The first significant change we made was to reduce the amount of aggregated content we store. We found that the vast majority of requests were for the most current aggregated activity items, however we were storing well over 20 million content records, most of which were never being seen. To help stabilize the chi.mp system and improve its performance we reduced the total number of content items that we store in any given service subscription. By making this change we’ve been able to greatly reduce page load times across all chi.mp sites and dramatically reduce outages, which is good for all of us.

The next major change was the removal of the Ultimate Black Book. Contact management is a business in-and-of itself and to be done right it must be the primary focus of the business. While the Ultimate Black Book is a cool idea we will never be able to give it the attention that it deserves and requires to become an ubiquitous contact manager. To that end we have removed the Ultimate Black Book from the chi.mp interface. If you would like to download a vCard with all of your contacts you can do so by logging into your chi.mp site and going to the View My Site : Following. The full vCard download will be available until the end of March.

So that covers what has been removed, now here’s what we’re changing and adding:

First we’ll be completely revamping personas. The current implementation is not being widely used and so we’re going to fix it. We’ll be doing away with OpenID-based log in for your guests and instead let you create custom subdomains that represent your various personas. This means that sharing a persona will be as easy as giving out a URL. It also means that you can have multiple public personas which will open up new possibilities on how personas can be used.

We’ll also be adding support for subdomains redirecting to other sites. For example, you might want to direct http://photos.yoursite.mp to your Flickr or Picasa profile.

Both of these features will be available under a new pro package, which will be a paid upgrade for chi.mp site owners. We’re also moving email forwarding to the pro package and will add the ability to forward more than one email address from your chi.mp site to other email addresses.

You may have noticed that we’ve changed Contacts to Following. We want to make it really easy for you to see what all of your chi.mp friends are up to and thus we’re adding a feature that will aggregate all of your chi.mp friends’ content into a single page so you can see their activity streams in a single location.

Finally we want to make sharing a more important aspect of your chi.mp site. To do this we’ll be adding a Promote link on your chi.mp site that will provide sharing tools as well as widgets that you can embed on other sites.

Chi.mp is all about you, and having a personal web site that brings together everything about you on your free domain. We look forward to a year of focus and improvement for chi.mp and hope that you continue to share the journey with us.

Sincerely,
The chi.mp Team

The dropdown menus on the .mp sites make navigating, creating content and publishing much easier to do.  The View My Site links will show you how others see your content.

The Manage My Site links allow you to easily find the places where you can create content and design your site.

Cory also added some themes and looks forward to creating more and improving the themes interface.

Other areas that he is focusing on include improving the service subscription interface and the overall user experience and ease of use.  He wants to know what you like most and what you like least about the user experience on your sites, so keep up the great feedback!

Check out your new site navigation and let us know what you think.

With aloha,

Laurel Boylen

Community Director

chi.mp

• Promote your site with Twitter! Choose the Preview link on your site and you will find the Twitter logo.
• Add a personal video or images to your Bio statement. We upgraded the HTML editor which now allows you to use it in your About Me section.
• Help icons on your Dashboard make navigation to the main functions of your .mp site easier.
• A new Feedback widget provides easy access to our support desk should you want to ask a question or make a suggestion.
• Do you know how many people are visiting your .mp site? You can set up Google Analytics and track your network as it grows. Look under Settings -> Site Settings for directions.

Let us know if you want help setting up your chi.mp site or need more information about a certain feature by choosing the new Feedback button. The more you tell us, the better we can serve you!  Join the conversation at Get Satisfaction or email us at support@chi.mp and let us know what you think.

Aloha,

The chi.mp team

Jean has facilitated social benefit conferences, cooperating with colleagues in fields ranging from technology & social media, to philanthropy, currencies, green/sustainable design, community development, international development, and human rights.  Jean creates and nurtures conversations. With broad knowledge of many aspects of social change work, Jean weaves together networks of purpose for enabling a thrivable world.

TODD: What are some examples of social change that you are seeing within the online world?

