your account. Pay the severance fee, hope to find a way to reclaim it later.
5- Go to another cellphone store. Sign a 1yr contract. You'll pay less for the same phone + contract severance than if you stayed with AT&T.
6- Go to the local Police precinct. File a report.
7- Eagerly await the day that execs & the marketing department at Apple/AT&T/various-other-cell carriers die, go to hell, and face karma.

One of my most favorite portraits. Ever.

I came across this in 1998, while researching a history project in the college library. This was an inside covers of a random book with no spine.

I didn't need the book, but I was so amazed with this portrait, that I checked it out just to scan the page. Unfortunately I lost the file that had the book title & roster of portrait subjects. However I can assure you of this fact: the hipster in the middle is none other than... John Maynard Keynes.

Post-Election Violence in Kenya

News reports of the recent violence in Kenya have troubled some friends and myself: ten years ago we spent the semester & then some in East Africa, and know many of the places now in headlines intimately. Aside from time in more serene places like Lamu & Zanzibar, I spent about two months in the 'inner city' areas of Mombasa with local artists - so some of the photos have hit me particularly hard.

Too many people have been quick to judge and dismiss this violence as typical of Africa -- which is unfortunately true. More unfortunately though, this isn't typical of Kenya, which is actually one of the most stable African nations.

In light of this, I feel the need to offer a quick overview...

When Europeans and Americans settled/conquered/enslaved Africa, we started to really screw them up. We strategically killed or exported (enslaved) their strongest and brightest people, drew up imaginary political lines that split some ethnic groups up and forced others to live together, and then used post-colonial rule & policies to exploit their resources as much as possible. The result? People live together who don't want to, in countries that were kept from going through their own industrial revolutions. It's a recipe for disaster.

People often say "Why didn't Africa develop?" The answer is simple: European and American nations did everything possible could to keep Africa from developing - you can't exploit the natural resources of a country if it is stable or self-industrialized.

When countries started to gain independence ( read: they put up enough of a fight that the European nations couldn't motivate forces or afford to occupy any longer ), they were left with arbitrary geographic boundaries that didn't really make sense. This is where 'tribes' come in.

The phrase "Tribes" in Africa doesn't mean the classical western view of little villages or nomadic peoples with a chief ( though they can be ). "Tribe" is more like a cultural group - if you can imagine New York City, think of the Italian population as one Tribe, the Chinese as another, each Latin group as another, etc. At some point there are indeed 'Tribal Leaders' - but for the most part, Tribes describe the ethnic groups. Pre-colonial times, these groups lived independent of one another... colonialism forced them together. This is very similar to the situation in Iraq with Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Kenyan politics is often marred by tribalism, as officials and agencies often create and enforce policies aimed at prioritizing one tribe or penalizing another. Before passing judgement, keep in mind that this is very much like a combination of American "Pork Barrel" politics, with the George Bush (II) style of trying to marry his evangelical beliefs with policy & law.

So why are people rioting? Until recently, Kenya has been one of the safest and most stable African countries. The population has just reached their boiling point with years of corruption and oppression. Despite being relatively safe and in a democracy, Kenyans weren't necessarily free. Among the various illegal activities in the country: taking a photograph of a state employee or property. In 1998 it was ( I'm not sure if the law still stands ) illegal to take a photograph of a Police Department/vehicle/officer, the national army, the ports or city government buildings, etc. While this law was often used for extortion and bribery , it was also often used quite seriously. I was once questioned with machine-guns pointed at me by a state official and 2 elite soldiers; they had seen me from an observation post on the top of a Government building 15 blocks away and noticed the camera on my neck and pointed in that direction.

FindMeOn, The HUGE Posting: Intellectual Property, Open Networks & Social Network Portability , Big Tech vs. The Little Guy , When The Little Guy Fights Back

Sections

Intro

Origins - Quick Recap

Starting Up

Being Different

What We Released

Intellectual Property Claims

Open Social Networks

Conclusion

Intro

FindMeOn has received press over the past week covering some Intellectual Property issues - both in regards to trademark law with our OpenSN ( Open Social Network ) product and speculation over strategies over our patent portfolio.

While many people have been cheering on the little guy, friends have forwarded me some comments from online journals where posters were less-than-favorable towards FindMeOn and our claims. I usually just ignore random ramblings on the internet - but a good friend reminded me that not everyone knows the whole story about FindMeOn: who we are, what we've been doing for the past few years - and most importantly, the backstory behind why we're now pursuing an aggressive Intellectual Property strategy.

I wanted to take a moment and address all these issues - because there's always a bit more to a story than just what people read in the press.

Origins - Quick Recap

FindMeOn started in Late 2005. It was originally the identity component of a PR tool I was working on called RoadSound.com. RoadSound let musicians, labels & venues collaborate on their news, release info, and tour dates... then sync that information onto their websites and social network profiles... and really just get up-to-date accurate and verified information into the hands of their fans. The system was a little too early for the market - everyone was still super-excited about MySpace and very much single-track-minded with the concept of there only being one social network, ever... so RoadSound was temporarily shelved to focus on what people liked the best - the notions of portability in content & relationships, and linking their websites together.

We spent the first few months of 2006 focusing on research surrounding social network portability: where the pain was, what needed to happen to alleviate it, and how could we address this without creating new problems.

Back then, portability wasn't a common or popular thought. In fact, it wasn't a thought at all. This is a full year before phrases "Social Graph" , "Open Networks" or even "Facebook API" even existed. The Social Networks themselves were very much walled gardens at the time - and people literally laughed in disbelief when we said change was on the horizon. In terms of market competition: the market didn't even exist - no one was crazy enough to risk venturing into this area.

