Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Web 2.0 Badge Generator



 
 

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Web 2.0 Badge Generator

With the new age of web 2.0 websites also comes a new wave of improved graphic generator sites. Most free graphics and button generator sites I have seen seem like they haven't been updated in years so its nice to see some new quality generator sites. I find this one especially useful. It lets you easily create good looking and effective web 2.0 badges to use on your website.

All you have to do is select the badge you want, enter in your text and play around with the colors. You can also rotate and move the text around within the button.

Web 2.0 Graphic Generator


 
 

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Monday, October 29, 2007

Zooomr Launches Mobile Features and Opens Japan Office



 
 

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via Mashable! by Kristen Nicole on 10/28/07

Zooomr has added mobile integration to its photo-sharing service, which is in conjunction with three wireless providers in Japan, including DoCoMo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank. The integration with these mobile companies offers a more seamless incorporation of Zooomr for mobile use.

Some of the new features are one-click login, access to your Zipline feed updates, and integrated camera phone capture-to-share features. Zooomr also works with the phones' built-in GPS, iArea and aGPS tools, which can come in handy, especially with some of Zooomr's other features.

The mobile features aren't all for photo-capturing and sharing. You can also add, edit and remove contacts for your accounts, and post and reply on photos and text. These mobile-sharing tools are currently available in Japan, but will be available in other areas of the world in the coming months.

Speaking of Japan, Zooomr was able to make this happen in part because of its new partnership with Cross Borders Japan, and has opened an office in Harajuku and Suidobashi. With 10 new people on board for the Japanese office, it's clear that Zooomr is going after a very specific global strategy. Some of Zoomr's other recently added features are a people search and a social stream.

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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Jaiku geniuses acquired by Google



 
 

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via SMS Text News by Ewan on 10/9/07

Ah! Get in! Fantastic!

When I met Jyri earlier this year, I asked him when he was selling out ;-) I didn't think any of the key players, Google, Yahoo or the like, could ignore Jaiku for long.

Obviously he couldn't comment and he gracefully refused an answer with a polite smile. I'm delighted for the team.

Interestingly, I wonder what's next for Jaiku ... and Google. Geez. The things they could do.

All verrrrry exciting.

Link: Jaiku | Google Q&A

Jaiku is joining Google. While it's too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you'll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now.

But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku. We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition.

Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders


 
 

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Why didn't Google buy Twitter?



 
 

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via SMS Text News by Ewan on 10/9/07

I saw this on Mashable — Why didn't Google acquire Twitter instead of Jaiku?

Link: Breaking: Google Acquires Jaiku, Why Not Twitter?

This is somewhat surprising news considering the perceived dominance of Twitter in the so-called "lifestreaming" space. Additionally, Twitter is co-founded by Evan Williams, who was the creator of Blogger, which was previously acquired by Google. In a world where price is no object for Google, it's interesting that they would opt for Jaiku and not Twitter.

Well, they're two different animals.

Twitter = hugely annoying, not the concept itsef, but the medium. I just couldn't get into having to write a text message every time I wanted to do an update. It just felt like such a waste; a repetitive waste, particularly with our idiot mobile handset design.

Go to menu
Go to messaging
Wait for the handset to open the messaging application
Open new message window
Address it
Write the Twitter message
Send the message... wait for it to ...send...send.... gone! Sent!

What a palava.

I recognise there are many other ways of Twittering — however I developed serious 'isshooos' with the reliance on the medium of text.

So when Jaiku came out with an application ON the handset.. that was it for me. The current beta iterations are just looking fantastic — and, what's more, I know they can and will do more.

The fact Google snapped them up points to many interesting possibilities for the way ahead. Or maybe not. Maybe they'll do nothing with them. Or maybe they'll knock them together with Dodgeball (another great concept but annoyingly reliant on the medium of text)? Or more...

(Oh, and maybe Twitter weren't for sale..)


 
 

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Jaiku as the sacificial lamb for the Gphone



 
 

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via SMS Text News by Ewan on 10/9/07

Link: Did Jaiku just become a sacrifical lamb for the GPhone? | :Ben Metcalfe Blog

Did Google buy Jaiku for it's engineering talent rather than for the product? I'm betting the engineering team is going to be siphoned off into the GPhone project.

Liked this perspective from Ben Metcalfe.

He finishes his post thus:

If I was Ev Williams and Biz Stone [of Twitter] I'd be popping the champaign today as that's a major competitor out of the game. Meanwhile a smart cookie in the development scene could easily crack on with a son-of-Jaiku to take the place of what Jaiku could, and should, have become.

There's always Mobiluck, you know...


 
 

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Sybase 365 launches new MMS content delivery gateway



 
 

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via SMS Text News by Alex on 10/24/07

Mobile messaging specialists Sybase 365 have launched their new MMS content delivery gateway - enabling content providers, marketers, and media companies to deliver MMS content directly to consumers' handsets, globally, with a single connection.

