Tag: AOL

  • Weekly Top 5

    This week’s updates include Zynga’s tie up with Gate2Play, its entry into China with Tencent, lawsuit against Vostu and Orkut, Angry Birds in China and a patent case against it from Lodsys; the end of Old Twitter and the beginning of Promoted Tweet He Came Back From A Trip No Contact s in the timeline, increase in languages supported, funding; Apple leading the smartphone manufacturer category, beta launch of iCloud, iPad apps by Skype and AOL, and an html5 app by Twitter; Facebook’s bug bounty program and suing similar sounding domains, Ads API, acquisition of Push Pop Press, Randi Zuckerberg’s exit; Google+ stats, Google’s Page Speed Service, Hotel Finder and launch of Two Factor authentication in more countries.

    [scribd id=61669441 key=key-ipumnvv40uoltxdk701 mode=list]

    He Came Back From A Trip No Contact

  • Social Connectivity

    Just yesterday, I read about AOL launching Social Thing for websites. Adding the service to your website gives you a navigation bar at the bottom of the page, users can sign in with their AIM/AOL/Bebo/ICQ ids and comment. They can also chat/IM, check out what their buddies are doing, and share stuff with them. According to Mashable, “Authentication goes through AOL’s Open Authentication API, which is being extended to include support for a single sign-on from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, OpenID and other services.”

    As TechCrunch mentions in its article which talks about Facebook opening its stream API to developers, the conversation wars are heating up. Facebook Connect and its potential is something I’ve written about several times before. Broadly, as a site owner, the implementation of FB Connect allows me to broadcast my content to my Facebook audience, and if they comment using FB Connect, it gets added to their stream thus multiplying the reach. As a commenter, I can share my activities on other sites on my FB stream. The opening of the API enhances the potential for FB stream conversations to happen outside FB.

    Meanwhile, a few days back, there was also a news about Twitter Connect. Obviously, since Twitter has very less profile data as compared to FB, it need not be seen as a competitor to FB Connect, but seen from a “conversation  platform choice” perspective, i’d say it still is. For those interested in how each of these Connect services work, this is an excellent detailed read.

    And what Connect conversation can be complete without the omnipresent Google. Before we get to Friend Connect, a detour. Google recently decided to give us more control of how we would be seen in a search result page – Google Profiles will now be part of search results and we can edit it. In addition to regular data, you can showcase links to your profiles on services like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and so on. While Google claims its just responding to users’ needs, its obviously aimed at getting more user data. However, the profiles will only be shown at the bottom of the search pages, and will not ‘save’ you if you’ve been making news otherwise. 🙂 I assumed that the Profiles so created would be in sync with what gets displayed on Google Friend Connect, but apparently its not so. But you can have a vanity url (google.com/profiles/your name) so long as its connected to your gmail id. You can get a detailed report on the new Profiles here.

    Back to Google Friend Connect, once implemented on your site, it allows users to log in using GMail/Open ID/Yahoo/AIM . Users can comment, rate etc (depending on the gadgets you’ve added), engage with other users, and invite their friends from other networks to check out the site. There are many related things I am thinking of – will Profile and Friend Connect be made to work in sync, and is Google doing the opposite of what FB has done? FB created a social network first and then decided to connect other sites with it and thus enhance its own lifestream. With Google’s many services, it has a ‘disaggregated’ social network in place – YouTube/Picasa/Blogger/(even) Reader. At some point will Profile be just the equivalent of the ‘Info’ tab on Facebook and something like iGoogle (or God forbid Orkut) serve as the aggregator of one’s conversations across the web, not just across Google services, but the sites in which one logs in using Friend Connect. Google is always hungry for more data on users, so it can build more (and truth be told, sometimes better – like the proposed new Google News) products and get more data and obviously find more ways of making money.

    Of the four, Facebook is now using its Connect on popular sites to add more layers to its existing user data  and increase the conversations on Facebook. The opening of the stream API should get us some interesting apps. We’ll have to see what AOL does with its new service, how it ties it with Bebo etc. Twitter Connect is in many ways a different animal altogether, its simplicity and existing third party applications throw open many possibilities (as always) The data just goes back to Twitter, and it can be argued both ways whether Twitter Connect can be used effectively to increase a site’s visibility in the open yet ‘noisy’ stream, but the commenting using Twitter login would be useful to quite a few people  (a wild thought – maybe Twitter should just buy Friendfeed and make that its base social network). Google Connect is easy to implement and interesting gadgets are sure to happen. The possibilities of aggregating  it into a network remain. Now I wonder if Microsoft will find new ways to connect, or will they just Vine? As for Yahoo, maybe they’ll connect with Microsoft finally!! What will be interesting is what handle you would use to connect.

    until next time, connecting people ain’t just Nokia’s job no more

    PS.  6 years of blogging. A week’s break. 🙂

  • Ends and beginnings

    Work took me someplace where I normally wouldn’t be found – an AOL (Art Of Living) discourse. While I have nothing against those who choose that path, I don’t see myself there. Standing there, as a non participant while a few thousand listened and performed yoga, I thought I got a few pointers to what made them a part of this movement. One was a feeling of belonging to a community that had the same wavelength and subscribed to the same thought processes and the other was a meaning, a purpose that the movement gave to their life.

