DiSo project: Taking a page from Facebook
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Ideas, Products, Social Networks, Web2.0
Feb|28|2008
If you take a look at the structure of Facebook you can see 2 main navigation sections (disregarding the rest of the site).
- Profile data at the top (Profile, Friends, Networks, Inbox)
- You have apps and other things on the left.
The way we’ve been thinking about the way Facebook works in terms of architecture and find it incredibly interesting, from an innovation perspective and also because the products we’re building rely on similar kind of systems.
We follow the standards or thoughts in the DiSo project, as well as the concepts in the Social Network Portability (really the same thing), so we’re trying to look at how your profile can be more portable, and follow you around the web.
In Facebook, your top profile is the one that really counts, it’s the one that follows you through all the apps you’ve installed, and brings you back to your data, the one on the left is basically all the different “sites” you’re on. It’s like FriendFeed or Plaxo or whatever, but the relationship between data-owner and application is much more skewed.
This post is pretty half-arsed and pretty obvious, but sometimes you need to state the obvious!
Facebook groups: A low engagement model
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Social Networks, Web2.0
Oct|16|2007
I’ve opened up a Google Docs Spreadsheet that I’d love some collaboration on.
You can view the document here.
I’m trying to construct an argument about why Facebook groups are a useless organising tool for interest groups. I’ve added the 7 or 8 groups that Rohit Barghava has mentioned in his blog post. I disagree with him. I believe Facebook groups offer a bad way for brands and and other interest groups to engage with their users.
One of the core features of a CRM tool - contacting your users - is difficult, you can only mail a certain amount of your members before your connection, or the connection, plonks out. Also, viewing what info is new on a group is difficult. You have to trawl through discussions and threads to get to where you want to be. The end result is that people simply don’t comment. Or they do, but they leave it at that and don’t engage.
I’m still working on the piece, but I’d love some feedback from the community. Please help out by filling in or updating this spreadsheet. The idea is that we’d be able to get a snapshot of some of the more active communities/groups on Facebook.
Some links to take a look at:
Community Technology Foundation
Widgify
AllFacebook
Leease
Ning Blog
And some other great funny groups.
And what groups were popular in 1995? When Facebook just started out?
Technorati Tags: facebook, group, social network, white label, custom, ning, kick apps
Secrets behind MobiMii and NudgeMii Facebook apps
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Products, Social Networks, Web2.0
Aug|31|2007
Most of my friends have the NudgeMii Facebook application installed - it allows you to send a “Nudge” to a friend, which then sends an SMS to that friend.
NudgeMii is brought to you by Fontera, a company that specialises in mobile products.
Fontera develops and manages innovative mobile products and services for leading companies across the globe.
MobiMii is the new social network that they launched recently. It’s a mobile social network that you can use to connect to your friends.
Now, let’s take a ball park figure of 20 000 SMS’s sent per day. This is pure thumbsuck, but let’s say that it’s true. Now, at 30cper SMS that equates to about R6 000 per day expenditure. That’s a lot of money. Per month it would come to R180 000. That’s even more money.
Now how would you think the SMS service makes any money?
I went over to the MobiMii site and was amazed at how populated my profile is so far…
Not only do I already have a whole bunch of friends, but they also seem to have a whole bunch of friends.
I’m thinking that people who have added the NudgeMii application populate the MobiMii network. It’s scary. It’s also brilliant.
Technorati Tags: nudgemii, mobimii, facebook, mobile, sms
Facebook has RSS
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Social Networks
Aug|3|2007
Finally we see some RSS in Facebook!
You can click through to the Facebook page here.
Orginal credit goes to Ben Martin.
Technorati Tags: facebook, rss, syndication
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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
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,
Who should you develop for?
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Ideas, Online, South Africa, Web2.0
Jul|3|2007
I’ve mentioned before that I think you should rather build an app on top of Facebook than build your own social network (of course, this doesn’t apply for everyone).
Mashable covers the Facebook vs Myspace: Platform or what?
MySpace Concedes: Facebook Does it Better
You might think that this has no implications for your network, but in fact it is a very very important point. Just as app developers can pick between these two networks, they must pick your network as well, and you should make it as easy as possible.
Some South African SN’s that have been popping up haven’t opened up. They simply don’t have the scale for it to be viable. Instead they opt for developing the apps themselves and launch it as a feature. Why do this when you can crowdsource? It’s the web2.0 way to do it.
It’s been proven now that opening up your network to external developers is the way to go. You must somehow make your network open and available to build on top of.
That being said, Why don’t you rather clone the architecture behind Facebook, or atleast the query language, so that it would be easy to e.g. import the iLike app to your own network. So, when developers are faced with developing for your site, they can easily take their existing code that they built for Facebook (because they will first develop for that) and make it easy to port to e.g. 24.com or Mk89.com
Technorati Tags: social network, web 2.0, south africa, developer, facebook, integration, local
eTV covers Facebook, the blogosphere doesn’t
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Online, Web2.0
Jun|26|2007
Apparently eTV did a story on Facebook the other day. I’ve been trying to get my eyeballs to take a look, but I don’t watch TV so I missed it, and I can’t find it on the blogosphere!
Nothing in a Google.
Nothing on Amatomu.
Nothing on Technorati.
Nothing on Zoopy.
Nothing on Myvideo.
All I could find was a small mention of it on Sarah Manners‘ blog.
What’s happening people?
Technorati Tags: facebook, etv
If you update your status and no one sees it, did it happen?
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Ideas, Web2.0
Jun|15|2007
Har har har, one of the funniest takes on an age old philosophical problem.
“If a status message falls in a feed, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?”
Click here for the Facebook Book Blog.
Technorati Tags: facebook
Facebook: Free of the raggedy-toothed Sex Predator
Uno as Facebook Friday's, Web2.0
Jun|13|2007
Myspace has received ridiculous amounts of flack for being a haven to sex predators stalking children, emo kids and other sex predators (I’d love to see two aging old men agree to meet up at some random place thinking they were meeting two foxy young girls).
Why haven’t we seen any of this with Facebook?
Firstly because with Facebook your identity is compiled out of many things and your friendslist plays a lot more prominent role. You can immediately see who this person adding you as a friend is friends with and which groups they’ve joined. No photos? That’s dodgy. No friends? Even more dodgy. Friends with other dodgy middle-aged men? Run away.
Myspace has (will) failed as a social network because it allows too much anonimity. The power with online comes in integrating offline. If you exist as a virtual being then the chances of you gaining popularity are slim. The level of posers on FB is much smaller than on Myspace. You can’t create spam profiles, but you can send out spam mailers (which you do at risk of being un-friended… oooh the politics!). OK, you can create spam profiles, but you’re going to be a lonely bastard. You need to exist offline as well, the things that make Facebook popular are the offline activities such as groups (Fiction) and events (Birthday partys) and the photos that accompany them.
If I was a parent I’d like my child to join a network like Facebook. I know who they are adding as friends, can check them out, keep tabs on their activities and be in much more control than if they were on Myspace. And Penguin Club doesn’t cut the cheese for me.
All these activities add meaning and substance to your identity. Your Identity 2.0.
Btw, you should now be able to use your OpenID account to login to this blog and comment
Technorati Tags: social networks, facebook, myspace, sex predator, stalk, sex offender, online communities, openID, Identity2.0
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