Tag Archives | social networking

A New Reason to Look at Yahoo: Facebook Connect

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 2, 2009 at 3:55 pm

I consider this very good news: Yahoo and Facebook have announced plans to integrate Facebook Connect into Yahoo during the first half of next year.

Yahoo’s blog post about the news doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, but it says that you’ll be able to (A) share Yahoo features such as photos, article comments, ratings, and more via your Facebook activity stream; (B) benefit from “richer experiences” on services such as Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Answers, and Yahoo Sports; and (C) update your status message on Facebook or on various Yahoo services. I’m assuming/hoping that you’ll also be able to log into any Yahoo service with your Facebook credentials, although the post doesn’t explicitly say so.

It’s a pleasant surprise to see a Web player as big as Yahoo turn on Facebook Connect. Even if the decision stems in part from Yahoo’s somewhat fragile condition and resulting willingness to behave in ways that a super-ambitious, Web-dominating monolith would not. (What do you think the chances are that Google will turn on Facebook Connect anytime soon?)

The more time I spend online, the more I realize that I don’t want multiple, fractured collections of friends, family, and acquaintances stored at various destinations around the Web. I want one well-organized, close-to-comprehensive database of people I care about. For a lot of us, that data lives on Facebook. The more places we can get to it, the better. And a Facebook-enabled Yahoo gives me a pretty tantalizing reason to consider using Yahoo services instead of comparable ones from Google, Microsoft, and other Yahoo rivals.

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Twitter’s Ad-Free Nirvana: Going, Going, Gone?

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 20, 2009 at 12:01 pm

I‘m at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp, an interesting conference in San Francisco on the booming subject of Web sites and services that move just as fast as the rest of the world does–Twitter, some aspects of Facebook, and lots more. The first session this morning was a conversation between TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo. And Costolo said that Twitter is gearing up to add advertising to the service.

We will have an advertising strategy. You will see that from us in the future. It will be fascinating, non-traditional, and people will love it.

[snip]

We want to do something that’s organic, like the way it happened with Google. It will work with the tweets. People will love the ads when they see it.

That would seem to be a significant shift in strategy for Twitter: In the past, its executives have famously dismissed advertising for not being sufficiently “interesting.” Now, Costolo is saying the company’s working on something that isn’t just interesting–it’s fascinating!

There are a million ways ads could go wrong on Twitter. (I’ve mocked up one of them in the fake screen shot to the right.) Costolo is presumably telling us that the advertising wont be anything as conventional as banner ads or Google-style text links, or the mere insertion of tweets that are controlled by marketers. You gotta think it’s something that involves leveraging what Twitter knows about your friends and interests to provide ads that are more theoretically relevant; other than that, I have no guesses about the details.

Facebook’s ill-fated Beacon ads remain a good case study in just how sensitive companies need to be when they meld personal information about their customers with an advertising message. But I’m not instinctively opposed to ads showing up on Twitter–hey, it would be hypocritical–and one way or another, I want the site to figure out a way to make enough dough to stay in business for the long haul.

Your gut reaction, please?

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Xbox Live, Facebook and Twitter: Incompatible

Posted by Jared Newman on November 17, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Here’s a telling moment from my first experiences with social networking on Xbox Live: While rifling through status updates on Facebook, I spotted a comment that seemed worthy of a response, which would’ve taken forever to type on my controller. Also, there was a Web link which the Xbox 360 couldn’t access. So I got off the couch, walked into the next room, and typed out a response on my computer, then spent the next five minutes looking at the Web site in question.

That’s a failure, and it carries over to Xbox Live’s Twitter implementation as well. Both features went live on the Xbox 360 today along with Last.fm’s Internet radio service and the Zune Marketplace, a facelift for the console’s existing video storefront that includes 1080p video and online movie-watching parties.

Of all the new features, I’m mostly interested in how the Xbox 360 does social networking. With Sony readying Facebook support on the Playstation 3, and the PS3 blockbuster Uncharted 2 allowing you to post in-game progress to Twitter, the games industry seems to be latching on to social networking.

Input is the obvious problem. Unless you spring for a $30 Xbox 360 Messenger Kit (which you’re cheerily reminded about when starting up Facebook), both networks feel trapped behind glass. You can read what other people are doing, but participating is a chore.