    Since it was an official event, I got dropped back at home, and in the process got to do something that i rarely get to do – forget the road, the traffic and the world ahead and soak in the effect of humanity passing by. I don’t know if you enjoy what could be uncharitably labelled gawking, but if you pause and consider that each face, and each expression contains a story, maybe you’d enjoy it like you do.

    I passed Resthouse Road on the way, and saw Pecos and Guzzler’s Inn, not places I frequent, but places that are ‘tagged’ in my memories of Bangalore from the time I came here. As i proceeded down Brigade Road, i also saw the signage of Vaayu, a lounge bar, and thought I could see a difference in the crowd that each catered to. I realised that after a while, after a few generations had passed, Bangalore’s character most likely wouldn’t include Pecos, although we would, in our denial of mortality, not think of it that way now.

    I reached home, and after the obligatory channel flipping settled down to Rocky Balboa, the comfort of a ‘seen before many times’ movie that will let your thoughts drift and you still wouldn’t feel left out. I never thought I’d quote from a Rocky movie, but it seemed to fit in

    Ya know they always say if you live in one place long enough, you are that place.

    It stuck to me when I watched Delhi 6 the next evening. An old woman comes back to her country-city-locality to die in peace, in a place that she’s familiar and comfortable with, and finds that the place has remained unchanged, but the people haven’t. And it took me back to this post that I had written a while back – on Cochin and the cosmopolitan place it was becoming.

    So, where will I be comfortable finally – Bangalore, where I have now spent 6 years (almost to the day) and where I will (at some point in time) have lived long enough to ‘be the place’, Cochin, which I refuse to let go of, whose memories I guard like a treasure- the chaotic, humid, gets-on-your-nerves place that I consider my home, or someplace new that the cosmos has in store for me. A place which gives me a sense of belonging. A set of people who matter to me and who I matter to. And that’s where this stream of consciousness ends.

    The cosmos is listening. From the list of 143 songs in the list, on ‘shuffle’ mode, it has suddenly chosen Daughtry’s Home.

    until next time, are we on the same home page? 🙂

  • Social Deluge

    The last time I’d written about Bebo was a year back, in the context of AOL buying it, and a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of getting Kareena Kapoor (whose nickname is Bebo) to be the brand ambassador when they launch in india. Recently,Medianama reported that they were launching this month.  According to ContentSutra, they will be talking to content producers in India to further their strategy of ‘conversations around media content’. The Social Inbox also sounded interesting – “a utility that combines Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail and Twitter feeds, and also helps users discover content they’re interested in”. I can’t help but remember Rediff’s attempts at Orkut and Facebook integration.

    AOL recently said that it was confident about Bebo doing well in the long run, and was for now, concentrating on getting users, more than revenue. In an interview with Paid Content, Joanna Shields, President, AOL People Networks, talked about the AIM client based strategy that gives it a wider reach than say, a Facebook. By aggregating feeds from various networks onto AIM, AOL allows people to be connected with friends’ activities in   sites like Flickr, Twitter etc, even without them being on it. Bebo has been busy with quite a few things recently – Lifestream – a basic Friendfeed like aggregator; Social Discovery Engine – which leverages profile data  to recommend related music, videos and people; Lifestory – puts uploaded photos, events, and (soon) videos into a scrollable, chronological series of postage stamp icons at the top of members’ profile pages. In the long run, Bebo is also planning to allow its users to subscribe to updates from other users, brands, bands, and celebrities, whose updates will then appear in their LifeStory timelines. (via TechCrunch) This could provide revenue opportunities.

    In the US, AOL has migrated all its AIM user profiles to Bebo, thereby doubling Bebo’s presence in the US, thanks to AIM’s massive popularity. The Lifestream is now one gigantic feed that will have updates from you and all your friends on Flickr, Twitter and Delicious, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, and the moment you link a service to Bebo, it keeps track of  your new friends there too. And with Social Inbox, the lifestream updates, AIM updates and emails can all land up there.

    Now, how good are bebo’s chances in India? The last Comscore report on social networking in India shows that Orkut is far ahead of Facebook, which has BharatStudent, hi5 and Ibibo following it relatively closely. I’m a bit familiar with Ibibo, thanks to their properties that are heavily publicised on TV, but since I’ve never been the target audience of any of those properties, I have never tried out the site. I don’t know about their revenues, but I am not sure if building properties which are quite tactical in nature is a good way to build long term equity for the site. During the tenure of the property, there will be heightened interest and traffic surges, but sustainability is a big question. I also read recently that Bixee, owned by Ibibo has ventured into several verticals – finance, shopping and auto. I’m really not sure where this is heading especially with web 18’s presence in these spaces and several other independent entities who are strong in these verticals. The way Ibibo’s traffic is declining (-50%) I think they need to relook.