We started listing the different requirements we would need to enable portability. Some things were apparent right from the start:
- We needed to push this as much towards open standards as possible. Portability means openness, not proprietary.
- User privacy needed to be a big issue. With too much portability, and by linking all of these sites together, we weren't just making it easier for people to push their identities, content and relations around -- we were making it easier for the aggregate of their information to be exploited.

A huge problem we encountered was that people who were working on open and commercial systems for login style identity projects were coming from the school of thought where you want to live your life openly. These developers and advocates made blogs, journals, and profile systems where people share every little detail about themselves. The products are great, and neat - if you're that kind of person , but not everyone wants everything connected.

Speaking for myself - I don't want my Executive-Level business contacts on LinkedIn being able to easily access my MySpace profile and photos. Like everyone else I have... lets call them different... personalities on each network. I compartmentalize my activities on these networks for a reason - I believe in isolation.

There is an amazing potential for exploiting Social Network Profiles to threaten a person's life and livelihood. Far too many stories have been in the press about people getting fired because of their MySpace or Facebook activity. Most people are getting smart enough not to share too-much information on a given network- but they're not smart about managing the linkage of these sites -- especially when 'experts' are advocating irresponsible technologies. If you go to someone's MySpace page and get their name & hometown, then you look at their genealogy site - and you have their mother's maiden name and father's middle name, you look at their dog profile site - and it mentions their first pet's name , their LinkedIn has employment history... and you see their flickr page - which it has an exterior shot of their house in high-res where you can see the number & street. By linking a few sites together, we now have all of the challenge answers to default questions the banking & credit industry uses. This does sound like an extreme case - but this is the kind of and quality of information that people are publicly sharing right now. Privacy is important.

Starting Up

When you embark on a startup you base it on a thesis , something like: "There is value/opportunity in ____ " , "The market is likely to shift to ______". In 2005 I came up with our core theses:
-Social networks and their usage are proliferating - there will be a need & opportunity to integrate them.
-People are not making privacy an issue right now, but market activity shows direction in that for the future.
-Social network advertising performance is most-likely the result of bad optimization strategies. The aggregate of information on multiple networks is a promising solution to this problem.

At the time I formulated these notions - and really until just about 6 months ago - people only cared about MySpace and Facebook, with a tiny bit of LinkedIn. Niche-networks and 'application' style networks/sites were largely irrelevant to common users. Investors ( Angels & VCs ) didn't believe anything was viable unless it was 100% compatible with the Top-Tier networks - walking into a room and saying that you want to federate identity & content streams between small/fledgling networks, and push them onto the big networks was met with disdain. And laughter. Today that's the hot new topic.

We also pushed privacy - noting that you don't necessarily place the same value on your MySpace and LinkedIn friends, and you might want to both insulate them from one another, and insulate the information they see about you on each network. Again, people laughed and called it unnecessary... and now that is the norm.

Advertising on Social Networks has been a huge joke too. CPM buys on blogs and content sites can easily fetch $10 - $30 ; social network performance is miserable.
In May 2006, MySpace was averaging 10c a CPM ( to their blame too - their clickrate was likely influenced by so many intermediary ad-filled pages on simple actions ). Around the same time, Facebook was claiming $4 CPMs based on their interior targeting engines. You can find all those numbers easily on yahoo. Current numbers are a little tricky - everyone is guarding their averages and performance. I've personally seen Facebook AdBuys as low as .64c , and I've heard reliable stories of them costing $12. I also know of people spending $1.50 per CPM on MySpace's system. In any event, Social Network CPMs are abysmal. Walking into a room and saying "I have the solution" is not easy to meet without a lot of skepticism. Today there are a few dozen companies working on optimizing Social Network Advertising - most started their endeavors within the past 6-10 months.

The context that I'm laying out right now is a simple backstory - we made a couple of predictions in 2005/2006 when we developed & patented the system. Most startups fail because they were wrong on a thesis or two - we were right on every assumption, we just needed to wait the market out. In the words of a VC I recently spoke with: "It looks like you were early and
right on a lot of the key questions." In the words of another: "Wow, you were way ahead of the curve".

Being Different

When FindMeOn finally launched after months of development, the only other website addressing internet identity was ClaimID (which allows people to centralize their content & identities onto a single web resource). We thought ClaimID had an awesome idea - but not without its own drawbacks and limits regarding personal privacy. A group in a related arena was a neat startup called Spokeo - which offers an interface to access content feeds from different social networks. There were systems like Microsoft Passports and SXIP that were focused on identity from an interactive (login/authentication) perspective - but nothing that addressed the Social Networking sector in terms of relations or content.

As a quick note: both ClaimID and Spokeo (very much like FindMeOn) make amazing products that are wholly original and have unfortunately been the model for countless derivatives. If you ever need services like their offerings , I *highly* recommend using both systems above their competitors. Their teams are powered by the talent that was first to see & address the needs and values in their markets, and the experience of teams that have been developing marketing products years ahead of the competition.

A few months after we launched, identity-based websites were the hot new startup - and the market started to overcrowd. An entire crop of firms would tout "meta networks", but really just created a new private network where they imported content from other websites to jump-start their own, then invited all your friends to join - it wasn't creating a meta-layer, it was creating a new walled garden with yet-another-identity. Increasingly, startups took to model themselves after ClaimID or Spokeo, and started to run into trouble: most users didn't want/care about those services, and they were annoying networks by stealing eyes ( pageviews == ad impressions == only revenue stream ). FindMeOn was fundamentally different ( we think ), because the system was designed as an overlay for linkage. We wanted to over everything we could in the widget, without annoying networks , and create the linkage between a user's websites - not ours. We didn't want to pull people onto a new social network, or access existing ones through a management interface we built - we just wanted to help people link and manage their own, porting content and friendships between them all. We were about the user - not ourselves - and sought to be network positive/friendly , not antagonistic. People kept using the term "aggregator" - and we'd yell. We weren't an aggregator, we were a syndicator and a platform . We didn't lie to people and say "We integrate all your networks [by getting your friends on existing networks to join ours]" - we were trying to make using existing networks more portable.

