Friday, February 29th, 2008
Have you seen the recent iPhone advertisement on TV featuring a custom Facebook site!? Well if you haven’t - you can check it out here. The iPhone and Apple in general are doing amazing things with interaction design and now it seems Facebook has teamed up with them and created a fantastic web-based interface. “Who cares” you ask “I don’t have an iPhone.” - well neither do I, but an estimated 10 million of us are projected to by the end of the year. 10 million users! After the initial wow factor after seeing the ad, I put on my “practical” hat (I wear a lot of hats, both literally and figuratively) and said to myself - “Hey self - are we going back to the days of creating browser specific web-sites - well that sucks!” However, 10 million people are using perhaps the most inspiring web device that any of us have seen - maybe it’s time to throw caution into the wind and consider creating custom sites just for this tool. The cool factor alone might be worth it - but browsing a newspaper or reserving a car would be so sweet on one of these things with a little iPhone customization. I started thinking - how are they doing it? How is it that Facebook can look so different on an iPhone - what’s the secret? Well, I honestly haven’t done all my research (sorry), but what I did find surprised me a little. I can actually open the iPhone interface in my regular browser! I typically use Firefox and Safari, but I checked ie and sure enough - it’s broken (what did you expect?). Anyway, if you are on a standards compliant browser check it out: Facebook on an iPhone - but not an iPhone (I’m taking the liberty of resizing the window for you to approximate an iPhone). Granted you have to use your mouse instead of you finger to navigate the thing, but it still seems very cool to me. Could we do this for our clients? I sure don’t see why not.
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
The question, “How do I break-up on Twitter?” was asked this weekend by my friend and co-worker Sara. No, she was not looking to break up with a boyfriend using Twitter. Instead, she was talking about the concept of following in Twitter and whether it looks bad to stop following someone.
For those of you unfamiliar, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to send updates or tweets to the Twitter website in 140 character less that answers the question, “What are you doing?” I personally am a twitter addict and find it somewhat interesting to know what my friends; co-workers and even Barack Obama are doing throughout their day or thinking.
In Twitter, you can follow the tweets of others and others can follow your tweets. Sara’s question surrounded the thought, what if she has realized someone she has followed for months, is not someone she really wants to follow anymore. Will it offend them if they notice she is no longer interested in their random thoughts or updates? Will they think she is breaking up with them and ending their “Twitter” relationship?
This got me thinking. Is rejection the same in the social networking world as it is in the real world? If someone takes me off their friend list in Facebook would I be hurt? Would I question whether or not I consider myself interesting, if people stopped following my tweets in Twitter? If my blog dropped from 50 visitors a day to 5, would I start to wonder what I did or didn’t do? Probably. No, I would not fall into a deep depression or give it a thought for more than a few minutes, but I would probably question why. Why did they no longer want to be in my social network?
I guess rejection is rejection, whether in real life or via the web. I know before I de-friend someone or stop following someone, I will think about it a bit first.
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
I for one am excited about this. Facebook has joined the DataPortability Workgroup with Google and Plaxo. This is positive because it is a sign that Facebook is loosening its previously closed standards. The Workgroup is trying to create best practices that will allow users to access their friends and media across many applications.
Some good links on the topic:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/this-day-will-be-remembered-facebook-google-and-plaxo-join-the-dataportability-workgroup/
http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/08/facebook-google-plaxo-join-data-portability-lots-of-hype-even-more-work-to-do/
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Here are some statistics on Facebook and MySpace. It is amazing how face these sites have grown and continue to grow. Some highlights I found very interesting:
Facebook
* Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States (comScore)
* More than 65 billion page views per month
* More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
* Over 7,000 applications have been built on Facebook Platform
* 100 new applications added per day
* More than 60 million active users
* An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
* More than 14 million photos uploaded daily
* No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)
* Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined (comScore)
MySpace
* 100 billion rows of data
* 14 billion comments on the site
* 20 billion mails on the site total
* 50 million mails per day (more than Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google)
* 10 billion friend relationships
* 1.5 billion images
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
This is a great blog post I came across.
Facebook or LinkedIn: Which one should you join? posted on SocialMediaToday by Krishna De.
More and more social networking sites sites continue to pop up each week, the question truly becomes how many can one person handle? I know I am already starting to get overwhelmed and I primarily use Facebook, LinkedIn, blog (in several places, including here) and Twitter. The questions becomes what is right for you? This blog posting does a good job of explaining the main differences between Facebook and LinkedIn in a simple way, while pointing out that like snowflakes, no two social networking communities are the same. You need to undersand what you hope to gain from a social network before you join. That will help you know if you are joining the right one.
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
This was posted on Go2Web2 this morning and was very funny, so I had to share. I personally doubt Facebook has the staying power of 50 years, but if it does, we are all doomed. The banner ad for Werther’s Originals is priceless.
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
In our never-ending search for ways to improve our clients’ web-presence, we are entering the world of Facebook. Currently, we have two Facebook applications under development. These initial applications are being designed to be fun, viral, interactive games. While these initial applications are primarily aimed at exploring and familiarizing ourselves with the Facebook platform, we see this as a new realm ripe for Organic viral marketing applicable to all of our existing clients.
Since Facebook opened up their API to 3rd party application development earlier this year, the application market has been flooded with new applications. Most of these applications are simply fun ways of interacting with your friends on Facebook. However, as we gain experience and familiarity with the Facebook medium we are interested in providing an additional level of viral marketing to the applications we develop for our clients. With more than 35 million users, Facebook provides amazing opportunities for reaching a major new user base and Indigio is positioned to provide access to that market.
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
I saw an interesting article on Zeldman about Blue Beanie Day. Apparently Douglas Vos, creator of Facebook’s Designing With Web Standards Group has put together this event to raise awareness of the importance of standards on the web. According to Vos:
Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content. … Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr.
It’s an interesting idea and I hope that many partake. I know I will.
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
Google dealt a clean slap to the facebook yesterday with it’s acquisition of Myspace, Bebo, and Six Apart for it’s Open Social initiative. They join Orkut, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Salesforce (that makes me happy), Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as Google’s new partners in the battle against Facebook.
I’ll avoid the obvious anti-trust jabs and say that Open Social looks like a pretty solid platform. Orkut has opened a limited sandbox for developers to start getting their feet wet with what is sure to become as ubiquitous as, well, Google.
