FriendFeed the social aggregator and now real-time sharing and commenting application has upgraded to its new Front-End interface. Up until yesterday, users could opt to use the application in beta mode, which got mixed reviews. Some of the power users such as the ubiquitous Scoble were quite positive about it. It will be interesting to see how it is viewed by the wider audience.

Initial feedback is that if you have a large amount of friends, that the real-time update is just too much and far too much noise for the regular users. I am big fan of FriendFeed, I really like the fact that you can follow people and see their aggregated footprint, providing that they are posting interesteng and sharing relevant content. I use the FriendFeed notification application that displays updates in the corner of my screen. So I tend not to use the actual friendfeed interface. The diference that I see with FriendFeed to Twitter, is that you do get exposed to more information from users in FriendFeed, depending on what services they have decided to share – for instance, GoogleReader shares, Blogs, Feeds, video and photo sites etc…but providing people are sharing and posting interesting content, one gets to see and read a lot of good, wide and varied content. This of course can be construed as a massive noise wall by users who do not want exposure to this level of detail.

But the main point, I think for FriendFeed, is that it is still a tool for users who are very technically engaged, as opposed to new users of social applications. It will be interesting to see will it become a Twitter like tool in terms of popularity. I think possibly not, as the options and levels of perceived complexity may switch people off.

That said, it’s a great application and one that will be very interesting to watch. The guys who set it up are also Google veterans who know what they are doing. Also, saw a very interesting video with their chief interactive designer with Scoble on Kyte.tv. Worth checking out to get an insight into the new changes and what is coming down the tracks.

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Facebook have just launched and announced that they are now making available their “live stream” in an API (which is basically the realtime feed that they have recently introduced in the latest re-design which caused all the flurry online) to developers to build third party applications. This is what Twitter have been doing for a longtime now, hence the mass proliferation of third party applications built out on top of the Twitter API.

There was a Facebook presentation yesterday where third party application developers such as seesmic who have recently released the seesmic desktop which will replace thwirl which brings together facebook and twitter updates. Also there was Adobe, who talked about their recent agreement to collaborate with Facebook using AIR as a development platform.

We can now expect over the coming months a bevvy of applications and mash ups that take data out of the stream and present and reconsitutue it in some creative ways.

That said there’s already some controversy over the developer terms and conditions about some restrictions being imposed by Facebook.

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Embedded is a presentation that I have put together which gives an overview of how businesses can and are using social media and looks at some of the tools and platforms available. It mainly examines how businesses are using it to engage  externally but it also covers how businesses use social technologies internally in their organisations.

Feel free to comment, be interested to get your feedback

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Google have recently introduced vanity urls for users with google profiles. The  Google profile is a good way to aggregate all your online profiles and present in a manner that Google can index and search (which is always a good thing re: ranking etc..). You can add in a professional and personal bio, integrate with flickr for photos and also add in all your profiles and feeds that you have accumulated and use online. Until recently users were identifiable by an id such as www.google.com/s2/profiles/107462389711797385918 – which is meaningless in terms of identifying you in a useful way. Now you can identify your profile using your actual name – e.g. http://www.google.com/profiles/keith.feighery.

This is all very useful for both businesses and individuals and should be added as part of your optimisation and visibility effort. Also, another useful google service is google local business centre. Businesses can register themselves which is a two step process – firstly, add in all your details and then google verify you. It should be done as a matter of course as again it increases the visibility for local customers who are searching for your related business as well as increasing Googles visibility and indexing of your business.

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Google Local Business, Vanitty Urls

Interesting piece in VentureBeat today claiming that Facebook has rejected a valuation of $4 Billion dollars.  The social networking site is the fastest growing social site in terms of numbers – Comscore estimated in January 2009 that it had over 276 Million unique users. In the UK 47% of the online community use Facebook with the fastest growing cohort in the 35-49 year old bracket. It has taken a lot of flak recently on a number of fronts. Firstly it changed the terms and condititions that users subscribe to, essentially turning ownership of all asssets and content (photos, videos, relationships) explicitly to Facebook. They rolled this back after a major online revolt errupted.

Most recently they have changed the user experience trying to make the site more real-time by introducing feeds from friends and subscribed sources. This change results in a lot more information being displayed to users, especially if those friends have active lifestreams connected to their facebook profiles. It is generally agreed that the new changes are good for businesses who want to ensure that fresh content is presented to users as often as possible (to keep their profile in front of as many users as possible) and very active social media participants. These changes have been seen as a play by Facebook to capture the ground stolen by the likes of Twitter, which offers real-time participation and also most recently be the beta version of friendfeed. However, the majority of Facebook users are not power users and consider excessive feed information as pure Noise and have registered their displeasure in droves. In a move to counteract this, Facebook have now made a semblance of reaching out to the public by courting their ideas on changes to the platform. But this has been circumscribed by a time limit and a quorom of 30% of the active Facebook community, which is unlikely to be reached.

That said, it is undoubtedly the big beast in the social networking space in 2009. MySpace figures are dropping – 2% since the start of 2009 accompanied by a lot of organisational distraction. Twitter is the only other site generating the same level of mainstream interest, but in terms of numbers is in around 14Million, which is no mean feat considering it had about 700,000 users this time in 2008.

It will be interestng to watch what Facebook does with its dominant position and likewise it will also be very interesting to see what happens with Twitter. Both of them face monetising issues. Facebook, for its massive user database generated only approx. 350Million dollars in revenue. Not a lot. Twitter still has yet to monetise itself. Most recently a lot attention was paid to the fact that they seemed to have sponsored applications advertised. But they have disabused the market of this saying that it was not the case. So the market looks on and tries to figure out what form of monetisation it will embark on.

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