I really admire self reflection…and so, if I’m to be honest, I have to admit that I’m an addict….I’m addicted to excitement, intrigue and rich experiences and the social web has plenty.   My problem with the social web is that it’s incredibly hard to sort out the truly interesting, from the inane and useless….and this is true for information, sites, events, and for people as well….and manual sorting is very boring….not something an adrenaline addict does very well at all.

After my divorce and subsequent social-rebirth, I really wanted to engage with people in meaningful ways.   I began using Friendster, Match, MySpace, and eventually Facebook among others.   And being a committed experience addict, I also habitually over-schedule myself, and I rarely had time to do (what I now call) the “Dunbar sort”.

I’ll do another post soon that further explains Dunbar, but for now, it means weeding-out all the information and people who weren’t good candidates to help me get my fix.   I wanted a better way to focus on those experiences and people who satisfied my need for adrenaline, as well as those who’s engagement with me helped to bolster my self-esteem.   (do I sense another post on Maslow emerging here?)

In my experience, the social web is comprised of things such as:
* ongoing relationships
* in-box (email) content
* news-stream & status updates
* events and scheduling priorities
* introductions and match-making
* presenting an “image” of how I’d like to be perceived by others

When I look at psychology, and human behavior in the real world, our brains are always running this “dunbar sort”, removing the irrelevant and boring, automatically and unconsciously.   It’s how we prioritize the who, what, why and when from the above list.  On the social web, even assholes frequently have 100’s of “friends”.  This is many more relationships than a human brain can effectively juggle and sort, and I couldn’t find any tools to help me do it at all—especially in this high volume contex….and certainly not across all of these communities.

If you need a real world metaphor for the solution that I’m seeking, consider the problem of a rock star and his entorage.   His dressing room only fits 120 people, and he has a limited supply of Tequila and Quaaludes.   He needs to pick the most entertaining invitees for the backstage party, from among 20,000 screaming fans.   How does he do this??   Does he personally go out and interview each groupie himself??  The party would be over long before he finished.   He has a cadre of roadies, security guards and high-school buddies that know what he likes.   They do the filtering for him, and the party starts on-time, with the filtering already handled.

I started Minggl to solve this problem, with the understanding and expectation that the interesting peoople and events on the web, would be dispursed across many communities, sites and services.   This problem is not solvable by any one site…..people choose different venue’s (concerts if you wish to continue the above metaphor) and it’s impossible to predict where they will choose to hang out next.  It won’t always be where I choose to hang out.  We needed an “filtering agent” that was portable across all the concert halls….and that’s where Minggl is headed.

Here is a comment I recently posted to Techcrunch on this same subject..

Hook 'em!

Howdy!

Marie “the Minggl intern” here! This is my very last week of college (at the University of Texas anyway). It is oh so bittersweet, but luckily more sweet than bitter. The last-last day of classes is this Friday, but MY last day is Wednesday. Sweet, huh!

The past 3 years have been a blast at UT.  I’ve learned a thing or two in my classes, but more so in actually living a college life. I grew up more than I knew I could and I’ve met people that have completely changed the course of my life.  So how does Minggl fit into the picture? Well, I hope to continue my personal development through sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, both Minggl capable, which will help me transition and network as I begin to turn the next page of my novel called Life. I feel Minggl is one of those products that I can take forward with me on my journey.

I have come into contact with more people who are not looking forward to graduating college than people who are actually looking forward to what’s ahead. Isn’t that kind of sad? I’m in the latter category of people that understand that my time in college has swiftly come and gone and that what’s in store for me in the future is only going to be as good as I make it. I want to pave a positive, optimistic road for myself as I face new challenges and add ingredients to the boiling pot that is brewing my ideal equation to life that will help me be a better person. Of course “better” is a bit broad, but at least I’m aiming for something! Anyway, I’ve had a LinkedIn account for quite a while, but I never really knew what I could use it for until I got a job offer from the company I will start working for in July. It seems to be one of the most valuable networking devices I can utilize as I build my portfolio of work and grow my professional network into a metroplex of people that are all within my reach.  Minggl, again, comes into the picture as the simplest way to update my status on LinkedIn as well as getting updates on the activities of my LinkedIn contacts. I want to maximize my usage capabilities on this site now that I’ve realized its potential and simply set myself up for success.

