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JS-Kit Making Yahoo More Competitive with Facebook Connect? Posted: 04 Mar 2009 03:12 PM PST JS-Kit is furthering it’s data portability capabilities by partnering with Yahoo this week. With this partnership, JS-Kit gets another boost for expanding its tactful approach to cross-network ratings and comments, while Yahoo receives another integrated way in which to reach hundreds of thousands more developers and extend even more functionality to the developers working on its Open Platform. The significance of Yahoo’s partnership with JS-Kit is that it makes Yahoo even more of a viable competitor to Facebook, specifically Facebook Connect. While Yahoo’s initial release of its Open Strategy made us think that it’s approach is quite the Facebook Connect competitor, the addition of JS-Kit as a partner raises the ante. That’s because in teaming up with JS-Kit and operating outside of a network such as Facebook’s, Yahoo’s Open Strategy becomes far more “open.” Developers using Y!OS are not limited to connecting data between their existing site and only Facebook, but can take part in a more vast cross-network that JS-Kit has been building up for some time. With a reported 600,000 developers using JS-Kit for ratings, comments, and in turn leveraging this cross-network approach, the potential reach for a given developer, publisher or end user is increased a significant amount. And for JS-Kit, the partnership with Yahoo is only the latest stop on the ongoing journey. JS-Kit recently launched compatibility with Facebook Connect as well as Open I.D., making it more encompassing in its implementation. Aside from these recent updates, JS-Kit already works with AOL, Evite, and Sun Microsystems, to name a few other partners. JS-Kit is truly working towards becoming a powerhouse in its industry, and has readily accepted the benefits of partnering with several sites in order to survive the waning startup climate, expand, and provided added value to publishers, developers and site visitors. Could this be the boost Yahoo has been looking for? In taking on an Open Platform strategy, Yahoo has been working on unifying its many sites and applications, looking to become what Nick has pointed out as a software distributor, encouraging developers to build on its Open Platform and give end users a manageable and singular web “existence” across things like Yahoo Mail, Updates, IM, Toolbar and more. It’s an effort that Yahoo has been speaking about and working towards for quite some time, especially in relation to Yahoo Mail and the socialization of much of the content that’s run through its long-established network. Facebook Connect has taken the lead on the shared content initiative, and has thus been at the forefront of many related discussions. But Yahoo is, at the very least, broadening the perspective of such discussions by expanding its Open Strategy features for developers.

Citi Cards Team with MySpace, Earn Music Rewards Posted: 04 Mar 2009 01:50 PM PST There are a lot of credit card initiative programs going on right now, given the economic state of affairs and the increased standards for lending out money and credit. So when I learned of Citi Cards teaming up with MySpace, I wasn’t at all surprised. Gotta get ‘em while they’re early, right? The new offering coming from Citi is called Citi Forward, which is a credit card that’s supposed to be more tailored to the financial needs of current consumers. Citi Forward aims to encourage the maintenance of good “healthy” credit, by incentivizing consumers by things like lowering their purchase interest rates by a quarter percent when cardmembers use credit wisely. Other rewards include ThankYou Points each billing period for paying on time and staying under the credit line. Directing these incentives to college age students and young adults that may be using MySpace is especially important as this is the demographic that needs such rewards the most, for encouraging good credit behavior. As college students are typically learning about credit on their own during this time in their lives, while also racking up huge amounts of debt through student loans, a clear-cut program that explains how credit works and also rewards them for good decisions is just good sense. As far as Citi teaming up with MySpace, I think this is a good start. Citi Forward has a MySpace profile page that’s flush with information about the credit card program and has shareable media that can be posted on other users’ MySpace profiles. Having this kind of presence on MySpace would also make me think that there’s a great opportunity for further integration between the credit card company and the social network, so it’s interesting to see that Citi does offer ThankYou rewards points that can be redeemed directly on MySpace. These points can be used for music, the Impact Maker Fundraising package, VIP concert packages, private concerts for the cardmember and their friends, or movie premier screenings. Hopefully Citi will find other areas of social media for such direct integration, whether through other networks such as Facebook, or financial service sites such as Geezeo. Whether such partnerships will eventually lead to more options that tie credit cards with social sites which are fast becoming hubs for much of our online behavior remains to be seen. Given the privacy issues that arise with a given social site, there may be some time yet before we see higher levels of integration.

