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OpenID Organizes the Organizers While Facebook and Google Start Letting Users Login Posted: 29 Dec 2008 07:18 AM PST Commercial incentive is a powerful force, and in the race for our web identities there is no exception. Over the weekend the OpenID Foundation announced that they are having its first election of community board members. Meanwhile Facebook and Google have launched their own identity services that enable users to instantly log in to any site with third-party accounts. Google Friend Connect uses open standards while Facebook Connect uses it’s own identity confirmation system. It appears as though both systems have somewhat avoided the OpenID discussion and have simply moved forward with their own model. The reality is that users want to log in with their existing accounts from other sites rather than use a new identity protocol. If you think about it, you probably log in to multiple accounts daily using just your Google or Yahoo! account. It would be easy to simply extend those services to the rest of the web. The problem with that model, or so says the OpenID supporters, is that the individuals don’t get to own their identity. Unfortunately though, most individuals don’t even understand what owning their identity is all about. When I added a Facebook Connect widget to AllFacebook last week, I had hundreds of people simply log in out of curiosity. They didn’t realize what was taking place behind the scenes necessarily and simply wanted to see how it worked. So should OpenID be launching their own widget campaign? Most definitely! The group seems to still be in the process of organizing though (view nominations here). I used to be a huge advocate of OpenID and I honestly believe that there is still a lot of movement going on. Unfortunately though I think the group is over planning and under executing. While some large organizations (Yahoo! included) are supporting the identity standard, there is still a lack of general consumer education. Without that there is no way OpenID can compete with Facebook Connect and other new standards.

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Scrapplet Launches Netvibes Competitor Posted: 23 Dec 2008 02:25 PM PST What started as a Facebook app has grown into a full-fledged stand-alone service that lets you make scrapbooks (of sorts) from web content you find interesting or have created elsewhere on the web. RadWebTech has just launched Scrapplet, an alternative to services like Netvibes or even Tumblr, as it lets you collect items from across the web as well as integrated content from social networking and microblogging sites. It’s easy enough to make a Scrapplet: import photos from your MySpace or Facebook accounts, add friends from these social networks as well. Layer in your FriendFeed and Twitter stream, along with various RSS feeds. Find something you like while you’re surfing the web? You can pull it with Scrapplet’s Firefox browser plug-in. What makes Scrapplet so easy to use, however, is its drag’n'drop interface for easy customization and organization of content. You can make as many Scrapplet pages as you’d like, similar to Netvibes. Scrapplet’s biggest differentiating factor, however, is probably its portability options, which let you take a given Scrapplet page and embed it elsewhere across the web (including Facebook and MySpace). Its usability and smooth interface make Scrapplet an attractive tool, but given the number of aggregation services already out there I wonder how Scrapplet will make its service even more useful than it already is. So far, Scrapplet’s business model is pretty clear–it offers a premium account for an ad-free Scrapplet for about $2.95 per month. But in terms of utilizing individuals’ actual pages and collections therein, making it searchable, further integrated with social networking platforms such as Facebook’s, and finding other uses for such collected data are all ways in which Scrapplet can continue to build out its service, which has already taken some significant leaps since its inception as a Facebook application.

MySpace Suicide Leads to Missouri Cyberbully Laws Posted: 23 Dec 2008 01:02 PM PST Cyberbullying is one of those semi-intangible acts that plays into the mysterious anonymity of the web, but that hasn’t stopped legislatures from trying to curb this very harming behavior. After a high profile suicide case in 2006, which was a result of cyberbullying that had occurred on MySpace, the state of Missouri has been trying to get more laws in place to better prosecute cyberbullying. Ars Technica reports that a handful of changes made to the state’s harassment laws includes cyberbullying, which is something other forms of legislature across the world may begin to layer into their own existing harassment laws. The case that encouraged Missouri to include cyberbullying in its harassment laws involved a young girl that committed suicide after receiving several threatening and manipulative messages via MySpace. Megan Meier believed that these messages were coming from a teenage boy that she liked and flirted with, but the situation took a turn for the worse when the boy started accusing Megan of being mean to her friends and acting in a sexually indecent manner. Meier told her mother about the messages and the two got into a fight, with the young girl eventually committing suicide. Weeks later, it was discovered that the messages were in fact coming from a neighbor, who was also the mother of one of Meier’s former friends. From looking at this case, it’s clear that there are several levels of illegal behavior to consider, from breaking MySpace’s own Terms of Service by using an account for harassment purposes to the actual harassment itself. And prosecution alone may not be the only thing a harasser will have to worry about if they participate in cyberbullying. Earlier this month a man was compensated for the personal damages caused by a cyberbully, setting a precedent in China for a legal battle of this nature.

