The thing about useful stuff is

Zipiko - meeting friends made easy Monday, November 10, 2008

Zipiko is a new approach to arranging meet-ups with friends that I can imagine catching on, which is showcasing at Le Web.

In concept it is very similar to Upcoming.org or even Meetup in that it is orientated around the notion of publishing events which your friends can see. The service is free [no ads spotted either] and is entirely web-hosted.

Members set up an event, detailing time and place plus comments. Thereafter friends can either be specifically invited or the event made public amongst your friends who can choose to participate in the open invite. Hence you can see events that your friends are organising and elect to opt in e.g. join your friends to watch the rugby in the pub.

I found that setting up an event was very easy and intutitive, via the simple online interface. Likewise, inviting friends was very easy. Interestingly the service currently send free SMS messages or emails to invite people, as well as notifying you of their responses.

To add friends to your account, you have the option of importing your phone contacts as well as importing contact from Gmail. Any friends you do add have to positively accept your invite to connect. I confess that didn't find either appealing since my address books co-mingle friends and business contacts. I think they should definitely be looking to add the capability to import contacts from services like Facebook, Twitter etc and you can buy code to do this off the shelf these days for less than $100.

The site claims it has been configured to be easy to use via mobile phone and a brief check on my own Blackberry phone browser did confirm this.

Connecting your events to your calendar is possible albeit only 30 Boxes appeared to be supported when I tried.

Whilst I understand that the team behind this are keen that you regularly use their site, I think the service would benefit from creating an ical feed of events from your "crowd" that could be accessible by calendar applications, with entries that link back to the Zipiko site. I say this because Gmail and Google calendar are two webapps I use constantly whereas I am initially less likely to have Zipiko open constantly. Likewise, it would be great if you could "send an calendar invite" to your own Zipiko account from say Google calendar to be added to the events list.

Worth trying when organising your next social meetup.

Labels: gmail, Google Calendar, meeting, meetup, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 8:43 PM Permanent Link ,

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LinkedIn - revitalised Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Despite having used LinkedIn for a number of years and built-up a large number of connections, I confess it was not a site I regularly used other than to periodically synchronise contact details of my connections.

However, my own use of the site recently picked up as I sought to hook up with various companies and individuals in connection with an initiative I'm involved with. I was therefore pleasantly surprised and pleased with the raft of changes that have been introduced.

The "river of news" regarding who's connected with who and what they are doing is helpful, as is the groups feature, which is exposing many more potential connection opportunities than was previously the case. Whilst these mimic Facebook features, I consider them more powerful in LinkedIn than in Facebook. For instance, for me the scenario of Friend A connecting with person B had little context on Facebook and rarely prompted a conversation - whereas on LinkedIn it opens up wider possibilities and conversations e.g. Connection A is dealing with the IT Director of X, perhaps I can assist them with an introduction to the same role in Y or conversely perhaps they can introduce me to Company X. If only there was a "friend wheel" equivalent for LinkedIn!

I suspect that use of sites social network sites like Facebook have had knock-on benefits for LinkedIn in that they have raised awareness of its' usefulness. Additionally, I suspect that many people have quickly realised that they actually want to separate their business and social connections, as well as related revelations, and hence are making use of LinkedIn for professional contacts and Facebook for friends.

LinkedIn still needs to improve in many areas but I'm pleased they have finally begun the transition into being a useful business aid.

Labels: facebook, LinkedIn, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 6:26 PM Permanent Link ,

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Konnects - a poor LinkedIn clone Wednesday, February 06, 2008

I received an invite this morning to a LinkedIn clone this morning, the main difference being this one is evidently a recent networking site that has yet to build up a sizeable user population.

As ever, there were many options for me to harvest my contacts from a variety of sources like webmail accounts, Outlook and Social Networks, before sending out invites to them to join me on Konnects. Unlike the more established LinkedIn, there were hardly any existing Konnects users amongst my 3,000+ contacts. Of course, I could have sent invites to them but this site had nothing to offer over LinkedIn.

Sure, you could create a blog, but why do that on this site when there are many dedicated sites that exist for that very purpose. Sadly, there was no option to embed an existing blog that I could find.

More irritating was that to be able to view the profile of the person who invited me, I was required to fully set up my profile on the site inc professional details etc. - sorry, couldn't be bothered. I can understand that the site will improve with more complete profiles on there and hence they have to encourage people to fill out their info, but at this point, the site hasn't even engaged with me to demonstrate it can offer me value. I found this a frustrating user experience and too high a barrier when first browsing the site.

