I’m still struggling with the issue of running two blogs; the blog you’re reading right now and the BIMA blog. Most of my posts are applicable to both audiences, but there’s an overlap in those audiences. Some of you read both blogs.

Do you read both blogs and if so, do you mind the duplication of stories covered on both? Are there specific topics you’d rather I covered, or didn’t cover on either of them? Any feedback you provide will be greatly appreciated. Until I received feedback, I’ll continue to post what I think is relevant, to both blogs. Thanks to Dennis Howlett for advice regarding this matter.

Now onto the article you came here for…

I picked up from TechCrunch this morning that Robert Scoble, one of the most influential bloggers in the world, has been banned from Facebook for breaking its terms and conditions.

Apparently, Robert tried to run a script over Facebook to export all of his contacts in one go. Those of us who know Facebook rather well, know that this will break their terms of use. He would have known that this was likely to end in tears. That said, perhaps Robert was pulling a PR stunt knowing that everyone would end up not only talking about it, but rallying behind him.

I must point out that I like Robert, a lot. I think what he does is brilliant and his contribution to industry is nothing short of fantastic. So, my post isn’t directed at Robert, but the Facebook conversation that’s taking place in the social arena that is Twitter.

If you break the rules, you should expect to be treated like everyone else. Just because Robert has thousands of connections and is very well known to millions, it doesn’t mean he should be treated any differently to anyone else. I have a friend who sent me a text message whilst I was on holiday as her account had been disabled. I just happen to know the VP of PR & Marketing and the VP of Sales so she thought I could exercise my connections in her favour. Her account was probably canned due to the number of event requests she sent out each week – there was a lot, but people signed up to her notifications. I must add that they were very exclusive events too.

Everyone who considers themselves as a ’social media’ guru should know that Facebook is closed and that you’re not permitted to use scripts to remove contacts. So, you should either join the club and abide by the rules, or leave. Right?

Well, yes and no. You shouldn’t break the rules and not expect to be punished. But, we should try to persuade Facebook that being closed isn’t good for industry as a whole. We should be able to retain ownership of our data. If you’re still unsure about what I’m talking about, try to export your friends’ email addresses. You’ll notice that it’s impossible because email addresses are made up of images. To comply with basic industry best practices, email addresses like everything else, should at least be text. To take this a step further, they should come in the form of a Microformat. You’d then be able to download email addresses automatically to a client such as Outlook.

Oh wait, making it easy for people to export hundreds, possibly thousands of email addresses… wouldn’t that make it easy for unscrupulous companies to harvest and then SPAM? You could argue that Facebook is helping to protect the vast majority whilst upsetting the minority. Personally, I think it’s just a matter of time. Facebook only opened it’s doors to non-universities a year ago. The business community has only started to flirt with it since the summer with London boasting the largest geographical network in the world.

What Facebook does well, is very small iterative changes to improve the user experience. You’ll notice that it’s not inclined to make huge changes to the platform – that’s probably because they’ll upset a lot of people if they get it wrong. Given that it’s still early days, getting major changes wrong is more likely. So, perhaps opening up email addresses is on the long ‘to-do’ list and will only be executed when they’ve figured out how to protect users from themselves.

I was one of the first employed by AOL in Europe in 1995, when it was a small startup, so I get the whole ‘walled garden’ thing. I don’t think it’s healthy for industry in the long term. But it is a necessary evil at the beginning to ensure users have a positive user experience within an environment where they are protected.

However, there comes a point in time when you need to knock down the walls. I’m not sure when that time should be for Facebook but one thing is for sure, their decision is not going to be influenced by early adopters. They’ll most likely listen to audiences which include influencers with a lot of connections, who would follow them to a competitor.

I believe it’s a little harsh to automatically ban users from Facebook. This should be done manually after humans have first given a warning and second, made sure that they’re making the right decision. If AOL could do it more than 10 years ago with millions of users, I’m sure Facebook can today given the technology available to staff.

