The dawn of the electronic social age is upon us.  It exploded with PC-based Internet, but you may question, where is it headed next?  Mobile phones have gained mass-adoption by most demographics, but they have yet to really change the way that we engage in social networking.  They primarily exist today as a means to enhance one’s existing social network as a communication medium.

But with iPhone 3G set to be released tomorrow, everything poised to change.

With the launch of the iPhone Application Developer Platform, individual developers now have the capability to rapidly develop innovative applications that take advantage of all the iPhone’s features.  Now anyone with some spare time can easily come up with creative applications that leverage the iPhone’s location-based GPS features and high-speed internet connection.  The possiblities are endless.  Want to chat to the crowd in a 100-meter radius at a concert?  Want to check out the profiles of all the hot girls in the bar on your iPhone so you can go on a directed attack? (ok, that one’s pretty lame, but you get my point)

What makes this application platform even more powerful is that individual developers now have a powerful marketing and sales channel, the iPhone Store, to distribute their applications to the millions of iPhone consumers worldwide.  Think Facebook Applications, but for the iPhone.  It’s a win-win situation for both Apple and the developers, as Apple stands to leverage developers world-wide to build vast quantities of innovative applications to enhance the value of the iPhone.  At the same time, developers have a channel to distribute their applications with a direct incentive to develop applications by earning either revenue for downloads or indirect monetary benefits (advertising, social graph, etc.) with no-charge applications.

But who is the big winner amongst it all?  Of course - the consumer.  We’ll now have a very valuable social tool for bringing our social networking capabilities to a new dimension.  With tens of thousands of developers around the world building their own unique and creative applications to get a slice of Apple’s pie, there are bound to be must-have applications created that change the way we live and communicate.

I would surmise that the iPhone 3G and it’s application platform will do for social networking what Netscape and the browser did for the worldwide web.  Social networking was not meant to take place sitting in front of a computer all day.  It needs to evolve to areas and events where you actually socialize, and can leverage mobile technology to enhance your social connections.  The iPhone 3G is ushering in this new era.

Why am I so confident?  Apple is cool, Apple is trendy; the product, interface, and design are all best in class; they have the commercial channel; they have the price that will drive mass adoption ($199); and best of all, they have the vision of how a consumer is meant to leverage their mobile device to enhance their daily lives.

And the commercial platform for developers now provides them instant access to bring the utility of the iPhone to new heights.  Applications can be discovered, distributed, updated and shared with one touch.

And ground zero breaks tomorrow, folks.  It will be an exciting time to watch it all unfold.

Tags: Apple, Applications, Social Network by Tim McKillican
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Google Press Center: News Announcement

As is normal in the social networking space, an announcement with massive implications has snuck up on us overnight, and seeing as mainstream media has not the sense nor foresight to understand its implications, the big news drifts innocently along the formal news stream of the day.

Google Friend Connect, simply, allows any site to implement users, friend lists and third-party applications using Google’s OpenSocial. So let’s say you made a great Facebook Application, and want to spread the idea: whip it into a full blown web page, implement Google OpenSocial’s FriendConnect, and now you’ve got completely control over your destiny AND a full-sized web site to boot.

While it will take a long time, my preliminary analysis is that Google will continue to improve support for FriendConnect, and continue to woo bigger and bigger companies and websites to use it, and over the course of the next few years, it will be an important part of any site that desires to be ‘connected’.

That said, Facebook just recently moved forward with their own similarly named Facebook Connect, which allows any site on the web to provide its users with a simply “Connect to Facebook” button, which will then port in all of FB’s friend and user information, and allow for the use of applications.

What’s the conclusion here? These two companies are going to war over the areas outside Facebook’s walled garden, and the next year is going to be absolutely critical to determine whether people truly value the amount of photos, friend connections and wall posts they’ve already put into their Facebook. Because Google’s FriendConnect is going to operate as most Google products do: silently. You’ll use a feature here or there, then maybe sign up one time (if you’re not already), and one day you’ll realize all your friends are on there as well, and one guy will throw up a photo on there, and a rush will occur, where everyone heads over to make their second important Social account…

Just like when MySpacians migrated to FB.

Only time will tell.

Tags: Applications, Facebook, Google, MySpace, Social Network by Neil
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The article is a year old, but senior editor David Kirkpatrick hits all the right notes in trying to understand the significance of Facebook as a communication and business tool.

“It’s not all rosy for business, though. You think we’ve had transparency on the Internet so far? The ramifications for marketers could be frightening if someone builds tools that enable Facebook users to get more efficient at communicating among themselves about products and services they use. It could become just as easy to learn if someone you know was overcharged by a credit card as to find out what concerts they are attending. Up until now most online sources of product information have been unreliable. But if it’s your friend telling you not to buy that shampoo, you’re likely to listen.”

