1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 We are in Sun's Menlo Camp campus, once again in the exciting Menlo Camp living room. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,000 And we've got another special guest with us. 3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Would you like to introduce yourself? 4 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 Hi, my name's Todd Vast. I'm the CTO for assembly.com. 5 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:17,000 I just came out of stealth recently. 6 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:21,000 Assembly's about building social applications. 7 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:25,000 It's actually the world's first Facebook app development environment. 8 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:30,000 The world's first open social development environment as well as Miibo application development environment. 9 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:36,000 And what you're doing in assembly is you're doing these things using social programming. 10 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:43,000 So you're developing these applications with other people using social networking type features 11 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:50,000 to actually build these applications and reuse pieces and parts from other people and parts out on the web. 12 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,000 And so what is the environment like? 13 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:55,000 I mean, it's a web based thing if I remember. 14 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:57,000 Right, it's browser based. 15 00:00:57,000 --> 00:00:59,000 So you're doing everything within the browser. 16 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:06,000 So you're creating these applications, you know, just using that browser and really just your ideas for what that application can be. 17 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:11,000 And then as you're building those apps and as you're putting them on those platforms, 18 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000 it's transparently hosted and scaled to any number of users. 19 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:17,000 This is sort of a purposely naive question. 20 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:20,000 But like, why do you build these apps? 21 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:21,000 Hmm. 22 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:27,000 I mean, I would answer that as, you know, when you look at something like the Facebook ecosystem today, 23 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:30,000 I mean, the number of apps is just growing exponentially. 24 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,000 So we had 24,000, you know, a couple months ago. 25 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:35,000 Now there's something like 30,000. 26 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:41,000 I think there are different reasons, but there's certainly a lot of interest that's out there. 27 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:46,000 A lot of people today are thinking this is a great way to reach a lot of people. 28 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:49,000 This is a great way to make some money. 29 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:53,000 Brand advertisers are very interested in building some kinds of applications. 30 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:58,000 And, you know, we want to enable that, but we're also looking ahead to the next step. 31 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:05,000 And we kind of look at that as, you know, one way to say that would be the long tail of social applications 32 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:09,000 or the idea of building situational applications. 33 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:16,000 So what that means is moving past kind of those very large companies that are building applications 34 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:21,000 into something like you and I share a common interest and maybe, you know, just a few hundred people, 35 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:26,000 you know, would like to have an application that we can use to collaborate or do something cool. 36 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:32,000 We're trying to, with Zembli, lower the barrier enough to make those kinds of applications possible. 37 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:36,000 And that's where the social programming element comes in and the idea that, you know, 38 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,000 the richness at Zembli is always getting better the more people use it. 39 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:42,000 And so it becomes easier and easier to build those kinds of applications. 40 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:46,000 I mean, I'm just, you know, sort of going through my developer mindset. 41 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:51,000 And I would assume that you sort of take the different environments you would deploy these applications into, 42 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,000 like you're saying Facebook or Mevo or whatnot. 43 00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:00,000 And have you guys sort of found the common design things across those and sort of abstracted those out? 44 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,000 Or like, what's the approach that you go for for that kind of, for making the framework? 45 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:09,000 So, you know, the reality is that today those different platforms are very heterogeneous. 46 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:18,000 So, even within, you know, OpenSocial, it's very fractured and each platform has their own extensions and other capabilities. 47 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:25,000 So, we're at the beginning of that, of trying to make that, you know, more consistent for the developer. 48 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:34,000 What we are offering now is some tools in terms of the way you can architect those applications or divide those applications, 49 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:39,000 so that you can create pieces that are reusable between the applications. 50 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:45,000 But in terms of, you know, if you decide that, hey, I want to use Facebook storage for my storage mechanism, 51 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:49,000 you're programming directly to the Facebook API and going for that. 52 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:54,000 So, we're trying to give you some tools to kind of help you decide what's, you know, what's the best. 53 00:03:54,000 --> 00:04:00,000 And over time, we do intend to, you know, really make that easier and easier to get some consistency. 54 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:05,000 Yeah, I was thinking about the different sorts of storage mechanisms there are in the online world nowadays. 55 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:11,000 And it was reminding me back when you had to worry about if you had something in like a Windows format file system or a Mac format file system. 