Accenture Gamification
Case study: Accenture‘s social adoption driven by gamification; http://eicker.at/AccentureGamification (via @tailorable)
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Social Networking
Suster: What the past can tell us about the future of social networking; http://eicker.at/SocialNetworking
Gerrit Eicker
LinkedIn: a Big Industry Trade Show
Helft on LinkedIn: It is not easy living in the shadow of Facebook and Twitter; http://j.mp/cb75aT
Gerrit Eicker
Yahoo Integrates Facebook
Yahoo deeply integrates Facebook, updates Yahoo Profiles, becomes a social network aggregator; http://j.mp/91YVVI
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: The New Internet?
Facebook: the new Internet? The Open Graph and the meaning of open; http://j.mp/c0mGdr Details: http://j.mp/f8OpenGraph
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Gerrit Eicker
pC: “A question for you. When was the last time you surfed the net? Can you remember when you just clicked around looking to discover new sites or a site to occupy your time? Now ask yourself when was the last time you sat on your couch or laid in bed clicking the remote looking for something to watch on TV. Finally, how long do you regularly spend on Facebook? How much time do you spend checking out your Wall, your friends’ Wall and hopping from profile to profile checking people out? … Everything that the net was 5 or more years ago, Facebook is today. … Facebook is putting out trojan horse after trojan horse and no one seems to care. The only thing FB has not done is create a mobile operating system ala Android/iPhone as a platform for applications. … There is no doubt that this is NOT the direction that Facebook wants to go. They want to remain independent. But just as Apple and Google quickly turned from friend to foes, Facebook will soon be the object that both of those companies see in the rearview mirror. I don’t see either Apple or Google as being suitors to buy Facebook. That isnt their style. On the other hand, its straight out of the Microsoft playbook. If you cant beat them or outlast them, buy them.”
TC: “The fact of the matter is that Facebook is one of the most powerful forces on the web and they’re now using that position to introduce a new platform that will yes, help them. Shocking, really. A company that wants to do something that will benefit itself. But I do believe that Facebook, at least in part, believes this will also make the larger web better too. But that’s not going to be good enough for some, because it’s not fully open. Nevermind that plenty of these fully open solutions always being advocated never make it off the ground for one reason or another. … Of course, then publishers don’t have to use Facebook’s Like button. But they will — I can think of nearly 500 million reasons why. Love it or hate it, that’s the way it is. It’s not good versus evil. It’s not black versus white. It’s a million shades of gray, as always.”
VB: “Concerns are already rising among users around overly sharing of personal information. ComputerWorld’s IT Blogwatch bloggers spotlight several concerjs, including the automatic opt-in to share your information when visiting websites through Facebooks new open graph feature.”
TNW: “There has been a lot of chatter, since Facebook’s F8 announcements, about how the company will be the downfall of Google. Or, in some cases, the chatter is about how it will push Google to do what it does in a different manner. … Face it, you wouldn’t dream of doing investigation for a research project using Facebook search. That is of course, unless that research were more appropriate to what Facebook does. … The question that arises, though (especially given the power behind the social graph API), is how long this situation will remain as it is. Will Google eventually have to step up its game directly to combat Facebook? It’s possible. Not likely, but possible.”
RWW: “Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors. … The bits of this platform bring together the visions of a social, personalized and semantic Web that have been discussed since del.icio.us pioneered Web 2.0 back in 2004. Facebook’s vision is both minimalistic and encompassing – but its ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web. – Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. … With this release, Facebook asks users if they are willing to trade off privacy for personalization. To be clear, no personalization is ever possible without users telling a system about their tastes. What Facebook is asking for is necessary in order to then create personalized Web experience. Whether users want this sort of thing is a different question, but assuming that you want to know more about your friends you will. … So any site that already has social networking built in has to decide to abandon that before jumping into the Facebook Open Graph. The even worse problem is the ownership of ratings and comments. Are publishers really ready to give that up? … This is aggressive and brilliant move by Facebook – and Twitter, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Amazon and others, except for Microsoft, should be really worried. … Technically speaking, what Facebook has done is elegant and correct. From markup, to plugins, to API, all of it is modern and awesome. The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation – and that makes the whole offering seriously closed. … One of the most exciting parts of the Facebook announcement to me personally is the possible breakthrough in semanticizing the Web. … Facebook made a major chess move. It might have checkmated its competitors, or perhaps it might have to lose another piece like it lost Beacon. Whichever is the case, right now there are deep implications for Facebook and its competitors, publishers, users and the Web at large. What Facebook has announced cannot be ignored and can not be undone. Everyone needs to figure out the next steps and understand what to do.“
Gerrit Eicker
Gravatar Profiles
Automattic expands its Gravatar Profiles: aggregated content, updating avatars in multiple places; http://j.mp/cuRcrh
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Gerrit Eicker
Automattic: “We’re continuing the tradition of complete openness and transparency that Gravatar (and WordPress) has been known for, so nothing you put into your profile will be locked behind proprietary APIs or a scary terms of service – what you choose to share in your profile will be open to the world. – You’ll find some cool features on the new profiles: you can have a gallery of your favorite photos, add a variety of contact methods, and link your other profiles. Every linked account is verified so you know it’s not an impostor, and we also might be able to do cool stuff in the future like aggregate your content or update your avatar in multiple places when you update Gravatar.”
