Google Wave Apps: A Bevy of Options

By Linda Broughton

Google Wave allows an individual user to merge all the most popular online applications in a single platform. This platform, a Wave, allows each Wave user to flow into and out of the waves of friends, family, colleagues and any other Waver open to sharing. A user can have as many ‘waves’ as he or she wants, create and install a myriad of applications, save and store and share all sorts of content and multimedia. Users can join public Waves or create private Waves. They can simply watch a Wave grow or they can jump in and share. Like life online, Wave evolves daily, diluting the digital divides that were once installed between search, storage, share and social applications.

When the Wave came out in May 2009, there were a number of third-party applications already awaiting Wave community use in the Wave extension gallery. Some of these applications compete, others collaborate and many are just unique — the point of the Wave is that users have choices and third-party developers have an open marketplace where they can compete for popularity and adoption.

Ribbit created a conference call gadget that lets Wavers go from email and instant messaging to online verbal discussions. Not unlike Skype, Ribbit’s application lets users chat as they review the Wave at hand. No screen sharing here — to share an off-wave idea, the user has to embed the link within the Wave while talking. It’s a good way to stay on-topic and have a clear record of what’s been discussed.

AccuWeather.com immediately presents the weather of a selected location and date, inviting Wavers to plan real-world get-togethers. Retro-chat lets users ‘go back in time’ and simply instant message each other within a wave. Napkin lets Wavers literally draw out ideas — the name is inspired by how enthusiastic diners used to sketch their ideas on the back of napkins. Wave has a lunch gadget that lets people in a Wave poll where to eat their next meal, a gadget for Wavers to make lists, chart gadgets, photo gadgets, game gadgets and more.

The most heavily hyped social application is 6rounds, an interactive video chat and all-round communal platform. 6rounds resembles an online version of a never-ending house party. There are games like spin-the-Heineken-bottle, chess and darts, white boards for drawing fun and files sharing applications for video, photos and links. Like Facebook, users on 6rounds can give each other gifts. They can edit and draw on their video images, playing as they chat.

6rounds lets application users meet other users. Although, when I first joined, this public feature irritated me as the other users interested in meeting me were all single men. But after chatting with a 6rounds community manager, Natasha Shine, I learned to overlook the gatecrashers and enjoy the party. Shine says that while 6rounds already lets already established friends and family chat and play, through joining Google Wave, 6rounds now encourages Wavers with similar interests to connect with each other in a fun, social environment where they can play a few games and get to know each other. As a community manager, Shine introduces people and ensures that 6rounds users feel comfortable with the variety of social tools at their disposal. She’s the platform’s hostess, trying to make sure that a few obvious come-ons don’t scare someone like me away.

6rounds isn’t the only video chat extension in the Wave — Ribbit and a few others are now offering online video chat. Like a real-time and incredibly interactive Facebook, 6rounds plans to make money off of advertising, personalization and offering community members the opportunity to give real and virtual gifts.

Google Wave itself surged into the online realm, but it’s not been adopted as quickly as initially predicted. With all the applications, the platform itself is incredibly versatile. However, too many choices can be overwhelming to users, so the third-party applications themselves offer a great way to introduce people to the Wave.

Linda Broughton works in public communications with the EU institutions in Brussels, Belgium. She is originally from the USA, but has worked with and studied European affairs for the past four years. She keeps a blog on the EU and life in the capital of Europe at euforus.blogspot.com.

FourSquare for Business

Like many social media products, Foursquare started out as a way for friends to connect with friends and update their locations via text message from their mobile devices or device-specific applications for the iPhone and Android. Blackberry and Palm Pre apps are in the works. It combines friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics. When users check in, Foursquare lets their friends know where they can find them and recommends places and things to do nearby. Those into bragging rights can become the mayors of locations by being the most frequent visitor. As with Twitter, it didn’t take long for businesses to see how Foursquare could make a great promotional tool by offering freebies like free coffee, free drinks, free food and free hotel stays to Foursquare mayors.   Foursquare also offers users a way to keep boredom at bay by winning badges such as School Night for checking in after three a.m. on a school night or Superstar for 50 check-ins to unique venues.  The service is now available in more than 100 metropolitan areas, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Austin, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington and Mumbai.

Features:

• Encourages people to explore their neighborhoods
• Users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites
• Combines friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics
• Foursquare specials for businesses

To sample the kind of awards available to Fourquare mayors, check out the participating venues offering freebies.

Facebook Forages for Talent With Fellowship Program

By Dave Fidlin

Hoping to capture insight from the best and brightest minds in the area of social Web and Internet technology, executives at social networking company Facebook have announced a fellowship program for graduate students.

The Facebook Fellowship Program is open to students seeking a doctorate during the 2010-11 school year in such areas of study as Internet economics, cloud computing, social computing, data mining, machine learning, systems operations and information retrieval.

The opportunity comes with several perks beyond the obvious practical, hands-on opportunities that come with a fellowship. Facebook is offering chosen students a $30,000 stipend that will be paid out during the nine-month stint.