56 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:12,000 Yeah, right. 57 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:16,000 Like, you know, this problem doesn't exist anymore or maybe it exists and we don't have to pay attention to it. 58 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:17,000 Right. 59 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:18,000 We're sort of at that stage. 60 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Right, right. 61 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:20,000 Our format is the disk in. 62 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:21,000 Yeah. 63 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:22,000 So, it's still a bit like that. 64 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:29,000 It's a bit of, you know, it's interesting because, you know, when I started with the ideas around Assembly, 65 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:34,000 it was really about let's look at the web as a platform and where are the APIs for that platform, 66 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:38,000 where are the pieces and parts that I can assemble to create applications. 67 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:45,000 And what we've seen before is the idea of building applications that were taking a couple of those pieces 68 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:52,000 but still working within largely the same, you know, programming development paradigm that we've done for a long, long time. 69 00:04:52,000 --> 00:05:00,000 And so, now we're really at that very earliest stage of seeing really the web as an API, you know, as a whole. 70 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,000 And so, yeah, everything's just like you described, right? 71 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,000 There are all those inconsistencies and all those other stuff. 72 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:05,000 Right. 73 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:09,000 But there's also a lot of richness that's coming out and it's very exciting. 74 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:16,000 So, we're hoping to really bring some sanity to that for developers, which is something that today is, you know, it's very difficult. 75 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:22,000 It's very hard for someone to sit down and say, I'd like to use the Twitter API and the Yahoo API and the Google Maps API. 76 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:24,000 And every one of those is different. 77 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:29,000 How you invoke them, how, you know, how you actually even learn about them is completely different. 78 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:34,000 So, you were saying that it's sort of like a social programming environment, right? 79 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:40,000 And so, once you've programmed up your applications, what's the, I guess, to use maybe an old term, what's the deployment thing? 80 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:41,000 How do you get into production? 81 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:42,000 Right. 82 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:44,000 Like, does Zimbly run it as well or? 83 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:45,000 Yeah, it does. 84 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:48,000 So, you know, we're trying to approach this. 85 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000 You know, we talked to a lot of people today that are building Facebook apps and a lot of that conversation is about, 86 00:05:53,000 --> 00:06:00,000 okay, I've got the idea, you know, and I've got some sample code from Facebook that kind of got me started. 87 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,000 And then, now I've got to make that scale up. 88 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:06,000 And there are companies that are helping people do that and they're doing pretty good jobs. 89 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:12,000 But you still have to think about, as a developer, this idea of how do you shard your database 90 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:19,000 or how do you, you know, scale up to millions and millions of rows of data or, you know, concurrency and those kinds of things. 91 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:24,000 So, what we're trying to do is really just get past that conversation with something like Zimbly. 92 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:31,000 Meaning that we're kind of taking this idea of, you know, this very lightweight kind of scripting development environment 93 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:37,000 combined with sort of this idea of a wiki in the sense of you create something and just hit the publish button 94 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,000 and it's immediately live. 95 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:44,000 And Zimbly is doing the work of pushing that over to the platforms for you, making sure that that's up to date 96 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:47,000 and then running the back end as well. 97 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:51,000 And so, that's, you know, hopefully not the main part of your conversation. 98 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:52,000 You think, will this scale? 99 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:56,000 And, you know, the answer is, okay, you know, Zimbly will handle that for me. 100 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:57,000 Right. 101 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:03,000 During the run time of the application, does Zimbly, like, provide, I don't know, I'll use the old vocabulary again. 102 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:08,000 Is there sort of, like, operation stuff that it provides to, like, monitor it and make sure it's working and things like that? 103 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Yeah, so, at a bit of a higher level. 104 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:11,000 Yeah. 105 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:18,000 So, you know, I think what most developers are interested in is, you know, the analytics of who's using their applications. 106 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:19,000 Sure. 107 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:21,000 And those are the real measures of success. 108 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:27,000 Whereas in the past, a lot of it was around, you know, how big is the application, how many features and that sort of thing. 109 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:36,000 And so, we'll actually be announcing a partnership very shortly with a company you know, to, you know, to provide those analytics to developers. 110 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,000 And, you know, it'll be very, very deep social analytics. 111 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:51,000 It'll give you, you know, a very clear idea of how much you're being used, but also by whom, what kinds of people, you know, how people are installing and installing the application and then measures of virality as well. 112 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:52,000 Oh, really? 