But just to demonstrate the insecurity of the site, I couldn't find any way to close my account. Looking in the Help Section showed why

There is no cost to keep your profile on Konnects. There is only a cost if you have exhausted your free messages. We recommend that you keep your profile live on Konnects even if you choose not to subscribe to the service. You never know…someone may see your profile and try to bring a business opportunity your way. You can always subscribe at that point!

To close your Konnects account please contact us. Please include your full name and company name.

In other words, "we are going to make it hard for you to leave, not to mention create work for ourselves in the process!" Dumb.

Konnects lacks any delight factor, and certainly offers no edge over LinkedIn. From what I've seen so far I would recommend to steer clear.

UPDATE : The contact form to close an account doesn't work!

Labels: LinkedIn, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 11:47 AM Permanent Link ,

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Google search fails to find profits in social networks Friday, February 01, 2008

Yesterday Google reported an unexpectedly sharp slowdown in the number of “clicks” people make on its online adverts on social networks, leaving Google out of pocket thanks to the guaranteed minimum payments it makes to a number of social networks that carry its advertising, principally MySpace.

This was despite a number of initiative pursued by Google to reverse the decline, all of which had failed according to Sergey Brin, but they remained hopeful they could turn things around.

This pushed shares down by 9%, which have fallen by 25% since January 1, contributing to the nervousness on the markets about its core revenue engine - advertising services.

To date the only people making money from social networking are the owners of the platform - not quite the commercial eco-system hoped for by many. Seems that people just use them for socialising.

Labels: Google, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 8:06 AM Permanent Link ,

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Tribewanted - online communities going native Thursday, January 24, 2008

Tribewanted completely passed me by until I stumbled across an article trailing a BBC2 observational documentary series about the venture entitled "Paradise or Bust".

Tribewanted describes itself as a unique community tourism project that is simultaneously based on Vorovoro Island, Fiji and online.

According to the website, Tribewanted was founded by Ben Keene and Mark Bowness in April 2006. Mark was a 26 year old serial social networker in search of the next level of the internet revolution. Ben was a 26 year old serial ‘gapper’ in search of the next level of adventurous travel. Mark emailed Ben with his idea of finding an internet tribe and building a unique on-line-on-island community. Ben said ‘ok, let’s do it’. Mark has since moved on from Tribewanted to pursue his next online dream while Ben continues to run the tribe today.

The idea was to create an online community of 5,000 members who form a tribe and then fund the development of a tribal "home" on an island in the Pacific, with each member spending between three and twelve weeks on the island. Members would get a say in the running of the island during the three year life of the project and remain in close context with other tribal members via the online social network.

An island in Fiji was chosen and rented for 3 years and the first episode of the BBC programme followed the project from the first landing on the island and the set-up of base camp, through to the arrival of the first tribe members. It covered the travails of recruiting online members, a process beset by online accusations that the whole scheme was a financial scam, and warning people not to part with the £300 to join.

It was fascinating to watch and see the youthful optimism of the founders, impatient for success, hit the realities and slow pace of Fijian life. Likewise, the scheme was hugely dependent upon attracting a large membership to cover the setup and running costs of the island venture, and they hit financial difficulties very quickly because of a shortfall in numbers. Even today, only 1,300 of the hoped for 5,000 have been signed-up, of which 400 have already been to the island with ages ranged between 4-63 years old.

If you missed it, worth checking out via BBC Online and their (awful) iPlayer.

Labels: social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 11:28 AM Permanent Link ,

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Social networks revealed Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Interesting piece on Read/Write web today on demographics of social networks

Some highlights, followed by full details below from Rapleaf:

The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.
Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male.
52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform.
Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites.