Drop.io Launches Playlist Applet for Easy Listening Posted: 04 Mar 2009 07:51 AM PST Drop.io is all about file-storage, sharing and making these easier tasks. Taking advantage of the cloud, Drop.io has build a new applet that makes it drop-dead simple to create a playlist that can be accessed via the web, anywhere and anytime. The new feature, rightly titled playlist.io, lets you take songs from your computer and add them to a playlist with a few clicks. This works with your iTunes songs as well. Once you’ve created a playlist, you’re able to pull up your playlist.io on any computer or compatible mobile device that’s able to access the web. Music from existing Drop.io folders can also be added to your playlist, with drag-n-drop capabilities. As with anything sent to your Drop.io account, a playlist can be made private or can be shared with privacy settings. Moving a bit beyond the direct playlist.io experience, two other new features enhance playlist.io for mobile users and iTunes users. Under the newly released Drop.io API base iPhone app (named droppler), music can be streamed directly to your iPhone. And in a two-way integration, subscribing to a playlist will also automatically send updated content to your iTunes as a podcast. While the ability to add things such as music was already a working option for Drop.io users, the added benefit of being able to stream that music in a dedicated player from the cloud makes media-sharing and accessibility that much easier. It seems like the sensible solution for better enabling end users to interact with their saved content. So far the playlist.io player is pretty basic, though it features some of the same skinning and customization options as your regular Drop.io interface. Perhaps some additional options for playlist.io will include more social networking or browser-based integration for continued feature adaptations many users would appreciate. In regards to such efforts, Drop.io is also clear to encourage developers to build applications that work with Drop.io, using its API. To that end, perhaps well see more interesting applications come of Drop.io or playlist.io, or both. Drop.io has also hinted that it will be creating and launching more applets such as playlist.io, or the Firefox plugin Drop.io released late least year for yet another layer of simplified social sharing via the cloud.

Zynga’s Latest iPhone Game: Scramble Live Posted: 04 Mar 2009 06:01 AM PST Zynga’s at it again. The social gaming company has launched a mobile version of Scramble Live for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The game itself, if you’re unfamiliar, is a grid of letters that can be connected to form words (think word search with options for all-directional word creation). While the words themselves cannot be re-ordered, the grid can be rotated in its entirety. This gives you additional perspectives in order to find your words. As with many other Zynga games made for the iPhone, Scramble Live takes advantage of the accelerometer, though this particular use case may not be as exciting as an action-oriented video game. I gotta admit this game is pretty addictive for me in its online Facebook app version. I know… I’m a sucker for word games and they’re of the few things I get viciously competitive about. So I’ll be happy to take advantage of some of Scramble’s social features in order to beat all of you. These social features are in fact a lot like those found on the Facebook app game, and actually let you compete against your Facebook friends. There is the option to play live against other users (yes, in real time). There’s also the option to Play & Pass, which enables you to play with up to three other people sitting next to you on the same device. While I haven’t gotten a chance to try the Play & Pass option, I tend to like this idea. It’s reminiscent of older video game systems. Now to find a group of people that like the game as much as I do… If you’re not into the social options, then you can play solo. And if you still have a bit of a competitive streak, the solo option does display the leader board so you can see where you rank amongst friends. But it is good to see that Zyna and others, such as SGN, are making their iPhone games more social, especially in linking them to their existing game counterparts already present in Facebook. Having a mobile game of this nature is yet another way in which Zynga’s platform-on-top-of-a -platform approach is making the Facebook-to-mobile experience more seamless, from the game mode to the competition factors. Unlike the Facebook app version of Scramble Live, however, the iPhone game app will cost you $4.99. To soften the blow, Zynga is offering a limited-time launch special, pricing the game at $2.99. So I suggest you get it now.

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