In conversation with John McCrea

We were hoping to catch up with him at SXSW this year, but in the meleé of the event weren’t able to. Recently however, John kindly agreed to answer a few short questions for us via email.

Before his current role as General Manager of Tunerfish, a service that describes itself as a ‘social discovery engine for TV, movies and online video’ that was incubated as a skunkworks within Comcast Interactive Media in the US, John McCrea was Vice-President, Marketing at Plaxo. A couple of years ago he wrote about Facebook Connect and OpenID for TechCrunch, and his own post on the topic was mentioned by Wired as a ‘must-read’. He’s been involved with the web since 1994 and co-hosts a weekly internet TV show on subjects related to the social web at SocialWeb.TV with Chris Messina, Joseph Smarr and David Recordon. Here's what he had to say to us:

You’ve been active in the web since 1994 – that’s a long time by web standards! Thinking back, what was the most used service or application for you then, and what is it now?

In the very earliest days of the web, the killer app was the browser, specifically Netscape Navigator, and among the first killer sites was Yahoo, which was then a directory of websites. The web would evolve to support many different kinds of activities, but then and now, I’ve always been most attracted to one particular aspect – that it is, among many other things, a new medium.

The social web is one of your passions. As Facebook and Twitter came in a few years ago, you’ve seen it explode, with the power of networks becoming stronger and stronger over time. What’s your personal opinion of Dunbar’s number, and do you think that number is less meaningful now than it would have been a few years ago?

I have always thought that all the chatter about Dunbar’s number in the context of the social web was complete and utter nonsense. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and many other services make it possible to maintain and nurture a much larger number of relationships than was previously possible.

You were at Plaxo for over 4 years. As a service, what are Plaxo’s strengths? How did the introduction of Google Profiles and the evolution of LinkedIn affect Plaxo?

Plaxo is the granddaddy of the social web, introducing many of its basic concepts years before the rise of social networks. Plaxo has evolved over its eight years as a consumer Internet service, but its core strength has always been working toward the vision of a truly smart, socially-aware, and pervasive address book. And that’s a problem space that has gotten more interesting with the rise of many different services where you can update your profile.

You recently moved to Tunerfish as General Manager. Tell us about the service, what’s unique about it, and what growth plans you have for the business.

Tunerfish is an exciting new service in what is becoming a very hot space, right at the intersection of social and entertainment. It is a social discovery engine for TV, movies, and online video, that makes it easy, fun, and rewarding to share what you’re watching. Our most unique aspect is our game system, which we are developing in collaboration with the TV networks. Today, Tunerfish is just a website, but we have mobile version coming soon, and ultimately plan to take Tunerfish to the TV itself.

How does Tunerfish hope to challenge what Hulu and YouTube are doing in the online video space, including initiatives like YouTube’s Screening Room?

We are in no way competitive with sites for video viewing. Quite the contrary, we are a logical partner for a site, service, or device that lets people watch entertainment.

On Tunerfish, users can ‘earn points and awards’. With the growth of services like Foursquare that offer badges as reward mechanisms, how do you see Tunerfish’s reward system being different?

The Tunerfish game system will seem familiar to those who use Foursquare, but the domain of entertainment is really different from location. There can only be one “Mayor” of a restaurant (and there are only so many people who fit inside it). With TV shows, millions of people can watch, and some people can influence thousands to change the channel. So, we’re exploring rewards in the rich realm of influence.

Where do you see the social web going next – what services do you think are on the brink of breaking new ground?

Among the things that I think will be interesting to see are the new crop of “social web natives” (like Foursquare and Tunerfish) which take social as a given and apply it to a vertical or horizontal market opportunity. Expect to see “checking in” go really mainstream and to apply to a wide variety of human activities.

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Thanks, John!