Facebook Users
- 2.6 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 63% female, 36% male
- 17% <18>45 yrs
- 2.9 major social networking sites used on average
- 62% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 10% are on Plaxo, 22% are on Hi5

Myspace Users
- 11.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 63% female, 36% male
- 20% <18>45 yrs
- 2.4 major social networking sites used on average
- 15% are on Facebook, 2% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 6% are on Plaxo, 17% are on Hi5

LinkedIn Users
- 0.8 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 38% female, 61% male
- 2% <18>45 yrs
- 3.2 major social networking sites used on average
- 16% are on Facebook, 25% are on Myspace, 12% are on Friendster, 16% are on Plaxo, 8% are on Hi5

Friendster Users
- 2.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 58% female, 41% male
- 12% <18>45 yrs
- 3.0 major social networking sites used on average
- 10% are on Facebook, 44% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 5% are on Plaxo, 26% are on Hi5

Plaxo Users
- 1.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 62% female, 37% male
- 16% <18>45 yrs
- 3.6 major social networking sites used on average
- 20% are on Facebook, 53% are on Myspace, 11% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 15% are on Hi5

Hi5 Users
- 4.5 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 60% female, 39% male
- 21% <18>45 yrs
- 2.8 major social networking sites used on average
- 13% are on Facebook, 43% are on Myspace, 2% are on LinkedIn, 13% are on Friendster, 2% are on Plaxo

Whilst this based on a sample using people they managed to identify, they are pretty sizeable sample sizes. I do wonder to what extent those people are active on multiple social networks rather than having simply left a footprint behind on sites they no longer use. The male/female ratios are also intriguing between the various communities - is it a surprise that LinkedIn is male dominated?

Labels: facebook, LinkedIn, myspace, social networks, social networks opensocial

posted by John Wilson @ 2:20 PM Permanent Link ,

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Re-unite with Friends for free Thursday, November 01, 2007

Friends Re-united, the ITV owned social "re-network" site for contacting your old school and university friends is dropping it's subscription model according to Jemima Kiss at the Guardian.

If you wanted to "reach out" to those you'd evidently decided to drop as friends previously, you had to pay about £7.50 or so for a premium membership that would let you send them a message via Friends Re-United.

Given that many of those people can be freely found and contacted via Facebook etc, one might suggest uncharitably that only the ignorant, stupid or desperate must have resorted to paying FU.

So now, you can happily hook up with folks from 20-30 years ago to either gloat or be gloated at, all without charge.

Labels: social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 9:42 AM Permanent Link ,

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How to tackle the competition for free

Two years ago we evaluated a medium sized financial technology software company with a view to investing. It was evident that they had way too many "products", which was actually causing them internal challenges.

Most had begun life as bespoke developments for customers but over which they had negotiated the right to commercialise. In many cases, little research or development effort had gone into the commercialisation of the products but because they had potential, so the company deemed them to be product offerings.

From a sales perspective, the sales effort was blunted by the confusion of what message to present to the customer - they simply had to many offerings and so weren't sure what to pitch with. Added to which, the "products" range spanned several market segments within financial services, so it diluted their "specialist" message - customers in each segment perceived them as being generalists!

But one product caught my eye and so I enquired how they were approaching selling it. Answer - they weren't trying really because the market had a dominant supplier. Leaving aside why they hadn't just dumped it then, I offered them an answer - give it away for free to everyone in the market. My rationale was a) they would probably get some consulting revenues from folks eg as per open source model b) you'll get noticed for disrupting the market, which may prompt other conversations c) the dominant supplier will suffer some pain and have to go on the defensive d) there was no downside to them because they were doing nothing with it anyway e) you can shape the agenda, even if only briefly.

For several reasons, the investment didn't proceed. And sadly, I don't think they proceeded with the advice either, because it just felt "too scary".

I was reminded of this when I read the story here on Blognation about a consortium's efforts to create "Open Social". Led by Google, it's an initiative to create an open set of APIs for application development for social networks. The throng includes Ning, LinkedIn and Plaxo.

At a stroke, the consortium are pitching an attractive alternative to developers who might be focussed on Facebook applications (dominant supplier) with the option that they could development applications that can be even more widely distributed over many networks. Moreover, by challenging the Facebook "walled garden", they are shifting the agenda and may disrupt the market with this moral high ground. Aside from distribution, it also shifts the balance of power back towards the developer - with Facebook, they could just shut you out or copy you at any point.

At the same time, with other social networks such as Bebo playing catch up and racing to try to offer their own platform to developers, this provides a "higher ground" response than simply one of "me too". For some, they may feel themselves already too far along the proprietary route, but I'd suggest better to delay and hop aboard this train given the greater abundance of developers likely to convert to this model.

As for Facebook, they have an interesting choice - fall in line or tough it out based on their distribution offering and existing position.

Labels: open source, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 8:37 AM Permanent Link ,

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Move over Sonny & lets Gramps get on the PC Wednesday, October 31, 2007

You can't teach an old dog new tricks goes the phrase.

