Facebook’s mail as a replacement for e-mail and a replacement for OpenID
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Ideas, Web2.0
Jul|30|2007
A while back I wrote about how Facebook could become the defacto Identity 2.0 provider for a lot of people if OpenID doesn’t get their game up, the post has been getting some great hits and some interest from some great people as well. Gotta love them internets.
Facebook mails better than e-mail
Recently Dave Duarte mentioned how he sees Facebook killing e-mail. While I don’t agree with him on it (Facebook has a terrible mail interface), it did get me thinking about mail and identity differently than before. Facebook e-mail isn’t really e-mail. You aren’t sending a mail to a name@domain.com anymore, you are actually sending the mail to a person as opposed to an e-mail address, which is a total paradigm shift essentially when you think of anonymity on the net. I recently received a mail from someone after a presentation I did at a backpacking conference, almost 2 months ago. The guy must have looked me up on Facebook and sent me a message (note even the language is different).
Previously, I was a lost entity. There was no place that he could have looked up my contact details except through a tedious process of calling the organisers (ok, only tedious for me…) if it wasn’t in the conference pack. Lucky for us, in trots the hero of the day, Facebook. The attendee can now simply do a quick search for me, I can recognise him if I spoke to him and we can quickly strike up the conversation where we left off. The most important part here is that we never had to exchange e-mail addresses. He could contact me as if he was walking up to me - no need to need a secret pass-key (e-mail address), or keep that ever elusive business card.
E-mail as it should be
And this is the way that we should move towards communication. I want to see some sort of identity provider that someone can search for and find my details (currently Google does that for me…) But there should not be one ID provider, there should be many (echoing the ideas of Malcom Gladwell and his TED spaghetti sauces presentation) and it should be open. You’ll remember I mentioned the great talk by Dick Hardt (back in 2005 mind you) where he asks how do you replicate your ID document online, but not only yours, you need to replicate the ID of South Africa, Botswana, America, Thailand, Greece, Morocco, Denmark, etc etc. and they all need to talk to each other in an understandable way. When you walk up to the bottle store in America and you show them your SA ID document, how do they know you are over 21? They trust your ID document.
But I’m straying again - previously e-mail was a pretty good measure/keeper of your identity. Some registration processes used to (and many still do) require you to login with your e-mail address. What kind of a sure-fire identity system is that? I can go and create 50 different ones and then create 50 more using any of the free e-mail services, or I can send the confirmation mail to an anonymous mail client like Mailinator. The fact is that e-mail is and never was a good identity provider, so why are we sticking to it? Because it’s the only weak one we have.
But now Facebook has broken past both of these barriers (geekyness from OpenID, and easily forged for e-mail). I’ve said before that I believe Facebook to be very secure. I don’t believe that Facebook will see that many sex predators (if any) as Myspace because it is such a good identity provider (you can’t fake your friends).
I’d love to get to the day that people don’t ask me what my e-mail address is but simply send me a message (and not in the sense of “Ya cool, I’ll add you as a friend on Facebook”). I have no idea how this would work, but that is what all those smart people are out there for.
Technorati Tags: identity 2.0, openid, facebook, e-mail, message, identity
Getting started with Google Reader
Jul|26|2007
One of the backbones of social media is RSS. But recent studies on South African online media has shown that the SA population is still pretty clueless when it comes to RSS, this video below is a great introduction to Google Reader. Watch out for the volume though, it’s quite high.
Technorati Tags: training, rss, social media, google reader, how to, tutorial, introduction, feeds
What’s the worst wordpress theme?
Uno as Web2.0
Jul|25|2007
I’m looking for a really bad shocking wordpress theme. Something neon and something disco, something that just SCREAMS trash right at you. Something from the 80’s maybe…
Does someone know of any designs? Mismatched colours is a must.
Michael Jackson in Prison
Uno as Music
Jul|25|2007
Amatomu: Perpetuating Hegemony
Uno as Social Networks, Web2.0
Jul|23|2007
Vincent Maher’s presentation at the Nomadic Markets course last week was an interesting nugget of info, not because I saw it and could listen to him speak, but because I had Critical Social Theory in my 3rd year at university and could follow the powerpoint presentation fairly well.
