Quick Summary: How will Google’s Social Graph API tie up with the earlier released Open Social API to enable social data portability across social networks?
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Google’s just releasedSocial Graph API promises to make public information about the social relationships between people on the web easily available and useful.
The API lets developers of social apps discover the social relationship data (”me links” and “friend links”) for their users embedded in links, blogrolls and social profile pages based on the the XFN (XHTML Friends Network) and FOAF (Friend of a Friend) labeling systems.
Watch Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick explain the Social Graph API in the video below –
Given Google’s terrible track record on the Open Social API, it’s probably wise to not go gaga over the Social Graph API, but here are my top of the mind thoughts on it –
Basically, the Prologue theme uses the Wordpress content management system to mimic the Twitter interface. Here are three reasons why I like Prologue –
(+) The “whatcha up to?” post form integrated into the front page is nifty for posting short tweet-sized messages. It would be useful, however, to have a “title” field apart from “post” and “tags”.
(+) The theme is built to be used by multiple authors (see demo blog) and author-wise RSS feeds are useful for linking each author’s posts to their Twitter accounts, via TwitterFeed.
(+) The summary view on the front page, expandable by clicking on authors or tags, is a neat touch. The front page now shows a stream of recent updates instead of one update per user.
Quick Summary: Businesses based on the influence curve of an idea cluster are likely to be more robust and less risky than businesses based on the influence curve of one idea.
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Ideas have a bell-shaped influence curve. Over time, ideas gain influence, reach a peak influence at a point in time and decline in influence thereafter. If your business is based on an idea, like all businesses are, your business is limited by the idea’s influence curve. To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea early, build competence/ credibility before others during the growth phase, make money at peak influence, and exit/ diversify during the decline phase.
Different ideas have different influence curves. You can think of an influence curve in terms of height (peak influence), gradient (rate of acceptance) and width (life of idea). To build a successful business, you would like to identify an idea that has a fast rate of acceptance, a high peak influence, and a long life.
Quick Summary: Read about how we have moved from corporate communications to the communications marketplace and, therefore, need to measure share of credibility instead of share of voice.
I have uploaded my response to the meme in the form of a presentation.
My presentation answers the question of how to measure returns on social media through three key insights –
- We have moved from corporate communications to the communications marketplace.
- Credibility is the currency of the communications marketplace.
- Therefore we need to measure share of credibility instead of share of voice.
Instead of tagging five people, I’m sending out an open invite to all my readers this time — do pitch in with your own insights on measuring social media ROI.
Quick Summary: Facebook serves desi social ad on my News Feed without cluttering it, but still needs to perfect the targeting.
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I wonder what prompted this ‘Love Bollywood’ social ad to show up in my Facebook News Feed, except that I’m part of the India network. Clearly, Facebook is still perfecting the targeting for these ads. What Facebook has perfected already is the ability to serve up to two ads on the same page without compromising on the user interaction.
Facebook Social Ads allow your businesses to become part of people’s daily conversations. Ads can be displayed in the left hand Ad Space — visible to users as they browse Facebook to connect with their friends — as well as in the context of News Feed — attached to relevant social stories. (Facebook Social Ads)
I clicked on the ad out of curiosity — the ad points to a Bollywood focused website and not to a Facebook Page. I even signed up on the website to check if they have enabled Facebook Beacon.
Quick Summary: Find out if Digital Inspiration’s Facebook Flyer experiment worked.
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Digital Inspiration is now advertising on Facebook. Amit’s Facebook flyer just showed up on my Facebook profile page and for a moment, I thought Amit had created a Facebook Page. However, it turned out the the flyer linked directly to Amit’s website.
It will be great to chat with Amit on what kind of traffic he is getting from the flyers. Amit?
Though the above advertising campaigns on Facebook were run for a very short period, they do indicate that the click through rates for ads appearing on Facebook can be extremely low.
Twitter’s destiny is, imho, to be acquired by a phone company and sold as a feature that gives users a reason to use one brand of phone over another.
Imagine if Nokia offered a cell phone with Twitter built-in, a checkbox for SMS users (default on?) — “Do you want to send SMS messages to your buddy list?”
Don’t you think the kids would go for that?
I agree with Dave that contextual tag footers on Twitter will be lame. All mobile companies I meet tell me that tag footers work, but I’m far from convinced.
What do you think? About tag footers on SMSes? About tag footers on Twitter?
The blogs are ranked based on the sum of scores on four factors -
- Google PageRank (0 to 10): Google PageRank is a link-analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The actual PageRank number was used in the Power 150 ranking algorithm.
- Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 20): Bloglines displays the number of feed subscribers. Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 20) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.
- Technorati Ranking (1 to 30): Technorati ranking analyzes the number of sites pointing to a particular blog. The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, Technorati ranking ranges were determined (i.e., top 9,000, top 10,000, top 20,000, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 30) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.
MediaSnackers want to create and consume content wherever they want, whenever they want, in whatever form they want.
Mobile phones are a second self for us MediaSnackers because they liberate us from the computer and allow such content creation and consumption to happen.
In my future posts, I’ll explore more aspects of how the mobile phone acts as a liberator for MediaSnackers.
Vakow! is a new Indian web 2.0 startup for people who “luv SMS Forwards”. Basically, Vakao! lets you post SMSes from web or mobile; tag, rate, comment on and share SMSes with your friends; and subscribe to users or tags to receive SMSes.
While I’m not a huge fan of SMS forwards, I know a lot of (mostly) young people who are. Therefore, Vakow! looks like it is ‘lowest common denominator’ enough to appeal to young people in a way that, let’s say, user generated content won’t. Vakow!’s user interface is also quite cool and, therefore, likely to appeal to the young audience it is targeting.
Valow! is the brainchild of two twenty-something youngsters Rahul and Amit who were amongst the earliest employees at Webaroo.
The duo will most probably try to monetize Vakow! through advertising and content syndication. If Vakow! scales up well, content syndication will be easy and I can even see youth oriented marketers wanting to advertise on Vakow!. What’s more, I can totally see Vakow! as a popular app for the Indian community on The Facebook or the OpenSocial platform.