What FindMeOn Released

Ultimately, we ended up having to release and advocate our own open standards, because of a disagreement with the approach/values the Open Source groups prized first.
- A lot of people were pushing for a universal identifier approach to identity. People are now starting to realize this causes significant privacy issues, and is an awful approach.
- Standards Groups were focused on the academic approaches to portability - making new profiles map into antiquated formats.

So we came up with two standards to handle two tasks.

findmeon - node standard for open identity
A way to create highly secure and publicly verifiable 'webrings' of personal sites and information; merges ideas from cryptographic document signing standards with Web2.0 discovery standards embed techniques to ensure anonymity.
OpenSN ( Open Social Network )
We researched several hundred 'profile' oriented websites and applications, and started standardizing profiles to a common format; - OpenSN acts very much like a microformat, and can be output as machine readable text - more importantly, it was designed as an intermediary format... a babelfish or rosetta stone.. almost any existing social network profile can be rewritten in opensn, and once in opensn can be mapped to any other profile. this means that you can quickly encode the entirety of existing profiles into the format. it works for the internet today.
On our machines right now, OpenSN is handling the serialization and analysis of 50MM+ online profiles across 30 networks. It's compatible with 250+ profile formats right now -- but our spiders don't have network parsers for the rest.

After too-long in development, the "Find Me On" page on RoadSound became a full blown Platform for managing & syndicating identities, relations and content. It was private beta in August 2006, and public in October. The .org simultaneously went up with specifications and open code.

The system did a bunch of things in August/October that were new and pretty neat at the time
-you could enter your online profiles & build badges with per-network controls
-badges had all your info ,and could be placed on sites like myspace - or people could build their own through our API
-we had this thing called shouts , which was microblogging with per-network controls. kind of like twitter for the paranoid - we actually launched right when twitter did too, and people weren't quite their paranoid yet, so they chose the clearly more awesome-to-use product
-there was profile management, which let us control which networks or applications could see what portions of profiles you managed.
-there was site-metrics , which let us track how people visited your websites , and how they travelled from one of your profiles to another
-and finally , there was a contact management system - which let you enter/edit information in XFN , or import existing contacts from other services
-when contacts were imported, we didn't invite someone to join our network like other groups did - we just started to track the relationship as a network native & contextualized one

The reason why I'm going through all this is simple:
-for a small company - we pulled off a lot
-and we had that all running for the public in October of 06, and started the patent procedure in january 07
-we started having direct competition on some of these features in February of 07 - by companies that literally had 30x our assets
-towards the summer of 07, direct competition started across the board - by companies that had 100x our assets

If you're a small firm, competition like that almost means death.
We were first, we were right, and we were still ahead - but we couldn't compete on the consumer side - but to be honest, we really didn't want to - which is why we've stuck around. If you ask any industry analyst - not a biased CEO or evangelical pundit - but someone who looks at this sector for investment they'll tell you the same thing I'm about to say: consumers aren't ready for an identity product yet, and won't be for another 2 years.

Instead of competing against better financed people in a market that didn't exist - we focused on institutional applications - working with brands and non-profits to better manage their supporters. We remained eager to get back to the consumer side - and once the market would be ready, we had the platform designed and the patents filed.

Intellectual Property Claims

The FindMeOn system was designed as a switchboard - connecting different websites & identities together , and allowing configurable user filters: "Let Facebook see MySpace", "LinkedIn can know my employment history, Friendster and these messageboards can not", "These messages/postings can be shown on Bebo and Last.fm , don't show them to Flickr". We also imported & tracked online friendships in network-native formats, and correlated them together based on privacy controls.

FindMeOn was the first consumer website to pioneer :
- Platform based SNS identity & content customization/switchboard services through Widgets & API
- Privacy-Oriented identity services
- SNS Contact-import, management, and cross-site mapping services

We had these services built and available for use by the general public in mid-2006. We ended up being in beta during the same time, and launched publicly the same day as Twitter - they had pretty microblogging + sms ; we had boxy microblogging with per-network controls. Obviously they got a lot more coverage and users than us - they deserved it. They had a slick consumer product designed for "The Now" - we had prototype systems that even large corps would have trouble advocating versions of a full year later.

In January 2007 we filed our first patent applications that cover the functionality of these products, and additional systems & methods relating to "People Search" functionality and the application of cross-site metadata to generate highly customized content & advertising. To the best of our knowledge and research, we were the first to develop, market, and seek US Patent protections on these products; and have seemingly done so before our major competitors in the consumer marketplace even entered the concept phase for their products.

Since our initial launch, FindMeOn has seen many companies launch competing services that offer technologies that overlap with claims in our pending patent applications, mostly with ones originally filed in a 30-JAN-2007 document ( 60887253 , "System and Method for Indexing , Correlating , Managing , Referencing and Syndicating Identities and Relationships Across Systems"). This is a partial listing of competing technologies that have launched after our products were in production and patent applications were filed with the USPTO.

- In February of 2007, Wink.com relaunched. Wink originally launched as a "people-enhanced" search engine [1] that was often compared to Digg, and started a restructure in November 2006 into people-search when their business plan encountered too many problems [2]. In February of of 2007, Wink started to compete directly with FindMeOn by launching a new widget + API platform that were visually and functionally similar to the FindMeOn system, however with a lack of the usage-tracking and privacy elements that FindMeOn offered [3]

- In July 2007, TechCrunch reported on an upcoming Plaxo.com development called the Pulse network [1]. According to a Plaxo blog posting by Pete Curley, the Pulse Product Manager: "The version of Pulse you see today is a culmination of about 2 months of work from conception to launch (written on top of the totally revamped Plaxo infrastructure, Plaxo 3.0 that we worked so hard on for the last year) - which means that the Pulse framework was concepted in June 2007 [2]. Plaxo and Pulse do a lot of things, but we believe some of those are things FindMeOn did first and sought patent protection on. Pulse integrates accounts and relationships across social networks, and adds a user-defined privacy layer on top of them. FindMeOn's public system in 2006 and pending patent claims cover the following: i. import profiles & relations from external social network accounts, ii. store relations in network native formats (keeps a network aspect to them), iii. allow users to expose accounts and account attributes to specific members or 'groups' of members, iv. associate multiple contact-methods of another individuals into a single individual.