One of the topics Vincent touches on is ideology and hegemony and how it is perpetuated and maintained through the dominant power structures. This means that when things that receive the most Diggs receive the most Diggs. huh? When an article is Dugg (?) that article rises in popularity. The article then rises above the other articles and receives more popularity and is Dugg even further. Other articles receive no attention. This is typically manifested by the strong tech slant on Digg where articles around technology are more popular than articles about, say, genocide.
Why and how does Amatomu perpetuate hegemony?
Amatomu has a Top 10 (or 30) blogs on the front, and then subsection for all the other top blogs. The blogs that are in the top ranking sections receive the most attention. If you are ranked nr 1 then the chances of most people clicking through to your site are much higher than if you were nr 25, even though sometimes the nr 25 blog contains interesting or culturally different views. This means that non-dominant views are sidelined and regarded as irrelevant.
Why did I think of this? My recent post on Social Networks attracted a lot of attention from Muti but not from Amatomu. You’d think that Amatomu would send through a lot of traffic but I only got about 3 hits… as opposed to the 32 from Muti. Not only that but the quality of traffic from Muti was much higher.
Technorati Tags: amatomu, traffic, statistics, hegemoy, vincent maher, critical social theory
South African Social Networks
Uno as Social Networks, Web2.0
Jul|19|2007
So we have Facebook, Myspace, Last.FM and whatever else there is out there, but where are we locally? What social networks are there out there? I’ve been a big pundit of piggybacking off other networks (like Facebook) and also made some arguments for launching your own network. This post will try to cover some of the local startups that are trying to carve out their own niceh.
I’ve excluded forums as communities here simply because there are too many to many and most of the time very niche. Also blog directories aren’t included as they are simply directories and don’t have any social value, they don’t serve as a platform. Clicking on the logo will take you to the site.
Networks
MyGenius
Oooh, a nice flashy redesign since I’ve last seen it. MyGenuis is a network designed around entrepreneurs with the goal to connect them up with each other. One of the great features behind the site is that you are sent an email whenever someone visits your site (you can set this on or off).
I’ve weaned myself off the service though, seeing as I’m not much of a freelancer anymore I have little use for the site. And most of my connections come through work or blogging. Still, a good service that would complement your LinkedIn account (Hrmm, I wonder if there are plans for integration, seeing as LinkedIn is opening up their API)
Mygenius doesn’t run any ads that I could immediately see. Their revenue model seems to be subscription based.
Dave also has post on it.
Digspot
Digspot is the brainchild of Nic Haralambous. Digspot works as a sortof Facebook for your digs, so it’s geared towards students who are staying together in a digs (duh). It has all the functionality of a normal social network like groups, profile pages, likes and dislikes etc etc. A nice thing that they’ve done is to get Bru and Boegie to do some of the interface design. At the moment I can’t seem to find any direct revenue model from the site.
Student Village
It seems like the student market is the place to be. Student Village is structured as a Student Portal, the go to place for students on various campuses. They have the social networking element but last time I went through it the interface seemed a bit clunky (and I generally dislike Fit to Window/fluid designs). As far as I’ve picked up they seem to be more of an events and promotions company, and then selling their database of students to corporates for these events and promotions. I’m not sure about this, but it does seem as an obvious move by them. Their team seems structured around GradX, the recruitment portal.
In all Studentvillage has a tremendous amount of ads on it, it’s pretty easy to see where their revenue model comes from. Student Village is also more popular under the northern campuses. At Stellenbosch it was practically unheard of, although they were trying hard to get into the market.
BlueWorld.co.za
Charl Norman is the general manager for Blueworld, and you can follow the design process on his blog. Blueworld is similar to StudentVillage. They are predominately a content portal. They have photographers who go out there and take pics ala Thunda.com, events play an important role in the network and so does chauvinism (I’m gonna get blasted for saying that). They network plays on boy/girl differences quite a lot, something that Student Village does as well, but it’s not as visible on the frontpage as with Blueworld. The site has all the other features normally associated with profile pages and it includes a Bluetube - the video portal.
Blueworld seems to run off sponsorships and advertisements. KFC has had a campaign running on there for quite some time now already.
