Answer Guy Central

Who Wants a Patent? Because they seem to be getting handed out for just about anything.

I’ve long believed that in general software patents are a very bad idea. This week the United States Patents and Trademarks Office set a new record for calling something unique that’s just not anything of the sort.

To start, let me state that I’m not an attorney. That said, I’ve dealt with Intellectual Property for a very long time and successfully defended against a trademark infringement claim when my software Uninstall for Windows was sued by the makers of the program Uninstaller. In fact, I got Uninstaller’s trademark invalidated. It was pretty much a matter of explaining common sense in a calm, rational manner to the USPTO.

So when Facebook received US Patent 7,669,123 this week I was dismayed. Patents and the applications filed for them are supposed to describe something unique, and as much as I believe that software is mostly a representation of an idea rather than a thing and therefore shouldn’t generally be patentable at all, Facebook’s patent for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network” doesn’t really even describe software.

Make no mistake: US Patent 7,669,123  describes the use of software, but it doesn’t actually lay out the software being used at all. 7,669,123 also tells what the use of the software will be, but functionally that use can be described very simply:

“We’re going to take information based on a set of criteria that we believe are important to you, decide what’s important, and show (only) that to you“.

You know, kind of like what the editors and staff at a newspaper do. Not New. Not Unique. Not Patentable.

In fairness 7,669,123 automates that process. And if Facebook described the specifics of the algorithm that they use in their application for what has become 7,669,123 then that specific process, if unique, might deserve patent protection. But they haven’t.

I don’t know whether I’m more upset that the USPTO has misunderstood the very idea of what a patent is, or that Facebook, with 7,669,123 in hand, is likely to start suing any and everyone who automates selective informational displays in anything that might be called a “social networking” environment.

Oh: and the very title of the patent application is not descriptive of what the patent does, which should have been enough to get the application squashed out of hand. The process Facebook describes does not “provide a news feed about a user of a social network”. It provides a news feed about the people the user knows.

If you’re at all concerned about this—and you should be—I implore you to contact the Office of Patents and Trademarks to get patent 7,669,123 invalidated. And if you’re MySpace, Twitter, or another social network and you don’t make big noise about this, well, enjoy the next thirteen years in court.

I’m being less social. My Twitter Community has spoken.

As cool a thing as social networking is (or can be), every time you write something you risk rubbing the people who follow you the wrong way. You probably want to avoid the “I’m Eating Breakfast” messages that I’ve joked about, but how close to that standard is it OK to get, in the interest of being social?

I use Foursquare on my Droid. I’ve told you about the service / game / social networking tool before, and I’ve said both here and in conversation that I’m not really sure what its purpose is. The test goes on, but I’ve disabled one of Foursquare’s features.

Foursquare will no longer send my activity to Twitter.

My kids saw everywhere I went, and now they can’t. They tell me that’s a good thing; even my own children just weren’t interested in my moment-to-moment movements and periodic search for free WiFi. Occasionally, I got a funny response on Twitter from accounts that were set up specifically to annoy people who were broadcasting their movements the way I was.

And every now and then a real person would ping me back. But that opportunity for social networking interaction is no more. Ditto my use of AppAware, a program in my Droid that keeps me up on the latest trends in software for Android SmartPhones. I’m still using the software, but it’s no longer telling my Twitterverse when I add or remove software.

Why have I stopped using Twitter integration in AppAware and Foursquare? Because I was losing followers. Simply put, I was talking too much.

I’m not going to rant about the “right” way to do social networking. It’s simply: be genuine and bring value to the discussions you join. But in the quest for using social networking in your business change, keep an eye on what works and what doesn’t . . . and especially on what detracts. It seems that for now, automatic posts from one social networking platform to another may still be in that latter category.

Do you want to hear what I think of Tiger Woods’ apology-heard-round-the-world? I’ll tell you, but let me be clear this is a business change conversation, and not a gossip piece.

If you want to watch the entire speech Tiger gave today as apology for his recent behavior, you can see it here.

