Claude Ritter

Mark Pincus’ lessons from Tribe – fail fast

Posted by claude - 29/04/09 at 04:04:14 pm

Facebook Highlights: Algorithm developed by a 6 year old?

Posted by claude - 21/04/09 at 12:04:04 pm

I normally don’t join the “I want the old Facebook back” crowd but the latest redesign is really a bit hard to digest. The one thing that annoys me most, is the “Highlights” box. I’ve been observing the contents of this box for a while and I think it’s save to say that a good 75% of all items are nowhere near something I’d call a highlight.

So let’s looks at the highlights presented to me when I was logging in to Facebook this morning.

Awesome, thanks for telling me! First of all, Coco lives in Hamburg, which is about 10’000km West of my location. Second, I’ve never had any contact with here, never send messages, wall posts, nothing. And the most important thing, Facebook knows that I am in a relationship.

Really? Who? No contact over Facebook, ever.

All right, that might be interesting if this same album wouldn’t have been around for like a month already and constantly re-posted by the owner. Been there, done that, thanks.

Interesting group. I joined it, now stop showing me that damn thing.

Next item, the group owner posting a note for the group I’ve already joined. 7 people like it, aha.

Classical music. Not really my taste, and Facebook knows that.

A note withe _one_ photo. Never had any interaction with the poster (apart from adding him as a friend), none of my other friends commented on this etc.

And last but not least, a tagged photo of my girlfriend. Now that’s a highlight, there’s even a comment for this photo. Oh wait, this is MY own comment. Never mind.

I generally enjoy using Facebook, it’s free and I think they provide a lot of value. However, the latest changes appear to be a somewhat rushed reaction to the whole Twittermania and/or some Zuckerberg ego trip. The Highlights algorithm needs some serious work, otherwise it’s just a giant waste of screen estate or ad space.

Facebook, Wolfram|Alpha, StealthStartup. Will the next Google Killer stand up please.

Posted by claude - 10/03/09 at 07:03:09 pm

Exciting times we are living in. Technology and the web are evolving at a speed never seen before and we can’t even imagine which tools and services will be available to us in a couple of years time.

Anyway, today I simply wanted to link to two blog posts, both announcing the next Google Killer. First, we have my friend Julius who is proclaiming that Facebook is soon going to eat Google’s lunch. And then there is Stephen Wolfram and his team who apparently came up with something that “could be as important as Google“, a computing machine called Wolfram|Alpha.

Personally I think that neither of those is going to be THE Google Killer, but that we are in a transition to a completely new way we interact with the internet and our social circle using technology. If you look at numbers such as the fact that around 20% of all servers that are sold each year are bought by Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft (add Facebook to that list soon) tell you that we’re onto something big. And it’s certainly not just about desktop apps like Word to the cloud.

With all that uncertainty, I’m happy that there is still one constant: Sex sells!

Could someone please build the Paypal of mobile payments?

Posted by claude - 13/01/09 at 07:01:54 pm

I was just reading this article on TC about mobile payments. As the article appropriately describes, transaction fees of 30-40% are way too high for any merchant to seriously consider this as payment methods. Especially because mobile payments, as a quick and easy way to send money, would be best used for cheap articles (virtual gifts etc.). But giving away 40% of a low priced item isn’t really something you want to do. And what about adding mobile payments to existing website, shops or communities? Would you just charge members, who want to pay via mobile, 40% more or give up half of your margin?

So, why is there no Paypal for mobile payments where I can store my CC number and then simply use my mobile phone for payments? Depending on the country, there could even be an integration for direct bank billing and other country specific payment methods. Maybe I am missing something but I sure that even with all charges considered, the merchant transation fee would be way below the 30% that are currently charged. Zong, can you please add that?

The Borg are coming

Posted by claude - 03/11/08 at 02:11:25 pm

Watch CBS Videos Online

This is amazing! And a bit scary…

Why paper prototyping sucks

Posted by claude - 09/07/08 at 04:07:37 pm

There’s no undo button and it doesn’t save you from bad ideas…

Started off good, got stuck in the middle.

About stealing someone’s attention

Posted by claude - 08/04/08 at 10:04:21 pm

The other day I was watching Merlin Mann’s talks about Time and Attention as well as Inbox Zero at Google. Basically it’s about the general topic of Getting Things Done and where your attention should go or what you want to spend your time on. He’s specifically talking about email and the fact that we make ourselves available around the clock by checking mail, IM etc. all the time. Switching off disturbing notifications, such as the new mail pop-up in Outlook , is one part of focusing on your current task without getting interrupted all the time. I’ve adopted many of these ideas and I’ve even gone so far that I stopped using MSN etc. because it’s just too easy for people to get to you.

So for me, it has been all about asynchronous communication lately, which allows me to check my emails (as an example) when I want, not when the notification pops up. What’s interesting though is, that although a lot of people seem to be annoyed be the constant availability, services like Twitter, which are all about fast communication and getting peoples attention, see staggering growth. There are also a variety of desktop clients for Twitter that immediately inform you when somebody you follow posts a new item. And Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg. Are people so addicted to other people’s news or are they just bored?

