What’s up with Facebook (virus)?

I walked into work (my real job) this morning and found a warning from the corporate information security team in my Inbox. They had verified reports of a worm virus spreading via Facebook related emails.  

As I’ve realized since, the problem isn’t just confined to ’related emails’, these are malicious emails within the Facebook system. The link takes to a website to look at a video clip. If you, the user tries to watch it, a message appears saying that they need to install the latest version of Flash Player in order to watch the clip. Unfortunately, by the time I received this warning, I had already received such an email in my Facebook  Inbox from a co-worker. I am so embarassed to even admit this, but yes, I did click on the link. So when I got this email from the security team, I did a virus scan, it detected and deleted the ‘Koobface’ virus.

I am extremely paranoid when it comes to online security and highly unlikely to click on anything if it’s even remotely suspicious, regardless of whom it came from. If I had received that email via Outlook or Gmail or Yahoo! mail, I would have deleted it right away. However, I was completely fooled by that, this email came from a trusted source and came to the one place that I thought was ’safe’ - the FaceBook Inbox.

What ticked me off most of all in this sordid saga on a monday morning is that I couldn’t find any mention of this email security threat, anywhere on Facebook. There’s no warning or any kind of information related to this. Would it really have been that difficult to put a note in everyone’s Inbox that there’s a virus threat and not to click any links even if the email is from someone you know?

What’s also extremely disturbing is that if the user accounts can be manipulated to send out malicious viruses to other other accounts, how secure is the Facebook platform?

But questions around Facebook platform vulnerability aside, first things first - make sure you update your virus definitions and run a complete virus system scan. And lastly, don’t trust anyone…I mean don’t trust any emails with links no matter where they originate.

Will Friendfeed move to mainstream?

A great deal has been written about Friendfeed and its phenomenal growth. This popular social site enables sharing of items across various social sites with others and also allows comment on items shared by friends. However, the ability to post direct to FF is limited.  Here’s the typical flow of information to FF, which as you will see is mostly from direct blog posts and other news aggregators.

Maybe this is a concious choice by FF to be a super-aggregator of feeds rather than a social bookmarking or sharing site. In which case, ability to share or post directly to the site is not as critical.

The Friendfeed blog recently described their favorite new application - Mail2FF, a new Friendfeed application that lets you send pictures directly to Friendfeed through email.

Since we launched our API, avid FriendFeed users and developers have built all sorts of cool applications. One of our favorites is Mail2FF, which lets you easily post pictures to FriendFeed via email. Built by Gary Burd, it lets you post messages directly to FriendFeed using a special email address that consists of your FriendFeed nickname and your FriendFeed Remote Key.

I think it’s a great idea and what I would also like to see is direct posting of news to FF from some of the mainstream media sites. 

NY Times	CNN	ABC News

The mainstream adoption of social aggregators is highly debatable and to say the social landscape is fragmented would be an understatement. I think becoming a super-aggregator of all content from all social sites is a brilliant strategy but I think FF could further increase its share of the social media pie by enabling direct sharing of content to its site.

Mobile drives adoption of social sites like Facebook

I recently received two invites from someone I know, one for Facebook and another for LinkedIN. I accepted the Facebook invite right away, took me over 2weeks to activate the LinkedIN connection. The difference was that I could add the contact to Facebook via my cellphone but not so with LinkedIN. For the latter, I had to go to the site, log in and accept the invite. With Facebook, I can add a new contact with a simple text message.

For sites trying to acquire new users, this is a lesson worth learning, the easier you make it for folks to sign up, the faster you can drive adoption.

Wii Fit says your 4yr old is fat

Just the other day, I tuned into my favorite radio station on my daily 1hr commute to work and heard this parent calling into say that according to Wii Fit, her 9yr old daughter was fat. Of course, next thing you know, there’s a flood of listeners calling in, to express their outrage.

My colleague walked into the office yesterday with a similar story, ’You are not going to believe this but Wii Fit says my 4yr old is obese’. I was horrified, what kind of monster would say that to a child and this was just a machine. 

