dens:

I don’t think this form of mobile + social is that interesting. Knowing someone is approx in the East Village is different than knowing that “Kevin K. @ No Malice Palace (with 12 others)”. Venues are important, context is important, history is important. [...] … anyway, if you read a lot of the blog coverage for this stuff, the people that are really fired up about it are looking at it from the ‘oh, now I know where my wife and kids are” perspective (“location as presence” instead of “location as whereabouts”, if that makes any sense).

noah:

Is who’s nearby a business? [...] interesting piece over at Mobile Industry Review about Google Latitude and the business (or lack thereof) of letting you know where your friends are

It’s a bit like asking “Is knowing who’s online valuable” or “Is knowing who’s connected to someone else valuable”. The experiences you build on top of these questions are what’s valuable.

I was asked a few questions earlier today about Chrome. I wanted to list my first impressions here.

“ClickRank”: Google can/will track your browsing history in a fashion similar to how Web History is tracked. The good thing about this is that Google will have a better idea how people browse and the types of content/pages that matter. It can form a sort of ClickRank. The first benefit to the user is that future search results will be more relevant because this data will be used to organize results and order. You no longer have to go to a “google.com” destination before Google sees your online activity.

Ads: The first thing that pops to mind (and advertisers are salivating over) is ads. Just as Chrome can use your browsing history (“ClickRank”) to deliver better search results, it can use it to deliver more relevant ads. [1] Currently, with existing browsers you can make use of systems like AdBlock to block ads. You probably won’t be able to do this with the new browser.

Gadgets: Google Gadgets will probably move out of the webpage and into the browser. I can see gadgets that keep track of objects across multiple pages. A “shopping cart” system is one that comes to mind. As you browse a couple of different Checkout-powered sites, you can automatically add to this cross-merchant cart.

User accounts (OpenID): With Chrome (and perhaps a custom gadget/plugin system), the browser finally has a chance to make online accounts and logins simpler. One of the biggest annoyances on the web right now is the multiple login problem. You have to maintain a separate login for every site. Current browsers attempt to get around this problem by offering to remember your usernames and passwords. One problem with this approach is that if you attempt to login with someone else’s computer, you have to remember all your details and type them in from scratch. OpenID helps solve the problem of multiple identities and passwords – it maintains a single profile for all of your activity – across sites and across computers. The issue with OpenID is that, although secure, it lacks a clean user experience. (A user is directed from a login site to an OpenID site and then back to the login site. A chance for hijacking or other malicious behavior is great). A browser such as Chrome can step in the middle to help make this process easier: it can use Google Accounts as the single OpenID “provider” to all supporting sites. And it can wrap the entire OpenID authentication process in a simple, secure, browser-based authentication tool. [2]

OpenID, part 2: The good thing about being an OpenID “provider” is that the provider now has access to all your activity (from a login/authentication standpoint). So far with Google’s online reach, they can only track what you do on their site. (AdWords excepted, but that’s not really “tracking”). If they released something like OpenID using Google Accounts, they’d be alerted everytime you logged into an external site, too. This way they’d really be able to see who’s using what and how many more people are using Flickr and Photobucket and Facebook’s Photos over Picasa. With a combination of Chrome, OpenID technologies and Google Accounts, this process finally becomes much simpler. This is a good play, I’m just surprised no other big player has really done this (with the exception of Yahoo!). [3]

Notes:

1. It’s a bit like when Gmail first came out. You have all the benefits of free, secure email without all the hassles that previous email programs like Outlook brought (spam, viruses, …). In return, Google serves you ads based on the content of your messages. In this case, your entire browsing experience has been revised to be cleaner and less malware-prone than with other browsers (Internet Exploder). If you want these features, you’ll have to make do with ads, etc.

2. I think Yahoo’s implementation comes the closest to making the OpenID easier and more secure to use but suffers because the average person does not really know about/understand it.

3. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t really done this. They already have proper user profile information (which is the most valuable bit of data in logins). All they’d need to do is to implement proper security around profile data (“site A can see my full name and town and website”, “site B can only see my first name and website”) and then give users/developers a way to use it with OpenID.

From Seth Godin’s The Dip:

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, told me, “We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we’d make a better impression with better technology. So we are never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.”

Sure, there’s a part of me that likes the idea of releasing early and often. However, I think there’s a bit of a perfectionist in me that thinks very much like Brin. I think many engineers and artists probably feel the same way. Sometimes you get so lost in your work and enjoy doing it so much that you are always looking ahead to what it can be. Sometimes, you’ll be 80% of the way there, but will hesitate to show it to anyone until it gets even closer to 100%. I often find myself doing this with various software or writing projects. It took me a long time to bring this blog back in a somewhat publicly presentable form – I kept thinking up new designs and content styles I wanted to include.

Back when I was a long-distance runner in high school, I wouldn’t invite anyone to come see me run at races – even my parents. I knew I was getting better and better as a runner, so the way I saw it, it didn’t matter that they didn’t get to see any of the mid-season stuff. I knew the good stuff was coming – league championships, invitationals, etc. Come back tomorrow. I’ll be better.