Archive for: social networking
Facebook has unquestionably become a part of life for the majority of internet savvy people around the globe. Whether you’re a high school student using it to gossip with your friends, in your 30′s looking for old classmates, or an entrepreneur or bussiness owner publicizing your company, Facebook seems to have something for everyone.
I have always been savvy with technology and computers – I started working with my first computer at the young age of 8 and when I was 10, I taught myself how to program in BASIC literally overnight. For some reason, though, I didn’t immediately jump on the Facebook bandwagon the moment it became mainstream. It seemed silly, frivilous and simply trendy. I had been using MySpace and enjoyed the ability to control the look and feel of my page. I managed to find a few old friends on it, but most of them never posted anything. Mostly I just used my page as a personal blog to track my mundane life.
Then one day, I finally took the leap. I joined Facebook.
At first the pages looked dull and boring. A stark contrast to MySpace’s colorful pages, flashing blinkies and auto-loading music and videos. But what I quickly realized is that everyone I had on MySpace was also on Facebook and… guess what… they were actually posting! Next I realized that not only were my old friends there, but so were dozens more. To date I have connected with nearly my entire High School class, a childhood best friend I thought I would never find, old teachers, college friends, remote family and even old boyfriends (most of whom I was already still on speaking terms with). While these may not be people I feel the need to converse with on a regular basis, I feel priviliged that I can know what great (or terrible) things are happening in their lives, offer congratulations or condolenses, provide advice, wish happy birthday’s or just simply “Like” their status because… well… I liked it!
Today, like many people, I am hooked on Facebook. I have not only used it to connect with friends, but I have also used it to promote businesses I have been a part of and to follow other businesses I have interest in. And let’s not forget the oh-so-addicting games. So what if Facebook never existed? Where would be then?
Perhaps MySpace would have remained more popular. Or perhaps social networking as we know it today wouldn’t exist – at least not at the level it is now. Businesses would still rely solely on expensive advertising, email marketing and banner ads. While these methods are still used, Facebook’s advertising has been, in my experience, invaluable.
Some say people would call, write or speak in person more. But let’s be honest here, when was the last time you called someone just to update them on your life or find out about theirs? In High School? 15 years ago or so? People tend to stay in their own circles – in their comfort zone. Facebook allows us to open up and reach outside of our circle. It extends our comfort zone.
One thing is for certain, the world would be a less “friend”lier place. I never would have found my childhood friend or connected with classmates who had been outside my circle in High School. This also means I never would have intended to attend a reunion, which I now look forward to. Facebook has given me the ability to reach outside my daily circle and laugh, cry and vent with old and new friends alike. It has rekindled friendships and connected me with people I thought I would never get to talk to again.
So despite the addicting games and countless hours easily wasted away with Facebook, I am thankful it was created. I am thankful I took the leap. I am thankful for finding friends.
Case in point: Life just wouldn’t be the same without Facebook.
“Social” was very much the buzzword of 2010 and the eager smattering of the word throughout western media does not look to be ending any time soon.
Companies and their subsequent brands are realising that their audiences are largely located on social networking hubs online and are having to change their marketing tact to reflect the needs of their target markets. It has also been suspected for a while that social is becoming more important to the mysterious algorithm which determines the rankings of web pages in relation to certain search terms in Google. This was seemingly confirmed by the search engine’s recent announcement of Google “+1” (which provides SERPS based on a system similar to Facebook’s “Like” button) which is expected to be rolled out within the next 6 months.
Social elements have even been employed by the videogame industry too but for a different reason; to extend the longevity of interest in games. Well, at least one game anyway…
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (the 16th title in the NFS series) was released in November last year. The game’s trailer opens with the following statement:
“WARNING:
Those in relationships are advised against playing of this videogame.
Connecting to the NEED FOR SPEED AUTOLOG enables extreme competition through exact documentation of records and stats from your friends.
Hard feelings, creative profanity and grudge matches are likely.”
The NFS: HP Autolog comprises a “wall” akin to the type that you would find on social networking website Facebook but it is localised within the game only. When a players console is connected to the internet, Autolog automatically keeps connected friends updated with regards to new records set, career progress and challenges from peers. The feature also provides players with recommendations based on the latest activity of their friends. Players can also leave visual snapshots of in game moments on the wall and as well as comments next to the posts announcing newly achieved records. This makes for a dynamic competitive element and thus; helps longevity of interest in the game for as long as possible after their release date.
