I’d like to put out a call to donate to Concern and aid the current flood crises in Africa and South Asia. Thanks!
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
It’s been two weeks since I launched SocialMedia.net and since then I’ve been trying to make one post a day. I just wanted to say thanks for all your feedback so far, and I hope that you will continue to find it of interest.
Here are links to and summaries of some of the recent posts:
Developers at Intel Corporation’s research lab at Berkeley have created the Mash Maker extension for Firefox. The blog post about Mash Maker says that the extension enables mashups to become part of your normal browsing experience - the aim being that mashups can be used by anyone, not just techies. The Mash Maker toolbar displays [...]
According to comparison figures from August 2007 released today by Nielsen//NetRatings, US teenagers aged 12 to 17 who visit both MySpace and Facebook spend more time at each site than those who visit just one site or the other. During that month, teens who visited both sites spent on average 20% more time on MySpace [...]
97th Floor, a US-based SEO firm, have recently released what they call their “Social Media” extension for Firefox, which adds a new toolbar to the bottom of your browser window for fast posting of URLs to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us. The toolbar can also display stats if a page has already been [...]
Two articles about two different technologies both bearing the name Atom caught my attention recently. The first was a blog entry on the 24th of July by Tim Bray on the approval of the Atom Publishing Protocol as an RFC standard by the IETF’s Internet Engineering Steering Group. You may already be familiar with [...]
Dublin, Ireland saw one of its largest web technology and business gatherings last Thursday evening (September 13th). At least 200 Web 2.0 professionals from all over the country and Europe, plus others interested in the web application industry, converged on Ely HQ in the docklands area of the city for a series of events. To [...]
A problem exists with most social networking services (SNSs) in that they usually do not work together and therefore you are required to re-enter your profile and re-define your social connections when you register for each new site. There have been a lot of complaints about these so-called “walled gardens”. Although many of the most [...]
French site “Skyrock Network” has lived up to its name and held onto its place at the number one spot in France’s list of top social networking sites, based on recent statistics from ComScore gathered since the start of 2007. The site, which currently has over 9 million total unique visitors a month, has had [...]
Online social networking service Bebo and web corporation Yahoo! have announced an exclusive multi-year advertising deal whereby Yahoo! will manage both banner and video ads for Bebo in the UK and Ireland (1, 2). Bebo is the most popular social networking site in the UK and Ireland, and had 10,655,000 visitors from the UK and 650,000 [...]
BlogTalk 2008, the 5th International Conference on Social Software, has today published its call for proposals for the event which will be held in Cork, Ireland on the 3rd and 4th of March next year. The event is being chaired / co-chaired by Thomas N. Burg, founder of BlogTalk and a social software expert, Jan Schmidt, [...]
The social networking site Facebook increased its total unique visitors in the UK by 366% in the six months from January 2007 to July 2007, according to figures from ComScore. During the same timeframe, the other top 10 social media sites operating in the UK increased their numbers of unique visitors by between 25 [...]
After some brainstorming with Conor and Ed yesterday, we came up with the following “streams” for BarCamp Galway, each of which will be held in one of our three rooms:
- Tales from the Front Line (Share Experiences)
- Boot Camp (Gain Expertise)
- The Great Escape (Breakout Sessions)
So far so good, and we’ve nearly filled all our talk slots (see image below). Don’t worry if you’re a speaker and the chosen time doesn’t suit you as I just assigned slots to see where we stand overall, so it’s still flexible. (Also, we still have the Breakout Sessions room in case we get more talks than slots.)
I read John Kennedy’s Silicon Republic article about UPC possibly introducing the Slingbox to its Irish customers with interest. I love the Slingbox idea, and tested out the system last August (see 1, 2).
Irish customers of UPC’s digital TV service may soon be able to watch their favourite TV programmes on a computer anywhere in the world if new services being studied by the company’s Irish management are deployed. (More)
I’m not sure though what the difference would be between getting a Slingbox from UPC or just popping into Curry’s to get one (I saw them there last year)… Maybe someone else knows.
Thanks to Nina at the Digital Hub for this synopsis of the GAME :ON / Talk Digital event on “Social Networking in Games” I participated in on Monday. I believe a video will be made available shortly…
GAME :ON - A Cyber Games FestivalSummery of the Talk Digital on Gaming and Social NetworksThe Digital Hub, Monday 10th September 2007This industry seminar was hosted by The Digital Hub as part of their Game :On Cyber Games Festival. The Talk Digital was chaired by Irish Times Journalist, John Collins. The panel was Ben Brown (Moli), Jamie McCormick (X-Box Live Gaming Centre), Joe Drumgoole (Put Place.com), John Breslin (NUIG, Deri), Mark Taylor (Eircom) and Peter Lynch (Eirplay Games).
The discussion focussed on the present and future of Gaming. The consensus seemed to be that social networking and gaming are becoming more and more linked, especially in relation to casual gaming. The drivers for this come from both players and the industry. Examples such as www.cafe.com and www.xfire.com are demonstrating that more and more attention is being put on the add-ons required to enhance the networked gaming experience.
But this is not the whole story. There is still a very clear distinction between pure games and pure social networks. An interesting debate ensued when the question “Is Second Life a Game?” was posed. The question becomes more profound when we think of ‘games’ such as Simms – is this a social network environment?
In terms of the fundamental idea that eventually players will want, on mass, to form connections with other players and that in time these connections will form the basis of on-line societies, the panel discussed some of the short term drivers for this. There does seem to be a real connect between real life events and social networks forming on-line. We can think of concerts, or big news events as such triggers. Such triggers are reflected very quickly in new social networks, the question arises as to could Games replicate this?
The views of the panel were that No games are not there yet. There are a number of reasons: the mains ones are a) the proprietary nature of gaming hardware and software was said to be a major potential barrier to true integration of games and social networking. b) Restrictions in the portability of identity and reputation will prevent players connecting their on-line persona (e.g. an avatar) with the games they want to play. These restrictions will prevent the establishment of ad-hoc groups or clans, from forming in a really unplanned way. In short it will be difficult to see true social networks becoming part of published games in the near future.
Towards the future then, the panel gave their views as to what is likely to happen in the next 5 years. They speculated that we will:
- See much more user generated games, an example would be browsing for a game on YouTube.
- User interfaces with games device will change and potentially become much more immersive
- Cross platform games will emerge where characters, leagues, high scores will be available across devices
- High end social networks and games will become more photo realistic and therefore more immersive
There was consensus that as the games industry, like the film and music industry, sees the enormous potential of social networks, it will begin to dismantle the existing barriers to true social gaming.
(Yes, I chose the date and time on purpose for +2 all the way.)
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