Posts Tagged: social networking

Technology — 3 Comments
4
Nov 07

OpenSocial – Beyond The Hype

On Thursday last week Google launched OpenSocial, which is a development platform that allows developers to create applications for a range of social networks. This platform is pretty much like the proprietary Facebook Platform, however the major difference is that OpenSocial allows developers to tap into a multitude of social networks unlike Facebook.

Why OpenSocial?
Since May this year, Facebook allowed developers to develop third party applications for Facebook. The reasons for this, among many others, was to increase the functionality of Facebook, user retention and allowing users to have almost everything in one place.

OpenSocial allows developers to access multiple social networks. This evens the playing field and gives other social networks the opportunity to offer its users more through third party applications. It also gives developers a wider audience for the applications they develop.

OpenSocial: One API, Multiple Sites.

The 3 API Sets
There are 3 standard API sets, which are used when building an application with OpenSocial: (OpenSocial documentation)

  • People & Friends Data API
    This allows client applications to view and update People Profiles and Friend relationships, client applications can request a list of a user’s friends and query the content in an existing profile.
  • Activities Data API
    This allows client applications to view and publish “actions” of the user and/or their friends. Client application can use the API to create new entries, edit or delete existing entries, and view lists of entries.
  • Persistence Data API
    This allows client applications to view and update key/value content, client application can edit or delete content for an existing application, user, or gadget instance, and query the content in an existing feed.

What Does This Mean?
In plain English this is going to allow businesses (developers, marketers, start-ups, etc.) to offer their services to an even larger number of people across multiple platforms. Just because OpenSocial has more reach than Facebook, I wouldn’t switch completely. I would instead develop for both of them, I will cover this issue in a post later on this week.

Conclusion
At first I was really skeptical about OpenSocial, however after seeing screenshots of some of the applications on other social networks, I am really impressed. I will be playing around with OpenSocial as soon as I get a chance and post my thoughts on the development side of the platform.

Twitter on Facebook & Orkut

OpenSocial: Twitter on Facebook & Orkut

Development / Facebook — 6 Comments
24
Oct 07

Facebook Development: MXit Me

Facebook Development Platform

Over the last few months I have been developing on the Facebook’s Development Platform and it has been a really fun experience. Facebook development is something we’ve really been pushing at Younique, so Devon and myself have really been going all out on the platform with some of our own in house applications.

We have developed our first outward facing Facebook application called MXit Me. Essentially the purpose of the application is a simple one. It serves as a tool for users on Facebook to display their MXit number on their profile so that their Facebook friends can invite them on MXit.

Facebook: MXit Me

We officially launched the application on the 19th of August this year and relied only on word of mouth, links in the profile widget and an invitation system to spread the application through Facebook. We have been seeing amazing growth for the application, however October has been the worst month as the application went through a lot of down time while we were rewriting it and making changes.

MXit Me Statistics:
At time of writing MXit Me had just over 12 000 users using the application.

  • August 18th – 31st: 972 users.
  • Septermber: 6 757 users.
  • October 1st – 24th (12pm): 3 999 users.

Today we officially completed our first major update of the application. We plan on rolling out new features as we finish developing them. Our two biggest features in the new release are:

  • Friend Search
    We built a little search box onto the canvas page which allows users to search through their Facebook friends and find their MXit number. We plan on expanding on this search engine functionality and will launch the updated feature set in due time.
  • Facebook Mobile
    We have successfully been able to integrate MXit Me onto users’ mobile Facebook profiles. However, MXit Me will not show up on the users mobile profile unless it is enabled in their mobile settings on Facebook Mobile. Applications on Facebook Mobile are still rather new, so we will be playing around with the functionality and see how we can improve the application on the mobile platform.

Facebook Development: MXit Me

We use the MXit Me application as our playground on the Facebook Platform in order to keep up to date with the changes that are constantly made on to the platform. As MXit Addicts we enjoy working on this application. It has helped us understand the complexities of the Facebook Platform as well as realise the power it has to reach thousands, if not millions, of people.

Disclaimer: The MXit Me application was created out of the love for the product, MXit. We were not approached by MXit or any of its employees to build the application. We strongly suggest users read MXit’s online safety guide. MXit is a registered trademark of MXit Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd.

Mobile — 5 Comments
22
Oct 07

The Grid – Vodacom Enters Social Networking Territory

“Speaking at the recent mobile advertising launch at Vodaworld, Vodacom’s Rick Joubert said that the company is planning to extend its services into the social networking realm with its own mobile platform.” – MyBroadband

So Vodacom is busy building its own social networking platform. I am glad to see a large company in South Africa starting to take notice of the power and potential of Social Media. However, they aren’t the first to announce this. Telkom realised the importance of Social Media, which it stated in April.

