SocioApps - News

Virgin annouce social media integration for new site and facebook connect for Planes!

2009-02-26T10:00:00Z

Virgin announce a new site that will exhibit social media “best practices”: and they will also integrate facebook connect with onto their flights. Allowing users to post real time information back to their facebook profiles.

Virgin just announced at the Future of web apps conference that they would be releasing a new virgin.com site that would allow users to post, and integrate information from their networks.

The really big news however was that they intended to integrate facebook connect as part of their in-flight services. Allowing users to post status updates and real-time news about themselves and what they were doing to Facebook (and potentially other sites and networks).

It is part of a trend we are seeing where corporations begin to see the value of social networking

Full news here

UX Corner - Proper mobile design.

2009-01-09T12:18:00Z

We attended a UXCORNER event yesterday. There was a strong focus on mobile devices. We expect to attend again!

We attended a User Experience meet on thursday the 8th of January. The meetup had been organised by a team that included (among others) Matt Goddard and Samuel Serra. The event was held at Sun CBC. It was title Beyond the browser: Usability in mobile interaction design

The main focus was on the mobile user experience with presentations from:

Scott Weiss – Human Factors International. Author Handheld usability – Mobile 2.0 and usability
Tom Hume – Future Platforms – Knitting design and development together
Antony Ribot – Ribot – Intricacies of design for small screen devices

All speakers were excellent with Tom Hune being particluarly honest about the problems designers encounter in prototyping for large projects and Scott Weiss being blunt about what he thinks is wrong with User Experience design today.

Among the notes we took:

A bad intial mobile experience of an application can turn a potential user off for life, there are no second chances.
Mixit is one of the largest mobile social networks in South Africa where the main/only method of reaching the internet is via mobile.
Minimise surprises for clients; hence the importance of prototyping.
Use habits that a user has already learnt in designing your application. This goes for any application, mobile or otherwise.
Mobile design isn’t about making things smaller. Very often its about making them simpler and ‘cleaner’.
Minimise the sub-conscious questions that a user would ask. Intuitivity is underrated.
Latency is key and users dont tolerate it in mobile apps.
Dashcode is an uderrated tool for mobile (and in general applications) prototyping.
There is always a prototype vs wireframe argument. You need both.
User testing is very important. If the application doesn’t change in this period, then you are doing something wrong.
Pixar culture underrated.

I’ll add some pics to this later.

Happy New Year, New Socioapps site

2009-01-07T18:56:00Z

Happy 2009 and a few announcements from socioapps. Including our twitter account and details on a new home site and products.

Happy 2009. Just a quick post to infrom you that you can now follow us on twitter here and that we will be updating the main site soon to reflect our full range of services and to showcase some of the socia l web tools we’ve built/used the last few months.

Thursday Read.

2008-09-24T23:32:00Z

A selection of online articles for your thursday read.

Myspace launch a DIY service for serving ads. On first read it looks like an adsense solution squarely aimed at the business community:

Users can choose to either upload their own ad or create one using MySpace’s system. After selecting from a few dozen templates and uploading an image to place in the ad, users get to select their target audience: gender, age, region, city/state, and interests. For instance, you could target your ad to women ages 27-52 who live in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and who love the book Brave New World.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this, what is particularly encouraging is the level of detail afforded the adbuyer. We do wonder what protections Myspace has built into the user side and what the business strategy is behing this. Time will tell….

Myspace finally launched its music service. What was unclear was whether they had finally managed to solve their ‘EMI problem’:http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/20/is-myspace-music-an-antitrust-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen/ . We’ll post updates on this tomorrow.

Sunday Remainders

2008-09-21T22:56:00Z

A collection of articles/posts on the social networking world on the 21st of september.

Myspace music is set to launch next week. The venture is already valued at $2bn but there is some concern that it is an anti-trust action waiting to happen. That concern is mirrored here and here

A good look at how teens use the 2 biggest social networking sites out there.

A facebook campaign inspires an anti crime march.

Apple recalls defective Iphone adapters.

and some news that should alarm Iphone developers; Apple bans an iphone application from competing with Mail.app.

Facebook's Iphone App.

