I have been saying that it’s not a bubble until uncle Henry and aunt Alice are building up pets.com storck in their 401K.  A couple of months ago, I had called the IPO filing of Classmates.com the first sign of a new internet bubble.

Well, the IPO is pulled.  Henry and Alice can relax.  It’s still not a bubble!

Om reported this a few days ago and I have been meaning to touch on it, because I think it’s very, very important.

Mozilla is contemplating offering syncing services, which would
allow profile data to be synced between various computers; third
parties eventually will be given some kind of access to this
information as well. Typically such syncing services would be the
preserve of Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. Among the services Beard
mentions are:

• provide a basic set of optional Mozilla-hosted online services
• ensure that it is easy for people to set up their own services with freely available open standards-based tools
• provide
  users with the ability to fully control and customize their online
  experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with
  their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)
• leverage existing open standards and propose new ones as needed
• build a extensible architecture like Firefox

The meme that’s been around for a while, "the internet is the social network", makes sense.  After all, if it’s the profile information that provides the pivot for the successful social networks, it’s trivial for people to publish that information themselves (think of a broader OpenID).  Open Social and Grou.ps are steps in this direction, as well.

However, I think the browser is a natural platform for users to manage this information.  Wİth extentions, I am doing this everyday in some areas such as managing my bookmarks (via del.icio.us).

Firefox‘s moves in this area will be interesting to watch.

When TBL speaks, I listen:

"Right now, so many people are complaining that they have told one Web
site who their friends are, and another one who their friends are…In
five years time, I hope people will be programming not at the document
level, but at the application level.  You will have something
which is an application which is consistent for looking at different
aspects of people. It (will use) your role as their friend for putting
together a very powerful, all-encompassing view of them (online)."

Just saw this on Sİgnal vs. Noise and found it interesting:

The Guardian reports on an interesting study that suggests police should skip photofit composites and go with exaggerated caricatures of criminals instead.
…
A photorealistic sketch is an exercise in accuracy, but an exaggerated
caricature is an exercise in identity. Of course this is just one
study, but it’s an interesting look at what really matters to get a job
done.

We have been noticing at Mondus that people use exaggeration in their online social networking profiles, as well.  Perhaps profiles should not be exercises in accuracy, but exercises in efficiency.  If your profile gets you interacting with the people you’d like to connect with, it’s successful.

gPhone turns out to be Android, previously-notoriously-closed Verizon goes open.  Is there a fundemental change in the mobile world?  This may be the best thing that’s happened to the industry.

Will we see similar trends in Turkey, with its uniquely un-competitive wireless market?

Newspaper ads in the U.S. are at a 10-year low.  Alan Mutter has a great analysis of how this is actually much worse than it seems.  This chart sums it all up:


On the home front, a new Turkish newspaper just got launched.  The brand new Taraf has been met with a lot of expectations, since there are deep concerns about the independence of Turkish media, with one dominant media company, and a large stake in media, indirectly, by the government.

Taraf has sold 42K on its first day.  A week later, it is reportedly selling around 11K.

Looks like another failure.

By the way, notice the lack of a link for Taraf.  You guessed it:  It does not have a website!!!

Honor Gunday is marking this week with an important observation:  He is getting friend requests from heavy Zurna users and he thinks this is very bad news for Facebook.

Honor is the founder of Zurna, a Turkish social network.  Like many other Turkish social networks, Zurna is home to a group of male users (whom we call Apaches here at Mondus) who tend to be extremely aggressive towards other users especially women.

As Honor analyzes in his two blog posts, Facebook now has over 1 million Turkish users.  Facebook is now the second highest-traffic website in Turkey, and Turkey provides Facebook with 3.8% of its global traffic, as the fourth hightest usage country (after th US, Canada and the UK).  These first 1m or so users aremostly elite Turks.  However, with the site’s enormous popularity, it is now starting to spill outside of this 20% elite population.  Honor goes on:

As it seems so far, Facebook currently has attracted the top 20% of the
population which also speaks English. If Facebook decides to launch a
localized Turkish version of the site, the uneducated 80% will start to
infiltrate the site, especially the men, who come from traditional
hijab-wearing households with oppressed women, will start messaging the
girls with obscene or unacceptable messages, leading to the exodus of
the creme de la creme; with nobody (or no respectable girls) remaining
on the site to message locally, then in the next stage, the Americans
and Europeans will start getting random messages from these Turkish
guys, leading to a linguistic and social armageddon. And that’s when
Facebook becomes like Orkut.

Honor also says that he could observe this phenomenon on Orkut, where once the Brazilians arrived in hordes (incidentally, the word horde comes from the Turkish word "ordu", meaning army), they drove all other traffic away.  There’s a group in Facebook called, "Don’t let Facebook get localized to Turkish", so it seems that some Turkish users are afraid of the same thing.

This will be interesting to watch.  Mondus is the closest thing to a Turkish Facebook, with tight-privacy, high-trust local social networking features. We are keen to see how the Turkish invasion of Facebook develops.

UPDATE: Check out this screenshot recently captured from the Turkey network homepage.  The language
on the wall would make a sailor blush!

Scott points out an important issue:

Madison Avenue needs it pretty simple & dumbed-down. I’m betting Zuckerberg & Co won’t fully get that.

It’s a great point and Scott should know what he’s talking about in this area.

The next question is what happens?  My guess is either Facebook’s growth is faster than the models, or the revenue growth ends up slower.