Here’s what I think: I don’t care how good a golfer this man is; I can’t look at him any more. I’m not making a moral judgment; Tiger Woods, like anyone, is a human being, and human beings make mistakes. We should all stay out of his personal life, period. Being a celebrity does indeed open you to scrutiny, but nobody needs to know what happens inside Tiger Woods’ home.

My brand-new issue in watching Tiger Woods is that as a superstar celebrity he needs to learn how to speak convincingly. I believe that he believed every word he uttered today, so sincerity isn’t technically in play here. But Tiger Woods gave a thirteen minute speech about the most intimate details of his life—or at least acknowledged them, which couldn’t have been easy—and sounded like a robot. John Kerry would have been President of the United States if he didn’t sound like a block of wood every time he spoke to the American people in 2000. And Senator Kerry’s subject matter on the campaign trail was never as personal as Tiger Woods’ was today.

This applies to you and your business.

In an era of ever-more social networking, where we blog, post details of our lives on Twitter and Facebook, and generally are more “with” people than ever before, it’s imperative that you’re perceived as “real”. Write and speak from the heart. Think hard about open processes and engagement . . . because pretty much everything you do and say is open.

Business Change is about change. Be social. Add value to conversations. Don’t be like Tiger Woods.

Doug Leeds, US President of Ask.com, has a point to make: “at the end of the day, people would rather Ask for something than Google it”. (credit where it’s due: the quote is from this article from yesterday’s New York Times).

More credit: Mr. Leeds is correct . . . sort of. He’s wrong if he believes that people are interested in abandoning their Google.com search habit in favor of Ask.com, but we’ve all stared at that Google search box, not quite sure what to type in, then been frustrated by the results of our choice of search terms.

So wouldn’t it be better if you could ask your questions in natural language, have your search engine understand what you mean, and return the correct results?

In theory, that’s what Ask.com does. You’re encouraged to phrase your searches in the form of a question rather than combine words and operators such as “+‘, and “not“. Ask.com uses software to look at your question and decide what it means. You just have to trust it to do the job correctly.

Yeah, right.

I don’t trust it at all. That’s partly because I’ve tried it and not been any happier with the results at Ask.com than I am with what Google spits out. But the real point is that I’ve yet to see software that understands my questions well enough to trust. And that’s where social networking becomes social search.

The nature of the word “social”, when you strip everything else away, is that you trust people you’re social with. Trust can actually be negative, as in “I trust him to try and screw me over”, but it’s easier to deal from that uncomfortable position than to just start from scratch. It’s why I “trust” Google more than I trust Ask.com. I know that I get back exactly what I put in.

In acquiring Aardvark, Google is acknowledging that the next generation of search is trust. Aardvark is a search engine, but it uses the recommendations of people you already know to provide results. It’s like that “Ask a Friend” lifeline on the game show “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?“.

Social Networking, Social Search, Social Trust . . . business change that is all about who you know, and what they know.

Last week, a company called Foursquare announced a deal that vaulted them from interesting curiosity to game-changer, as what I told you at the time equals nothing less than the coming of real Interactive Television. Now, they’ve got something else happening: Foursquare has begun a deal with the venerable Zagat restaurant guide.

I was fascinated to note that three days after the Foursquare/BravoTV deal was written about in the New York Times, there were literally –zero– comments on the story. Today, there’s a new article in The Times detailing (perhaps) why: it turns out that as a general population, people who read things on the Internet may be more discerning than was previously suspected. In other words, we just aren’t as stupid as everyone thought were were!

So stand up straight, puff out your chest, and be proud: you’re doing more on the Internet than watching pornography and stealing music and movies! You’re actually communicating. This social networking thing isn’t just a huge “thing”; we’re exchanging ideas with each other that may be worth exchanging!

How does this tie into Foursquare? I’m still not sure; that service is mostly a game. But if “crowd sourcing” of information does, as today’s Times article professes, actually works, then using Foursquare for live recommendations and to meet people whose opinions match your must be . . . worth the trouble. And from a business change perspective that’s a good thing .

Yesterday I came across an absolutely fascinating article about how much your Twitter Follower Count “matters”. It’s conclusion? Not at all. The article is ten months old, so this is a guy who was way ahead of his time in asking the question, witnessed by his reference to Ashton Kutcher trying to be the first person on Twitter with one million followers (he’s approaching 4.5 million as of today). That rate of increase, by the way, is a business change we could all live with.

