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Plum Adds Groups to Compete with Facebook Connect Posted: 11 Mar 2009 12:06 AM PDT Plum Inc. is a social media messaging platform that’s been around for some time, offering social media components for publishers that would like to add semi-customizable social features to their websites. Today, Plum is revealing Plum Groups, which is a ready-made solution for multiple people to access a shared web space for messaging, updates, comments, and sharing media. This Groups update comes in light of all the other changes we’re seeing across larger social networks, specificaly those, like Facebook, that have opening platforms. Options like Facebook Connect provide some semblance of immediate connectivity in the social sense, without a publisher needing to add their own social components or networking features on their own. The iea with Plum Groups is to offer a similar ability to connect with those a user already knows, as the Groups tab is actually replacing the Friends tab on Plum’s products. The idea of adding Groups is also being used as a way for an individual to broadcast updates and content to others within the group. With this update, Plum is targeting family, office teams, schools and friends. The idea with Plum Groups is to allow multiple types of groups to be available for a given user. This implies that Plum will have tools for managing multiple groups from a single account as well. Individuals that would like to create a group on Plum’s website can do so for free, whereas sites that would like to add Group components can take advantage of Plum’s business options. Competing more directly with sites like Ning or KickApps, Plum’s offering also comes during a time when the idea of offering internal networking options to consumers and end users is an attractive option for site publishers. I think in the future we’ll need to see many of these third party social platforms have ready-integration with the larger platforms such as Facebook Connect, especially as many sites looking for social capabilities are also looking towards growth which can be achieved in leveraging existing social graphs on Facebook. However, we’re still seeing a good deal of ongoing development for all social media platforms, so time will tell how best to integrate such features for the best use by businesses and individuals.

Drop.io Adds Real Time Collaboration for File Sharing Posted: 10 Mar 2009 07:04 AM PDT Drop.io, the file-sharing service, now allows you to share your media with others in real time. What’s this mean for users? Real time file-sharing makes drop.io more collaborative, and offers a wave of new possibilities for end users and developers that take advantage of drop.io’s platform for new applications. The new real time offering comes shortly after drop.io’s launching of its playlist functionality, which also adds another layer of usability to its browser-based media access page. With real time file-sharing, multiple users with access to the same drop can witness changes made immediately. Participants can upload files, change the settings of the drop, and leave comments. There may not be too many reasons you can readily think of where such file-sharing would be needed. But coworkers within the same team, or a client-based relationship where files and media needs to be shared and viewed in real time from a remote location lend just two use case scenarios for drop.io’s new real time features. When you think about it, the new real time file-sharing appears to work a lot like chat. Perhaps you’re wondering why you’d use drop.io instead of a media-supporting chat client, such as AIM or Yahoo, and in some cases gchat. But drop.io has curbed some of this potential competition by offering chat directly from the real-time drop windows. The chat conversations are all archived, so it’s easy enough to scroll back and see the previously shared messages and comments between participants. The full-size chat room itself is quite like Basecamp in this effect, but may prove more usable and easier on the eyes regarding actual media sharing. This isn’t the only way drop.io continues to ramp up its feature offering in order to become more competitive against Basecamp and the likes. Drop.io does have a set of APIs that enable developers to build third party applications with its products, including the new real-time collaborative offering. This vastly widents the range of options for both the developer community and drop.io itself when it comes to the types of applications that we’ll see being extended to users as a result.

