How Obama Will Use Web Technology
Led by forward thinking, web savvy technologists, President Obama’s new media team looks poised and ready to fulfill President Obama’s vision of open-source democracy.
The online whiteboard of Kristofer Palmvik
Led by forward thinking, web savvy technologists, President Obama’s new media team looks poised and ready to fulfill President Obama’s vision of open-source democracy.
The real power of Twitter lies in its aggregate data. Why do you think Google and every other company out there is interested in them? It’s not just because they are the hot ticket in town right now, despite what some would have you believe. It’s all about the data. And Twitter knows that too — and is apparently on the verge of some interesting moves with Twitter Search that will better highlight that.
When Facebook redesigned its homepage in early March in a wholehearted embrace of the real-time activity stream as its primary user interface, everybody complained. "Why on earth does the world need 2 Twitters?," asked one of my friends on Facebook. Twitter-envy aside, some early data suggests that embracing the stream was the right decision after all.
Twitter has faced harsh criticism from celebrities, including Kanye West, about impersonators creating unauthorized accounts on their behalf. Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise is suing Twitter claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site.
Facebook rolled out a limited test tonight of a new search interface which for the first time lets people search their News Feeds and brings up results chronologically from their streams. The new search interface is still experimental and has only been turned on for "a fraction of a percent of the people" on the social network. I am one of the lucky few. My initial impression is that this is the first time I’ve actually been able to find anything on Facebook without having to jump through 25 hoops to get the results I want.
If you were to distill Facebook down to its core magic, you’d have Twitter’s real time news stream with a really expensive-to-maintain photo site bolted on. And while Twitter isn’t exactly posing much of a current threat, Facebook isn’t taking any chances.
Facebook has two very big pieces of news that they announced today at TechCrunch50. The first: They have crossed 300 million users worldwide now, extending their lead as the biggest social network. The second: They are now cash flow positive. Yes, from this point forward, Facebook is making money.
It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves – the user interface was intuitive enough that people "got it" without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it.
In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers.
Each Winter, the United States Congress adjourns through the end of the year. Before that recess occurs, there’s usually a flurry of legislative activity happening to squeeze it in before the break, during which time nothing gets done. This week, there has been a curious amount of activity coming out of Google at a time when many companies are in holiday mode. And guess what? It’s the same idea.
We’ve confirmed with Microsoft that the tech giant has launched a new program, called Student Insiders, to enlist college students to blog about Microsoft products. In return, the Microsoft "Student Insider" will be able to attend Microsoft conferences, such as Microsoft’s developer conference, PDC, and others and then write about their experiences and the products. The student will get all expenses paid to attend conferences as well as receive free training on Microsoft products. Student Insiders are expected to cover 15 events or topics a year, with at least "500 engagements per event/topic."
When Spotify does launch in the U.S., though, look for a new version of the player that adds social elements – like social playlists – to the product. That’s a big weakness Spotify has against MOG, which uses social elements to aid discovery of new music. And Spotify will also supposedly let you play songs that you have on your hard drive (like via iTunes) that they don’t have in their library. That will help fill in the ever-decreasing gaps in their library, and make Spotify that much more compelling for users.
StrategyEye reports that less than 4% of users of Spotify—the gorgeous online music app with a troubled business model—are paying subscribers.
Facebook has just started rolling out a new homepage design to a small number of users, and will be deploying it on a wide scale in the near future. The design takes the navigational elements that have previously been tucked under the "Applications" menu and returns them to the left sidebar of the page (which is actually where they were a long time ago).
As we first reported on Friday, Microsoft is adding some social hooks into Outlook 2010. Outlook will gain the ability to pull in profile information, photos, and update streams from LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace. You can try the LinkedIn plugin now in beta. The other social networks will be added later when Outlook 2010 goes on sale, probably in July.
The service’s home screen features a list of people you know, ranked by how often you communicate with them via Email or phone. The list includes information like the total number of times you’re interacted with each person and when you first began talking with them online. Most important, it lets you know how long it’s been since you last contacted them, and lets you set regular reminders — if you go too long without talking to someone, the service will send you an alert.
Wave is finally turning on email notifications to alert you about new and updated waves. From the Inbox menu, simply select the new "Notifications" option to set how often (if at all) you’d like to receive them.
A source with knowledge of Facebook’s plans tells us that the QR codes will be used with an upcoming version of Facebook’s mobile app. More specifically, businesses could potentially print out a QR code and put it on a wall or a counter in their venue to allow users to scan it to check-in at that store, we’re told. Facebook is expected to unveil its location plans at its f8 conference in late April.
One of the new features we’ve been hearing about is the extension of Facebook Connect and the Facebook API to allow publishers to add a "Like" button to any piece of content on their site. Sound trivial? It isn’t. This is likely part of Facebook’s Open Graph API project that will incentivize third party sites to interact deeply with Facebook by sharing content and associated metadata.
Don’t let anyone tell you it is easy to create a successfully engaging Facebook Fan Page. It is not. It’s not an insurmountable task either. But it requires planning, time, some kind of HTML knowledge, design skill, and imagination. Originality doesn’t hurt either.
When we think of sexy technologies, enterprise software usually ranks somewhere between the fax machine and a Zune. With prohibitive pricing, long product cycles and user interfaces only a mother could love, the enterprise offerings of Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and other big vendors are about as appealing as Steve Ballmer in a bikini.
The RULE.fm product itself looks like what would happen if Apple got serious about productivity software, with much emphasis on design aesthetics. Right now its basic function is a ramped up contact list manager with real time updates from your contacts pushed to you, a Yammer-like discussion area, a place for tasks, and a communal file sharing functionality. Nielsen describes it as "a place to know and understand everything that’s going on with in your organization" and hopes the company will eventually expand into wikis, customer retention management and accounting tools.
In this post, I just want to give you a clear picture about the best services that are out there, by gathering all the information in one place so it’s easier to save and use as needed.
After giving an overview of the history of News Feed, which has evolved quite a bit since it launched in 2006, they offered some insight into the algorithms that allow News Feed to show you relevant content, collectively called EdgeRank.
Fortunately, most enterprise software markets are ripe for disruption from purpose-built, superior solutions.
Young companies die by the hundreds in Silicon Valley, but you would hardly know it by reading your local blog. Flowtab, now a shuttered product, did something following its demise that I’ve never seen before — released a death chronicle of sorts. Their timeline and notes showcase the mistakes that the company made during its short life. Contracts, failed television appearances, deals that fell through, and more were published. If you work in technology, it’s a compelling set of documents.
Yahoo is doing actual object recognition in searches now, automatically generating tags from things it recognizes in your images. Is there a cat in your picture, but you didn’t tag it cat, or bother to tag it at all? No problem, Flickr’s new search will see the cat and transparently add a "cat" tag, surfacing it in search results. The same goes for dogs, horses, sunsets and a variety of other subjects.
Personal devices like smartphones and wearable devices are made up of nothing but details. The next few years promises to continue to be kind to those who grasp control over that minutia and don’t let go. It’s not the only way, but it is Apple’s way, and the new iPhones are representative of that.
Global hospitality startup Airbnb is launching a major update to its mobile web experience today in an effort to reach more users accessing the site on their smartphones. The update not only will make the mobile site more attractive and usable for potential guests, but will also make future development easier as Airbnb moves to more responsive design.
Technical skills can be bought/acquired, whereas it is very hard to buy a deep understanding of market needs.
In 2011, we moved our global headquarters to San Mateo, CA. Now, with 120 employees in 12 countries and $50 million in funding, here are some things I’ve learned along the way.