Who is Farhan Lalji?

I blog on my own site and - with Facebook’s notes import feature - my notes get reprinted on Facebook. This works well in some ways as (assumption) most of the people who read me on Facebook don’t use RSS so when they login to Facebook they see that I’ve written a new note. For people who read the blog through RSS or visiting the blog directly they (assumption) prefer using readers and commenting directly on the post. The problem is this separates the conversation and instead of comments being shared and great conversation taking place there are comments in two places and the conversation is in parts and not as great as I think it could be.

Examples, my play and work posts got comments on both Facebook and on my blog and my government posts got a ton of comments on my Facebook page and I know that people who read my blog would have added to this conversation.

So that’s the dilemma, what’s the solution? Some visitors on the blog aren’t Facebook friends, don’t think there’s a way to keep the Facebook posts open to people who aren’t contacts, is there? Should I just ask people to comment only on the blog? Facebook readers click on where it says “View original post”. I don’t think I can block comments on Facebook and force folks to comment on my blog, can I?

Any tips? Suggestions?

I found it really interesting to see that Union Square Ventures was recruiting their new analyst through their blog. Fred and his crew really get it. I really like the evaluation methodology - candidates were asked to send a link showing their web profile.

Personally, I think the best way to tell if someone gets the internet is to see their web footprint. Which is why I’m always surprised if someone in the space doesn’t have a solid blog, delicious, facebook or Linkedin profile, even worse is when I search for someone who claims to know the internet industry and I find little or no results.   I call this a web footprint and someone who get’s the web should have a sizeable web footprint. If not do they really know what they speak of?

A lot has been made about the (semi) new Facebook beacon. MoveOn and others are up in arms talking about the lack of privacy.  There’s even a Facebook group against the beacon.  I can see the value of the beacon and why Facebook are doing it. Although I’m not completely enraged by the impact on privacy,  I do think that they need to change it to an opt-in service.

Thinking about this and my recent move, recent troubles getting internet at the new house (more on this if it persists after this weekend), recent troubles with my bank, all got me thinking about how we, the community, can reverse this on to the companies and facebook. I want to wreak my vengeance on the companies who over promise and under deliver. I want a facebook wreakon!

I want an application which I can use when a company ticks me off. Orange is ticking me off with poor costumer service and not delivering me the internet service they promise, I want a way to let EVERYONE know. HSBC is ticking me off, cancelling my card when I travel, thinking that when I use Paypal its fraud, once again I want to let EVERYONE know!

The blog is great for that. But a simple facebook app that allows me to rant and rave and collects data on which company’s suck, now that would be great! Who wants to build it for me?

One thing that annoys me about using facebook is that I have to go into facebook to use it.  I hate the fact that you get emailed when someone sends you a message, and the message isn’t shown in the email.  I hate that the site makes you login to see what peeps are doing and who’s interacting with whom.

So I was surprised and happy to see that facebook had started to use RSS feeds to allow you to manage some of the information from the site (both Fred Wilson and Dave Winer have written about this already).

It will be interesting to see if people build widgets for other applications based on this now.  Similar to how we’re seeing widget’s being built incorporating twitter.

I’m becoming a bit of a spreadsheet nerd.  Whenever I have the opportunity to look at some numbers and do a bit of crunching I get a bit nervous with anticipation – nerdy, I know!  Sometimes I won’t really need a spreadsheet but just love working and seeing the numbers work.  When I was looking for a new set of speakers for the house I put together a spreadsheet on my phone as I went from store to store looking at the number of channels the wattage and the price, broke it down in price per watt and negotiated with the retailers on Tottenham court road accordingly – my wife was pretty embarrassed but we got a good deal and some nice speakers.

I’m also becoming a bit of a Facebook addict, when I have a spare minute I’m busy looking at our MBA class group, or catching up with friends I haven’t seen in ages.

Today I decided to merge these two and look at periods in my life, the length of time spent in these periods and the friends on Facebook I’ve made accordingly.

Using the networks facility on Facebook I worked out that I have friends from my time in Toronto (22 years), in London (7.5 years), McMaster or Hamilton (4 years), London Business School (2 years) and Yahoo (2 months).  I wanted to take into account factors like people might not be on the network but still registered as friends of mine or other elements, but thought it will probably normalize across the board.

After looking at the numbers and my friends on Facebook, I saw that of my 251 friends 70 were on the Toronto network, 54 were on the London network, 25 were on the London Business School network, 3 were on the McMaster network and 3 were on the Yahoo network.

So the percentage of my life in comparison to the percentage of my friends looks like this:
Toronto – 77% of my life, 28% of my friends
London – 23% of my life, 22% of my friends
London Business School – 7% of my life, 10% of my friends
McMaster – 13% of my life, 1% of my friends
Yahoo -0.67% of my life, 1 % of my friends.

So, Toronto and McMaster are underperforming, London is performing adequately, London Business School and Yahoo are outperforming the others.

That’s really interesting as that’s probably how I feel about these parts of my life right now, not too engaged by Toronto or by McMaster at the moment, London feels about right, and I am really happy and engaged by the London Business School and Yahoo friends and experience.  I guess the numbers really don’t lie.

I read a posting on mashable for chess.com a few weeks ago, and I can’t shake the thought that vertical social networks are a waste of time.

I know that some vertical social networks are turning a profit and closing vc rounds and getting a lot of pub (like Dogster and Catster getting a $1Million), but I just think the absolute user numbers benefit the big social networking sites and the groups on these sites.  I took a look at chess.com and it claims to have 5000 members since it’s soft launch, compared to facebook: with 24,480 users with the chess application installed, and over 500 groups created for chess enthusiasts.

No body has one passion, everyone has many.  I love basketball, but I also am passionate about technology, business, politics, hockey, golf, music and various other interests.  Personally, I like to keep all my interests and passions together and can’t see myself ever joining a vertical social network.

Mashable had a post outlining LinkedIn’s plan to introduce APIs on its “business networking platform” in reaction to the growth of facebook and its application popularity. This really got me thinking about how mature social networking is today?

If we consider social networking an industry, then we would assume that it goes through the normal industry life-cycle, with introduction followed by growth, maturity and then decline. We’ve seen social networking sites (companies) rise and fall, grow and now innovate and follow on.

The way I look at web industries is by comparing it to my family and seeing who’s using it. So when my younger cousins are onto something but I’m not, I consider it in it’s introductory phase. When I’m on it but my wife isn’t, it’s in its growth phase. When both the wife and I are users then it’s mature. When everyone, including my mom is on it, it’s probably about to tip from mature to decline.

So by that rationale, social networking is still growing. My wife has resisted the temptation of joining facebook – and for that matter any social networking application/site/tool – to this date, but temptation’s growing and she’s coming close… I think.

Growth is an interesting time in industries; we’re seeing some real innovation and some real problems being worked on. Personally, I’m finding it difficult to see beyond the application and widget noise and see some real value in applications built on facebook. Feels like someone new every day is using a new application – telling me what their mood is or what books their reading or what their toilet habits are like, okay actually that last one is an app I’m developing. The point is I’m not sure which applications add value and which ones are just clutter on my profile. Is this rapid application development on facebook sustainable? Will it filter onto other social networking sites? Will LinkedIn be able to create a similar buzz around its api and applications built by the community?

My gut instinctive reaction to all of these questions is no. But I’m definitely enjoying the ride. It will be really interesting to see where social networking is at this time next year or even in three years time. Maybe by then the wife will have joined.