- In August 2007, Brad Fitzpatrick of OpenID & LiveJournal announced a 'Social Networking Manifesto'. The system he described is substantially similar to the system FindMeOn had operational 12 months earlier. The second Brad's project became public knowledge, we reached out to him in hopes of constructively working together. Brad continually ignored us, moved over to Google, and public proof of us reaching out to him just kind of.. disappeared. We should have made this a huge press issue in Sept/Oct but were too busy with internal company stuff. I've included the info below , along with all the requisite links/proofs.

- In October 2007 Google announced their OpenSocial initiative. FindMeOn has no issue with the technology OpenSocial currently offers - however we've less-than-thrilled with the name Google has chosen. It has caused an unfortunate amount of confusion with our OpenSN (Open Social Network) product, and I really wish it wouldn't.
Many experts have been claiming that Google's OpenSocial initiative is an attempt to break the growing Facebook stronghold. Given Google's core revenue stream being deeply rooted in online advertising, and the data/analysis the OpenSocial initiative affords, we believe there is strong potential for overlap between future Google systems in this area and the content customization and advertising optimization system thats FindMeOn developed and has filed USPTO patent protections for.

We recently released a whitepaper detailing one aventue of a potential for overlap [1], which essentially comes from the use of an identity or other cross-network system like FindMeOn's to amplify social-network-profiles against one another in an effort to better create customized content.

To the best of our knowledge (via research on blogs & 'employer' info on LinkedIn and Facebook), Google's main hirings in Open Social & related endeavors occurred long after we filed for USPTO protection.

- In October 2007 it was leaked that at AdTech MySpace would release a HyperTargeting system based on Advanced user demographics , and Facebook was launching a SocialAds system to offer the demographic targeting of their internal profile based system to external websites. There is a potential for overlap between technologies in that these platforms and claims contained in our USPTO filings in January and August 2007. RevenueScience, BlueLithium, and AggregateKnowledge have been developing heavily in this area, so its really going to be a crapshoot in 3 years as to 'is there overlap?', 'who-did-what-first?', and 'who-is-doing-what-now?'.

- In October 2007 I started hearing from local startups that they were approached by a new midwest startup that had a pitch almost identical to our May Meetup presentation[1][2]. I thought people were crazy, because when I last saw their site in August, that company was pitching a near clone of Spokeo, with some wrappers for mainstream websites. When i looked on their corporate blog and in press coverage, they indeed were a Spokeo derivative during launch and their early career... but when the 'Social Network Manifesto' came out, they sought a new business model. In mid-September, the firm started to blog about a system very similar to ours.

Please note that these comments are in reference to pending patent claims. FindMeOn does not have any patent or protections currently awarded by the USPTO, and the development timelines of competitive products have been sourced from public blog postings and social network employment info. These other companies may have designed , built, and sought IP protection before FindMeOn -- and countless other companies may be actively developing & seeking IP protection in these realms as well. Claims may also be rejected by the USPTO on FindMeOn's applications for any number of grounds. However the timeline of facts strongly suggests that we were far ahead in concept, execution, and intellectual property protection filings and priority dates.

To clarify some points in terms of IP ad Social Network Portability systems - once awarded, we have no plans to enforce IP claims on the end-user data portability aspect of our technologies. What we will enforce rights on are the 'advanced' server side technologies: account and asset management/routing ; contact/relationship management, organization, and grouping ; corollary analytics tools & systems ; cross-site friend management, connection chaining , and search ; and a bunch other stuff not worth mentioning now. We're not claiming IP on porting your profile , relations, or content from one network to another -- but we will be protecting the privacy protocols we developed, the ability of the backend server to automatically resolve "Geoff on MySpace" with "Geoff on Facebook" without the user providing that resolution ( or external-networks being queried for the same email address as the identifier ), and being able to say "Show me friends within N degrees of separation across these networks that match this criteria".

The "Open Social Networks" Situation

* UPDATE * - 2008.03.19
Google/Livejournal's Brad Fitzpatrick and FindMeOn CEO Jonathan Vanasco were finally able to talk.
Mr. Fitzpatrick assured us that any failed responses to communicate were unintentional due to an overload of correspondence, and that the disappearing comment was due to an automated moderation system. Unfortunately it took 7 months for this conversation to happen - and with repeated attempts to connect not responded to, FindMeOn had to assume the worst.

The original text of this section appears below.

---

In August 2007, Marc Canter from PeopleAggregator/BroadbandMechanics suggested there was a "behind the scenes approach that Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordan seem to be taking in discussing 'social network portability'" [1]. This was in reference to a rumor in Valleywag [2] about what became the upcoming Brad Fitzpatrick 'manfesto'.

Well Marc, I couldn't agree with you any more.

When Brad's Manifesto 1] was released in August 2007, I couldn't help but notice a large amount of similarity between his reasoning to what we had published on our website and advocated publicly for a year by then [2] and spoke about at NYC Tech Events [3]. There was a clear similarity & overlap between his 'groundbreaking' new ideas, and the systems & methods that we had operational for the general public for about a year, and had filed patent applications on months earlier. There a particularly strong similarity between his manifesto and what I had presented at the May NYC Web 2.0 Meetup [1][2] I was pretty *amazed* by this - with all the resistance we were hitting, I didn't think the market was going to move in this direction so fast... The market was clearly shifting now though - and much faster than I expected... with a much better response than I expected too.

