Six-week old mobile application Banjo has been updated with a new feature that lets users virtually stalk locations, and the people there, in real-time. Banjo, for those unaware, is a new social discovery service which reveals the social network present at any given location at a particular time. To be clear, it’s not another social network, it’s a layer on top of social networks. With Banjo, you don’t have to create a profile, add friends or collect followers, or perform any of the other typical social networking behaviors.

Instead, to use Banjo, you simply launch the app to see what the people around you are saying and doing right now. The app pulls its data from social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, TwitPic and Instagram, accessing both the publicly available check-ins and the geotags that accompany status updates and posts.

When Banjo first launched, it offered a “Map” feature which let you pick a point on the included Google Maps interface to virtually travel to that location, and see who was there. However, the feature was cumbersome to use because you weren’t able to type in a search box, specifying an actual location – you had to drag-and-drop the map to reposition it.

Virtual Tourist, Virtual Location Stalker

But now, you can enter in any address supported by Google Maps in order to discover that location’s hidden social network, whether the location you seek is a city, a street address or even the name of a local business.

There are certainly some use cases for this feature that will appeal to mainstream users – perhaps you’re curious what people think of tonight’s concert, for example, or what people at a conference are posting pictures of or are tweeting about.

However, as an online journalist, the immediate appeal of the search feature comes from the possibilities it presents for enhancing the reporting process. Imagine being able to virtually visit the streets of London during last weekend’s riots and seeing the streams of information arising from popular social networking services in real-time.

The benefit is not only the ease with which you can view this sort of public data, it’s that you can confirm those people are really there. With services like Twitter, anyone from anywhere can post an update using a hashtag (a keyword preceded by a # sign, e.g. #londonriots) to join the public conversation about that topic. But in some cases, it’s critical to know that a person is actually there when they’re posting an update – a feature which would allow journalists to then reach out to those immediately at the site an event’s occurrence, in the midst of the action. Banjo makes this possible, as it only looks at updates that have geo-coordinates attached.

Public Information is Easily Discoverable

The fact that it’s now so easy to reveal this sort of data should be a reminder to you that what you post publicly the Internet is indeed public.

And Banjo is not the only app that’s making easier to uncover this kind of information. Its nearest competitor, Sonar, a TechCrunch Disrupt startup, has a similar take on location-based social networking, except that it ranks the people at a given location by how many friends you have in common. In other words, instead of revealing a location’s hidden social network, it’s showing you your own expanded social network at a given location.

Coming Soon: More Apps, More Features, More Social Networks

Banjo plans to add a dozen more social networks in the next couple of weeks, and has added or is in the process of adding dozens of new features, including the ability to save photos, share them via social networks, email, or SMS, plus performance and speed improvements.

Banjo is currently available on iPhone and Android, but is expanding to other platforms in the future.

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Sponsor

“Agent G” Syncs Google+ to Other Sites

To use the service, you must first associate Agent G with your preferred social networking services, using OAuth (on Twitter and Identica) and Facebook Connect.  In testing, the service was a little buggy. It took two times to register Agent G with Twitter, three times to register with Facebook, and we’re still waiting on Identica. Maybe we weren’t being patient enough, but Agent G’s developer Saggi Malachi says the registration process should only take seconds. It did not.

Still, even with its kinks, you have to admit – this is a pretty cool idea. And as for the bugs, the source code will be released in just a few days, so crowd-sourced improvements should follow soon after, or so we hope.

How to Use Agent G

To use Agent G, do the following:

1. Sign in with Identi.ca, Twitter or Facebook on this page: http://gplus.sagg.im. (See the buttons on the upper right of the page.)
2. Once connected, you will be given an authentication string. Create a Google+ post containing your authentication string and share it only with +Agent G.

    

   

3. You can now sync Google+ posts to your connected accounts by simply sharing your post with +Agent G

    

   

    

That’s it!

We should note, there’s a lag here, as well. In tests, syncs between services took several minutes, which is far from being real-time. As they say, your mileage may vary.

But if you do decide to use this service, please remember one thing: if you’re syncing to other services, be prepared to respond on those other services, too. No one likes bot spam!

Discuss

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So lazyweb is really just the laziness in trying to find an answer for a question. So where does Twitter fit into all this? Well, as explained, we’re starting to use Twitter as a human search engine where we can get several intelligent answers at the same time. Instead of trying to ask the search engine what to look for, we get to interact with the search results in a way that was previously impossible. You could say that your friends and connections have become the engine of your searches. Quora is a great example of such a service.

So if you think about it, we’re all trying to get more in depth answers faster instead of trying to find the answer ourselves through some tedious research process that might end up giving us the wrong information anyway. So, as the lazyweb grows, I think we’ll be able to pinpoint people in our friend base or community who we can ask certain questions and get the best answers instead of fumbling in the dark for a long time before we hit the right thread that will take us on our way to the answer we are so desperately trying to find.

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Lately there is a trend where colleges increasingly use social media to affect college admissions. As you might understand, this has caused a great number of people to become concerned. That tag on Facebook of you trying out a bong as a joke suddenly isn’t so funny anymore. These things surely should remind us all to give this our utmost attention so we can clean up our act.

