The realtime fantasy adventure game is among Bigpoint’s most popular. The Flash game will be made accessible for all hi5 users without having to install a seperate application. So far the supported launguages are English, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Potuguese, Romanian, Russina, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Seafight is the lastest in a growing string of games included on hi5 and integrated with the social network’s own virtual currency. Having yet another popular game with which to apply the hi5 Coins is a revenue-generating strategy that both hi5 and Bigpoint can take advantage of. It’s a necessary shift in payment options, considering the platform approach hi5 is taking to its own growing virtual economy.

And it makes things a great deal easier for end users, especially if they’re given a certain amount of money from their parents with which to spend in a given environment. The conversion to virtual currency means that parents and users have more control over how their money is being spent. It’s something I’d love to see expanded even beyond social networking sites, including other game portals. As larger corporations such as Google and Yahoo begin to invest research and development into virtual economies, I anticipate a similar method will be applied to portals such as Yahoo Games.

Nevertheless, hi5 has been quite aggressive in its effort to establish its own game channel and virtual economy for the purpose of retaining users, their time spent within the hi5 environment, and the monetary exchange that takes place within hi5. While Facebook and MySpace have been discussing virtual economies for years, and are slowly finding the best ways in which to implement such marketplaces into their own social networks, hi5 has taken a rather decided course and it’s one that is heavily tied in with the social gaming industry.

Since launching its virtual currency and building out its game channel, hi5 has gained several partners for its larger initiative. An important aspect of this push is in regards to alternative revenue streams, as well as the creation of more engaging environments for online users. The rsult is a better mechanism for marketers and advertisers, as well as more direct sales to users, as they can purchase virtual products through their social network.

What’s this really mean? In Meebo’s long-standing effort to expand its own network, web presence and visibility, the integrated communication tool has launched several tools and gained several partners, many of which have teamed up with the company for marketing purposes. This is in part due to the fact that Meebo’s integrated communication tools enable brands to connect directly with consumers through multimedia brand messages, chat, and advertisements. On the consumer end, these communication tools provide great channels for product and brand discussion as well as valuable feedback that marketers can use in their larger data pools.

This also appears to be another step towards Meebo’s larger goals of becoming a mainstay and standard in the way of web communication, especially when it comes to enterprise and advertising purposes for social media integration. In the past few weeks Meebo launched an upgraded browser toolbar that lends itself to an interesting manner by which Meebo can better facilitate web content for users. This is something brands will eventually be able to take more advantage of. It’s also a method that many advertisers are leaning towards, as display ads and basic widgets are less and less effective and integrated applications that leave a great deal of the interaction to end users is more conducive for leveraging the social web.

Stepping up its advertising game also means that Meebo needs to increase the tools and feature set it makes available to clients and marketers by way of analytics and tools. To this end, Meebo is also offering a guarantee for marketers that users will engage an ad inside the Meebo experience spending a minimum of 30 seconds with the creative, or Meebo will make up the time spent with complimentary media.

So a bigger, badder advertising platform, an improved feature set, a wide array of publisher partners and a “money back” guarantee means that Meebo is pretty confident about the success rates of its new partner network. Launching today, time will tell how well Meebo can hold up to these claims. With long-term goals of providing real-time communication for all web users for any reason possible, advertising and its partner network is only one aspect of Meebo’s company and overall strategy. But as the years pass, its ad network becomes increasingly important to Meebo’s business model, an providing integrated ways in which marketers can push their campaigns means that Meebo is at least looking to stay ahead of the curve.

Managed through a widget, visitors to your website can say in 140 characters what they think of your product or service. If the concept of garnering feedback directly from your site sounds familiar because of a certain side tab that became popular, you’ll be happy to know that TwiFeedback uses a similar tab that appears on your website. Non intrusive but inviting nonetheless, clicking on this tab will open up the TwiFeedback widget.

The widget invites users to leave their feedback via a tweet, which comes pre-populated with your corresponding Twitter username and a respective hashtag at the start of the tweet. Once a site visitor types in their tweet, they’ll be redirected to their Twitter homepage where they can hit send. Now they’ve created a tweet and you have more brand-related fodder to go along with your Twitter community. In terms of this Twitter community, the related tweets that others have left in regards to your brand will display on the widget as well.

