:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 ::

Google Friend Connect

I've been saying for some time that an embedded social network tool, that can be used on any website, is required. The existing social networking sites are too closed and self-serving. I would like to be able to use a networking gadget within my own, ftp hosted, website to connect to any other site that uses it.
Previous post on the topic here and here.
Well, it looks like Google have developed exactly what I was looking for in Google Friend Connect.
I've signed up for the preview release so look out for updates.

Labels: Google, SocialNetworking

:: Dan 28.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Originally a comment on Doppelganger

Whilst perusing the Bookbarn a couple of weeks ago I was disappointed that more than half of their electrical engineering section was taken up by books for CD radio slang. Useful as these may have been at the time they are of little but academic interest now. I’m sure large chucks of the web, currently filled with those occasionally useful and oh so funny slang translators will equally waste future achieve storage space. Unfortunately, unlike radio, the medium they are translating will also be archived (eg my myspace has long since fallen into disuse) and thus the wasted space increases exponentially.

If you do insist on using it, here are the top 5 things I have learnt from it that you may benefit from knowing:

1. Do not accept friend requests from people who send you pictures of their body parts, even if they do write you’re name across them. This is a thinly vied guise – that it looks like you have seen through already – to get you to look at something called “pornography.” Incidentally, looking at it is fine as it can be passed of as “ironic,” just don’t tell everyone that you do by advertising it in your friends list.
   
2. Following on from this. Do not add friends ironically. Irony, like sarcasm (see slang translator comment above), rarely works in writing and is even less likely to come across through pointing and clicking.
   
3. Do not agree to play gigs (or in your case take commissions) from anyone you don’t know without seeing money up front. myspace is awash with first time promoters whose idea of promotion is to put a flyer on myspace. That’s it. No one will come to the gig as they will have only told people they don’t know in other countries about it. It will get shut down by the management as they aren’t making enough on the bar to pay the staff. You won’t get to play, even to the 14 randoms who wondered in by mistake. You won’t get paid.
   
4. It can be handy for getting around office firewalls that block webmail. However, facebook has already succumbed here and I’m sure myspace will follow. Fortunately generalities have shown that middle class twits use facebook, hence it is blocked in my office, whilst chavvy urchins use myspace, meaning it’s probably blocked in call centres.
   
5. Don’t bother.

Labels: blogs, Humour, SocialNetworking

:: Dan 25.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Open ID update: Facebook and Google anounce that they are joining the Data Portability Workgroup

Labels: facebook, Google, ID, OpenID, SocialNetworking

:: Dan 9.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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This is interesting. I wrote a post about the need for an open system and API for social networking back in March (see point 4) and guessed that someone must be working on it somewhere. It seems [via dev/null] that LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is on the case, with OpenID. Although there are obvious privacy concerns about what information is held about you and where, especially if you actively wanted to keep different groups of friends linked to different accounts / aliases. Hopefully a robust set of rules can be written into it that might help to control aggregation sites like Spock and PeekYou, as Grom criticised last week. The biggest issue I have with these is the lack of control they give you over what information they collect about you. For example, PeekYou has scrapped my Blogger, LinkedIn and Flickr profiles together, which I'm not entirely happy about but can live with, somehow has failed to find my Facebook or MySpace, and has linked the wrong eBay account. Now, I'm not jumping to add the missing data, but I would obviously like to be able to remove the incorrect data. Having said that, there are data uses I wouldn't mind, especially having copied and pasted the same basic profile information into Blogger, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook, and rarely editing any of them, a simple "would you allow us to copy data from xx" dialogue during sign-up and one central point where changes cascade down would be very handy. But the user must have control over what data is taken from where.

Here's the link to dev/null's post again. I recommend reading the whole post if you skipped past the link previously.

Labels: Blogger, facebook, Flickr, FOSS, ID, myspace, OpenID, SocialNetworking

:: Dan 21.8.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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SIT ON MYSPACE
Originally uploaded by acb.


A Forum Conversation about MySpace and possible alternatives gave me leave to consider its benefits and the difficulties in competing with it. My thoughts were as follows:

MySpace is an irritating rash of groin fungus and it's not going away, you just have to live with it.

What it allows you to do, networking wise, is essential in these super connected days. It's unfortunate that it is owned by a cock, is difficult to control and is over run with ads and spam. But despite that there's just no way any alternative is going to get off the ground without the user base.

An alternative networking system, should one ever have a chance of replacing it, would have to overcome all of these problems. To do that it would need the following:

1. Less intrusive advertising in a free version (cf Google AdSense) and no advertising at all in a paid for premium version.

2. Better user control and configuration, ability to embed into an existing site through scripting or use the systems own servers (cf Blogger)

3. Open API (Application Programming Interface) for integration across sites (cf Google, Flickr etc). Basically it needs to embrace Web2.0

4. Huge user base. The only way I can see this happening is if the API is good enough to allow existing myspace / google / blogger / flickr / yahoo / msn etc users to integrate all of their accounts in someway, rather than try to build a new user base from scratch.

If you are capable of providing this, please get coding. (Although I assume someone is doing it somewhere already.)

Labels: myspace, SocialNetworking, web 2.0

:: Dan 28.3.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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