We were obviously very excited by this, and saw a lot of overlap and potential for synergy between our efforts, so I reached out to Brad via email hoping to talk/collaborate. I didn't get a response.

Email can be weird, so I signed up for LiveJournal - to post Brad a message/comment on the 'official' manifesto thread saying that there was a lot of overlap between our efforts, and we should talk to push things forward. I didn't get a response.
Email can be weird, and he's a busy guy running LiveJournal, so I sent Brad another email from a different account, in case it was a mail issue. Again, I didn't get a response.

I started to sense a pattern.

I asked just-about every open source developer I knew if they knew Brad, and could broker an intro -- with the traction and coverage his manifesto was getting, and the increasing overlap, I really had to talk to him. Unfortunately, we travel in different Perl circles, and no one knew him. When an offer to make personal intro finally came through several weeks later, the situation had already escalated past where we had to start meeting with lawyers to discuss options.

Then Brad wound up at Google pushing for their version of Social Network Portability, and the comment on his LiveJournal - just kind of disappeared...

There are a lot of reasons why this could have happened - it could be from a user or computer accident, a server/migration hiccup, culled for his believed relevance to the topic at hand, deleted on purpose to be able to claim plausible deniability of our existence or attempts to reach him , or any other random reason. I don't really care why it disappeared , and won't speculate on the reasons or motivations. What does matter, and what I do care about, is that the public knows that FindMeOn and myself went above and beyond trying to contact him and work together on this - and our efforts were fruitless. I want it to be known that we're not "going after the big guys" - we've been trying to work with them since day one. Literally.

Just to clarify and put context on this: This is the same Brad Fitzpatrick who founded LiveJournal, and then left to become the icon of Google's Social Networking efforts and their Open Social initiative.

This is the URL to comments for Brad's Manifesto (search for findmeon to *not* find it):
http://brad.livejournal.com/2338553.html

This is the URL to the direct comment:
http://brad.livejournal.com/2338553.html?thread=14034425#t14034425

Unless the comment has been made magically visible already, you'll note that the in-stream comment does not appear, and that the direct url is blank.
The URL was live in August, and *I think* September/October. When I checked it on Friday to send to a reporter who asked about some Trademark & Patent issues, to show that we did try to work with them, it was dead -- and it remained dead on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It appears in no recent Yahoo , MSN, or other search engine caches.

This is the text of the comment in question:

From: 2xlp
Date: 2007-08-18 12:34 pm (local)
Subject: Welcome to the club

Nice to see you joining in on this, Brad.

Its crazy to see how crowded this space is getting -- we've been working to address this exact problem on FindMeOn.com since early 2006. Back then, it was pretty much ClaimID and us. Now there are 30+ options?

Anyways, the main difference between our approach and yours is that we've been focusing on the idea of a "lens" of privacy at each network. We love OpenID, but are scared to death of it-- the problem we encountered was with the misuse of OpenID being an be-all solution. With everything resolves to the same endpoint, your work and social lives start to overlap -- especially when you don't want them to. Our solution was to use OpenID as a login mechanism... but use abstracted endpoints ( along with digital sigs for fallback verification ).

Simplest put -- I want to port my friends and profiles around, but I don't want VCs I'm talking with to see drunken photos of me at a Skeeball match.

With that in mind, we launched our system last August ( our 1 yr bday was 2 weeks ago! ) which would allow people to import friends and to cross-site relationship derivation -- but control visibility on a very granular level.

We've got a really lengthy FAQ section that often reads much like your manifesto. It was trimmed down last October, I'd be glad to send you some of the old evangelical copy for review.

When it got to the point of dealing with all the different profiles, we tried using a ton of existing standards... but after surveying 300+ proprietary and open profile formats, we just went with an intermediary that we call OpenSN. OpenSN just wraps every damn field we've run into, so we can quickly convert a myspace profile to OpenSN, then that OpenSN doc to anything else we support under the sun.

We released our identity system as an Open Standard in september at findmeon.org

And we released our profile format as an Open Standard in october - thats at OpenSN.org

If any of that interests you and you want to talk more, please get in touch -- http://findmeon.com/user/jvanasco

I think that's a pretty friendly tone for an outreach, especially one sandwiched between "We need to talk" emails.

As you can see - depending on my login status, the comment is either there or not.

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If Brad felt like he had to be quiet about this, and not talk because of Patent and IP issues - then he could have said so multiple times. We've had to turn down or put-a-hold on a few partnerships ourselves because of IP issues. We've *always* maintained that the correct way to handle that is to be upfront with people and say "We can't talk. I'd like to, but there is the potential for some IP issues, and we can't risk a technical conversation or overview right now." We didn't get a decline like that from Brad - we got silence. I don't think that response is respectable in any way. We tried to be nice, we tried to reach out, we tried to avoid problems before they started. Brad - and possibly Google - didn't feel the same way... thats too bad -- but we're not taking the blame for that, and we didn't create what is likely to be a big painful IP headache. We tried to avoid it -- literally on the first day.

We're not some crazed patent troll or people looking to abuse or game the system. We invested two years of our time and money to develop technologies in this arena - years before anyone else bothered - and mandated that there was utility , value and need for them when people said "no - that area is not worth it".

We've never been secretive about anything - last October we started approaching every single open standards group asking for inclusion. We've presented our stuff at technology events whenever we could. We even stood on standby to present the system at the bigger NYC Tech Meetup last April ( I was bumped by James from HotOrNot talking about his love for Facebook, which left me half mad and half complacent - he helped some good friends get their company off the ground a while back ). When this started getting all out of control, we started publishing all of our presentations [1] - we've been fully transparent on all these issues.