    There’s definitely a space for another social network, even in what some would call a  cluttered space, provided it differentiates from the existing ones, and gives the user a reason to try it out. I’m really not sure how random invites like the ones from hi5 work. They don’t, for me. While the AIM strategy for Bebo works well for the US market, I don’t think it can work that well in India, (inspite of the GMail connection) though it will give Bebo a start, along with the existing AOL users.

    From a product standpoint, the lifestream goes where Facebook still really hasn’t (despite having copied commenting on status messages and the ‘Like’ feature from Friendfeed, and the real time stream from Twitter) – updating friends’ activities on other services in your lifestream. Will that be too much of a deluge for users, we”ll have to see., the Facebook redesign response will give a clue. It also remains to be seen whether Facebook will tear down the ‘walled garden’ and integrate these services quickly, or will only pursue the internal activities+ Facebook Connect way of adding activity feeds. If it does not, the more social version of Friendfeed could prove an irritant for Facebook. The difference maker, however, could be the content tie-ups (Medianama reports this to be the start) and what Bebo will do to ensure that conversations happen around it.

    until next time, a new socialite 🙂

  • Microlives

    I read a few interesting news clips about AOL today. While one was about Time Warner thinking of splitting up and selling AOL, the other two were more interesting to me – AOL’s acquisition of Social Thing, a lifestreaming site, and their introduction of Buddy Updates, which  lets you share and view your online activities with your buddies. They have a fairly good list of services supported – Twitter, YouTube, Blogger, RSS Feeds….

    And that made me wonder on where exactly two other lifestreaming services i took for a spin around the weekend would fit in. One is Lifeblob and the other is LifeinLines. I have to admit that i spent more time on the latter since I found the interface a bit more ‘warm’ and easier to relate to. I guess I was also influenced by Ankur’s blog where he explained the reason for starting LiL, and his taking time out to explain things to me. 🙂

    The best part about LiL is its almost exhaustive means of updating – email, Gtalk, SMS, Voice, or directly from the webpage. Very cool. The user interface is also extremely friendly, and it has layered privacy settings, which helps you to define different settings for different friends, thus retaining gradients of privacy within a social environment. It also allows you to choose your moods and do a bit of location tagging. In that sense, a few years from now, this is perhaps a great way to visualise what you were doing at 9pm on Aug 4th 2008. It could be text with mood, location or your own voice. 🙂 What I’d love to see is more connection with my existing favourites – twitter (which they’re working on), an FB app (yes, again), and a browser plugin (that’ll be later). I asked about the last one because my twitaholism started after I discovered Tweetr, and soon after, Twitterfox.

    LifeBlob is more visual, connects ‘lifelines’ of people, and allows tagging other people, hmm, like Notes or Tagging in Photos in Facebook, as a rough comparison. It also allows you to import photos from other photo sharing sites and allows imports from blogs too. I quite liked the ‘Places’ and ‘Tags’ clouds on the homepage.

    While both are lifestreaming services, the approach is quite different, and thanks to UI and features, they are differentiated. But I was looking at it from a user point of view, okay, my point of view, since I believe in the Long Tail. 🙂 While Twitter is always referred to as a microblogging service, its fundamental question ‘What are you doing’ makes it a lifestreaming service to me, which people have used to communicate just about everything, including @having !! I also have a few blogs, where my rants are in say, large formats. I have pretty active Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. In addition, there is Friendfeed, which I have promised myself to explore, the virtual worlds, so how many microlives am I expected to have??!!!

    So you’ll say, “oh, you’re back to saying consolidate“, but no, that’d be so predictable, and boring. Remember the long tail I mentioned? Well, so, I forced myself to be a lil more objective before I made such sweeping rants. And I realised that this is only the beginning of the social universe, a big social bang if you will, there are so many ‘shiny objects’ out there, and more are being made as we speak. Nothing is defined yet, so spaces and uses and therefore users, are still debatable. In a country like Japan, Facebook and MySpace are yet to make a mark. Back home, in India, I have so many friends who just refuse to let go of Orkut. Most people I come across have not experienced the magic of Twitter. Perhaps, I will even discover a long tail of my internet media  usage – a large amount of time for some services, and smaller amounts for other services. 😉

    What I’m trying to say is a very simple thing – in between the blogs, the social networking of Facebook, and the updates on Twitter, there are many worlds, and many parallel worlds. Also, the large players may not be able to provide great levels of service as they scale up (a good note here albeit on real world entities), and the ‘my’ kind of service that many users want. Perhaps that’s where the opportunity is, for Lifeblob and LifeInLines, and others like them. The threat, of course, is not being able to find that critical mass of users ASAP, for they will ultimately hold the key to revenues.

    until next time, one life, many moments 🙂

    PS. My dear 2.0 readers, do not be alarmed if you don’t find a post tomorrow. I’ve reviewed my strategic  long term intent for the site, and the scalability that I can offer. (I’ve always wanted to use those words, basically means that while I won’t lack the material to rant about, I may not get the time to do it) Keeping that in mind, I have decided to make it 3 posts a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

    Update 05/08/08: Just read a very good case for Lifestreaming