Posts tagged something
Facebook Promised Something Awesome, Now They Have To Deliver
Jul 5th
In the midst of all the Google Plus hype last week, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped in an interview with reporters that the company is going to announce “something awesome” this week. The statement was cryptic and a giant tease to tech reporters looking for the next big story. Now Facebook has to live up to the words of its CEO and actually deliver something awesome.
Awesome is a pretty subjective word. What could be awesome to Zuckerberg could be lame to the rest of the world. What could that be? Powers of deduction around the rumor mill have pointed to some type of Skype integration with Facebook. Zuckerberg made his comments at the Seattle Facebook office. Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond are 15 miles from Seattle. Microsoft was an early investor in Facebook and has had a good relationship with the company. Microsoft bought Skype not long ago. Do all these signs lead to Skype integration within Facebook connected with a guiding hand from Microsoft? Or is it something else entirely, like new photo-sharing tools or an HTML5 application store? Let’s take a look at the rumors to see what kind of awesomeness could be released in Palo Alto, Calif. tomorrow.
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Facebook & Skype
Back in September 2010, it appeared that Facebook and Skype were ready to announce “a deep integration partnership” that would bring Facebook the type of communications tools enjoyed by Google such as browser-integrated video chat. For some reason, that deal was never closed. At the time it looked like Skype would enable Facebook users to call and SMS their friends from Skype but the rumors made no mention of being able to video chat with friends from within the Facebook ecosystem in the browser. The ability to embed Skype directly into Facebook would certainly be a killer feature.
Microsoft and Facebook have a close relationship. Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007. More recently Microsoft debuted its “social search” capabilities by integrating Facebook data into Bing search results. Embedding Skype into Facebook would be a big win for Microsoft and a validation of the $8.5 billion it spent to acquire the service.
Google Plus has an exciting feature called Hangouts that allows up to 10 people to video chat in the same room. When it comes to real-time communications on the Internet, that is a powerful new tool. Will Skype integration into Facebook reach that level of “awesome?”
iPad Application, HTML5 Mobile Web Apps
According to Reuters, the 40-person Facebook team in Seattle has a background in mobile development. Does that mean that Facebook is finally going to release an iPad app or something similar in the mobile realm?
An iPad app does not seem like something that would fall into the “awesome” category. If Facebook was serious about an iPad application, it would have developed one by now, 15 months after the release of the original Apple tablet. A source tells TechCrunch that the announcement will not be an iPad app.
Facebook could still be going after the mobile realm though by releasing an HTML5 version of its platform that would be specifically designed for smartphones and tablets. Would that be the so-called “Project Spartan” that reportedly will try to create an application model to undercut iTunes? Maybe, though reports said that Project Spartan would not be available till mid-July at the earliest.
New Photo-Sharing Tools
When it comes to mobile photo sharing, Google Plus beats Facebook without a doubt. Yet, Facebook could be working on upgrading its photo-sharing tools that utilize sensor data on a device. If the Facebook team in Seattle is really a mobile-first operation, this might make sense. Facebook would like to create more connections using implicit data and as such creating a team of developers to emulate and add upon the ideas of photo-sharing app Color would make a lot of sense. Facebook + photo sharing + implicit data would probably fall into the category of “awesome.” This may or may not be another aspect of Spartan.
Facebook could also update its photo-sharing capabilities in the same rollout. Improvements to Facebook’s mobile uploads would be the ability to upload more than one photo at a time (or enabling “instant upload” the way Google Plus does) that could easily be shared with specific groups of people on Facebook but not the entire user stream.
We will be covering Facebook’s announcement tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST. What do you think? What kind of awesomeness do you want from Facebook? What do you think Facebook will announce on Wednesday? Let us know in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
3 reasons why SEO does mean something to group buying – Memeburn
May 30th
 Memeburn |
3 reasons why SEO does mean something to group buying
Memeburn In my travels along the social commerce road so far in South Africa, I've often been told that SEO plays no role in bringing in traffic to to group buying site. There are generally two kinds of sites, when you look at traffic: those where … |
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Get a Great Deal on Learning Something New with TeachStreet
Apr 6th
TeachStreet, the online community that helps lifelong learners find teachers and classes on almost any subject, is joining the “deals” space today, launching a new feature with both an online and (for now) a local Seattle deal.
This week’s online deal: $59 for a 6 month access pass to Educator.com (normally $150). This week’s local deal: $25 for a 3-class package at Arthur Murray Dance (normally $59). Share the deal with 3 friends who sign up, and yours is free.