Interview: OneRiot Continues Transformation with Real Time Video Search Posted: 10 Mar 2009 07:12 AM PDT When browser-based social search engine Me.dium relaunched as OneRiot last year, it seemed like a drastic change for the company. But the intent to focus on social web search remains an integral part of OneRiot, which is launching real time video search results today. Given the focus on both social search and media, OneRiot is looking to real time video search in order to add another useful component for its service. Easily likened to the real time citizen journalism empowerment of microblogging platforms such as Twitter, or useful hubs and memes that keep pulse of the hottest topics right now, OneRiot has a great deal of potential in terms of harnessing the power of social search, and delivering it to users, businesses, brands, and website publishers for several purposes. Adding real time video search is just another step in that direction. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Tobias Peggs, VP and General Manager of OneRiot. Kristen Nicole: Could you give me some background on OneRiot, and about the decision to relaunch Me.dium as OneRiot? Tobias Peggs of OneRiot: The plan with Me.dium was always to create a great social search company. We initially focused on social content discovery – Me.dium allowed you to surf the web with your friends and discover new relevant content together in real-time. In June last year, leveraging the same underlying platform, we launched a more traditional search engine app in prototype, and asked Me.dium users for feedback. Their response was so overwhelmingly positive that we decided to focus primarily on that search engine app – which led to a rebrand and the launch of OneRiot in November 2008. Kristen Nicole: How does OneRiot work? Tobias Peggs: OneRiot is the first index of the real-time web. Our index is fresh and socially relevant, and our search results reflect what real people are buzzing about right now. To create this real time index, OneRiot looks at a range of "social signals" from our 2 million strong community. As they surf the web, they can join a program which helps us build the index, allowing them to share information anonymously with us about what's hot or not. Since November our community has opted in to share over 2 billion pages with us. We also look at other social signals – e.g. the links people are sharing in real time on Twitter – to help complete the picture. Kristen Nicole: In terms of the new video search, how does this layer in to the larger OneRiot service? Tobias Peggs: We launched OneRiot in Alpha last November – and things have gone tremendously well. Users are getting huge value from OneRiot's real-time social search. We focus on delivering "the pulse of the web" – the news, stories and websites that people are buzzing about right now. Video Search is hugely complimentary to that experience. Users who like to get "the pulse of the web" will love the socially-relevant video search results from the real-time web. This all coincides with our service moving from Alpha to Beta, not to mention a refresh of our website's look and feel. Kristen Nicole: What are your ultimate goals in adding real-time video search? Tobias Peggs: The ultimate goal is to deliver more user value. Our users want to be connected to the socially-relevant videos ranked by what people are watching and sharing right now. We're also keen to show off our technology too so video was a natural next step to the evolution of our social search engine. It's the first real-time index of video on the web; an index that changes throughout the day based on what videos are being watched right now. That's pretty cool. Kristen Nicole: Any social media integration for OneRiot? Tobias Peggs: Lots. For example, OneRiot users can socialize around the search results pages – leaving comments which we've enabled via Facebook Connect. Users can search, find great results, comment on it, and share their thoughts with friends. Kristen Nicole: How has your business model had to shift in regards to social media integration, moving from Me.dium to OneRiot? It seems like OneRiot has less social immediacy than Me.dium, lending itself to a more personalized and singular use case. Tobias Peggs: Users search with OneRiot to find the news, videos, and products that people are talking about right now in relation to any topic. With the addition of Facebook Connect, OneRiot users can also share that experience with their Facebook friends, starting conversations on Facebook about the hot gossip, music, fashion, and other stories that they found on OneRiot. Facebook Connect helps OneRiot reveal another social element to "social search". Our community finds information which is relevant to the conversions that they're having today. Now they can easily share that information, and continue the conversation, with all their Facebook friends.