Using Minggl has helped me realize how vital it is to simplify the way information is shared and received. If you think about it, it wasn’t too long ago that the term “social media” was only a daydream and that a Twitter was nothing more than the sound of a bird. We’ve certainly come a long way, so why not take advantage of what’s accessible nowadays *ahem Minggl *ahem?

I’ve decided that my favorite Minggl features are auto log-in, the live stream sidebar, and Flair Notes. Minggl is definitely worth a try. That’s not my biased self talking, that’s my logical self exclaiming! There are endless ways to mold Minggl into what works for you. You simply have to open your mind, reach out, and give it a try. Like Nike, just do it.

Until next time, Happy Minggling!

>>Marie

We start 2009 by introducing Marie and Brandon. Marie is a marketing intern from The University of Texas who, like T.I., is immaculately polished with the spirit of a hustler and the swagger of a college kid. We are looking forward to her fresh perspective. Brandon is a self taught software engineer specializing in web development and an all around go to guy.  He has worked part time for us the past couple of years. With his wide ranging skills we could no longer afford to keep him in the bullpen. So Brandon has started working full-time. We welcome them both to the team.

Marie

Brandon

Habitat for Humanity has a great program to help low income families along the path of home ownership. The cool thing about the program is that its not just a giveaway. The families are required to work 400 hours on other homes before they become eligible for their own home construction. The homes aren’t free to them either. They pay a zero interest mortgage.

Last Saturday our team was fortunate to be involved in this program. We helped build a home in East Austin. Our keyboard jocks did quite well away from the computer…Joel worked the circular saw, Blake was in charge of cement making and pouring, Marcus helped put up soffit. Glad to report no recordable injuries and everyone had a good time. To learn how you or your company can get involved find your local chapter from their main page: www.habitat.org.

Brandon daydreaming about PHP, Dewey showing off the guns, and Danielle standing on the wrong side of a ladder (she's young, she'll learn).

The debate goes on…is the future of social networking continued growth in niche sites or consolidation around the popular sites of today Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Our contention is that the proliferation of niche sites will continue so long as there are tools to make it easy to participate on multiple networks.  A thoughtful blog was written by Dan Schawbel on Mashable…”Twitter, Facebook, Digg:  Can You Join Too Many Networks?”.  He cautions against joining too many networks.  We break down the problems with joining numerous sites into two parts.  First, the basic plumbing (infrastructure) to connect sites.  Part of the problem with managing multiple sites is moving data between them.  The second part is managing relationships in a way that is meaningful to the user….NOT site centric.  At Minggl we are working to automate both of these.

Let’s start with the easy part, the plumbing.  Dan writes, as the number of social networks you use increases, “Your ability to constantly update each profile, to ensure it includes the most updated and accurate information, will be unmanageable and unenjoyable.”  As he notes, many tools exist today to help with this.  Currently at Minggl we offer the ability to update multiple parts of your identity across sites at the same time.  Users can update status, send messages, and post photos to multiple sites from Minggl (note – the photos are currently only viewable to other Minggl users).

Another plumbing problem we consistently hear is simply remembering passwords for multiple sites.  Minggl automates login and navigation to sites for users.  In fact, data sharing tools such as Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, Google Friend Connect, and OpenID address the login issue as well.  As long as Minggl and other apps continue to build plumbing to connect sites you can scratch that as a reason against joining more.

Dan also wrote, “by joining a social network, you are setting “conversational” expectations, meaning that people should expect you to have a decent level of participation on each one.”  This is the more difficult problem to solve.  But updating status on all your sites on a regular basis with one of the existing tools that enable this already takes care of managing a significant part of your identity.  And the opening up of platforms and data sharing also help you keep up your identity…if only in the “ambient awareness” sense.  You can scroll through your Facebook newsfeed to get a sense for what friends are doing on other sites outside of Facebook such as YouTube and Flickr.  As such, the aggregate feed of what a friend is doing around the web provides a sense of identity and participation.  So your friends don’t really have to be actively participating on all their networks all the time.

