Category: Web 2.0

Facebook let's you add to your mini-feed

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Lots of folks do stuff around the web that is outside of Facebook. For instance, i post lots of Flickr photos and i save web sites to delicious. I’ve always loved the Facebook News Feed as it does a good job of letting me know what my friends are up to. Today it got even better because Facebook now allows me to add Flickr, delicious, Yelp and Picassa actions into my mini-feed. Nice

This is great for a variety of reasons. First, it shows that facebook isn’t the walled garden that AOL was. Facebook is a walled garden, but only for certain things (social graph, photos, social messaging, etc.). For everything else, they are willing to open up and reciprocate. They made a platform to allow users to interact with their assets (people) and have a messaging feature so emails can come in and out but not replace. If they were a basketball team, they may not go around the country and play everyone but at least now they’ll let other come to their court and play a game.

Second, it shows they aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. It could be very easy for Facebook to believe that they can build better products than everyone else and try to compete. This is what AOL did for email, video, destination sites (Sports, News), communities, photos, maps, music, etc – and they lost big. Facebook is clearly maintaining its focus on social activities and even recognizes the difference between their photo app (social photo sharing, not for storage) and Flickr’s (photo blogging, archival) and embraces that. Kudos to them.

Speaking of handing out kudos, you should watch this video (below) of Andrew Bogut’s high fives after his free throws. Not everyone is that eager to congratulate someone.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc11PUnFgkQ]

My Love of TripIt Grows

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I’ve been traveling a lot lately and for each trip i make sure to throw my airline, car and hotel details into TripIt as it does a great job of building an itinerary.  You can share the trips you set up with other travelers and all collaborate together.  It also gives you an iCal link which you can put inside your Google Calendar so all your trip information is integrated right into you digital life. It’s a great application and i’ve thought so for a while

I’ve always had one complaint for TripIt and that is it’s a horrible application to access on the road.  My iPhone interface takes a long time to load and i’ve had a few times where i stood staring at an Avis employee making small talk while my TripIt page loads on my phone so i could get my confirmation number.  Those days are over as TripIt Mobile just launched and now a custom, fast-loading site has launched.  I couldn’t be more excited

Do you "get" Twitter?

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I read a post today by Fred Wilson that his kids finally “got” twitter. He wrote:

We are headed to Honolulu today. I twittered that fact and within minutes Joshua was back to me (via text message) with a recommendation for a ramen place called tenkaippin. I didn’t ask for it, but he offered it and we are now headed there for lunch

Earlier this week Jessica had gotten a text from her friends who were in boston visiting colleges. They wanted a recommendation for a sushi place. Jess asked me and I twittered the question

We got back a half dozen messages, and quickly determined the best place which she texted back. Her friends were thrilled

They used to think twitter was a stalker service. They still do, but they also think its awesome (‘at least for you dad’)

i hear what his kids are saying. I’ve been using Twitter for about a month now and while i see some useful parts of it, the service has yet to deliver the goods to me. I don’t have enough people i know on it and i don’t get enough useful twitter posts. It seems to be simply a way for people to advertise for themselves. There’s no real communication. I also don’t know if i should be following more strangers or if that’s tacky. The strangers i do follow (because their are blogs i read) like Mashable and Calcanis simply repeat what’s on their blogs so it’s pointless. I wish they could take the time to add a little more personality to the medium.

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I think it’s hard for kids – or anyone – to understand the utility of Twitter because for the new user it doesn’t offer any immediately positive feedback or benefit. When you first begin, you twitter something and nothing happens – you just sit there. Similar to a typical social network, it’s not until you have lots of friends using it or until lots of users are following you that it becomes useful and even then i’m not sure if it’s much different than a massive chatroom with a better interface

Twitter may hit the mainstream, but i’d be willing to guess that it’s only useful for the hardcore who are actively trying to make it useful. That’s not mainstream, that’s digging for gold. I personally want my web services to just hand me the gold.

Bebo for $850 million. Now Hi5?

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This is an interesting graph which shows Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and Hi5. Clearly one of them is stuggling.