However, the feeling of looking-but-no-touching goes beyond input. On Twitter, you can’t visit Web pages because the console doesn’t have a Web browser. That’s too bad, because external links are as much a part of Twitter as the things people say. Facebook suffers from the same problem, and more: You can’t add friends, you can’t use apps and you can’t modify your profile. You can’t even poke people.

The major problem is that Facebook and Twitter are made for the open Internet, while the Xbox 360 is a walled garden. Looking at full-screen photo albums in Facebook is a redeeming quality, but ultimately social networking is incompatible with the closed system of consoles. I don’t expect to use Facebook or Twitter on the Xbox 360 too often, and when Facebook comes to the Playstation 3, I’m not expecting a markedly better experience.

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TypePad Takes on Tumblr With Free Microblogging Feature

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 17, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Six Apart’s TypePad blogging service has long been aimed at bloggers who were serious enough about what they were doing to fork over money for a blogging platform. But today Six Apart is announcing TypePad Micro, a new level of TypePad service that’s meant for extremely casual blogging–and which is the first version of the service that’s free.

Six Apart CEO Chris Alden told me that TypePad Micro is meant for quick, brief, informal blogging and photoblogging–the kind of stuff that feels like a cross between traditional blogging and status updates a la Twitter. It’s a hybrid that’s associated with Tumblr, the service that popularized microblogging, and TypePad Micro’s most obvious rival. Alden said that he thinks Micro will appeal both to paying TypePad customers who’d like a home for a microblog, and to people who are currently part of TypePad blog communities but who don’t blog themselves.

Micro is a reduced-feature version of TypePad Pro: For instance, it currently offers only one theme, called Chroma (you can customize its colors). Alden said that Six Apart might add more themes later, and that it doesn’t plan to place ads on Micro blogs. But it does see the new service as a good stepping stone to full, paid TypePad Pro accounts.

TypePad supports the concept of Twitter-like followers, and any followers a Micro blogger has are prominently displayed in the Chroma theme. So a Micro blog does, indeed, feel like a richer, semi-standalone version of a Twitter account.

A few TypePad Micro blogs:

•      Microdogging
•      Cute Funny Sexy Awful
•      Dollarshort (this one’s by Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott)
•      Awesome

And here’s Chris Alden’s own Micro blog. And Alden’s post about TypePad Micro on the official TypePad blog.

If you give the new service a try, let us know what you think…

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The Myth of Platform-Independent Applications

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 17, 2009 at 11:21 am

At Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles this morning, Seesmic announced that its Seesmic Desktop, a popular tool among Twitter power users, is coming to Windows. Finally!

Um, hasn’t Seemsic run on Windows all along? Well, yes, but that’s because it’ s written in Adobe AIR, an application platform that lets programmers write Flash applications that can run outside the browser. (That’s a dumbed-down explanation of AIR, but enough to get the gist across, I hope.) One of the principal selling points of AIR is that it lets developers write one app that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, as Seesmic Desktop does.

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Google Friend Connect: More Ways to Connect Friends

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 4, 2009 at 10:54 am

Google Friend ConnectGoogle has rolled out a major update to Google Friend Connect, its service that lets small Web sites (and some not-so-small ones, such as the Huffington Post) easily add community features such as comments, reviews and ratings, and the ability to friend other visitors.

There are a bunch of new features, all of which you can add to a site by pasting in code that creates gadgets on your pages.

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Think Before You Tweet

Posted by David Worthington on October 28, 2009 at 12:29 am

My roommate recently put a bug in my ear about an October article in the New York State Bar Association Journal. The premise was simple: You can be held accountable for what you post on social media Web sites, and some people have gotten themselves into a real fix.

Author Michael Getnick recounted stories of clients facing libel suits for making defamatory statements about everything from apartments to clothing. In another case, an attorney that told a court that there was a death in her family was busted for playing hooky when the presiding judge saw Facebook status updates about weekend revelry.

Clients and attorneys alike also pose the risk of revealing personal or privileged information, Getnick wrote. A tweet made during court hearing could also be considered disruptive, he noted.

