I got a hold of a copy of “The Project” – new, hyped magazine for the iPad that’s supposed to revolutionize the way we think about digital magazines. I got to play with it for a while and despite the fact it’s pretty pricey (almost 3 euros) it also has some really cool ideas too. It probably won’t revolutionize the market but it brought a couple of things to it and we might see them in other publications.
Well it’s not exactly that simple, but myspace or my[ ] as they’re now choosing to be called realized that on the social level they will never win with facebook. So now they’re sort of merging, allowing facebook connect to log into myspace, and share friends and information between both sites. And from this day on myspace will be about delivering content (since facebook doesn’t really do a good band page) and facebook will be your social interactions.
By merging and diversifying myspace can regain some of it’s long-lost powers and thrive alongside facebook instead of competing with the behemoth. And that might actually be a good idea. The merger is called ‘mashup’ and we’ll see how well it’ll do pretty soon.
Since I’m not a complete fanboy (yeah, right ;)) I’ll try and bash this idea a little bit. The main reason is simple – it’s a simplified, censored and completely market oriented version of last.fm which already has many users and is quite popular. Even though the service is a mix between social network and internet radio, it still has a lot more to offer than iTunes “Ping”.
And why we’re at it – “PING” ? What kind of a name is that? Ping is a command and it will always be associated with that command. Unless ping is for the sound it makes when it comes and goes.
The only cool thing about it is the iphone/ipad integration that’s far more seamless than last.fm’s app. But nevertheless this is not “reinventing the social media” in any way. It’s just a copy of last.fm and twitter/facebook to expand market share.
And I think it won’t last too long.
So here’s the deal. Right now A LOT (that’s an estimated number ;) of people are facebook users. And they share A LOT (also an estimate ;) of data daily. That is pretty impressive. But why? What’s so cool about farms, mafias and all those other stupid tests? Sure they work for a while but how to draw people in and keep them in ?
Well they got it all figured out with external links that are viewable inside the facebook web app. Basically you can listen to a soundcloud song file, view youtube (and other) videos and read some news stories without ever leaving the page. And how do you get that stuff? Well your friends post it, and your friends are pretty much the only type of advertisement you as an experienced web user trust anymore. Aren’t they?
So basically you get all your funny videos, and all your most recent news from one place and you can comment and “like” it all in that one place, allowing other your friends to see it and spread the word. So facebook is becoming slowly a way to discover the internet and not only the social network of friends. Because before that we used aggregating websites to find certain type of content (funny videos, marketing tips, games) and right now they can all be embedded to become a part of the facebook machine.
The analysts at Hitwise claim that celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton now gets more traffic from Facebook than from Google – more than 7 million pageviews from Facebook alone. If that trend increases, then the current wisdom about web traffic is about to get turned on its ear.
Yes, it draws people away from google, and I think they’ve noticed (a little too late probably) and launched Orkut / or whatever it’s called now. Google Buzz? That’s it! It has potential of course (because it’s google) and it’s gonna be plenty useable combined with all the google cloud apps but it’s hard to break something that already works fine. And what’s more important it’s SUPER HARD to change the habits. Maybe they’ll succeed. Or maybe in a few years the internet will be facebook and content supplying “facebook apps” for it. Let’s all hope that won’t happen!
The problem with google is that it’s just a machine based on probability and algorithms to deliver you content. And social networks are based on the idea that no machine stands between you and the content. No. It’s chosen by the people you know and trust, and that’s why it’s actually better tailored to your tastes (well unless you’re spamming for thousands of friends you don’t know that is)
So here’s the deal. I’m not really a microsoft person, but I checked out their “isometric view” of the maps (here’s New York) and I instantly thought of one thing – Sim City! First of all the idea itself is pretty awesome to show it this way, the perspective makes the cities more memorable as a landscape, rather than just a top-view photo. But what can be done with it ?
Well for once – using the API which I think would be given out anyway – a new type of social sim-city style game could be created. Let’s for one moment think that we can “destroy it all” and put nice, green grass everywhere. Then we’ll have a few types of buildings, some roads, other elements, and combine it to create a district of our own, based on the natural landscape of our city, with it’s rivers, islands, whatever. Other people can of course join the fun and start building a district of their own in the same city. Maybe even a better city-planner could be found that way (choosing the best guy for the job while working on a semi-real thing would probably make more sense than choosing him based on just promises). Possibilities are endless.
And yes – of course google is doing something similar as well – letting people build their own buildings and all. So a bunch of free API’s from both of the big fish could actually give someone with the guts to do such project, plenty of choices.
A pretty cool idea for mashing up youtube clips for some stunning results. Ideas can include adding spoken-word videos to instrumental music videos (dance music anyone?) and many, many others.
It’s clear that simple ideas are a great thing, and it’s odd that it took so long to create something like that. Thumbs up.
You can see it at : http://www.youtubedoubler.com/