Too add to the feedback capabilities of content coming through your TwiFeedback widget, there’s a voting capability for site visitors to vote up or down on tweets that others have left. This gives you feedback about your feedback. Useful for things like feature requests and related content. This is also a good feature to have as it realy looks to the community for a broader way of offering up feedback, and encourages those that do not want to tweet about your product to still contribute their thoughts on your brand in a comprehensive manner.

What appears to be missing is a moderation tool for selecting which community tweets show up on the widget. Some brands may be uncomfortable with an unfiltered stream of feedback that’s directly accessible from their own website. But a brand that’s good at managing itself will likely be able to handle negative tweets anyway.

Currently in private beta, TwiFeedback has given us 500 invites to test out the service. If you’d like to give it a try, use the invite code BETAONE for your test account.

For Tapjoy, the inclusion of Offerpal’s monetization platform means that the company can offer a range of new features for its own clients. This holds especially true as Tapjoy already benefited from creating package deals that encompass advertising and monetization options through companies such as Google. As a core focus for Tapjoy’s SDK is to enable developers to profit from their iPhone apps, broadening options towards this end is in the best interest of Tapjoy.

Offerpal Media has extended its services to the iPhone earlier this year, and in an effort to make itself more accessible to a wide array of iPhone developers, Offerpal has teamed with an established SDK provider. A similar tactic was used by Offerpal in other areas of virtual goods monetization, as the company teamed with IMVU this year as well.

This is the latest in a string of announcements from Offerpal Media, which has been aggressively seeking to grow its monetization platform. Likely due in part to its recent infusion of cash to the tune of $15 million, the virtual goods monetization strategy is becoming an attractive alternative for generating revenue.

Offerpal is doing what it can to take advantage of this current trend, rolling out custom analytics features for clients and leveraging key partnerships such as the one with Tapjoy during a pivotal point in iPhone’s time line, given that the new OS 3.0 became available to consumers just this month.

That’s a good point of view to have, considering the dominance of Apple’s iPhone, and the multimedia support mobile devices need for creating, sharing and consuming content. With what appears to be a main tab for social networking, a menu of socially integrated applications are ready and able to connect you with your web world.

It’s a concept that hasn’t been lost in the past few years, only catalyzed thanks to leaps made by Apple and other companies such as Nokia. With furthered support frm the device makers themselves, it’s becoming infinitely easier for social networks to lobby for prominent placement on mobile devices.

The same once rang true for computer desktops, where a pre-installed application could catapult a software company into fortune and fame. Over the past few years we’ve seen several steps taken on the sides of device makers, social network owners and mobile network providers to offer socially aware services that will ultimately benefit consumers.

Just as important is the matter of Motorola’s platform, should the device creator decide to battle against the likes of Apple, Android and Nokia in this realm. Mobile platforms are gaining ground as a viable economy, stimulating growth for developers and advertisers in their rising ability to generate revenue.

This is all quite reflective of a shift we’ve seen for pre-installed mobile apps, as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft battle it out for the placement of their own services to direct users to their own products accordingly, namely through search. With the push for socially aware apps to be pre-installed on mobile devices, we’re likely to see mobile search taking advantage of this shift as well.

In order to achieve this, Digsby has redone a great deal of its performance optimization, reducing overall CPU usage by nearly 50%. File transfers have also been improved for AIM, ICQ and MSN. Support has also been added for MySpace status updates, and for the invisible status on Gtalk.

Other improvements for Digsby relate to the IM tool’s usability, adding a shortcut option for easily searching your buddy list or the web, and a new option for IM windows to be initiated in hidden status and blink the tray icon, instead of opening up an entirely new window. The infobox has also been updated so that its interface is the same as the IM window, making it faster and easier to navigate. The icing on the cake would have to be the four new emoticon packs Digsby has added, so your true personality can shine through.

As an all-inclusive messaging tool, encompassing email, instant messaging, status updates across various social networks and more, Digsby has long been working towards becoming a centralizing tool for nearly everything you do to communicate with others online. In order to further establish itself as a strong front-runner, continued updates such as Facebook chat support and infrastructure support are quite necessary.

For some, these current updates may not seem like a huge deal. For others, the simple ability to appear invisible on Gtalk while using Digsby may be the only selling point they need. But whatever the case may be, Digsby is one of the more usable and versatile desktop clients out there.

Are you a Digsby user? Let us know what you think of the changes.

