Another startup that I am loving right now is Qwiki. It’s come under a lot of pressure recently, with people saying it doesn’t do anything useful and can be easily replicated.Qwiki is built on the premise that information should be presented in an experience. And what that experience allows is for us to consume information on any topic in an interactive, engaging way.

Where is consuming information in an interactive and engaging way most important? School.

I’ve encouraged some of my teachers to use Qwiki in the classroom, and the results were quite incredible. For example, my history class was learning about the origins of World War II, and someone asked where exactly the Rhineland was. My teacher went to a map on the wall, but I suggested he try out Qwiki. He typed it in, and in about a minute everybody in the classroom had a better idea of where the Rhineland is and what its significance was than my teacher could have ever explained (and he’s a good teacher).

We had also been discussing the significance of the Ruhr area, and this was also mentioned in the Qwiki for Rhineland. So after we had finished watching that Qwiki, we clicked on the related link for Ruhr, and watched this.

It was just incredible. Everyone in the class was watching with interest, and then suggesting related Qwikis that we should watch. I’ve never seen a situation like this before in a classroom, where suddenly students felt empowered to take control of what we learn, and how we learn it.

But it’s more than that: everyone in the class realized that they could go home and watch the Qwikis for anything they’ve ever wanted to know about. It’s so different to the passive experience of Google, where to really get an understanding of a topic you need to click on a few links and then search through those pages to find what you want. A Wikipedia entry has a lot of information, but it’s not put into a format where you can get an understanding of something in minimal time, in an interactive and engaging way.

People have been saying that Qwiki just takes paragraphs of Wikipedia, adds images and a voice on top, and then plays it to you. And yeah, that does seem to be what it does. But that’s incredibly powerful to a student. You can learn in a fast and effective way that helps you engage with what you’re learning. On top of that, Qwiki has said that they are going to be taking suggestions from people for better content – so the “wiki” part of it will start coming into play.

If I were Qwiki, I would stress the educational uses of their platform because I think that’s where they’ll see the most success. This is something new to students, and Qwiki has the first mover advantage. In any case, it’s sure helping me and the other students I’ve seen use it.

So Facebook has 600 million users. Many people are saying that Facebook will now be here for ever, and the entire planet will eventually be on Facebook. The same people are saying it will grow to be the biggest company in history, and that it’ll make a killing for investors. I disagree. This article explains why I disagree, and discusses what social networks should look like to succeed.Social networks are still in early days. I don’t think they’ve really matured in any way, because they are still built on false assumptions that were made beginning with the first few mainstream social networks. The system of “friending” is completely broken, and yet many people don’t realize it because they don’t stop to ask why it is that way.

Facebook says that all my friends and contacts are of equal importance to me. They know this isn’t true, but there is no way for me to distinguish between friends I am truly close with or contacts that I met at a conference and felt obliged to accept on Facebook. In real life, we rank our connections in order of how important they are to us and how close we are with them. But on Facebook, this system has gone out the window because that functionality is not built into the social network.

But there is more about Facebook that is broken. Facebook is a “one-size-fits-all” social network. In other words, it thinks that everyone will find use in Facebook as long as they are on it with their friends. They believe that the higher the number of users they have, the more likely it is that people will keep joining. But this view goes against societal laws.

We live in societies in real life because we surround ourselves with people who share similar values, beliefs, and interests. Sure, the fact that I support one political party over another says that I have slightly different values to the person next to me, but fundamentally our values and beliefs are very similar. And living in a society allows me to know that anybody I meet will have fundamentally the same mindset as me. People who share similar religions live in the same societies, because they understand each other. This means that I can meet new people, and be social with a group outside of my existing close friends, with the knowledge that anybody I meet will be essentially similar to me.

Think about the term social network for a moment. When we hear it, we think of online social networks, like Facebook, with a system of “friending” and where we only communicate with our existing contacts. But social network is a broad term. Actually, it kind of describes how we relate to our contacts in real life. We have our own social network in real life, and you know what? It works. It’s called our society, and it’s been around for decades, if not centuries.

My question is: why aren’t online social networks built like physical societies?

Imagine this model as three circles, one inside of the other. The inner circle has your core group of friends and family – you share everything with them. There may only be 25 people in there, but these are the people who you would call to tell them something important that has just happened. They mean a lot to you. You’ll connect with these people by “friending” them – ie. mutual designation.

The next circle, which is quite a few times larger than the inner circle, is made up of your connections. These are the people who you’ve met at conferences, or know from school – you’re not close with them, but you’d talk to them if you saw them on the street. To connect with these people, you just have to specify them as a connection. It’s more like “following” them, only they will see that you have specified them as a connection and they can specify you back.

The third and final circle is made up of outer society. People you don’t know, but who you may meet someday. You cross paths with these people every day, but just haven’t yet taken the time to stop and talk to them. This final circle is huge – many, many times bigger than the previous two – and you have no direct link to them unless you choose to.

What this model allows is for us to differentiate between true “friends”, and mere “connections”. You can have a clear distinction between the two, allowing you to know more clearly who what you are sharing will reach. It gives you the ability to share more with those you really care about, without annoying connections. And, likewise, it allows you to share things with connections that you wouldn’t share with your family. And what about “outer society”? Well, you can interact with them as much or as little as you want.

The beauty of this model is that it allows us to choose how we want to use our social network. If we want to use it like Facebook, we can do that – the choice is entirely up to us.

But there will not be just one social network that looks like this. There will be tens, if not hundreds of them – each with millions of users. The social network that you are a part of will be a representation of who you are as a person. It will signify your values, beliefs, and interests.

When will this shift in model of social networks occur? I believe it will start in a year and a half, and reach the mainstream in about three years from now. That’s time for these new social networks to be built and perfected.

