Where have all the cool sites gone?

In the late 90's and into the 2000's it seemed like the almost every day a friend, colleague or family member would mention some new site they found on the Internet. Whether it was something silly like the Hampster Dance, a scary puzzle, or something helpful to debunk all the various urban legends it seemed like the number of sites were exploding every moment.

With the massive expansion and commercialization of the Internet, new ideas appear to have been overrun by corporate sites. Design has, in many cases, become more important than content. Google, for the most part has stuck to its tried and true minimalist designs. But the rest of the high profile sites seem to be replacing their designs like we change clothes. That's not exactly the wonder of the Internet to me. I think the last new site someone tipped me off to was maybe Zillow.com. I know we still get the occasional viral video that goes around, hits the news sites, etc.

Perhaps the web is dead as a source of innovation? It seems that all the innovation has gone into the various Smartphone App stores. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But, with over half a million apps in the iOS store and over 200,000 in the Android store, it is awfully hard to find good new apps. And, smartphones are not yet nearly as pervasive as a computer. And even with that many Apps it is extremely rare to hear about a new app from a friend, family member or even a store. There certainly are a lot of updates coming out for the operating systems - and those are good because they bring a lot of improvements to every user.

But, it almost feels like we need a Google for Apps. A search engine that helps you find applications and solutions across all the various platforms. Don't get me wrong, I know this isn't a new problem. There never has been a great way to find applications. Sure, there are reviews and magazines, but you have to almost already be in the eco-system to find things. That's not the accessibility that most people are desperate for.

I suspect that the company that solves this evolving meta problem will find the road ahead paved with gold.

Instant Personalization = Instant Lack of Privacy

So when Facebook rolls out a change to their system, about 400 million people are affected. And most of them will notice. That is of course, unless the change is buried in the settings that you rarely go to.

I am of course referring to the new "Instant Personalization" feature that Facebook rolled out this week. This feature is supposed to extend the Facebook experience to the larger (though only participating at this time) web. That's actually a pretty good idea, but Facebook might want to watch the world's response to privacy issues as they innovate.

Remember that flap when Google Buzz said, "Hey, everyone wants to share all their information" and opted everyone into Google Buzz? It resulted in a quick change and more than one investigation. Welcome to 2010 Facebook. One of the first items I came across on the web with a search on "Instant Personalization" was this blog, mostly discussion how to remove it. Which I quickly did, by the way.

There are a lot of smart developers at Facebook. Are you really telling me that you couldn't have popped a window up for every user and said, "Hey we've got this great new feature with these partners, but you'll have to send them your information to make it work. Are you up for that?"

Instead, they stuck the information under Account, Privacy Settings, Applications and Websites. I've quoted part of that page below:

"Instant Personalization helps you connect more easily with your friends on select partner sites.

You'll find a personal and social experience the moment you arrive on our select partner sites -- Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp. We're working closely with these partners so you can quickly connect with your friends and see relevant content on their sites. These sites personalize your experience using your public Facebook information."

The biggest issue here is that Facebook and other social media systems seem to be treating the information you've put into their system as theirs, not yours. It's one thing to put information out there, it's another to have someone put it out there for you and send it to other sites. I know we can't put the genie back in the bottle, but for these social networks to thrive in the long term, they are going to need to put their customers first, socialization second.

Putting All the Pieces Together

Earlier, I posted why I created this blog and the associated parent site, aaronhickmann.com. I suppose it is also worthwhile to talk about how I put everything together. Since this is a personal site, I wanted to take the most cost effective route possible, but also not have to struggle with difficult tools. I do value what little free time I have so I didn't want to have to bang my head against the wall any more than necessary.

First step, register the domain. In this case, it's just my name and since it's pretty unique, it wasn't hard to get. I locked that puppy up for 10 years (with the help of a coupon found on the Internet) for about 75 bucks.

Next, get a site together. There are tons and tons of free hosting providers out there. I signed up for a couple before trying Google sites. For me, Google would be fine. If I were a business looking to perform ecommerce functions, I would probably look at something like SquareSpace.com. In any case, the next item was to choose from the panolpy of templates and then start building content. Cost for the site was $0.

It had been awhile since I had updated my resume or even thought about my public presentation. So there was quite a bit of editing and content creation required. Once, there was at least some fledgling content, I set the site  to public and then pointed the domain at it using the domain and sub-domain redirection tools. Tip: Make sure to create a sub-domain called www to point to your site as well, i.e. www.aaronhickmann.com since most people will type in the w's.

My plan is to leave most of the content on the site relatively static. I don't change up my career or personality that much, but I did want to have some dynamic content. So, I created a Blogger account which is where you are reading this and linked it to my web page so that there is a unified location to get my information.  In the content, I also linked to my Twitter account and my Linked In public profile.

This site has only been live for a short time, but it's always good to get a sense of who is visiting, why and what they are looking at. So, I signed up for and configured Google analytics so that I can get reports of the activity and how folks are finding me. Also, helpful to tweak your site content and (sort of) see how Google sees your site are the tools and articles at Google Webmasters. Both of these sites are free as well.

So far so good in terms of cost. Now I just need to keep the content flowing and we'll see how this grand experiment works out.

Why Does This Site Exist?

I currently have the role of Product Manager at my company. And while I'm not one to hide behind a title, there is a lot that does come with a particular role that you have to pay attention to. I was recently invited to our internal national sales meeting. Prior to the meeting, the Little Red Book of Sales was distributed and it came up quite a bit. It was used at the primary theme for much of the meeting.

My background really isn't in sales, so I enjoyed reading the book and spending some time learning more about the sales process we have instituted. The book was a straightforward, short (and fun) read. If you are in sales and haven't read it, you should pick up a copy right away as it is worth your time. That's not just coming from me, but from everyone at the meeting.

Ah, but look at me starting to digress again. One of the chapters in the book talks about selling yourself. In the Internet age, that happens offline as well as online. I was already on a few of the social networking sites, but wanted to put together a single place to locate my online persona. So, aaronhickmann.com was born. But, no one is going to visit my site without regular updates and so this blog will have that responsibility.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves. I had what most folks would call a blog back in 1999 on my own site, but I just got away from it over time. I'm happy to return and hope to blog at least a few times a week. Let's all keep our fingers crossed, shall we? :-)