Read some interesting article on this topic

Hear what Robert Scoble has to say

Hear what CentreNetworks has to say

My source: TechCrunch

Thanks to Dennis Howlett, I picked up news of Fred Wilson’s blog post about Twitter earlier today. His post is about the potential business models for Twitter. I’ll write my own views about Twitter’s potential later, but for now, I’d like to discuss ‘business models’ vs ‘scale’. In his post, Fred states that he agrees with Jason Calacanis’ opinion on this topic.

Jason’s main point, with which Fred agrees

Business models!?!?! The business model comes AFTER you get to scale.

As an investor I’m sure (and hope that) Fred wouldn’t agree with this comment out of context. For me, scale is important for some business models but you certainly can’t state that all business models come after scale. That statement alone doesn’t make good business sense to me.

Mind you, it’s pretty easy for Jason to make such statements because he’s managing to get scale for Mahalo based on his personality. There’s no way in the world that Mahalo would get as much attention if it wasn’t for Jason.

Setting aside my opinion about Mahalo, as Jason and I have met twice to discuss possible collaboration. Hopfully we can both give it the thumbs up. In short, Mahalo would read our Content Labels to annotate each search result so users would get more information about the suitability of the content contained on each site. In return, our Firefox extension would have Mahalo as its default search engine. Mahalo wants to enable more relevance in search results. Segala wants to enable more trust based on Content Labels.

More about that another time if we decide to work together or not.

Why I don’t think scale comes before business model (for most)

Take Segala as an case in point.

Body shop, deploying contractors

In 2002, Segala was born as a body shop. This means we supplied contract mobile phone and software test engineers to clients based on project demand.

Building a brand

Still in our first year of trading, the company naturally evolved into a consultancy and later, a managed services provider. This meant we didn’t have to live hand to mouth and worry about the next project coming in. It also meant that clients were placing trust in our brand. Products tested by ‘Segala’ (as opposed to specific contractors) were deemed to be high quality and trusted to work. At our peak we employed 24 consultants and a handful of admin personnel.

In year one, our revenue was £1.6 million and all achieved without pitching for a project, well, with the exception of our very first project. (till date, 100% of our work has come from referral)

Had we decided to continue as a consultancy, we’d easily have an annual revenue somewhere between £10million and £15million today. However, that’s ‘ok’ if you want to run a small business that’s reliant upon it’s people and therefore not scalable.

Placing value in the brand, removing away from ‘people’ dependency

In 2003, we made a strategic decision to evolve the company into a Certificate Authority by productizing our testing services and offering a Certificate and visual Trustmark to Web sites so organisations could demonstrate their commitment and conformance to Web Accessibility standards and legislation. Our clients were already referring to Segala as their Certification Partner, mandating other suppliers to seek certification prior to releasing new mobile products and software applications, so the transition was both natural and managed.

Changing our business model to achieve global scale

In 2006 we decided to change our business model, even though it would have the expected impact of reducing revenue in the short term. We knew that it wouldn’t be possible to achieve mass scale worldwide as long as Segala had to hire more people to match demand for the Trustmark (Certificate). Productising services alone wasn’t enough.

So, similar to VeriSign’s business model for the resale of SSL Certificates, we decided to build a Partner Programme to sell our Web Accessibility (and now mobileOK) Compliance Certificates. After building the necessary process over a 9 month period, we tested the water in late 2006 by allowing companies to join our programme (we did no PR or marketing). We now have a few (50+) partners across 8 countries, of which, some are the biggest digital agencies in the world. They have started to certify Web sites (including banks) with Segala only required to spot-check to maintain quality. We’re aiming for a conservative figure of 7,000 Partners worldwide by end of 2011.

Creating vital answers for the ‘why Segala’ question

The vast majority of 2007 was dedicated to the creation of various W3C standards for which we provide certification. For example, we are co-author of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative conformance document called mobileOK with Google. We also invested quiet heavily in making sure that our Semantic Web method of classifying content (Content Labels) became a ratified W3C standard, to help ensure we gain mass adoption. This is expected to happen in the next 3 months and replace PICS; the old standard still used by Internet Explorer today for filtering content.

Currently partners consider their partnership with Segala as a unique selling point as accessibility standards compliance is now a legal requirement in countries such as the UK, US and Australia. However, if Content Labels gain mass adoption it will mean that the sites they certify will be more prominent in future search results. This will encourage more companies to become partners.

