Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Seems that Loic once again brought a good discussion to the house that we have been having several times over though under the name of Open Social Graph. Where does my social graph reside, whom does it belong to? I am writing more and more about this first of all because it is a subject dear to my heard, second I am in lots of discussion with Dirk, one of Ormigo’s developers, about it, and third, it is relevant to what we do within Ormigo in terms of the long term vision.

What Loic really wants is already available through e.g. Noserub. The tools is only a side project but it is getting more and more attention and due to the fact that it is open-source, you can just install it on your server. id.thylmann.net/othylmann is my account on my own Noserub Server for example. I’m likely moving that soon, because the fun thing is that all the data belongs to you, you can ex- and import it, and you can add friends simply through adding any of their URLs. In the end it is all about the Data Portability that Michael talks about in his Techcrunch Post.

Noserub is just an example implementation of what it will mean in the end. Being able to port around your data, adding friends through URLs with the help of Google’s Open Social API, and more. And you can create special RSS Feeds within Noserub allowing you to then put that RSS Feed on your blog. But the thing is that even though Loic now believes that he wants his Blog to be the center of his life again, I am not sure he means that. We still need some new Design to handle all our social life and display it for all to see. It’s too much content and actually, privacy is still something that we really need to care for.

The date is out.

Loic just posted about Les Blogs 3 in Paris. It will happen 11th to 12th of December.

When I think about it, the investment we finally got with Ormigo was quasi because of Les Blogs 2 last year. It took a few steps from there but this is where it started.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

A new conglomerate is in the building at the moment. This is getting serious. Joi just announced his investment into Flickr. I presume Loic will be next. Then between them they will have close ties to Six Apart (ok, very close there ;)), Technorati, Linked In, Flickr, Creative Commons and Socialtext. .. I actually don’t know what else there is but it’s getting interesting. I somehow want a part in that

The money starts coming in as it seems. Ross just posted that Socialtext has received Series A funding from among others the Omidyar Network a new venture company by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who also blogged a bit about it. Other investors that should ring a bell are Joi Ito and Loic le Meur, but there are several more. They already have a great customer list but one I was particularly happy with was the use of Socialtext at the Chaordic Initiatives, which is a movement/idea/something that has fascinated me ever since reading Dee Hock’s book Birth of the Chaordic Age several years ago. I have been talking about it to people a lot. The main site of the idea Chaord.org as a bit unaccessible though I found and the Chaoric Initiatives looks great! Thanks for working with them Ross!

The second funding round is reported by Om Malik here (source) and is unconfirmed but looks right. It values Technorati at $12 Million which seems to be either amazingly high or amazingly low to me. I do think their largest competitor is Bloglines and I am looking forward to seeing them funded.