As the recap:
- Brad Fitzpatrick wrote his manifesto
- FindMeOn immediately read it and said "Lets Talk! We've been doing this for a year!" (3x)
- Brad ignored our existence
- Brad moved to Google and pushed on with his system, knowing we were out there & that there could be IP issues
- Public comments of us saying "Let's talk!" mysteriously vanish from LiveJournal ( which Brad founded )
- FindMeOn starts an aggressive IP strategy

We should have made a BIG PR mess of this in Sept/Oct/Nov - but we were busy with our own business, and my partners convinced me that this would be irrelevant. That very much changed when we got a good look at what is going on behind OpenSocial.

In an extreme, and ridiculous scenario, the person who is the now the icon of Social Network Portability at Google has known about us since before he entered the role, hasn't cared to return our outreaches, and is pushing away at his ( and Google's ) own agenda - which we believe encompasses claims in patents that we've filed.

So that is the situation. Just a few months ago we were the energetic guys reaching out to others and trying to work together - but being ignored. We're not doing that anymore. Now its time for other people to do the reach outs.

Conclusion

Why am I saying all of this now? In regards to our IP situation and current talks/negotiations with lawyers/IP Holding Groups, people are often very quick to say "Wait- you're looking to be the next NTP ?" and talk about how awful patents and trademarks are, and how uncool that all is. People say "You're becoming a troll, because you can't compete legitimately." Personally, I'm tired of hearing that.

From day one, we've been trying to avoid IP problems like this from ever happening. It's really upsetting - personally - to hear people suggest otherwise.

We're not coming out of nowhere and saying "Ha ha ha! we own this IP". We tried to avoid every issue that we could as they arose. Over the past year, we reached out to countless corporations trying to work with them - and not in a threatening "We have patents!" way , but with the dialog "We've been doing this for 2 years - before there was a market. Our technology & research will put you ahead. Our patent filings will ensure it." People weren't interested. We approached open source groups - "Hey, there's a lot of similarities -- lets talk" - they ignored us. We wrote too many scene-blogs and journalists saying "We enjoyed your coverage of ____, however you might not be aware that we released a nearly identical service X months ago". We didn't get the coverage. Is that a troll? Are we being evil? Patent Trolls enforce rights in opportunistic fashion - often on patents they never wanted to commercialize. We tried to commercialize - we built a product long before the market was ready , and when the market caught up -- derivative products were everywhere. In the meantime, we'd been speaking, advocating, releasing open source projects. Is that trollish too?

There are such things as patent trolls- they buy up Intellectual Property from a failed company, and never intend to commercialize it - they just want to litigate , license and extort. We're not that group. We're the little startup that the big-guys decided to compete against, and tried to push under. A few years ago, big-tech corps would purchase startups like crazy. Today, they have internal labs to compete against the startup sector , and use market forces to push competitors with better technology out of business.

Of course we can't compete on products right now. As a self-financed startup , we obviously don't have the resources to compete against billion-dollar companies for users - especially when the products and names are nearly identical. Try raising financing when you list our direct competitors - its not very easy. Is it illegitimate to use established Trademark and Patent law to ensure fair business practices? I'd like to think not.

Like a lot of other startups, we're a small company-- seeded by ourselves, our friends and our family. I quit my job to work on this fulltime in 2005, and haven't had income since... working 100+ hours a week and missing every holiday. No one involved with FindMeOn, aside from contractors, has ever drawn income from the venture - and we've had a handful of people working on this fulltime , plus lawyers, advisors, and multiple consultants for Legal, Technical, and Non-Profit relations. We have rent to pay, insurance to cover, food to buy. We have families, and one of us is expecting a child. Is it wrong to say "We did the a lot of the early work in several sectors and have been up-front about it all; Others have created derivative works either based on our technologies, or using systems & methods we pioneered. We will be legally entitled to a return on our investments through Patent rights - and we are going to pursue that."

People have been quick to comment "Patents are evil". I think they're good... actually, I'd say they're pretty great. Patent abuse is evil. Patents ensure that people who take a risk: spend time and money, toil with research & development... and invent something bold/new have the ability to compete with large and established firms. If we abolish patents, we might as well abolish the concept of entrepreneurship or innovation - the reward of protection is what mitigates the risk for individuals to take a chance and innovate something new. A lack of these protections just says "let the big companies make new products. screw the little guy - because large firms have free reign to clone small entrepreneurs, and the PR budgets to blast them out of the water". We're not talking about a technicality play -- as a small firm we had designed, built and filed patents on systems *extremely* similar to ( and in some sections identical to ) applications designed 6-18 months later by 'leading' companies and name-brand/recognized experts in these fields. They have fancy User Interfaces & Public Relations Budgets - we don't. We have working systems, the scope of our claims, a timeline advantage and the combination of our competitors intelligence and their consumer response -- which have made a great argument for us passing the dreaded new 'non-obviousness to a seasoned professional' test at the USPTO.

Critics have said "You don't have many users or traffic." We stopped working on consumer internet endeavors in Feb 2007 - there was too much competition in the arena, other groups had bigger budgets, and consumer activity was proving a prediction we had made - consumer Identity solutions are not going to viable until 2010, and networks aren't ready for identity portability. Analysts in the space agree. Consumers don't 'get it' yet, and they won't need it for a while, but eventually they will... and traction/development is all moving in the direction we claimed it would. With systems in production and patents filed, we started to focus on B2B applications: institutional services , platform integrations, and analytics.

