Tools vs. Toys: Why The Timeline Changes Nothing

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Yesterday Erick and I had an interesting discussion about Facebook vs. Google+ and I came down on the side of G+. Why? Because tools are important, toys aren’t. Granted Facebook’s 500 million visitors a day proves me wrong in numeric terms, but in general usability and quality, I’m coming reluctantly down on the side of Google Plus.

As you well know, Facebook won the Internet with its app features and new timeline feature, a view of your data that offers a sort of time machine into the distant past. I saw pictures of my kids from years ago, their faces implike and far more natal than they are now. It was a great feeling but it lasted maybe fifteen minutes. Now Facebook is showing me a list of things that happened since I was born, a fairly impressive feat given I spent two thirds of my life without the Internet.

Google Plus, on the other hand, introduced enhanced Hang-Outs. Leave it to Google to blow its wad on productivity software. While I find the value of Google Plus dubious at best, I think hang-outs are a great tool and quite disruptive. A room that I can use to share sketches, documents, and photos? Without having to download WebEx or GotoMyPC some other garbage screen-sharing app? That’s the world I want to live in.

I like Google’s tools. They are good and strong and useful. Google Wave was great (while it lasted) and hang-outs are great for tech folks who want to work together. Their goal is the steady erosion of friction between Google’s ad product and the Internet and they do it through the release of tools that Google programmers want to use themselves.

Facebook, on the other hand, is looking for the magic trigger that will turn all those eyeballs into paying customers. Zynga seems to have solved some of the riddle by selling social games, but by releasing Timeline Facebook has clearly decided to mine the valuable content they already have – your pictures, your preferences, and your recommendations. The fact that I can now embed Rdio songs onto my timeline is very telling: add in a music feature and you’ve got a music store to rival iTunes.

This is tools vs. toys. Google gives you tools to work in the information economy while Facebook gives you the toys to play in it. I’m not sure what’s better.

I’ve come to bury Google Plus and Facebook, not to praise them. Both services are essentially time sinks designed in both cases to stroke the souls of thousands of lonely people. I use them both, to be sure, but are they changing anything with these additions? Are they improving our lot in life?

Fans of Neil Postman will recognize a bit of stridency in my voice and I feel it is justified. Just as broadcast media controlled our minds two decades ago, one-to-one media control our minds in the early 21st century. It will take a few generations for us to become immune to the siren’s call of social media and by then the technology will have moved on.

There is a certain territoriality brewing in the G+/FB wars right now and I worry that soon it will be as corrosive as the Android/iPhone fights that pit brother against brother and father against son. I’m not saying I particularly care who wins here – I could take or leave both services and neither of them has offered me anything beyond an impressive list of human beings with whom I can interact. I thank both of these services for that opportunity, certainly, but I believe I’ve talked with perhaps 100 people in my social graph online and even fewer in real life. In short, if I’m so popular why am I still lonely?

In general, however, I can see people using G+ while people simply play with Facebook. It’s an important distinction for every day men and women put away their childish things and want to get down to business. Google is there for them at least in some regard and clearly Facebook is not.

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Ustream Partners With Telestream To Bring Live Video Production Tools To Broadcasters Of All Stripes

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Last month, Ustream launched its video streaming service on the iPad. As Jason reported at the time, the app allows users to view live and recorded content streaming through the Web and even to stream their own footage directly from their iPad 2s.

The move was a big step forward for live, streaming video on tablet devices, especially in that the latter feature allows users to be couch videographers. Of course, since last year, Ustream has been working on a series of apps that give users the added benefit of video editing features that can turn couch videographers into pro video creators.

Today, Ustream is announcing a partnership with Telestream, the maker of digital media tools and workflow solutions, which will bring Telestream Wirecast live video production technology to all Ustream subscribers and add yet another layer to Ustream’s video editing solutions.

Last year, Ustream launched the first product in its “Producer Studio” line, which aims to turn a user’s PC into a live video production studio with video editing tools that add a professional look to a user’s streams. Since its initial launch in 2010, Ustream Producer products have attracted over 600,000 downloads. Today, Ustream and Telestream are launching a jointly-developed version 2.0 of its family of desktop streaming media applications, which adds a bunch of updates to all Producer products and sees the suite expanding to a total of three flavors.