What you probably don’t know about this is that today (yes, this very day), more than 80% of all colleges use social media as a form of recruitment. Scary? Well, if you don’t have the most cleaned up Facebook photo gallery, maybe it’s time to clean it up to make a better impression. Even that YouTube clip isn’t too far away from being discovered. There is a truly interesting infographic pulled together by Schools.com that might shed some further light on the matter. If you are starting to look for colleges, this will have you glued to the screen.

If you’re getting worried now that your presence on some of the social networking services available on the Internet could cause your application to be denied, maybe it is good if you know that the three social networking services that colleges monitor the most are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. So clean up your act on those ones, and you should be at least moderately good to go. However, having a few high profile connections on LinkedIn sure doesn’t hurt either. Go ahead and start your “clean up” mission because you never know when the admission officers will have a look at you. They might very well be watching you at this very moment. No pressure!

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IMOGO put together a rather simple infographic on the topic, and it’s astounding to know that we’re all on the cloud together these days.  Everything you tweet, facebook, linkedin to and pretty much everything else you are doing is connected to the cloud.

So next time you’re wondering if and when you can use the cloud, be rest assured that you are already doing so using the social networking services that you have signed up for.  In a way, it feels great because of the reason that the information is always there.  But there is a slight concern that keeps poking me in the back of my mind.  How much will all my information be used and for what purpose?  It’s definitely something to think about.  Do we want to be farmed for information used by multinational companies around the world?  Well, that’s entirely up to you.  If you don’t want to share it, don’t put it on the Internet.  Simple as that… I guess.

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The idea is to show who you are, yes.  There are different ways to do that, and they don’t have to be heavily complicated to set up.  As a matter of fact, you can do so by just thinking outside of the box.  To show who you are is as much to show that you like Star Wars as much as you do ice cream.  See, right away you get a lot of ideas I am sure.

There are some really neat profile pictures that you can draw inspiration from or even copy.  Screw being original, right?  Go with the flow, and set it up Star Wars style.  Or, why not Super Mario, The Punisher or even The Joker style?  If you can’t decide between the ones listed below, it’s seriously easy to create your own with a simple image editor.  There are even several available on the Internet so you don’t have to download anything to get going.  Let’s geekify your edge, and tell the world you’re a master geek!

Via: [BuzzFeed]

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The idea is to show who you are, yes.  There are different ways to do that, and they don’t have to be heavily complicated to set up.  As a matter of fact, you can do so by just thinking outside of the box.  To show who you are is as much to show that you like Star Wars as much as you do ice cream.  See, right away you get a lot of ideas I am sure.

There are some really neat profile pictures that you can draw inspiration from or even copy.  Screw being original, right?  Go with the flow, and set it up Star Wars style.  Or, why not Super Mario, The Punisher or even The Joker style?  If you can’t decide between the ones listed below, it’s seriously easy to create your own with a simple image editor.  There are even several available on the Internet so you don’t have to download anything to get going.  Let’s geekify your edge, and tell the world you’re a master geek!

Via: [BuzzFeed]

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That’s where Digital Surgeons comes in.  They have compiled data and demographics from the social media scene and designed a pretty awesome infographic that will enable you to make a firm decision on what platform to use most.  You should always remember though that if time permits, you can of course engage in several different social networking services.  However, also remember that it’s quite time consuming, and if you’re running a business, you should probably make sure everything is taken care of on the business side first.

For us here at Bit Rebels, for example, we have 40% of our visitors coming from the US.  So, if we want to expand those numbers, we would do well to interact on Facebook for a while.  Our experience; however, has taught us that engaging on several platforms will increase the overall traffic.  But, just because we’re present on Facebook as well, we’re continuously increasing our percentage of US visitors.  So, take this with you, and have a look at this inspiring infographic.  Make your decision once you have included this data.  It always pays off gathering information from several sources.

Click Image To Enlarge

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You might not know it, but there were actually a few successful social networking services before Twitter and Facebook even though when reading their names you might not recognize them at all. Some of us used the Internet purely to look up information and send files back and forth. Some even used chat rooms and message services like ICQ or AOL Instant Messanger.

But mostly, we never touched the social networking world or even came close to it before Facebook and Twitter. You will be surprised to know that there were actually quite a few services that you would file under the category of Social Networking Services. The whole thing started with an email, and it is on that road that we will soon come to Facebook and Twitter. Watch the whole pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter world unfold in front of your eyes with this awesome infographic designed and created by Online Schools. Interesting indeed!

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Continue reading: Facebook “Face” Trademark Soon To Be Approved [Facebook Given Notice Of Allowance To Trademark The Word "Face" in Telecom & Social Networking Services. What Will Happen to FaceTime?]

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Related Reading on TFTS – In Order of Freshness:

1. iTunes 10 Ping: Apple’s Music Social Networking Gets Official, Facebook Beware! [Apple Announces Important Social Networking Feature Called Ping; Will be Available on iPod, iPhone & iPad Too] by Chris Smith
2. Facebook IPO Probably by 2012 [Bloomberg Reports That Facebook IPO May Happen by 2012] by Brian Yalung
3. Diaspora Facebook Social Networking Alternative Wants to Kick Facebook Where It Hurts: Privacy [New Social Networking Start-Up Called Diaspora to Challenge the Big Guns; Will It Succeed?] by Chris Smith
4. Facebook App Store Page Lets You Browse & Buy iPhone & iPad Apps [Apple Opens Up Facebook App Store Pages & Takes Social Networking at the Next Level; Google Buzz Who?] by Chris Smith

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With Facebook expected to launch its own email service on Monday, analysts at Gartner seem to be right on target.