JEAN: Some social changes I perceive are innovations in fundraising, awareness building, granting. This year has been marked by the inclusion of social good into mainstream technology conferences such as SXSW Interactive and Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conference, for example. Mashable is all about social good this year. Social change is the new black. With the abundance of free services, making slick social cause websites and campaigns requires very little money (although time and experience are strong requirements). Early successes, which won’t be replicable en masse, but do gain traction in the ravenous minds of nonprofits getting involved include: Beth Kanter’s fundraising for Cambodian kids and Stacey Monk’s fundraising for Epic Change, and #IblameDrewscancer is a different model - crowdsourcing attention rather than micro-donations.

Some social changes I see are less direct or obvious, yet more important and present. The ability to connect to others who share our interest, long a value of social media, is particularly vital for social change. The medium for the gift economy flourishes- crowdsource your travel needs (couchsurfing the social good network) for example. Social media facilitates a sense of connection to others in an immediate and compassionate way - very feasible, and the grounding for a great deal of social change work. The ability to know the social good network, enabling the knitting of that network is also powerful transformative and part of the impetus for WiserEarth, the global social good wiki for organizations and projects.

TODD: Is the world changing, or are we simply experiencing new communication technology?

JEAN: Yes, and the world is changing.  It is a little frustrating to see people trumpeting how social media is the next revolution after the printing press. The birth of the internet (and probably computers themselves) already claimed that. The communication technology is not vastly different from chats and forums that we had a decade ago. What makes it the new is the scale of the communication. This isn’t just a circle of geeks and early adopters.

TODD: Within the world of creating social good, what trends are you seeing in online participation?

JEAN: I notice that we have moved beyond early adopters to a broader mass engagement. This has a negative effect on the network - making it harder to reach some people as filters begin to rise in how we pay attention to people. And it has a positive effect - it is easier to stay connected with a broader field of your network. Also, the differentiation between spaces is getting sharper - rather than one tool emerging to rule them all, we are reinforcing the fractures of ourselves -the compartmentalization of our past, our profession, and our personal. Even within twitter - the space of infinite NOW, many regular contributors have multiple accounts to keep their multiple networks clear and distinct.

TODD: You have started an organization around thrivability.  What is thrivability?

JEAN: My friend Arthur Brock explains it: ‘Thrivability builds on itself. It is a cycle of actions which reinvest energy for future use and stretch resources further. It transcends sustainability by creating an upward spiral of greater possibilities and increasing energy. Each cycle builds the foundation for new things to be accomplished. Thrivability emerges from the persistent intention to create more value than you consume.” I can also explain it simply as transcending sustainability, social justice, and consciousness through understanding and guiding complex adaptive systems. Or we can get right to the heart - co-creating the world we want to live in.

TODD: What can people do to advance thrivability in their community?

JEAN: Creating thriving communities powerfully advances thrivability. There are very practical ways to engage in creating a thrivable community. Asking people what a thrivable community would look like to them can start a very useful conversation.  They don’t have to all agree to a shared vision from the beginning. Opening the door for creative visualization and giving people a space to voice their dreams is very potent. Connecting people around their passions in the community builds the resilience and creativity of the network and helps generate energy.

TODD: What role does entrepreneurship play in creating thrivability?

JEAN: Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in thrivability. I was having an interesting conversation with an economics and labor historian last night. He suggested that by several historical definitions, what we have now is not capitalism. We laughed, a little uncomfortably, and we both agreed this might be an era of markets and market-ism. Who are the key agents of transformation in markets? I suggest that entrepreneurs are. I look forward to the emergence of markets around thrivability, and I am quite curious about the business models and practices it will generate.

TODD: How does the open web fit into all of this?

JEAN: The open web is vital for expediting the flow of information. It is the global brain and the manifestation of our collective intelligence network. Right now, it is in a Neanderthal era in terms of identity, etiquette, and ownership/territory. The old pyramidal structures of relating to each other collapse in the open web, ideally. Note that this does not mean giving up leadership as much as it means increasing the quality of information.

TODD: What are you working on now?

JEAN: I am testing a conversation process for thrivable.org which will bring people together around a thrivable topic of interest, generate multiple perspective of understanding around that topic, evolve and refined into co-authored essays. My hope is that this helps form grounded and practical wisdom in many domains. I am also testing a set of discovery cards around thrivability, seeking a playful and potent way for people to engage in the breadth of thrivability while focused on their own projects.

Thank you, Jean.