He came to the conclusion that your follower count doesn’t matter. His point, well-taken as it was, was limited, though: the larger your follower count gets, the higher your percentage of not-real-people “followers” becomes.

A while back, I told you about Kim Kardashian ’s deal to be paid $10,000 per tweet by certain advertisers. I suggested that paying that amount of money to reach 2.8 million opted-in receivers of an advertising message was a relative bargain. Now, in light of the story I read yesterday I ask: what’s the real number of people being reached?

And the answer is: nobody knows.

There are services that will look at your followers and offer an opinion on how many are garbage, but that’s the easy part; if it turns out that 80% of her followers are garbage does that mean that the other 20% actually read what she writes? No; and . . . we don’t know how many DO, and as far as I know there’s no tool that will tell you that.

In fact, even if Twitter wanted to try to answer that question, it couldn’t.

I follow only about 50 people. Their tweets should up on my Droid. I scroll through them and scan for useful information, but let’s be honest: I miss a bunch. AND I’M ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO GOES THAT FAR. My fifty people, by the time I pick up my phone each morning, generally create about 200 stacked up tweets; people who follow lots of big names can’t possibly keep up!

Twitter is in no position to say anything meaningful on the subject, so there’s truly no fix. So can you even get a meaningful CPM figure to decide whether paying for access to Kim Kardashian ’s 2.8 million followers is worth it? No.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t invalidate the importance of social networking. Get on Twitter, and wherever else makes sense to you. Follow only people who are genuinely useful to you (ask us for help if you aren’t sure who that is).

And remember that business change, by its nature, is change. So don’t try to apply what you already “know”.

What may be the biggest business change of all is finally on the verge of becoming real. Interactive Television, an idea we’ve all known was “big” since way before the Internet destroyed the Yellow Pages and called the model that television stations and newspapers live on into question is coming to a place that actually makes sense.

In a way I haven’t quite figured out.

The Bravo TV channel has announced a deal with Foursquare.com, a web site that tracks where you go, what you do, and who else is there. It’s at least a little stalker-esque, but the idea is fascinating and potentially a way to make new friends in an increasingly disconnected time.

If you followed me on Foursquare, you would have known, for example, that I was with Mick Jagger at the Gagosian Gallery’s opening for Damien Hirst a few days ago. Live. And maybe we could have met.

I’m not going to try and explain Foursquare or similar ideas like Gowalla any further; to be honest they leave me mostly scratching my head. But as the New York Times tells us, the deal between Foursquare and Bravo TV will encourage television viewers to get up, go out, and collect points by making their way from one Bravo-endorsed location to another. Interactive television, Re-imagined.

Think that’s a lot of business change? Me, too. Here’s what I find most amazing, though: since the deal was announced and the Times’ story was posted three days ago, there’s been not one single comment on it. Not One.

Maybe nobody cares. Maybe none of the usual people who read The Times are using Foursquare. Maybe they are but think it’s such an unimportant idea that they couldn’t be bothered to post a comment. Maybe the staff at The New York Times is asleep and not releasing comments on that page Nope, I posted a comment and it was released almost immediately.

Or maybe the Bravo/Foursquare deal is an example of a new kind of business change: one nobody cares about.

I’ve been known to pick on Michael Arrrington. I think he’s a whiny self-important blowhard whose words are often not worth reading. Also, I’ve said as recently as last week that blogging may be in trouble. Today, I wish to compliment Mike, and give you an example of when blogging is the most useful tool anywhere.

A few days ago, Harman Bajwa was quite unpleasantly surprised when he found that Facebook had taken away his page. Why did Facebook do that? Because Harman’s given name matches the name of a big company, and they had claimed that he was violating their trademark.

Umm . . . no.

If I wanted to claim /pepsi as my Facebook page, or if I registered pepsi.com as an Internet address, then Pepsico would have a valid reason to grab their property from me. Even if I was a fan and saying only nice things about them, disclaiming any official links between us, and not making money, Pepsi would have every right to say I was using “their” name.