“In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only,” said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner.

“Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles. However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”

While microblogging is reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use e-mail in parallel.

“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode,” Ms. Basso said. “E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities.”

Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across e-mail and social networks. By 2012, Gartner said contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.

Collaboration is slowly moving to the cloud, and Gartner analysts expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services. Organizations will use hybrid models where some services live on-premises and some are in the cloud. Gartner predicts that the percentage of e-mail accounts on cloud services will grow to 10 percent by year-end 2012, up 7 percent from 2009.

From a vendor’s perspective, the market is consolidating around Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM), the two market leaders. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, RIM and Microsoft will own 80 percent of the enterprise wireless e-mail software market.

“The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organizations can either take the lead, or be led by their users,” said Ms. Basso.

“The most progressive organizations won’t be afraid to explore the innovative communications and collaboration models enabled by new devices and social services allow their employees to generate innovative ideas by experimenting with them.”

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With RockMelt we’ve re-thought the user experience because a browser can and should be about more than simply navigating Web pages. Today, the browser connects you to your world. Why not build your world right into your browser?

Your friends are important to you, so we built them in. Now you’re able to chat, share that piano-playing-cat video everyone’s going to love, or just see what your friends are up to, regardless of what site you’re on. Your favorite sites are important to you, so we built them in too. Now you can access them from anywhere, without leaving the page you’re on. And RockMelt will tell you when something new happens.

On paper, RockMelt, which is built on Google’s Chromium open source browser project,  looks intriguing. Consumption habits on the web have changed, and as we’ve seen in the mobile space, there are plenty of opportunities to create user experiences that allow consumers to interact with existing content and applications in new ways that are consistent with those changing consumption habits. From the looks of it, RockMelt is making a decent attempt to make using the internet and popular social networking services like Facebook a more seamless exercise.

Despite all this, it’s hard to see RockMelt gaining much mainstream traction any time soon. The browser market is highly-competitive and will be a very tough nut to crack. As a Facebook account is required to use RockMelt, the company has inherently limited its market to Facebook’s 500m registered users, and will have to convince them that there are no privacy issues with logging in to browse. Perhaps most importantly, history is not on RockMelt’s side. As others have noted, the makers of the Flock browser have done a good job making the browser more social but they haven’t been rewarded by the market for it.

At the end of the day, there is no doubt that, for many consumers, using the internet has become a ‘social‘ experience. But it’s quite unclear whether or not there’s a need for an additional layer of ‘social‘ at the browser level. Even for a billion-dollar behemoth like Google, browser market share is hard won. Reinventing the browsing experience, marketing that new experience and educating consumers will not be easy, nor will it be cheap. RockMelt had better hope Andreesen Horowitz, which just raised a new $650m fund, is willing to write a blank check.

It’s something that just a year or two ago probably would have been
inconceivable. After all, if Facebook controls your content, chances are
you won’t leave Facebook. But at 500m users and growing, Facebook
doesn’t seem concerned that freeing user data will lead to a mass
exodus.

Will the company’s “Download Your Information” feature usher in an age of data portability? Perhaps, but it would be premature to make such a prediction. But even if Facebook’s move doesn’t really create a data portability utopia, it is interesting nonetheless and has numerous implications. Here are the most notable good, bad, and ugly.

The Good

Facebook users will be able to walk away from the social network with something to show for it. Previously, leaving Facebook — for whatever reason — meant leaving behind photos and other content. Thanks to Facebook’s new feature, however, users can quit the social network without saying goodbye to much of the most desirable content they’ve added to their profile.

It creates opportunity. Now that Facebook users can export some of their Facebook data, companies, entrepreneurs and developers will have the opportunity to do something with it. You can be sure, for example, that other social networking services will look to enable their members and prospective members to quickly and easily populate their profiles using content in the format Facebook provides it in for download.

The Bad

Not everything is included. Facebook may be permitting the export of important content (photos, messages, etc.), but you apparently can’t, for instance, export all of your friends’ contact information. In other words, there’s a lot to be desired and Facebook certainly isn’t giving away the farm.

You can’t export Facebook. Content may be king, but the Facebook experience is her queen. On paper, being able to download your Facebook content seems really useful, but it remains to be seen whether the vast majority of Facebook users will find a use for the content without the accompanying experience.

The Ugly

It’s a scammer’s dream. Even the most innocuous information can be used for malicious purposes. Information downloaded from a Facebook account, for instance, could be used to crack a password or steal someone’s identity. Now that information can be downloaded from Facebook with a few clicks on a button, scammers and hackers may find compromising Facebook accounts to be even more worthwhile than before.

The secret to success for a website these days is really no secret at all. Websites that really bring home the bacon are the ones driven by loyal visitors who frequent the site on a regular basis. Building a community like this often takes a lot of time and loads of great content.

But is there a way to shortcut the tried and true methods of great material and great marketing?

