News of Jelly, our casual coworking session:

• We had a great Jelly in Brooklyn last week. We’ll be doing Jelly in Brooklyn more frequently.
• Jelly in Manhattan this Friday. (Thanks to Darrel Silver for hosting.) RSVP if you’re coming, all are welcome.
• We’re looking for Jelly venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and anywhere else. If you’d like to host a future Jelly, get in touch!
• Miriam Warren @ Yelp is working on getting a Jelly in D.C. up and running. If you’ve got friends in DC, help spread the word!

Link: RSVP for Jelly in Manhattan Friday, 8/24

Charlie says that "the whole idea that you have a main site is dead". I couldn't agree more - I strongly believe that platforms are the future of the Internet.

One clarification I'd like to make in this whole discussion is Facebook is both a destination and a platform. It's important to understand that these are discrete things - something can be a platform without being a destination and vice versa. Clearly, Facebook offers a nice API for integrating your code into theirs, but this to me is not what makes Facebook a platform. MySpace, iGoogle, and a plethora of Web 2.0 portals allow you to "embed" your code - Facebook just allows you to do it more seamlessly. If anything, these are all simply platforms - or rather, vehicles - for traffic. Of course, as Charlie and myself and countless others have said, traffic does not give you a business model.

On the other hand, Facebook is getting flak for not being open enough with their data. As Fred says, being open in one way is not enough. Yes, the fact that Facebook does not (yet) allow Twitter to update your Facebook status is annoying, but as a platform, Facebook is important because it exposes the underlying relationship information to consumers of the API. This allows me to build an application that leverages this data without having to go out and collect it myself. While I appreciate being able to subscribe to my news feed in my newsreader, ultimately it's this social landscape already available in the API that is important.

This is precisely why Facebook is appealing to us as a platform and something we consider a key element in our launch strategy. As Charlie puts it, "at the end of the day, you shouldn't care where the user winds up... everyone can access your content or your service in a form native to the platform that its on, but will the full functionality of whatever you're up to." Facebook gives us a natural place for our users to wind up - both because of the potential traffic and the data it exposes - but ultimately we recognize that it is but one of many destinations.

Along these lines, it's why new social networks like Plaxo Pulse leave me scratching my head. Plaxo already knows who your friends are - the fact that it asks me to add a friend on its site that it knows I'm already a friend with is just ridiculous. Despite already leveraging the social networking data exposed via Facebook and others, Plaxo is trying to reinvent the social networking wheel.

I'd also reiterate the point Charlie makes about dogfooding. We built our site on top of the API so we can ensure that the API properly captures all of the functionality we want available in the API. If you're not able to build your site with your API, then your API is not an actual API.

There’s a lot happening these days at/with the Web 2.0 Meetup!

First, Michael Chin, Senior Vice President of Marketing at KickApps, will be speaking/presenting on behalf of the company. As previously reported on the nextNY blog, Mashable and others tech-related sources KickApps received an additional $11 million (totaling $18 million with previous rounds) of funding that will go towards various divisions of their company.

In other great news New York-based CafeMom announced their 500,000th member today. They’re set to take the microphone once again at the Web 2.0 Meetup. The mother-oriented social networking community is making quite the splash these days. They’ll be demonstrating their online community, its functionality, and other news related to the growing company.

Finally, we have some big news to unveil at the Web 2.0 Meetup as well. We look forward to seeing you there!

Two great New York minds got together last night on Channel 13, as Charlie Rose interviewed Esther Dyson.

The whole 40 minute interview is worth your time, but if you want to skip around, check out the first half for stuff about health care and the super interesting project Esther is involved in which will put her genome and medical history up on the Internet for all to see.

But for all you “I only consume information about web trends” folks, skip to the second half where she talks about Facebook, Google, and how Charlie can raise more money on the web using (her portfolio company) Eventful.

Highlights include Esther explaining why she’s less optimistic about real innovation on the Internet these days than she is about possibilities to push the envelope on the health care frontier and the space frontier (sorry kids, put away those social networking business plans!).

Everybody’s doing it and so are UpNext and HeyCosmo. Both startups announced yesterday at Web2NewYork they are working on Facebook apps.

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Went out to meet the Bug Labs team last night at the first of their Bug+BLANK events (where BLANK in this case was NYC+bar).

Bug Labs is a New York City based startup building an open source hardware platform. What does that mean? Their soon-to-be-released product is a modular set of hardware with open APIs that enables users (read: hackers, at least at first) to mix-and-match (mashup, if you will, but I understand if you won’t) hardware components to prototype and build all sorts of cool stuff.

The main board has a battery, wifi, Bluetooth, storage, and 4 adapters for external modules. They have 5-10 modules planned for launch, with 100 more in the roadmap. Example modules include: keyboard, screen, camera, GPS, RFID reader, accelerometer, video encoder/decoder, mp3 player, etc. All of the modules expose a REST interface so developers can code to them. How friggin’ cool is that??

The first example someone mentioned was a screen, keyboard, GPS, and camera that can be used as a mobile photoblogging tool. My first idea was to make a dashboard GPS device that integrates with Google Maps and is optimized for bike lanes and not highways that I can mount on my handlebars. One of the Bug guys was talking about compiling a version of MythTV and building a customized set top box. And my friend David can use an actuator module to fulfill his dream of creating a refrigerator door that live-blogs it’s daily openings and closings to RSS. And his other dream of attaching mini webcams to windmils and the big arms that go up and down at the toll booths and broadcasting the images live to neighborhood bars.