Other pieces of the ecosystem to help achieve scale

There are many other pieces to the puzzle but I’ll spare you the detail. I’ll save it for the Venture Capitalists so we can secure funding to grow the partnership worldwide and sell more certificates amongst other things.

The moral of the story

The point I’m trying to make is that all of this was managed because we generated revenue, reinvested profit and between my business partner and I, invested approximately £300k of our personal money.

Had we not generated £1.6 million in year one and continued to sustain relationships with key clients whilst building our brand, there’s no way we’d be able to act as an agile company evolving our business model to adapt and take advantage of new market trends.

There’s no way we’d have been able to build an entire ecosystem to help ensure we gain mass adoption for Content Labels in order to make it more compelling for Partners to certify Web sites for Accessibility and mobileOK compliance, through which, we intend to generate the vast majority of our revenue.

Had Segala gone for scale through a partner network on day one, there’s no way we would have been taken seriously. It has taken time and a lot of effort, to indirectly encourage design and build agencies, not to mention direct competitors (usability companies), to award our Trustmark and Certificate through the Partner Programme.

My advice to budding entreprurners

So, my advice to any startup is to strive towards generating revenue so you can sustain the business. Only then can you afford to change, adapt and modify your business strategy based on a changing market or new competitors coming to market. Only then will you last long enough to gain scale.

It might be that investors will only be interested in your company after you have achieved scale. But you’ll never get the opportunity to have that conversation if you go bust, or continue to sell a dead horse because you can’t afford to change direction. Generating revenue to help build a better strategy will probably help you gain greater scale in the end.

[Update: 3rd January 14:06] I later found a very interesting post by Dennis Howlett on this subject. I fully agree when he says

I lobbed a Tweet out that more or less said: Twitter is a feature, a gr8 feature but as such it should be built to scale and then flipped. This would be very much in the tradition of Skype. But, I argued, ignoring the building of a business where there is money involved is highly risky, leading as it does to models more aligned to consumer advertising which most folk I know hate.

Isn’t it obvious that ‘ignoring the building of a business where there is money involved is highly risky’? How on earth can Wilson disagree with that, as Dennis suggests in his post. Read Dennis’ full article.

I picked up on an interesting post about attention data from Damien Mulley’s blog. Whilst writing a comment on his post, I realised it was turning into an epic. It presented me with an opportunity to talk about Segala’s Semantic Web Firefox Trust extension too, so I’ve decided to write here and link to Damien’s blog instead of posting a comment on his.

The most applicable point for me in Damien’s post, was

It was in a past blog post here where I said that if we controlled our activity data, we could actually make money from search engines and the likes of Microsoft HealthVault, so there’s potential there. So I was quite interested when Mozilla announced Weave, their system which will store your Firefox preferences on their servers and when you install a new Firefox on a new computer, it can go to the Mozilla servers and download all your preferences and bookmarks.

According to Mozilla

The idea behind Weave is that all your personal information — bookmarks, passwords and account names, for example — are synced to your Mozilla account via Firefox. If you lose your computer, you can download Firefox, log into your account and you can restore all that information. You can do some of this today if you use Google Browser Sync and Dot Mac services. You can start by creating an account with Mozilla Services. You will need Firefox 3.0 or higher to get this working.

This is relevant to me as the functionality behind the Mozilla Weave has been available in Glaxstar‘s Firefox browser for more than 2 years. When I say available, I’m referring to every single last detail. Whilst Glaxtstar’s Glubble browser is new, I’ve had insight to their technology for quiet some time.

Glaxstar is possibly the only development company in the world that could build a competitive Firefox browser to Mozilla in my opinion (Flock is a 1.0 effort compared to what these guys can do!). That’s if Ian decided to take that route. As it happens, he’s just interested in helping guardians to protect their loved ones from inappropriate content.

Note that I didn’t say, help to protect minors, or help governments protect people. That’s not his job. It’s not Google’s job, it’s not Segala’s job and it’s not the Government’s job either. Ian’s job is to help guardians who are responsible for deciding what’s appropriate and inappropriate for the people they’re responsible for. Technology should be perceived and used as an enabler, not a prohibiter. Furthermore, what a guardian in Germany deems approproate is not likely to be the same as what a guardian thinks in the UK for example. This is why I’d like people to perceive Content Labels as an enabler to help mainstream search engines and browsers to provide better content discovery, not a method for policing the Web.