Full article here: Facebook’s plan to hook up the world - May. 24, 2007

Tags: Advertising, Applications, Facebook, Marketing, Social Network, Usability by Neil
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If you’re a Facebook developer, user, or even an avid reader of this site, you probably know that Facebook is gearing up to revamp the visual and functional design of the basic Facebook profile. I evangelize about it daily, but this post isn’t about how widespread of an effect it’s going to have (it will be watercooler talk for days). Rather, it’s about how Facebook’s approach to this change demonstrates the pioneering of the next generation of large web companies.

Just take a look at their latest post: An Update on the State of the Profile Redesign. In short, it’s saying one thing: We’re listening to you. How? They held a few ’roundtables’, where developers and users of all types were able to get together and talk about what they like/don’t like about the upcoming changes. Then, they’ve been posting weekly updates on their design process, and keenly scouring the comments left by the 39,011 fans that have joined the Profile Redesign Fan Page. Finally, they also mention that there will be ample time for application developers to modify their applications before they release the profile to the public.

Say what you will about some of their Beacon moves and default privacy policies, but from the perspective of a user of the Facebook tool, I trust Facebook to make the right decision to enable me to communicate with my friends easiest. From the perspective of a developer, they have been smart and quick to upgrade as long as they’ve had the Platform available.

IMHO, it’s the use of a company’s ears that will enable a company to succeed in Web 2.0, 3.0 and beyond, and Facebook is definitely on the right path. While people are constantly extolling the virtues of a social web, in truth there are only a handful of companies (Digg is another great example) that truly leverage their social feedback. Even the prolific Google doesn’t make it this simple to let them know how you feel about their interfaces. And we won’t start into MySpace.

This goes farther than web businesses. It’s rare for even an individual to listen, but if you look carefully, the ability to consume and utilize feedback is the hallmark of any true success story. And when a service-provider of any type and size can hear and understand the thousands of users that truly love their offerings, they have the key to keep people smiling.

This clearly should have happened long ago, as a capitalist system would dictate. If a company isn’t listening to their consumers, then a company who does have the ears will open up, and produce a better product. However, the resources necessary to support these vast lines of communication feedback are a recent phenomenon, and we’ll feel the effects of this business style more over the next half-decade. While older corporations will stumble to understand the importance of having their ears to the web, young dynamic startups will spark a trend of iterative, evolving creations based on user feedback. Just like any modern day Engineering design must incorporate feedback, any web business expecting to succeed in the future is going to need to structure a social feedback system for their web presence.

Rant over.

Tags: Advertising, Applications, Facebook, Marketing, Social Network, Usability by Neil
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One of my favourite tools on the web is StumbleUpon. In short, SU is a toolbar which allows you to easily give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to any site on the web. As long as it has a web address, you can give it your approval. These lists of your favourite sites/movies/mp3s are aggregated into a page at the StumbleUpon.com website, where you can share with 4,493,158 other websurfers, according to the SU site.  I believe that SU’s structure as an entertainment-driven social network may enable it to compete with traditional Social Networks in the years to come.

The basic elements of SU aren’t exactly revolutionary for the web (see Digg or Del.ico.us). However, what really separates StumbleUpon from the bunch is its “Stumble!” button, which, based on your likes and dislikes, presents you with a targeted-but-random web page from its massive archives of over 12 million pages.  Looking through your preferred categories, ‘liked’ sites, and combining that with user-based content tags and reviews, SU provides you with something you probably like: an mp3, a blog, a mainstream news article or a short video.  And it often hits the right note.  It seems as if the algorithm is very sensitive to your tastes, and also looks to your friends to detect their tastes too.

The idea may or may not be intriguing on paper, but it’s in that moment of boredom where this tool comes to life. Instead of hanging around my favourite blogs for the 15th time today, Stumble! takes me to the University of East Tennesse’s Philosophy Games club, where I can engage in their newest hit, battleground God.  I believe that the market of people seeking this brand of alternative entertainment will grow wildly in the coming years, as a new generation of young folk grow up completely ensconced in web culture. These users may prefer a social network which focuses on its open collection of “fun stuff”.

SU is growing.  StumbleUpon has had a steady growth from 600,000 users in 2005 to 4.5 million users today.  According to Phil Butler, its slowly mounting success is due to “the methodology and ease with which content is collected and displayed”. This, I feel is the essential long-term benefit of SU over traditional social networks:

As opposed to Facebook or MySpace, where we connect to our friends, SU is a site which prioritizes our friends’ interests above their relationship to us.