What if a website were fun to play?

Games and gaming are two terms that are quickly finding themselves a new meaning on the web. What used to be associated with an acne-prone teenager alone in a windowless basement is being transformed into a socially hip hobby. The age range for gaming is expanding, and the activities that include gaming features are shifting as well.

Games in general are nothing new. For centuries, we have been enjoying sports, card games, and board games. In the past few decades, the evolution of video games has spawned the modern "casual game." On the web, these games include online Flash games, mobile apps, and most recently, social networking and community-oriented websites.

Gaming, most recently, has entered the social media space, in incarnations such as Foursquare and Gowalla, as well as Facebook applications such as FarmVille, with great success. While the likes of location-aware social networking services like Foursquare and Gowalla may not seem like much of a game at first — don’t be fooled. Checking into your favorite locations in order to earn rewards such as points or badges is a solid game element.

Is gaming something that can be incorporated into a website in order to draw in a wider audience? And more importantly, can game mechanics keep our users coming back?

Set the Playing Field

How can a website incorporate a game for its users? The core mechanic of pretty much any game is completing a set of tasks in order to achieve a reward. A website already has half of this in place in that every site has a set of tasks that they would love their users to take. This is often called a call to action. What most websites are missing is the other half of the mechanic: a reward for the end user when they successfully take the call to action.

Foursquare, a location-based social networking web service, has introduced a great reward system for its users. The badges you earn for completing desirable tasks are fun for the consumer to collect, and easy for the producer to deliver. The badge system of Foursquare has shown us that there is a sweet spot for building this type of community. Badges give users the incentive to keep their statuses up to date.

The gaming element of the community must be fun and easy to participate in. But at the same time, it should avoid overshadowing the primary function of the system. In the case of Foursquare, badges are fun and easy to earn as a reward, but the core function of sharing your location with your friends remains in the forefront.

A Whole New Ballgame

It’s important to consider what Foursquare and Gowalla are not. The elephant in the room is that both of these examples are apps. It really doesn’t reflect the typical website (blogs and content-driven websites, e-commerce sites, etc.). So how would this idea really translate to a community that lives and breathes entirely in the traditional web browser?

A standing example of a site with great game mechanics is GiantBomb.com. Not too surprisingly, Giant Bomb is a site dedicated to video games, and so game mechanics on the site only makes sense. Still, the popularity of the site stands as a testament to the methods they have used to encourage user involvement.

Basically, the site is a giant wiki for video games, sharing every bit of information you could possibly want to know about your favorite video game, from how many different appearances Mario has made since his introduction, to full fledged game reviews. All of this content is created and maintained by a user base that is rewarded for their contributions through a point and level system. The top contributors are praised and displayed throughout the site.

The result is a content-rich website with a very loyal community. The contest for the top spot on the leader board drives users to include more information about the games they play and love, all to oust their friends as the king of Giant Bomb content creation — in gaming lingo, to be "l33t."

Can I Play Too?

With game mechanics becoming the buzzword of the year, and seeing it succeed in mobile apps and websites such as GiantBomb.com, Stack Overflow, Concept Feedback and the like, makes you wonder if a game system on your website is a good idea. The reality is that it may not.

Much like any trend to sweep over the web, the idea of implementing game mechanics into a website may not be ideal for everyone. Many sites on the web already have a great system of their own in place for retaining visitors; for a lot of them, the reward their users get by contributing to the site is more natural.

For example, many design blogs will always have an active user base because their readers value the ability to contribute to the community. Comments provide an option to get your name out there, have a link back to your personal site, or help build a professional network. So the incentive to discuss the topic at hand and enrich a particular post’s value is already there. Having a badge system or a "top commenters" list may increase activity further, but would that incentivize better commenting or would it just compel people to comment just to get a badge? Wouldn’t the latter be the wrong motivation to comment on a post? In this scenario, unless there are counter mechanics in place such as the ability to down vote comments that are clearly for attaining a badge (which in itself can open up a can of worms), having a game system might make the core feature worse, with comments written solely to achieve a badge, and not to contribute to the discussion.

However, some industries could see a boost of community activity by setting up a reward system for their site visitors. For example, restaurants value customer reviews and feedback, but don’t always have a way to give back. Foursquare gives owners the option to provide discounts or special offers to their loyal customers who frequently visit their location. The same system of rewards could be established for customers that contribute more than their friends to the restaurant in terms of online reviews and social feedback.

It’s all Fun and Games…

…until someone loses an eye, right? Are game mechanics a good way of building up considerable traffic on your website? Certainly, the first concern of many will be that introducing users to a game on your website will take away from the content or core goals itself. A huge problem we could be creating here is users blindly using a site and posting meaningless content just to gain rank or reward. Not only could we be creating more work on the administration end of the site, but also, it might produce unwanted effects.

Like any technology, the idea of game mechanics in your website is that it should be like a tool. No tool is inherently good or evil when left to its own devices; only the holder of said tool can determine its fate. The key to incorporating games in your website depends on the tasks you’re encouraging your users to participate in. Much like a video game itself, each environment has a unique audience that requires personalized tasks relevant to them in order for the system to be executed with perfection.

