Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web — Today's the day that Facebook makes their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced last May. The NY Times has a story giving a broad overview of Connect …
Power.com, the latest company that wants to bring you Nirvana by letting you update all your social network profiles from a single place, launches this evening.
However, it needs a bit of work before it’s truly convincing. It has some bugs, and has the air of being rushed.
But it’s goal is noble. For a while now, the problem of having multiple profiles has plagued users. You may use Facebook regularly, but you may also have a MySpace account where you interact with certain friends, and you may use Gtalk to IM with still others. What do you do when you say, want to send a message out to friends across the networks? Well, you resort to a lot of cut and pasting. A pain.
More than a handful of companies have tried to bring a “aggregation” solution to this problem, but almost all have been unable to break through to mass adoption. There’s Friendfeed, that lets you share what you’re doing on various web sites, within a single interface. It’s popular among Silicon Valley’s technology community, but has yet to really break out to a wider user base. There’s a host of others, including Socialthing, recently bought by AOL; Plaxo, bought by Comcast; Spokeo, Profilelinker, and so on. A number of other companies, such as Orgoo, want to let you message pretty much any way you want, such as with IM, email, SMS or video chat. But even these haven’t done too well, in part because Google and others are starting to let you do pretty much the same thing from one place.
However, Power.com, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, says it brings something new to the table by being able to synchronize your profiles and messages much more easily — by not forcing you to use a third site. You can use Power.com at any of the existing networks you use. And it does so in bi-directional way. If you update your profile in one place, say on Facebook, it updates your profile elsewhere, for example on Hi5, and vice versa. While Friendfeed is a repository of what you do at other sites, Power.com lets you update your profile from its own site or at any other site. Same with messages: You can message anywhere from anywhere, and in any format. Or at least that’s the vision.
To begin with, Power.com’s actual launch offering is more limited. In the U.S. it lets you synchronize with Myspace, Facebook, Google, MSN, and Hi5. It will soon launch syncing with other services, including LinkedIn and Twitter. It will also soon let you sign in with your mobile phone number.
However, here’s the caveat: To begin using its service, it forces you to sign into all of your networks from a single page at Power.com. Screenshot of the login page is below. In this way, it is like the IM aggregator Meebo. Meebo lets you sign into all the IM services you want to use, and lets you do so from a single Web page.
Power.com has been surprisingly secretive to date. It has worked in stealth for two years, and says 5 million people have registered to use it. Some 500,000 visitors come each day, with 300,000 of them coming to Power.com directly to use as their start page. That’s serious usage for a company that hasn’t officially launched. It has remained quiet by focusing mainly on Orkut users, the bulk of whom reside in Brazil and India. The viral growth has come from promotions the company uses, for example it provides a link to Power.com each time a user messages a friend using the service.
The company has a whopping 70 employees, and has eaten through about $8 million in funding over the last year, $6 million of which came from Silicon Valley’s venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Founder Steve Vachani, who previously was chief executive of direct marketing company Qool Media, gave me a demo of the service this morning.
The company does have an air of rush to it. Only last week did it expand from its Orkut base to let users sync with their Facebook, MySpace and MSN accounts. That may be because the downturn is forcing it to move with more urgency. Vachani said the company is looking to raise its second round of venture capital, and that the public launch is designed to prove its viability. But there are other bugs that show its not ready for primetime. For example, in its “upcoming birthdays” feature, none of the people or the birthdays are actually accurate (see left). Vachani tells me this is a bug that is being fixed.
The company has me torn in two. There’s part of me that says it’s tried diligently to think through every instance of how you’d update a profile or message from within a profile and makes it extremely easily to synchronize it all — with all the right cues and options. For instance, you’ll be able to update an application on Facebook, and Power will update that application on via the OpenSocial protocol so that the changes are reflected on apps on your other networks.
There’s no doubt it is on to something. The company says it is the first to introduce “social internetworking,” which it defines as “your social network, email, instant messenger, and mobile phone accounts, content and contacts always synchronized, interoperable and connected together.”
