Social computing - the next avatar of web

Image via Wikipedia

Social networking is the buzzword on internet. Facebook, MySpace, OpenSocial and the likes attracting traffic the equivalent of google. Facebook and MySpace valuations in billions of dollars is the living example. These sites are dedicated social networking space for people to interact and socialize. But, the other avatar of social computing is the soclialization of existing websites. Allowing visitors to interact, modify or add new content to the site by means of blogs, discussion forums, photo gallery etc. Put together, Social Networking/Computing/Media as you would like to call is transforming the web.

I have explored the Social networking in its current state and the various opportunities thrown open by 1this phenomenon.

What is a Social networking site?

• Social networking sites just provide the infrastructure, tools (UI) and set of rules to operate on the SN platform (site). The vital component, Content is user generated, unlike the conventional web sites.
  


• In simple terms, its a power shift from publishers to consumers, who are now prosumers.
  


• The owners of the Content become the marketers for self and the site.
  


• Every user effectively becomes a marketing person for the site. Every user’s primary target audience would be their friends or personal network. Secondary target could be people with similar interests on/off the site.
  


• More effective target advertising is possible, as most users tend to give accurate personal details being in a network/vicinity of friends/trusted associates
  

• Eventually, the SN sites have the potential to become one-stop place for all online activities such as connecting with people, online shopping, bill payment etc.

Opportunities

• A huge repository of users to target ads, products and services

• A platform to serve quotidian user needs on the web [integrated Online shopping, Auctions, Bill payment etc]
  


• The value from user-generated content can be monetized, such as user survey, opinion polls etc. E.g.: AOL email service for biz users is a subscription/paid service.
  


• Open up the platform allowing users to create applications

Challenges

• How to review and approve user content?

• How to store and manage the content that users upload?

• How can companies capture the value from user-generated content?

• Effectively dissipating the information within and across the networks to reach the target audience on the site.

• Integration of other popular services on web [E.g.: Youtube, Flickr, Blogger, Dating, Matrimony]

• Making available on mobile devices.

• Dependence of ­Content searchability on the semantic nature of user content storage.

• Providing features across the platforms. (IE/FF, Win/*nix)?

• Ability to scale-up rapidly, as the site can become popular overnight/week with proportional traffic. [Companies like Akamai Tech help in this.]

• People are always on lookout for something new/exciting. Difficult task to keep the users interested in the site.

• How to design the site with ability to open up as a platform in the future allowing external users to develop applications?

• Content searchability is the key here. Also, the site promoting/publishing/disseminating the popular interests among other users on the site.
  

Unexplored opportunities:

• Enterprise solutions/products
  

Command line comes to web.

Image via Wikipedia I am a command line enthusiast. Inspite of the power of GUI, command line seems more easy to work, as we need to use just the keyboard. I have found it pretty fast using a keyboard than a mouse to write code. I prefer to use keyboard shortcuts than moving the mouse around. This has certainly been difficult when it comes to web pages, as they seem to be designed for mouse. I can't think of web pages providing intuitive keyboard shortcuts, except Google Docs, Outlook OWA to some extent.

Read this article in Slashdot. Probably, this is one of the most simple and innovative web site in recent times. The website goosh has brought command line to web. As a geek, i was excited to see this app. The best part is simplicity and feel of a command line environment. Its quite primitive, but certainly looks cool.

As of now, it just does google search, more of a google shell on internet. But, i see wide possibilities of this web app. I would love to see it growing. Nowadays, i am using this site to google for keywords.

Check out this site @ goosh.org

Atlast, a move towards portability across Social Computing platforms

Quite recenltly, Facebook created controversy kicking out its user who was trying to extract his friends list for use in his other Social Networking site. Basically, Facebook was so trying to protect its vital information, the user generated content. I wrote a post on this during the turn of events here. With OpenSocial on the anvil, allowing data portability across its compliant websites, Facebook has been forced to make the move, it wouldn't have otherwise. But, obviously Facebook isn't going to get OpenSocialized.

So, a new alliance has been formed to provide data portability across the prominent Social Networking platforms. If successful, this would be the next big thing after the arrival of OpenSocial and Facebook. Eventhough, the alliance is just kicking up, participation of most big names in Social Networking domain seems to make the alliance relevant. Some of the big names have already jumped in: Facebook, Google(OpenSocial), LinkedIn and Plaxo.

Its still unclear on how the portability will be provided. But, certianly a big news for Social Networking app developers and websites operating in this space.

Dataportability.org has more info on the alliance.

Toggle your web page to screen mode

Came across a web page that has an interesting way to view the page. Typically, web pages are built to automatically resize to screen width or have a fixed width immaterial of screen size. But, this allows the user to toggle between narrow and widescreen view of the web page. It may not be technically complicated thing to do, but certainly an innovative feature.

Checkout the page with the feature. Look for "Switch view:" below the page header towards the right corner of the page. Alternatively, search for "Switch view:".

Facebook - sign of growth(trouble)?

Facebook removed one of its users for trying to export his Facebook friends list to his other networking site. Facebook users shot back on hearing this news. Who the heck is Facebook to kick me out of the site? After all, its content like mine and millions of others that make up the 'Facebook' what it is today. Without users' content, its a piece of s**t. Atleast, this is how many Facebook users reacted on hearing the news.

