I’ll actually be at work during the Super Bowl, sweating through one of the most nerve wracking launches I’ve ever been a part of. My contract gig at HomeAway is wrapping up, and after two months of ActionScript-slinging and Airport-sprinting, we get to share it with the world.

Third Quarter. Griswolds. Stay tuned.

Admittedly, it’s hard for me to hate Walmart more than I already do—the real travesty is that this puts Halloween officially in our rear-view mirror, and I must bid adieu to The Mash. It’s easily in the Top 5 of cool projects I’ve had the luck to contribute to, the best use of Facebook Connect I’ve ever implemented, and the team was an absolute blast to be a part of.

Check it out quick before it’s retired and we’re left with another season of going to Jared.

You should come check out my talk on building add-ons for Firefox and Fennec at this month’s Refresh Austin meeting.

Tonight. Buffalo Billiards. 7pm.

There’s food. There’s beer. There’s ample time to heckle me.

Be there.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170821558189

But as far as intimidating intros go, where does it rank? I ask you, America: Ivan Drago in Rocky 4 or Jay-Z from Game 2?

I remember standing stationary in the busy hallways at SXSW/i ‘06, mesmerized by the Twitter chatter plastered on Plasmas all over the Convention Center.  The overwhelming buzz and seemingly overnight new media darling status has quickly changed that mystical chatter into annoying noise.  What kind of noise?  Well, as I write this, the top trending item on Twitter is “RIP Kanye West“.  Now I’m sure it’s very possible that The Louis Vuitton Don has passed, but Jeff Goldblum and I are skeptical.

What does this “noise” have to with Facebook?   Nothing.  Other than its raging case of Twitter-envy.

The original Facebook News Feed worked as a curator.  It knew that you didn’t want to search through each and every one of your friends’ profiles to figure out the big news of the day.  Just like working through my email inbox, I could read through all of the Facebook-supplied, juicy tidbits until I got to one I had already read, and then cross “checking Facebook” off my mental to-do list.  “I’m done,” I would think.  “I’m caught up. I’m in the know.”

But like the Facebook fiend that I am, it wouldn’t take long for fear to creep in.  “Hm…it’s been a little while since I’ve been on Facebook,” would lead to, “I wonder if there’s anything new going on,”  which would ultimately turn into a panicked, “Crap, I hope I’m not missing anything!”, and right back to facebook.com I would go.

But as Facebook started to feel the unwarranted heat from Twitter, the News Feed suddenly changed from a curated summary into a real-time, unfiltered activity stream.  Going even more Single White Female, Facebook organized a username land-grab, and even implemented their own version of @ replies.

Now this isn’t a problem when you’re just starting out on Facebook, but as the average social graph size continues to grow, it becomes impossible to read through absolutely everything.  Shouldn’t a friend getting engaged be given more prominence than Liz sending Eric a horse topiary?  With zero possibility of processing every bit of the unfiltered minutiae of my friends’ activities, there’s no fear of missing something, because you’re always missing something. Without that fear, checking Facebook slips a notch from being a must-do, to being a fun-to-do.

And that’s what the new Facebook homepage design hopes to fix.  Leaked earlier this week by a brand advertiser being pitched to by Facebook, it seems that they’re bringing story curation back to the forefront.

“Facebook is simplifying the user experience on the home page by introducing Top News and Recent Activity streams. Now, when users log on to Facebook for the first time in a while, they will see the most important stories that they missed while they were away. From there, users can navigate to the real-time stream and toggle between both views throughout their sessions. In addition to making it easier for users to view content that is most relevant to them, this change also speeds up the time it takes for the home page to load and makes birthday reminders more prominent.

Ultimately, Facebook believes these changes will increase engagement on the home page by surfacing more relevant stories to users.”

The emphasis added was mine, and it can’t be stressed enough.  Facebook is turning off the firehose stream of data, and returning to the role of uber-connected friend that knows all the best and most juicy gossip. If you don’t stay in touch, you’re going to miss something.

Facebook is bringing the “fear” back. And that should scare all of its competitors.

I sometimes think I was the last person on Earth to fall in love with Pandora. It was a quick courtship—in just a matter of weeks, Pandora became the background music to my day. It didn’t matter if I was at work or at home, the world just felt silent without her. And once I found Pandora for Blackberry, we were joined at the hip. Literally.

It seemed perfect. I had found a limitless library of music that was sincerely interested in me. I would talk, she would listen. I would “thumbs up” Mos Def, and she’d introduce me to Atmosphere. I’d “thumbs down” The Offspring, and she’d remind me how much I loved The Darkness. It was summertime and I was in love. It was kismet. And it was free.

July 7th started off like any other Thursday, but that morning I got an e-mail that I’ll never forget. Pandora was leaving me for someone new. His name? “Revenue”.

I was crushed.

Our favorite Web sweethearts, YouTube, Facebook, Digg and (my favorite) Twitter, all operate in the red. Despite their rock star status and the seemingly endless amount of time I spend on these sites, not a single one has turned a profit. Emulating King Gillette is a great game plan, but why give away the razors when you have no clue how to make a blade?