The company also will doll out $5,000 toward a personal computer and a $5,000 allowance for conference attendance and related travel. Additionally, tuition and fees will be paid for the academic year. When the fellowship ends, participants will have an opportunity to apply for paid summer internships.

While Greg Badros, Facebook’s director of engineering, is quick to admit the company has a staff to address technical glitches that erupt, the idea behind the fellowship program, he says, is to tap the minds of graduate students studying the many facets of Internet infrastructure. “Not every technological problem is something our engineers can solve in isolation,” Badros says. “The academic community has given us so much, and they are key to funding some of the breakthroughs that have taken place.”

Badros says Facebook, like most Internet companies today, is an ever-evolving operation. The goal is to make the growing social media site better and more efficient for the millions of users who log on each day to connect with friends, he says.

More recently, Badros says his team has addressed such issues as creating a more efficient photo storage system for users, as well as better crowdsourced translations and an enhanced distributed computation system.

Once fellowship participants are named, Badros says he will have a better sense of what specific issues related to Facebook’s infrastructure will be addressed in the future. “It’s really up in the air at this point,” he says. “I don’t have any good sense of specific details. The proposals [from applicants] will likely vary widely.”

Badros says the fellowship program is especially tailored toward students working toward a doctorate in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system architecture and other related areas of study.

In addition to being a student working toward a doctorate, Facebook has outlined a number of other conditions for eligibility into the program. The fellowship website has specific details about the criteria, which includes submission of a detailed curriculum vitae.

Chosen candidates also will have to submit at least two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from a faculty sponsor, in addition to a research summary, one to two pages in length, that outlines how the applicant’s coursework is applicable to Facebook’s operations.

The deadline for submissions and all accompanying paperwork is Feb. 15. Badros says chosen candidates will receive an acceptance e-mail March 29.

Fellowships will begin in August or September in accordance with the start of the student’s academic school year.

Dave Fidlin is a Milwaukee-based freelance journalist and feature writer. He can be reached at dave.fidlin@thinkpost.net.

Virtual Worlds Go Mainstream For Businesses

By Ron Callari

Viximo, a 2-year-old start-up company, is fast becoming a leader in the burgeoning virtual goods industry. For those who are new to this commercial space, virtual goods are digital products that are gifted, bartered or paid-for items online or via mobile phones. Videos, icons, e-cards, personalized avatars - items that allow people to better express themselves, add gravitas to their online persona, or increase their enjoyment of a game - make up the products that are now known as virtual goods.

Considered an unlimited opportunity for thousands of Web publishers, Viximo distinguishes itself from its competition in how it addresses the market. It claims it is the first and currently the only virtual goods provider that brings together everything a publisher needs for virtual goods in one complete, easy to implement, customizable solution.

Viximo is one of the only companies that offers both a system for selling virtual goods and the goods themselves. This then permits clients to either upload directly into their own virtual gift stores or customize at will.

In addition to partners such as Fotolog and Zorpia, Viximo just added BlackPlanet.com, SmartDate.com and FanIQ.com into its virtual goods platform. These deals extend Viximo’s reach to 60 million users, a new milestone for the company.

The increased interest in virtual goods is apparent by how quickly it has scaled. U.S. consumers spent $1 billion on such items in 2009, according to Inside Network, a market research company focused on Facebook and social gaming sites. Daniel Strang, the newly appointed CEO of Viximo, says he “sees these types of purchases as a potential substitute for dying revenue streams (such as subscriptions) in the publishing world.”

Brian Balfour, founder and vice president of product marketing for Viximo, speaks with DMB about how companies can capitalize on the virtual goods market.

What is the current status and future of the virtual goods market and how does it break down percentages between social networking, online gaming and online dating sites?
The current size of the virtual goods market in 2009 was about $1 billion in North America, and about $7 billion world wide. While North America still represents only one-seventh of the global market, it is the fastest growing - quadrupled in 2009 - and the youngest. There is still a lot of room to grow in North America and we expect it to double in 2010. I am unsure of exact percentages, but the majority of virtual goods purchases are taking place on social networks, which includes social gaming - probably around 50 percent. The next biggest area is more traditional gaming and virtual worlds, with online dating being the smallest piece at the moment.

What do traditional brands use virtual goods for? (e.g.  Kohl’s, American Apparel, Sears, K-Swiss, Eberjey)
There are a couple opportunities for brands to get involved in virtual goods.

The first way is a sponsorship model. Users are highly engaged with virtual goods and spread them virally to their friends, so it’s a great place for brands to embed themselves. Brands can pay to have branded virtual goods offered to the users in various social networks and games. It basically acts as a very engaging form of promotion that performs much better then banner advertising does on social communities.

The second way is a licensed model. Certain brands that have a luxury appeal to them have an opportunity to sell virtual goods around their brand to users for actual money.