2008-08-07T12:44:00Z

Facebook’s Iphone Application.

Facebook have launched an Iphone application. It has already garnered a million users .

IPhone Development tips

F8 08 Summary

2008-08-07T12:08:00Z

On the 23rd of July 08, facebook held their annual showcase with the developer community. In the past its often been used to make major announcements that affected the platform. This year’s event was held at the San Francisco Design Center 635 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94301. Below is a summary.

The tickets for this year’s event sold out very very quickly, meaning we were not able to get any tickets. We did however follow the proceedings online . In the past this event had always been something to look forward to; it was very often a way for Facebook to announce big changes. In that regard this year was a disappointment . The only announcement of note was the decision by facebook that they were going to enable facebook connect on the Iphone (something that had been widely anticipated).

The whole event is summed up in the Keynote address given by Mark Zuckerberg. Here is a writeup

Video below:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

The End.

Reporting on Mashed08.

2008-07-09T08:49:00Z

As some of you know, we at SocioApps attended the Beeb’s Mashed08 event held on the 22nd of June. Here a composition of reporting on the event.

How did it go?

In all we attended a few talks that we found promising. A list of all the talks are here .

Yahoo YUI

We got an insider’s look courtesy of Yahoo’s Chris Heilman (below) on what the YUI library is all about. Something we are looking to integrate into a few Django applications we are developing. Enjoy the video.

BBC iPlayer – under the hood

What was particularly encouraging about this is the dependence on Open Standards. We had the feel that the beeb is prepping this service for an API (which would be very good news indeed). We also got a feel for the dev process and resources they had in place. Increasing accessibility seems to be their mantra right now and they’ll be rolling out some upgrades to the service over the next few weeks. With some new atom feeds thrown into the mix as well.

The winning hack.

A collation of everything at Mashed can he found here but enjoy the winning hack below.

Until the next Mashed…....

SocioApps@MediaFutures

2008-06-23T07:42:00Z

We at SocioApps attended the BBC’s Mediafutures event at Alexandra Palace. A slew of talks about the future direction of media (new and old ensued). Some notes below.

The History and Venue:

Media Futures is an anuual, one day event organised by the BBC looking at the trends and dynamics of current media (both new and old) of which Facebook development and developement for other social networks plays a part. We here at SocioApps went along. The event was held at London’s Alexandra Palace

The Presentations:

An Overview here

Our Conclusions:

There were a bunch of wide randing discussions about what the popularity of media like Facebook and Myspace actually meant and whether there was still room for growth of theses of if a high water mark had been reached.

There was also a wide ranging discuss of what constituted the media. Current day tech allows any memeber of the public to become part of the media. With a simple Blog, anyone can self-publish.

Some Material:

Main Page Twitter

Social Media; June Update

2008-06-20T08:48:00Z

Social Media June Update.

Social Media Explained:

The guys at Common Craft are pretty good at these explanations

Google’s head honcho for all things social (Joe Kraus) discusses the future of the social web and how Google’s Friend Connect fits into the big picture.

Kraus talks about how social networking may be the “new black”, but connecting people on the web is not a new idea. A shift is occurring, however, from sharing information actively (emailing photos to friends directly) to sharing it passively (uploading those photos to Facebook where they will show up in friends’ news feeds). The “publish, then filter” mentality leads to more sharing because people don’t worry as much about appearing self-important.

The guys at Awareness look into looks into what the Social web can do for the enterprise.

Social media has many applications for a business or organization. From complex social networks or online communities connecting factions of a brand’s audience to relatively simple corporate blogs, the environment and tools before us enable businesses, large and small, to connect with consumers in compelling ways not seen before.

Monday Roundup.

2008-06-16T16:18:00Z

A roundup of Social Media news.

Myspace is undergoing a complete re-design:

Changes will include improvements to search and navigation, a new-look homepage, improved profile editing and a better video player, including support for high-definition programmes and full-screen playback.

The overhaul is seen as critical in enabling MySpace to wrest back some of its share of the social-networking market from websites such as Bebo and Facebook.

Ebay is Opening up its Seller’s tools as a platform (a la facebook).

