It’s been long time coming, since Netflix hammered the first nail in the coffin of the social networking features of their site this past spring. But Friday the end became reality as the doors closed definitively on Netflix community features.
The move comes just days after Apple launched its new product-based social networking service Ping in iTunes. Now Netflix admits the community aspects of their site were hardly used and their engineering resources would be better spent devoted to developing aspects of the site that are highly popular – such as video streaming. Whether Netflix’s poor experience blending products, services, and social interaction will bode unwell for Ping remains to be seen. read more
Apple’s new Ping network has debuted with the most recent release of iTunes.
Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.
Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world. read more
CollegeOnly isn’t reinventing the wheel with their new social network, instead they’ve went back to the good old days of Facebook when only College students with a valid college email address could join the network.
The networks founder told Mashable that he started the network because as Facebook continues to grow:
“College students are less likely to upload photos or post what they are up to with parents and potential employers looking on.”
How protected is the site? Even the sites founder is not allowed to join outside of being able to moderate the site and checking out the success of features added to the network.
The site makes this promise to students:
“Our site is the only one that is free from parents, potential employers, and other folks that shouldn’t see what you are up to on a Saturday night or at any given point during the day.”
Following the footsteps of Blogger and OnSugar (a Drupal blog service), it looks like Automattic has finally embraced social buttons for WP.com fans.
While this feature was long overdue, Automattic has also announced that they will be porting this feature for those who choose to self host.
Starting today there is a new way for your readers to share the posts on your blog with friends. This feature allows you to add sharing functionality from a range of services to the bottom of your blog posts. [...]
We have also added stats for all activity around this feature so you will be able to see what content people are sharing and on what services. Check out the sharing support article for more information on getting setup. Note: We will also be realizing [sic] this as a WordPress.org plugin next week. (Official WordPress Blog)
Although WordPress.org fans can already install various social buttons (like Twitter and the Facebook Like button) via plugins, more often than not the buttons are an eyesore.
As one can see in the video below, Automattic’s implementation should help resolve that issue by presenting a more elegant interface. read more
With Google Me rumors picking up over the last several weeks yet another rumor has begun to make the rounds. This time it’s being said that a dedicated Google research team has been charting Social Networking functions to gain a better understanding of social media intricacies.
Apparently the researchers efforts include a 216-slide presentation with footnotes which has been posted on SlideShare. The slideshow is being used to help all people involved with Google Me build the new system, including designers, interface designers, programmers and other people involved not just with Google Me but with the social web as a whole. read more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to give Amazon a patent for a “new” social networking system. I put “new” in quotes because the Patent doesn’t appear to allude to anything that isn’t already being done by the likes of Facebook, Myspace and various other social networking websites.
According to the Patent filing:
“A networked computer system provides various services for assisting users in locating, and establishing contact relationships with, other users. For example, in one embodiment, users can identify other users based on their affiliations with particular schools or other organizations. The system also provides a mechanism for a user to selectively establish contact relationships or connections with other users, and to grant permissions for such other users to view personal information of the user. The system may also include features for enabling users to identify contacts of their respective contacts. In addition, the system may automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts.”
TechFlash says the patent was created by Brian Robertson and Warren Adams, the two men who sold PlanetAll to Amazon in 1998, a social networking platform which was later ditched by Amazon in 2000. Amazon sent the patent to the U.S. Patent office in May 2008. read more
19 Year-old U.S. international Josy Altidore rushed to Twitter today to apologise for showing late for the Premier League game Hull City – Portsmouth. The now deleted tweet was quickly picked up by the BBC Live Sports team.
From JozyAltidore17 on Twitter: “Apologize to all of you. I showed up late. Made a big mistake I’m very very sorry.”
Altidore, who made more furore with the announcement that he was being loaned out to Hull for the season on his Twitter account some months ago than with his game in England so far, is said to be in trouble because of his public apology. Hull City manager Phil Brown said later in an interview with 5-Live that he doesn’t understand that people share their whole life on social networks and that Altidore’s actions will cost him lots of money.
In a blog post Facebook announcedthey will launch (the application is available already) the launch of its Twitter application for page admins, allowing these to both update their FB page and Twitter status. This is rather interesting considered that Facebook failed to acquire Twitter, then launched a redesign turning the news feed effectively into ‘Twitter on Crack’, and more recently the threat to not publish page updates to news feeds anymore. How will it work?
If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them. If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter. read more
Pat Quin, Governour of the State of Illinois, has signed a bill in to law banning all registered sex offenders in the state of Illinois from using social networks. This becomes interesting when keeping in mind the broad spectrum covered by the definition of social networks: any site where someone has to sign up and can create a profile can be considered a social network.
“Social networking website” means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.
Maybe it would be easier to ban sex offenders from using the internet for a determined period. This period should be decided by a Judge and not by a politician.
Happy Monday, folks! Well, it’s here: Movable Type 4.3. Lots of new features and performance enhancements, so you’ll probably want to upgrade to this one. Here’s a summary of what’s new, taken from the official announcement:
Performance for all publishing is faster than ever.
Your readers can now find content by author or date range (something Google’s site search doesn’t do) with the powerful new search feature.
You can create a new site based on an existing one in just a few clicks with smarter blog cloning.
Page views can increase by more than 50% with the new flexible pagination for comments and entries (based on the testing of one of our clients.)
It’s faster to insert and re-use photos in your posts, and simple to create slide shows, with the most powerful asset manager ever.
Documentation is more comprehensive and easy to access than ever before.
Some impressive claims there. I hope after people have had time to kick the tires they’ll let us know how it really performs. read more
It’s been long time coming, since Netflix hammered the first nail in the coffin of the social networking features of their site this past spring. But Friday the end became reality as the doors closed definitively on Netflix community features.
Pat Quin, Governour of the State of Illinois, has signed a bill in to law banning all registered sex offenders in the state of Illinois from using social networks. This becomes interesting when keeping in mind the broad spectrum covered by the definition of social networks: any site where someone has to sign up and can create a profile can be considered a social network.
