Wow, it has been an interesting half-year! Six months ago I decided to move to Brighton, which has turned out to be the best impulsive decision I have ever made. I moved here jobless, mainly friendless, and totally terrified, but I think things have worked out pretty well.

On Monday, I’m joining Future Platforms, which I mentioned a few posts ago, so tomorrow is my final day at Cactus Language. Cactus, incidentally, is a wonderful place to work, and I will miss it and my colleagues a lot — check out their blog — their passion for what they do oozes off the page. Moving into mobile will be an interesting journey, and one I’m really looking forward to. Mobile, as I’ve said before, has a very strong appeal to me for a lot of reasons, and I’ll no doubt be writing on more mobile-related theme over the next few weeks and months. I like it because I feel it’s nascent, it’s gathering momentum, and there’s a lot of room for development and change, a lot of room to experiment and apply theory.

When I visited Brighton for the first time in early September, I loved it. I was briefly conflicted, as I had already set my heart on moving to London; but this was quickly displaced by the jealous feelings I started to feel towards people already living in Brighton. I’m not sure what it was initially: the sea air, the positive ‘vibe’, the endless cafes, Banksy, visiting the Laines for the first time (full of the most exotic street signage I’ve seen, must blog it), the paradox of hippies and tech-geeks living side by side, vegetarians with iPhones. You can walk down St James’s Street in pyjamas and nobody would blink an eye. That’s not to say people are badly dressed: in general, people are as style-conscious as they are in London, but without the bitter snobbery. There’s an aura of ‘anything goes’, you can wear what you want. People are cool, and people don’t judge.

So, that was it. I moved to Brighton, about a week after I had visited for the first time.

Brighton is more bohemian, exciting, and liberal than Oxford; and it has more individuality, spark, and character than Reading. Admittedly, that’s not difficult in both cases, but this place is like nowhere else in the UK. It’s a place people feel lucky, it’s a place where people willingly get stuck. I spent my first night in Brighton sitting on the beach with strangers around a campfire. They were singing, spinning fire, dancing, drinking. Someone was playing a drum. Everyone I spoke to seems to have visited Brighton for a day… 17 years ago, and everyone seemed to be from Russia, or Finland, or Italy, or somewhere else.

Another thing that attracted me to Brighton was the technology community. I can’t really stress how great it is to be surrounded by people who are working in the same field as you, or closely related, and to be around people who are genuinely, seethingly passionate about what they do. There’s a real thriving community here that I love. I felt like a geek at university, but I am always outgeeked in Brighton. Another plus is that here, you are never more than 10 minutes away from a free Wi-Fi connection (thanks to looseconnection.com, and forward-thinking cafes and pubs). The beach itself was also a reason to move: living by the sea (I am 2 minutes away from it) is wonderful, and something I’ve never experienced before.

I’m beginning to sound like Julie Burchill. I wish, she communicates the Brighton thing much better than I do…

I’ve been following Twitter and watching the SXSW conversations unfold in the last few hours. Many have been focused on Sarah Lacy’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg, which are mainly negative. There’s a really interesting write up on the interview at BuzzMachine.

From Jeff Jarvis’s write up of the interview, this is the most interesting bit to me:

He [Mark Zuckerberg] says that Facebook is working on a universal need: connecting people who want to communicate. He says that someday everyone on the world will be using these tools. “It may not be Facebook.”

Interesting. Facebook will need to evolve, as I think that branding and advertising will only obfuscate a communication tool. I think that if Facebook really wants to “connect people who want to communicate”, it needs to be as invisible as possible, and it needs to be open as possible. I want to easily sync my contacts with my address book, my phone, etc. I want to take data out.

Transparency in social networking: a good analogy would be plain typography, or the principles set out in Beatrice Warde’s ‘The Crystal Goblet‘: basically, that printing should be invisible, so that words and ideas can be read and understood as clearly as possible. A real communication tool must give privacy, yes, but also transparency and flexibility.

I have just finished reading the story of boo.com, ‘Boo Hoo: $135 million, 18 months… a dot.com story from concept to catastrophe’, by Ernst Malmsten et al.

From any perspective, it’s quite a read, and I would recommend it to anyone based on its thrill factor (”reading [this] has the fascination of watching a high-speed car crash in slow motion”) and lucid, readable prose style.

