Matt Kiser

We like to talk about “social music” as it pertains to music shared with our friends across social networks. Spotify and Rdio’s integration into Facebook being the obvious example of social music. But, that’s not social music. Nor is Facebook’s “Listen with” feature. Even Turntable.fm for all its interestingness is close, but not an actual social experience. 

This is social music:

Imagine a venn diagram. In one circle is music I like. In the other circle is music a friend likes. The overlap is the sweet spot where music crosses over from being an individual experience, to music as a social one. In the vastness of the canon of recorded music, this is the spot at which the two of us intersect — this is where our musical compatibility and relationship begins. That’s powerful knowledge. Now take that concept further and extend it to music recommendations: music you like that your friend might also like. 

Think about it for a second: we don’t actually know what our friends will like. Do you really have a good answer to “what should I listen to?” for every single one of your friends? I’m an outlier and spend an extraordinary amount of time listening to music, and as good as I am at recommending it, my success rate is pitifully low. A “normal” person would have an even lower success rate. 

The ability to make recommendations “smart” and personalized on a person-to-person level is what I love about working at the intersection of music, media, and technology. 

If we could take this concept of social music and apply it to entire friend circles, the results would be incredibly interesting since it would highlight the natural affinity groups centered around particular artists and genres. Further, it would reveal the sub-sub-groups we form when we listen to music communally. Which, in reality, is what being social is about. 

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

For Users:

• Connect people.
• Discover and learn about the world.
• Enable self-expression.
• Control who sees that self-expression.
• Make it a ubiquitous experience. 

For Advertisers and Markets:

• Provide reach.
• Provide relevance.
• Provide context.
• Provide demonstrable engagement. 

*as summarized from Facebook’s S1 filing.

I hate losing files. I also hate carrying around thumb drives and portable external hard drives. In an age when we’re able to blast humans into space for months at a time, it’s ridiculous to think we can’t keep a friggin’ file from going *poof*. I’ve been lugging a bajillion pound (fact.) Dell laptop around the past five years because I had no clear path to backing up whatever files were contained on it.

So, inspired by VC extraordinaire Fred Wilson’s post on how he moved to the cloud, here’s how I did it and how you can, too. It’s a little scary at first, but trust me, you’ll thank me later. And you won’t lose any files. Keep in mind that successfully migrating to the cloud is about creating a workflow you’re comfortable with. So if these processes don’t work for you, improvise as necessary. 

Step 1: The Tools

You need the right set of tools to make this work. Thankfully these are all free. Go register for accounts with Dropbox, Evernote, Instapaper, cloudHQ and If This Then That. I’ll wait here. 

Ok, good. You’ll probably want to go get yourself a 1Password license as well. And, Google Chrome (taking a leap of faith and assuming you already have a Gmail account…)

Step 2: Getting Setup

Ok, so first things first. Let’s consolidate some data. If you’re like me, you probably have a work and personal computer and have used Safari, Firefox and Chrome throughout the years on each machine. Your data is probably scattered. You’ll want setup Firefox sync and suck all your bookmarks from your other machines over to your current one. Same with Safari (does Safari even have a sync? I have no clue. Use Chrome.). Once your bookmarks and passwords are all sync’d open up Chrome. Go ahead and import bookmarks and passwords from all your browsers into Chrome. The reason we’re using Chrome is that Chrome Sync is superior to Firefox and Safari syncs (again, I have no idea if Safari lets you sync across multiple computers or not. iCloud?) since it brings along extensions to any computer you’re logged into. 

Alright, you will now only use Chrome on all computers. It might take a few hours of idle time for all your bookmarks to populate across browser installs you have on different machines, but once it does you’ll never have an issue with finding bookmarks. You bookmark something at work, and it’s instantly at your home. Magic. 

Setup Dropbox on all your computers. Drag the Instapaper bookmarklet to your Chrome toolbar. Install the Evernote clipper extension. While you’re at it, might as well make a copy of your Google data and put that in Dropbox for safe keeping. 

Step 3: Social

It’s super lovely that we have all these services out there that let you essentially scrapbook your life. It’s super not lovely that they’re scattered across a few different services. Wouldn’t it be nice to collect all those photos in one spot without lifting a finger? Yeah, same here. 