113 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:53,000 No, that's fascinating. 114 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:59,000 That's like a conversation I've been having with a lot of people recently of, like, the sort of new business model around stuff like this. 115 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:00,000 Yeah. 116 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:13,000 That has a lot of, it's a very, you know, search and SEO sort of thing where you're worried about all those things you're talking about and then figuring out converting all of that stuff into actual, I guess, sales to be all crass and crazy. 117 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:14,000 Yeah. 118 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:17,000 Shame on you for wanting to make money. 119 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:25,000 But no, I mean, that's the kind of infrastructure that I don't think, obviously companies that are successful at it, a few of them have built it on their own essentially. 120 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:26,000 Right. 121 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:31,000 And there's not necessarily a reusable monetization API or, you know, whatever that is. 122 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:38,000 What we're trying to do is, you know, I come from a developer tools background as well as an open source background and, you know, I'm an engineer. 123 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:43,000 So, you know, I look at this as how can we make lives or, you know, make the lives of developers easier. 124 00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:48,000 And for the most part, you know, it takes a long time for tools to do that. 125 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:50,000 And a lot of times that doesn't happen. 126 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:55,000 And so, you know, we're saying, okay, here's the places where the people are, where people want to take the applications. 127 00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:56,000 Let's make that easy. 128 00:08:56,000 --> 00:08:58,000 Here's the richness of the web. 129 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,000 You know, the web is your palette that people want to use in their applications. 130 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:03,000 Let's make that easy. 131 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:07,000 Here are ways to, you know, different motivations that you have for building these apps. 132 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:11,000 Either monetization or for, you know, just for fame or whatever it is. 133 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:14,000 Here are APIs and partners that will also make it easier. 134 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:21,000 Let's bring those in and kind of, you know, combine all that to really provide that rich, you know, playground for the developer. 135 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:22,000 I like the fame API. 136 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:23,000 Yeah. 137 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:24,000 That's a novel concept. 138 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:25,000 Yeah. 139 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:26,000 We're going to put that in there, right? 140 00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Yeah. 141 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:31,000 The last question I was interested in, since you guys are, you're part of Sun, right? 142 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:32,000 Right. 143 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:39,000 And, you know, I haven't been familiar with that many sort of things where sort of like there was the Sun incubator that came out of stealth or whatever. 144 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:40,000 Yeah. 145 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:42,000 So, like, what's that all about? 146 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:45,000 Like, what's the, is that a normal sort of thing or is there? 147 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:49,000 Um, no, it's kind of an interesting, you know, thing from Sun's perspective. 148 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:56,000 Um, you know, when we started this, when we started this, um, you know, assembly, you know, I came out of the developer tools organization. 149 00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:57,000 Yeah. 150 00:09:57,000 --> 00:09:59,000 At Sun actually, the enterprise tools. 151 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:04,000 Um, and then we started assembly within that group and we're still there in that, in the developer tools group. 152 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:14,000 And, um, but, you know, when we started looking at the kinds of people that were interested in this, uh, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, the web 2.0, uh, kind of audience and that sort of thing. 153 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:26,000 Um, you know, we were able to, uh, you know, make a compelling case to, to Sun and, and, and the execs that, you know, here's, you know, here's something that is unique, that, uh, you know, has, has a chance. 154 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:31,000 A chance to reach someone, but we need to, you know, target that audience and their expectations and so on. 155 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:33,000 And so, uh, you know, we've run it as a Sun project. 156 00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:35,000 It's, we're still part of Sun. 157 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:40,000 Uh, you know, we're happy to do that, uh, and, and be here cause that, that gives a lot of power behind assembly. 158 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:47,000 But in terms of reaching out, we want to, you know, start the conversation is like, here's something cool, you know, let's, let's talk about that. 159 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:53,000 And, you know, then, and then when the other questions come up about, well, does it scale, you know, does, is it reliable, is it all that? 160 00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:58,000 And that's, you know, that's so much about, you know, the Sun, uh, you know, the Sun legacy and what Sun is all about. 161 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:03,000 It, it, it, it's an interesting model cause usually it's the, uh, you know, let some startup do it and then buy them afterwards. 162 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:04,000 Right, yeah. 163 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:06,000 Instead of, instead of spending that money on your own upfront. 164 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:07,000 Yeah, exactly. 165 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,000 Well, you, you were going to, uh, show us a demo of this stuff, right? 166 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:10,000 Yeah, absolutely, I'd love to. 167 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:11,000 So we'll, we'll check that out. 168 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:12,000 Okay, cool. 169 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:12,660 Okay, cool.