“We should have done it a year ago,” admits CEO and founder Dave Schappell. Perhaps. But the addition of deals to TeachStreet doesn’t make sense simply because of the explosion of interest in the space. Instead, TeachStreet has spent the last year or so focused on building a vibrant community of teachers and learners. There are just under a half million classes listed on the site, offered by around 100,000 teachers and schools.
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Unlike other sites that are focused on deals only and offer a range of discounted services – deals on spa services, restaurants, tours and the like – TeachStreet will remain focused on education. That means these deals will be targeted at quite a different consumer. Rather than pitching a service to someone who’s on the look out for a deal – any deal – the addition of deals to TeachStreet will benefit those interested in lifelong learning and will serve as another marketing vehicle for the teachers on the site.
It will also add a layer of virality as well, as learners are encouraged to share the deals with friends in order to secure free classes for themselves. And in many ways, classes are more fun with other friends along.
Not all teachers are required to offer deals, of course. “We offer a suite of ways to use the site,” says Schappell. That includes a number of other tools and metrics for teachers, who are able to see for example how many leads they have, how people view and click on their profiles, how many enrollments they’ve got, and so on.
Adding deals to classes makes sense as lessons are the sort of thing that you want to buy multiples of. And in turn, teachers are interested in deals as those who are willing to buy multiple sessions are probably more serious students.
But in the end, says, Schappell, it isn’t simply a matter of promoting just the deals, and he thinks the new feature will be a boon to all the other class-providers on the site.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Microsoft Needs to Open-Source Something Big. But What?
Mar 31st
Microsoft is trying hard to become an open source friend company, and it’s made some strides since the days in which Steve Ballmer was calling Linux a cancer. But today, everyone pays lip service to open source. It’s harder to walk the walk than to talk the talk, as we explored in our article on how to spot open-washing.
Microsoft has open-sourced various projects, is working with developers to run open source programming languages on its operating systems and recently hired a senior director of open source communities.
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“I used to be completely anti-Microsoft,” says Michael Szul, partner and developer at Barbella Digital. “I didn’t even have a Windows desktop.” Now, Szul is considering purchasing a Windows Phone 7 handset to replace his Android-based phone. Szul says that even though Microsoft abandoned IronPython and IronRuby, it still supports the community and has even kept developer open to assist the Mono team. Szul’s gripes as a developer are less about Microsoft’s openness, and more about the how fractured its marketplace ecosystem is between XBOX Live, Zune Marketplace, MSN Marketplace, etc.
But even as it has improved its standing in the developer community, it’s lagging behind other companies. Apple, Facebook and Google make major open source contributions with projects likeWebKit, Apache Cassandra and Android. What has Microsoft built? A bunch of open source ASP.NET code.
If Microsoft wants to go from just having a better reputation to being a real player in the open source community, Microsoft needs to open-source something big, and soon.
But what could it open-source that would have a big enough impact?
Windows
This would obviously be huge, but it will almost certainly never happen. It’s too large a source of revenue for the company to risk cannibalize its sales by allowing other companies to package competing distributions. There’s also the matter of all the proprietary components licensed from other companies.
Perhaps the company could take some sort of an open core approach, though. Perhaps some of those licensed components could even serve as the differentiators between the open source and proprietary versions of Windows. But even this scenario seems unlikely.
Windows Phone
This is also unlikely. Considering the amount of money Microsoft spent getting Nokia to run Windows on its phones, Microsoft probably isn’t about to give it away for free, let alone open-source it. It’s made even less likely by the fact that the Windows desktop, tablet and phone operating systems are likely to converge in Windows 8.
Internet Explorer
This makes sense, apart from dealing with separating operating system components from the browser, and dealing with licensed technology. The other big browsers – Safari, Chrome and Firefox – are either open source or based on open source software, and Microsoft gives IE away anyway. But would it make any difference at this point whether IE was open source?
ServiceOS
We first told you about the Microsoft Research project ServiceOS back in 2009 when it was called Gazelle. It’s still vaporware as of now, but it there’s a strong case for open-sourcing it. Google ChromeOS is starting to trickle into the marketplace, as are other lightweight browser-oriented operating systems. Open-sourcing Internet Explorer and this tiny operating system would give Microsoft something it could give away to netbook manufacturers as an alternative to Chrome. Meanwhile, it would be tuned specifically towards services like Bing and Office 365.
Would an open source ServiceOS make any difference at this point? We’re not sure. Microsoft may never see the need to open-source it either, considering that it was already able to get vendors to install Windows instead of Linux on netbooks once. Not to mention the perception that tablets are the future, and Microsoft already has a tablet strategy in Windows 8.
Office
I can’t see this happening. Ever.
What Else?
What else does that leave? Perhaps some elements of Azure could be open sourced? The Kinect SDK?
