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Multiply Relaunch Competing with Facebook News Feeds and Photos? Posted: 28 May 2009 02:03 PM PDT Multiply, the social network for families, has completely relaunched its website this week. And at the center of the relaunch is a new take on the news feed, which was already a key component in Multiply’s feature set. Reformatted to function much like your desktop email client (i.e. Outlook), the news feed is your central point of information-sharing within your Multiply network. There are folders on the left-hand side, which act as filters for the type of information displayed in your news feed. Custom filters are also a new option for your Multiply news feed, in order to ensure you’re receiving the content you want to see. There’s also an option to view updates from friends of friends, which offers a way to see content coming from people within your social graph though they aren’t direct contacts. According to Multiply CEO Peter Pezaris, the ability to access certain content from the friends of friends takes the pressure of adding people as contacts, while still allowing you to see what’s going on in their lives. This particular take on accessing others’ news feeds is a new take on the concepts surrounding information dissemination, and it combines certain aspects of Facebook and Twitter that we find most beneficial. The semi-public aspect of the updated Multiply news feed is reminiscent of Twitter streams, and the filtering options are a step up from what Facebook has recently incorporated into its own news feeds. Staying one step ahead of Facebook news feeds is important for Multiply, as the activity feed is a feature the Multiply network had before Facebook launched its own. So the ability to both filter and access certain activity of friends of friends is somewhat like Multiply’s answer to Facebook’s privacy settings, which are the most effective ways to modify your own news feed content on Facebook. In addition to all the news feed updates, filters and broadened access to your social graph, Multiply has also updated its Media Locker in order to improve the photo-sharing capabilities of its service. In an effort to simplify the photo upload process, there’s now an auto-upload application that pulls newly added photos and videos to your Multiply Media Locker when you add them to your computer via your digital camera. From your Media Locker you can then select which photos and videos you’d like to add to your Multiply profile. For Multiply, this makes the network competitive with Facebook in another way, as the auto-upload feature will encourage users to upload even more content at a more frequent rate. As Facebook is the largest photo-sharing site out there, one way to get a leg up on Facebook is to get users to automatically add their content to your site. In addition to the auto-uploader, there are enhanced photo-editing tools directly within Multiply, along with an expanded catalog of photo-printing and scrapbook creation, and Picasa and Windows photo gallery plugins for even easier media-sharing both within Multiply and across the web.

Wibiya Uses Facebook, Twitter to Make Your Blog Better Posted: 28 May 2009 06:58 AM PDT Can you build a community around a Facebook Public Profile, and will that help in your own blogging endeavors? Wibiya has created a service that is banking on the ability to do so, which has become an easier task given the continued updates to Fcebook’s platform, namely Facebook Connect. Leveraging an existing fan base/community from Facebook in order to drive traffic and build up your own blog is a concept we support here at Social Times and AllFacebook, as it goes along with the marketing ideas put forth in some of our articles. But recent updates to Wibiya mean that the process of utilizing Facebook for your own purposes could be made that much easier. Wibiya works by providing widgets and custom toolbars that you can add to your site, which act as catalysts for optimizing the way in which your blog can take advantage of existing social networks, media tools and communities on the social web. Launching its private beta earlier this month, Wibiya has reported having reached 2 million users. Wibiya will spend the next few weeks extending its private beta, with plans to open its service up to the public towards the end of the year. The recent updates to Wibiya’s services include a Facebook Connect community shoutbox, integrated Twitter search and integrated Twitter trending topics. The Facebook Connect community shoutbox is a more integral way in which to directly connect your Facebook community with your blog or website. It makes communication easier for your community members, as they can post omments in the shoutbox. This feature particularly takes advantage of the news-spreading ways of Facebook Connect, but looks to use it in a way that offers more capabilities for interaction between your audience. Beyond your Facebook presence, Wibiya is looking to further increase your blog traffic and branding potential with its new Twitter integration. For this, Wibiya has taken two important aspects of Twitter filtering and associated it with your blog. The Twitter search is tied directly with your own account user name, so the content coming from your Twitter stream is being utilized for community-building within Twitter and on your own site. Trending topics is a feature we’re seeing on a number of Twitter-related applications and use-case scanarios. While trending topics through Wibiya isn’t directly associated with any community features you’re building up, this integrated resource aids in the creation of your own community by adding stickiness to your site. Deeper Facebook integration is on the short list for Wibiya, with plans to expand on its current fixed set of features. See here for more details on how Wibiya’s service works.