For example, if a local theater for live entertainment wanted to reward its regular patrons, they could provide free swag, tickets or other incentives to any user that attended a certain number of shows and posted reviews on their website. The customers who posted the most reviews and attended the most shows would get prizes that are more significant. They also get the prestige of being the top participant.

A Great Double Play

The potential benefits of a gaming system extend beyond the site statistics produced by a loyal and highly engaged community. With the advent of social media also came with it a change in the way businesses connect with their customers. Networks such as Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook have given business owners the ability to have personal interaction with more customers. They also have a bigger potential to expand their customer base by tapping into their existing customers’ network of friends. Owners and operators who have taken advantage of this technology have been praised for it and a new standard is being formed.

The result is a community of business patrons or site visitors that have come to expect that warm fuzzy feeling when they get a nice pat on the back from the people up top.

Getting personal feedback from the people who run the site you visit often is a great feeling, and now that this feeling is so obtainable, it will soon be what is expected.

Allowing your community to participate in a friendly game against each other to prove who is the best member is a great way to discover the individuals in your community who are active and engaged. For site owners, this is a great way to see whom they should be reaching out to for help, alpha testing, feedback, feature selection, and suggestions for improvement because they are the people who are compelled to make "their" website better.

The Last Play on Games

Games have always been a great social activity and they can encourage the development of a strong and loyal community. The ability to partake in a game with someone builds the bonds that spark sports rivalries, professional camaraderie and heated debates. The internet should be no exception to the results that traditional games have brought to physical communities and what video games have brought to digital worlds.

If levels, rewards and leader boards can strengthen the loyalty of your community, then perhaps it’s time for your website to be more fun to play.

Game Over. It’s Your Turn

What is your take on game mechanics? Have you had an experience where a game has made your web community stronger? Can you think of any great examples where game mechanics could improve a company’s online environment?

Related Content

• Increase Your User Activity with Points, Badges and Status
• The Future of User Interfaces
• How to Grow a Community: Insights from Experts
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Applications

About the Author

Jason Gross is a freelance web designer focused on creating clean and user friendly websites. Jason currently lives in Indiana and can be found on Twitter as @JasonAGross or on the web at his personal blog and portfolio.

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The rise of social networking services like Facebook has created
significant digital privacy concerns. And new geolocation-based
services like Foursquare are creating a whole host of new concerns.

But privacy doesn’t necessarily have to be a touchy subject for today’s
most prominent social networks. Prominent venture capitalist Fred
Wilson, whose firm has invested in Twitter and Foursquare, thinks that there may actually be an opportunity for companies
to charge their users for additional privacy safeguards.

At the Geoloco conference in San Francisco this week, Wilson was quoted as stating: 

When you reveal your specific location, it’s very important that you have control over that… There are business opportunities in privacy-related services. The challenge is to get someone [whether business or consumer] to pay $2-$10 dollars per month to ensure that sort of premium privacy.

Obviously, users should be aware of the privacy policies of the sites they join, and the risks of sharing too much information. When they don’t, they can only blame themselves when their privacy is ‘violated’. That said, some of the sites that have come under fire over privacy concerns, namely Facebook, have changed their privacy policies dramatically over time in an opt-out, not opt-in fashion.

Wilson is certainly correct when he notes that “The challenge for large social networks is to undo permissions that they’ve already given. Meanwhile, a startup is at an advantage as they can build something from scratch that allows the user to predefine the data terms for sharing.” But the only way for large social networks to undo the permissions they’ve already given is to ask the users they’ve made promises to if they can change the terms of their relationship. Anything less than that is ‘bait and switch‘.

From this perspective, I’m not so sure that there’s a legitimate proposition for ‘premium privacy‘ offerings. Companies should think carefully about how the information their users provide is going to be shared, and they should be committed to adhering to the spirit of the privacy policies they initially create — whatever those policies are. Period.

This is not only the right thing to do ethically; long-term it’s the smart thing to do from a business standpoint. That’s because the information users provide is often a company’s most valuable asset. Changing how it’s used without explicit permission is a violation of trust that is likely to damage a company’s reputation over the long haul. Telling users they can pay you to not use the information they share under terms different from the ones you set when they provided it is, in my opinion, more likely to be perceived as extortion than it is to be perceived as a legitimate business model.

At the end of the day, the mainstreaming of online social networking has created significant new business opportunities and made it possible for businesses to know their users in ways rarely possible before. The thorny privacy issues that have arisen because of this are issues that most businesses didn’t have to grapple with before. But social networking hasn’t changed the concept of trust.

Trust is established when actions and words are consistent with each other; when promises are kept. If I tell you that your secrets are safe with me, the trust in our relationship depends on me keeping your secrets. In the world of social networking, any business that believes that users should pay you to act in a trustworthy manner probably won’t be in business five or ten years from now. Put simply, in business as in life, you shouldn’t make promises you’re not prepared to keep. There’s not a (paid) app for that.

Photo credit: rpongsaj via Flickr.

A recent report on Twitter usage in the U.S. by Edison Research concludes that 87% of all Americans are now aware of Twitter — up from 5% in 2008 — but only 7% of the population actually use it.

Edison’s data was collected in February from 1,753 Americans ages 12 and up. The report also includes the company’s findings on Twitter usage over the last three years.