When Social Networks Are Actually Used for Social Networking Posted: 23 Dec 2008 10:28 AM PST We’ve seen so many social networks launch in the past four years, it makes even my head spin. But one key differentiating factor between many of the peripheral social networks and the major players like Facebook is the actual ability to network. Socially. The benefits of social networking (with a purpose) began to come into focus when MySpace musicians found they could connect with each other and audiences on a professional level. And when it comes to social networking for the rest of the professionals out there, LinkedIn is the place to go. Even though Facebook hasn’t always had the best format for direct networking with the purpose of finding a job, it’s still very useful for this objective. So now that millions of people across the U.S. are in need of a job, no thanks to our current economic crisis, many are turning to Facebook and LinkedIn for recommendations and job leads. Such a twist isn’t really all that ironic–those services that prove core to consumers are the ones that will survive the downturned market. But what’s interesting is the new mainstream focus on social networking as it’s being used for real social networking. MSNBC has a full article on how you can best utilize social networks for finding a job. It seems obvious, but since social networks have been used for so many other things (photo-sharing, event planning and promotions, marketing), that we sometimes forget that leveraging your real connections can lead to virtual networking in the productive sense. This could be a great opportunity for Facebook to take its social graph to the next level, perhaps even focusing on some of the networking capabilities that enable users to meet those that can be most helpful–beyond the recommended friends section of one’s homepage. LinkedIn is of course more equipped to handle the job-specific needs of a user seeking work or growth of one’s network, but it’s also been adding more features that look similar to Facebook’s in terms of staying informed to one’s social graph activity. Even though both Facebook and LinkedIn have not been fully immune to the woes of our current market, having features that appeal to job-seekers may further insulate these networks for the long haul.

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trooQ’s Social Approach to Beat eBay? Posted: 22 Dec 2008 07:30 AM PST trooQ is a recently launched social marketplace that rivals ebay in concept with its approach to interacting with trusted buyers and sellers. What this D.C.-based service does is encourage you to buy from trusted individuals based on the relationship you build with them within the trooQ community. The setup of trooQ itself is rather user-friendly, with an easy submission form for classifieds, and profile pages that list all a user’s available items. Search queries can be sorted in a similar way that eBay search queries can be, by those items that are ending the soonest, among other filtering options. And while there’s a focus on the social aspects of trooQ, you can still offer feedback on users after interacting with them through buying and selling on trooQ’s marketplace. These ratings will be displayed on a user’s profile. While this approach creates a different set of trust values than eBay’s ranking system, the concept itself is not new. There are several online marketplaces that allow you to befriend the other buyers and sellers in order to build up a trusting repertoire for a more social marketplace. But with platforms like Facebook Connect, trooQ could greatly benefit from creating an application that taps into larger, existing social networks for an even more trusting environment. Right now, any friends you have on trooQ are also friends made on trooQ, meaning that you have to build up trust and reputations from scratch. Though if trooQ had a Facebook app, you could see your Facebook friends that are buying and selling on trooQ, and these are the people you already know and trust. While there’s no way to find existing friends on trooQ, the company, formed by former Director of Product Management at Mixx, does encourage social interaction with its communities. These communities act as special interest groups that let you get to know other users better, and have a more direct group of people to sell items to. What’s helpful with these communities is that they offer a more targeted option for both buyers and sellers, while allowing users to get to know one another. So far, trooQ doesn’t appear have many users or listings across its categories, but I think that creating an application that integrates with the Facebook Connect platform could really help users jump-start their experience. Especially since there are already Facebook applications for eBay that let you see what items your Facebook friends are buying and selling, a more integrated approach for trooQ’s social stance will help make it a more viable contender. For a screen demo, see the video below, as posted on East Coast Blogging.