Well, Silver Surfers in the UK are about to disprove that with their very over social networking site courtesy of the UK largest over 50's focussed business, Saga.

Entitled SagaZone (should have been zimmerzone surely), the over 50's will be able to make friends and discuss important issues of the day online - gardening was cited as one example!

Saga is an amazing business. Starting out as a holiday company in Folkestone, it has become something of a financial services powerhouse. I did some advisory work for them many years ago, when the now CEO was Head of Strategy & Biz Devt. Very switched on to their community with a trusted brand. They drive a hard bargain with suppliers to get cheap deals, whilst the Saga Magazine has a huge circulation in the over 50s demographic.

They will almost certainly do well with this new service, because of the ability to promote successfully to their audience.

Labels: social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 8:47 AM Permanent Link ,

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Gmail is the social centre of the universe Sunday, September 30, 2007

I think gmail is an excellent online email app and I'd be happy to use it for all my email were it not for the fact that it insist on sending out emails that are tagged with my gmail account "on behalf of.." which ever email account I'm intending to send it from. Maybe there is a way to change this but I can't find it!

Anyway, I liked the ideas advanced here that enabled you to use gmail to orchestrate other social network accounts and tells you

How to use Gmail to post to social networks
How to track your friends and their replies using Gmail
How to build a "lifebase" inside Gmail that maintains a record of your various friends/connections
How to use Gmail to prioritize the right friends and weed out the ones you want to un-friend

Labels: gmail, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 9:44 AM Permanent Link ,

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We're a hit. No wait, we're not. Wednesday, June 06, 2007

When writing about Facebook the other day and the possibility of crowds moving off a social network, I suggested such migrations were increasingly possible outcomes.

Michael Zang at Folksonomy has posted about Xanga.com highlighted the apparent falloff in their traffic.

Of course, they haven't lost the members. It just seems that they aren't coming back as regularly. You can also see on the graph that there were some reversals in the decline in Q106
but these weren't sustained. Can these users be attracted back?

Labels: social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 9:35 AM Permanent Link ,

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Facebook wrongfoots its competition Monday, June 04, 2007

The recent announcement by Facebook regarding their Developer API was greeted with delighted, astonishment and horror by different constituencies.

Facebook with its 20 million+ users looks to be a heavenly place in which to build a business, and is reminiscent of the early days of the AppExchange from Salesforce. It too launched with what was then a free and open API with few restrictions on what use developers could make of this service.

However, as Ivan points out on Vecosys, the T&Cs raise some potential issues that could be exploited down the line

1. Facebook can limit you or terminate you at any time at their sole discretion (Section A.3)
2. Facebook reserve the right to impose fees at time and in any manner (Section 3)
3. Facebook can copy and distribute your Application, and analyse the content in order to target advertising (Section 4)
4. Facebook may create similar applications to yours, with no obligation to you (Sectition 4)
5. You can’t use any name or domain name address containing ‘facebook’, even at the third level, eg.g “facebook.xxx.com” (Section 6. C)
6. Be careful what ID you use for your developer account - IDs can’t be transferred or sold on, but nor do there seem to be corporate IDs. (Section 7)
7. Facebook can change the Terms and Conditions at any time, your only recourse if you don’t like this is to STOP USING THE SERVICE
(all sections below)

A cynic might suggest that Facebook could exploit the R&D being undertaken by developers and simply replace the most popular widgets with Facebook ones, and thus avoid their own experimentation. Obviously this might create a serious backlash, but as you may recall it didn't stop MySpace turning off Photobucket widgets recently, albeit as a device during negotiations to buy Photobucket.

Certainly, and as I forecast at its launch, Salesforce has now commercialised the AppExchange and shares in the revenues generating by those offering services on it. For Facebook, why shouldn't they share in the success of those companies that might make great revenues within their realm?

In the meantime, the most immediate question for other social network sites is how to respond - should they maintain "walled gardens", copy Facebook or muddle on with ad-hoc arrangements/facilities. Whilst the first of these provides maximum control, it may leave their users disappointed / frustrated with the offering. The second leaves them looking "me-too" like yet will require considerable effort to implement in most cases, whilst the third suggests lack of managerial vision/clarity (not a quality investors generally seek). A couple of such sites I've spoken to since the Facebook announcement privately concede they were caught on the hop and have yet to determine their strategy.

