Categorie: social

Google+: The Charge Of The Like Brigade

editorial, Google, google plus, Opinion, social, TC

simp2A recent post by a defecting Googler (at his new and previous home, Microsoft) suggests that a fundamental reordering of Google’s priorities has made it far less than the company it once was. A sudden comprehension of the danger posed by Facebook’s ever-expanding platform caused the company to enter a sort of berserker state, focusing solely on reinventing social while neglecting or amputating anything that didn’t fit into its new mission. Or so the tale goes.

There have been times recently when I’ve felt the need to deflect a few of the slings and arrows trained on Google. This time, however, they are well-deserved. Google’s big bet was based on bad instincts, jealousy, and hubris — not the curiosity, experimentation, and agility that have characterized them theretofore.

Could Google+ ever have been anything but a failure?

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FamilyLeaf Brings Your Kin Together In Its Own Private Social Network

family, Privacy, social, Social Networking, Startups, TC

familyleafFacebook is on its way to having a billion members, but it’s not always making friends everywhere it goes. Two young men, both aged 19 and in the most recent crop of Y Combinator startups, think they’ve found a gap in the market that has yet to be served that well by the social network: families.

FamilyLeaf was created by childhood friends Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta (last seen here spinning out a Y U NO yarn to gain entry into YC; it worked). And it was borne out of a desire to have an easy-to-use online space for you and your relations that address some key “misuse” of sites like Facebook — something they say became especially apparent to the two of them after they left for college (respectively Wharton and NYU Stern, where they are now on a leave of absence).

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Twitter Launches Advertising Program For Small Business In Partnership With American Express

social, TC

twitter adsTwitter is continuing its rollout of advertising initiatives, with today’s launch of its new program for small businesses, which is being launched in partnership with American Express. Originally announced last month, American Express merchants and cardholders are now being alerted to Twitter’s new advertising opportunities, which were kicked off by a related promotion in which the first 10,000 Cardmembers and merchants received $100 in free Twitter ads.

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Check-In Needs To Work, But How Can We Fix It?

apps, check.in, Highlight, Opinion, rants, social, Startups, TC, yelp

shutterstock_56330170Remember Highlight? That app that everyone thought was hot stuff back at SXSW? I used it for a few days and then deleted it, discovering quite quickly that the app, despite some utility, was an absolute battery hog. But what Highlight did was prove that, given the proper scenario, check-in works and is important. What frustrates me most, however, is that we keep doing it wrong.

Take this new app, Chkin.at, for example. It allows you to check-in at various websites and to become King of a certain page, thereby giving you certain conjugal rights with the ladies of your Kingdom (not really). Rather than dismiss it outright – it kind of works, but it spurred this little rant – I’ll note that it, like so many other apps, suffers from that fatal flaw: the check-in.

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Forget Time Traveling, Disney’s New Facebook Game Has Players Poking Through Nature

Disney, Gaming, social, TC

07westsavannascene-LDisney’s Playdom had a hit on their hands when they released their time-traveling, object-finding adventure Gardens of Time, which eventually (and contentiously) topped Facebook’s list of most recommended games in 2011. The question for the team then was, well, what’s next?

User research had players responding positively to nature, so when the time came to craft a follow-up to Gardens of Time, the team decided to trawl the Disney IP vault for something that would fit that nature-conscious bill. After being reminded of a certain wildlife-themed Disney theme park in Florida, Animal Kingdom Explorers was born.

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Night Of The Living Social Network: Friends Reunited Relaunches Tomorrow As A Digital Scrapbook

facebook, Friends Reunited, social, Social Networking, TC

friends reuinited relaunchFriends Reunited — which once laid claim to being the UK’s first social network before falling far behind the pull of Facebook — is relaunching this week as a “digital scrapbook” where users can collect their own pictures along with copyrighted photos, through a series of deals with image libraries.

The first two libraries to sign up, the Press Association and photographic archive company the Francis Frith Collection, collectively will contribute some 350,000 photos into the service, and a spokesperson says that there will be “more images and deals with more libraries added in the next few months.” Altogether the site will offer users 10 million “memories” in the form of 6 million photos, 2 million events and 2 million places to tag alongside their own content.

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All That Cash: On Apple, Twitter And The New Bit Factories

Amit Runchal, Apple, mobile, Opinion, social, Startups, TC

Screen shot 2012-03-25 at 8.12.38 PMThe speculation of what Apple is going to do with all their cash has long been a favorite topic in the tech and financial press.

But the thinking along those lines is often akin to the cognitive dissonance one experiences when seeing a billionaire driving a Honda Civic; What’s the point of having all that money if you’re not going to spend it?

That thinking is what we saw when Apple recently announced their cash plans. Two common reactions went something like this …

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Find Everyone You Can’t Google Or Facebook With YC’s Ark People Search

ark, social, Startups, TC, YCombinator

Ark LogosGoogle and Facebook can’t help you find which of your friends are single, or live in New York and like Radiohead, but Ark can. Today Y Combinator-backed Ark.com sails into open beta in hopes of becoming the best place on the web to do people searches. With a variety of layer-able filters, Ark lets you search through public profiles and the private data of your friends across Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other networks. It’s also got filter sets for easily discovering old classmates and new business contacts.

Ark could pull searches away from Google and Facebook, disrupt dedicated sites like Classmates.com, and give us a better way to find people than broadcasting “Who do I know here that does this?” TechCrunch readers can get early access to the beta with instructions within this article.

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Sean Parker And Shawn Fanning’s New Social Video Startup Airtime Staffs Up For Launch

Airtime, chatroulette, sean parker, Shawn Fanning, social, Startups, TC, Video

airtimeA few weeks ago at SXSW, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning briefly mentioned — during a talk about another company they co-founded, Napster — that they were working on a new social video startup called Airtime. Now it looks like the company is gearing up for launch.

Airtime now has a website and a Facebook sign-up button for early access. And it is hiring.

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You Say “SoLoMo,” I Say, “I Hate My Life”

mobile, social, solomo, Startups, TC

psychoWorking in tech does weird things to your vocabulary. Five years ago, if you’d told me that I’d become someone who talks about whether they have the “bandwidth” to get something done or promising to “ping” you later, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here I am, finding the bandwidth to ping people — like it or not, you adopt the language of the people around you.

Still, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. And for me, the phrase SoLoMo (short for social-local-mobile, if you’re lucky enough to have never heard it) crosses that line and outrages all decency and common sense.

When it first popped up, I assumed it was the latest feeble attempt to make “Socio Loco” take off and would die in a few weeks. But no, it seems to be catching on, and it’s even crept into a couple of TechCrunch headlines.

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