Top Startup » Open Social Networks

Location is the web’s new frontier 2.0

Colin — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:58:54 +0000

Where are you tweeting? Where are you blogging? Where was that picture taken? Where are your friends?

It’s a big world out there and location is an axis on which everyone is dying to slice you up.

You don’t have to be on the terrorist watch list to get value putting your location online. I’ve picked my horse and it’s Fire Eagle.

There are a bunch of other horses for storing your location. They are irrelevant. Everyone else wants to trap “where” in a walled garden. Fire Eagle allows developers to create applications around providing your location. I’m using Navizon on my iPhone to update Fire Eagle. Fire Eagle also allows developers to create applications that utilize your location. Dan Choi helped me build the map to the right using Fire Eagle ->.

Why should I tell Twitter where I am and Google Maps where I am. I want to tell Fire Eagle where I am and let Fire Eagle tell everyone else – at the level of granularity I choose.

Developers take notice: Support fire eagle for location based services or you are a second tier web 2.0 app.

Special Event: The secrets of Social Network Platform Apps

Colin — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:14:26 +0000

WebInno is hosting a super secret special event on January 8th at 6:30pm about developing for Facebook, Bebo, Opensocial. Local companies are going to share their experience with those platforms. It should be a great networking opportunity to meet people in the space. Registration is free (password protected) and space is limited.

Here’s the link to register, drop me a comment with your email for the password.

It’s the freakin beacon speakin

Colin — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:40:38 +0000

I added a new review to Yelp! and understood Facebook’s Beacon all at the same time. It’s powerful, and a very good idea. Im slightly impressed

So here’s how it works:

Im signed in to facebook.
I then go on to yelp and add a review
Yelp infers who I am on facebook and sends a message to facebook that I have posted a new review
Next time I log in to facebook, I have the option to add that to my mini-feed.

Personally I am not crazy about adding MORE lifestream data into facebook’s clutches, but it’s a slick implementation and a solid idea.

Enjoy the beacon!

tumblr is a cool way to aggregate public (and some private) lifestream data

Colin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:00:46 +0000

I’ve got this blog, I’ve got pintmaster.com, I’ve got a picasaweb account. It’s a confusing mess! I’ve got lots of “stuff” I need to share with friends. Granted, i’ve got my rel=me links in the sidebar. But, giving you guys that stuff to do something with isn’t enough. We’re all lazy. We want someone or something else to do the heavy lifting. In comes tumblr

It’s what they’ve left out that makes it cool

Beyond aggregating my personal streams, what makes tumblr cool is that they’ve made a determination on the things that people like to share with each other:

Each content item is more structured than my blog. For example, in my blog, every tumblr content type falls under one thing. I like that I can post a quote without feeling the need to write a blog post around it. I’ve got my iPhone rigged now, so I can snap a picture and mail it to my tumblr page.

Cool privacy

tumblr has cool privacy in the form of channels. I can specifically allow or deny access to channels based on email addresses. I think it might require people to join though – which is a little bit of a bummer. I’ve got a music channel which has links to cool stuff that I’ve heard recently. It’s only for friends because Im not sure if I can share it. It’s not an oink.cd replacement, but if you want in, let me know!

tumblr vs. twitter

Twitter still has it’s place. tumblr is not there yet in terms of social interaction. There are a lot of back and forth conversations on twitter now. tumblr still feels very one way. Maybe because aside from Brian Del Vecchio, I am practically alone there.

Thumbs up

So, tumblr rocks. I’ve got it working in moodblast and Im going to continue to use it. If you want more than just the topstartup.com content, you can check out (almost) everything I’m putting online at: colin.nederkoorn.co.uk. Im sure my first couple of hours on tumblr only scratch the surface of what’s there. Expect more in the future.

Google pulls down their pants and exposes a huge PR Department

Colin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:00:28 +0000

Google announced today their OpenSocial APIs reportedly located at this address http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial. As of this writing, there isn’t anything there yet. But when there is it will be huge?

All joking aside, Google does a lot of great work for open source and does give back to the community. For that, I definitely respect them.

Let’s dig in to the business motivation for your startup using these APIs:
You can write an application once and use it with many social networks – like LinkedIn, hi5, Ning, Friendster and Plaxo.

But the big question is… who cares? I haven’t used Friendster since 2004. Plaxo is great for backing up my contacts, but I dont trust them. Ning is pointless, and LinkedIn always wants you to pay to get any value. The other social networks I couldn’t care about. The only two relevant social networks for my market (the American market) are Facebook and Myspace.

So, google… either you’ve got a trick up your sleeve – like enabling me to host my profile on Topstartup and use your API to feed into to all of these social networks, or you wont make a big impact.

If anyone can do it, google, you can. Why not release something real before setting the PR drones in motion?

Click here to read more nonsense on Google’s OpenSocial

Understanding rel=”me”

Colin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:00:28 +0000

There’s a geeky little HTML tag that’s gaining some traction. rel=”me”. You add it to links on your blog / homepage that are links to other identities of yours on the web.

I’ve added it to my “Get Social” section on the sidebar. The post-facebook internet starts with this little tag. Through it, you can identify me on all the sites I use around the web. If you can learn about me through those sites (or a mashup) without going to facebook, why use facebook?

The secret formula

1. Add rel=”me” to every website and individual
2. ……. (there’s stuff in my head to fill in #2)
3. Profit!

Granted, rel=”me” doesn’t provide any immediate benefit. It does however put the infrastructure in place to replace little walled zuckerberg gardens with vast, beautiful, digital rainforests.