So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Glaxstar gave the Weave code to Mozilla given that they’ve had it for more than a couple of years and they built Mozilla’s mainstream browser extensions for companies such as Google, Yahoo!, PayPal and eBay. They also maintain spreadfirefox.com and are responsible for resolving defects in the mainstream Firefox browser. That makes Glaxstar the most qualified company in the world to build Firefox add-ons in my opinion.

Luckily for me, Ian Howard, Founder of Glaxstar, is a personal friend of mine. So, who better to build Segala’s Firefox trust extension (not plug-in, that’s something different) Search Thresher. Our extension really is based on The Semantic Web, unlike the claims made by many of the co-called Semantic Web search engines.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

As I’ve said, Glaxstar and Segala have been working together for the past couple of years. Although, we haven’t updated our extension in over a year (I guess that demonstrates how ahead of the curve we’ve been). As of February though, you should expect to see regular updates for our Trust extension.

Search Thresher is just one of the pieces in our jigsaw to help demonstrate why and how we feel very confident that 2008 is the year to tell Segala’s story. You will notice me talking less about conferences that I host and Chair and more about our Semantic Web method of classifying content.

What’s with the name?

The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks.

For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took the drudgery out of farm labour.

Today, searching the Web is equally laborious. You may or may not find what you’re ’searching’ for and even when you do find what you want, can you trust what you find?

Think of Search Thresher as a threshing machine. It’s a Firefox extension used to demonstrate to search engines and mainstream browsers, how they can (and should!) provide users with more trust on the Web using a method called Content Labelling.

We haven’t touched the extension for over a year as we’ve been focused on other stuff that I’ll tell you about soon. If you’re a designer and would like to be recognized for your work, please feel free to volunteer your services to rebrand the Web site. Search Thresher is a non-profit standards based browser, so this may be of interest if you’re a standards enthusiasts.

We’re not emotionally attached to the name Search Thresher. What do you think of it? We’re open to suggestions if you can propose something better.

Read more about Content Labels – this post also includes sample use cases.

Watch a quick video about Content Labels

I woke up this morning to Google alerts informing me that a few bloggers had been talking about me (or Segala) while I was asleep. The one to mention was Damien Mulley’s blog post entitled ‘One to watch in 2008‘.

Damien, a name that would appear on the list if it was for the fact that it’s his list, was recently awarded ‘Technology Journalist’ of the year and is Ireland’s number 1 blogger. So, he holds a very qualified opinion given that his finger is firmly on the digital pulse. More so, than any newspaper or magazine. I was tipped as ‘One to watch out for in 2007′ by Revolution Magazine, but truth be told, I’m more flattered to have appeared on Damien’s list.

I’m so flattered about making the list myself that I decided to write a post to draw your attention to it. I didn’t write a post when Revolution Magazine listed me, probably because I knew that most of last year was going to be about laying foundations, for both Segala and BIMA, the two organisations with which I can be measured.

I’m looking forward to 2008 because it’s the year for us to open our doors to show the world exactly what we’ve been working on for the past couple of years. If you’re interested in seeing more trust enabled in search results then watch this space.

Well done to the rest of the guys on the list, make sure to show your mothers

I’ve got a half-baked post in the oven about the Australian Government’s poor decision to censor the Web. Trust on the Web, protecting people from inappropriate content, better content discovery and content classification, are all terms that underpin Segala’s business. So, I’ll post a comprehensive opinion piece about censorship when I’ve had time to review what others have had to say. This will enable me to either agree, or explain why they’re wrong

Earlier this evening I came across a post on TechCrunch about data privacy, in which garlick got a mention. I was delighted to see that Mike decided not to use the term ‘identity’ in the title.