What’s especially interesting is that the percentage of Americans who are aware of Twitter actually supersedes the percentage of those who have Internet access (85%). Twitter is now equally as well known as Facebook, albeit used far less. Edison links this disparity to Twitter’s lack of a clear purpose in the U.S. consumer’s eye.

Edison also finds that mobile usage is a key component of Twitter’s value proposition and that users are more likely to update and access Twitter via mobile devices than other social networking sites. One in five Twitter users update Twitter via their mobile devices several times per day; one in three do so at least once daily.

Some other interesting findings from the “Twitter Usage in America” report:

• African Americans account for 25% of the Twitter population, which is double the percentage of African Americans living in the U.S.
• Twitter users are more likely to live in higher income households.
• Four in 10 Twitter users (39%) own three or more computers.
• Twitter users are three times more likely to follow brands on Twitter than on other social networking sites.
• Less than half of regular Twitter users post updates (47%), although 70% of these same Twitter users do post status updates to other social networking services like Facebook.

As a whole, the report supports previous findings on the state of Twitter and emphasizes that it is more important for Twitter to define its purpose than build awareness. Additional findings and charts are included in the full report, which is available here.

Tags: stats, twitter

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Originally posted at Relevant Results

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So what can you do to make sure you’re using every single favored social networking service to your advantage and still make sure you spend the necessary time on each. Well, the best thing would be to update them all at the same time. Right?

And yes, there is a way to do this and it’s super simple and makes a lot of sense. Using ShoZu, an application for iPhone, Blackberry and more, you can update ALL our Social Networking services at once within just a few steps. Checking this app out has made me quite excited about its possibilities and I can’t wait to check it out. First launched to the public back in August of 2009 this is the best way to keep ALL your friends and followers up to date with what it is you’re doing.

The app is about $4 and has a slew of cool features enabling you to update with pictures, videos etc in the same easy steps as everything else. I am definitely getting it and will try and utilize its power to the maximum. Can’t wait to get started.

The introduction video found on YouTube isn’t bad either. One of the most hilarious ones I have seen. If only more developers did theirs this way and we’d all have our days full of laughter. Enjoy!

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What can you use the application for?


Lifestream.fm is a social media and services aggregator that combines all of the user’s online activity into one continuous, real-time stream. The service is currently capable of aggregating content from 60 different social networking services. Viewers of a user’s lifestream will see all of the user’s activity from all of the services they use. The services include blogging platforms, presence applications like MySpace and Facebook, and social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Delicious. Other users can comment on any item in a user’s lifestream, and users can mark individual items as favorites. Users can have friends on the site – the registration process gives the user the opportunity to invite users imported from their address books in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook and others. The registration process also prompts the user to add all of their services to their lifestream.
Users have a My Lifestream page, where they can see their recent activity, their friend’s recent activity, recent comments about items in their lifestream, and their list of Favorites. Users can choose to view the lifestream of the entire site in real time, browse the site by tags, or search the site for keywords. Any activity found on Lifestream can easily be sent to the user’s mobile phone. In addition, the site offers an Adobe Air application which brings the Lifestream site to the user’s desktop. Users can also choose to be notified by email when someone comments on their Lifestream. Users also have an Account Settings page, where they can make changes to their profile, add or delete services from their Lifestream and change their email or password.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


New York, NY-based Lifestream.fm was founded in April 2008 by Juan Xavier Larrea. The site continues to add new services to its list of compatible services.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Lifestream comes from sites such as Tumblr and Soup. Both of these sites have the ability to incorporate outside services into the user’s lifestream. They both also offer an update feature which allows the user to use them as a presence application as well. Lifestream does not offer the user the ability to add updates to the user’s lifestream.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The Lifestream.fm site has a clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site is very responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The user’s lifestream is updated in real-time, and this feature is quite responsive as well, with updates from other services appearing in the user’s lifestream in a matter of a few seconds in most cases. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar provided on all pages of the site. The send to mobile feature works well, as does the Adobe Air desktop application. There is no advertising displayed on the Lifestream.fm site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to the Lifestream.fm site is free and is required to add a lifestream to the site. The registration process asks for username, email address and password. Validation of the email address is required, and clicking on the validation link prompts the user to enter their profile details, add their services and invite their friends to join Lifestream.

What does it cost to use the application?


There is no premium membership offered to the Lifestream site, and registered users have access to all features of the site.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Lifestream.fm site is recommended to anyone who would like to incorporate all of their online activity into one continuous update stream. The site works well with the 60 services it is currently compatible with, and does a good job of providing a real-time lifestream of the user’s activity on the web.

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Originally posted at Deep Tech

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The Tutorial

Lets get started, download the Twitter PSD Background Template courtesy of Chris Spooner. This PSD has all the different screen resolutions and where the twitter section will be in relation.

Grab your websites header and place it in the top right corner. Then shut the visibility of the template group off.

Using this Hi-Res Spray Brush Set start to erase the right end of the header, the reason behind this is that we want to make the head fade of to the background colour seamlessly with a nice effect spray grunge effect, rather than a straight edge.

Using some of your own brushes really start to personalize the end result whilst blending from the header to the background. You can also use a white brush to spray some texture at the center of the header.

