Session Blog Reviews

Posts Tagged ‘friends’

AOL unveiled its social aggregator and publisher, Lifestream, as part of its instant messenger platform last Fall. Now they’re launching a stand-alone site at lifestream.aol.com . After it appears they’ve failed with Bebo , this social venture may have a chance of success, in the opinion of TechCrunch at least—they’re saying, “ This is what Google Buzz should have been .” Like most social aggregators, Lifestream gathers content from several social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube. Lifestream uses existing friend lists on those social networks, so users don’t have to recompile their friend lists. Users can also cancel updates from entire networks, users or users on networks (i.e. ignore your friend’s Twitter stream but keep following his Facebook). It’s also integrated with Facebook Connect, so there’s no separate login, and users can publish back to social networks from the platform. Lifestream also has a network of its own, and plans integration with Google Buzz in the future. TechCrunch doesn’t mention whether the service automatically hides duplicate messages—for example, your friends who have their Twitter statuses automatically publish to Facebook, too. And then there’s the mobile platform: the website is compatible with mobiles, but Lifestream also has AIR, iPhone and Android apps. The mobile apps auto-note location, and you can use them to post pictures. TechCrunch concludes: The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol. In a time of more and more fragmentation, I think many people are looking for a product like this. If Lifestream is really as easy and seamless as TechCrunch says, and if it can gain acceptance, it could be the product AOL needs to turn its social fortunes around. What do you think? Will you give it a shot?

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AOL Launches Stand-Alone Lifestream

Facebook is going to be joining the frenzy to help everyone not only know what people are thinking but also where they are thinking it. As we move more toward a world of this total view of another’s life you can be sure that Facebook wants to be involved. With the rising popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla and other location based “services” it makes sense that Facebook be here. In the bigger picture, however, this is likely to be more about taking on Google for local advertising dollars. After all, money has to be made correct? The New York Times Bits section reports Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a new kind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends. Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature in late April at f8, the company’s yearly developer conference, according to several people briefed on the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss unannounced services. In preparation for the introduction, Facebook updated its privacy policy last November. The new policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.” On reports like this where there is the “unauthorized” source that is talking about unannounced services I always have the picture of a clandestine meeting under a gas lamp picture. Two shadowy figures exchange a note and keep walking on a lonely street in the fog kinda thing. Then I wonder who these “sources” are, if they are really unauthorized or are they part of the new age of PR which is more about leaking information than announcing it. Officially Facebook is staying mum. Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the company wasn’t ready to discuss any possible location-based features. “We’re constantly experimenting with new things around here, but we don’t have any details to share right now,” she said in an e-mail message. It appears as if Facebook will remain friendly to the developer community on this one as well according to these “sources”. With estimates that 100 million users access Facebook daily via a mobile device (which represents 1 in 4 total Facebook users) this service is primed for quick adoption for those who like this kind of thing. As a result there is money to be made and allowing a business as usual attitude with the Facebook development community only makes sense. Of course there will be plenty of concern about security and privacy because Facebook has turned itself into the poster child for how not to do new things and thus open the door to criticism. Maybe this information “leak” is designed to let the air out of any arguments that this new offering will face. I admit, my inner ‘conspiracy theorist’ is strong today. So what do you think about this new, soon to be (we think), offering by Facebook? Of course, the details are sketchy but you must have an opinion on the general idea, right? Chime in. We’re listening but we’re not telling you from where .

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Facebook Readying To Allow Users To Say Where Their Face Is

Unlike last time, there’ll be no snafu about whether the time is right to reveal the new MSN Homepage –it’s now officially live for all. New features include: TrendWatch – Highlights the day’s top trends and movers on Twitter Hyper-local Tweets – Uses the power of Bing to highlight tweets from your location, available on the new Local Edition My Cities – Personalize MSN Local Edition and save up to 3 cities to follow – making it easy to keep up with your friends or family across the entire country You should already see the new design at MSN.com or you can head here: http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx Thoughts? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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New MSN Homepage Goes Live…Really!