"MMS is, and will continue to be, the most viable method for delivering rich media," said Marty Beard, President of Sybase 365. "Mobile campaigns are becoming an increasingly important part of companies' communication and advertising strategies, and multimedia messages are exceptionally effective because of their ability to engage the recipient in interactive campaigns."
MMS 365 runs on the Sybase 365 operator-grade network, ensuring successful delivery of complex content, management of high traffic volumes, and seamless delivery to consumers' handsets via its connections to more than 700 global operators. One connection to MMS 365 provides direct content delivery to millions of subscribers, eliminating the need for content providers to manage separate, time-consuming negotiations and connections to individual operators.
MMS 365 supports all popular types of rich content including photos, graphics, audio, video, alerts, ringtones, and wallpaper allowing content providers to use the most effective method to communicate a campaign to subscribers.


 
 

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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Facebook gets on with business

October 9, 2007


Facebook is no longer just a social time waster, it's a platform for
on-demand software. Randal Leeb-du Toit talks to the developers building
this new world.

EVER wondered what your stripper name is? If so, you're not alone - 2.7
million Facebook users have added the What's My Stripper Name application to
their profiles.

It's just one example of the viral power of the Facebook online social
network - and a hint to its potential as a platform for marketing and
delivering on-demand software.

Two weeks ago, news broke that Microsoft was in talks to buy a slice of
Facebook, which would value the company at $US10 billion ($A11.2 billion). A
week later it outlined its Microsoft Online strategy, of "software plus
services" delivered partly, or entirely, through the web browser.

TheBroth doesn't need Microsoft to validate the potential of software
delivered online. This Perth collaborative art community, launched last
year, wrote What's My Stripper Name.

TheBroth's founder Markus Weichselbaum (aka Bambi Candylips) says Facebook
was a chance to show the team's intellectual property to many users, rather
than attracting them to separate websites.

"Our decision to enter this space was for commercial reasons," Mr
Weichselbaum says. "We're lucky that we are working on applications that are
fun to develop and fun for our users."

Its first application, PuzzleBee, transformed a photo into a puzzle to
share. When the number of users increased exponentially - now more than half
a million - he realised he was on a winner and a portfolio of applications
was built.

They have more than 5.7 million users, helped by virally attractive
functions such as male stripper names and rating friends' names.

It's just one of the success stories on Facebook's open development
platform, launched on May 24. A hundred days on, there were more than 70,000
developers on Facebook's developer forum and more than 3000 applications
vetted by Facebook for addition to the system.

While most, like Stripper Name, are just for fun, Facebook obviously means
business. Last month it announced fbFund, $10 million of grants for anyone
interested in building their business on Facebook's platform. Any individual
or company can apply for $25,000 to $250,000, as long as they have not
raised any formal venture funding. It is administered by Facebook but funded
by venture capitalists.

"We are forming this fund to help grow the Facebook application ecosystem,"
the company wrote on its blog.

"By decreasing the barrier to start a company, we hope to entice an even
larger group of people to become entrepreneurs and build a compelling
business on Facebook
"We hope this is also a funding model that other venture capitalists will
follow."

Kazaa's former chief technology officer, Phil Morle, says the most
compelling aspect of the platform is access to millions of users and the
very fabric of the social network.

"Developers can create a rich universe of people and connections without
requiring years of hard work and luck. In addition, the technical approach
Facebook has taken and the developer documentation they have created has
enabled developers to quickly get results by building on the languages and
models they already use."

Companies have already set up to focus on Facebook applications. Social
Media founder David Henderson says Facebook use is all about Generation Y,
which spends much time in this medium.

"Facebook is the new TV," Mr Henderson says. "Only this medium is social and
engaging, not passive and linear." Social Media has raised $1 million from
Silicon Valley venture capitalists Charles River Ventures.

Understanding what users of a social network want is key to getting them to
download and use a developer's applications, says Jia Shen, chief technology
officer of California-based RockYou. It serves 150 million applications to
more than 200 countries across several social networks.

Mr Shen says his applications are tailored to social networks' needs.
MySpace applications cater to self-expression and provide flashy decoration.
Facebook applications are about users interacting with the software and
their friends.

"MySpace is about meeting people and has a strong dating aspect, whereas
Facebook is about people you've met or already know," Mr Shen says. "On
MySpace 80 per cent of the views are of user profiles. On Facebook people
spend the majority of time on the newsfeed page and from there they launch
off into the different applications they are interested in."

RockYou, which received a second round of venture-capital funding in May,
launched some of the first applications on Facebook. One of its most popular
is Likeness, which enables a user to discover who they most look like among
their friends or film stars.

Mr Shen says the concept was that a user expresses herself or himself and
then pushes the application to friends, saying "Hey everybody, this is more
interesting if you engage with it, too."

"Because a user's friends are there, it's a whole lot more interesting."

Applications have to be about long-term value rather than converting people
into users.

A good example is the Zombies game, by which people bite friends and turn
them into zombies.

"It's only been three months but Facebook applications have already gone
through five epochs of evolution," Mr Shen says.