The teen who lost her job after calling her work “boring” on Facebook, or the woman fired for calling her boss “pervvy” in a status update did not suffer from a deficit in privacy.  They were fired, rightly or wrongly, for poor judgment.  Most people understand that their posted content exists in the public domain.  Taking precautions on Facebook, and being careful what you disclose anywhere on the web is necessary.

It’s what happens behind your back that irks the privacy advocates at chi.mp and elsewhere.  Consumer Reports released a report earlier this month, outlining the varying degrees of data that currently exist on you, available for purchase by landlords, employers, creditors, service companies, and curious citizens.  What the report does not include is the level of “anonymized” data that has been aggregated without your consent.  Each time you disclose an interest, income, or medical condition, there’s a chance this information is being sold and aggregated.

Even anonymized data can be potentially linked to you, and the definitions of personally identifiable information are open to various interpretations.  The personal data marketplace that exists seeks to profit from your needs and buying interests.

Twitter sent out a new Terms of Service this week, clarifying that users own their own data.  We applaud the announcement, but the subsequent actions must be watched carefully.  Data ownership on the web is a complex issue.  It’s not as simple as “it’s your data,” because your data is being replicated, repurposed, and added to on an ongoing basis.

At chi.mp, privacy is equally about what we do and don’t do.

We do:

• Give you a free domain that’s yours
• Offer personas so you can selectively share yourself
• Devote resources to giving you increasing control over your online identity
• Advocate Data Portability and the Open Web

We don’t:

• Sell your data to anyone
• Utilize your contacts in any way
• Advertise on your public profile

As much as possible, read the small print in Privacy Policies and Terms of Service.  Use Twitter and Facebook to ask questions and question the policies of sites and services in the open.

The personalized web is still a new frontier.  Until the norms and regulations are established, be wise.

PubSubHubbub defines a way to publish and receive updates when Atom feeds change. As mentioned in my previous post, Atom feeds syndicate items from places like news sites, blogs and various parts of chi.mp (like the activity stream and blogs). With PubSubHubbub chi.mp could select one or more hubs to publish notifications to each time one of your feeds changes and then subscribers would receive notification and content from the hub directly. The primary benefit of this is that subscribers would no longer need to poll Atom feeds to see if the feed has changed, rather they could simply be notified of the change.

One interesting aspect of PubSubHubbub is that it does not require a single centralized hub. On the contrary it is designed to allow publishers to select one or more hubs that they publish to, which are defined in the atom feed, and then subscribers that support PubSubHubbub subscriptions can listen for updates on those hubs. The hubs in turn are responsible for checking whether or not the feed has updated and then posting to each subscriber’s HTTP endpoint that they have provided when an update occurs.

After reading the protocol my conclusion is that this will probably be useful in the future, however right now it’s so early on in the process that the implementation is still a significant challenge, largely due to lack of documentation and test environments. To be fair, there is a test implementation running on Google’s App Engine, however when I tried it out it lacked decent explanation for the various required fields and their expected values.

The bottom line: PubSubHubbub is interesting but still needs some more time to bake.

• Google them
• Check their LinkedIn page and connections
• Verify their interests and work product across the web

For executives and people in the digital space, results will usually be found.  But even if you work in a much different field, web searches are conducted to both find and verify who you are.  Researching a real estate agent?  A designer?  A plumber?   I will search before spending or hiring.  I have to believe these simple background checks will become more common across industries.

How can you proactively manage your online presence?

1.  Set up and personalize your chi.mp site - highlight your interests and areas of expertise by connecting to services and establishing feeds that reflect the topics you want to showcase.

2.  Keep your username and identity consistent across social media sites when possible - use namechk, or if you’re willing to spend some money, ClaimMyName, to reserve multiple accounts without the hassle.

3.  Interact on the platforms where people and discussions exist that are relevant to you - from the common social networks to the niche message boards.

4.  Get an online CV up - I use VisualCV.  Jobspice is another good service.  LinkedIn is becoming a necessity, but does not provide the personalization, multimedia, or formatting options of VisualCV.

5.  Send traffic to your chi.mp site and your online CV. - Put your .mp site on your business cards and in your email signature.  Tell friends, colleagues, and potential business partners.

