Maximum PC social RSS Feed

Yahoo Updates Mail, Search With New Social Features

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:39:28 -0500

Earlier this week Yahoo announced that it would be tweaking its mail and messenger services to be more social by letting users update their status, share photos easily and partake in video calls.

Along with the new and improved mail and messenger programs, Yahoo plans to overhaul its search engine with a new results page that will let users retrieve the content they’re looking for, without leaving the safety of the results page.

The idea behind these upgrades comes in two flavors: firstly Yahoo hopes to bring in more people who are not already familiar with the inner workings of their products, as well as to entice those that are already using Yahoo products to spend more time on their site. “Our user base grows when things are simpler and more delightful,” said Elisa Steele, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Yahoo.

There was also an acknowledgement that Yahoo’s new hope page was being worked on, but wasn’t done just yet.

Image Credit: Yahoo

iGoogle Introduces Social Gadgets

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:44:18 -0500

iGoogle already gives you plenty of ways to keep in touch, whether it be Gmail, Latitude or keeping up with the day’s news. But, never one to leave well enough alone, the folks at Google have decided to bolster their army of gadgets in the interest of making iGoogle a more social experience.

Among the first new gadgets to be released are Who has the biggest brain?, Chess and Scrabble. There are even news sharing gadgets from the likes of NPR, The Huffington Post and YouTube. Even keep track of a collective To-Do list with your closest friends.

These features are currently live for those of you living in Australia, and Google plans to make them available to the U.S. over the next week.

Image Credit: Google

Murphy's Law: Do Open-Source Social Networks Matter?

David Murphy — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:55:52 -0500

When's the last time you surfed on over to your Pligg and updated what you were doing for the entire Internet to see? What about Elgg? Have you changed your favorite movies to reflect that big blockbuster hit you saw this weekend? You probably don't have to, because all of your friends using the Tweetero client on their iPhones could just log on and see exactly what you were up to. Or not. Because you aren't on Twitter -- you're on Identi.ca, the open-source equivalent of the popular messaging program.

Unlike the open-source software world, where even the smallest gems of programs can find a meaningful existence, the open-source social networking world depends on people. Masses of people. You can't just launch a new social networking platform and expect it to flourish if it doesn't have a decently sized audience. And you're never going to pull away the users that are already comfortable on their existing Web 2.0 platforms if you just imitate the best practices of the current litany of sites. But that's what's happening in the open-source social networking world right now. There's a healthy mix of innovation and duplication, giving some segments of the online world new and interesting applications... and others with their 25th version of Twitter.

Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says it best: "There’s been an explosion of social activity on the web, it’s probably the most important trend of the past few years, but there’s been a dearth of Open Source tools that enable the social web." I agree, but I'd be willing to take the argument one step further and say that there are plenty of open source tools to allow a person, or company, to experiment with the social networking space akin to a MySpace or a Facebook. One of the latest Wordpress side projects, Buddypress, allows one to tap into that very environment. But there are certainly other open-source social networking tools: both Elgg and Pligg, mentioned previously, are strong examples.

And while an application like Elgg has found strong support in individual use scenarios, there has yet to exist an open-source social community on the scale of a Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. But that's precisely the point. An open-source model is not going to find success in the modern social Web because it's competing against the prevailing mindsets of the users that populate existing environments. In short, they aren't going to move. They aren't going to move because they're already established on a successful, sprawling social network. And that mindset is going to carry over even if, through some awesome power of the development community, the open-source social network offers increased functionality to the established community. k

It's important to distinguish that I'm only talking about social networks at this point. Open-source applications that involve some element of community, but are not social networks in the true sense of the phrase, are spared from the users-dropping-their-anchors-and-staying scenario. Just consider all of the different CMS and photo-themed Web applications that are open, useful, and popular. Just because Flickr or Smugmug exists doesn't mean that there's no market for Coppermine. The commercial arm of MoveableType certainly hasn't cornered the world on blogging software, nor has it pushed out the open-source equivalents.

But that's because these entities don't depend on a community to thrive, per se. Ten people in the entire world can install Wordpress and that application would still have some functional use. A thousand people could switch to Identi.ca, and I can guarantee that not a peep would be heard from the millions of Twitter users worldwide. I really hate the "community is king" jargon, but when it comes to social networks, it's true. And what's easier for an aspiring developer to do: build a competing social network from the ground up, or find new ways to make use of these existing, sprawling communities to further an open agenda? Why build an Ubuntu network if you can leverage the power of the existing herd where they already are?

