Monday, November 05, 2007
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Social Networks
One day after the big OpenSocial announcement, Google added a little afterthought: MySpace the 640-pound social-networking gorilla, Bebo another huge social-Web player, and the very longstanding SixApart were joining too. As a PCWorld blog put it, "now that changes everything." This isn't so much about Facebook users at your house - users won't be going anywhere because of this news. What it's about is those popular little add-on software programs called widgets that users love to use (for stuff like sharing tunes, putting a "bookshelf" of favorite books in your profile, or throwing virtual sheep at your friends). All those widget makers were making apps for Facebook, and now Google, MySpace and friends have serious numbers of users (aka a huge alternative market) for widgetmakers to offer their wares to. I wonder if Facebook will eventually (emphasize "eventually") have to join OpenSocial. This was a huge business story, as it has a lot to do with how sites on the social Web (as well as widget makers) will actually make money (through advertising) going forward. Here's the view from the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times in the UK, and Welt Online in Germany.

Manhunt 2 was released on Halloween to reports that it's taking videogame violence to a new level (e.g, see these from the Associated Press and a CBS News station. It's now rated "M" for "Mature" for 17+, since its maker, Rockstar Games, modified it a bit last summer. "Made for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2," the AP reports, the blood-drenched game has been sparking controversy since June, when the Entertainment Software Rating Board gave it a rating of "adult only" that would have excluded it from some big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc." In it, reports CBS in Springfield, Mass., "players act out killing and torturing someone with tools like a sledgehammer or shovel. And this is a toned down version." CBS Evening News in New York reported that Manhunt 2 is "even more intense when it's played on Nintendo’s Wii, which gets players to act out the violence." Here's ABC News's "Ultimate Parents' Guide to Video Games", complete with an explanation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board's ratings and descriptors , as well as a glossary of video and online game terms.

What Sean Blagsvedt found after he was sent back to India by Microsoft to establish its research office there, was that poverty-level Indians needed a LinkedIn.com, he told the New York Times. He research found that "many poor Indians in dead-end jobs remain in poverty not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to find them." So he left Microsoft to found Babajob.com, which "seeks to bring the social-networking revolution popularized by Facebook and MySpace to people who do not even have computers - the world’s poor." This inspiring piece leads with the story of house painter Manohar Lakshmipathi, who doesn't own a computer and is of course not allowed to touch his clients' computers. So Babajob sat him down at a desk and had him dictate his date of birth, phone number and work history to a secretary, took a
picture of him, and uploaded it all to his profile on Babajob - "just one example of an unanticipated byproduct of the outsourcing boom: many of the hundreds of multinationals and hundreds of thousands of technology workers who are working here are turning their talents to fighting the grinding poverty that surrounds them."

Close on the heels of her report that a "boomlet" of kids' virtual worlds was in the works, CNET's Stefanie Olsen blogs about toy company Playhut's two new online playgrounds, one for girls 6+, one for boys. Like ClubPenguin, it appears, "the free sites enable members to play games, dress up virtual characters and chat with friends - once parents send a permission slip via e-mail to the site." Well, ClubPenguin has very limited, scripted, chat, where kids are given phrases to choose from. VirtualWorldsNews reports that the free sites are Wowbotz for boys and Mystikats Kutties for girls.

Young digital socializers will love this: sending social-network-based photos to friends' phones. CNET's CTIA (mobile phone industry trade show) blog reviews MySpace and Facebook versions. It really sounds like a 2-platform utility that gets one's media moving from phone to Web and vice versa. In this and its WebWare blog, CNET looks at this - the 3Guppies widget - which, if installed on your Facebook or MySpace profile, will allow visitors to "grab all the pictures and videos on it and send them to their own phones." It also sends music from your profile to your phone (and on to your friends), and WebAware says a user doesn't have to know much about his/her phone to use the phone version. The MySpace version, once associated with the profile owner's phone number, can automatically upload photo, video, and text from phone to profile. Photos and - to a degree - music can
be edited with this little software app, CNET says, so ringtones can be created from MP3 files. Lots of convenience and potential for self-expression, here, but also a tool to be wary of for teens into online self-exposure. [Virgin Mobile has quite the ringtone-producing tool, too, CNET says in a separate review, and here's a bunch of other widget and micro-app reviews from the CTIA show at CNET.


This is "the year of social networks" for cellphones, CNET reported in its coverage of last week's mobile-phone-industry trade show. So it reviews five "shiny, new" examples,: Bluepulse, a social service really just for phones (looks bad on a desktop); UK-based Trutap, which is "more a mobile facilitator than pure mobile social network"; Utterz, which is more about "pushing mobile-generated content to the Web" (photos, video, audio comments you make, and of course text); and Whrrl and Rummble, facilitators of socializing in person (using GPS or geo-location tech. These, however, are merely five drops in an ocean of socially oriented services targeting the cellphone. To get a feel for sheer numbers, see a librarian's list of dozens last March  (some of these startups may've folded by now). SpinVox. With "voice-to-screen" as its tagline, it says it "seamlessly marries the mobile and online realms" by converting a voice message to a text one, then sends it to one friend, many friends, a blog, or a profile

Of course "stardom" on the social Web is different from mass-media stardom. Take bands in MySpace, for example - fame is more dispersed but intimate. Artists are closer to their fans, who do the real marketing (in a "viral," word-of-mouth way that has a lot more influence than the polished but less personal marketing of a record label). Income is different too - coming in more in piecemeal fashion over time - but a living can be made, sometimes after big media companies or agents notice an artist's amazing fan base. So, it appears, will it go for two funny guys in Madison, Wisc. Their eight-part series "Chad Vader: Day-Shift Manager" is one of YouTube's "biggest hits, having been viewed more than 19 million times since its debut in July 2006" and this year they, Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, were "among the first performers recruited by YouTube’s new professional partnership program, paying content providers a portion of the site’s ad revenue," the New York Times
But a key takeaway if your child has aspirations of YouTube stardom - is "don't try it for the money," which seems to describe Matt and Aaron, according to Times writer David Callender. Check out the article to see why.[source]

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