I have blogged about Wii’s mainstream marketing woes in the past and how it’s trying to appeal to every demographic on the planet, a strategy which seems to have served it well as it outsells Xbox game consoles in the US and Wii Fit is one of June’s top-selling games.

However, it is obvious that by targeting everyone, Nintendo might be confusing its user base. Unlike other Wii games, Wii Fit as the name indicates has a fitness component to it. Here’s how Nintendo describes it,

Wii Fit is a combination of fitness and fun, designed for everyone, young and old. By playing Wii Fit a little every day, you, your friends, and your family can work towards personal goals of better health and fitness.

The problem with Wii Fit is that it uses BMI (Body Mass Index) as a way to assess one’s fitness level and there’s a cute little disclaimer at the bottom,

The BMI assessment in Wii Fit is designed for adults, not for players between ages 2 and 19.

Based on their marketing and advertisement, there’s no doubt Nintendo is pitching Wii Fit to all age groups so it can’t hide behind the fine print. Moreover, BMI is a very flawed indicator of one’s fitness even for adults because it’s based on one’s height and weight. It’s very misleading because weight is not a very accurate predictor of one’s fitness, because someone with higher muscle mass could easily outweigh someone who is of the same height but has more fat, because fat weighs less than muscle. Using that kind of flawed system, no wonder cherubic little girls are inaccurately proclaimed to be ‘fat’.

One one hand, one can say it’s the parents who are responsible because why on earth are they using a gaming system to determine their child’s fitness? But then again, isn’t the customer always right? I don’t think it’s in Nintendo’s best interest to have their product associated with creating self-esteem issues in little girls.

Why Yahoo! mail sucks

One of my pet peeves is why companies who have been around a long time are still unable to get the basics right. A great example is Yahoo! mail that,  even after 11 years of being in existence, can’t distinguish between legitimate emails and spam. It’s annoying enough when tons of junk mail gets routed to your inbox but the last straw is when legitimate emails get sent to your spam folder.

This interview with Mark Risher, anti-abuse product manager for Yahoo Mail in Network World on introduction of DomainKeys Internet Mail, as the standard for authentication, back in February makes it sound like the greatest invention since sliced bread. I found that there’s more truth in the comments than in the interview itself. 

This technology is something we felt would be very helpful for receivers so we can confer special privileges to a message. For this other message that lacks a signature, we can penalize it. We can treat it with more suspicion and run it through additional filters.

Yes, authentication of emails sound great in theory, the assumption being that Yahoo! system can identify the authentified piece of mail. But when their own mail system can’t distinguish between authentified mail and spam, what’s the point?

The incident that inspired my post today was an email I received from another Yahoo! mail user, a friend of mine who was responding to my previous email, and guess what?! His email was DomainKeys authentified and yet, it ended up in the spam folder. If I hadn’t checked my spam folder I would have missed the email with his flight details and would have left him stranded at the airport.

That’s why theory doesn’t always add up to reality and that’s where Gmail atleast has its basics right. Gmail system is smart enough to identify and compile emails in the same thread so subsequent emails in the same thread don’t get blocked. I mean, the fact that I’ve responded to a given email address multiple times should render it kosher.

That being said, how much can one expect from a free mail service but wait a minute…Gmail’s free and it’s not even out of Beta yet (which is curious, why is it still in Beta?). From what I’ve heard, the paid business mail hosted by Yahoo! has even worse spam filters, resulting in more spam than the free account, so much for paying for better service.

And as if it couldn’t get any worse, for the last few months, it’s been nearly impossible to log in to the mail account. You keep trying and trying, and you can see your emails in the tiny box on My Yahoo page but you can’t get to them. Yahoo! mail is supposed to be the third-most popular site according to Hitwise, a number which is no doubt helped by frustrated users who have to keep visiting the site multiple times because it’s so friggin darn impossible to get in.

Inside scoop on SV New Tech July Meetup

Last Tuesday, I was at the Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup in Palo Alto. The line up was great as usual and the only downside was that they were all out of pizza even before I got there, oh well…there’s always the wine. Here’s the scoop on the new ventures who presented there:

The first one was www.kwiry.com, presented by founder Ron Feldman. “You can text it before you forget it with mobile txt message reminders to your computer.”

