Pinterest is not a Napster; it's curator-powered Google Images

One of the tenets of social media is sharing.  You post something for people to see.  You are not entirely sure who might see the post, but whoever is interested can visit your page and see the post.  While visitors are on your page, they can comment on the post.  They might even decide to share the post with their friends, if they find it interesting enough.  That's what makes social media really powerful.  Without visitors commenting and sharing the post, Joseph Kony becoming public enemy #1 in matter of a week would not have been possible.

If you don't want to share things with public, there is one-to-one communication channels.  Email, IM, group chat, internal collaboration tool like Jive and Yammer can be used to share messages with a limited set of recipients.  You know exactly who are receiving the message that you are sending, and their is tacit social contract between sender and recipient(s) that the message is intended for people included in To and CC list.

Facebook Messenger: mini-Facebook desktop client

Facebook has quietly rolled out a stand-alone Facebook Messenger client for Windows last week.  Idea is a simple one. Take Facebook chat and make it run as Windows desktop application.  Just like Google has stand-alone Windows application of Google Talk and integrated chat client on Gmail site, Facebook is following suit.  Now you don't have dedicate a browser tab to have Facebook page open at all time.  Simply log on to Facebook Messenger, and it will keep you posted with all real time updates from your friends.

Yahoo!: a sad day for all innovators

Today Yahoo! filed a suit against Facebook for patent infringement.  As you might know Yahoo! has a new CEO, Scott Thompson, and along with a rumor of impending big layoffs there has been increasing talks within Yahoo! about suing Facebook.  In a patent infringement suit that was filed in San Francisco, Yahoo! alleges that Facebook stole privacy, advertising, customization, messaging, and social networking technology to create its social networking site.

Yahoo! sues Facebook;
a sad day for everyone in Silicon Valley

This looks like Yahoo! is committing itself back in to the race.  The problem is that it's the race to the bottom.  Just when you thought Yahoo! might be getting ready to bounce back from series of failures, this is yet another downer for Yahoo!.

People in software industry acknowledge that current software patent system is broken.  Core idea of patent is not to stifle the innovation.  It is to encourage sharing of ideas and building on someone else's idea.  However, software patents are used to stifle innovation by allowing patent trolls to trade idea-only patents and to go after companies that are actually innovating.

It's really sad to see Yahoo! choosing the path to become a patent troll.  It's especially sadder to see it happen with new CEO who is supposed to turn Yahoo! around for the better.

Kony 2012: Social Media to Global Media

Chances are that you have already watched Kony 2012 YouTube video.  As I just watched it, it had 72,433,716 view counts on YouTube.  And it was released on Monday March 5.  It shows social media addresses global audience.  Given a compelling cause people will react and content will go viral.

Whether the tactic that Invisible Children, the maker of the video, is the right one or not, some are bringing up some questions.  But what is clear is that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have turned all of us into global villagers.  Collectively we have power to change the dialogue, and this may be yet another example that drives this point in everyone's mind.

In case you haven't seen the video yet, here's the clip:

Product Management: Hacker's Way

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
- Henry Ford

I want to share a video that I discovered through Facebook Interest.  This was a talk by Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, Director of Engineering at Facebook, at fMC 2012.  He started out his career at Microsoft but after a year got recruited by Facebook.  During the talk, he shared how Facebook built the culture of continuous innovation through fostering hacker's way.

He gave 5 points about creating innovative product development culture.

Social game in action

When you are stuck on a plane and have already gone through newspaper and emails, there are limited options available to you.  Browsing airline catalog and looking at the flight information can entertain you only for short while.  I had to realize these all over again yesterday when I flew.  But thankfully there was another option: social gaming.

Facebook Interest: why it is important to Facebook, Twitter and marketeers

It is astonishing to see how fast Facebook can move and introduce new things considering their scale.  They have 500+ million daily active users, yet at the speed they can churn out new features and roll them out to all user base is truly remarkable.