Lately, we’re seeing more companies try to buck the trend. Small startup 37signals and their hugely popular project management tool Basecamp has been charging from day one. On the other end of the spectrum, global media mogul Rupert Murdoch plans to build an online pay wall for the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in 2010.

But will anyone actually pay? More importantly, will I pay for Pandora after having my heart broken? On the Internet, the gap between $0.00 and $0.01 is a chasm, and we’ve been trained to expect the former. Pandora’s new $0.99/month charge for access to more than 40 hours of music (or $36/year for unlimited music via Pandora One) is absolutely miniscule, but I still remember a fraternity brother strolling into my room a full 10 years ago babbling about free music and some program called “Napster” that some kid down the street had built.

As a die-hard geek, this was a watershed moment for me. Am I really going to pay for music? A co-worker (and fellow Pandora user) summed it up best in an IM, “Mark–you could pay that 99 cents, or, maintain your dignity. Time will tell…”.

So what did I decide? Let’s just say I’m one hour away from hitting my 40-hour quota for September, and for the second month in a row I’ll be selling my geek dignity for the price of a Biggie fries.

I’m sure my Commodore 64 is rolling over in its grave, but paying for a service this good actually feels right. And if an early adopter like me is okay with it, what does it mean for the mainstream? After an atrocious 18 months for tech companies that saw many enter the deadpool, expect many of the survivors to start charging monthly subscriptions. I’d also bet we’ll see companies in different industries band together with package deals, “Get music from Pandora, news from the Post, traffic alerts from Fox, and weather alerts from AccuWeather for just $9.99/month with the SuperGloboTron Everything Plan!”

So how does that saying go? “Once is an aberration, twice is a trend”? After two months of ponying up, be sure to check back in to see if I crack the wallet open in October. I’m pretty sure three times represents a seismic shift.

For those of you still stressing about what to get me for my birthday, allow me to suggest voting for my SXSW Panel: The Last Panel In. You’ll feel great, your teeth will suddenly become whiter, and you can avoid those crazy lines at BestBuy. Voting ends today.

If you’re an Idea City employee, come on over to the Theater at 2p.

I’ll have candy.

I’ve submitted an idea for this year’s SXSW Interactive conference that I’m really excited about. To actually get selected, I need tons of votes on the SXSW Panel Picker. The concept is The Last Panel In and is powered by Refreshing Cities.

SXSW’s massive size forces panel selections well in advance of the conference. Occasionally, this leads to panels that are vague or out of date.

With The Last Panel In, we’ll reserve one spot in the schedule for a topic that we’ll vote on in early 2010. This experiment will let SXSW attendees choose a timely topic that they’ll be excited to learn about.

For a brief moment this morning, Facebook and Twitter were both down. I quickly crafted a few succinct, snarky sentences before realizing I had nowhere to post it.

While Facebook seems to be back up and humming again, Twitter has confirmed that the site was forced down, and is being kept down, by an ongoing Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack. What’s a DDoS? Imagine 10,000 people descending on your local grocery store, not looking to buy anything, but just stroll up and down the aisles. Everything gets congested, and no one accomplishes anything.

Well, no one except for the people orchestrating the attack. Regardless of your feelings on Twitter the medium, there’s no denying its full-blown media darling status, or the huge bulls-eye that status places on its back. And Twitter’s (surprising) single network provider architecture certainly doesn’t help.

So what does this outage mean for users? Well, a lot and a little. We’ve all seen the stats on low retention rates for users that don’t dive into the conversation quickly–there are a lot of nascent n00bs that I’m sure will completely drop off because of this.

But then again, Australia and much of Japan will sleep right through it. The early-adopting Twitterati will probably enjoy the nostalgia of the Fail Whale. Heck, I’ve read reports of people taking strolls around the block to kill time while it’s down. What crazy times we live in!

So what does this mean for your brand? Well, a lot and a little. Companies like StockTwits and Bit.ly get smothered while sucking on the Fail Whale’s teat. Symbiotic relationships are great as long as there are multiple sea anemones for your Clownfish. No brand should place all of their customer service, marketing, or customer acquisition eggs in the basket of a pre-revenue startup still trying to find its way.

But then again, that’s not a news flash, because you knew that already. Right? Right?

Tossed on my lap by @jrea, this is easily the most imaginative integration of Facebook Connect I’ve ever seen. From now on, whenever someone asks what Connect can do, I can just point to this. We all get that you can log in quickly and post items back to your page, but it’s sometimes hard to explain why it’s any better than a vanilla Facebook app.

I literally screamed out loud once this got going.

For Pete’s sake, someone please convince a client to launch something this awesome so I can build it.

And that’s saying a lot.

Soak up the idiocy of Mark Pfeifle, kids, a former Deputy National Security Advisor to George W. Bush. More on this story over at TechCrunch.

Many great products fail because they’re not explained well. But with its intentional, palpable disdain for servers, this video absolutely nails it, with language everyone can understand.