Mpowerplayer Adds MySpace App to Roster Posted: 22 Dec 2008 06:39 AM PST Mpowerplayer, the mobile game arcade that lets you try before you buy, has launched its MySpace application. Similar to the Facebook app launched just two weeks ago, the Mpowerplayer app on MySpace lets you discover mobile games and try them on for size. With a mobile interface directly in the application, its easy enough to get a well-rounded simulation of how the game will actually work on your cell phone. Aside from the need to click on the mobile phone buttons instead of being able to use your thumbs, the simulation works pretty well. For each game (and mpowerplayer has a number of fun and popular games to try out), there is a link for purchasing that game and having it sent to your mobile phone. The Mpowerplayer application on MySpace is another good move for he mobile arcade company, as it taps into yet another community of users and takes advantage of MySpace’s network for recommending games to friends and sending out updates about what games are being played and recommended by friends. Given the MySpace demographic and the social network’s dedication to its own mobile interface, having an app on MySpace in addition to its Facebook app is certainly a good move. As Nick mentioned in his article regarding Mpowerplayer’s initial round of funding, having such an extensive game preview function is a useful tool that other major app and game providers should provide, especially Apple. And having such an integral previewing service such as Mpowerplayer’s social networking applications is yet another powerful way in which games can be distributed across a wide array of users.

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Drop.io Adds Firefox Plugin for Fast Facebook-Sharing Posted: 22 Dec 2008 05:00 AM PST Drop.io has a new Firefox browser plugin that makes i even easier to share files with friends and, more specifically, with friends on Facebook. With the new plugin, you can create new drops from items you find from across the web. It’s got a convenient drag’n'drop option for text, links, files and HTML that you’d like to share, as well as drag’n'drop tabs to the drop.io logo for creating a link to that particular tab in that drop. You can even continually drag’n'drop files to the same drop or different drops, even while other files are uploading. Drop.io has also added some keyboard shortcuts to make the sharing process even simpler: hit control + shift + D in order to create a drop.io link to the tab you’re currently viewing. The beauty of it all is that the new browser plugin is tied in with the drop.io Facebook application, which took advantage of the Facebook Connect platform just weeks ago. It doesn’t get much easier to share web content, files, media and HTML than this, and with the Facebook Connect integration, your shared content can be spread to your social graph faster as well. As drop.io has also already begun building useful business applications around its service, further integration with Facebook and other platforms including Firefox makes drop.io a social bookmarking tool and media-sharing conduit with great potential for more. This is also in part because of the way drop.io has bridged the gap between online and offline media-sharing, while tying it all in with existing social networks in a very seamless fashion. The new drop.io Firefox plugin is compatible with Firefox 3.0 and 3.1. Click here to download.

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Kiva Now Taking Loans via hi5 Posted: 18 Dec 2008 02:13 PM PST In the truest of holiday spirits, social network hi5 has teamed up with micro-lending site Kiva.org in order to provide an integrated way in which hi5 users can make direct, person-to-person microloans via Kiva’s service. This will be accomplished through a Kiva community profile on the hi5 network, enabling the users on hi5 to lend directly to the entrepreneurs. Why does hi5 or Kiva need a partnership like this? It enables both hi5 and Kiva to operate on a global scale. Kiva already acted as a financial medium for micro-lenders and those in developing countries in need of money to launch their startups. But digging into a large and already global network like hi5 means that Kiva can tap into hi5’s social network in order to promote more giving. The good thing about this particular partnership is that it’s setting out to make real, actionable occurrences take place within an online environment. LendingTree set out to achieve a similar goal by initiating its launch as a Facebook application. And Kiva has a Facebook app as well, though it doesn’t appear to be as integrated as the new partnership between Kiva and hi5. Given that hi5 just launched its virtual currency last week, I imagine that a partnership with an organization such as Kiva is only one way in which the new hi5 currency could come into play, even if that’s not yet the case. There are a great number of organizations for charitable, financial and entertainment purposes that could further take advantage of the hi5 currency, so I would conjecture that we’ll be seeing partnerships with hi5 along these lines throughout 2009.

12seconds’ Clever iPhone App Posted: 18 Dec 2008 10:17 AM PST Application developers like 12seconds can’t yet tie in the iPhone’s video capabilities, so what’s a video-based service to do? Since 12seconds.tv has taken the Twitter model and applied it to video updates, it’s almost necessary for the company to have a viable mobile accompaniment for users that are always on the go. Having used mobile devices like the Nokia N95, I’ve grown to appreciate the video capabilities that connect me to the web and the communities I’ve become partial towards. So as 12seconds emerges from its beta test phase, it’s been interesting and encouraging to see the workaround its development team has come up with to appeal to iPhone users.