Minggl aggregates friend activity and plans to take it a step further.  We already help you prioritize information flowing in and away based on relationship categories (coworker, classmate, family, etc).  In future versions, what comes into your view and what goes out to your friends will be based on relationship strength with each of them.  For example, Minggl will know to share my party photos from the weekend only with my college buddies.  And it will know to notify me immediately when I get a message from super blogger Robert Scoble.  Since I am actively sharing and receiving content with my most important friends, my participation on social networks should be quite satisfactory to all.  To learn more about our view on managing relationships on the web, read our submission to the W3C Workshop on the future of social networking.

Please share your feedback and thoughts.

Below is our submissision to the W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking in Barcelona in January 2009.   A list of all the papers submitted to the conference can be here:  http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/papers/.

The Relationship Layer and the Secretary

Copyright and Property of Minggl 2008 – www.minggl.com

Abstract

Multi-context relationship and social-interaction data should be shared and architecturally centric
to the social web.  This will allow many wonderful services which, acting as your virtual
secretary, can execute all manner of automated decision making and personal boundary
enforcement.

By:  Dewey Gaedcke, CEO, Minggl

Contributions by:
Marcus Irven, VP of Development, Minggl
Juan F. Sequeda, Founder – Semantic Web Austin, University of Texas at Austin

Introduction

A high-end Executive Assistant (my secretary) will know of each lunch, phone call, business
deal and tennis match that you and I have ever had together.  From that knowledge, she has a
sense of our relationship strength, and can intuitively and accurately prioritizes information,
requests and visibility between us.   If she’s really good, she’ll do it in a way that aligns with my
intentions and agenda regarding you, without ever bothering to ask me about it.    Our position is
that effective social automation will require technology that can prioritize and sort relationship
context in a manner similar to off-line human behavior.  Support for these capabilities will
require cross-domain data visibility and (at minimum):

1. A global identity for each person
2. Translation service between global and domain specific user identifiers (“domain”
   signifies user identity at each social site)
3. Historical knowledge of my relational activity across domains (i.e. all social services)
4. Data exchange format and retrieval API for dispersed individual “interaction history”
   (called “actionstory” from this point forward)

A Real World Example

In the absence of a central “actionstory” repository, each social service will fetch recent social
contact data from each of my other services.  They will then use this data to calculate several
dimensions of my “social tie strength” to everyone in my localized friend list.   From there, many
interesting conveniences and automations will become possible.  Before we discuss the future
potential, let’s look at problems with the current model.
For example, what happens when…

1. My accountant sends an emergency reminder about my late IRS tax-return deadline (due
   today), but he uses a 3rd tier email address….an inbox that I check only once every 10
   days?
2. A close friend posts important personal news on a social site that I rarely visit?
3. I post pictures of my children and the wrong people have access to them?

The answer:  not what I intended….I’m missing key information, getting it late, or experiencing
privacy consequences.  So what do we mean by “close friend”?

In the real world, our brains automatically (without conscious effort) prioritize relational events
and content based on context, agenda and social-proximity (how well we know someone).  You
can witness your brain doing this every time you walk into a public place and connect naturally
with people in varied ways.  Your brain’s “prioritization process” may dictate that you hug an
ex-girlfriend, shake hands with an acquaintance and only introduce yourselves to strangers under
certain circumstances.

The three anti-examples above illustrate how familiar technical abstractions, such as the
communication channel (i.e wrong email address), the social venue (i.e. land-locked information
in different websites) and specific features (i.e. inflexible privacy settings) have gotten
fundamentally in the way of reasonable human intention.  The brains’ natural prioritization
process has been thwarted because the sender and the technology did not consider our full
relationship and intentions….e.g. the site did not know that we were “close friends”

Technology Centric vs. Relationship Centric Social Infrastructure

Technical abstractions such as features, tools, and social venues, are currently how the social
web is organized, and have therefore (unfortunately) become it’s de-facto center.  Just imagine if
the supermarket (social venue) and the cell-phone (communication channel) dictated who, how
and where you could socialize with other people.  It’s just not how we humans operate….we (or
our secretaries) carry stateful context across all domains and apply this former meaning to each
new relationship situation.