This is a nifty tool to remind yourself of everyday important details by texting it to the kwiry website. Kwiry adds a social component to the query, it allows folks to search through the reminders, add comments, it has a Facebook application, integration with Twitter and yes, there’s also a mobile version of the site.

Show me the money: Their response to business model question was that the site serves up search results and product results, both of which are monetizable through search advertising and product advertising. One intriguing idea they’re working on - pilots with offline media companies, where the brands could leverage the site to do product marketing campaigns. One test case was with Mustang, where customers were encouraged to text kwiry for more information on Mustangs. 

 www.websketch.com – Presenters were Scott Tse – founder/prez and David (who seemed to be the king of everything else that needs to be done). It’s an online web design and hosting service for the average user, ie. someone without programming experience or html training, very unlike the average audience at this Meetup.

Based on the demo at this Meetup, it seemed very easy-to-use and the UI was very slick and intuitive. You have the ability to drag and drop your new website into reality with interesting use of images that scroll, embedded videos, and scrolling pages to create very professional-looking pages. One of their customers is Ducati motorcycles. The presenter created a snazzy-looking webpage from scratch in under a minute. The site also has Flickr integration so you can easily use pictures from your Flickr account. The tool is 100% browser-based with expected integration with YouTube in a week.

Show me the money: Currently, like the gazillion other start ups out there, this site is also free. Their plan is to grow the user base and then start charging a fee but I think this model is very sketchy.* The main issue with the site is that you can’t transition your webpage to another server, the pages have to be hosted on their site. I wonder how many of their users would be willing to get locked into a third-party site for their business website without knowing the terms of the contract? Also, currently there is no customer or database support available so that’s other deterrent for small-businesses which seem to be their primary target.

*Meetup organizer Vincent Lauria had a great suggestion which was to grandfather the early adopters into the system so you don’t lose them when the site goes live and you reward them for taking a chance on your idea.

Note: I tried to access the live demo on the site, but I got an error message even though I had IE 7. Sorry, but your browser is incompatible. “You may only view pages with Firefox 2 & 3, Safari 3.x, or Internet Explorer 7 and edit pages with only Firefox 2 & 3 or Safari 3.x+”.

 www.LaunchSplash.com pitches itself as filling “a need of 100% of web startups - drop dead simple launch pages for your upcoming site - build community before you even have one.” Presenter/founder, Jacques Crocker did a great job of demonstrating how easy this application is for use. This is a great option for folks like me who register a ton of domain names and end up with a dummy page with tons of crappy links. The application is quite simple and all you have to do to get started is to enter name of your domain into the search box. It offers several different templates with RSS feed and ability to capture email addresses from visitors so folks can sign up while your site is being built. The preview option shows you what your page will look like. You can also host the page at your own domain by mapping the IP address.

Show me the money: The revenue model is simple fee-based subscription model where the basic page is free, and the plans start  at $5/mthly and go higher depending on the selected plan. The founder has no intention of opening the site up for third-party developers… yet.  

www.ZoomProspector.com helps business find the right location through a variety of attributes such as college education of the labor market, property prices, and even income. The data provided through this site is incredibly extensive. The founders, Chad Catacchio & Anatalio Ubalde claim that their tool offers Map data that’s much deeper than Google, Yahoo! maps and all the other data sources put together. The site which was featured on TechCrunch earlier this year uses data from the local governments.

Show me the money: The revenue model was somewhat vague and very ‘Googlesque’, they talked about how they want to ‘liberate’ the data so access to all information is free. They seem to be targeting local governments who will leverage this data to attract new businesses. The plan also seems to be to monetize through advertising and driving traffic to client communities. The site’s currently in closed beta and access is through invitation code only. Note: For those aspiring for an opportunity with a startup, they are hiring.