The triage now includes Ustream Producer, which can be used by any users for free, Ustream Producer Pro, a more advanced application available for $199, and the new Producer Studio, an app for pros starting at $549.

Each version of Ustream Producer will include a newly remodeled “Desktop Presenter”, which enables users to screencast desktops of any computer within their local network in broadcasts. Version 2.0 also adds audio capabilities, which allows Desktop Presenter, for example, to serve as a Skype client for web talk shows, which will likely be of particular interest to those participating in the growing gamecasting space.

Producer also takes advantage of the new H.264 codec by MainConcept, as well as a built-in bandwidth meter that works to ensure that broadcasts remain in high video quality. In addition, some cool new features of the new Ustream Producer Studio include an audio mixer with sync delay, built-in support for HDV and IP cameras, integrated scoreboards for sports fans that can be viewed during live broadcast, and a new catalog of lower-thirds to help make broadcasts a little more professional looking.

The best part is that now both amateur and professional videographers will be able to take advantage of streaming content that incorporates music, image transitions, and picture-in-picture capability with a few clicks. Incorporating Telestream’s Wirecast architecture into Ustream’s products will now allow users to benefit from scalable, high-quality video production tools on both Mac and PC — and to create custom productions, regardless of one’s level of expertise.

For more on Ustream Producer, visit the Producer Demo here, or check out the live demo below:

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Monetate Gives Control Of Consumer Experience Back To Marketers With New Testing And Targeting Tools

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Earlier this month, Monetate, the platform that provides marketers with testing and targeting services for their websites, announced that it had closed a $15 million series B funding round, led by OpenView Venture Partners, which added to the $5.1 million series A round the company raised back in December from First Round Capital and FLOODGATE. With over $20 million in the bank, Monetate has been developing a new platform that gives marketers greater control over messaging and promotions on their websites as well as testing, targeting, and personalization tools.

As we reported a few weeks ago, the coolest part about Monetate’s platform is that it can be installed using a single line of code. The startup’s newest version of its cloud-based platform enables marketers to integrate customized content and features between the eCommerce server and the site visitor’s browser.

“One of the unfulfilled promises from the early days of eCommerce was that marketers would be able to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time”, says Monetate CEO David Brussin. “With Monetate, we have inserted a new level of agility into the eCommerce marketing experience, providing marketers with the ability to make educated campaign decisions that will directly contribute to increased conversion”.

What’s more, as marketers and marketing teams are so often on the go, Monetate 11 allows its customers to test, target, and personalize their websites on the iPad, giving users that extra layer of mobile functionality. Another bonus: All current Monetate users will be automatically upgraded to the new version of its platform.

Monetate 11, like its predecessors, aims to cut out the IT middleman by giving control of creating and measuring marketing campaigns and serving customized user experiences back to marketers. They simply enter the “who, what, when, why” of the campaign into the Monetate dashboard, and the platform takes care of the rest, offering users the ability to take advantage of campaign cloning, tagging, and filtering.

Marketers will also be able to do automatic A/B testing against a control group, tracking the results in realtime, so that marketers can quickly see the impact their new campaigns will have. Users will also have the added benefit of new targeting options, including geotargeting to tailor messages and promotions to a visitor’s specific location, weather-based targeting, and behavioral targeting.

Monetate customers will also now be able to test and deploy their own HTML and JavaScript, target recommendations based on complex business rules, and access all the data they need about traffic segments and purchasing patterns to make informed decisions about the promotions, messages, and other content they deliver to consumers through its analytics and reporting features.

Monetate is really a no-brainer for eTailers and eCommerce marketers. It’s a great solution, and along with an infusion of new capital, the startup’s new version may very well have legs. After all, its platform has already attracted brands like Petco, Urban Outfitters, Sports Authority, QVC, Casual Male, Dick’s Sporting Goods, to use its targeting and testing services on their eCommerce platforms — and Brussin told us that the company has added hundreds of millions in collective revenue to these businesses, removing the need for businesses to hire specialized teams and decrease bounce rates and shopping cart abandonment.

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