I wrote the other day on Twitter, “If @my6sense, http://tweetstats.com, @Twitter, and @socialtoo had a baby, that’s the Kynetx app I want to write. #FillANeed”

I’m going to tell you all about what that app looks like and what it does but first some background. I use Twitter a lot.

I have really enjoyed the whole experience. I have found over the past 2 years that connecting with people is what makes Twitter great for me.

Tweeting lots every day is easy along with following lots of people. These two actions only require a little typing and clicking buttons. The hard part is following people and listening to them and engaging in meaningful conversation. I read most updates of the 900 something people that I follow and it takes lots of time and effort.

Here are my goals with Twitter:

• Find more interesting people to follow and build meaningful relationships with them
• Spend less time reading tweets that I’m not interested in that have no relevance or are basically spam
• Spend more time engaged in tweets that are relevant, will help me grow as a person, and build meaningful relationships
• Help my friends do the same things listed above

Here are some things that stand in the way of me accomplishing those goals

• Don’t have a way to quantify and report the relevance of a “follow”
• Don’t have a way to quantify the time spent time on Twitter and different Twitter activities
• Don’t have a way to quantify the amount of load a particular follow puts on my  Twitter stream

I want to find more people to connect with but it’s a double edged sword. If I follow more people I increase my chances of finding interesting people to connect with but this same action causes more content to come through my Twitter stream. This makes it harder to stay connected with the people that I have already established a meaningful connection with.

I think an app/service can be created to help me reach all my goals and take care of all the road blocks. This is where My6Sense, TweetStats, SocialToo, Twitter, and Kynetx come in. I envision creating a Kynetx app that

• records how much time is spent on Twitter reading tweets
• what percentage of the tweets I read  are from each follow
• the relevance of Tweets and follows as I read and give feedback

Because a Kynetx app can be deployed as a browser extension it is fairly easy to get this kind of data and report it to a system through a simple API. The server could then take this data and start doing interesting and helpful things with the data. Things like

• make suggestions to un-follow people based on a ratio of load vs quality content created much like SocialToo attempts to do through rules
• build cool looking, informative, and geeky charts like TweetStats
• help me sort Twitter stream based on context similar to what My6Sense does
• suggest people to follow based on the relevance data received from my friends

Just imagine being able to see personal trends of how much time you spend going through your tweet stream. You could also see trends of the percentage of relevant people you are following, who is generating the most load on your stream, who you find the most relevant, and more. Because all of this is based on your actions on Twitter.com and is quantified you could set goals to improve in different areas. Rewards for achieving those goals could be given and the app could give me help along the way. Built correctly and used well, it could be a powerful tool to transform any social network into an astoundingly strong group of friends and acquaintances that are relevant, meaningful, and create much more benefit than cost to build and maintain.

If you like this idea, have suggestions, or have something you want to say, let me know in the comments or tweet me!

There is lots more that I could write about but I think I’ll hold off for now and see what people have to say about this.

I’ve always loved playing, learning, and games. It isn’t until the past few years that I’ve really started thinking more about gamification, what it means, how it plays a role in my life, and how I can learn from it to make better products on the web. I can’t remember who, but a friend on Twitter posted a link to a slideshare presentation “Meaningful Play. Getting Gamification Right.”

I went through each slide reading the notes at the bottom and thinking through each slide. I am genuinely impressed by the thought that has gone into this presentation. In a moment of awesomeness, I experienced an aha moment on slide #103. I found the key to understanding something that has left me perplexed since my childhood.

Back when I was younger, I was often charged with doing the dishes. I hated doing the dishes! Or, so I thought that I hated doing the dishes. Several times I had decided that I wanted to surprise my mom and do the dishes without her asking instead of the often, “Michael, will you PLEASE do the dishes?!”. Walking into the kitchen I was excited to do something nice for my mom until I heard, “Will you please do the dishes Michael?”. I was furious and my mom was confused. Even though my mom asked nicely, what changed when she asked that made me so mad? I finally understood today on slide #103. Enjoy! : )

(be sure to go through the slides in full screen)

Here is my public admission that I am a bit of a stats junkie. I LOVE NUMBERS AND DATA! As one of my good buddies would say…

“INPUT!!!!”

Reasons why I think I am addicted to stats:

1. I love tracking statistics within my applications to know what is going on
   
2. Built my own stats API to easily track what my Kynetx apps are doing in JavaScript
   
3. I have been checking http://tweetstats.com/graphs/mikegrace for over a year
   
4. I installed DD-WRT on my router mostly for the statistical functionality and for geek cred
   
5. Built my own round robin style load tracker for my server so I could better understand its load http://status.michaelgrace.info/
   
6. I built my own JSON interface to the command line top program to monitor who and what is creating the most load on my server
7. This blog post by the etsy engineering team about tracking everything made me drool http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/
8. Even though I didn’t really enjoy the homework, I absolutely loved my statistics class in college.
9. Sites like onetruefan.com that give me stats about what I do on the web make my geeky heart beat faster
   
10. Purchased a wall plug that would tell me stats on how much electricity my different appliances use

As you can see I am fairly addicted to numbers and stats and I haven’t even listed everything here.  I wish that more stuff was webhook enabled so I could gather meaningful statistics and build cool apps that tied more of my ‘stuff’ together in meaningful ways like Kynetx envisions. Here is to a future where life is made better and more interesting through the application and correlation of meaningful data.

Before I get started let’s get 2 points out in the open:

1) Yes, at the time of this blog post I am unemployed.

2) Kynetx is still kickin butt and taking names. Kynetx FTW!

Yesterday morning I found out that I no longer had a job at Kynetx as Kynetx was shifting to plan B. Any good startup worth their salt always has a plan B and Kynetx is executing that plan B. In Steve Fulling’s own words, “failed bridge financing. Re-aligned staffing to revenue. We’re open & okay”. I’m bummed out that I don’t get to be a part of that plan B execution but I have known since the day I joined the team that this was always a possibility and I have absolutely no regrets about joining the Kynetx team. One of my best friends, Michael Farmer, expresses my feelings better than I could over on his blog post at http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

While the last 48 hours have been a roller coaster of an emotional ride, my wife and I are very excited for the future and all of the possibilities that it holds. I am overflowing with gratitude and love for everyone on the Kynetx team family. I have grown tremendously as an individual and as a developer while working at Kynetx and have learned so very much from all the extremely smart and talented team. I gladly welcome any future opportunities to work with anyone on the team and highly recommend each one of them.

Here’s to an exciting future.

oh! And what blog post from me about Kynetx would be complete without some “Grace faces” that have become somewhat legendary within the Kynetx team.

Update:

Several of my co-workers have also blogged about the recent change at Kynetx and they are all a good read.

Mike Farmer -> http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

Q Wade Billings -> http://scramswitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-of-my-favorite-musical-artist-is.html

Sam Curren -> http://www.mostlybaked.com/changing-sails

Jessie Morris -> http://www.jessieamorris.com/content/so-long-and-thanks-all-fishing-lessons

Phil Windley -> http://www.windley.com/archives/2011/02/starting_a_high_tech_business_making_hard_decisions.shtml

Alex Olson -> http://www.alexkolson.com/2011/03/01/reduction-in-force/

Also, a friend/fan of Kynetx has also blogged about his thoughts on the recent events

Holden Page -> http://pagesaresocial.com/2011/02/28/extending-best-wishes-kynetx/