However, what Bebo has that Hi5 does not is a English speaking user base which is able to be monetized. AOL has a slew of Advertising companies that must be just itching to get their hands on the Bebo inventory. I’m sure there was plenty of analysis done such that AOL’s pretty sure they’ll earn that $850 back and more

Facebook is a combination of web 2.0 companies

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Facebook is a combination of Web 2.0 companies. That’s one way to look at it. The flip side – and more accurate – is to say that there are many Web 2.0 companies that are taking a piece or feature of Facebook and making an entire service out of it. Not the most original strategy, but it does seem to work (at least for some).

Obviously the core pieces of Facebook have been companies already and are very common features around the web. Features such as:

  • Facebook Mail: this feature is exactly like regular mail applications and the FB version of mail is becoming more like traditional email every day. You can send mail to anyone (even if they’re not on FB) and soon be able to receive mail there too.
  • Photos: Facebook has the largest photo service on the web and deservedly so as they took the traditional album upload sites like Snapfish/oPhoto and made them social.
  • Events: They made a much better and easier to use Evite service.

These features have been around for a while, so it’s nothing new that they’ve also been standalone companies. The new services are the interesting ones. What i’m thinking of in particular is:

  • Facebook Share: This is a feature that let’s people post items they see around the web on to their facebook profile. New services such as Tumblr let you repost things very easily too. Don’t call it a blog b/c it’s much more lightweight but it is really more or a repost feature with comments – like the Share.
  • Facebook Status: What are you doing right now? This feature has been around on FB for a long time and now the company Twitter has taken that made it more mainstream, with an API and with other features. In fact, i’ve already blogged about how the two are the same.
  • News Feed: The Facebook News Feed is essentially an RSS reader of your friend’s activity. This concept is not lost on everyone else and a few companies are focusing directly on that. Specifically Plaxo & FriendFeed. They allow you to enter in sites that capture your activity and then they repost it to your friends.
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Whether these services can survive as standalone applications, i’m not sure. I’m somewhat doubtful that there is a business there, but if you can get an audience doing these things, you should be able to monetize it.

Obviously, Facebook is not going to build a feature better than a standalone service can (although they often do), but they are able to integrate it into everything they offer. Items like Events work well on Facebook because they are easily shared and posted around FB. This “threading” is crucial for their success. Ultimately Facebook won’t win in trying to be everything to everybody, but they at least have to try to be most of the core services all in one place – and in this respect FB does a great job.

Levels of Blogging – where have my blogging friends gone?

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Over the past year, I have seen some of my friends (Toby, Kathryn, Sarah, Drew) drop off the blogging scene. Some of them have switched blogs, but some have just switched the way they share information. With the growth of other online tools, it’s becoming much easier to express yourself (sharing ideas, links, and messages) in ways that are easier than blogging.

Because of this trend, this post by Fred Wilson and image really stuck a chord in me:

You can see how facebook and MySpace and the ease of use there is going to take people away from glogging. I know a few of my friends have been casualties.

Personally, i like blogging still as it allows me to fully explain my thoughts and ideas whereas the other mechanisms are smaller chunks and just single thoughts. I do them too. But with facebook there is no nuance. Of course, not everyone has the time to explain themselves – at least that’s the number 1 excuse. To which i’ll reply, if you have time to debate a topic for hours – which all of you do – then you have time to stick it on your blog. Get off your ass

MySpace vs. FB & the Top Social Network Sites

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As with most people, i’m obsessed with Facebook these days.  But is it the best?

From a numbers perspective, MySpace is still the big dog. I read an article yesterday from danah about how Facebook is attracting more affluent, middle-class users whereas MySpace indexes higher for less privileged users.  It’s a good read (article is here)

I also read today that Friendster is still hanging around.  The top social networks in the world are:

  1. MySpace
  2. Facebook
  3. Hi5
  4. Friendster
  5. Bebo

Hi5 is a huge social network in Europe.  I’ve heard from my Romanian friends that this is the go-to place for them.  From what i can tell, it’s a pretty standard site.   Bebo is a UK site that focuses on music, similar to how MySpace does. I think they’re a little more sophisticated in terms of functionality but they definitely haven’t hit it out of the park the way facebook has.

Friendster is a strange one though. It’s functionality is nothing special but it has been around for a long time and has lots of users.  The problem is that it doesn’t have anything unique or special about it and there’s no reason to go back every day.  It is less sketchy than MySpace but less cool than facebook.  It rides somewhere in the middle.  Social networking is such a large phenomenon that there is probably room for a player like this.

What do you think?  What has been your experience with these sites?