What was the crime by the Facebook user, Scoble who got kicked out? Scoble tried to retrieve his friends list in Facebook for use in his other networking sites. Was it a crime in first place? YES. Atleast, as per the terms and conditions of Facebook usage. Hmm... i thought, it was ME, who added that contact to my friends list. And, now Facebook doesn't allow me to take it wherever i like to? Sounds unfair? Alright. Let's hear the Facebook's story. You own YOUR profile contents only. But, not others'. The contact details of your friends are certainly not yours and you don't have the right to distribute, as its deemed risky/whatever by Facebook.

As a fact, Facebook allows you to import contacts from your email address books such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL into Facebook and eventually, send a friend request or invite those email IDs. If Facebook doesn't mind scrape your email address book, what is wrong in someone else retrieving contacts from Facebook? Just like email address book maintains contacts, Facebook does the same. On the contrary, Facebook's only formidable competitor OpenSocial encourages users to share content/contacts across OpenSocial sites.

Unlike the past closed content model, where the contents were generated by sites and users were just consumers(Yahoo, MSN, Rediff), now is the generation of pro-sumer model, where user generates AND consumes content. Slowly but steadily, the user generated content is becoming the lifeline of successful sites. Facebook is the living proof of the model. LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut are further proof of the power of user generated content. With OpenSocial encouraging users to share details across OpenSocial sites, how long it might take for Facebook to revert its decision?
The article that prompted me to write this post is here

Microsoft - Is it that Evil?

MSDOS is the first well known successfully marketed product from Microsoft. In the following years, Microsoft was developing OS/2 in collaboration with IBM. After a short stint, Microsoft part ways with IBM and created Windows OS. Now, rest is history!

Microsoft has been and still known for its bread-n-butter product, the Windows Operating System(OS). In layman terms, an OS provides basic infrastructure or platform to run applications on top of it that adhere to the specifications put forth by the OS. By creating Windows, Microsoft created a platform and made it mature/intuitive/monopolize over the years. Lets dig into it.

In the 80s when Microcomputers called PCs were taking shape to bring computing to the common man, the computer giants such as IBM, SUN were still selling tightly coupled proprietary hardware and software as a single package to customers. Customers were forced to buy hardware and software together from a single vendor. Sun was selling Solaris with their proprietary hardware architecture. Apple was selling Macintosh (flavour of *nix) with proprietary hardware and software. IBM was selling its own monsters. Eventhough IBM was getting interested in Microcomputers or PCs, the hardware and the software would come from its own stable, still making it a closed system no different from *nix predecessors.


Arrival of Microsoft changed the business equations ripping apart the proprietary hardware cum software business model. Rather, Microsoft created the diversified computer industry by establishing itself as a pure-software company with creation of its operating system, Windows. This threw open opportunities for anyone to manufacture the hardware compatible with Windows in contrast with the computers manufactured by SUN, HP, IBM etc. This was the beginning of ‘Off-the-shelf’ PC phenomenon.

The PC was more modular now. Each of the hardware components were now manufactured by innumerous companies. All they had to do to make the hardware work with Windows was by providing drivers as per the specification published by Microsoft. The driver, a piece of software allows the Windows to recognize and interact with the hardware. So, anyone could manufacture a motherboard, a graphics card, Hard disk drive etc and make it work with Windows! This resulted in commoditization of the PCs.

The PCs were getting better day by day, more affordable and most importantly lots of choice for customers to put together a PC from off-the-shelf components. At the same time, Microsoft published the Windows API to allow anyone to write applications to run on its Windows OS. A software platform was born to rule the forthcoming decades of personal computing. Anyone with the knowledge of the Windows API could write killer apps and make millions of dollars. Big corporations were born out it.

Similar to commoditization of hardware, Windows platform resulted in creation of software industry as a whole or atleast, served as a trigger. InstallShield, Norton Anti-virus, Business Objects are few big corporations that were born out of the Windows platform. Why would I credit Microsoft and Windows for achieving this?

Eventhough, the industry behemoths SUN, IBM, HP, Unisys were still around; they were still selling completely packaged hardware and software. And, they were so expensive, only research organizations and universities could afford it. Creation of Microsoft and Windows as a software-only company resulted in segregation of hardware and software industries as well as Software becoming a mainstream business. Windows was so intuitive compared to its *nix counterparts, that it accelerated the adoption of personal computing by masses. This was the biggest achievement of Microsoft and Windows to date.

Those were few credits to Microsoft. There are more credits to write down in the next post.

More to write about:
What are the bad things that Microsoft did? How Microsoft transformed itself into a Software juggernaut? Where it won? where it lost? What is it doing now to stay relevant in the current service-oriented world?

Well, someone says not to donate to wikipedia.

I have always seen wikipedia as a powerful and free tool to spread the knowledge across the globe. Personally, i admire the guy Jimmy Wales, who is behind this initiative. I wanted to put a "Donate to Wiki" banner on my blog and went googling around to find this anti-wiki donation article.

Few lines from the blog.

Wikipedia promotes Amazon.com and IMDB (owned by Amazon.com) through search engine optimized links and in return, Amazon.com gives Wikia huge amounts of venture capital, which violates Wikipedia’s non-profit status, given Wikipedia’s close ties to Wikia.

Wikipedia is not going to help children in third world countries because the bulk of its content is in the languages of first world countries and pretty much nothing is in the rest.

Read the full article here.

I am yet to do a serious digging into this. In first glance, it makes sense though.

Type rest of the post here