For now I’m taking it one step at a time because after spending two years as a hare, I’ve begun to see the value in becoming a tortoise. I have a number of speaking engagements lined up over the next few months which include seminars about leveraging social technology for brands. What’s most important is having a library of content to integrate into those presentations, which is why I wanted to launch New Media School.

There’s a serious void in the market for educating companies and executives how to take advantage of these new technologies most effectively. I think the largest void is in education from true experts. While numerous companies offer education services, very few have taken the time to master the tools. Those that have mastered the tools are not willing to take the time to provide thorough education services. It’s the everlasting catch-22 of the world of education.

It’s not to suggest that great services don’t exist already … they do! The demand is too large though and with technology evolving quicker than educational programs, we need solutions. I’m hoping that New Media School will serve as one of those solutions and over the coming months we’ll roll out new programs that I hope you can be part of!

If you are interested in teaching your own course or want to partner in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

MySpace will be refocusing its international operations around a smaller number of territories, with plans to “retain a robust global consumer presence,” according to the statement sent out by MySpace. While this plan is still subject to consultation with the international employees in various countries, MySpace is really looking to make a uniform move here across all the countries in which MySpace has a presence.

Should everything go according to plan, MySpace will cut down its international staff from 450 employees to 150, closing at least 4 offices outside the U.S. London, Berlin and Sydney would become the promary hubs for the reorganized and tightened regions, through which the bulk of MySpace’s international activity would run. That leaves several other offices, from Canada to Argentina, Italy and India, in dire straights as they will be under review for restructuring.

This is another major move for MySpace, as the social network has spent the past two years aggressively building up its international presence, seeking growth outside of the U.S. in order to maintain a high level of dominance in the social networking realm. One of MySpace’s core strategies in its global push was to set up sites as well as physical offices for a country-specific version of MySpace, tying in with local culture and events.

Having to step back from its international push is indicative of the state of affairs over at MySpace, especially as other social networks such as Facebook are increasing their presence around the globe. As MySpace is still looking to grow in terms of its reach and user base, the whittled down staff will be left with an increase of work and a lot of pressure to revolutionize much of what MySpace has become. See here for more thoughts on MySpace’s future.

So how does it work? Users earn points redeemable within the game by recruiting new users via Twitter. It’s yet another exchange-based system that has proven successful, to certain degrees, on Facebook. In exchange for a user participating in certain offers and actions, they earn points and other benefits to be used in the game or social network. As Twitter continues to prove useful as a distribution platform, taking advantage of its cross-device access and usability, there are other “platforms” that are cropping up in order to build on that spreading reach.

The game 140 Mafia already leverages the Twitter format, as it is a text-based game. Level up in the Mafia family in order to gain property, position and wealth. For the Mafia game and Super Rewards in particular, the model used for monetizing Twitter is one that is very similar to what has been readily proven within Facebook applications, by way of games and virtual environments.

What remains to be proven, however, is whether or not this type of rewards application will work on a microblogging platform such as Twitter. On the one hand, recruitment is often considered spammy within a social networking environment and has been curtailed with various regulations. Spam on Twitter has already begun to run rampant, and any institutionalized application that monetizes itself via Twitter will need to be careful to avoid becoming perceived as spam.

On the other hand, monetizing virtual goods is becoming a saturated market, and we’re seeing a good amount of the rewards-based monetization move into the mobile realm. This all becomes particularly noteworthy as news of Twitter’s possible revenue plans coming through branded microblogs for corporate organizations. It seems that there are several emerging ideas being implemented towards the monetization of Twitter.

This new production shop was chosen by creative production company thelab as its exclusive digital arm, introducing a wealth of experience in online and social media optimization for advertising purposes. Below is an interview with Abelson, who talks about Samson’s Barber, its relationship with thelab, and the future of online marketing within social media.

Kristen Nicole: Could you tell me a little bit of background behind Samson’s Barber, and thelab?

Jeremy Abelson: thelab is a creative production company, and Samson’s Barber is an innovative production shop that serves as thelab’s standalone digital arm.

thelab was built to seamlessly integrate with marketers and advertising agencies to help create, develop, manage and deliver any kind of content. Through experience gained from working intimately with clients, we have come to understand the need for true integration between creative and production, which was how the partnership with Samson’s Barber was born.

Together, we represent three independent creative agencies produce all studio, retouching, pre-press and distribution services on-site and have best in class programmers (.net primarily), art directors, flash developers, search engine optimizers and strategists. We also handle web development, application/widget development, social media marketing, search engine optimization and digital strategy.