I was on one of the Essential Web panels during the summer. Although companies such as Jaiku gave a pitch to my panel (it’s hardly surprising that it was bought given that Google’s Head of Acquisition was on a panel after me). I was disappointed not to have been given the opportunity to quiz garlik and its hijacking of the term identity during its pitch. When I say hijacking, I mean, they pitched their company as a means of resolving the issue of identity online. I have a problem with their pitch because they’re confusing people with their use of terminology. I’ll expand on this in a separate post if asked to do so specifically.

On the plus side for the UK, it is one of the most advanced countries in the world when it comes to helping protect minors from inappropriate content online.

The Internet Trust Watch Foundation (IWF) in the UK, is one of the most impressive if not the most impressive organisation within the entire membership of inhope. In short, the IWF share a list of IP addresses that belong to Web sites which provide illegal content such as child pornography. I’m pretty sure that any decent human being will find it difficult to argue that child pornography isn’t worng and illegal.

A friend of mine once debated with me that blacklisting any type of IP addresses, irrespective of what they’re used for, is wrong as it infringes ‘freedom of speech’. Ok. so he has a point. But, shouldn’t our moral obligation to protect children from harm come first?

Inhope

INHOPE is the International Association of Internet Hotlines and was founded in 1999 under the EC Safer Internet Action Plan.

When a user tries to visit a Web site which has been banned by the ISP, they’ll simply receive a 404 error message, or something similar.

Whilst I’m on the subject, I might as well point out that Ireland is probably one of the worst countries within the inhope membership. Ireland doesn’t share known IP address of illegal Web sites amongst all its members (ISPs etc.). If memory serves me right, the CEO of the UK’s IWF told me that its Irish counterpart is more interested in data protection, or some other scruffy form of do-gooder legislation that does more harm than good.

Reading back, I’ve noticed that this post covers a jolly mixture of things. As I’ve said, I’ll write a more detailed post about censorship later this week.

Rather than type what I think, I’d like to share with you, my thoughts about the real difference between Europe and the Valley, as articulated by Eric Eldon on a TechCrunch post.

This the best version I’ve read to date. My favourite quote is ‘think Hollywood for geeks’.

Why is anybody comparing an entire continent to a specific metropolitan area?

Silicon Valley is a geographically proximate group of related tech industries, and the institutions that support them. It includes a large pool of entrepreneurs and engineers with many different technical and business skills, along with investors, law firms, accounting firms. Also, big tech companies who buy startups.

Silicon Valley works because everyone is so close together, and because everyone shares the core sense of entrepreneurialism. The place feeds on itself. Think: Hollywood for geeks.

Europe is a continent. It is comparable to “the US” or “North America.”

If you want to compare something to Silicon Valley, you need to compare a city or region.

That said, I don’t think Europe is comparable with North America as Eirc suggests. Europe also has borders, language barriers and of course, cultural differences. Oh and different laws and taxation systems for different countries.

Microsoft announced last week that Internet Explorer 8 passed the Acid2 test. This is a milestone because IE has never been supportive of standards in the past, forcing Web developers to create multiple versions of the same code to ensure their Web sites were compatible with as many browsers as possible. This is a serious issue today as many sites have been developed specifically for IE and therefore exclude approximately 12% of the market who use other browsers such as Firefox.

Personally I think the Acid2 test is a little light. But it does encourage browser vendors to make significant adjustments to at least support a baseline of common standards.

(I purposely kept this post separate to the post that asks Microsoft to dump PICS in favour of Content Labels to enable better search based on trust. If Microsoft adopts Content Labels, it won’t really matter what crap Google servers up in 2008.)

According to the IE blog, Microsoft is very keen to adopt more standards. However, I’m a little unsure what exactly this means. It doesn’t articulate a commitment to the W3C, let alone specific standards.

Out of the entire blog post, there’s one point I’d like to highlight as a concern. The quote I’d like to question is

Now, with all that context, I’m delighted to tell you that on Wednesday, December 12, Internet Explorer correctly rendered the Acid2 page in IE8 standards mode.

I’d be very happy if there was a full stop (period) after the word ‘IE8’. But there isn’t. What they’re saying is that IE passes the Acid2 test when in ‘standards mode’. What does this mean? Does it mean that IE8 fails the Acid 2 test when using the default settings? What does this mean for end users?

I’d like some clarity on this so please let me know if you have any more information.