What’s exciting to me is that Bug really wants to build a platform and ecosystem around their hardware. So I can make my own one off device (say, the windmill webcam) or produce & sell really useful ones that have lots of appeal to enough people to resell and make money (say, NYC bike lane GPS device) but not enough appeal to have Samsung start manufacturing them en masse.

So I wish these guys the best of luck and I can’t wait to start hacking around with one!

Update: ooh! a picture of me at the event:

Jelly, our twice-monthly casual co-working session stretches its legs and visits Brooklyn this week. Thanks to Dave, Josh, and Saha for hosting.

Visitors from all boroughs are welcome. If you’ll be there, add your name to the list!

Aaron Bollinger just emailed me KickApps has received ‘a big new round of financing’. The white label social networking platform received $20 million from SoftBank Capital and return backers Prism VentureWorks and Spark Capital.

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KickApps seems to be preparing a Fall marketing offensive. The New York-based hosted social media platform hired Michael Chin to lead its growing marketing department. Previously Chin was a business development executive at tech-focused PR firm Bite Communications.

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The most valuable online social network I belong to doesn’t have profile pages, doesn’t stream music, doesn’t have an application development platform and has no pre-determined “friending” mechanism.

This social network isn’t SEO optimized, has a Consensus Master instead of a Web Master, organizes some of the most innovative industry events, gives back more information than you put into it, and connects you to the best jobs in your field.

What social network am I talking about?

nextNY, of course, and as of today it’s 1,000 members strong!
(On a personal note, next week marks the 1 year anniversary that I joined the group, forever changing my life!)

As I was moving into my new apartment I began thinking about all the social networks I am a part of (scores and scores!) and what sort of value I get from being a part of them. This pondering came after I borrowed a milk crate from The Roasting Plant to move small kitchen things and borrowed a create drill set from Russ and Daughters so we could reinstall shelves. What a wonderful social network of LES retail stores I had built up!

The one online social network that kept coming to mind as I extended this thought was nextNY, though it didn’t have the markings of a traditional online social network.

With this is mind, I thought that if “friending,” “poking” and “blinged out” profile pages aren’t the markings of a valuable social network, then looking at nextNY as an example could points to what really does make a valuable online social network.

Here’s what I came up with. I’d love it if others would post thoughts on their own blogs about what makes nextNY so great!

Influence over social life:
When people new to online social networking ask questions about Facebook or MySpace they often ask, “do you actually meet people on those sites?!” While some people do, I think Facebook most popularly used a tool to manage existing offline social networks and their online presence is dictated by those offline networks.

nextNY is different because most sign-up for the mailing list knowing no one or only one or two people. From there, you hear about events, meet people at events, collaborate with like-minded folks, ultimately changing your personal offline social network.

I can’t identify ways in which my life is truly different because of Facebook. I can count many ways my life is different because of nextNY.

Respect for the group:
Respect is underrated. If you’ve been on the NY Tech Meetup list you’ll notice that for the most part that list disastrous. People litter the list with spam and conversations which should be taken to a back-channel. There’s absolutely no respect for the health of the listserv as a group. And this by no means is the fault of Meetup or our Meetup’s organizers — they have a wonderfully respectful social network — but is instead has to do with the way folks on the list view it in relation to the group. With nextNY it’s understood that our list the heart and soul of the group. But with other listservs it’s just a feature for the group, and so it’s trashed. Because people in nextNY care so deeply for the quality of the listserv, they respect it.

Clarity and purity of Purpose:
nextNY exists as “a fun way to connect both socially and professionally with young people who have a stake in future of tech and new media in New York City.” In that sentence we see that nextNY is about connecting and about sharing a collective investment in the future of NYC as a tech hub. While this is a broad mission it’s a clear one. Also, because it’s so much about community — even about the community beyond the email list — the result of taking part in the community is tangible. It’s “I’m a member of nextNY to connect with people and to better our tech community.”

Also, as far as purity of purpose goes, nextNY exists for nextNY. Sure it looks great on Charlie’s resume that he founded this group, but that’s not why it was founded or why it has taken off. No one makes money from nextNY. No one has ulterior motives for being a part of it or leading it. It’s about as pure as it gets.

Lack of structure:
The lack of structure I think is a huge reason nextNY is so valuable. With a flick of a mouse you can plan your own event, organize a demo day, invite people to cafeSlam, or make a community list of tech conferences. The fact that you don’t have to get “approval” to do something with nextNY allows for maximum creativity and participation.

This lack of structure is not to be taken for granted. Every so often, someone posts on the list about the “need” for more structure. I did this last November when we were talking about a community blog and the issue was brought up again more recently. Every time this happens, however, “the old guard” protests and explains why no structure is better. Indeed it is.

Positive structuring forces:
While there’s no structure to nextNY there are structuring forces that hold the network together. Someone has passwords to the Google Group and the wiki. A few of us have the ability to approve blogs for the blog.nextny.org blog. And if someone starts abusing any of these community tools, there are a handful of people who can remove the negative forces.