Kristen Nicole: How does the partnership between Samson’s Barber and theLab work out?

Jeremy Abelson: Samson’s Barber is the digital arm of thelab. There are companies that preach integrated production, but we actually execute it. In many cases, multi-media production happens in a sequential order to ensure consistency. We are able to drastically cut time, costs and asset management issues through integrated and simultaneous production across media, under one roof.

We manage the production from the original creation of approved assets until final delivery of executions. Photo assets are retouched and design assets are created in house. Those assets are utilized within digital executions (flash, etc), in print executions, as the foundation of 3D elements, within animations, etc.

Kristen Nicole: What’s the most impactful aspect of your partnership?

Jeremy Abelson: In conjunction with enabling our agency partners to integrate their production by using one production partner for all creative executions, we have seen the greatest value/impact through our onsite relationships. We take a very unique approach to in-sourcing our creative/production resources that are entirely focused on client needs.

Kristen Nicole: What is the partnership doing to redefine digital media production?

Not only is everyone claiming integration or attempting to integrate, but people are also looking to define what integration truly is. Can a creative ad agency be responsible for “integrating production?” They might have integrated producers and digitally minded creatives, but they aren’t handling production and in most cases are outsourcing production to a number of specialty production shops.

In addition to integrated production, we also integrate within digital. As digital expands, so does the facets of each digital execution and it is crucial that they all work together. More importantly, brands can and should take advantage of and exploit all effective digital promotion options.

Basically, if you take a promotional website or microsite, it is very valuable to spend the marginal extra dollars to distribute that site messaging and interactivity through mobile, social networking sites, social media sites, social book marking sites, not to mention a media campaign. All of these efforts need to work with and for one another. And, for this to happen effectively there needs to be an integration of effort between true specialists in web development, search engine optimization, social media marketing, digital strategy and media along with an amazing production manager. Without it, you leave so much value on the table.

Kristen Nicole: As a young but experienced entrepreneur, how do you feel about the changing wave of digital media and its impact on the entertainment and marketing industries?

Jeremy Abelson: This is a big question.

Personally, I feel very fortunate to be my age at this time of such rapid shifting in the media landscape. I can understand it and naturally keep up with it. What was current 12 months ago is now archaic from a marketing standpoint. If someone plans a year-long strategy, by the end of the year the strategy is passé.

From a tech standpoint, years ago people switched from traditional media to digital media because of the timeliness, immediacy and on-demand nature of information access online. Today digital media platforms need to offer more than the transmission of information, people now expect true engagement. Not just the ability or option to comment on a post, but the ability to converse with the information provider, subject and fellow readers.

I love how shareable media has become. I recently heard someone say that if something is newsworthy it will find them. Not only are people actively sharing media between their community, but recently, people have become reliant on their community for the transmission of information. The impact potential is naturally increasing and reaching people is becoming more challenging and exciting to keep up with.

Kristen Nicole: Where do you see yourself and your companies being the most innovative?

Jeremy Abelson: First and foremost, our ability to work with agencies and the way we work with them. We want to break the mold of the vendor and look to create long term mutually beneficial partnerships beneficial to production managers, top creatives and heads of agencies managing P&L’s.

Also, we’ve been successful and innovative with our presence in the calculated viral/content distribution space. Viral needs to be a combination of intelligent and poignant viral content/strategy creation, technical optimization of that content, effective research about opportunities and controlled response within target populations, technical distribution and syndication of content and top-of-the-line online PR.

Kristen Nicole: What are your ultimate goals for yourself personally and Samson’s Barber?

Jeremy Abelson: The ultimate goal is to reach a critical mass of 60-100 people effectively doing a very steady amount of production, and then take a percentage of company resources to start incubating new businesses. We have seen great value in practicing what we preach. Putting our practices, tests, experimentations and creativity into something tangible shows clients that we have a unique understanding of business in general, as well as their business and core objectives specifically.

Months after raising $15 million in funding, a new update from Offerpal extends more customization capabilities for clients. In what appears to be an enhanced dashboard option, Offerpal is launching a virtual currency analytics package for social applications and destination sites. Participants can track activity as well as monetization performance for their specific campaigns.

Custom options enable publishers to break down their data based on User Levels, character type, install source, account age, and more, ranging from basic to more complex demographics. This new tool is offered free to publishers using Offerpal Media’s Managed Offer Platform for their monetization purposes.