Autolog is to be featured in the next Need for Speed title (‘Shift 2: Unleashed’) but I am more interested to see whether other games developers follow suit and integrate this type of social arm into their own titles in the future. You think that they would when you consider the fact that Hot Pursuit won a BAFTA for its multiplayer element and the gaming press couldn’t commend the Autolog enough. NFS: HP is also the most highly critically acclaimed racing game of the decade (receiving an average of 90% in reviews) and it has shifted over 5 million copies to date, indicating that the feature was both embraced and loved.
Guest post by: Kat Cole is keen XBOX 360 gamer and thinks that her skills should not be underestimated simply because she is female! This year she is most excited for the release of the extremely long awaited Duke Nukem Forever which she has already pre-ordered from GameStop – even though it is not released until June!
Two years ago I wrote an article on the major updates made to the Flock browser and the impact it would have on social search
Flock, the social browser, is not built on Chrome.
and browsing. Since then Flock, the social browser, has always been that fringe browser that a few people used but didn’t grab the audience it was hoping for. What did help Flock was the fact that it was built on the Firefox browser framework which made it easy to develop for since it was open source. The Flock browser allowed for many unique plug-ins very similar to Firefox, thus offering a seamless user interactive experience with the added bonus of social networking.
This week a huge announcement was made that Flock was leaving the Firefox backbone and moving to Chrome. Touted as a social browser there is definitely something to love about it, but does it really know where it wants to go? The interface has undergone a drastic overhaul moving away from the complex menus and tabs and moving more towards a simple interface with fully customizable group and friend options.
In a world where social platforms like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and Hootsuite have been integrated into desktops and/or browsers, it feels like Flock is still running too many steps behind. Has Flock lost its luster? Perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself.
Hi5 have just acquired the gaming company ‘Big Six’ in order to flesh out the gaming sector of their website, a popular social network. Hi5 has been up an running for quite a few years now. Although it has never really taken off in Europe it is big in the US and is following the lead of others such as Facebook in terms of integrating gaming into their network.
As of now, 15% of their revenue comes from gaming by its users so I guess it makes sense to buy up a popular games developer in order to give the feature a shot of adrenaline. But they’ll have some stiff competition as the likes of FarmVille on Facebook have millions of active players.
An emphasis will also be put on developing the social network’s currency further to encourage people to spend their money there rather than on other networks.
“We are excited to be joining a company that shares our philosophy and vision for how social gaming will evolve,” said Kevin Gliner, co-founder and CEO, Big Six. “This deal is a perfect match because it enables us to accelerate our go-to-market plans by leveraging hi5’s huge global audience.”
Facebook, undoubtedly the biggest social network at the minute, has been promoting and ramping up its ‘credits’ system over the past year or so. These ‘credits’ afford users the opportunity to use real world money to purchase gifts, apps and songs which can either be used by themselves or given as presents to other Facebook users.
Now, they are allowing users to pay with PayPal, which has in excess of 80 million users. Previous to this one could only purchase Facebook credits via credit card or by using their mobile phone. By intergrading with PayPal, Facebook will undoubtedly allow more people to use the service, particularly young people who may not have access to a credit card themselves but do have a PayPal account.
Recent speculation as to whether Facebook would be opening their own payment service to compete with PayPal have pretty much been put to bed with this recent update. Many people said that you would soon be able to “pay with Facebook” on eCommerce sites. However, it seems unlikely that Facebook and PayPal would be cooperating on such a big revenue-making deal whilst one party was plotting the downfall of the other.
Screenjelly is perhaps the easiest screen recorder you'll ever use.
There are a lot of applications that claim to be the leader in capturing and recording your screen. Well I’m not making that claim with Screenjelly, but I will say it’s the easiest I’ve ever used.
Why?
Well unlike most other free screen capture applications, you don’t need to create a profile or sign up for an account. You also don’t need to download anything or log-in for access, you simply go to the site and start the process. The ease of use is a welcomed approach for new users who are not familiar with existing screen recording applications. There is little barrier into the service and users do not get mired down with having to check their emails to authorize emails and other such necessities when creating a new account.
