Wallop - Invites and a Brief Review
May 18, 2007
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Through Mashable.com I just received an invite to Wallop. I’ve got a few extra to spare, so let me know if you are interested in one.
I think I first read about Wallop about four years ago. It is Microsoft’s venture into the red-hot social-networking arena, using the common Microsoft tack of piecing together existing technologies and packaging them for the novice user. Those technologies include social-networking capabilities, simplistic blogging tools,
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Twitter - Twitbin Updated
May 18, 2007
The guys from Twitbin (infimedia) loves to toot their own horn and I’m not too shy to help them do that
Since the launch 11 days ago, 3200 twitbin-users have posted over 18000 to twitter using twitbin. This week we got the character counter intergration, next week we will get a few fixes, ad info and pricing and a surprise. It doesn’t say anything about what the surprise is, except that some of us might like it.
If you don’t know what twitbin is, then read all about twitbin and twitter in this article please.
You can read the twitter blog here.
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Fidg’t - Social Media Address Book
May 10, 2007
Today I found a Web 2.0 application that just might make my day.
fidg’t is hopefully the beginning of a wonderful partnership. Its a clever address book, but for your social networking. It will allow you to access IM-clients on your cellphone. Right now only MSN, AIM and Yahoo are supported on Nokia
N73 and 6682. I have a feeling that the entire N-series are supported. I’ll find out when I get my N80IE. Besides providing a service that applications like Trillian already does, you can actually access your flickr and last.fm content through the phone as well. I can’t wait to test that out!
On fidg’t.com you can see your flickr images and your last.fm charts. Nothing new in that, but what is pretty clever for example, if I am connected to Didde (my wife) on Flickr, LastFM, and MSN, fidg’t create a Meta Contact reference for Didde that points to all her different identities. Now, in my Address Book, I don’t see 3 different entries for Didde, just the one Meta Contact entry. If fidg’t aren’t able to automatically generate these Meta Contacts, then you can manually create them through a drag and drop import tool.
If you have a compatible cellphone you can connect to your friends or their flickr/last.fm stuff through the address book.
There is more though, the visualizer is a cross-platform java app that allows you to play with your flickr and lastfm contacts in the context of the larger community. Just create tag magnets - either for pics or music - and watch how your network is attracted or repelled. This demo from YouTube will show you how it works. So basically through the visualizer you can see what your friends or network is talking about.
You should try it out yourself. The video doesn’t do the visualizer justice.
At the moment fidg’t only supports three different chat programs, flickr and last.fm, but support for Facebook, digg, del.icio.us and eventful are in the pipeline.
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eBay is Close to Acquiring StumbleUpon
May 9, 2007
According to a online report from the Wall Street Journal, eBay is close to finalising its deal to acquire StumbleUpon for the sum of $75 million. The report also says that the deal could still fall through if no final agreement can be reached.
StumbleUpon currently has 2,309,082 users and is growing every day with over 4 million sites stumbled daily. I’ve been a Stumbler since June 2005 and I’ve enjoyed this excellent service almost on a daily business.
The question is why would eBay buy StumbleUpon?
- I can see why they bought PayPal. Easiest way to pay for your winnings and get paid
- I think the acquisition of Skype, was the first sign that eBay are expanding or even looking into new markets
- Or perhaps they just think that buying StumbleUpon would be a good business deal. I tend to agree with them on that. According to TechCrunch StumbleUpon has only raised money once (around $1,5 million). It would be an even better deal for StumbleUpon’s founds but thats another story with an idea like StumbleUpon they deserve it.
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Twittering Through a Firefox Toolbar
May 8, 2007
Update: According to Twitbin’s blog there are now:
- 2,775 unique users
- 940,000 minutes of operation
- 12,000 new tweets posted via twitbin
Its looking really good. Hopefully the numbers will have doubled by the end of June.
I just found this one on Techcrunch.com:
“Twitter Users are currently given two primary interfaces through which they can interact with the growingly popular service: by the Twitter website itself or through TXT messaging via mobile phone.
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Webkinz and Relationship MMORPG
May 8, 2007
As you read I recently bought a new Weber Performer Touch-N-Go. I a little masochistic so I like to check out the prices in the US. I usually use Amazon.com for that. While browsing Amazon I stumbled on a new toy. Have you heard of an online service for kids called Webkinz?
Its like a cross between cocaine and puppies. Kids can’t resist it. It’s frickin’ brilliant. Before you use the Webkinz service, you have to buy a stuffed animal that comes with a code. You use that code to activate an animated character in an online world that looks like your stuffed animal. The brilliant part is that your online critter will become sick if you don’t regularly visit and care for it. Somehow this makes kids emotionally invested.
Kids can earn fake money by playing games on the system. That money goes toward caring for their online creatures, including buying furniture and so on. Kids love it. But I think kids aren’t the biggest market for this sort of thing.
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Social Media Software
May 7, 2007
I’ve previously mentioned last.fm which is a social media program that keeps track of the music you are listening to.
It could be through your iPod,iTunes or Windows Media Player. It then sends the information to last.fm and you can see your Top10 tracks there, find others with the same musical interst or your favourite artist playing a concert nearby and meet up with other users of last.fm at the concert.
Last.fm is much more than that. You can listen to music all kinds of music, sometimes only 30 seconds others time the entire track or review and discuss albums and artists. All you have to do is install a small tracker software on your PC/Mac and you are up and running.
Now Wakoopa has launched a similar tool, but instead of keeping track of the music you are listening to, it keeps track of the software you use. You can also install a widget on your blog with your current chart.
It works just like last.fm, you install a small tracker software and every 15 minutes it sends information about what software you use. Wakoopa will also let you know when your software is updated or when a user writes a review of your software. Again your friends can see what software you are using most often and if you are looking for a new anti-virus you can see which one most user are using and what their opinion about it is. You can also see the most used software, how many people used it and for how long.
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Home Sweet Home
May 6, 2007
I’m back from a nice vacation to Eqypt. So give me a couple of days to read up all the latest news.
One thing did strike me though, the story of how close digg was to losing it all. If you want to read more about the story of a 32 digit hex number (09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0), hacking HD-DVD, digg’s founder Kevin Rose, thousands of digg users, MPAA and RIAA. Basically digg removed any diggs with the above mentioned numbers in them because the lawyers of MPAA and RIAA threaten with lawsuits. Digg made a big mistake doing that, if there is one thing digg’ers hate its being censored so within a brief period digg literally got “spammed” with diggs featuring the 32 digit number. Eventually digg decided they needed to think, so they closed digg.com. Thank god they came back and this time they decided to fight with their users, so Kevin Rose posted the numbers himself. A brilliant move if you ask me.
Mark Blair has written an excellent analysis of the whole issue, it was through his blog I learned about this in the first time. You can find it here
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New Page Added - Social Media
April 24, 2007
Inspired by my mail correspondance with Mark Blair who knows quite a lot about Social Media and Social Media Optimization, I’ve created a new page about the Social Media services/sites I’m currently using.
You are more than welcome to drop by any of the site and add me to your friends list if you feel like it.
If you think I forgot a site or service please drop a comment. There is a chance that I’m already signed up there, but perhaps I’ve forgotten all about it.
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