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Social Times and VentureBeat DEMO Meetup Tomorrow Posted: 27 May 2009 01:06 PM PDT Social Times, Venturebeat, and DEMO have put together a last minute meetup in Washington, D.C. This Thursday (tomorrow), we will be hosting up to 100 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and interested parties at Hudson Restaurant and Lounge. The venue is located a couple blocks south of Dupont Circle at 2030 M St NW. Venturebeat and DEMO are covering the first 30 people’s drinks. In order to determine how many people are interested in attending we’ve set up an eventbrite page. Please go fill out your basic information so we can keep track of how much interest there is. It’s definitely last minute but there’s never a bad reason to take some time out to network with fellow entrepreneurs and investors. Go visit the eventbrite page. Also Venturebeat said they are good for the first 30 drinks.

Clearspring Doubles Growth with Acquisition of AddThis Posted: 27 May 2009 11:31 AM PDT After acquiring AddThis last year, Clearspring set out to grow its own web presence and make its media-sharing tools as accessible as possible to social media users across the globe. We’ve received an update from Clearspring, following up on its acquisition. So far, the follow-up looks good, and provides an encouraging look at Clearpring’s swift integration of the AddThis distribution platform for sharing web content. Clearspring cites the April comScore report showing a great deal of growth, reaching over half a billion people. That’s up from the 200 million web users Clearspring reached prior to the acquisition of AddThis, more than doubling its web presence. The company achieved this growth by combining the sharing capabilities of AddThis with those already found on Clearspring. What started out as a widget company has quickly grown with the changing trends of the web and has become an entire distribution platform for transporting pieces of media to different areas of the web, and enabling users to experience those peices of media remotely. It’s a concept to which Clearspring has always been dedicated, and the acquisition itself reflects Clearspring’s ability to keep up with undulating attitudes of media distribution and redistribution on the web. To that end, Clearspring has made some updates to the site, rewriting the AddThis JavaScript client and adding in-depth documentation along with support mechanisims to better aide developers that use its APIs and client services. Additionally, Clearsprings analytics infrastructure has been added to the AddThis reporting function, giving developers a broader understanding of user behavior and areas of their implementation that need tweaking. A major priority for Clearspring is to provide AddThis as a one-stop shop for developers that want to “enable sharing beyond links.” This is yet another core concept for Clearspring, as it has spent the past few years building out its own advertising and analytlics platform, appealing to a wide range of developers and clients. Layering in these functions for the AddThis integration seems like a smart move, as it improves the value of AddThis and allows Clearspring to grow vertically with its client-facing feature set.

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The 10 Obstacles To Brand Building On The Social Web And How To Avoid Them Posted: 22 May 2009 07:28 AM PDT Whether for business or personal, building a brand on the social web can be a great way to spread the word about your product or service, as well as engaging consumers in order to garner useful feedback. But I hear a lot from newcomers that they have trouble reaching the tipping point. Here are the to obstacles I’ve encountered and witnessed others encountering, with some suggestions for helping you get over that hump. 1. Not Having a Good Product When you’re building a brand online, you’re representing your product. If the product is good, it will sell itself to a certain extent. Having a good product will help you flourish in online brand building on the social web, because other social media users will be more likely to talk about your product and help you spread the word. Not having a good product will often result in a lower success rate when it comes to leveraging the social web for brand-building. This is something we stress often. Unless you have a good product, you simply won’t get very far in online brand building. One central concept for online brand building is taking advantage of the social web. This is where a lot of influential social media users can disseminate information about your product in a way that will get your name out to more people than you would have been able to do on your own. This goes for bloggers, web-lebrity status Twitter users, diggers, and early adopters in general. When it comes to building a brand on the social web, a great deal of your marketing comes down to word-of-mouth. From one user to another, the user-generated content being circulated around your product can make a big difference in getting the word out about your brand.

