We're spending the week in Surfside, TX enjoying a bit of post-SXSW de-connectivity before plunging back into the fray. I'm catching up on some software projects for Wikitravel and some other projects as well. It's pretty fun.
Surfside is really beautiful -- fine white sand, gentle waves from the Gulf, flocks of brown pelicans passing by our deck in the morning. There's been some damage to the village due to Hurricane Rita and long-term erosion, but it's still really fun. And not particularly over-run, even during Spring Break this weekend. We've got a few hundred yards of beautiful beach in front of our house practically to ourselves.
The downside has been that the vacation home we rented doesn't have the WiFi coverage we'd hoped for. We had the Mayor of Surfside (!) over at our house yesterday trying to set up a directional antenna so we could get a bitstream from the volunteer fire department, but no luck. So I'm doing updates at the restobar on the main street, and then editing offline at home.
It's been great playing in the sand and waves with Amita June. This is her first time really playing on the beach, and she's having a great time.
tags: travel surfside texas amita june wikitravel
Montreal Gazette article
A few weeks ago I met with local reporter Steve Faguy about Wikitravel, living in Montreal, and wikis and technology in general. He wrote a great profile of me and Wikitravel, a sidebar about my blog (!), a description of wiki and a list of good wikis.
I like the story; it's well-written, and Steve knows enough about technology to write a good article while still making it accessible for non-professionals. I also like the image of me; that's a pretty good shot of me.
The one omission I am kicking myself for was failing to note that Montreal will be the location of not one but two Wiki conferences this year. RoCoCoCamp is 18-20 May, and WikiSym is in October. Ray King calls Portland (Oregon) "Wiki City, USA", but I think Montreal is giving it a run for its money on the international scene.
tags: montreal gazette steve faguy wikitravel wiki me montreal press
Twitter 2007 == Friendster 2003
So, I'm really concerned about Twitter's performance and stability problems since SXSW. Remember Friendster, the social networking platform of 2003? The site failed to support a surge of traffic in mid-2003, about a year into the service. The deluge of users meant that pages wouldn't serve, images timed out, and edits were impossible.
Consequently, the social networking market was fractured as users went to smaller services like Tribe.net, MySpace, Orkut and LinkedIn. The other services might not have all your friends on them, but at least they worked. It was a phenomenal fumble by Friendster that was entirely attributable to failure to scale. Would other social networks have come up anyways? Probably. But there's a network effect to social networking, and people would probably have stuck with Friendster a lot more than they actually did.
I think Obvious Corp. has got to get on the ball if they're going to capitalize on the success of Twitter. There's a similar network effect advantage for Twitter-like services, and if they can execute well, they're going to Pwn. But the software and interface are pretty easy to replicate, and there are other services like Twitter out there already. Better keep an eye on your lunch, fellas.
tags: twitter obvious corp friendster network effect network effect