This contains a summary of my work this week. I had two very important non-Groupon stories this week, on Facebook and Twitter.

My work

Secrets of Facebook’s success: Virality — Facebook’s photo tagging feature was an important driver of its growth. Traditional marketing approaches aren’t as effective as products that are designed to take advantage of the social nature of people. Google+ misses the basics. While Google spends millions running beautiful Oscar ads, they ignore very basics of product design necessary for social interaction.

Can Twitter and Yammer fix our broken patent system? — Twitter announced a new agreement with its employees that Twitter will only use patents for defensive purposes and will not become a patent troll. Employees who invent for Twitter will have a say in how Twitter can use the patents. As an inventor, this has a lot of appeal. Could this be a sign of more sanity in patent battles?

Chicago Tribune talks to Groupon chairman Lefkofsky; asks the wrong questions — A Chicago Tribune business columnist sat down for an extended interview with Groupon chairman Eric Lefkofsky and failed to ask the hard questions, such as: Why did you take so much money off the table pre-IPO? How is it that you made so much money on previous companies and investors were left holding the bag.

“It just works” rules — I’m launch a new feature on VentureBeat where I’ll be taking a look at brilliantly designed products. My goal is not to traditional product reviews, but to help product people learn from great design. Do you have a product that fits my criteria? Shoot me an email.

Staying connected with friends for frequent travelers — For someone who travels as much as I do, staying in touch with friends can be a challenge. Here’s a strategy I came up with.

Other interesting nuggets

The Perils of the Daily Deal Customer — A first person account from a merchant on her daily deal experience. The merchant’s experience is exactly the result I expect from the economic model of the daily deal. At their core, daily deals create unserviceable demand from untargeted customers at massive discounts.

I just finished the final hellish weeks of a Groupon deal I ran a year ago. I’ll probably never do one again. If enough merchants grow to feel the way I do — and many already do — Groupon and its countless imitators will wither and die because they will not be able to get enough businesses to participate in the deals you so enjoy.

Why aren’t we going back for more? Because daily deal customers are worse than normal customers in every way imaginable.