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How To Increase Your Email Whuffie Factor In 5 Easy Steps Posted: 21 May 2009 06:00 AM PDT You may want to think twice before you send that next email out. We all face an ongoing battle with our email inbox. While there are countless systems for getting down to inbox zero, success is ever so fleeting and the next day you are back at it again. It’s become part of the daily grind and the worst thing is that we’re all frequently causing pain for the person on the receiving end. So what does any of this have to do with Whuffie and what the hell does Whuffie mean? Making Whuffie Whuffie is a term coined by Tara Hunt who recently published the book, “The Whuffie Factor“. The term directly refers to social capital, something I’ll be discussing increasingly on this site. Anyways, I pre-ordered the book months ago and began flipping through it yesterday afternoon during a moment of deep thought. The book describes how you can use social technology to build your “Whuffie Factor”, or social capital, something I’ll be increasingly discussing on this site. As I flipped through the book, I stumbled across a table on page 158 which outlines the various type of deposits and withdrawals that can be made to what I would call your “Whuffie Account”. It’s a measure of how much you give to a community (and your network) and how much you take away. It has been proven countless times that if you end up giving more to your network, you receive much more in return. Whuffie For Email The concept of Whuffie and social capital has been in my mind for a while now and today during the DC Tech Cocktail event the concept of the email whuffie factor popped into my head. Every day I wake up and loathe the battle that will be fought between me and my inbox. I’ll send a message out and immediately receive on in return. Some people would say that I should be grateful for so many inquiries but at a certain point it become completely ineffective. Yes, with more effective planning (and possibly with the help of Away Find) I could potentially manage things better but the bottom line is that we all face the battle. When you are building your network, you must consider what impact each of your interactions with others has on that individual. If you know someone is getting two thousand emails a day, the last thing you want to do is overload them with more stuff to do. What I realized during my “aha” moment was that the same sort of relationship that we have in building communities online takes place every day in our inbox. Whether it’s the favors from others that we ask (as Tara Hunt references in her book) or whether simply the structure of the email. This form of communication requires effort on the recipient’s end and taking a few moments to consider how to structure that message is extremely important. As a result of this moment I decide that I would put forth five factors that will help increase your “email whuffie factor.” Please feel free to add more to the comments and I’ll be happy to add them to this list. 1. Create An Effective Subject Line “No Subject” is the worst thing that can ever show up in somebody’s email inbox. You are pretty much saying that you don’t care enough to write the subject. There’s a reason that emails contain a subject line: for you to use them. Get the person’s attention and let them know that you care. You can say a whole lot in just a few words. If you don’t put in a subject you might as well assume that you aren’t getting a response. 2. Be Short And Sweet It’s ironic that I’m saying this because all too often I get caught up in writing lengthy emails to explain something that could have been written in 5 sentences. With hundreds of emails in our inboxes, a short email that gets to the point is seriously a breath of fresh air. There’s not really much else to say about that! 3. Don’t Ask Permission For A Follow-up You’ll never believe how many emails I receive from people that ask for permission to send me information about their product. I hope I don’t sound like an asshole saying that asking for permission to tell somebody something is pretty much asking to hear the word “No”. Actually you won’t even hear that because the person will delete your email right away. 4. Fill Their Inbox With Love There wouldn’t be any whuffie without a little bit of love. When was the last time that someone sent you an email which said “I just wanted to let you know that you are producing amazing things. Keep up the great work and no need to reply as I just wanted to let you know to keep up the great work!” It’s an email that no person will ever dislike no matter how cluttered their inbox is. One of the most important components of these emails is that you don’t require a response from the person. All you are doing is providing some love. Nobody will ever say no to that! 5. Win Friends And Influence People With Email Whuffie I figured that it would be best to boil all of Dale Carnegie’s secret tricks down into one single rule. Consider his tips when you are sending out your email. His words of advice are timeless for any individual looking to increase their social capital. Follow his rules and apply them to your email strategies and you will most definitely continue to thrive in the digital world. Anything Else? I’d love to hear what your thoughts are about increasing email whuffie. These were just a few ideas to get started but at the end of the day, those few extra steps can go a very long way. Also thanks to Tara Hunt for producing an inspiring book which happened to arrive on my doorstep at the right time.