Patent opponents often use the line "Patents strategies cost too much. Did you read that report where companies spend more on patent prosecution and litigation than they make". Sure - I read that report. I often reply "Did you read that report though , and not just skim the blogging about it ?" Because its pretty clear that the problem isn't in patents altogether, but mindless legal departments and MBAs who have no IP strategy other than 'patent everything'. You're supposed to patent what you need to strategically protect, not every thought you have. When FindMeOn launched, the system had about 16 original/inventive subsystems/daemons/tasks/etc - we applied for patent protections on 5 of them.

From Day One, FindMeOn hasn't said "Don't Be Evil"; we've said "Let's Be Good". We pushed privacy and responsibility when people were careless with information sharing. We held back commercial site developments to work on OpenSource and OpenStandards projects, and like countless others have continually released our custom modules & internal patches to open source projects. Until Patents & Trademarks became an issue, and we had to suspend active development, we were working with some of the most amazing non-profit causes in the country to develop & gift custom supporter management & networking products for them. Our management team's experience is in non-profits, progressive media, and green technology. We didn't set out to sell cigarettes to kids, or create new diversions to a bland workday - we wanted to fundamentally change the way people interact with one another - to empower the groups that are actively helping make the world. When the market drastically shifted this Fall, investors felt uneasy about our competing against companies with billions of dollars in the bank ( and rightfully so ). They're particularly scared of the impact that backing a little group with IP claims can have on negotiations across their other holdings and investments. Our lawyers have been the same way - they all say "You're in the right... but we can't represent you on this matter - we can't go file ___ that opposes the interests of ___, ___, or ___ ; we can't handle a c&d/litigation issue because it could jeopardize our working relations with ____ ; we can't handle financing/etc because of ____. We're now up to 6 law firms and still growing... constantly having to find new counsel for certain tasks. Do you have any idea how insane it is to be working with 6 law firms at once? We should only have 1!

With all that being said... FindMeOn is unfortunately likely to become an entity focused on IP litigation and licensing. We're trying hard to avoid that, and would love to - but this isn't a decision that we're making of our own choice. We would have sold for pennies to any of the major corps we tried to work with months ago, but now competitors have developed the market for our technologies and pending patents. We get much better treatment from IP Groups than corporations or investors. Would I like to still have a company? Yes. Are there projects & systems that I really want us to build? Of course. But we're now in the situation where there is far too much competition for the startup growth we want, we have the earliest IP claims in this area, and we are 100% convinced that these pending claims will clear. If the consumer market keeps following the current patterns, and competitors start building the applications and functions we expect them to, the revenue potential of our patent portfolio alone is nothing short of substantial.

We're shifting gears and doing what we should have been doing from the start - instead of running around America as the meager startup begging "We'd like to work with you... please..." we're doing a complete 180. Our new message is simple and clear: "This is FindMeOn, these are our IP assets, and you should be working with us. We were early, we were right, and we weren't stupid - we filed patents on everything long before others even thought about working in this space. We know the market better than anyone else. You can either work with us now, or regret not making the right decision tomorrow." We're not making phonecalls anymore, we're taking them. We tried to avoid headaches for other people- now its their job to avoid headaches for us. The facts, filings, timeline, and the Intellectual Property Law are on our side. Most importantly, karma is on our side.

We're pushing for the new mantra in technology - don't fuck with the tiny startup. We're doing this for us, and for every other group we've met, who were muscled out or pushed under by the big guys who spend more on PR than they spend on operations.

With all that said: I went to one of the best undergrads in the world; most of my friends are now: doctors saving lives, lawyers defending the innocent, career non-profit workers, scientists searching for cures or how to get people to the moon, journalists reporting on international injustices... and sometimes we all forget there's a war going on right now. I ran into an old friend two years ago at our reunion. He was in-between two tours of Fallujah -- and spending his spare time in-between getting shot-at and carrying dead bodies as active blog/op-ed/ed-let writer on military reform from the inside. Even my Skeeball league friends are Post-Doc Immunology Researchers... All of these people are taking their education and skills to help leave the world just a little better than when they came into it. I know that I am -- and I'd like to think that the world is -- capable at-the-least of a little bit more than sending a virtual beer to a friend across social networks. Honestly - what are we all doing? This whole industry is increasingly petty & egoistical - the open source groups are functioning almost like the 'cool kids' lunch table in a cliched high school movie, the big-corps are simply ruthless and soulless, and even a lot of entrepreneurs will joke "Thats a great idea! Almost good enough for me to steal!" We're better than this. Aren't we? At least I am.

----

Clarification: Launch Dates
FindMeOn.com launched as friends only in August 2006, invite-only in September 2006, and public/open registration in October 2006. In talking those dates often get confused, I'm sorry for that. Legally we're bound to the August 2006 date as 'first public disclosure', and often use that date; however its arrogant to talk about a 'secret' thing not open to the general public, so I often use October. The 'legal' and 'social' definitions of public are different - and I apologize for confusion I cause when jumping between terms. FindMeOn started as a component of another project I was working on in 2005 while doing business as SyndiClick- RoadSound.com. RoadSound handled internal workflow efficiency for the PR/Music industry, and would create portable syndicated content streams for Artists/Labels/Venues to instantly update their own websites and multiple-social-network-profiles. In early 2006, RoadSound was shelved and FindMeOn split out and expanded - FindMeOn had a more immediate market opportunity.

[re] CNET - Start-up to Google: OpenSocial's too close to our name

Caroline @ CNET contacted me to confirm a story she heard through common friends of legal issues we've been analyzing over @ FindMeOn in regards to Google's OpenSocial initiative.

Link: http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9839997-36.html?tag=more

Yes, it's true. FindMeOn really doesn't like the fact that Google named their product so similarly to ours, and we would prefer if they changed it.

You can read the official press release shortly on findmeon's official blog.:

Link: http://blog.findmeon.com/

Just to personally clarify some points on this matter that people have asked me over the past few days.

