Hueniverse

The Slowest Tastiest Tweets

One of the things that makes Twitter stand out is their embrace of a technical limitation as a fundamental feature of their service. Using the 140 character limit imposed by mobile SMS messaging, Twitter creates a culture where brevity defines a new form of communication. But the best thing about it yet to be discussed in depth is that tweets are the only form of microblogging guaranteed to fit on a fortune cookie!

What’s the Plan, Stan?

Inspired by Path 101 anti-stealth startup philosophy, I decided to make public some of the business documents I wrote for Nouncer. Reading the Path 101 blog, I really enjoyed following their progress. My first reaction was they are making a mistake by revealing too much, but when I actually considered what they might be losing, I could not come up with a single point. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of storytelling to get a startup off the ground and you end up telling people everything anyway, with or without an NDA.

Before you dive into the presentation, you might want to read the rest of this post first. Also keep in mind that it is based on market research from March-April. A lot has changed and the plan was not updated.

Nouncer Old Business Plan Presentation

OAuth End-User Experience Demo

This quick demo is useful for explaining what OAuth looks like to the end user. It is fully explained in the beginner's guide but I find it very useful in this interactive format.

To use it in your own blog or site, use the following HTML code:

<iframe src="http://nouncer.com/oauth/flow-demo.htm" height="382px" width="484px" scrolling="no" frameborder="no"/>

Beginner’s Guide to OAuth – Part II : Protocol Workflow

OAuth is best explained with real-life examples. The specification includes in Appendix A a similar example but focuses on the HTTP calls syntax. This walkthrough demonstrates a typical OAuth session and includes the perspectives of the User, Consumer, and Service Provider. The websites and people mentioned are fictional. The Scottish references are real. And so our story begins...

OpenID Makes Close Better

With the completion of OAuth Core 1.0, it was time to go back to what I was doing before – getting the Nouncer API ready. Like others, my interest in OAuth started with the plan to use OpenID as the user credential platform for the API. Now that OAuth is ready, I am going back to my initial objective of integrating the two (something I plan to write about in an upcoming post). Given that Nouncer is taking shape as a corporate solution rather than a consumer service, I’ve started questioning the need for OpenID. After all, it is not something you’d think about when discussing closed internal corporate identity systems.

Beginner’s Guide to OAuth – Part I: Overview

With OAuth reaching its final draft (OAuth Core 1.0 Draft 4) last night, it is time for those of you new to the protocol to dive in and learn what it is all about. I have written in a previous post about the history behind OAuth, its use cases, and when it is (or isn’t) applicable. People seems to like my metaphor of a valet key, which John Panzer rephrased “OAuth: Your valet key for the Web”. This post is for those wishing to understand the internal mechanism of the protocol, and go beyond the introductory Explaining OAuth post. This guide assumes you have already read Explaining OAuth but not necessarily the specification. This guide is first posted here to solicit feedback and will eventually make its way to the official OAuth Community website.

Beginner’s Guide to OAuth – Part I

Introduction

This guide is intended for a technical audience with focus on implementation. I dedicate one section to the end-user perspective which is something I expect many others will address with mockups, user interface designs, best practices guides, and of course working services. To make the most out of this guide, keep the specification handy as I will be referencing it, walking you through the spec and adding color where needed. This guide does not replace the specification nor can it be used alone for implementation as it is incomplete.

Twitter is More than Just Twitter

Being critical of Twitter is really a compliment. It comes with the territory of being the market leader in a new space. My recent negative rants about the Twitter are really about how it is being used than its qualities. Like many others, I have a vested interest to see Twitter succeed. While Nouncer does not compete with Twitter, it builds upon the usefulness and experience of microblogs users. Most of my points about Twitter apply equally to other microblogs like Jaiku, Pownce and others. And there are many others.

The best features Twitter has to offer are their powerful platform and open API. It is also the reason they are more successful and why others are coming out with their own API almost as fast as their website. I am excited about the soon to be released Pownce API and have been playing around with the Jaiku API. These three sites and the many who try to improve the space (using their lower load as an advantage to build new functionality), all serve an important purpose of getting microblogging into the mainstream. We are still in the imagination phase, trying to figure out what to do with this powerful tool we stumble upon.

The Mundane Breaking News Cycle

Phil Barrett has an interesting post about the usefulness of Twitter and other microblogging sites:

Having said that, some people have said that Twitter has become a hot newswire - industry insight and news is sometimes available through a Twitter feed before it hits the blogs or news pages. I guess that’s important for some industry people…but does anybody else really care if they hear about industry news 3 hours before they read it in their RSS newsreader? One sign that Twitter has become a hit is the fact there are lots of imitations now available globally - like Pownce, Jaiku and Dodgeball.  Wikipedia reports that there are over 100 knock-offs of Twitter now. It seems like instant messaging 2.0 has arrived.

First, I would not call Jaiku a Twitter imitation as both appeared around the same time. Dodgeball was up before Twitter and is in a related but different space - Twitter does not have location-based services (which Jaiku does on their mobile application). And (I hope) Barak Obama does not update his Twitter account – a staffer on his campaign is in charge. Spending a year running tech ops for Ehud Barak’s first (successful) campaign for Prime Minister of Israel, I can’t see a Presidential candidate being allowed to post tweets  - it is too much of a PR liability, and I’d be surprised if he had the time.

More is Less is More

Here is a not so original and revolutionary idea – have services use the information they gather about you, your habits, and your interests to target content you will be likely interested in. This has made Google’s founders very rich and is at the core of many established companies and emerging startups. With the amount of content produced daily, many services come up with their own way of making some content stand out. From manual editorials like the New York Times, to community driven efforts such as Digg, different sites help you find the content you want faster and with less noise.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Sometimes business planning takes you to strange places. In my current quest for a co-founder I’ve been talking to many people and explaining what it is that makes microblogging great and what is not so great about it. After all, if microblogging was a mature and well established space, there would be no need for Nouncer and other new efforts. When talking to people new to microblogging, it is usually enough to explain the great potential of this new communication format and the many applications it has. But when talking to geeks fluent in Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and the rest of them, the first question is, what makes my ideas better or at least different.

In Search of a Co-Founder

It sucks trying to build a startup in the New York City area. But not because of what most people think. It is not the weather or the expensive lifestyle. There is no lack of experienced people, success stories, active VCs, a supportive community, or good entrepreneurs with great ideas. Before starting my own company I worked for a (Really) big bank, and like most employees in corporate America I blamed everything on my employer – nothing unusual about that. But I did surprise myself when I still blamed my former employer for everything after leaving them. Well, maybe not one particular employer but the financial services industry as a whole.