This all goes for tracking actual ad behavior, including revenue, impressions, unique visitors, offer clicks, completions, eCPM, click-through and conversion rates, and revenue and earnings per click. It’s a lot to think about–Offerpal has over 1,000 separate parameters by which you can drill down into your user data. Given the growing need to utilize multiple methods for advertising and revenue-generation, so many parameters along with added custom options are increasingly important for socially integrated applications.

Of course, the largest benefit of being able to customize so much of this metrics data is the fact that a publisher is more readily able to improve their virtual goods economy. From the placement of certain offers within a virtual environment to other targeting methods, the ability to self-regulate and modify aspects of the monetization platform is the next major trend for services like Offerpal.

To a certain degree, such customization options present themselves as forms of recommendations, empowering publishers with a set of tools necessary to continuously tweak their implementation of Offerpal’s solutions. A handful of other major monetization platforms, including Twofish and Super Rewards, have added custom options for their publishers as well.

This may seem like a minor update, but let’s think about this. Who wants to wait nearly 30 seconds for anything to load? And if you’re already an iPhone user then you’ll appreciate an application’s ability to use the device’s maps directly. More specifically, we’re talking about a speed trap application. The faster you can search for speed traps, the better off you’ll be. And for those that actually contribute to Trapster, there’s nothing more discouraging than a slow load time when you’re ready to report a new speed trap.

The second update for Trapster’s iPhone app is the option to receive push notifications, which means you can better focus on the road while you drive. Kind of. The biggest benefit of Trapster’s push notifications is the ability to receive them without running the actual application. For the iPhone, this is kind of a big deal since the device doesn’t support background running applications. With this particular update Trapster no longer has to rely on using text messages for alerting drivers without having the app running, which is more cost effective on Trapster’s end.

For the iPhone OS 3.0, the biggest changes from a platform standpoint include the added support for integrating developer’s applications. While not immediately recognizable to many end users, the ability to mor readily create applications and distribute them on Apple’s mobile platform creates a great deal of value to end users when it’s all said and done.

Given Trapster’s recent updates, which include integration with Facebook Connect as well as Twitter. Such ongoing updates have helped Trapster gain 400,000 traps in its worldwide database, with over 1 million users. As over half of Trapster’s user base consists of iPhone users, it’s also easy to see why the company is so excited about the new iPhone OS 3.0 and its new feature set.

At EA, Pleasants acted as the President of Global Publishing and Chief Operating Officer, giving him a very high level perspective on the gaming industry as a whole. Some benefits of EA are its established presence in its respective industry, as well as its involvement with multiple aspects of gaming overall. Having witnessed the recent changes to the gaming industry over the past several years, EA has managed to shift along with the times, even trying its hand at online social gaming.

While EA hasn’t always had the best success in the online social gaming realm, the experience for Pleasants as well as the whole of the gaming industry offers a lot to learn from. Playdom, formerly known as You Plus, launched as a social gaming organization and has been heavily involved within social network application platforms as part of its business model.

Having since expanded from MySpace to Facebook, Playdom is clearly seeking a great deal of growth and visibility. Integrating with social networks on this level presents access to an established user base and the cross-network approach that Playdom has moved towards is a necessity for many applications, and can be particularly beneficial for social gaming.

For a more in depth look at Playdom, the company’s business model and monetary approach to integrated social gaming, see here for Nick’s interview from earlier this year.

As one of the minds behind the patented process that powered Summize, the Twitter search engine that was acquired by the microblogging platform and is now Twitter search, Campbell has long-standing ideas on how search and discovery should operate on the web. He’s seen the evolution of data-sharing as it pertains to things like news within he financial industry and has learned from organizations’ necessity to reach that “aha” moment as quickly as possible. It’s that “aha” moment Collecta is trying to give you, for any topic, in a very short amount of time.

Instead of focusing on Twitter or FriendFeed, Collecta performs its real time search for the wider web. From Wordpress to Flickr, Collecta searches comments on blog posts, images, and more. When you perform a search, you’ll find your initial results along with a time stamp displaying the time your search was initiated. Watch the page as it adds more results, each of which can be expanded to show the details of your search query.