Webkinz stays close to its offline roots

It’s probably because I am completely immersed in the online world that I am used to seeing online sites trying to drive customer acquisition and retention through offline activities. I did a double take when I saw Webkinz, the hugely popular toy sensation going the other way and using its online gaming/virtual world to drive purchase of its furry little stuffed pets and related knick knacks. For those of you who don’t know much about Webkinz, it’s a stuffed toy with an online avatar. In the highly addictive Webkinz world, you can feed, dress and exercise your ‘adopted’ pet. In addition, you can play games and earn Webkinz cash, which you can use to buy food, clothes, and even real estate for your pet.

But the only way you can get access to the virtual world is to buy one of the numerous furry critters and use the unique code that comes with each pet. Many kids as well as adults are hooked on the site, but there’s no option for those who want to just renew their acccounts at end of one year (when the account access ends), without buying yet one more of those stuffed critters.

Let’s be honest here, the Webkinz stuffed pets are cute, but they not all that interesting given the stiff competition from the other leading kids brands. If it wasn’t for the virtual world/online gaming, there’s really not much compelling about the Webkinz pets.

I think Ganz (the company that owns this virtual world phenomenon) has boxed itself into a corner because of its arrangement with the retailers who stock these furry critters. Its strategy isn’t all that surprising, given its traditional roots, which is gifts and stuffed pets. So here’s a hugely successful product idea that’s trapped by tradition. 

Ganz could drive pure profit by having an online renewal option for Webkinz by allowing those with an existing account to renew without having to buy another stuffed creature. Hopefully, Ganz will reconsider its strategy and let the site thrive on its own merit rather than remain shackled to its offline merchandise.

My first blog post on WordPress

Okay, here goes. My first post on WordPress. I have to admit I like the blogging interface much better than Typepad. I absolutely love that it lets me edit the permalink, I don’t remember having that option on Typepad.

I wonder if there’s a way to transfer my Technorati ranking to this new blog? Still need to look in to that. Need to hook up the blog with Feedburner but that will have to wait until later today. But for now, I am all set in my new home on WordPress.

Don’t know wtf is going on with Typepad..

…the sidebar and most content for my blog is missing. I’ve been contemplating switching over to WordPress for a while now, so I guess this is a sign… in future, my new home will be http://marketingmystic.wordpress.com/

Twitter and the conundrum of ‘free’ (social sites)

After a couple of highly frenetic work weeks and several crazy road trips later, I am finally back in the blogging scene.

Given the recent uproar over Twitter outages, the question begs to be asked (and answered), if you aren’t willing to pay for a service, should you be whining when it doesn’t deliver? What, if any, should your expectations be from a free service? Conversely, if you are a free site/platform, how do you justify additional investment in your company, if you don’t have any means of generating revenue?

This is a huge challenge for free social sites like Twitter. Good news is that you have millions of users, bad news is you have millions of users but no revenue. And if there’s no revenue, it’s heck of a lot more daunting to keep scaling to meet the needs of your burgeoning user base.

There’s where the venture funding helps, but sooner or later, Twitter (and free social sites like Facebook, Orkut, Friendster, and others) will have to figure out a way to make money. I think it’s quite dicey when the valuation of these social sites is based on freeloading users who don’t want to pay to use the site. Given that none of these sites like Twitter, Facebook have figured out a way to monetize this freeloading user base, the popular option seems to be advertising.

I have my own doubts about advertising as a sustainable revenue model for social sites. Especially, if the intent of any social site is to entertain and engage the user, driving them off the site with links to another site seems highly counterintuitive.

Therein lies the biggest challenge for these free sites, it’s all fine and dandy as long as the venture funds keep flowing in, all the site has to do is focus on getting more users (and of course, make sure the site doesn’t crash under all the traffic). Acquiring users for a free service is the easy part, but this story will get much more interesting when these free sites are forced to support themselves like some of the other ‘growed up’ social sites like LinkedIn.

Om Malik of GigaOM suggests charging power users like Robert Scoble, who according to Malik overwhelm the microblogging site. I think that’s a great idea, but how long do you think users will stick around if they have to pay for what they are used to getting for free?