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Twofish Updates Focus on Virtual Currency Data Posted: 20 May 2009 05:00 AM PDT Twofish, the company that provides micropayments for applications, is announcing a few new products for its service. The new products mainly revolve around analytics and easier ways in which to get set up with Twofish. With these updates, Twofish is really looking to appeal to the developer community, gain new users and provide better ways in which to utilize the data it provides through its microplayment platform. From its Easy Element product, the core service for Twofish, comes a new tool called Currency Starter. This is closer to a turnkey solution for developers that want to get started right away with a virtual currency option for their applications. Some of the options that come with Currency Starter include Google Analytics integration, and all the other basics needed for setting up a payment gateway for virtual currency. Twofish has a one-click purchase option for users, which saves their credit card information, along with account history which users have access to. A highlight of the Currency Starter program is the customizable widget which developers can place on their site. This widget is skinnable and can be integrated quickly and easily into a developer’s site. The benefit of using the widget is tat users can handle all their transactions related to Twofish without having to leave the developer’s site. As Google Analytics cannot be integrated with a service that has to rediret end users to a third party site, another plus side for the widget is the fact that it still supports Twofish’s Google Analytics integration. Speaking of Google Analytics, the integration of this option is another of Twofish’s updates being announced today. For those developers that would like the basics of the analytics surrounding their virtual currency for their apps and already have Google Analytics, this is a good way to get the core information as it relates to their own site activity. For those developers that would like more ways in which to drill down into their metrics and user activity, Twofish is offering a new analytics framework that offers more comparison tools. These tools revolve around sales, currency catalog and user behavior. What are users buying, how much are they buying, when are they buying, where does the point of sales occur, and where are the referrals coming from? These are only a few of the analytics options that will be available on the new analytics platform. Twofish and its updates really fit into the larger picture of a virtual goods economy, as competitors such as Super Rewards step up their offerings to developers, and Facebook continues on its path towards a universal virtual currency in order to reap more of the benefits from this growing trend. Twofish still remains rather focused on the optimization of the data it collect son behalf of developers that use its service, and the current updates reflect this core concept for the virtual goods company, and recently added a number of new partners to its roster as well.

Twitter Tees on Threadless. Win Money for Your Tweets. Posted: 19 May 2009 08:00 AM PDT Many have tried to start a company that puts your Twitter status updates on a tee shirt, but the end results have been largely dismal. It’s a tricky concept to pin down in a revenue-generating model when you’re merely a third party service. But Threadless may have figured something out. In partnership with Twitter, Threadless the company that made t-shirts social, launches Twitter Tees today. And the best thing about this new project is that it keeps the community around Twitter and Threadless intact. Twitter Tees works by submitting a tweet to be considered for the next contest, where others can vote the tweet up or down. Logging in with your Twitter credentials will enable you to submit your tweet and also access submitted tweets of your friends. The winner does indeed get prize money. If you nominate a tweet that was created by someone else, the original Twitter user will be notified and approval must be given before the tweet can be used in the contest. This particular aspect of the approval process is a good safeguard against ownership and copyright issues, something that hindered others such as Twitshirt from having a successful launch. The Threadless contests for Twitter Tees, which run weekly, are still at the core of this new project. What this means is that the new service is not a place to have your tweets turned into t-shirts. There are no “one-off” printing options, and the community voting still applies. Lucky for you, the integration of Twitter into Twitter Tees makes it that much easier for you to spread the word about your nominations. While details of the partnership have not been revealed, we do wonder at the revenue-generating potential of such an idea. If it were to make money, now would be a good time, given the mainstream coverage of Twitter and our undeniable attraction to snarky, pop culture tees. I have a tendency to feel that Twitter could make some amount revenue with several smaller projects such as this, so I’m anxious to see the future for Threadless and the way in which Twitter handles this particular project.

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