In any case, the battle of the social networks is far from over. Facebook hasn’t won, and there are plenty of genius programmers at colleges around the world. Good luck.

You probably already know that I’m loving Quora right now. But at the same time, I’m also skeptical because of the hype surrounding it. Hype is often a sign of bad things to come, and an article by Jack Yan sums up some of these thoughts. Vivek Wadhwa also wrote a postover at TechCrunch outlining why he thinks Quora will fail (he was leading to some of the same conclusions that I am here – I recommend you read his post).I sincerely hope Quora survives, because I’m finding it so, so useful. A project I’m working on involves videos of inspiring people, and I didn’t know where to find some of these videos other than TED. So I just asked a question on Quora, and within a day I had numerous responses with over ten different websites I could go to to find some inspiring videos. It’s helping me out in so many different ways.

In saying that, I have to say that I agree with everyone saying Quora will never hit mainstream, and may even fail. It seems to me that they’re taking the wrong approach, and it could cost them immensely.

In my opinion, Quora has two options from here. I reckon one of them will lead them to success, and the other will turn them into the next Yahoo Answers.

1. Target a core group of the tech crowd, and forget the masses.

Some of these reasons also apply to why I believe Facebook will fail. But that’s another post! It appears that Quora is trying to become the next Twitter or Facebook, and is attempting to reach the masses. That’s the wrong strategy for them.

Think about how societies in real life are made up. People who share similar values, beliefs and interests will join them because they enjoy the company of like-minded people. This is why the quality of answers on Quora is so, so good – because people who truly care are answering them, and are dedicated to ensuring that the best answers make it to the top of any question page. Passionate people are the ones answering your questions.

But if Quora reaches the mainstream audience, we won’t see this any more. They will have turned the Quora community into “one size fits all”. In other words, we’ll have someone who’s interested in cooking answering questions about social networks just because they used one once.

So Quora’s first option (and I believe the correct option) is to to change their strategy, and fast. They should focus only on appealing to a core audience of tech people who are passionate about Quora and are willing to put in time and effort to make the answers the best they can be. They should forget about everyone else, and lose their aspirations of becoming the next Twitter or Facebook.

2. Target the masses, and lose the passion and support of the tech crowd.

Quora’s second option is to do the exact opposite of above, and target the masses. They may do this if they’re desperately worried about monetizing, or will settle for nothing less than becoming the next Twitter or Facebook.

But if they take this route, they will surely lose the support and passion of the technology crowd that is currently helping them find success. Tech people will start seeing crap answers, and can’t possibly curate every single question properly to find the best questions. Heck, just the other day, Quora’s Charlie Cheever wrote a post saying “Because of this influx of new users, the processes that were in place for making sure that new content on Quora is good have broken down”.

Is that a sign of things to come? Will all the methods that Quora carefully implemented to ensure that the best answers are always found break down?

If that happens, the tech crowd will quickly lose interest. We’ll stop using it, stop writing about it, and stop telling people about it. Then Quora will head towards becoming another Yahoo Answers – full of lots of questions and answers, of which 99.9% of the answers are complete crap. I doubt that’s where they want to end up.

Here’s hoping that they take route number one.

Earlier today I finally received access to the new Facebook Messages. I’ve been wanting it since the moment it launched, and I honestly believed that it would change how we communicate. I thought it would consolidate all the different mediums of communication we use, along with removing some of the silly syntax that goes along with it. When Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Messages, he talked about how he had noticed how teenagers use Facebook, and how this was meant to make everyone’s communication simpler.

I’m a bit disappointed.Facebook obviously knows where the gold lies. Simplifying communication is a huge task, but the rewards are infinite. They’ve even defined the aspects of communication that are causing problems, and making people’s lives more difficult. That’s one step ahead of everyone else. But as for the execution? Not quite.

A lot of what Facebook has done is an improvement, yes. Facebook Messages consolidates “Messages, Chats, and Texts” – great, so it does simplify communication within Facebook a bit. I do like how they’re organising messages around recipient and not subject (and hence have removed the subject line entirely), so they’ve solved the problem of removing some of the pointless syntax that goes with existing communication mediums.

I also like how they’ve simplified the user experience within Messages, and have added the ability to send messages just by hitting enter. This simple feature entirely changes the view of the medium of communication – pressing enter to send a message is much more “chat-like”, which is what Facebook was trying to do. So again, they’ve accomplished on that score. The one other thing I like is that I can now attach a file – that’s brilliant!

But as for consolidating my communications as a whole? It seems like they’ve stopped before the job was done.

I do not want to use Facebook as a replacement for my email. But I do want to have the ability to pull in my emails and access them through Facebook. That’s what consolidation is about. Consolidating communication within Facebook is a start, but if they’d taken the next step they would’ve won with this product. I want my emails pulled in from my Gmail account so that I can view them and access them from within Facebook, and choose to reply from either my Facebook or Gmail account.

As for text messages, it’s all very well that I can send Facebook Messages as text messages to my friends. But what I would love is for Facebook to pull in all my communication with a friend and store it within Facebook. So if a friend and I are both texting each other off of our cellphones, I want that communication to be pulled into Facebook and stored to be accessed and viewed later. This isn’t a crucial feature – but if they’d done it, it would add to finishing this product off.

I’m not saying I don’t like the new Facebook Messages. I’m just saying that it feels like it’s not quite done. I think if Facebook implemented the above features, it would be much closer to finished. But even then. I feel like there needs to be a little bit more. And hey, that’s the $100billion little bit more. So, I’m getting thinking. You should too. Because Facebook hasn’t got a winner on their hands here. The prize is still there for the taking.