Unless, of course, my name was Pepsi.

Back to where I started, now: Facebook has given Harman back his page, and two interesting things crop up: Mike Arrington helped make it happen, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now friended to Harman.

Facebook did the right thing, and quickly. Since most newsworthy stories seem to be bad this is now a non-story, right? Yes, unless you simply want to point out that Facebook is a good citizen (this time). And no lawsuits were filed! Are you listening, Facebook PR Department?

Or unless you need a lesson in the way social networking works, and why you need to be on top of the techniques and issues that drive it.

Oh, to be Kevin Rose. The founder of Digg and several other “important” Internet companies has a problem on his hands.

Kevin is a smart guy, and—now into his thirties—no longer running on pure hubris. So I’m encouraged by his acknowledgment that Digg, one of the hottest companies on the Internet about 18 months ago, is about to undergo a major business change.

Here’s the question: When yesterday’s hot new property is today’s also-ran, is business change happening too fast?

Say the words ” social networking ” and even people who aren’t familiar with the phrase have a pretty good chance of mentioning Facebook and Twitter in response. But how many would name Digg? The news aggregation and recommendation service is very much a social networking site, and with our ever-expanding hunger for news so much in evidence it seem Digg is a better place for most of us to spend our time than on Facebook reading Uncle Joe’s latest musings on nothing or on Twitter reading Guy Kawasaki’s words on how brilliant Guy Kawasaki is. But it isn’t working out that way.

So kudos to Kevin Rose for seeing the business change writing on the wall. I wish him luck (although I’m guessing he’s already lost this war).

Now jump in a slightly different direction: five journalists are about to do the reality-TV thing in France, where their task will be to report on the news based only on information they gather on Facebook and Twitter.

I don’t want my news based only on what’s available on social networking sites. No matter how good these five journalists are at mining the social networking big two, not being allowed to also look elsewhere renders suspect the news they report.

Wasn’t it just yesterday I told you about The New York Times’ plans to start charging for their web site? Business Change is a tough sport. Find the balance between reactive and proactive, and keep watching for the next wave . . .

If a sentence falls on your computer screen and you don’t read it, did it make a sound?

In order to do my job, I listen a lot. I talk a lot, too, but if I don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me I really can’t be the kind of coach and mentor my clients need.

So I read. All the time. That’s great, because I really enjoy keeping up on what’s happening in the business and technology communities. Having it be a big part of my job makes everything even better!

It isn’t always easy, and the way I approach the task of keeping up on all that reading varies (as it should). Some things get mailed to me. Some show up in my e-mail or browser. And others come to me through an RSS feed (you can receive this feed by subscribing here) and land in my Droid SmartPhone.

Lately, there’s too much.

I don’t mean there’s too much for me to keep up with. What I’m saying is that there’s too much repetitive noise. On my Droid, I receive 300-400 articles each day, and a similar number of tweets from the people I follow on Twitter. It sounds like a lot, but I drink my own Kool-Aid and just as I put business management systems in place for others I have an information management system in place for myself that lets me get through that without missing much.

But I’m noticing that the 800 or so items each day are actually about twenty items worth reading re-issued over and over again, plus another dozen or so pithy remarks that catch my attention. I like the pithy remarks. But seeing the same story come across my plain of vision thirty times just tells me that there are too many people whose job it is TO TRY AND GET MY ATTENTION, instead of actually having something to say.

Yesterday, The New York Times announced that sometime next year they will start charging for access to their web site. They aren’t talking about what that will look like, other than to say that it will probably involve giving everyone a limited amount of free access, after which they will have to pay if they want to read any more that day/week/month.  They also aren’t saying how much it will cost.

The question now is this: will The Times and the rest of the “serious journalism world”  get us to pay, and will that spell the end of the amateur or underpaid blogging world, or will the opposite occur and we’ll be thrust into a world where more and more repetitive but mostly useless information is what we look at?

I hope paid content wins. You know that old line about “you get what you pay for?”. The words of bloggers are feeling more and more like they’re worth what we pay for them. And while I’m sad saying it, that’s a business change we all need to root for.