Do Social Networks really need to engage in an arms ("widget") race? Will users be likely to hop networks for better facilities? Certainly there are barriers to migrating (getting your friends to move too), but increasingly, and as I found recently on Facebook, most people already belong to many such networks and so there's a good chance that you'll find many of your friends already belong to "better" sites.

Labels: AppExchange, facebook, Salesforce, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 5:56 PM Permanent Link ,

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Plaxo Address Book widget is a win-win scenario Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Many people have described Plaxo as an annoying service. These criticisms have been levelled not because of what it's designed to do but simply because of the annoying volume of emails you can get hit with as a by-product of others using it.

Plaxo is actually a great idea. Essentially everyone maintains their own address details and then you subscribe to your friends/contacts details. This reduces everyone's address book maintenance effort and should avoid details becoming obsolete. It's definitely the case that my own address book is littered with out-dated details for people, but I simply don't know which ones are wrong until I go to try them. It would be very handy if these details were automatically updated.

Unfortunately, this means your contacts also have to buy in to the concept and use the service.

When you initially upload up your address book, Plaxo tells you which people are already subscribed to Plaxo based on the details you provided and which are not. It suggests you contact this latter category and invite them to join the service because that will make your life easier. Of course, this seems such an excellent idea that you initiate email invites via the service.

Some of your friends ignore the email for a variety of reasons including inertia but also because they see the benefit to you but not to themselves. However some others choose to sign-up and follow the same procedure.

Unfortunately, it's probable that there will be some overlap of address books with the result that some people are likely to be invited to sign-up again and again. Whilst Plaxo aren't causing this (it's your own popularity and stubborness to succumb to the invite) they are a beneficiary of the "virus".

Plaxo isn't unique in operating an "invite a friend" feature but they are rare in that you actually need your friends to join Plaxo if you are to derive benefit from it e.g. it doesn't matter if my friends don't use Last.fm but it does matter if they don't use Plaxo as it defeats the point.

Ok, so Plaxo is old news to many. Well, I mention it because Plaxo have made available an excellent widget that other web sites can use. Called "Address Book Access", it allows users of your site to do a temporary upload of their address book(s) to your site for the purposes of sending email invites to their friends.

This avoids you having to develop this functionality for your own site, whilst satisfying your desire to make the invite process incredibly easy for your site visitors/users.

So, you may ask what's it in for Plaxo to be so nice. Well, it probably won't surprise you to learn that the routine is branded as Plaxo as well as containing a small marketing message inviting people to sign-up for Plaxo. Others will disagree and possibly direct me to other open sources facilities that do the same (please do), but I think this is an excellent trade for both web sites.

Labels: friends, invites, plaxo, social networks, widget

posted by John Wilson @ 8:23 AM Permanent Link ,

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The users take control of Digg Wednesday, May 02, 2007

There's been considerable coverage on Digg's user community taking control of the sight. Techcrunch has the story here.

Responding to a demand to remove content relating to the decryption key for HD-DVD Digg deleted the story and links. But like the Hydra, the same story reappeared added by other users. Digg responded by deleting these and suspending the offending users. At which point the "story virus" exploded out of Digg's control and the users effectively ganged up on Digg to ensure the story remained on top.

Eventually, Digg had to conceded defeat. The user community won and demonstrated who was actually in control by exercising their muscle when circumstances offended their sense of order.

This is a saluatory lesson to any social network site. Whilst any business depends on the goodwill and custom of its' users, social sites provide their users with both the means to mobilise
and the sense of ownership that translate into a belief that the sites is theirs to control. Facebook also experience the wrath of users at the turn of the year.

The paradox is that at the same time as appearing to have immense power because of an enormous customer base, social site businesses are actually beholden to the whims of their customers to a greater extent than perhaps any other. Efforts to change (or control) the "beast" once it has become popular perhaps by introducing new features (ads into Youtube video clips), some of which may be an attempt to generate some revenues, can easily backfire.

Labels: digg, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 9:40 PM Permanent Link ,

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Is Facebook creeping up on us Sunday, April 29, 2007

I met up with Paul Lomax last week and we got onto the subject of Facebook, which sometime last year opened its' gates to all comers, instead of the college communities it had formerly focussed on.

In London, it now has nearly 365, 000 registered users. How many of these are active it's hard to assess from the outside.