So while it may still be a bit clunky for people to get used to the interface, eventually, SU holds a database of what people have enjoyed the most on the web, and a fantastic way of delivering that content for small hits of fun. And by connecting people together based on that information, SU has the potential to bloom into a social network that will facilitate conversations of the most pertinent entertainment to people, and this could make a big impact on social networking and perhaps, social living.

–

Ramblings:

The image to my left is SU’s initial forays into friend recommendations, and I found that a few of these people had interests so similar to me, we could likely talk for hours.

This isn’t unlike what Last.FM ventures to do, or what Facebook does when it tries to match you with content, but the point I’m really making,  is that it isn’t the interface or number of users that’s really going to determine our social future, but rather, an algorithm that can understand us.

Another point is that if there is a social networking shakeup, and an OpenID begins to surface, the entire web will become social (see Tim’s pontifications on Web 3.0).  At that point, people will need a strong reason to devote their social time to a given site.  Free, plentiful entertainment is always a good reason.

Miguel Helft from the New York Times referred to SU’s activity as “channel-surfing the Internet”, and the guys at SU label this paradigm of web interaction as “Web Discovery”.

Tags: Applications, Facebook, Social Network, Usability, stumbleupon by Neil
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It seems that Microsoft is chasing after its own tail these days.  Only months after investing a healthy quarter billion into Facebook, their Spaces division is attempting to leverage its own friend network by introducing a friend-feed to display your Live Messenger friends’ latest actions (see screenshot).  Are they competing with Facebook?

With MySpace having jumped on the ‘friend-feed’ idea in their revamped profile and web applications such as FriendFeed and Twitter popping up, it’s quickly becoming apparent that the feed is the essential backbone of any good social network.  That must have been what Microsoft was thinking when they made this move, but the current incarnation is hardly providing me with enough relevant information to constitute a “social network” (see screenshot).  Most of my friends have never even set up their Live Spaces profile, even though it’s been around for years, and so I’m left with entries like

Judging by the latest Nielson ratings on Social Networks (see image), Live Spaces is about to lose its long hold on the fourth place.  I don’t see anything particularily wrong with the technology, but the botched release of Spaces and the consequent pillaging of the once simple-yet-effective MSN Messenger convince me that we won’t see users flocking to Spaces anytime soon.

Tags: Advertising, Applications, Facebook, Social Network by Neil
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I recently jumped on the insider bandwagon and installed FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com).

My first thoughts:

The interface is absolutely simple.  It’s not necessarily elegant, but the cleanliness helps navigate this functionality-heavy site.  I’m sure it will get sleeker and Googler with time.

I can’t believe how many of these services I already had accounts to: Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, Google Reader, my Blog.  It felt really good to consolidate all the content into one place.

The seamless integration into Facebook is genius.  It points you to the Application without you knowing you’ve even left the site, then redirects you right back, before you know it, your Facebook is now hooked up to FriendFeed.

My second thoughts:

Every single activity I’ve ever done on any site is now completely visible to all my friends.  Wow, I completely don’t see the need for it at all.

Perhaps we really will move into utility based social networks.  Facebook for friendship and (see my last post) chat, LinkedIn for your profesional lives, and FriendFeed for finding good information and entertainment content.  I can see FriendFeed overlapping with Facebook, but I can also see this sort of model propagate and settle over the next few years.  I think the general consumer will enjoy it and slowly get used to having the multiple accounts and multiple points of usage.

Am I wrong?  Will all services assemble into one, with filters and options separating the network?  Facebook is trying to do it, with their recently announced privacy controls, they’re trying to be your work site and your private site.  I have my reservations about whether people will be able to sort out the complex controls.  I imagine people will try, and then just appreciate LinkedIn for what it is, a separate area where you can manage your ‘business’ side.

Tags: Applications, Google, Social Network by Neil
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It seems that Facebook is continuing to respond to many users’ overwhelming complaints with regards to Facebook Applications and the constant spam that they receive through Invites and Newsfeeds from Applications (we really don’t care that Distant Friend X’s zombie bit Even More Distant Friend’s zombie).  Today Facebook announced new Application Feed Forms, that will allow developers to create new interactive Mini-feed stories through their applications, but will explicitly ask the user for permission to post the feed.  Applications can also now publish new engaging News feeds involving interactions amongst friends to both friends’ feeds.

This is a win-win for everyone all around.  Users gain more control over what is published in their news feed, while developers have another tool for engaging the user (and their friends) with quality interactions.  Facebook gains overall by reducing the spam from annoying applications that has plagued users since the launch of the platform.  I am quite impressed with how Facebook has quickly responded to user complaints while at the same time providing developers with a new tool to really engage users through their applications.

Tags: Applications, Facebook, Social Network by Tim McKillican
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