Are you willing to throw out the paper resume?  What other wisdom can you share?

If you’re new to chi.mp and/or are looking for some examples of other chi.mp site owners doing some great things with their site, may I introduce Tara SG.  Tara is new to chi.mp having signed up only a few weeks ago, but her site brings together her blogs, websites, and social media accounts very nicely.  Not only is her background design awesome, her blogs are quite an interesting read as well.  So this week we thought we’d shine our owner spotlight on Tara SG.

Q:  Tell us about taraSG.mp
A:  taraSG.mp is where everything comes together! I’m an organizational freak and I was looking for a way to feed all my blogs, Flickr, and DailyMile in one central location. I was talking to my best friend about it and he mentioned he had read an article in How-To Geek about Chi.mp and thought I should check it out. Chi.mp was the perfect answer. I love that I can easily direct people to all my sites with one simple address.

Q:  What are some of your interest?
A:  I am a complete bookworm. I will do nothing but read for days at time (I’m currently sucked into the Southern Vampire series). I love to run and I’m trying to get back in shape for a half-marathon. I like to find new musical artists to listen to and I’m starting to get into photography. I like to watch crime shows like Law & Order or Bones, but I also love Sci-fi shows like Battlestar Galatica. I’m a huge Office and Arrested Development fan. I like to cook and have friends over for drinks by the fire. I wish I had more money for traveling. I like to go on random road trips with no set destination and see what I come across.

Q:  What’s the story behind your blog, 101 Goals in 1001 days?
A:  After losing my “dream job” I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with myself and I came across the 101 goals in 1001 days challenge. The 101 in 1001 Challenge is very simple. Just create a list of 101 goals to accomplish over 1001 days (2.75 years). These should be things that are measurable, that are achievable, but that in some way present a challenge. As a terrible procrastinator with a passion for list making, I saw the challenge as a way to add some adventure/culture/healthy habits to my life as I try to work my way out of a quarter-life crisis. Some of my goals are really simple like reading 101 books or drinking more water. Others like climb a mountain or hike the Grand Canyon will be a little more challenging. I started up a blog (101.tarasg.com) to track my progress and I’m having a blast with it!

Q:  What is your favorite book to date and why?
A:  This is a tough one. I love to read and reread books. My favorite book differs depending on how I’m feeling. Today I’d say my favorite book is Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austin). I loved Pride & Prejudice and this book makes me laugh out loud more than any other book has in a long time. I also really love the Harry Potter series and the Southern Vampire series.

Q:  What the most listened to song on your iPod or MP3 player?
A:  Another tough one… Right now it’s “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap because I fell in love with the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack.

Q:  What will you do if you have a time machine?
A:  If I had a time machine I think I would go back to early America and to see what life was like on the plains as a Native American. My grandfather was Cheyenne and I love to learn about the culture. I’d also like to see what the Medieval Times were like, but I’m thinking they were a lot more depressing than movies and books portray.

Q:  What are your top two improvements for chi.mp?
A:  I’m going to have to jump on the bandwagon and say that I wish the blog was better. Other than that I honestly can’t think of anything else I’d change :)

My personal quest for digital organization never ends.  The circa 1970 steel file cabinet in the corner of my office slowly empties, as my computer desktop and hard drives fill.  My stuff is everywhere.

This is an aspiration of chi.mp - to simplify your digital life.  By collecting and organizing contacts, activity streams, and RSS or atom feeds, chi.mp does provide some personal order within the chaos of the world wide web.  Plus, you can use your .mp site to login on any OpenID enabled site.

So, what other tools do I use?

I keep all of my music and photos on one hard drive.  All of my files are backed up to another hard drive.  Then, on what I wish was a more regular basis, I upload important files and multimedia to LiveDrive, an online backup service.  My passwords, at one time in a spreadsheet, are now encrypted through LastPass.  I entrust my financial history to Mint and Billeo.  For social content outside of my streams on my chi.mp site, I have tried both coComment and BackType.  My bookmarks are with Delicious.

This does not include three different calendars, four email addresses, and the posts I save in my reader.  A lot of stuff.  My challenge is developing and sticking with a routine.

There are plenty of cheap and free tools out there.  Someday it will be easier and more automated.

What do you recommend?