In response to Fred Wilson's question "What drives consumer adoption of new technologies?" (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/06/what-drives-consumer-adoption-of-new-technologies.html)

Developing new technology is the same type of endeavor as composing and recording a song or writing, filming, and editing a movie, and therefore Richard Cave's "nobody knows" problem ultimately applies to the business desire for reproducibility (Creative Industries http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Industries-Contracts-between-Commerce/dp/0674008081). While we may be able to describe in general and specific terms, after the fact, why a particular song, movie, or technology became popular, the description by nature cannot provide a basis for describing the next popular creation (it can however provide a basis for formulaic efforts like sequels and spin-offs).

A good song, says what needs to be said, says it within the context what has been said before , and says it at the right time. Consider that the themes of songs we love (or hate) really don't differ much from the songs we care nothing about (neutrality is worse than hatred for the creative). It is the timeliness, relevance, and craft of the expression of that theme that wins the day. And if a song further exhibits time*less*ness, ongoing resonance, and beauty it becomes a "classic".

This analogy neatly explains many phenomenon in popular technology: hits-based business structures, a belief in king/queen pickers, fadishness, increasing operational focus on marketing and promotion, etc. The business of new popular technology looks like the business of music and movies, because the creation of new popular technology looks like the creation of music and movies.

A few things follow from this analogy. Winning technologies like YouTube are not thematically novel (i.e. hundreds of competitors in the online video distribution space, which is ultimately thematically related to television), but rather emerge as the most timely, relevant, and well-crafted. Further, we cannot ignore the influence of resources - monetary,  power, or otherwise - on the relevancy component of the function. Perhaps most importantly, it is way too early to know whether any of these recent technologies have graduated to "classic" status yet. Even Google, while of obvious business value, has yet to exhibit the cultural longevity of Abbey Road, or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or perhaps more to the point television or the telephone. The last two illustrate the final business problem for popular technology ...successes become categorical and thus commodity.

Finally, the answer to your question as it applies to your business, Fred, is the same as in other creative businesses: prolificacy, experimentation and inspiration comprise the measure of creative capacity. The business problem is that the creative process is orthogonal to the ex post facto hallmarks of creative success (even if you substitute or add your own to timeliness, relevance, and craft). Everybody knows why a creative *product* was a success, but we can only perceive the capacity of a creative *effort* to output a large number of products all of which try to be subtly novel and "come from the heart", one of which *might* be a hit.

Gotta love it, right?!

When we launched Twitmatic six weeks ago, we knew we could answer the question "What are you watching?" But since then, we've been asking the question "Do you care?" The 1200+ following us @twitmatic are the most vocal of the group, responding emphatically "Yes!" Beyond that though, you told us Twitmatic has potential to be a regular stop on your social media day (thanks for all the emails & DMs!), and that's why in this version were trying take Twitmatic from a novelty to a truly useful tool. Based on all our users' feedback, here's what we've added to this latest version:

- Real-time video search
Instead of "all videos shared on Twitter" or just filters for Twitter Trends, you can now perform your own search (results sorted by recency) and save those searches to track in real time.

- Integration of "Log in with Twitter"
By logging in with your Twitter account, you can save your searches, mark videos as favorites, and follow people who share interesting videos. In our testing experience, this has been a very helpful tool
to discover new people on Twitter.

- Toggle between video and tweet view
You can now see a Twitter-like list view of the 20 most recent results that match your search (If only so you can easily see how distinctive our results are from other video search engines you currently use)

So what's the answer to "What are you watching?" Twitmatic.com, of course. If like the direction we are headed with this (even if the implementation is still rough around the edges), please tweet "What am I watching? Twitmatic.com, of course"

This is a big deal, not because it is yet another example of Twitter's increasing influence (PCWorld, PCMag, Techcrunch), though it is notable that the move was made in response to requests by Google employees. What I think people are missing is that this isn't (only) about making it easier to share YouTube links on Twitter. It's already pretty easy just cut and paste the URL into your twitter client most of which have the added benefit of shortening the URL. Ultimately, I don't think Google sees a competitive threat from other video websites just because they already allow sharing to Twitter.