Searches can be paused, which is particularly helpful for hot search topics that will generate a great deal of content in a short amount of time. There are also filter options for search, which allow you to select what type of search results you’d like to see; stories, images, comments or updates.
The launch of Collecta couldn’t come at a better time. With all that’s going on with Twitter and the political situation in Iran, the proof of concept has nearly been confirmed before Collecta even opened its doors to the public, as real time search has become a poignant aspect of social media in this particular case.

And with the launch of other Google alternatives such as Microsoft’s Bing, I couldn’t help but wonder at the long term goals of Collecta. One such question I had towards this end was whether or no Collecta would be including ranked search items along with its real time data. Campbell, who doesn’t deny the usefullness of ranked search data, says that Collecta will be responding to the needs of users and the search industry overall, and could very well include plans for a combo approach to ranked and real time search results.

I was shocked to hear a Social Data Cloud (SDC) is in full operation, created by Freedom OSS using Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology. CloudMQ is making social data available “in the cloud”, and all the major social networks are participating in the exchange.

Social Data Cloud (SDC)

Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all publish data about changes occurring on their social graphs via CloudMQ. FriendFeed and other aggregators then subscribe to this data. Social networks can even subscribe to each others’ data. CloudMQ is the first Social Data Cloud (SDC), and is the beginning of a trend in which all social graph information will be made available real time, on a granular level “in the cloud”.

The emergence of this Social Data Cloud (SDC) raises important questions about user privacy, social network collaboration and future industry business models.

CloudMQ and the Social Web Ecosystem

Perhaps to avoid the bandwidth costs resulting from web page scraping by aggregators (FriendFeed , Twine and Mixx) and spider traffic from search engines (Ixquick, Google), data is now being automatically broadcast by the leading social networks to select partners. Apparently, all major social networks participate in this CloudMQ exchange, accessing and providing massive amounts of real time information about the social graph. The actual data made available to CloudMQ differs by social network, as each have different rules for what profile changes, etc. should be released into the exchange.

Future Impact of the Social Data Cloud

The emergence of a Social Data Cloud will impact both users and social business models.

Users’ privacy expectations are likely out of sync with a massive, AWS powered distribution of their every action into a Social Data Cloud. Users may not expect their social activities to be broadcast this way, but it is certainly how the industry is evolving. Social web business models are moving toward an open model where they feed a Social Data Cloud, and various partners access and syndicate that data.

Facebook Example: Users Resist Openess

Facebook users seem to cry foul every time there is a change that helps Facebook to communicate their information to other Facebook users and/or business partners. Facebook had protests when launching mini-feeds, ran afoul of user expectations with Beacon and got stopped from making a Terms of Service change that gave Facebook the right to exploit users’ content across all platforms, in perpetuity.

Facebook Example: Opening the Business Model

Facebook left other social networks in the dust primarily by opening its user data to third parties, namely Facebook application developers. Users didn’t complain about that move toward openness. Instead, Facebook rose to become the #1 social network globally.

Facebook did not open its business model enough, however. Twitter emerged into prominence with microblogging activity that is completely open, part of a “public timeline”. Facebook is responding in a number of ways, including the “everyone button” Nick reported yesterday.

Nick’s right, the “everyone button” primarily reflects some bizarre Twitter envy on the part of Facebook. But the “everyone button” also shows how immense the competitive pressure is to open up social platforms for more public consumption.

In other words, Twitter’s success is pressuring Facebook to release more information into the Social Data Cloud.

Silver Lining “in the Cloud”

What’s the silver lining? When Facebook steamrolled users’ expectations and chased Twitter’s open business model, it paved the way for new players rise to prominence in the social web landscape. These players are CloudMQ/ FOSS and Amazon Web Services – new entrants who are making the Social Data Cloud a reality.

AWS and CloudMQ take Messaging to the Next Level

I did a double take when I heard there is a messaging system operating on the scale of real time social graph data. Freedom OSS credits Amazon Web Services’s infrastructure on demand with making the CloudMQ service possible. CloudMQ’s Pub Sub model, when used for social data, occurs on an “Internet scale” that can dwarf the number of transactions in similar financial pub/sub exchanges.

Just imagine the amount of social data generated by status updates, user actions and profile changes that occur on social networks. As the social web grows, the amount of information that will be available in the future is mindboggling. Apparently, the cloud infrastructure of AWS is up to the challenge.

FOSS powers CloudMQ with AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure underlies FOSS’ CloudMQ innovation. AWS provides infrastructure on demand (access to as many servers as you need). AWS is a recent service from Internet retailer Amazon.com that makes Amazon datacenters available to software developers as a platform, and on a pay as you go basis. Amazon’s massively scalable processing power is enabling new business models like CloudMQ to emerge in the social web.