The other major alternative that I can see is that Microsoft could create something entirely new and open-source it.
What do you think? Does Microsoft need a big open source initiative? If so, what could it realistically do?
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Listen Up, Small Businesses: Your Customers Are Telling You Something
Feb 17th
Last week’s inaugural Conversational Commerce Conference (C3) was dedicated to bringing together relevant groups and influencers to discuss the growing connection between marketing and customer service. Core to this discussion was the rapid adoption of social media and mobile Internet-enabled…
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SoftBank Takes on Salesforce.com in Asia with Something Chatter Does Not Do
Feb 11th
In December, BroadVision executives met with colleagues from SoftBank, the massive Japanese telecommunications company. What they came away with was a micro activity stream that does what Salesforce.com Chatter does not do. And that’s serve as more of a Twitter-like experience for communicating in and outside the firewall.
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Moving data transparently two ways on each side of the firewall is a missing capability that we see in enterprise services. It ignores the increasing flat work environment that come with today’s business requirements. You need flat work environments and you need flat networks. Period. Flat work environments are better for transparent conversations and flat networks manage pooled data infrastructures.
At the meeting, the talk turned to Chatter and its entrance into the Asia market. The concern was expressed that if SoftBank did not act fact fast, they would not be prepared as the Salesforce.com marketing machine moved into the market.
Clearvale Expressis the invention of that meeting. It’s a free social media application, much like Chatter.com that Softbank will distribute to its customers.
BroadVision’s Clearvale service had already found a powerful partner in Softbank. The telecommunications company had adopted theClearvale Enterprise offering, a Platform-as-a-Service for collaboration.
Softbank will now market Clearvale Express and upsell Clearvale Enterprise. It can then offer a unfied set of sevices, including instant mesaging, email and voice technologies.
Offering a PaaS is a new realm for Broadvision. The publicly traded company had earned a certain fame during the dot-com era for its portal technology. But in recent years it has moved its focus to the new generation of enterprise services that have surfaced as the pressing need has emerged to manage data in all its forms.
Spearheading Broadvision’s strategic direction is founder and CEO Dr. Pehong Chen. We spoke with Chen earlier this week about Clearvale Express and the intricacies of the Japanese and Asian markets.
He said In Japan there is a particular importance placed on maintaining and building trust. The Japanese work culture is far more flat than in the United States. The CEO has a different role, working more closely with the people in consensus building and decision making. There is an extended social life that is part of the job. You go out to dinner with your colleagues.
It is this part of the Japanese way that is embodied in the concept of “nemowashi,” Chen said. It translates to working around the complex roots of a tree.
“Asians are very collaborative,” Chen said. “In Japanese culture, the CEO has a lot less power than the typical Western CEO. They are rank and file.”
The nemowashi culture permeates through the supply chain, Chen said. The network consists of intricate, delicate relationships that are continually developed.
Activity streams are of interest for the communication capabilities that they provide, especially in connected environments where the nemowashi culture extends, Chen said.
But there is something more in Asia that is acting here and that’s the loss of influence exemplified by Apple’s cut into the Sony image. Sony once stood as the leader in consumer electronics. I will never forget the Sony Trinitron color television that my dad received for Christmas when I was about five years old. It was amazing with its buttons in primary colors of yellow, red, blue and green. That impression stayed in me for years. But Apple is now king. And it’s not lost on the Japanese, who see their dominance chipped at in the electronics space.
So interestingly, a two-way activity stream would seem to make sense in Asia as it works both in and outside the corporate walls. It’s conducive for planning, reaching out and sharing conversation. It can be used for internal projects and with people outside the company who may be partners or customers.
This is a different environment than we see in the United States where hierarchy has in many ways slowed the adoption of tools to manage data. The American corporate structure is tied to email, with its command and control architecture. Conversation is less conducive in this environment. The threat of losing control affects how executives adopt activity stream and new enterprise technologies.
At IBM last week, we heard a lot about the intricacies of developing internal systems for social business. That’s all fine and well. But you better understand the outside data world, too. Flat networks work in flat work cultures. Data flows faster than in hierarchical systems.
It’s that difference that will make the race in Asia one to watch.
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Google Squared Powers Answer Sources & Something Different Refinements
May 12th
Did you know that Google Squared turned one today? Google noted this fact today and also noted the various web search features Google Squared powers. Currently, Google Squared powers the “sources” displayed for the “best answers” one box and it also powers the new “something different” refinements on the new Google design.
For example, a [...]
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If I answer a yahoo question and put my link at the end of the answer affects my seo or something?
Mar 27th
I’m answering lot of questions, but at the end I put a link that have nothing to do with it, just advertisement for my site, it is bad in any way?
Thanks