MK89
MK89 is a new kid on the block, and you might remember I predicted the launch of the site (or something like that). They’ve sinced launched with an off the shelf social networking product as opposed to developing their own platform. The sole goal of the site would be to get in touch with their viewers more. They have the video sharing section where bands can upload videos, the network can push content towards the users etc etc. Interesting that they haven’t done all of this on their own www.mk89.com/co.za domain. This will probably come soon.
LitNet
Litnet is one of the more interesting social networks simply because it is one of the worst UI designs I’ve seen in my life. I’m not sure if they have any type of CMS in the background but I wouldn’t be suprised if there isn’t anything. Still, it has one of the most active and vibrant communities I’ve seen. It has no option for creating user profiles of any sort and it’s difficult to submit content, yet it has new content everyday and the conversation is lively. Most of LitNet focuses around the opinion pieces and writing sections. Litnet uses the advertising model for revenue and I would assume they have some form of book deals with publishers.
Updates:
SA REunited
Vrinne
(Thanks Tristan)
BizJam
Media (Music, video, photos)
Other
Mxit
Technorati Tags: social network, south africa, mygenius, student village, mk89, blueworld, digspot
That’s it for now! I’ll be covering the following networks in a follow
up post. If you want to be kept up to date you can use the subscription
options at the top of the page to be notified of new posts.
This was
a short, overview review, in the next couple of weeks I’ll try post a
more indepth view of all the networks. If you know of any other
networks please say so in the comments.
CoComment vs MyBlogLog: Who will win?
Jul|18|2007
At the moment the two major players in the conversation tracking game are CoComment and MyBlogLog.
Both of them have different feature sets, but are more or less the same when it comes to tracking your movements on your site.
CoComment is rolling out a whole new set of community features (you’ll see I’ve added the My Conversations sidebar on the right of this blog) that are geared towards improving the links between you, your comments and other people and their comments.
But this is an interesting space, I can see CoComment winning over MyBlogLog in the future. MyBlogLog doesn’t have too many feature sets as it stands, I really only use it to see who has been lurking around on my blog (and I don’t even do this often enough). Not only that, but the interface is slightly fugly while CoComment has some nice clean white and blue lines and Ajax.
CoComment allows me to track my movements on the web much better than MyBlogLog. With them rolling out their new features MyBlogLog might just be in for a tough ride when (if) CoComment decides to make a full on run at them.
Technorati Tags: cocomment, mybloglog, conversation, web dev, products, community
Mark Zuckerberg still doesn’t matter
Jul|18|2007
Tyler has a nice nugget post on how the Business 2.0 magazine said Mark Zuckerburg doesn’t matter.
Well, does he really? What I’m trying to get at is how disposable is Zuckerberg? He definately matters as a decision maker behind Facebook, but when it comes to being a driver behind the network I’d like to know how much of that company is his. Same as with Google, Sergey and Larry both own the company and are definate personalities, but if they leave… will the company continue? If Facebook goes the route of an IPO and a whole bunch of shareholders clime onboard, what will Zuckerberg do to maintain control over his network?
Take the latest case with the Myspace founders asking for a ridiculous $50m contract renewal. The chances are quite high that Murdoch will simply say “stuff you” and get someone else to manage the network. In this case the two founders are disposable and their original baby lost.
Interesting though, it seems as if Business 2.0 doesn’t matter any more. They are closing down their doors because of competition from online publishing.
Technorati Tags: facebook, tyler reed, mark zuckerberg, business 2.0, myspace, social network, web 2.0
amazing music video
Uno as Music
Jul|13|2007
Will an Open Social Network work?
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Online, Web2.0
Jul|12|2007
There have been a lot of calls for an open Social Network lately.
One of the bigger players like Google has helped out the small capstone project called Socialstream that will aim to aggregate all the other networks, something like a Unified Social Network. And it seems like Yahoo is trying to get into the game as well.
Marc Canter also has a post over at ZDNet on how Ning can/should help out with this project.
I’m all for an Open Social Network, but man, if we can’t even get our IM platforms to talk to each other, how are we going to do this with Social Networks?
At any one stage I have Gtalk, Skype and MSN running. I’d love it to be in one interface (ala Trillian) but I find that UI uncomfortable.
Call me skeptical.
Technorati Tags: socialstream, ning, unified social network, facebook, myspace, social network, Marc Canter,