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: Feed Patent
Facebook now owns a patent for dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network; http://j.mp/9bOuN0
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Gerrit Eicker
AF: “This is a huge deal for a number of reasons, most significantly that it grants Facebook the opportunity to pursue other social networks which are infringing on their patent. Included in the patent are additional claims including feed filters, feed advertising, searching the feed, and more. … It appears that this patent surrounds implicit actions. This means status updates, which is what Twitter is based on, are not part of this patent. Instead, this is about stories about the actions of a user’s friends. While still significant, the implications for competing social networks may be less substantial.”
VB: “Facebook earned a patent for its core news feed and published one for prioritizing communication from apps based on how closely users interact with them. – It’s hard to put too much weight into either patent because, from a strategic perspective, Facebook would do better financially by prioritizing development on its advertising, metrics and payments offerings, than by pursuing a more litigious strategy of suing other companies. Both patents, which were found by AllFacebook, were filed a long time ago; one in 2008 and the news feed one in 2006. The company iterates and adapts at a significantly faster pace.”
RWW: “It sounds crazy, but did Facebook invent the algorithm-driven newsfeed? Messina wasn’t quite willing to grant that in our conversation, but it’s a tough call. ‘Facebook certainly built the whole phenomena around the newsfeed,’ he said.”
Winer: “The moral of the story of the Facebook patent and all the recent news from Apple and Google: Tech companies are no better or worse than big companies in other industries. … Further, the tech companies of today are much larger and more influential than the leading tech companies of the early 90s. … If you want to know what you can do, great – there are things you can do. Buy your own services and put your content in places where you are treated like a customer with rights that are respected. That’s still possible. In many industries it’s no longer possible, but you can get that kind of service on the Internet now, but you have to pay for it. … And when you have a choice between using the product of a small company or a large one, give the small one a chance. This helps protect choice and diversity.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Buzz
Google: Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations, built right into Gmail; http://j.mp/9AFwAB
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch – it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.”
NYT: “Google and Facebook are on a collision course in the increasingly competitive market for social networking services. – On Tuesday, Google introduced a new service called Google Buzz, a way for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. The service will compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are capturing an increasing percentage of the time people spend online.”
Guardian: “The move brings Google into closer conflict with a number of smaller rivals than ever before. Although the company remains the most powerful force on the web – and has even seen profits from its internet advertising business continue to rise despite the recession – it has also been feeling increasing pressure from competitors that have tapped into a desire to connect with friends and family online.”
TC: “Without having had a chance to play with it yet, it would seem that the core idea behind Buzz is to take on Twitter and Facebook as the easiest way to share content online. Google is offering a number of compelling features such as smart curation (it gets better as you tell it what you like and what you don’t), and a rich mobile experience including location. – Because of the features it adds on to what Twitter does, and its overall look, it’s hard not to compare Buzz to FriendFeed. That service was arguably the better product than Twitter, but never took off in the same way for whatever reason (though I would argue that simplicity was a big factor).”
NYT: “People will find the Google Buzz notes right in their Gmail in-boxes, where they’re marked with a special Buzz icon that looks like a cartoon text bubble filled with Google’s signature primary colors. The comments that follow an update, also known as a Buzz, are grouped in a similar fashion to the way Gmail handles a thread of messages.”
Winer: “I only know about first impressions of Google Buzz because once I saw what it did to my Gmail inbox, which is a mission-critical app for me, my mission became How do I turn this off? … It violates the prime directive of new software. It starts turned on, and the way to turn it off is all-but invisible. And it invades a space that heretofore Google helped to protect. One of the big values of Gmail is its spam filter. Now all of a sudden it’s as if the exhaust was reversed, and it was spraying dirt into my message stream, instead of filtering it out.”