Many services you use everyday are actually powered by CloudMQ and AWS. FriendFeed now uses CloudMQ messaging services to drive real time aggregation of social graph data, a quantum leap beyond the 1X a day batch processing that preceded CloudMQ .

CloudMQ Social Web Data Exchange

CloudMQ is creating a large scale exchange for real time data under a “pub sub” model. Social networks are able to publish and subscribe (pub/sub) to data about changes to their respective social graphs. CloudMQ created a system for social networks similar to those in the finance industry, where players like stock exchanges make financial transaction data available to one another as fellow members of an ecosystem. Interested parties can then follow exchange data via a stock trade “ticker”.

CloudMQ makes information available programmatically (computer to computer), using enterprise software like JMS (Java Messaging Services) and web services like HTTP based REST APIs. If you would like to experience this and have the technical skills to do so, you can go to CloudMQ.com, provision yourself an account, and begin accessing the data.

Technical Terms for Understanding CloudMQ

Messaging Systems

Messaging systems are critical to corporations with huge IT departments. Messaging systems send messages that communicate between servers, applications and subcomponents within software programs. Messaging systems include MSMQ and JMS, and are expensive, complex pieces of software.

EDA – Even Driven Architecture

Event driven architectures are, quite simply, event driven. Every time someone updates their Facebook profile (the ‘event’), a message is sent to subscribers of CloudMQ. This is a quantum leap from batch processing, which communicates information in large batches – after long lag times.

Message Queuing as a Service (MaaS)

MaaS describes next generation messaging, like the large scale messaging infrastructure CloudMQ makes available from the cloud. Social networks use this MaaS product to both publish and consume social web data.

Pub Sub Bus

“Pub/sub message bus” is the technical term for systems that create a data bus (message loop) for publishing and subscribing to data from disparate transaction systems.

CloudMQ and the Future of Monetization

Could CloudMQ take social web monetization to a new level?

CloudMQ enables a fuller picture of users to emerge online. CloudMQ is designed to enable “Super Crunchers” to analyze users’ behavior across all the social networks in real time. For instance, marketers watching your behavior via updates to a mini-feed on their Fan Page on Facebook will also be updated about changes to your MySpace profile that indicate your interest in a Prius.

Reality Check?

I had a “Are you kidding me?” moment when talking to Freedom OSS CEO Joel Davne and Chief Architect Max Yankelevich at an AWS event in LA this week. I couldn’t believe that so much social data is already available to those in the know, and that the social network majors must be consuming each others’ data behind the scenes.

I would love reader feedback on the CloudMQ service, as it appears to be a “game changer”.
Please send usage experiences, technical insights or strategic thoughts.

It’s all about jet-fighting and flying aircrafts, complete with a variety of armed aircraft that are loaded with missiles and guns. There are radar-guided and heat-seeking missiles, and let’s not forget about the accellorameter, which has become a focal point for many iPhone games but have become signature for those created by SGN.

You can make it social by playing against others via wifi, and Bluetooth, which is a brand new capability for SGN in the iPhone OS 3.0 platform. It broadens the accessibility for multiplayer games over a mobile network, helping further develop the realm of social mobile gaming.

As one of SGN’s first new games built for the new iPhone OS 3.0, F.A.S.T. is able to combine many of the developer’s specialty features as well as the new options, including the Bluetooth integration, that was previously unavailable for game play. As SGN is also heavily involved with the cross-device approach to social gaming, we’re sure to see some interesting integration with mobile and web game play coming from SGN.

But as we see with the new iPhone, the major differences between mobile and PC are becoming more minuscule, especially when it comes to social gaming. It’s an evolution that’s been a long time in the making, and a combination that will greatly help both new and traditional media find a balance between usability, distribution and monetization in the end. SGN is one of the companies at the forefront of this particular trend and has recently brought on a new CTO for accelerated growth.

This is a major opportunity cost for iPhone app developers, especially as the mobile space is still burgeoning in the advertising realm. This is particularly true for iPhone apps, as the Apple device has become so prominent in the mobile space.

When signing up for AdWhirl, iPhone app developers are allowed to not only switch ad networks, but can take advantage of an auto-switch option provided by the meta-network. While automated, this option seeks higher returns on ad inventory, as multiple placement options are being utilized. So far, supported ad networks include AdMob, JumpTap, Videoegg and Quattro Wireless, with Google AdSense in the pipeline.

