November 13th, 2008

Microsoft gives Windows Live a social networking makeover

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 8:15 am

Categories: Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mobile, Social Networks, Twitter, Yahoo

Tags: Network, Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Social Networking, Operating Systems, Software, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion

Microsoft have announced a major overhaul of its Windows Live service that, similar to Yahoo’s ‘Open Strategy’, rewires the company’s suite of consumer web-based products — e-mail, instant messaging, photo sharing, blogging and more — to turn them into one interconnected social network. To do that, Microsoft is leveraging a user’s existing Windows Live Messenger contacts to create an instant friends list across all Windows Live properties.

And in a feature that borrows directly from Facebook, which Microsoft invested in last year, the new Windows Live includes a a “what’s new” feed that aggregate a user’s activities on Windows Live and third-party site across the web. Initial partners include Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, Twitter, WordPress and Yelp — though no sign of Facebook yet, despite that hefty investment.

See also: Yahoo wants to be your social web ‘control panel’ too

The strategy Microsoft is adopting is simple and a rather familiar one. The company wants to become a user’s one stop shop for all things social on the web. And conceding that it isn’t the market leader, and will probably never be, when it comes to the majority of social web products — aside from IM where Windows Live Messenger is number one — the new Windows Live is also attacking the social networking aggregator space, putting it in direct competition with singly-focused products such as FriendFeed or the social networking aggregator features of monolithic networks e.g. Facebook Connect. Read the rest of this entry »

November 11th, 2008

Is Facebook the mobile web's killer app?

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 8:29 am

Categories: Facebook, Mobile

Tags: Web, Facebook, Mobile, Killer Application, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Steve O'Hear, INQ, Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics

Active users of Facebook’s various mobile products has grown from 5 million to 15 million since the beginning of the year, says the company. In particular, the ability for users to not only update their ’status’ while on the go but also to comment on their friends’ updates, has spurred mobile use of the site.

“When we recently added the ability to comment on your friends’ status updates to the Facebook mobile site, we didn’t expect that we would receive nearly a million status comments in the first 24 hours”, writes Facebook’s Wayne Chang on the company’s official blog.

While that particular tidbit is interesting, it should be no surprise that mobile versions of Facebook are proving popular. Not when you take into account that Facebook offers two browser-based mobile versions of the site — one for low-end feature phones and another for ’smart phones’ — as well as native Facebook clients for Blackberry, Palm and iPhone. Notably, the Palm version runs on the smartphone maker’s entry level consumer offering, the popular and affordable Centro. While television ad campaigns that aim to push the Blackberry beyond its business roots and into the hands of consumers pitch Facebook access as a major selling point. Ditto some of the most recent ad campaigns for Apple’s iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »

October 17th, 2008

Yahoo wants to be your social web 'control panel' too

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 9:41 am

Categories: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Social Networks, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Control Panel, Social Web, Steve O'Hear, Web, Facebook, Channel Management, Marketing

Yahoo has begun rolling out a new profile page for its users as part of its ‘Yahoo! Open Strategy’, a major project to rewire the company’s web properties to make them more “open and social“.

Described by Jim Stoneham, the company’s Vice President Communities, as a “centralized control panel”, the new Yahoo! Profiles will let users manage their “identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo! — and eventually the entire Web”. While a unified user profile and friends list across all of Yahoo’s offerings - Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, Mail etc. - seems like a no-brainer, Stoneham’s reference to a social ‘control panel’ for the entire Web is far more ambitious and sounds very similar to the thinking behind recent products from Facebook (Facebook Connect), MySpace (Data Availabiliy), Microsoft (Mesh) and Google (Friend Connect).

See also: Powering Facebook’s proverbial brain: your Identity, Social Graph, and Lifestream data

Although each company’s implementation differs, the broad concept (often disingenuously dressed up as data-portability) is the same. First, offer users a single place to maintain their profile and manage their social graph (friends list) that can then be synced with third-party sites through a publicly available and secure API. That way any update to your central profile or a new connection added, ripples through to those other social destinations that are linked, and at the same time conveniently locks users into the original source of that data.  Secondly, enable certain data to flow back in - any social activity elsewhere on the Web - so that the central profile also acts as a lifestream or social web aggregator. The end result is a kind of ’social control panel’ for the web OS, a term that Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft and Google don’t actually use, but which Yahoo is actively embracing.

September 29th, 2008

UK secret service recruiting on Facebook

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 8:12 am

Categories: Facebook, Social Networks

Tags: Facebook, Advertisement, Recruiting, U.K., MI6, Professional Development, Recruitment & Selection, Career, Human Resources, Workforce Management

MI6, a branch of the UK’s secret service, is using Facebook as part of a recent recruitment drive to find the “next generation of spies”, reports The Guardian newspaper.

The ads, which begun appearing on the so-called social utility, reflect a change in tactics first introduced in 2006. Rather than targeting top tier Universities only, MI6 is reaching out via a number of public channels in the hope of attracting candidates from a variety of backgrounds. Last year the CIA also began using Facebook to reach out to potential candidates. Read the rest of this entry »

September 25th, 2008

Madison Avenue to Facebook: you'll never be the next Google

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 8:15 am

Categories: Facebook, Google, MySpace, Social Networks

Tags: Google Inc., Facebook, Advertisement, Valleywag, Karp, Steve O'Hear

In a renewed attempt to woo Madison Avenue, Facebook is “making a huge push” at Advertising Week, an industry-wide series of events for media buyers and publishers, reports Valleywag. The social utility’s “push” includes a full-page ad in the events program, a number of sponsored sessions, and throwing a party tonight in which Ziggy Marley (son of Bob) will be performing.

