Lawrence Coburn wrote a great post about AdaptiveBlue yesterday on his Sexy Widget Blog. The title of the post, Distributed Social Media - AdaptiveBlue, perceptively and succinctly captured the social aspect of what we are working on here. Lawrence explained that one way to look at the BlueOrganizer is the service that allows users to extract semantic content out of the web pages and then share them anywhere online.
This observation is right-on, and so I wanted to take time to explain our rationale and strategy for the social aspect of the BlueOrganizer. The key thing is that BlueOrganizer is web-wide technology. It plugs into your daily experience and helps you enhance your browsing by “understanding” your context and connecting you to the right services based on your habits. In terms of sharing things, it means that BlueOrganizer does not bind you to any particular web sites, you can share things with friends and family anywhere, on your terms and on your turf.
Here is the big picture behind what we are doing:
Our goal is to let the users share things and enjoy the rich semantic experience everywhere. BlueLinks and BlueBadges placed in blogs and social network profiles facilitate the instant exchange of BlueMarks. In addition they enable smart browsing because they connect users to related web sites and services.
Here is the list of scenarios for sharing BlueMarks:
1. Sharing via raw RSS feed
You can publish an RSS feed of your entire collection or just things that match a tag or a smart filter. Then friends and family can subscribe to the feed using any RSS reader, including webtops like Netvibes and Pageflakes. By right clicking on the BlueLink in the reader, they can access the standard BlueMenu:
The user can also feature this feed on any blog using standard RSS widgets. These widgets are available in any major blogging software. For example, the image below shows an example of one such widget in Wordpress. Note the BlueMenu works as in exactly the same way as with any BlueLink.
2. Sharing via BlueBadges
Probably the flashiest (pun intended) way to share your BlueMarks is via a BlueBadge. Widgets have become an extremely popular way to deliver micro content to blogs and social network profiles. We think that widgets are great because they let you show your personality and also share with friends and family on your terms.
The BlueBadges simply leverage the RSS feeds by taking a feed as an input, so there is no additional setup. Whatever is published via RSS can be shown in any BlueBadge.
The badge that is shown in the middle, in the graphic above is in the “zoomed in” mode. In this mode the you can see the details of the object, such as title, description and rating. You can also grab the BlueMark by clicking on the button in the upper left corner.
3. Sharing via BlueLinks
BlueLinks are simpler versions of the badge. They are not as fancy and blend well in blog posts and blog sidebars. But the important thing is that they carry the semantics of the underlying object. BlueLinks are meant to be replacements for basic links that you place in your blogs and profiles because they have the basic function of linking but in addition they serve as the instant gateway to sites and services. (In the upcoming 3.3 release there will be another significant function added to the BlueLinks).
So collectively RSS feeds, BlueBadges and BlueLinks help you share your BlueMarks with others and let them to use your information to find related things on sites that they use. Visit our help page to get a step-by-step guide to sharing via BlueOrganizer. Start sharing your BlueMarks, and as always, please let us know what you think!
Alex
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I like how this ties into Fred Wilson’s self-proclaimed 4 rules for the future of social media: http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/11/the_future_of_m.html
In short:
This high lever strategy nails 1, 2, and 3. and I think 4 will enevitably fall out as a consequence of the attention generated by a solid execution of 1, 2, and 3.
I particularly like the way this strategy addresses 1 (microchunking). In Del.icio.us the atomic element was the URL. The URL is really just a proxy for a semantic item behind the URL, so I like that you are removing that proxy and getting at the core of the interaction with a semantic object.
I think these are some very important points. The BlueOrganizer is a vehicle, with a top of the line navigation system installed, for cruising the information superhighway. You might take your favorite routes (finding movies to add to your Netflix queue, or creating stations on Pandora) or you can just take a mapped out tour of your favorite topics/products. Along the way, you can leave some signposts by adding Bluelinks to your website, and afterwards, re-create your journey for others with a BlueBadge.
What’s particularly interesting about all this is that BlueOrganizer, and all it’s sharing methods is still social, but not in the mainstream sense. Rather it’s explicit sharing and in any environment…making it unbound to a particular medium or site.