Touting the layoffs as a plan for restructuring the company in order to become more “innovative, efficient and entrepreneurial,” MySpace is letting go of 30% of its staff, whittling the company down to 1,000 employees. MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta was quoted as saying that the staff had become bloated, making MySpace hindered in the innovation company.

I wouldn’t say that MySpace was ever all that innovative, but it’s a widely recognized effect of large companies that need to constantly compete with smaller startups–the leaner and more nimble the company, the more quickly they’re able to adapt to changing environments in their respective industry.
As we’ve previously noted, this inability to make changes quickly enough to keep pace has been one of many ongoing issues for MySpace.

In light of widening platforms, changing trends, new ways of networking and modified advertising partnerships with large companies like Google, MySpace has been losing traction for some time now. While still dominant based on size alone, MySpace’s traffic has significantly decreased in the past year or so, making it difficult for MySpace to maintain an ad-based revenue model.

With the statements MySpace has made in regards to the layoffs, it’s evident that the social network is hoping to better compete in the space by working on product development and new ways of implementing the way in which users actually network on its site.

As I mentioned earlier this year, one way in which MySpace could improve its standing is to return some of its focus back to its core competencies. MySpace has tried its hand at several feature add ons as well as services and products, partly in effort to keep up with changing trends. This has been a blessing and a curse in its own right, as it clogs the channels of communication within MySpace, will creating a disparate environment for its users. The coming months will show what MySpace has in store for its newly trimmed company and if a comeback is in the cards for this social network.

In order to get stared, you sign in with your Twitter credentials. Then you can install the Amplify bookmarking addon to your browser. From there, you can select text to be clipped and shared. Tweeting content you find on the web is extremely simple with this tool, as is sharing conten throughout your social graph on Facebook.

Taking advantage of Facebook Connect, Amplify lets you share customized bits of the web on Facebook. The shared media will appear in your news feed, where most of your Facebook friends will see the shared content.

Of course one of the benefits of such a tool is that it minimizes the need for you to have multiple clipping tools in your browser. Instead of having one for Facebook, another for Delicious, and still others for FriendFeed and Tumblr, Aplify gives you multiple options in a single tool.

There are other services that offer similar capabilities–ShareThis is one of many tools that let you share web content across a variety of sites and networks. A key difference for Amplify is that you’re also able to archive your shared web content on Amplify’s site, with what the team calls a Clog. This is like a blog with a very ironic term. I imagine in the future we’ll see some additional features being added onto clogs, which could include practicalities like advanced search, real-time updates or custom filters, to name a few.

As far as business use goes, there seems to be some potential for Amplify, as many brands that are taking to the web need easily integrated tools for redistributing their content across the social web. While there doesn’t seem to be any particular features designated for just this, it’s something that both brands, advertisers and Amplify can keep in mind for future implementation.

Launching a couple of years ago, CollectiveX was among the first of the major services to offer free group collaboration products. With a distinct focus on professionals, CollectiveX’s feature set revolved heavily around action-oriented capabilities, and less on socialization. That being said, CollectiveX hasn’t seen the same success as some of its peripheral competitors such as Ning. While CollectiveX has been careful to distinguish itself from other self-sustained network creation sites, it’s clear that a new direction is necessary for the company’s long-term success.

Now named Groupsite, the changes made to the website itself remain mostly cosmetic. The focus of the company appears to remain the same–enable teams and organizations to leverage the power of social networking for the purpose of achieving common goals. This particular direction for CollectiveX, now Groupsite, was really pushed forward late last year when the company underwent a mini makeover, adding a series of new features to the site.

Will the re-branding work? We typically see more changes internally when a company completely re-brands itself, and that isn’t entirely the case with Groupsite. But the company is also announcing a new program designed for developer partners, which really highlights the fact that CollectiveX is looking to go in a new direction without veering away from its core product and competencies.

The new program is called the Groupsite.com Certified Partner Program, which is a selective partnership for developers, designers, trainers, social media consultants and community builders. The purpose of the program is to extend some of the features it already had to the most valuable of its users. While there haven’t been many details revealed for the new program, it appears to be a way to build a foundation for supporting power-users, further aiding in their Groupsite-specific needs for the creation, maintenance and efficiency of their groups.