Outspoken Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 for criticizing the officiating during an NBA game. A job applicant tweeted his or herself out of a job. A UK officer worker cost herself her job by stating that her job was boring.

Getnick suggested that lawyers should always remember that anything that is posted in social media Web sites is permanent, searchable, and shareable. Getnick must be channeling my mother who always told me to “think before you speak.” The same thing goes online. Have you ever posted something that you later regretted?

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Facebook for the Departed

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 26, 2009 at 10:40 am

Over at Facebook’s official blog, Max Kelly has written about what happens to a Facebook profile when its owner passes on. Facebook offers a service called memorializing which leaves the account in place but mostly freezes it in time:

When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased’s privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.

Sounds like a good idea to me–I like the idea that when someone passes on, he or she won’t disappear altogether from the online world. (Actually–this may sound creepy, but I don’t think of it that way–I’ve been known to leave departed acquaintances in my address book as little reminders of our friendship.)

As far as I can remember, my only deceased Facebook friend  is sci-fi legend Forrest J. Ackerman, but he doesn’t really count–I was a fan of his, not a friend. His account’s still very active, but as far as I know it was maintained by friends of his even when he was still with us…

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Facebook’s New Front Page Looks DOA

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 25, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Facebook LogoFor a market-leading company, Facebook’s moves are sometimes so half-baked that it’s practically mindnumbing. The latest example of this is the site’s new home page. For whatever reason, Facebook has tweaked the news feed to become more of a “top stories” format then a chronological timeline of your friends’ activities.

(If you’re curious, here is why the company says the change was necessary.)

Oh yes, you still can get the old layout, but that’s now something you have to click through for and is called “Live Feed.” The site has attempted to make up for this by making that feed actually real-time: you no longer have to reload for the latest updates.

This was sprung on users without any warning at all. I initially thought Facebook was choking yet again when I noticed the status updates were all jumbled up. I actually didn’t realize there was a change until I noticed a news article highlighted on Techmeme.

Apparently, neither did most of my friends. “What the hell is wrong with Facebook now?” one said. Those that did notice what just happened were not much kinder. “This new layout sucks!” was a common meme.

Now Facebook groups are popping up demanding the old news feed come back. One called “Facebook: SWITCH BACK TO THE OLD NEWS FEED!!!” has garnered some 648,000 members in just two days. Another has about 440,000 members, and yet a third with over 51,000 users.

Such rapid opposition signals to me that Facebook is going to have a lot of trouble keeping this around. But it also should be a concern to those with interests in the social networking company: it is repeatedly making questionable decisions that really seem as if they are not being thought out very well.

Facebook has grown exponentially as MySpace has collapsed. But at the same time, MySpace seemed to think through changes before it made them, or realized sometimes it’s good to leave things alone.

I see no good reason why Facebook needed to mess with the news feed. To begin with, this Twitter-like layout wasn’t really popular with its users, and now they’ve messed with it again in a move that seems to have significant opposition.

If they keep doing this, Facebook’s time at the top may not be long-lived. In the end the customer is always right.

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Sir Tim is on Twitter

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 23, 2009 at 2:17 pm

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

He’s as important a pioneer as Johannes Gutenberg or Alexander Graham Bell –except that he’s alive, well, and very much deeply involved in determining the future of the medium he created. He’s Sir Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and it was an honor to sit in the same ballroom as the guy yesterday as he appeared onstage as the final guest at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters noted, Sir Tim has joined Twitter–here’s his account–and started tweeting shortly before his Web.20 session began, Like nearly every new Twitter user, he started out by being somewhat confused, as he noted in his first tweet.

Tim Berners-Lee Twitter

Judging from Sir Tim’s third tweet, he’s already a user of the Twitter-like Identi.ca service–which makes sense, since (unlike Twitter) it’s an open-source project and therefore reflective of his dedication to openness on the Web.

Side note: Twitter’s recent introduction of a spam reporting feature is a boon, but there’s something jarring about the “report timberners_lee for spam” link at the right of his page. It’s a little as if George Washington suddenly showed up at the White House today, wanted to stop in for a visit, and was forced to walk through a metal detector…

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