Now they are expanding those APIs and asking Developers to build apps to appear within the eBay Selling Manager, which 700,000 or so large eBay sellers use to manage their listings and customer information. Until now, all of the tools in Selling Manager have been created by Ebay.

Facebook goes Open

2008-05-27T09:48:00Z

Facebook OpenSource their platform. Allowing any company to adopt the application publishing platform by mapping their API calls to the facebook platform’s.

Facebook Platform goes OpenSource.

Facebook have announced that they are going to OpenSource their platform. The platform is currently licensed by Bebo. This new move will allow any company to develop their own version of the facebook platform; allowing developers to port their facebook applications to those sites. This is a direct rebuttal to Google’s efforts to Open up the “Opensocial”www.opensocial.org platform to outside sites and developers.

Social Networking.

2008-05-20T09:48:00Z

A collection of noteworthy Social Networking articles on the 20th of May.

Social Networks Embracing Other Media.

Cyworld, Korea’s largest Social Networking site is integrating games and search functionality in a very big way. We;ve already begun to see something like this from Myspace “Music and video” and facebook “chat”. The overall aim is to find new ways of engaging users as they spend more and more of their time on social networking sites.

Facebook in Real Life.

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Salting the Web.

2008-05-19T16:53:00Z

Google announces a tool allowing data portability from social networks. Facebook and Myspace quickly follow with their own releases. We expect to see something from Yahoo on this.

Opening Up:

Google and Facebook are releasing tools that allow users to transfer their data between social networking sites. Myspace first released a tool for this last week. Facebook quickly followed suit.

Salting the Web:

Google release friend connect. Can argue its a clear indicator of where they see social networking going. With data portability, users also get choice in terms of devices and mediums they use to interact. Expect to see Yahoo doing similar things. Facebook and Myspace are already releasing their own versions.

Video Below:

Myspace Goes to Korea.

2008-04-15T09:05:00Z

Myspace release a Korean version of their site with an emphasis on its openness via OpenSocial. Myspace in an bid for growth is opening up the site to Korean users (with India in the pipeline).
What is particularly telling about this announcement is that they will be heavily promoting
the Open nature of their platform to spur user/developer adoption of OpenSocial.

From our point of view, there are only plusses to this move. As the currently english dominated Social
networks reach saturation point, the easiest way to acquire new users (and deny them to the competition)
is to go international is a big and relevant way. This opens up the avenues/oppourtunity of having applications
made in the English version being ported to the international versions.

Note that Facebook too has been going down this route with the (now finished) Spanish version.

There are more country specific versions in the works for these social networks and we'll definately be keeping an eye on these as they are released.

Hi5 goes OpenSocial

2008-04-01T09:16:00Z

Hi5 release their OpenSocial platform to the general public.

Yesterday, Hi5 released their OpenSocial platform to the general public. It joins Myspace and a few other sites in finalising their OpenSocial implementation. The first 100 approved apps will be given free hosting as well as free translation into spanish. There is one aspect of this announcement/implementation that make it different from some of the other touted social networks (Facebook, Myspace) out there. Hi5's main audience is based in Asia and Latin America. By extension the incentive to develop on this platform will probably come from developers/companies wishing to target this demographic. It remains to be see how this will bear out, but this is definitely good in terms of where the social web is headed.

The video below is from Hi5's OpenSocial Hackathon last month.

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Social Marketing Insights

2008-03-27T13:03:00Z

An Overview of how Social Marketing has worked in the US primaries.

Social Marketing has been used extensively and as never before in the US primaries this year; particularly within the Democratic party. Below is an overview.

Microsoft allows Contact Sharing.

2008-03-27T11:50:00Z

Microsoft signs a deal allowing contact sharing with 5 social networking sites. This is part of the Windows Live Data API. On the 25th of March. Microsoft announced that they have signed a deal with 5 social networking sites, allowing these site's users to share their information with Microsft (and Microsft's applications) in a secure way. The said sites are Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged. The service will be the Windows Live Data API.

We don't see this directly affecting the current dynamic with regards to social networking. It may however, be of note with the anticipated release of IE8 later this year. There is definately space for the integration of desktop and mobile applications with social networking. We see this initiative as helping that goal. Perhaps the biggest thing of note from this is that Facebook has embraced this, whilst saying no to OpenSocial. On the flip-side, Yahoo! (whom Microsoft is hoping to acquire) has signed up toOpenSocial.