Next, get your logo and place it on the canvas, scale it to size, rotate it to make the design more free and fit with the fading edges.

Download a blank polaroid photo frame, scale it to size and rotate it the opposite way to the logo.

With the polaroid layer select go to Edit>Transform>Warp.

Warp the polaroids image at the bottom left up, this will create the effect that the edge is slightly curled.

Next to add more depth and realism add yourself a drop shadow with an angle of 35, opacity of 50% and a distance of 3px.

Now just turn the visibility of the PSD Template back on just to check that everything is aligned okay at the standard screen res.

Make your twitter page personal to you and grab a photo of yourself and rescale and rotate it in position, then give it the same Warp we did with the polaroid frame.

Add your name to the bottom space of the polaroid frame, the font I have used here is called Dear Joe.

Get yourself a Mug Stain Brush and place it over the polaroid photo, set the blending mode to Multiply.

Download Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set bring the icons that you want or you are part of and desaturate them (SHIFT+CMD+U), rotate and scale them to your preference.

Next, take the desaturated social icons and nudge them into position behind the polaroid photo.

Using the same spray brush set as earlier bump the resolution up and set the colour to black, then spray some where over the header

Next, change the opacity of this layer down to 25%, this will add more of a textured feeling to the header.

Now find yourself some nice doodle brushes and place some around the design, then drop the opacity down to 35% so they aren’t too intrusive to the design – yet making it more ‘personal’.

That’s pretty much the design side of it done, you want to keep your websites theme, make it more personal however you don’t want to clutter it as it’s only the top left corner you have to work with. Now crop the design to the smallest area possible and save for web and devices (OPT+CMD+SHIFT+S) – save it as a JPEG and tweak the file size so you get high quality with the smallest file size.

Login to your Twitter account and navigate to your settings page, click the tab that says design. Change the background image by uploading your new design remember not tile the background.

Next, change the colour scheme of the design so that it matches the overall colours used in the design. Use the eye dropper tool in Photoshop to get the hex colour and simply apply it to the desired section.

Final Image

With the design complete head over to your profile and check out your new design! If you enjoyed this don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

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Social media is coming to Warner Bros. Television Group’s online properties, thanks to a smallish AOL property called Socialthing.

A feed of members’ activity across Warner Bros. entertainment sites–TheWB.com, KidsWB.com, DC Hero Zone, MomLogic, Essence, and TheCW.com–will be displayed on their Socialthing profiles. So, if you watch a “Gossip Girl” video on TheCW.com or play a game on DC Hero Zone, it’ll show up in your feed, and you can keep tabs on what your friends are doing as well (and share bits of content with them). There will also be fictional Socialthing profiles for characters like the “Gossip Girl” cast as part of a broader promotional effort.

As some others have pointed out, it’s nice to see AOL finally showing some synergy with parent company Time Warner. You know, before it gets spun off and all.

AOL purchased Socialthing, a would-be competitor to FriendFeed, last summer and integrated it into the “People Networks” division anchored by the company’s earlier acquisition of Bebo. Last month, AOL relaunched Socialthing as “a revolutionary new platform that brings social-networking services to Web sites and enables publishers to attract new users and keep them engaged wherever they are on the Web” and announced that it would be working the service into its MediaGlow content network.

From what it sounds like, it won’t be all that different to what Viacom has been doing with its own “social platform” technology, Flux. Right now, members can log in with AOL and AIM accounts, but it’ll soon be expanded to include Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, and OpenID credentials with the help of the various data portability tools out there.

Disclosure: The CW television network is a joint venture between Warner Bros. and CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.

Facebook is a leading social networking site with over 120 million members. There are now many Facebook applications that allow it be used productively in education and business. The success of many of these facebook applications is a testimony to the effectiveness of Facebook as a great platform to distribute networking services and connect with friends and colleagues. There are thousands of Facebook apps out there, however there are ones you can use to launch your Facebook profile.

Here are more than 35 of the best facebook applications that could be useful and make your profile efficient and appealing as possible. Please Don’t forget to share with us your favorite facebook application and tell us your thoughts about the ones listed below.

I just started to pay some attention to my Facebook Profile, feel free to add me so i can actually know what do you guys have in mind.

Socializing Facebook Apps.

1. NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs is a community of bloggers and blog lovers to help you promote your blog on Facebook and to discover new blogs. Helps you to connect with others who read and write about subjects you like.

2. Music (iLike)

iLike is the fastest growing social music discovery site on the Web, and the most popular music service on Facebook. Add a music tab to your profile. Get personalized concert alerts. Create and share playlists. Discover and share new music and free MP3s.

3. LivingSocial

LivingSocial.com is a social discovery and cataloging network that allows people to review and share their favorite movies, books, games, music and restaurants As the most comprehensive interest-based online community, LivingSocial is now helping more than 7.5 million users catalogue their interests, seamlessly integrating with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5, and Orkut.

4. Slide FunSpace

Want to find and easily share all those funny and hot videos, pics and much more. Slide allows people to better express themselves by providing the most popular personalization tools for social networks.

5. Super Wall

Super Wall is the best way to find and share entertaining videos, pictures, graffiti, and more with your friends.

Photo Editing Facebook Apps.