“Social” is defined by the relationships and context between people. The personal meaning that
flows from our collective history is among our most valuable assets.  Our brains use it to
automate all manner of things in the real world, but this asset is almost completely missing on
today’s Social Web.

Facebook, et al, mistakenly acted as if the social venue (the website) was equivalent to the
community.  A community is a collection of people who share history, context, common values
and group norms.  A social site is only a location, no more a community than your local
nightclub or supermarket.  People, relationships and context create “community” and the social
web of today has this reality completely upside down.  We argue that the relationship (social
interaction) data should be architecturally centric to the social web.  This will allow the
technology (your virtual secretary) to support automated decision making, which could include
things like:

1. Prioritizing or demoting a message depending upon who sent it
2. Rerouting a message to other recipients or through a faster/optimal delivery track
3. Automating Privacy (context appropriate disclosure)
4. Delivering birthday flowers with minimal intervention

Relationships as the Central Driver of the Social Web

For these automation capabilities to become a functional reality, the Social Web needs an“Interaction History” (“actionstory”) data format and an API centered on a universal human identifier (UHI).  This data format might well be an appropriate extension to FOAF.  The various social services will (optionally) extend an option to log all “actionstory” activity between me andthose with whom I interact.  Only by storing robust knowledge of my entire social “actionstory”, can the cloud begin to function as my very effective executive assistant.  Participating social services will track (and share) details of every interaction or social encounter including:

1. Interaction type
2. Frequency
3. Duration (or persistent)
4. Who initiated
5. Whether responded/attended/punted/referred
6. Who else included
7. Subject matter/context (standard taxonomy based if possible)
8. Relative connectedness to other touch points with the same person (i.e. we work together)

This data will then be used in all manner of automated-assistant services.  As another example, if
LinkedIn knows that we work together, Facebook will be able to (automatically) use this meta-
data about our relationship, and keep certain data private, while giving you access to work
related content and personas.

Conclusion

Charlene Li of Forrester predicted that the future of social networks will be “like air”.  We
believe she means functional and ubiquitous, yet widely unnoticed.  Just as the supermarket and
the cell-phone do not control socialization options in the real world, online services that base
user control upon “actionstory” data, will move the technology out of the way and allow our
socializing to really be, as thin as air.

People start to complain about “clutter” on webpages when content is not interesting or relevant to them.  The New York Times is now beta testing showing links from Blogrunner, a new aggregator, under the headlines of their own stories.  Erick Shonfeld of TechCrunch argues these links don’t belong on the NY Times homepage as they mostly just clutter it up.  It begs the question of how much is too much?  And how do we tune out non-relevant content?

One of the things we are working on at Minggl is helping people tune out clutter and surface friend activity on a page.  For example, when you visit NY Times we’d show you if friends have read or recommended any specific articles.  And you’d be able to respond to their comments on an article in a private forum on the page…only viewable to you and your group of friends.  We think surfacing relevant friend actions on a page is part of the future of the social web and getting around all the clutter that exists.

Are we crazy?? Give us your feedback…

Dewey presenting Minggl

Many thanks to Microsoft Startup Zone, The Techset, and Austin’s Startup District for creating a unique forum for Austin startups to showcase themselves.  Photo courtesy of Brian Solis.  Check out his coverage of the event on bub.blicio.us.

Brian, Scoble, Randoms, Two-headed Marcus

Minggl was selected a Beta Summit winner at Innotech Austin.  We were joined by other exciting Austin startups OtherInbox, GameWager, and Moximity.  Dewey made a great presentation to a standing room only crowd.  He got the biggest laugh of the day when he showed a George Bush follies video appear on whitehouse.gov.  Many thanks to Amanda Nutt and Bryan Menell for hosting the Beta Summit.  Congrats to the whole Minggl team!

In this picture, Marcus is either setting up our exhibit or hanging out with all his friends.