Yahoo Joins OpenSocial.

2008-03-26T10:15:00Z

Yahoo joins the Google led OpenSocial initiative. In addition to this, OpenSocial has been spun off as an independent project. We see the standard becoming one of the main threads that make the social web. Yesterday (Weds. 25th), Yahoo announced that they were now going to be supporting OpenSocial. This latest development massively increases the range and scope of this project and its developement. To seal the deal, the OpenSocial project and all its associated code have been spun off into a separate independent entity called the OpenSocial Foundation and all its source code will be released under an open-source license. We see this as a major development, allowing anyone (savvy enough) to become involved.

Google have up till now had quite a few companies sign up to OpenSocial, but its implementation across several sites has been lacking. By contrast, the Facebook application platform has garnered a lot more developer interest and users. It seems very much like developers and users have found a way to use/ ear from facebook platforms. So far, this hasn't happened with OpenSocial. The numbers clearly bear this out. With this announcement, we see a consolidation.

There are now 2 very simple choices for social web application developers out there. Facebook or OpenSocial. Yahoo's official release doc can be found here.

Google's Social Graph

2008-03-17T15:18:00Z

Early last month, Google released a new API that allowed users to query for publicly declared connections between people. They do this by picking up on Xhtml friends Network (XFN) and Friend of a Friend (FOAF) tags on the world wide web. This approach allows Google to index social graphs of evryday activity on the wider web.

The video below explains the general gist, here at SocioApps, we are looking at ways of integrating this into some of the Facebook and OpenSocial Applications we currently have under development. Look to this space for further updates!

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Social Media Predictions.

2008-01-18T09:32:00Z

Social media 2008

Interview in which predictions are made on the current social media trend and how that might develop over 2008. We are particularly interested in the implications of this for tools such as Facebook and the OpenSocial platform. What is guaranteed is that the various social initiatives that we've seen over the last year will begin to "bleed" into each other and allow for the sharing of information across different networks.

New Year and Some News.

2008-01-18T09:30:00Z

New Years greetings and some news.

Happy New Year!!!

We start 2008 on a couple of notes. First are the obvious advancements that have been made in the code base for the OpenSocial Platform. We had a look over the Christmas period and are really liking the progress that has been made. Code has been brushed up and the API is looking smarter and more production ready. It is a platform we are hoping to release on soon. Watch this space.

The second note is the launch of Youpop which is going online today! Youpop is a versatile social rating widget allowing you to ask a question and post up media from Flickr, Youtube and Facebook among others. The widget is then embeddable in any of the social networking sites.

There is also an accompanying facebook application, integration between the Facebook application and the site allows you to log into the site and publish any youpop (including yours) to your facebook profile. Have a look.

Bebo's new API

2007-12-19T09:47:00Z

Bebo have announced a new API that is 100% compatible with the facebook API.

Bebo have announced that they are to release a new platform API (Application programming interface) that is a 100% compatible with the facebook API. They will also ensure that it is compatible with any changes facebook introduce to their API in the future.

This announcement is all the more surprising given that Bebo have already signed up to google's (competing) OpenSocial platform.. Bebo are aiming to have both platforms supported by early 2008.

Match.com and Facebook tie up.

2007-12-19T09:29:00Z

Match.com launches "little black book" application on facebook.

Match.com the online dating website has announced that they are launching an application next week on facebook called "little black book". Match.com hopes to take advantage of the obvious synergy between what they do and what the facebook platform can offer (trust). Its another example of what a great CRM tool the facebook platform can provide (when used properly).

The level of integration and trust that the facebook platform provides simply cant be replicated in any other context.This is something that we continually highlight to our clients here at SocioApps and here is hoping we see more and more examples of this. Its a proven model and we have no doubt Match.com's approach will reap dividends.

Another Bubble?

2007-12-11T08:37:00Z

A video from Richter Scales. Its theme is simple; are we in another bubble?