6. Sketch Me

This app creates an artistic pencil sketch based on your profile photoThis app creates an artistic pencil sketch based on your profile photo.

7. Picnik

Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.

8. Top Friends

With top friends you can completely CUSTOMIZE your Top Friends Profile! Choose your skin, add music, animations and more! Give and receive exclusive awards, show off your mood and keep tabs on only the people you really care about with Top Friends News.

9. Picasa

Upload photos to Facebook directly from Picasa where you simply add a simple button to Picasa that lets you upload your photos straight to Facebook. You can put photos in an existing album or create a new one.

Just for fun Facebook apps.

10. Bumper Sticker

Facebook users use Bumper Sticker to express themselves, entertain, and inspire one another by creating, collecting, and sharing stickers. Browse through millions of stickers and add them to your profile or even stick your friends. You can even make your own.

11. YoVille

YoVille is a world where you can buy new clothes for your player, purchase items for your apartment, go to work, and meet new friends.

12. SuperPoke!

Do stuff to your friends and see what they do back. Hug, slap, poke, even throw sheep. Choose from hundreds of actions!

13. Geo Challenge

Geo Challenge takes you on a tour around the world as you put your geography knowledge to the test. You and your friends can prove once and for all who knows the most countries, flags and cities of the world.

Tests & IQ Facebook apps.

14. The True Age Test

This test determines the true age of your body based on your habits and lifestyle.

15. IQ test

Find out what you IQ is.. NOTE: Questions aren’t as easy as it seems..READ CAREFULLY!!

16. Earth I.Q.

To celebrate Earth Day take this awesome trivia and test your knowledge about the planet that you live on!

17. Who Has The Biggest Brain?

Think you are smart? Play this highly addictive brain training game to prove it! Ever wondered Who Has The Biggest Brain amongst your friends?

18. Word Challenge

Word Challenge is the addictive word game featuring vivid animations, 40,000+ words, 20 vocabulary types, a bonus game mode and weekly, monthly and all-time top scores.

Utilities Facebook apps.

19. TouchGraph Photos

TouchGraph lets you see how your friends are connected, and who has the most photos together.

20. Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace lets you sell, give away, buy, ask, or search for anything you want. You can also support charities by selling for a cause. Marketplace makes it easy to see what your friends have posted and what is available in your area.

21. Polls

Tap the pulse of your fans with custom polls for your Facebook Pages! Polls are easy to create and even easier to analyze, with beautiful graphs showing user responses across demographics.

Documents & Sharing Facebook Apps.

22. Zoho Online Office

Have all your office files – documents, spreadsheets, presentations – online for free. Access them from inside Facebook (also from anywhere). Share/collaborate easily and instantly with your network of friends. No more storing of your office files in your computer & emailing them to your friends to-and-fro.

23. Scrapblog

Easily create beautiful multimedia slideshows from your Facebook photos and post them to your profile with drag-and-drop ease!

24. Files

Access your files from anywhere and share important work files, photos, and music with your friends using the Facebook Files application, powered by Box.net. Facebook Files is like a virtual thumbdrive that is always within reach and impossible to lose!

25. weRead (Books iRead)

Access your files from anywhere and share important work files, photos, and music with your friends using the Facebook Files application, powered by Box.net. Facebook Files is like a virtual thumbdrive that is always within reach and impossible to lose!

26. my Lists

Create any kind of list (to-do lists, movies you saw in college, books you want to buy, grocery lists, invitee lists and so on.

27. DivShare

Send your documents, photos, music and videos to your friends with DivShare — it’s fast and free. You can send your files to individual friends, post them to your profile or add them to your news feed. You can also attach videos, MP3s, images and any other file to your friends’ walls with DivShare! Just add the app and click the “Attachment” button on any wall.

Miscellaneous Facebook apps.

28. Social Me

Find out what your friends like about you? Do they think you are honest? Crazy?, or have pretty eyes? Or a sexy smile?

29. Mobile

With Facebook Mobile, you can use Facebook on the go. Use Facebook Mobile to upload photos and notes from your camera phone straight to Facebook. You can also receive and reply to Facebook messages, pokes and Wall posts using text messages, or use your phone’s mobile browser at m.facebook.com.

30. My Flickr

Flickr photos meet Facebook with the My Flickr app. With My Flickr, you’ll be able to display your Flickr Photos and Photosets to your Facebook friends for them to comment on with or without making them leave Facebook!

31. Calendar

30 Boxes is the critically acclaimed personal calendar that lets you get organized and easily share all or parts of your schedule. Includes easy sms reminders, integrated to do list, and simple integration with facebook, myspace, flickr, wordpress, blogs, etc.

32. Feedheads

Feedheads is an app that helps you discover and share the news, directly from your feed reader. Every share is counted by the system in order to continuously surface interesting posts and feeds from around the web.

33. Last.fm Music

Sort all your friends by musical taste and turn your ‘favorite music’ into a playlist of full-length tracks. You can compare your music with friends, listen to their playlists, and put a grid of artist and album images on your profile.

34. Twitter

Automatically update your Facebook status from Twitter.

35. MyOffice

Having a tough time getting your team on the same page? MyOffice lets you quickly and easily collaborate with your colleagues, partners, or clients on one or multiple projects.