Venturebeat reported in March this year that Facebook claimed to be seeing about 1.5 billion page views a day, up from about 1 billion daily views in February 07. Facebook is now at more than 20 million registered users, up from 7.5 million users last July. Finally, it has more than 1.3 billion photos on the site, more than the 1 billion last month.

Labels: facebook, social networks

posted by John Wilson @ 9:38 PM Permanent Link ,

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Webkinz made my child a computer junkie Tuesday, April 10, 2007

It's astonishing but my 6 year old daughter has become fixated by an online world called webkinz and so have her school friends.

My chum Sam Sethi of Vecosys who also has young children has written a number of times about his concerns about the lack of child-safe environments on the internet, finding serious flaws with offerings from weighty brands such as Nick Jnr.

Well, I have to confess Webkinz is impressive, both commercially and from a parenting perspective.

On the former, you get access to the Webkinz world via the purchase of an offline physical toy "pet" and there's a series to collect. I believe they may only be available in the USA presently - my daughter got hers (she has several) courtesy of the American parents of a boy in her class, the family of which have also become great family friends of ours. The formal "adoption" of the pet is done online and this grants you a year's access to Webkinz world. So in a year's time if her addiction continues, I know I will be forced to either get her another or pay for access. So it's effectively a subscription revenue model. More annoying/impressive is that kids are keen to collect the set and want to buy more pets they can adopt, but the pet subscriptions run concurrently rather than sequentially - you try telling your 6 year old to wait 11 months before adding her latest pet to the system

Inside the world, your pet comes alive! And just like a tamagochi, it needs to be fed, amused, bought trinkets/toys and rested. To pay for this, you have to earn webkinz credits/currency called Kinzcash by playing games. And boy, is this a motivational thing - the kids are competing like crazy to "earn" kinzcash. Moreover, they are learning about having to make spending choices and being restricted to things they can afford - no overdrafts or debts offered here.

The games are harmless enough albeit not massively educational. There is a large range of activities/games to choose from and the quality of their construction and the site generally is fairly good. Some of the games are single player, but some involve you playing against others who are also online.

So, I was initially alarmed when at the end of a game she was proudly demonstrating to me, the person she was playing against invited her to become a "friend". I was horrified by how easy it was for her to click" yes" in her innocence and connect with whomever. But then having insisted she decline any future offers, I took a close look at how this social network operated and was more impressed with its' structure.

You can only "chat" to others inside Webkinz using pre-defined words and phrases. Given that most young children haven't mastered spelling and sentence cosntruction, this is seen by them as a helpful feature. More importantly, you can't reveal your identity or age etc because these aren't approved words and numbers aren't permitted. So the opportunities for conversations that would terrify a parent are effectively eliminated.

Bear in mind this is a social network for tweenies and not your street savvy teenager. So the constraints operated are not a major turn-off. Were this simple technique applied by Nick Jnr or the BBC heralded Second Life for kids, I think it would certainly make life for parents and operators alike much less worrying.

Labels: social networks, webkinz

posted by John Wilson @ 11:09 PM Permanent Link ,

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Sony asks all Playstation 3 players to kindly go "Home" Thursday, March 08, 2007

Sony has launched a "me too" online community for its Playstation 3, accessed via the machine. Called "Home", the BBC has a report on it here.

Picture from BBC - trendy, social, gamers interacting inside "Home" - no, really

Gamers will be able to meet, chat and share content inside the 3D world, not to mention buy stuff for their avatar, in similar fashion to Second Life!

Sony said "This is not just about Sony brands and Sony games - it's a much wider network of connected spaces"

Connecting to other players is not new for gaming - multiplayers games are already well established and XBox 360 already allows players to connect online. Neither is the creation of an online persona with possessions. However, I understand that the ability for players to "create" stuff of their own in the environment is a new development (and revenue source for Sony!)

This is clearly one example of a "brand" experience to which people will undoubtedly connect, which I debated the other day. Moreover, this sort of mainstream headline with the associated revenues, will certainly attract the attention of other brands and accelerate the numbers hoping to emulate the model.

Labels: playstation 3, psp, psp3, SCN, Second Life, social networks, sony

posted by John Wilson @ 6:47 AM Permanent Link ,

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Analysis of Social Communities by Tom Coates Saturday, February 17, 2007

Tom, who works for Yahoo and writes a blog called plasticbag, did an excellent and passionately delivered presentation on social communities/networks. Its available here online. He covered lots of interesting material in the slot including:

Why people contribute to communities?