A friend Kindly directed directed me to this video on youtube. I have to say, I agree with all the arguments expressed in there

Facebook Garage London Nov. 28th

2007-11-29T07:21:00Z

We attended the facebook developer garage for London. Found it to be worth the time.

We attended the facebook garage for London on the the 28th of Nov. The main theme of the event was "Dont fail to scale". There were presentations from a number of participants mainly focusing on what to do to scale your application.

Some of the more notable presentations were from Dan Penguine, the creator of the facebook honesty box application. His talk focused on coping with the in-flux of users and the scaling issues that tend to come with successful facebook applications. He particularly focused on the challenges that come with hosting providers and what to look for when choosing one. The main thing I took from that was the cheapest hosting option is the cheapest for a reason. You need a hosting provider that will help you scale.

Another interesting talk (pitch) was that by Stewart Townsend of SUN. He outlined Sun's new strategy fro catering to the startup market. i.e SUN servers for < £1K and I have to say I was impressed. My perception of SUN (and Stewart alluded that this is what many think) is that SUN is a big corporate facing company. Startups generally come below their radar. Here's hoping this new approach will bear fruit. Overall, this was an engaging event, catering to a lot of tastes and we'll definately be at the next one.

OpenSocial Visit to Google HQ

2007-11-08T14:17:00Z

The SocioApps team visit Google to hear more about OpenSocial from the horses mouth!

We headed down to Google's London office last week to hear about their launch of OpenSocial, an API that lets developers create applications for multiple social networks. The API seems to be able to do most of core actions that the facebook API allows. These include posting to the mini-feed, sending notifications, posting to the profile page and retrieving friends' data. There have been some reports of the API being insecure with some hackers being able to hack applications and extract user data. Security concerns will have to be resolved before the community starts to take OpenSocial seriously.

Update, A few things we noted:

You could (very simply) describe OpenSocial as Google Gadgets for social networks. This works because the parties (Social Networks) that have signed up have agreed to become "Containers".

Google engineers are iterating very quickly. The version we saw was v0.41 and a week before it was v0.3.

No one in the room seemed to have realised that Google had announced a tie-up with MySpace earlier that morning.

A partner program with OpenSocial is possible.

OpenSocial

2007-10-31T13:52:00Z

An open standard for building applications for social networks initiated by Google.

Google has announced that they will be creating an open API to enable developers to write applications for multiple social networks using one API. Its currently called Open Social.

This makes sense since developers such as ourselves have to learn a new API for each social network that opens its platform. The downside however, is that by creating one API means that there will be differing restrictions on each social network and agreeing new functionality make take more time than on the Facebook API since multiple players are involved. SocioApps will certainly be taking a close look at the API when it is released tomorrow and hope to master it pretty quickly so that we can offer this as a service to our clients.

Update:

Google have just announced that myspace will be joining the OpenSocial initiative.

The structure of a large social network.

2007-10-30T09:43:00Z

A Simple Framework charting the mathematical structure of a large social network.

Conclusions:

Big Social Networks (a la facebook and Myspace) are highly clustered "small worlds".

There is a small average path length between clustered nodes (users).

There are many highly connected nodes (users) within these clustered networks. I.e super nodes, users that seem to know many other users but not necessarily interact with them.

Links formed between people newly acquainted via the web (i.e complete strangers on facebook or Myspace) are irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of activity is between users that already know each other in the real world. I.e you don't bother emailing or gifting or sharing applications with people you've only met on facebook. You only do this with your friends.

There are two overwhelming types of social linking at play. The network of friends strong enough to warrant an invite; and the network of acquaintances the user has judged useful enough to be included in their network. (This doesn't mean that they are friends).

There are 2 phases to a user's uptake in friends. The early phase (when the user has just joined) is dominated via the invite mechanism. I.e the user is looking for the real world links. Then there is a second phase where the user records acquaintances that are already on the network.

The average number of successful invitations will be close to 1.

The user's network is by no means monolithic. It is composed of a set of networks. The on-line network in time comes to represent a sub graph of the users real world network and acquaintances.

The activity between nodes (users) is the surest measure of how 'friendly' nodes are.

We have launched our website

2007-10-17T09:58:00Z

Our website is being launched. Our Website is launched!