I should be in bed.

But I have one statement and one question.

I’ll make it quick.

Tech Marketing Folk: Stop using the word algorithm when all you mean is a really big If statement. I know you’re exaggerating. You know you’re exaggerating. Stop it. Now.

Twitterati: If the despicable Ahmadinejad had been robbed of an election and was using social networking to organize his supporters, would there be as much of an outpouring of support? Would people be changing their profile pictures to green ribbons? Would Twitter be pushing back scheduled maintenance? I doubt it.

On the surface there aren’t many commonalities between a women’s professional sports league and the world’s largest airline, but they struggle with what we all do these days: how to make money.

Following the lead of international sports, the Phoenix Mercury have become the first WNBA team to put a sponsor’s name on their jerseys. Under the three-year deal with LifeLock announced Monday, the identity theft protection company’s name will replace the “Phoenix” and “Mercury” across the road and home uniforms, respectively. The team’s logo will appear above the “LifeLock” on the left side.
Mercury jerseys to have LifeLock name across front

The WNBA is a third-tier league, and European clubs have been doing this for years, but this is definitely the highest profile team sponsorship of a U.S.-based sports team. If you contrast the new jerseys with any vehicle in NASCAR though, the differences hit you like a brick. Instead of a simple logo on a mostly sparse jersey, NASCAR seemingly crams in every logo in existence.

Earlier today my friend Liz sent me an interesting article on FastCompany talking about the design difficulties of AA.com.

Designer Dustin Curtis was so disgusted with the American Airlines Web site that he redesigned it, and posted the results as an open letter to the company. Guess what? One of AA’s designers responded with a long defense about why better design dies a slow death at places like AA.
American Airlines Web Site: The Product of a Self-Defeating Design Process

The article says what you would expect, talking about red tape and bureaucracy (complete with obligatory 37signals reference), but the first comment brings up an interesting question: Does simplicity of design always improve revenue? The suggested design is pretty and more pleasing to the eye, but does that actually mean more tickets would be sold?

Today we’re showing some love for Zack Metzner. And I’d like the record should state that it’s not because I’ve known him since forever, but because his new project JoblessJoe got a write-up in the Statesman today. Pimp.

“You wake up one day with that panicked feeling of, ‘Oh my God, I don’t have a job!’ You feel alone out there, not realizing there’s 13 million people who are probably in a similar situation out there.”

Metzner spent the rest of last year working on a Web site, JoblessJoe.com, which he hopes will be a “community support system” for people who are job hunting.

It’s one of several new Austin-based sites whose creators have turned the economic downturn into a reason to launch a jobs-related business online. (more)

An auto mechanic used to be there if I remember correctly, and the smells, colors, and all-around groovy vibe make it feel like the absolute antithesis of the space’s former tenant. Last weekend I tagged along with Shannon to satisfy her sudden hankering for a smoothie.

The “wow”s started as soon we opened the door, and continued as our eyes repeatedly found new nooks and crannies to explore. We stood there for a while, pointing out different things and taking in their great attention detail, not realizing how quickly each person in the line in front of us was dispatched. Suddenly it was her turn and I watched as her head tilted back and her eyes open wide as the enormity of the menu dropped on her. Think Chihuahua at a dog park trying to figure out what the hell a Great Dane is.

The word intimidating really doesn’t do it justice. 40+ wittily-worded, delciously-described drinks beg you to pore over the ingredients of each one, but when you’re finished you’re no closer to knowing what you want.

Once I gave up on trying to pick something I might like, I noticed the “We Suggest” column. Each drink had a recommended $1-ish add-on to make the drink just a bit more perfect. It’s a genius way to up-sell when you have a lot of options, but it’s worth bupkis when you’re trying to just sell.

With a menu as daunting as theirs (and granted, DJ may not consider it as such), why not give customers a view that flips it around? Lead with the add-on that in turn sells the drink. Love hemp granola? Consider a blah-blah, blah-blah, or a blah-blah. Intrigued by raw pecan butter? Tough choice between a blah-blah and a blah. Sure, I’ll giggle at your clever word choices, but if I don’t feel informed enough to make a good decision, I’m less likely to buy.

And that, my friends, goes for $6 smoothies and $60,000 cars.

The next time you’re around Hyde Park, you should stop by and have a drink. The next time you’re visiting a site you manage, take the time to think about how daunting your menu/navigation/products might be to a visitor.

Sure, your nomenclature makes sense to you, but does it make sense to a Chihuahua?

“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

Time Warner Cable Backs Off Metered Broadband Everywhere

I spend a lot of time picking apart web sites to get a feel for how good their technology is. I often hear, “What are you looking for?” as I’m scrolling through HTML, so I’ve rolled what I look for into a talk called “From Easy To Geeky”. It’s a Top 10 list geared towards AEs, PMs, Producers, and the like.

I’ll be giving the talk around Austin over the next few weeks—contact me if you’re interested in having me speak to your company/organization/pet iguana. You can grab a copy on the Talks page.