Better late than never is what they say right? Everyone else and their brother have made their deal with Twitter so Yahoo doing so only makes sense. What is interesting is that while this kind of announcement should be a big deal it comes off as sounding a little “after the fact” which, unfortunately, seems to be how Yahoo is perceived more and more these days. To be fair, Yahoo has more properties to tie Twitter into so the deal is likely to be more complex than the “real time search” deals that have been struck with Google and Microsoft. Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog sings the deal’s praises What does this mean for you? Very soon, you will be able to see your Twitter feed on Yahoo! just as easily as you use Yahoo! to consume all of the other great content you love from across the Web. Through today’s partnership, along with our recently announced Facebook relationship, Yahoo! is giving your online social life wings to help you stay in touch with the people and things you care about most across the Web. It’s part of our strategy to ensure that Yahoo! delivers the people and things that matter most to you! Want to see your friends’ latest Twitter posts? Or update your Twitter feed with stories and content from Yahoo!? Or check out trending topics and public updates? You no longer need to stop what you’re doing to see what’s going on with your Twitterverse — you’ll be able to do it all from Yahoo!. This kind of a play is probably most important to Yahoo because now that it is not a search engine (although the average person may never have a clue that Yahoo doesn’t actually do the search behind the scenes which is for another discussion). The social side of the web is about content and that’s where Yahoo is hanging their hat for the future. In their blog post they are showing their hand that while they are making this announcement they are not quite there yet. Here is what we can look forward to Coming Soon: Read your personal Twitter feeds directly from Yahoo!’s many products and properties, including the homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, and others — anywhere you can see Yahoo! Updates across our network. Coming Soon: Update your Twitter status and share content from Yahoo! in your Twitter stream — we’ve made it even easier to share what’s going on with your friends and followers on Yahoo! and Twitter. Coming Soon: Whenever you produce social actions on any website (like comments on articles, ratings, buzzes on Yahoo! Buzz) that you’ve allowed to appear on Yahoo! Updates, those actions can also be shared automatically with your friends on Twitter. (Pssst: Publishers and developers interested in learning more about Yahoo! Updates, including publishing directly into it or using Yahoo! Buzz or the Yahoo! Application Platform as ways of driving social traffic to your site, look here [http://developer.yahoo.com/updates], here [http://buzz.yahoo.com/publisher/about], and here [http://developer.yahoo.com/homepage].) Coming Soon: Yahoo! media properties like News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports will include real-time public Twitter updates, allowing you to get a quick pulse-check on topics, trending and otherwise. Available Today: Yahoo! Search users will immediately see real-time Twitter results starting today. So there are a lot of changes coming down the line for Yahoo. The question still remains though whether these are enough to keep Yahoo as a relevant player in the space. How do you use Yahoo today and does this look attractive enough to make you more of a user in the future?

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Yahoo and Twitter Announce Partnership

Yesterday, Google announced five little tweaks to Buzz . While they’re certain to please active users, they do little to address some of the issues Buzz has faced. To be fair, Google has tried to address the major privacy concerns after Buzz’s initial ( rushed ) launch . Probably most important is the note that buried in your Gmail settings is the Buzz tab where you can disable the service if you’re not interested. Probably the two most useful new features are a yellow bar to denote new items from the last time you checked your Buzz, and a way to keep your Gmail chat status from appearing in Buzz (putting it in parentheses. Obviously I love the parens, but in a chat status it’s kinda ugly, actually.). The other changes are that you can post to Buzz through email (nice for active users, I’m sure), link to posts (though you’ll still need the correct permissions to view Buzz posts) and follow the Google Buzz team. Let’s admit it—that last one is just a little silly, eh? When it comes to Buzz, I’m not interested. I’d like to be interested, really I would, but the signal to noise ratio is still too low. (And I still hate seeing things my friends recommended on Google Reader on Buzz, too. And for that matter, stories I’ve already read in Google Reader’s Recommended items.) I’m not the only one. Plenty of more active users are looking for a way to refine the types of stories they see in their feeds. Of course, it’s not Google’s fault your friends are useless, but it is Google’s fault that you have to be reminded of it constantly. What do you think? Do you find Buzz useful? What would it take to make you feel safe and make it useful for you?

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Google Rolls Out New Buzz Features: But Why These?