So what's the takeaway? When open-source is just a vision or a programming goal, it can achieve its goals regardless of the size of the community that grows around it. But when you throw social networking into the mix, open source development gets hit with a wrench. While a number of interesting open alternatives to common, proprietary social networking platforms exist today, they are never going to be able to carry the kind of clout of the big social networks. An open-source social network has to be the game-changing application like Twitter was to the normal Web back in 2006 -- you can't just copy the best and expect to find much success.

Murphy's Law: Unfolding the Future of the Social Web with OpenID

David Murphy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0500

A large part of the Web as we know it today is built around independent communities. Think about it. You have a login for your Twitter account, a login for your Facebook account, a login for your [insert favorite Web site here] account. And while each of these independent entities can play with each other via plugins, coding trickery, or outright hacks... you're still stuck in three separate sandboxes at the end of the day. Does Twitter know what I like on my Facebook page? Can Amazon take a gander at my current interests and suggest related purchases? Do any of these sites know who my friends really are--not just the people I tweet, but the people I email on a regular basis?

While that's the current state of social affairs on the Web, it's not necessarily the future. Open-source projects like OpenID are paving the way for a new generation of connectivity, one where differing Web entities come to you for information and display it in a format and location of your choosing. Instead of jacking your life into the Web on a variety of fronts, you will have one point of interaction, one location to present your information. The litany of daily sites you visit will become more accurate, customized elements for your lifestyle. And best of all, you won't have to login to 85 different places to make it work.

OpenID is just one of the open-source Web technologies that are leading the charge into this new social sphere. In case you haven't noticed this little element appearing on sites like Wordpress, Livejournal, and Google -- amongst more than 25,000 others -- here's how it works. The basic approach of OpenID is centered on the login experience for Web sites. Rather than having to remember a login and password for the unlimited number of sites you likely visit in a day, OpenID allows you to choose a single provider as the source of your digital identity in cyberspace. Once you've selected a common user name and password, you can use this -- rather than a site's proprietary login/password specifications -- to interact with anyone who supports the service.

Technologies like these, and Facebook Connect, make up what Forrester Research's Jeremiah Owyang dubs the "Era of Social Colonization." Like the rise of humans from primates to people, Owyang has crafted up a series of timelines for the evolution of the Web's social experience. We're currently in stage two, the Era of Social Functionality, highlighted by a growth of interactive applications that transform social networks into more than just meeting grounds for talking parties. Or, to put it blandly, we've moved from a chat room to an interactive portal.

DestinationCRM.com does a great job of illustrating the differences between these eras, so I'm not going to lift their work in favor of pointing you to the source itself. Suffice, the light at the end of the cyber-tunnel is expected to start around 2011, when the power of online groups begins to replace the importance of top-down brands. Companies will engage communities to shape and develop their products, and the power of social networks and one's personal connectivity will be the driving force behind distributed content. Corporate Web sites will lose their relevancy, as companies will be forced to interact and engage customers based on their social identities, rather than waiting and letting customers "find them" or their products.

In essence, OpenID is but the first drop in the bucket toward a more connected Internet experience. As the walls between social networking and social commerce begin to blur, peer-to-peer trust is going to emerge as the ultimate arbiter of what's hip, what's hot, and what's horrible on the Web. I suppose that means we're all going to become a bunch of Newegg reviewers in the future. But that's the power of the community -- and it's a new force that companies are going to have to adopt and cater to, should Owyang's predictions hold true!

Microsoft Unveils Ambitious, Localized Social Webapp

Paul Lilly — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:22:31 -0500

Microsoft's not exactly a new kid on the software block, but it's also never been part of the 'in-crowd' either, which makes its latest experiment that much more interesting. While services like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace dominate the social networking landscape, Microsoft will try to take a different approach with a new web service called Vine.

The service debuted in beta form today in Seattle and serves as a dashboard for users to stay connected with family, friends, and community events. True to Microsoft form, Vine makes its way onto desktops as a widget. On the main screen sits a map of the user's community and contacts status. But the real potential, says Microsoft, is in promoting Vine as a type of emergency broadcast system, both for emergency management officials and for family and friends to update their status during a disaster.

"I think long-term this is probably going to be a very valuable tool to help people keep connected, not only during times of crisis but on a daily basis," said Hillman Mitchell, the city of Tukwila's emergency management coordinator.

Vine, which is being made available to more than 10,000 testers from the outset before expanding into other test markets, is debuting with more than 20,000 media sources and public safety organizations, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Microsoft has posted a video demo of the service, which you can view here before hitting the jump and telling us what kind of future you see for Vine.