To understand is really going on you just need to remember that Google didn't purchase Youtube to get into the video hosting/streaming business (I mean who wants to be in that business long term anyway), they purchased it as a stronghold in the video information business: what do people watch, what do they bookmark, and now, what do they tweet.

It's not that Google couldn't previously collect info on what videos were being Tweeted but it was limited to when it happens to crawl the exploding number of Twitter pages when a YouTube URL happens to be among the recent tweets (very hard to keep up), or when a link is clicked on in a tweet which often goes through intermediaries like TinyURL and masks the original tweeter. Google has now determined that this information is now important enough that they want to collect it at the moment it was created and cutting third parties out of the info entirely. In sum, Google now recognizes Twitter as a repository of real-time information and at least with regard to video, wants to take some of that mojo back.

Now, I may be biased because we at ffwd saw this opportunity nearly a month ago and launched Twitmatic, the real-time video stream of Twitter community. If you too recognize the value that Google is going after, you don't need to wait for Google to figure it out. If you want to see all the videos being tweeted from YouTube (or one of 250 other video sites) you can do that immediately at http://www.twitmatic.com. Since then we've added support for filtering the stream on Twitter Trends, and now that we've been given proper access to the API (thanks Twitter!) we can start implementing the more advanced features users want:

• watch only the videos posted by your followers or people who follow you
• discover new people to follow based on the videos they tweet
• a twitter based comment/reply stream for videos
• track videos that correspond to your areas of interest

And please join the Twitmatic community @Twitmatic on Twitter to direct our efforts so in essence, Twitmatic will be your personalizable real-time video community and startpage.

For the past month or so, we've been working on Facebook Connect integration with our site, and now it's finally available for you to try out. It's a great way for users to be able to mix the powerful web channel surfing experience on ffwd with the unique social context that Facebook provides.

This first release includes the following features:

- Sign up or log in to your account on ffwd using your Facebook account.

- Import your favorite shows and interests from Facebook directly into your ffwd channel.

- View or search for your Facebook friends on ffwd using their Facebook identities.

- Post videos directly to your Facebook profile page when sharing or saving a video on ffwd.

We'll continue to work on improving the Facebook user experience on our site in the coming months, so please let us know what else you'd like to see!

1. is american chopper cancelled
2. veronica mars season 2
3. veronica mars normal is the watchword full episode
4. celainn
5. wonder showzen clips

Of note this week...Hours of veronica Mars being watched and a user channel (celainn) breaks into the top 5.

1. "def comedy jam" "theme song"
2. leave it to beaver
3. xena sins past
4. aqua teen hunger force couple skates video
5. kelly bundy videos

One fascinating thing to note about this week is the number one result was a "miss" in the traditional sense. The searcher was led to an acoustic rendition of the theme from MacGyver (not Def Comedy Jam) and still stayed for 2 hours.

PK

1. watch homicide life on the street
2. chris nunez
3. reedickyoulus athf
4. watch spongebob videos
5. video couple bleeding love

The first one deserves special recognition because we recently tweaked our channel AI and this might be a result. The other four were the were the more typical 1 hour plus, The person who came in looking for Homicide Life on the Street stayed for 5 hours, as much time as many people spend watching television.

(btw, sorry I missed a few weeks, I'll go back a fill in the gaps soon)

Comedy, Sexy and Sex Comedy this week

1. videos of saturday night live
2. kathy griffin
3. watch def comedy jam videos
4. watch free the girls of the playboy mansion
5. delicious of flavor' of love sex tape

A week dominated by off-air and foreign shows. Interesting that people no longer assume that something isn't available and at least try to find it and in these cases they found it and more!

cosby show

videos of laverne and shirley

kashmiri comody

steven king gramma

the mighty boosh video

Happy New Year. Here's our little slice of how the world got started

what channel is homicide life on the streets on

inuyasha episode 83

afv animal videos

watch ren and stimpy space madness

download two and a half men episode

Average viewing time for these channel sessions was 1 hour 7 minutes.