Should Neotel, MTN, Cell C and Virgin Mobile be worried? I say not at all. However, you should be working on your own Social Media strategies right now, because if you aren’t then you have some catching up to do.

What I do find interesting is that Vodacom are going to be mashing up MySpace, Facebook and MXit. This does sound like a highly successful formula, however, the end product will have to live up to the promise of almost seamless integration in order for the platform to work well.

For now, I am enjoying Facebook and using my blog as a social network as well. I probably won’t move over to “The Grid” but I will give it a fair go, when it arrives. I’m still waiting for Telkom to launch their offering, it’s already been 6 months.

Facebook / Marketing — 2 Comments
18
Oct 07

The Youth And Facebook

This afternoon I decided to talk to a few youngsters about Facebook. What I really wanted to find out was why they use it. A large part of my day is spent talking to the youth. In order for my company to help companies to engage the youth successfully, I need to stay up-to-date with the trends, even though I am a youngster myself.

It was really fun to hear some of the responses to questions that I asked. I also asked a few of my followers on Twitter if they had any questions. Here are some of the findings from the conversation:

  • Used To Keep In Touch
    The most popular and obvious reason was to keep in touch with old friends or friends and family who are overseas. Facebook allows people to send public and private messages to other people. It also allows people to share photos and videos with friends and family.
  • They Ignore The Ads
    Almost everyone I spoke to said that they ignored the ads on Facebook. The youth are very good at blocking out interruptive messages and therefore are blind to banners. In order for brands to gain the youth’s attention attention they need to start engaging them and build relationships with them.
  • They Do Make New Friends
    Once again most of the people said they knew they majority of the their friends, in real life, on Facebook, the few being new friends they have made online. I think Facebook is wonderful in this way because it allows us to overcome geographical boundaries to make new friends.
  • Facebook Mobile Is Important
    Facebook has a mobile version. Everyone I asked agreed that it allowed them to stay even more connected as they weren’t always near a PC with an internet connection. I think the mobile version plays a huge role in user retention as it allows users to login to Facebook from almost anywhere and access the main features of Facebook.
  • What Is Facebook?
    I asked a few people to explain Facebook to me in one sentence.
    “Social networking thingy?”
    “Facebook is a brilliant program to keep you in touch with friends and family all over the world!”
    “A more creative version of MXit?”

Facebook is rapidly approaching the 400 000 user mark and shows no signs of stopping. Below is a graph, provided by Compete, that shows how Facebook users are interacting inside of Facebook.

Facebook Usage

Facebook / Social Media — 10 Comments
10
Oct 07

3 Talk – Social Media & Facebook

The topic on 3 Talk with Noleen, today, was Social Media, blogging and Facebook. She had Arthur Goldstuck on her panel as well as a bunch of other names that I didn’t catch. The panel addressed a few issues that I would like to highlight and comment on.

Facebook Affecting Productiviy
Facebook affects productivity during work hours, period! However, it depends on the type of business you are in. The Times use Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites daily to stay abreast as South Africa’s top interactive news paper. Metropolitan Health Group is using Facebook for recruitment and many others for marketing and business. If I have to use myself as an example, my productivity is extremely high with Facebook because Facebook is my business. It all depends on your industry and what you’re looking to achieve with Facebook.

Facebook Affecting The Youth’s Social Lives
If anything, Facebook helps the social lives of youngsters. It allows us to organise events and invite hundreds of people within a few hours. We can communicate at anytime of the day or night and organise to meet up offline. We’re seeing a huge convergence of “geek” and “jock” culture amongst the youth all over the world. We’re growing up with technology and using it to our advantage. Don’t be jealous because the early adopters and youngsters use it so well.

Personally, I have not seen one case of “cyber-bullying” on Facebook. I am in contact with a large number of youngsters on a daily basis and have not heard nor seen anything of the sort. However, I do agree that someone being denied to become a person’s friend on Facebook or not invited to an event can be slightly damaging to ones self esteem. I also think that Facebook can be used effectively for stalking, that is why I suggest everyone check their privacy settings.

Confusing The Viewers
This wasn’t a topic, but something that I picked up on and it bugged me slightly. The gentleman from MyDigitalLife confused the viewers with way too many buzz words. Terms such as blog, plog, vlog and mlog. He then went on to say that we make them up as we go along. This makes me irate because it gives some people the impression that the industry is very confusing and unorganised. No offence to the gentleman, he knows what he is talking about, but why not just use terms like picture blog and mobile blog to make it easier. Everyone is already confused with the term blog, lets not make it even worse.

Your Say? The Conversation Continued..
I would like to hear your thoughts on the show and what was said or on what I have written. Maybe I have missed the boat a little or jumped to conclusions.

There were a few of us watching the show and passing comment via Twitter, namely Jason Bagley, Steven and myself.

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