Boo.com seemed to be a web 2.0 site before the world was ready for it. Tristan Louis argues this in a blog post (about two screens down the page, titled ‘Was boo.com the first web 2.0 company?’). If Boo.com had launched the same way in 2008 as it had in 2000, it would have stood a better chance — widespread broadband alone would have helped significantly with the website’s problems — but it’s hard to make excuses for the excessive spending of investors’ money. Frugality is quite topical right now: reading the story of boo.com side by side with the recent discussions about dollar-stretching in startups is quite a contrast.

It’s easy to see how boo lured interest from media and investors: the story is both romantic and convincing. Founders Kajsa Leander and Ernst Malmsten were friends from childhood, millionaires from their previous internet book e-tailing success bokus.com; and one founder was a former fashion model, the other, a poetry critic. Patrik Hedelin was the third founder, whose role was played largely out of the media spotlight.

One thing that really interests me is the level of thought that was given to the site philosophy and emphasis on “more than a brand — boo is a lifestyle”. The branding was carefully applied across the site, with visitors depositing items into their “boobag”, mixing with other shoppers at the “boo party” (encompassing a forum and chatroom), and reading their fashion and style magazine, Boom. The design of the site itself was ahead of its time: it used the rounded corners which feature as part of the standard branding of web 2.0, a rounded logo typeface, and bright colours.

Miss Boo, the character introducing visitors to the site, was anything but a one-dimensional cartoon: her personality, looks, history, and ‘voice’ were given careful consideration and thought. Unbelievable to me, they booked Eugene Soulemain, the world’s top hairstylist whose clients include Hollywood A-list actresses, Prada, and Louis Vuitton, to advise them on Miss Boo’s hair.

The depth of thought they gave Miss Boo is amazing to me, and perhaps symptomatic of the rather too-visionary nature of its founders (come on: booking the world’s top hairstylist for consultation on a website character? Is it a joke?). Focus on their business model, and being accessible to all users, would have been a better idea. Immediately after the site’s launch, there was a bug preventing Mac users from purchasing items. Unfortunately for boo, a lot of journalists used Macs, experienced this bug, and negative reviews flooded in.

It is intoxicating to learn how seriously boo took its brand, and how much money they managed to raise, and subsequently burn through, to build it. I felt a bit drained by the end of this book, and feel that as a model, the failure of boo at least leaves behind a lot of lessons.

View an archived copy of boo.com here

Another interesting read about boo

Boo on Wikipedia

I’ve been trying Twitter for a couple of days (I’m eclat), after failing to see the point the first time I used it.

I now “get” Twitter and think I’ll be using it frequently in the future. It’s great for feeling connected to the people I know, to see which of my friends are around, and what they’re doing and thinking about. I’ve found I prefer to read tweets from people I know, rather than people I don’t know — though I’ve added a few bloggers because I’m interested in their updates. I also added a twittering plant which recently enjoyed media attention.

So far, I really like Twitter. I also really like Facebook, so I’m going to briefly compare my loves.

When I log in to Facebook, I like to see which of my friends have updated their information, photos, status, posted items, etc. Interaction via comments and messages goes on, but that’s not the focus of Facebook, and that’s not what I chiefly follow on Facebook.

One focus is on building a social network out of existing relationships. Another focus is on gathering and presenting information and facts about people. Photographs (visual facts, I guess), interests, favourite music, bio, etc.

Facebook has a Twitter-like status feature, but there is no way to reply directly to status updates. For that reason, status updates read as a monologue; they’re not part of a dialogue. Status updates feel lonely, somehow — they don’t invite longer conversations.

I realise now that this is why I feel uncomfortable about updating my status on Facebook. Self-consciousness; but also: who am I talking to? Who do I think is interested in what I’m doing or thinking about? Shouldn’t this invite or provoke a longer conversation? Perhaps it’s intentional that status updates are stand-alone, but I often find myself wanting to comment on a status update.

On Twitter, the focus is on people, stories, conversation. Facts get revealed through conversations on Twitter, rather than served up on a self-edited webpage, as they are on Facebook.

So far, I really like Twitter. I don’t think it can replace or compete with Facebook, because they’re good for different things.