Twofish Looks To Revolutionize the Virtual Economy Posted: 10 Mar 2009 06:01 AM PDT Today Twofish announced its first partnerships with a number of large social gaming companies including Pocketville, Pangaea, and Ignite Skill Gaming. More important than the partnerships is the immense value that Twofish provides to applications that are integrated into the virtual economy. Through leveraging double-entry accounting standards, Twofish tracks every single transaction that takes place within an economy. That’s not all though. Twofish also gives developers insight to buyers’ post purchase behavior. For example, say a user in a virtual game like Pet Society (the largest application on the Facebook platform in terms of daily active users) purchases an item for their house but keeps it in their inventory rather than using it. The Twofish data platform will be able to notify the developers of the user’s behavior with each product they purchase. I spoke with Lisa Rutherford, President of Twofish, last week to discuss their newly launched platform and I was truly impressed. While social networks continue to seek a break through monetization model, Twofish is actively developing a platform which provides deep insight, eventually empowering developers to create virtual goods and services that are most relevant to each user. I’m currently long on the digital goods space, and believe that we are still extremely early in developing a more robust digital economy. Companies like Twofish are necessary to help developers build more efficient systems and truly understand what’s driving their application’s economy. The platform reports on metrics such as scarcity, velocity, and stagnancy. Is your application’s digital economy about to enter a recession? Twofish can warn you ahead of time so that you can take precautionary measures to avoid things like virtual currency inflation. I am extremely impressed with Twofish and think they have an extremely bright future ahead of them. If you want to learn more about monetizing and tracking digital economies check out the Twofish website. I’ve also included a video from Sean Ryan, a co-founder and Chairman of Twofish, and the CEO of MEEZ, describing more about the Twofish platform.

Interview: Cliqset Beta Offers Portable Profiles Posted: 10 Mar 2009 06:00 AM PDT Cliqset, which officially launches its public beta today, is one of the several companies looking to make online networking easier for the individual. With goals as grand as OpenID, Cliqset is actually working in tandem with the established methods of “portable profiles” in order to push the trend forward, providing an ever-accessible omnipresence for end users that benefits the participating publishers and site owners as well. With such a seamless concept for site accessibility, Cliqset presents itself as an immediate socialization tool, providing instant networks for sites, while bridging the gap between computer-based and mobile applications as well. Below is an interview with Darren Bounds, co-Founder and President of Cliqset. Kristen Nicole of Social Times: Could you tell me the principles behind Cliqset? Darren Bounds: Cliqset is all about the platform. They’ve created the first neutral social platform designed to allow a user to create a single social identity that can be shared and used by any 3rd party–in any way they see fit. With Cliqset, applications can simply share and mold one single copy of the user’s identity and have it be available in one place. Kristen Nicole: How does Cliqset work? Darren Bounds: Cliqset enables a new type of social interaction that couldn’t exist prior. Social applications no longer need to make a point to share content, they’re all part of the same underlying social infrastructure. Users can communicate and interact with each other across social applications without any boundaries. Today when a user selects a social application they have to consider more than just their personal preference–they need their friends to use it as well. Cliqset eliminates that barrier, adding value for the user but also the developer. Users can pick the app that’s right for them as an individual without sacrificing interaction with their friends and family who’re spending their time on one or more other social applications. This is a win for both the user but also a big win for the developer. Kristen Nicole: So you’re pretty reliant on the developer community and publishers for growth. How will you go about reaching out to developers? Darren Bounds: We’ll definitely be doing a lot of viral outreach–through blogs, Twitter, etc. We think that Cliqset offers a very compelling environment for developers, as it is much more open than other platforms, such as Facebook Connect. Kristen Nicole: On the user end, you’ll be able to market directly to them as well. What are your plans for this? Darren Bounds: Again, we’re relying on a lot of on the ground outreach to consumers–through blogs, Twitter, events, cool contests, etc. Already, our Twitter campaign has generated a ton of visibility for the beta launch. Kristen Nicole: You mentioned that you have a pretty focused mobile initiative for developers as well. Could you elaborate on this? Darren Bounds: Yes, mobile is a huge part of Cliqset’s offering. At launch, we’ll have an iPhone application and Windows Mobile integration, allowing users to update their relationships and contacts on the go. The initial mobile offering is just a sliver of what we’ll be coming out with in the future. Kristen Nicole: Where do you see the “portable profile” trend going long term? Darren Bounds: Existing social identity will be the foundation of all social applications. Users will move from place to place, application to application, never losing touch with the people they know and never needing to recreate or reestablish content. The Web will ultimately be made up not of large, monolithic social networks but rather discrete niche services that are hyper focused on an individual’s tastes and interests. These services will share the same underlying social fabric, tying these connections together and allowing them to share and exchange information almost transparently.

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