Does Viximo supply Second Life with virtual goods? According to the blogosphere that site has lost popularity over the years? Why?
Viximo does not supply virtual goods to Second Life. We primarily work with social networks, online dating and casual gaming sites. These areas are where most of the growth happened in 2009 and will continue to happen in 2010. I think the fact that the public has lost interest in Second Life is a good thing for the virtual goods industry. Typically people originally associated virtual goods with something very geeky and non mainstream like Second Life or other 3D worlds. The fact is that they represent a smaller portion than other areas like Social Networking. Virtual goods is a mainstream thing and as users become exposed to it more often, it will become more socially acceptable and we will continue to see the industry as a whole grow.

What types of sites are “hot” right now? And why?
The three verticals [that we] mentioned are where we will see most of the growth in 2010. There are still thousands of these sites worldwide that have yet to institute virtual goods. But looking forward beyond 2010 there is a question of how virtual goods will expand into the broader social Web and content arena. It will happen, but just how we don’t know yet. Other areas of potential opportunity in North America would be consoles (xBox, Wii, etc).

Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been published on AlterNet, CounterPunch and the Sacramento News & Review. He is currently a social media blogger for InventorSpot.com and the author of two graphic novels.

Twitter to Compete With Ever-Expanding Facebook Connect

By: fastcompany.com

Facebook’s Connect system, the unseen code that makes logging in to many other Web sites much easier, marches on–it’s just reached MySpace for example. But Twitter isn’t planning on being left out, and it’s improving its own version.

[Read More and Discuss]

It’s a Small World After All: Technologies Improve the Business-Consumer Relationship

By James Zipadelli

Businesses have been able to reach their niche audiences in more ways than ever before. From buzz tools like social networking to the more innovative Digital Out of Home and mobile, the business-consumer relationship has been strengthened through enjoyable experiences, says Adcentricity founder and president Rob Gorrie.

“Today’s consumer operates in a very different manner than even 15-20 years ago,” Gorrie says. “Participation is a much more relevant approach; we shouldn’t be sending messages to the customer ad-hoc based on a reach target. We should be figuring out how the customer wants to participate and find the appropriate means by which to allow them to do that, whether that’s social networking, digital media, DOOH or mobile capabilities - even TV or print should be planned on what allows the most participation.”

Mitch Smith, CEO of Columbia, S.C.-based rootloud, says that technology has made small companies bigger. ”We’re not only measured on quality of service, but the speed at which we do information,” Smith says. “I bought a 1 GB hard drive in 1994, our first year in business, for $1,495 and I just bought a terabyte hard drive as backup for $120. It would take all night to upload video in the office before, and I can edit it on the iPhone and upload it within 30 minutes.”

As an interactive agency, Smith says tools such as Google Analytics help improve an audience’s response to a client or to rootloud’s website. ”You have to have some information about who your audience is and tailoring a podcast to your audience,” Smith says. “If a client comes to a site and we provide information, and they’re coming to our site, [they are] clicking on information so they can find the right podcast. With all the analytical information we have, we can look at traffic patterns so we can be better later on.”

Adcentricity’s Gorrie says being able to target by demographics saves time. “Environments like grocery stores, pharmacies and pediatrician offices have defined target audiences,” Gorrie says. “You know who your audience is and the exact demographic makeup, in each of the environments.

“Once you’ve been able to narrow media choices in DOOH by the target audience you’ve selected - the second evaluation is based on environment. So, of the 72 categories DOOH offers, using 25- to 44-year-old females as a target demographic may narrow your appropriate environments and reduce the amount of appropriate venues for a brand down to maybe 15 categories.”

Gorrie says DOOH can further narrow a search by the appropriateness of the context in each physical space to the message. “It’s a great way to try and get into the mind of the consumer in that environment based on the location they are in,” Gorrie says. “Once you’ve reached the environment, then things get very scientific. DOOH exists in place-environments like doctors’ offices and gas stations and also in retail environments like pharmacies and grocery stores. So you have the opportunity to speak to consumers not only as they go about their day, but also to attempt to influence as they come to the next purchase cycle of a particular product. Obviously, being last message in mind is extremely important in today’s media environment.  Adcentricity calls this the Digital Path To Purchase.”

One example of a business using technology to reach out to customers is Minneapolis, Minn.-based Target, who has a dedicated YouTube channel, Twitter and Facebook pages, says spokesperson Leah Guimond.

“We’ve been exploring new and innovative ways to reach our guests to communicate with them and we see that more broadly within the retail industry,” Guimond says. “We started Twitter last November and we’ve been on Facebook since 2007.”

“We use Facebook as a way to let customers know about deals and upcoming product launches,” Guimond continues. “Also, we asked feedback from customers through status updates, like men’s apparel, and then we’ll try to incorporate ideas into our product lines.”

Smith says businesses have to change and adapt to new technologies. ”You have to push the envelope every day - that’s what I tell my team,” Smith says. “Just when you think you’ve developed the right thing, you put your feet up and it goes by. But when you’re passionate and love what you do … it works.”

James Zipadelli is a Connecticut-based freelance journalist. He has freelanced for CTNewsJunkie.com, Ourparents.com and several publications in Boston. You can find him online at www.jameszipadelli.com or on Twitter @redsoxlive.

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