Data Is the Next “Intel Inside" - Memolane

“This is a whole new chapter for social media,”
- Eric Lagier

The quote comes from one of the founders of Memolane.
The application was created in April 2010, and has just gone from private beta to public beta.



Would you like to see your whole online-life compiled together in a time-line? The application gathers all your information from various sources.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Picasa
• Foursquare
• Tripit
• Vimeo
• Youtube
• Last.fm
• MySpace
• Instagram
• and RSS Feeds

They are working on new services to add to the application aswell, and are asking other developers to get in contact with them to get their API so they can work on integrating their own application to Memoland!

I signed up just yesterday, and found out that I really didn’t have that many accounts. I have connected my Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts to the application.



When you have registered the various accounts you have, the timeline you’ll get would look something like this :



Without the data the application would be useless. People are saying that "Data Is the Next “Intel Inside”

Maybe the most interesting thing about Memolane is that it is actually using other Web 2.0 Applications to make their application valuable.
By doing this Memoland don’t have the “the cold-start problem”, since the data is generated from your previous online life the user feels rewarded from the beginning.
The problem with this application is that it can have different effect on the users. Maybe some will feel that their data is suddenly very visible to all the other people using the app, or maybe have the complete opposite effect and some want to use the various Web 2.0 applications even more to capture their online-life. I have looked at my timeline, and I will admit it is really fun to see what you have been doing since 2007!

The privacy issue does not need be explained. If someone hacks my account, they will get all my Internet activity the last 4 years. But Memolane have given you these choices:

• Private - which means that only you will be able to view the memos from that service
• Friends only - this allows your friends on Memolane to see these memos, but not anyone else
• Public - which means that anyone can see your memories at the URL of your memolane.

So you have full control over what you are sharing with the rest of the world, or maybe just your contacts you can add as friends to the application (They can also add stories to your different dates or entries) !

Follow the timeline for the Memoland story here to get a preview of your online-life would look like . Cool huh?

Harnessing Collective Intelligence - StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon was created back in 2001 and is an internet-community that allows the users to rate web-sites, videos and pictures. In 2006 they added the StumbleVideo, where the users also could rate videos, this means that the creators are designing software that evolves when more people are using it, and that is crucial.

This application goes hand in hand with the first pattern of the Web 2.0 Applications : “Harnessing Collective Intelligence”, where it is the users who add value to the application. That means that they are adding their own data to the application and by that makes it more valuable.
You have to sign up for an account and put down some of your interests to get started.
No one else then the persons inside the community can participate (like Facebook), and that is why people use the expression walled garden for these types of applications.


My profile on StumbleUpon, with my interests

With Web 2.0 applications it is crucial to trust your users, and let them participate and add the value it needs. Users can give "thumbs up" for web-sites they visit, and by doing that they add data to the application so others also can experience what kind of sites you like. The web-sites get filtered by popular demand. If a website gets a lot of thumbs up, it will appear more often when users "stumbles", content that don't get it will be shown to fewer people.

StumbleUpon is a perfect example how they are rewarding the users first. The user logs in to their account thinking they are going to get to see a lot of great web-sites that they had no idea even existed! But when they start using it they are participating in a whole new way when they are surfing the internet. StumbleUpon is easy and the users get what they want quickly.

One issue with StumbleUpon I have been thinking about is the way X-rated web-pages are being filtered for children who are using the application.



Here is a screen-shot of the settings. I haven't tried to set my profile to be underage, but I am not sure if that would be enough to stop children from "stumbling" over web-sites that maybe are not so good for them.

In this blog the author tells about the problem people are facing if they put their setting that they can view R-rated content. Your profile as seen by other users will look like this:


Picture borrowed from the blog
This will maybe be negative on how other people will look at your profile. The comment section underneath the blog reveals that there are a lot of people facing the same dilemma. One of the suggestions is that you can create two accounts, this blog is from 2009 so maybe it has changed. I have tried to Google it, but if someone have found out more about this issue, please comment!

In an article penned by Dawn Gregg named "Designing for collective intelligence",(download) he writes that in the future it is the users of the system who should play a central role in defining what data is important and how the data is used.
I think StumbleUpon is a perfect example of an application that do just that, so create an account and join in on the fun!

Welcome

My first blogpost, stay tuned!