"Zombies started out as a goofy game but the real value of this application
is leveraging the horde and the network effect of how many friends a user
has infected.

"This allows the user to level themself up and engage in different types of
battles."

He sees applications such as Zombies including item acquisition and trading.
This is the long-term dream of many companies - using the platform to make
money.

RockYou is leveraging the reach of its applications into making money. For
example, it helped Yahoo! launch a music-video application by integrating it
with its Likeness and Superwall applications.

It also promoted the application on its Facebook advertising network, which
has 100,000 installations a day. This resulted in the Yahoo! application
growing 200 times faster than it would have otherwise.

RockYou's advertising network helps small developers to launch applications
at a fast pace - it charges on a cost-per-install basis and guarantees a
certain number of users.

RockYou makes money from advertisements on the application pages and brand
sponsorships. It recently did a James Bond Casino Royale campaign on its
Slideshow application.

THE business angle of Facebook has not escaped venture capitalists. Altura
Ventures is the world's first Facebook-only venture capital firm. Chief
executive Lee Lorenzen says Facebook will have 200 million users and be
worth $100 billion in 18 months.

"This is about the social operating system and if we look at the huge
fortunes made around the internet browser, the equivalent time period to now
would be 1994 - about a year before Netscape went public," he says.

Mr Lorenzen says the idea is to write software that entices a user back
frequently to the canvas page, where they will want to interact with it
repeatedly.

He says Facebook's success is a wake-up call for companies such as Google,
which positions itself as a door to the web.

Social Media's Mr Henderson agrees.

"Like Netscape's browser challenged Microsoft's dominance a decade earlier,
the social network platform will challenge Google's dominance.

"It won't happen overnight but the seeds have been sown.

"We are transitioning from a web of content to a web of people - from page
rank to social graph."

Facebook is not without controversy. Mr Weichselbaum warns that Facebook is
"a young platform on many levels".

"Serious developers used to serious application development may find it
difficult to keep up with Facebook's unannounced code releases," he says.

Balancing the interests of users and developers and maintaining the security
of the site is paramount. Facebook issues new programming code most Tuesday
evenings from its Palo Alto offices. This sometimes breaks a developer's
application.

"Users oblivious to the inner workings of the Facebook developer platform
leave scathing reviews on applications they feel are badly programmed or
don't work - even though the developer is innocent and Facebook itself is to
blame," Mr Weichselbaum says.

"Within the many-thousand-strong Facebook developers' community, voices are
getting louder that accuse Facebook of acting recklessly for not testing new
code enough before releasing it."

Rather than putting him off the platform, Mr Weichselbaum treats these
issues as "opportunity costs".

But the big question is how big is this opportunity?

Mr Morle cautions that Facebook risks flaming out if users get bored. The
Facebook team and outside developers need to innovate to keep users coming
back.

"I'm waiting for Facebook to allow us to get access to their application
platform interface from outside of Facebook.

"They could become a unified service for users to store their
relationships," he says.

FACEBOOK

THE STATS

Founded: February 2004

Open registration policy: September 2006

Facebook Platform launched: May 2007

Page views per month: 54 billion

Active users: 43 million

Australian users: 1.4 million

Average time on site per user per day: 20 minutes

Average weekly growth since January: 3 per cent

New applications added per day: 100

Photos uploaded daily: 14 million

Official blog: http://blog.facebook.com

Source: Facebook.com

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Friday, October 5, 2007

Google gets into mobile social networking



 
 

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via SMS Text News by Alex on 10/1/07

Link: Google Buys Mobile Social Networking Site

Google has brought "certain assets and technology" of the mobile phone based social networking site, Zingku for an undisclosed amount. Zingku says that it was started in 2005 when the founders noticed that teenage/twenty something's and their friends were engaging in rich media conversations drawing upon the full reach of mobile text messaging, the immediacy and speed of instant messaging, and thoroughness of web browser interface.


 
 

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Buzz Marketing highlights: week of 9/10



 
 

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via Buzz Marketing for Technology by Paul Dunay on 9/15/07

Will The Ad Slowdown Reach The Web?
OM brings out the latest data on advertising but my belief is that this is a short term pull back in a long term stampede toward more online advertising.
(tags: Internet Marketing)

Applying a Social Computing Strategy to the entire Product Life cycle
Jeremiah does it again! - he looked at a product life cycle and how social media can apply in the process.
(tags: Social Media)

Example of how not to start a Corporate Blog
A great example of how NOT to do a Corporate blog. Right off the bat it sounds like a sales pitch. Good example of a quick comeback by the marketing VP turning a negative situation into a positive (see comment section). Worth a quick read!
(tags: Blogging, Blogs)

7 Ways Marketers Can Use Twitter
There is a lot of Buzz on Twitter these days but this article details out how some marketers are using to help their marketing efforts.
(tags: Twitter)

The Alignment between Marketing and Finance
Brian Carroll makes a good point on reexamining your relationship with Finance. Programs like his lead nurture program go a long way towards building friends not only in sales but in finance.
(tags: Marketing, Finance)


 
 

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