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SGN Hitting Home Runs With iPhone Games Posted: 04 Oct 2008 11:29 PM CDT When I sat down with Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN, at f8 earlier this year, I asked him about whether or not his company has plans to begin developing games for the iPhone. At the time he said little more than their company is seriously considering all social platforms. For me it seemed pretty obvious that one of the primary platforms for social games would soon be the iPhone. While the iPhone has proven to be a revolutionary platform, the applications still lack significant social features. Event SGN’s latest iPhone games aren’t very social but for now that doesn’t matter given that they are already extremely successful. Within a few days SGN’s first game, iGolf, rocketed to the top of the application charts. In just a couple weeks the company would have a second game at the top of the charts: iBowl. At least one commenter on the iBowl application asked for the release of an iBaseball game. My guess is that they will have a whole suite of Wii-like games before all is said and done. Just a couple months ago things weren’t looking as rosy for the company. There was a lot of chatter about developers leaving the company and it appeared that active usage of the company’s Facebook applications were dropping. While I wouldn’t say that the company was near its end, I would be willing to say that the company was navigating some extremely choppy seas. No path to success is ever easy though and SGN may have just made it through one of their first serious tests of will. Just this past week Shervin Pishevar posted a note on Facebook that at first glance sounds trippy but after looking is the executive digging deep for inspiration. The note would also go on to inspire others and while the company is still early in its iPhone history, there is no doubt that they may have just found a better environment to play. While the path to revenue for iPhone applications is a bit more challenging, I have no doubt that SGN will be able to get there quickly. The only thing that I’m left wondering is when will SGN’s social gaming competitors follow suit onto the mobile platforms?

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Will Blogging and Social Media Be Mainstream? Posted: 03 Oct 2008 04:37 PM CDT While you could argue that blogging in general has crossed into mainstream based on the number of visitors attending top blogs, most visitors don’t know that what they are visiting is called “blogs” though. After speaking with one individual last night, I’ve concluded that some people will just never get involved in social media or take advantage of the many tools at their disposal. The Inner Circle I’ve realized that much of social media is really an inner circle. A large portion of these readers participate in the conversation on Twitter, Friendfeed, and other platforms are part of a relatively small yet influential circle. While that circle continues to expand, I’ve begun to wonder if the majority of individuals will ever become highly active in social media outside of Facebook and mainstream social networks. When Charlene Li wrote the book “Groundswell” she highlighted Forrester’s social technographics profile and the various categories. The six types of categories are creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. The “joiners” do nothing more than participate in social networks for the most part. The spectators and inactives do even less. A whopping 44 percent are inactives. I rarely think about how disconnected from reality I am but after talking with one person last night I definitely realized it. There’s a group of people that require an alternative form of communication to have what is ultimately “inside conversation”. This morning I concluded that much of this conversation amounts to what is secret code among fraternities. The average person doesn’t understand what one is talking about (for instance when referencing “Twitter”), but the few active social media active participants are the only one that knows what’s being discussed. When the conversation is outside of the mainstream, is there any way for the conversation to eventually become mainstream?

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Friendster Launches Support for Facebook Applications Posted: 03 Oct 2008 08:01 AM CDT In a move signifying the influence of the Facebook platform in the social web, Friendster has announced that it has deployed supporter for the Facebook platform. Developers can now choose between the Facebook Platform, OpenSocial, or Friendster’s API to launch applications on the platform. Whether or not Facebook developers will actually choose to launch on Friendster is unknown but it just became a whole lot easier. This appears to be the first use of Facebook’s open-source platform offering that they released earlier this year. It appears that launching your Facebook application will be as simple as requesting a new API Key from Friendster. Developers can learn more by visiting http://www.friendster.com/developer. This is a big win for Facebook who has decided to avoid the OpenSocial standard for the time being, instead choosing to focus on expanding their existing platform offerings. In addition to choosing not to use OpenSocial, Facebook has decided to launch Facebook Connect instead of partnering with Google on their Friend Connect product. While none of the distributed login services offered by any of the platforms have been successful at spreading, Facebook and Google have been extremely slow in rolling out their new services. While Bebo was the first to implement Facebook standards for applications, Friendster is the first to release Facebook support using their open-source platform. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues to other social networks. This is a big announcement for both Friendster and Facebook.

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SGN Launches Another iPhone Game: iBowl Posted: 02 Oct 2008 02:22 PM CDT A couple weeks ago I wrote about SGN launching the iGolf game. The game went on to become the most downloaded free iPhone application for at least a day or two. The company has decided to move forward with their iPhone development and has released a successful game which leverages the iPhone accelerometer. That game is called iBowl and it’s a wii-like bowling game. I downloaded the application and tried it out and it’s not too bad. The only problem with the application is that it isn’t very sensitive when it comes to putting spin on the ball. I have a feeling that the company will improve the sensitivity in their next release. The other interesting feature that I tried out was the “invite your friends” feature. Unfortunately this simply send them an email to check out the game on the iPhone. Right now the iPhone doesn’t have many social features but once Facebook Connect launches, I think it will be a lot easier to integrate social features into the games. Alternatively, Apple could decide to add their own iPhone profile feature which lets users build their own profiles and connect with their friends through the phone. While this would be competition to Facebook and other social networks, it would be a quick way to enter the social networking space. Fortunately for Facebook, I don’t think Apple has any plans to launch a social network on any platform, anytime soon. The game is extremely simple and my guess is that they will roll out new features quickly as they did with the previous application. The key to success in software is typically release and iterate as quickly as possible. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s the approach they take on this one. Check out the iBowl application and let us know what your thoughts are!