The motivation: Facebook has yet to turn its 100+ million user-base into a fertile ground for advertisers, with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly estimating revenue in 2008 to be around the $300 million mark

An unnamed New York ad-executive (via Valleywag) offers Facebook some unsolicited advice: Read the rest of this entry »

September 18th, 2008

Facebook's Zuckerberg makes Forbes' rich list

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:42 am

Categories: Facebook

Tags: Facebook, Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Steve O'Hear

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the so-called social utility Facebook, has made number 321 of the Forbes 400, a list of the richest people in America, with a personal wealth of $1.5 billion.

Forbes’ calculation is based on an estimate that Facebook generates annual sales of $300 million, and the fact that Microsoft invested $240 million last October for a 1.6% stake, valuing the site at a very generous $15 billion. Although Forbes does concede that “analysts—and even a few Facebook investors—suggest [the] company’s value is far lower”. That being the case, perhaps Zuckerberg isn’t worth $1.5 billion after all? Read the rest of this entry »

September 15th, 2008

Facebook: no social networking here

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 6:13 am

Categories: Facebook, Net culture, Social Networks

Tags: Facebook, Network, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Steve O'Hear

One of the delightful things about creating a new web application or service is the way in which end users find unintended ways of utilizing said service. That’s a common story we hear from those who’ve created cutting-edge and disruptive products on the web and something that has become an aspiration of web startups.

An example that springs to mind is the way in which early adopters of Twitter made use of the @ sign, and how Twitter recognised this to evolve to become more than a micro-blogging system into a communications platform.

But Facebook is different. Arrogant even.

Either use the service how its owners intend or you’ll be kicked out. Read the rest of this entry »

September 3rd, 2008

Facebook: when targeted ads cause offense

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:25 am

Categories: Facebook, Net culture

Tags: Facebook, Advertisement, Steve O'Hear

“You’re fat!” screams the ad. But in an online world of supposedly hyper-targeted advertising it’s hard not to take offense. And offense The Washington Post’s Rachel Beckman takes.

In a rather fun article, Beckman describes her own experience of Facebook’s ad platform. The site’s ‘proverbial brain‘ knows a little more about us than most web properties, and certainly traditional media such as television and newspapers. In particular, Beckman has declared her age and marital status.

When Beckman told the so-called social utility that she was engaged, she was targeted with weight loss ads, specifically “learn how you can shrink your waist.” Another offending ad asked: “Do you want to be a fat bride?”

After changing her status to married, Berkman was then targeted with ads offering advice on how to get pregnant. Read the rest of this entry »

September 1st, 2008

Live Feed: Facebook takes lifestreaming mainstream

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:24 am

Categories: Facebook, Social Networks, Twitter

Tags: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogging, Internet, Steve O'Hear

As much as I love Twitter (you can follow me here), and A-list bloggers constantly bang on about FriendFreed, Facebook will be the one to take lifestreaming mainstream.

In fact, in someways it already has.

The once controversial News Feed has already evolved to include aggregated activity updates from outside web services. The pending launch of ‘Facebook Connect‘ aims to make this feature ubiquitous by creating a simple way for third-party sites to send a users’ online activities back to Facebook’s proverbial brain.

While the newly launched ‘Live Feed’ provides a real-time view of Facebook’s lifestreaming data, whereby the latest friend update fades in AJAX-style and pushes the oldest update off the screen (not dissimilar to Digg’s Spy feature). It makes compelling viewing of all of your friends’ lifestream activity and certainly brings the concept of lifestreaming even further to the forefront of Facebook’s functionality. Read the rest of this entry »

August 14th, 2008

Snap2Face: Facebook lands on Windows Mobile

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 12:28 pm

Categories: Facebook, Mobile

Tags: Facebook, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Friend, Photograph, Snap2Face 1.0, Microsoft Windows, Advertising & Promotion, Operating Systems, Construction

Just like their iPhone, Palm and Blackberry brethren, Windows Mobile users now have a native Facebook client for their cellphone. Snap2Face isn’t an official effort but comes courtesy of New Jersey-based Magnifoca Inc.

Although I haven’t had chance to test the application as I don’t currently have access to a Windows Mobile device, here is a quick list of supported features:

• Set your status while on-the-go
• View friends’ status and detailed information
• View friends’ friends and send friendship requests
• Get notified of events like wall post, message,
  poke, and friend request
• View your pokes, wall, inbox, and friend requests,
  all in full text
• Poke friends, send message to friends, and post
  on friends’ wall
• Access you and your friends’ photo albums
• Ability to view, zoom in/out, and pan full-sized
  photos, and play slideshow
• Upload photos from built-in camera or file folder
• Import friends’ profile photos to Outlook Contacts
• (photo Call ID)

Magnifoca says that Snap2Face has proven very popular during its beta period, and that the application meets pent up demand for a native Facebook app due to limitations of Pocket IE, the mobile browser that ships with most Win Mobile devices.

Snap2Face 1.0 is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0/6.x (Pocket PC or smartphone), and is available as a free download from Magnifoca’s website.