SEL: “Gmail certainly has its share of dedicated, hardcore users – people who have Gmail set as their home page and keep it open all day in a separate browser tab. But do these users want social networking to invade their inbox? We’re all familiar with the challenge of separating work time – which almost always involves email – from ‘social time,’ and Google is taking somewhat of a risk by combining the two with Buzz.”
Jarvis: “I think this could be the beginning of some big things: The hyperpersonal news stream, which Marissa Mayer has been talking about. The key value here is not just aggregating our streams but prioritizing them by listening to signals that unlock relevance. … Local is clearly a big Google priority. Newspapers, Yellow Pages, local media, and perhaps even craigslist better watch out. Google is gunning to organize our areas and with that comes an incredible flood of advertising opportunity. … Personalization is key to this: relevance in your feed; publishing to your friends (even understanding who your friends are). I think this portends the end of the universal search and thus of search-engine optimization (there’ll be no way to calculate how high a result rises when everyone’s results are different).”
RWW: “Google Buzz could quickly become the most popular location-based service on the Internet. Not only does Buzz integrate itself into Gmail, which will give it a large mainstream user base, but Buzz also puts geolocation front and center on its mobile sites. In addition, the new Buzz layer in the Google Maps mobile interface makes it incredibly easy to find geotagged Buzz messages around you. … By default, location sharing is turned on in Buzz, which raises concerns about privacy.”
VB: “You’ll find more location features when you go to the Buzz mobile website. In addition to posting an update, you can see a Google place profile of where you are, and you can click on a ‘nearby’ button to see all the public updates from users near your location. This might be particularly useful if you’re at a big event like a conference, so you see all the conversation around that conference. – None of these individual features are all that unique or innovative, but by tying them into a comprehensive product, which is itself integrated with a number of popular Google services like Gmail, Google might find location-based success in a way that it doesn’t seem to have done with its earlier location service, Latitude.”
RWW: “Google Buzz is headed for the enterprise. According to the Google Enterprise blog, Google Buzz will become a part of Google Apps within the next few months. – Google Buzz applies as much to the enterprise as it does to the consumer market. The real-time application creates an extension for communication that adds a threaded context to a conversation, a critical component for an enterprise application.”
Gerrit Eicker
Blogging vs. Microblogging
Pew surveys [PDF]: Blogging loses appeal for teenagers against microblogging and social networking; http://j.mp/9h6oXD
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. Even as blogging declines among those under 30, wireless connectivity continues to rise in this age group, as does social network use. Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for the application.”
Pew: “Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006. Blog commenting has also dropped among teens. … While blogging among adults as a whole has remained steady, the prevalence of blogging within specific age groups has changed dramatically in recent years. Specifically, a sharp decline in blogging by young adults has been tempered by a corresponding increase in blogging among older adults. … Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly, yet there are shifts and some drops in the proportion of teens using several social networking site features. … Facebook is currently the most commonly-used online social network among adults. Among adult profile owners 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% have a LinkedIn profile. – The specific sites on which young adults maintain their profiles are different from those used by older adults: Young profile owners are much more likely to maintain a profile on MySpace (66% of young profile owners do so, compared with just 36% of those thirty and older) but less likely to have a profile on the professionally-oriented LinkedIn (7% vs. 19%). In contrast, adult profile owners under thirty and those thirty and older are equally likely to maintain a profile on Facebook (71% of young profile owners do so, compared with 75% of older profile owners). … Teens are not using Twitter in large numbers. While teens are bigger users of almost all other online applications, Twitter is an exception.”
Gerrit Eicker
Social Profiles
Siegler on social profiles: “We remain at a stand still”, updating every profile individually; http://tr.im/jolM
Suster: “November 2010 and Facebook has 500 million users. They have more page views than even Google. More than 10% of all time on the web is now Facebook. They have become a juggernaut in online advertising, pictures, video and online games. And now they want to revolutionize email. It is no doubt that the next decade belongs to Facebook. But the coincidence is that 10 years out will be 2020 and it’s when we look back from that date I’m certain that people will find a Facebook monopoly a bit laughable. … Is the game over? Have Facebook & Twitter won or is their another act? No prizes for guessing … there’s ALWAYS a second act in technology.”
1. The Social Graph Will Become Portable
2. We Will Form Around ‘True’ Social Networks
3. Privacy Issues Will Continue to Cause Problems
4. Social Networking Will Become Pervasive
5. Third-Party Tools Will Embed Social Features in Websites
6. Social Networking (like the web) Will Split Into Layers
7. Social Chaos Will Create New Business Opportunities
8. Data Will Reign Supreme
9. Facebook Will Not be the Only Dominant Player