Q. Are you really serious about this?

A. Yes. This is a serious and legitimate trademark issue, that has already affected our business in a negative manner.

Q. What exactly is OpenSN? I thought your company is FindMeOn.

A. OpenSN (Open Social Network) is a set of standards & software that FindMeOn maintains & distributes to enable Social Network Portability; we've been distributing products under this name to the general public, and actively advocating them at Technology Conferences since October 2006. findmeon.org / opensn.org have operated as a repository of the OpenSN specification , and database code for people to implement.

Once upon a time... not too long ago... Social Networks were walled gardens and all very different. OpenSN was designed to standardize social network , web application , blog , dating , etc. profiles into a common format. Existing standards like foaf and hCard were unsuitable to our needs - they were concerned with 'contact' style information and did not support common profile fields (interests, work histories, etc). We mapped out several hundred Social Network profiles, figured out the base commonalities, and created OpenSN to address the overlap and uniqueness of them all. Most SocialNetwork / Profile websites and Open Source projects can translate their entire profile data into the OpenSN format - which can then be serialized to disk or transferred to another SocialNetwork/Application -- which can use a reverse mapping of their fields to access the data in their native format. Simplest put- OpenSN was designed to be a babelfish for Social Network profiles.

Q. I thought trademark registration was necessary for protection.

A. Unlike Patents which are 'awarded', Trademarks can be formally registered -- but that is not necessary for protection under US law. You can yahoo the "Lanham Act" for more information on US Trademark law - it still pretty-much stands as the definitive bible for trademark law. Simple usage of a term in interstate commerce grants common-law trademark status and rights - and that why there is a difference between a "registered" trademark (circle with an R) and a general trademark (superscript TM).

Q. Are you really worried about confusion between the products?

A. Yes: we have already been experiencing it, and it has been to the detriment of the firm. Since the release of OpenSN, people have continually confused OpenSN with OpenSocial. At NYC technology events, people often say "Oh, thats the Google thing, right?!" When speaking with investors and clients, we often hear "OpenSN, is that the Google product? Are you the guys they bought?" The names of the two products are confusingly similar, and have been the cause of constant confusion. Being a startup is hard enough; being a startup where people constantly confuse your product with a new one from a billion dollar competitor is even harder.

Imagine this conversation, I have it nearly every day:

Random: What does FindMeOn do?
FMO: We created the first technology to port and sync identity information across the internet through Widgets and APIs, and foster social network portability through open standards we call "OpenSN - Open Social Network"
Random: Oh cool! Google just bought you, right?
FMO: No. That's Google's OpenSocial. It's like Widgets & APIs. Too.
Random: They kinda sound the same.
FMO: Yeah... I know... We've been using our name for about a year before them. Its becoming an issue.
Random: I'm not surprised.

Q. The article mentions foreign use and other companies using similar terms. Doesn't that diminish your rights?

A. No. Foreign and 'other' use are largely irrelevant to US Trademark law. US Trademark law generally serves protect fair business practices within a given arena. That being said, under US Trademark law, even national use of identical or similar marks are generally irrelevant when names are in a different realm of business. For example: there is a car company and modeling agency both called Ford - they both operate in different arenas of business, and are not likely to be confused with each other. We believe that "OpenSocial" is confusingly similar to "OpenSN" - and it is not only in our industry (internet goods and services) but for a very similar product. If you created a search engine today, would you call it "GooglySearch" or "Gaggle"?. We think Google could have chosen many other names, and wish they had.

On a side-note: unless you're a mega-corp or specifically targeting a foreign market, you generally don't want to bother with overseas patent or trademark protection - you're rarely going to have the ability to litigate/enforce your rights. You're much better off taking the money you would have spent on securing those rights and investing them into your company. Even better: how about making a charitable deduction to a worthwhile non-profit, so you can help make a difference in the world. Can I suggest the Patrick O'Brien Foundation?

Q. Are you just going after the big tech player?

A. Not at all.

Ms. McCarthy stated in her article- "If the story sounds familiar, that's because it is: many an obscure start-up has gone after a big tech player over some technology or idea that it sees as a bit too familiar." Unfortunately she seems to forget about another all-to familiar story: when a big tech player decides to quickly enter a space and develop its own systems to directly compete with smaller firms.

Until recently, it was common for large tech companies to acquire startups for users or technology. Since around 2004, acquisition and funding for consumer internet ventures have been based solely on userbase numbers ; i.e.: attention/audience is purchased, not innovation. That's why acquisition prices and market valuation are now almost only spoken of in terms of "Cost-Per-User".

Recent giant-staff upgrades from IPO cash & profitability , and rapid-development frameworks have made it cheaper & easier for large corporations to embrace a 'Build Your Own' approach to technology. Tech giants are increasingly choosing this route using internal incubation services to compete with startups in certain sectors: Yahoo has Brickhouse, Google has Labs, recently Facebook has been alleged to make 'official' apps based on 3rd party platform development.

Q. The article mentioned Patent Holding Groups - what does that have to do with this trademark issue ?

A. Absolutely nothing. Because of recent market activity, FindMeOn is pursuing an aggressive Intellectual Property strategy - which includes both ensuring our trademark rights AND strategically managing our Patent portfolio. The OpenSN system and protocols are fully open , and irrelevant to our patent strategy. We're currently exploring options to continue as a firm on our current path, or suspend operations to focus on IP licensing & market consulting - which is why we're talking to these groups.

Q. Did you file a lawsuit against Google? Are you planning to?
MarketingVox incorrectly reported that FindMeOn filed a lawsuit. That is simply not true.
No lawsuit has been filed, and there is no intent to litigate. We hope to work this out amicably, and have turned to nationally recognized Intellectual Property experts for consultation on these legal matters, and to develop & manage or intellectual property strategies. Legal matters like these are far different than lawsuit, and the American court system is overburdened already.