Just now I was coming home from the Shanghai Geek Dinner (that’s actually why I write this). We heard 3 presentations about products and all of the presenters mentioned that we could follow them on their Twitter feed. Now, not that I would say that any of these products were bad, why would I want to follow any of these products on Twitter? Yeah, they were interesting, but do I want to allow them to steal my attention and time with Twitter updates, maybe not.  Another thing is, that I wonder whether the Twitter audience really addresses the group of people these services target. But that’s maybe another story.

I guess in the end it’s all about choice and who do you want to allow to “steal” your time.

Recruiting in China – pitfalls ahead

Posted by claude - 11/03/08 at 05:03:44 pm

I think we all agree that hiring the right people is crucial for any company, especially startups. However, sometimes this is easier said than done. We are frequently hiring new talent and hiring in China seems to be a rather different story than it is in the US or in Europe.
I am planning to continue posting about hiring in China but here’s the first list of some of my findings and impressions so far:

• University != University. We often get applications from people who state to have been studying at a university. This often happens because Chinese CV’s are translated into English word by word while the Chinese work for college is the same as for university. So if you are looking for graduates, make sure the university really was one.
• English: advanced. If you are looking for people with some English skills, don’t let yourself fool with English certificates such as CET-4 (which might also be fake) or self assessments. Too often have we had applicants with “advanced” English skills and then it turned out that they don’t even understand even simple questions. Call applicants before inviting them for an interview.
• Work samples. I don’t know whether this is a special China thing but applicants often seem to overstate their role in their reference projects or simply show samples of someone else. Make sure you have some sort of check or test in place to verify the applicant’s abilities on the spot.
• Keyword stacking. Some applicants are very flexible adjusting their “proficient knowledge” by memorizing keywords depending on the job. Don’t just check whether people are familiar with common terms you maybe even included in the job advertisement. Same as above check the applicant and ask questions, which require further explanation.
• Ugly looking CV’s. We get tons of CV’s which are badly formatted, in some strange format, have typos all over and so on. 99% of these CV’s wouldn’t even make it trough the Spam filter of western companies. However, I learned that good-looking CV’s should not be the top criteria when going trough CV’s. We hired great guys who applied with a “me.txt” file but turned out to be great picks for our company.

Ok, that’s it for now. Happy recruiting!
(Image from madebytess)

Show me your friends, social graph visualization

Posted by claude - 04/03/08 at 05:03:02 pm

Creative visualization of data has always been something I was very interested. There are several examples on the web, which take interesting approaches to data visualization. One of the areas I am most interested in is the visualization of graphs, specifically the graphs of friends or related people (friend graph). Some developers or companies already worked on friend graph implementations but most of them just look good but aren’t really helpful. As we are currently working on a social networking website we wanted to have a look into this and see whether we could find a way to combine eye-candy with something useful.

Below, I’ve embedded a short video of our current version of the friend graph. Be aware that this is not a release version that contains debug output with test data.

Our graph currently features:
- Friends and friends of friends (FOAF)
- Connections between friends and friends of friends
- Filters (in development)
- Browsing history

(Sorry for the crappy quality)

This is the current status but we’re busy working on more features and a revamped interface (buttons etc.). We are currently focusing on the visualization of the friend graph within our network but due to Google’s Social Graph API and other initiatives there are almost endless possibilities when it comes to the visualization of friends or the complete social graph around a person.I will post updates as we progress.

Web 3.0 and Semantic Web

Posted by claude - 25/02/08 at 01:02:29 pm

Ever since Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 people have been asking what Web 3.0 is going to be. A lot has been written about this topic and it looks like there is some sort of consensus about what Web 3.0 will be. Semantic Web.

The interesting thing with Semantic Web is, that the technology has been around quite a while. Back in 2002 Edd Dumbill published an article titled “Finding friends with XML and RDF”, which basically describes what we call the Social Graph today (see Google’s Social Graph API). This is somehow similar to the evolution of Web 2.0 with its user-generated content. Long before we even called this Web 2.0 we had bulletin board systems, dating communities, marketplaces and much more. Due to a growing online population, technological progress, falling prices and other factors, companies were able to leverage existing technologies and build new services on top/around them.

As I mentioned above, the underlying technology needed to add a semantic layer to the Internet is not really new. The two basic building blocks or core technologies are the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Xhtml Friends Network (XFN).

What’s missing?
RDF, XFN and other technologies related to the Semantic Web are difficult to understand. While there are projects such as Microformats or The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project aiming at making things easier, we are still far away from having a mainstream Semantic Web application. In order to bring it to the masses, these technologies need to be implemented in the tools people use for their daily work. What I mean is that it must be transparent for the users so that there’s no need to bother about RDF etc. while using blog software, a social network or the web mail client.

Will there be ONE big Semantic Web company?
Due to the distributed nature of the Semantic Web I don’t think that there will be one company or service dominating this space. We will have thousands of blogs, social networking websites, discussion boards and other services participating in creating the Semantic Web. Users will get used to the fact that their information is shared between several services and that they are able to access their friends everywhere. Therefore the ability to share information between different services and websites will become a key success factor for all “social” services in the future. Semantic Web is part of the product, not the product itself.
A very interesting service, which is definitely worth watching, is Twine. From what I can see now, it looks like a social network built on top of a Semantic Web application, which also contains a friend aggregator such as Friend Feed. So far they are doing a good job in hiding the complex technology and making it understandable for consumers.

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