Google’s New Blog Aggregator Posted: 02 Oct 2008 10:12 AM CDT Yesterday Google rolled out the new version of their Blogsearch product with a surprising new feature: a blog aggregator. The aggregator sorts all news articles being linked to across their blog index based on popularity and time. Many are calling the new Google Blogsearch the “Techmeme Killer” but honestly this is flat out inaccurate. If you browse through the top stories on Google Blogsearch they are all around 17 hours old. Techmeme in contrast has the ability to show you the latest stories within minutes of them being written. One thing that is clear though is the increasing importance of content aggregators. The Importance of Aggregators As content on the web continues to grow exponentially, consumers have turned to content aggregators to filter their information. While traditional media outlets like the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and others often serve as a filter of content for us, the limitless user-generated content has made it more challenging to filter information. As the trend from individual websites toward web-based applications continues, one of the most important applications will be the content aggregator. While bloggers and professional journalists have turned to RSS feeds for organizing content, we have realized that content consumption simply doesn’t scale. Each internet savvy consumer currently has their own aggregator that they prefer to visit but I would suggest that all consumers in the information age will soon have their own news aggregator application that they take on the go and access regularly. The Perfect Aggregator Has Yet to be Made There is a long way to go before there is a “perfect” content aggregator. One thing that I would suggest is more valuable on Techmeme and Memeorandum in contrast to Google Blogsearch is that the former aggregators include traditional media outlets in their index. In contrast, Google Blogsearch is completely limited to blogs. In the future I expect to be able to instantly load a single aggregator which includes the most popular items distributed through my favorite media outlets, social aggregators, social networks, and every other source that I visit for the latest content. For now we need to visit our favorite aggregators daily to find the best content. Soon enough, we will have a way to access all our content from a single source. For now though, Google Blogsearch is yet one more place for finding the latest information being discussed around the blogosphere.

Web 2.0 A.k.a “The Internet” Posted: 01 Oct 2008 08:00 AM CDT When Tim O’Reilly first defined Web 2.0 it helped define an emerging industry surrounding new web technologies following the bust of the internet bubble. Yesterday afternoon I read a post about Tim O’Reilly course correcting the definition. The definition was ultimately being expanded to include Google as part of Web 2.0. I found it somewhat entertaining as ultimately Web 2.0 is really nothing more then the internet. While we can place terms for the evolution of how human’s leverage the power of the technologies provided by the web, ultimately the web continues to evolve and no matter what application are built to harness the power of it, it is still simply the internet. Humans simply weren’t used to what is ultimately a “many to many” communication platform instead of one to one as most communication was prior to the web. To be honest, I even have used the term “social web” as though there is a subset of the web focused on communication and technologies which help improve our ability to socialize (or “communicate”). The entire web is about communication though and ultimately we are simply integrating the tools that leverage the power of the web to more effectively communicate. As such any terms which attempt to define anything outside of digital transactions (including “Web 2.0″, the “social web”, etc) is simply placing a term for what is ultimately humans striving to leverage the web to communicate more efficiently. I guess defining terms is a way for us to create a sense of place and time and make us feel like we are progressing. Let’s stop making “Web 2.0″ products though. What we really need to build is great products and tools that help us communicate more effectively. That’s it.

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Slide, Hulu, and Others Sign Major Agreement Posted: 01 Oct 2008 03:16 PM CDT Max Levchin has been trying to build Slide TV for a while now. From people that have spoken with him it appears that his focus has been to build out channels through slide that give users access to premium video content. The only thing standing in the way of the company’s (or Max’s) vision has been the lack of premium content on any of their channels. Thanks to a new agreement announced today between Slide, Warner Brothers, News Corp, CPS, and Hulu, Slide is now one more step closer to their vision. On Thursday Slide will launch “FunSpace Channels” which will provide them with a platform for distributing the video content. Back in November I called social networks the new t.v. and this further suggests this as a continuing trend. Given that the company has the most popular application on Facebook it will surely drive a lot of traffic. While Bebo has continued to release original content, most other social networks are opting for the partnership agreement route. While not video content, MySpace Music is another example of the partnership model. Unfortunately for Facebook, the company now has two of the largest applications profiting from music and video content. All Facebook gets is more page views which isn’t exactly the worst thing but it may not be the most profitable. It will be interesting to see how the conflict between applications and platforms plays out over the coming months as mainstream media moves on to the platforms.

The Social Web Economy: Social Web Agencies Posted: 01 Oct 2008 09:53 AM CDT This is a continuation in the series “The Social Web Economy” Social web agencies are the companies that help develop branded products on the social web. Currently large traditional media companies are the most prevalent organizations on social platforms and elsewhere on the social web but that is slowly beginning to change. These agencies specialize specifically on leveraging the distribution platforms for exposure and the product companies to purchase reach. The social web agencies sell the development of a product and user exposure to those products as advertisements. This is because there is no way to guarantee that an application (product) is going to succeed in the long-run. In the best case an application will take off and maintain and active user base. How that works for the brand beyond their initial install buy will depend on how the contract between the agency and the brand was structured. There are some fundamental challenges facing the social web agencies though including those suggested by Seth Goldstein this morning. When advertisers and brands are used to buying IAB-standard ads it's an uphill battle in convincing them to build custom, non-standard applications. Thankfully large brands and advertisers in general are willing to experiment. The agencies have tension on two fronts: distribution platforms and ad networks. The reason for tension is that these companies are taking away ad buys directly from the platforms as well as the ad networks. While some agencies combine ad buys with development, there are many clients that simply seek the development of high quality applications. That’s not to suggest that there isn’t enough room for all companies to exist but in many circumstances each company is offering an advertising option that can be substituted for the other. Next in this series: “The Social Web Economy: Ad Networks & Sales Teams”

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