dangerouslyawesome

One of the biggest lessons in networking is having a firm handshake. Not one that crushes your partner’s hand, but one that shows, “I’m confident and I care”.

Figuring out how a social utility could embody that kind of interaction has been one of the goals since I joined Anthillz as a consultant back in July.

We’ve gone through a number of iterations, both with the functionality and the marketing of Anthillz. I’m really happy with the latest iteration, as it feels closest to what I’ve been describing to people for a while in terms of potential.

The problem we identified is that most of the “online social networking” being done in business is weak handshakes. Even LinkedIn, while it has testimonials, puts the focus on building huge numbers of connections (hence the 500+ badge). We’re not going to take down LinkedIn, but we certainly can help focus its users on what’s really important.

Large networks are a fun competition, but anyone can enter and win. Strong networks have a higher barriar to entry. Think about it. How many of the hundreds of connections on your LinkedIn network can you really recommend? Not many. And that’s the problem we’re looking to start solving.

The new Anthillz adds a barrier to entry for networking, much like “real social networking”. You know. The offline kind that most of the business force sucks at.

Real social networking takes work, and much more than a business card exchange to be effective in the long term. Just because you gave me your card doesn’t mean I think you’re the best person for the job. In Anthillz, adding someone to your “trusted colleague” network has a barrier to entry: you have to write something about that person. And in order for the connection to be completed, they need to write something back. The system does what it can to enforce a balanced social economy. Over time, it’d be nice to pull back the reins, but I think we need to break some bad social networking habits first.

Take a look at my profile if you’re looking for an example.

Sure, people can write bullshit reviews, but that’s where we can learn from lessons of other review-powered systems and apply them here to make the good stuff bubble to the top. I’m SUPER pumped to see how that begins to evolve as more people start filling the site with testimonials for their trusted colleagues.

I’m excited to see the new Anthillz live for a number of reasons. One, I think this is the strongest the product has been in the life cycle that I’ve been around for, and I believe that the team has done a tremendous job working together towards this goal.

Second, this is a great example of how social networks don’t have to generate a ton of noise in order to appear effective. In fact, the contrary is more true in my opinion.

Finally, there’s been a great deal of discussion about openness and portability in the roadmap for future versions of Anthillz’s technology. We’ve already got XFN (rel=me and rel=colleague) baked in, and as such, are participating in the Google social graph API. Future additions will hopefully include things like hCard and hReview. OpenID? I’d love to, but we’ve already given our audience a barriar to entry in this version by design, and I don’t think they need another one quite yet. I’m confident that in time, understanding and ubiquity of OpenID concepts will get to a point where it makes sense for us to support it. Hopefully sooner than later.

I’m really interested to see how the newest version of the system begins to take hold, and how people use it. People’s actual use will be the driving factor in next iterations, so help the product grow by using it and sharing your thoughts.

In a comment responding to my previous post, Lachlan Hardy asked me what continuing value Facebook had to me.

First, and most simply, none of the blunders they’ve made have directly affected me: none of the privacy violations invaded my personal privacy since I do my best not to have anything to hide, anyway. The closest thing to an invasive blunder Facebook has ever made to me, personally, was the inclusion of SuperPoke, Funwall, and that confounded Zombie application without including an “ignore forever and ever and ever” button.

I think during the initial wave of Facebook account deletions due to, Tara Hunt said something along the lines of “Facebook has made some lousy decisions, but they totally have me by the social graph”. Now, I’m paraphrasing (I wish I could find the original tweet, this was the closest I could find). But Tara’s and my shared sentiment about why we are still on Facebook is similar to why, for instance, I have an account on Pownce and Twitter but spend ALL of my time on Twitter: it’s where my peeps are at.

I can do the same thing and more elsewhere, but my stuff and more importantly, a great deal of my friends, are there.

Remember, I’m from a generation where I was on Facebook before it was open to non students. Remember, the majority of my friends outside of the social media/new media space are either recently graduated or still finishing school. Unlike most of the users of Facebook, who are more of a layer of very rich sod sitting just on top of the surface, I’ve got deep and twisty roots buried into photos, contacts, comments, connections, messages. And many of them are personal, not the casual “nice blog post” or “I think Scoble is a douchebag, too, who needs 8000 friends?” type exchanges that happen for many others.

Roots via Wikimeda Commons – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Roots_by_cesarpb.jpg

Now…I’m not interested in tangent-ing down the road of, “well, if the data was portable like it should be…”. Because it’s not portable. That’s Facebook’s M.O. and I accept that. We’ve got plenty of other opportunities to make it better. Then, Facebook can play catch up (or not).

So really, the value of ANY social network, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ZipKarma, my blogroll, or any other NETWORK OF SOCIAL CONNECTIONS, the value is in those connections, not the tools that the network provides.

In the case of right here right now, the majority of the people that I care about can be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Maybe this is why I chuckle every time someone tries to identify value in social media. I think value is the wrong word.

Value, to me, suggests that it must be for sale because something is only “worth” a certain amount if someone else is willing to pay for it.

I learned that lesson as a kid collecting comic books. It was during a collector “bubble”, and me and my friends were excited to have gotten our hands on comics that were “worth” hundreds of dollars. The reason this bubble was a bubble, though, was that much like many valuations they are arbitrary until someone is willing to shell out. People invested big bucks into comics, and since not many people were on the high end of the buying scale, the whole thing fell in on itself. Comics are still very popular, but people collect them for the enjoyment of them, not necessarily to own a “valuable” collection.

There will never be “value” to a social graph because a social graph’s “value” is highest to it’s creator. And even then, my friends aren’t for sale.

I don’t value Facebook. I don’t value Twitter. I don’t value LinkedIn or even my Blogroll. I appreciate Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all of the individual connections, nay, the individual PEOPLE that make up the social graph. In the case of Twitter, I totally heart twitter because of the WAY that it’s let me connect.

But Heart != value.

Heart = Appreciation++

Now that I’ve identified a new term to replace the overused and diluted term “value” with something more relevant in this context…on to the next task. Getting rid of “social graph” and “join the conversation”.