Screenjelly also has a close relationship with Twitter, where you can easily share your recordings directly with your followers, and instantly get feedback. It’s pretty tempting if you’re looking at doing something quick. There are no screen share capabilities to pass it on to someone else, there’s not meeting function for chat function to share with other users, this is just purely setup to record what’s on your screen and the audio being sent via your microphone.
We at Crenk scour the net for stories, apps, humor pieces, and useful additions for your productivity and websites. Here’s a quick something that a lot of us on Twitter have been looking for, a classy badge.
Lots of sites out there offer Twitter badges that you install and more often than not they can take up valuable real estate on your site, so here’s a nice SITE that can help you instantly create a very unobtrusive “Follow” badge for your site that users can click on, while saving space on your site.
It’s not an issue for everyone, but I thought it would be useful for some.
“Share and discover film locations” is this site’s motto and that’s exactly what Filmaps does. It’s a Google Maps mashup that combines movies with social networking.
Filmaps basically allows for movie searches by title or location including the interesting ability to find out what movies were made at a specific location. For instance, looking for movies by title and then narrowing by location might show you that San Francisco has a theater playing the film you’re looking for. Switching the search and looking at what films were made in San Francisco will show you Dirty Harry.
Once you find a movie (or movies), you can leave comments about the film for others to read, send Tweets (each film has a permalink), and otherwise share you film finds with friends. Users can ad information (comments, locations, movies not listed) easily and no registration with the site is required—an unusual feature.
Filmaps also works on the iPhone and was created with the idea that sometimes you’re watching a movie and wonder “wow, I wonder what else is there?” when watching scenes. So you can use Filmaps to find out where the film was actually shot, what other movies were made there, and otherwise explore the area with Google Maps.
This is a good idea that, if kept simple, will be one to see a lot of interest from everyday Web users. It’s appeal seems limited until you actually go and use the sight. Pretty soon, you’ll be looking up all your favorite movies and seeing what else was filmed there and maybe hitting the nearest Redbox to grab some of them.
If you’re looking at either spreading the “good word” or hearing some messages of praise and encouragement, turn no further then Gospelr. This Twitter-clone 
application brings together all the positivity and encouragement of the Christian faith to those who seek it out.
It was just a matter of time before something like this happened. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially since it was established due to the perceived harshness of Twitter conversation. Gospelr looks to focus on connecting people for motivation and to share their faith with one another. No longer do you have to pay for missionaries to reach the far parts of the world or into the homes of people, now you can do it all online, and Gospelr looks to work that angle.
Because it’s based on Twitter’s API, integration into Tweetdeck and various other apps that play well with Twitter. An interesting addition to the Gospelr homepage is that the site will refresh for you, keeping you current at all times with the latest messages to hit the network.
If you need to hear the Word, be uplifted or encouraged by those strong in their faith, then check out Gospelr. While your there, check out the cool RSS button, now that’s creative!
While going through the RSS feeds this morning, I saw a great write-up on CNET about the interface redesign on Twitter. Great in that, it’s well written and covers all the positive points, but it seems that Twitter has pushed more emphasis on making their web app look pretty as opposed to actually stable.
Here’s a summery of what is new and changed:
- Smaller tabs that were on top of the timeline to the right sidebar, where they can occupy more space, making them larger clicking targets. They also moved the following/followers/updates stats to the top of the page and made them larger, so now I can really see how deflated my follower numbers are.
- The most important change, in terms of functionality is the addition of AJAX to the “Home” and “@Replies” pages. Their new implementation allows you to refresh the items in your timeline without having to reload the whole page.
- New design customizer with this release, which allows you to change the colors on your Twitter profile with the help of a color wheel.
Great, new ways to make it look pretty, but still barely works properly. I’ve been using Twitter on and off for a year now (follow me at twitter.com/mikepanic) and while I did manage to crack 12,000 text messages by subscribing to some major news outlets and having them sent SMS to my cell phone, most of what I’ve found is that it’s just noise, even from people I know in real life. For more than 3 months now I haven’t had tweets coming into my cell, I’m very happy about this and do not miss it one bit. I also rarely go to the official Twitter site, rather I use Twitterific on my Mac to read and update tweets.
What is most frustrating, outside of the noise and constant “read my new blog post” tweets that I myself am guilty of sending is the lack of stability. The service seems to be going down, still, several times a month. How can I stand behind and love an app just because it’s pretty looking when it isn’t stable?
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