I solved this problem for myself by using If This Then That, a nifty tool that let’s you create triggers to — surprise — do something when something else happens. I created a few tasks that automatically take my Facebook, Foursquare, and Instagram photos and puts them in Dropbox folders with all the metadata and date info still attached. Get the ones I created here:

• Facebook Photos Sent To Dropbox
• Facebook Photos I Am Tagged In Sent To Dropbox
• Instagram Photos Sent To Dropbox
• Foursquare Photos Sent To Dropbox
• Links I Tweet Sent To Evernote

I also setup a few tasks in IFTTT to take RSS feeds and dump them to Evernote as well. The best example is having my Instapaper items sent as they’re saved to Evernote. Love Instapaper, but having my links saved in Evernote gives me more control over them in the future. You can use IFTTT for just about any service worth it’s salt, so poke around and setup what you need. The goal is to consolidate what you’re doing everywhere else into as few places as possible. 

Step 4: Setup 1Password

I recently got turned onto this nifty app. It stores all your username and password information for all the sites out there, then allows you to retrieve those and autofill using a single password. You can extend this further by storing your credit card and other sensitive information (like address) with it. It takes a leap of faith, but once you’re comfortable with it, you can safely use hard-to-guess passwords on all the sites you visit, and they even have a way for you to access all your information remotely. I’ve setup my account on all computers and devices using this method:

• Automatic Syncing Using Dropbox
• How To Configure Dropbox Syncing

Step 5: Music and Movies/TV 

I love Apple. But I’m not putting my music in their iCloud. I actually use Spotify. However, I’ve sync’d my two iTunes libraries (work and personal) to Google Music. I THEN DELETED MY ENTIRE MUSIC LIBRARY ON ALL COMPUTERS. I’m able to stream this anywhere, anytime. It’s a great companion to Spotify, which already has sync’d up my iTunes libraries. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but if I did I’d probably use some combination of Hulu/Netflix/iTunes paired with AppleTV. The streaming/renting aspect wins out over storing gigabytes of pointless data… Seriously?

UPDATE: I’m giving iTunes Match a try. So far, so good. I revived my libraries via Time Machine and have sync’d both personal and home libraries. I can now grab anything from any device. I imagine I’m going to use iTunes now for the things I care about that are not on Spotify (i.e. fill in the holes with the Adele’s and Black Keys of the world who refuse streaming services). Spotify will remain my chief tool for simply consuming, sharing and discovering music and playlists. I’m thinking Google Music will stay there as a nice backup if I’m neither at a computer with Spotify, or if I’ve lost my iPhone (gasp!). It runs in the background so it’s not much of a concern to me if it’s used, or not. 

Step 6: Putting It All Together

Still with me? Good. So this is how I work… I use Gmail for email and for to-do’s using the Tasks feature. Google Docs for all my writing and spreadsheet needs. I do a one-way sync from Google Docs to my Dropbox using cloudHQ. This makes my docs available on all my devices for quick access. Google Calendar for calendering.

Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Foursquare keeps me social, and all the photos are saved straight to Dropbox, automatically. I bookmark destinations in Chrome and use Instapaper to save articles for reading later (both on computer and iPhone/iPad), while I clip things I’m researching or collecting information about using the Evernote clipper extension (recipes are great for this sort of thing!). When I can’t use Spotify, I’ll use Google Music.

1Password works on all my devices and keeps me secure. 

I plan to export my Google data once a year. And every month or two I’ll export my Instapaper (I really don’t know why I do that since it’s also saved in Evernote…). I dump this into Dropbox, too. 

I lean on Dropbox pretty heavily. However, just because I have a 150gb hard drive doesn’t mean I need that much Dropbox space. I get by on 50gb. Seriously. Once you remove storing music and movie files from the equation, you open up a ton of possibilities. 

I didn’t discuss them, but I use Basecamp for project management and Google Analytics for, well, analytics. 

There you have it. A pretty straight-forward approach to moving your life to the cloud and having near data ubiquity across all your computers and devices. And, like Fred Wilson said, ”The sense of freedom that exists when you know your applications and files are available from any device with an internet connection and a browser is amazing. I feel lighter already.”

Enjoy.