However, there’s another side of me that is skeptical, that thinks it is overkill and has so many features that its way too confusing for regular users to adapt to it quickly. In this way, it reminds me of Blue Lithium’s effort last year to launch a social network called MingleNow — that effort took months as the MingleNow engineers thought through every possible scenario you could use a network, and it ended up going out of business because it simply did too much.
Still, it’s true that no one else has succeeded in making social internetworking super simple. Here are the competing efforts to Power.com:
1) The big social networks are walled gardens, but they’re trying to open, with things like Facebook Connect, Google Connect and Microsoft Passport — letting you sign on to other services with your existing login info. However, these services all keep the major networks at the center, and people to log into those central networks to do anything.
2) Shared gates between gardens: OpenSocial, OpenID. Downside: Microsoft and Facebook never joined OpenSocial. To agree to the common standards in OpenSocial, applications have to agree to lowest denominator functionality, which limits their use.
3) Third parties that build on top of the gardens: Trillium and Meebo for IM, Web 2.0 Mashups. However, these services are based on APIs, and they are one-directional. Other services, such as Friendfeed and Plaxo are able to access their data only via APIs and feeds.
Separately, Power.com lets you mix up all your data into a new experience. It uses a programming language called Powerscript. For now, its controlling that mashup experience, offering specific modules at its home page. Later, however, it will release an API for developers to build on it. It isn’t saying too much about that for now. But for now, it says it isn’t transgressing the terms of service of Facebook or others, because it doesn’t copy or move any content out of Facebook: “We are passing through their site and content dynamically. We have seen Digsby doing some of these things for a while,” says Vachani. He says Google has been aware of Power.com’s use of Orkut data for a year and hasn’t complained.
One cool feature is that it lets you browse your friends from a central place, wherever they may reside, and lets you add them to your IM client contact list without you having to cut and paste anything or even be conscious what IM service you’re using. Power.com takes care of the protocol connection quietly on the back end.
Its browser functionality keeps you at a Power.com URL even while you surf your favorite default site — the only difference is that gives you a way to peer across the other networks by letting message or communicate with people who have profiles on other pages.
My advice to try it out and see what you think. It could be quite powerful for some users willing to experiment with it. For some users, it could be simpler than using Friendfeed.
In summary, here are the main features it offers right now:
–Enjoy all your friends from your Facebook, Myspace, Google, MSN, and other sites, brought together in Power.com
–Read and respond to your messages from all your sites in one place at Power.com
–Enter and browse all your social network, email, and IM accounts simultaneously with one login at –Power.com
–Use MSN Messenger inside your Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, and Orkut at Power.com (Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk, and AOL Buddy coming soon)
–Send messages, photos, and videos to multiple friends simultaneously on all your sites, email, and IM from Power.com
–Access Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, or Myspace from blocked computers at work or school through Power.com
–Interact with with users from all social networks around the world in Power.com Chat rooms
Use Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook Mail, and work email together in one place at Power.com (coming soon)
–Synchronize and manage all your photos, music, applications, blogs, and videos on all sites at Power.com (coming soon)
–Add LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, Blogger, and Skype to your Power.com start page (coming soon)
Power.com, the latest company that wants to bring you social networking Nirvana by letting you update all your profiles from a single place, launches this evening.
However, it needs a bit of work before it’s truly convincing. It has some bugs, and has the air of being rushed.
But it’s goal is noble. For a while now, the problem of having multiple profiles has plagued users. You may use Facebook regularly, but you may also have a MySpace account where you interact with certain friends, and you may use Gtalk to IM with still others. What do you do when you say, want to send a message out to friends across the networks? Well, you resort to a lot of cut and pasting. A pain.
More than a handful of companies have tried to bring a “aggregation” solution to this problem, but almost all have been unable to break through to mass adoption. There’s FriendFeed, that lets you share what you’re doing on various web sites, within a single interface. It’s popular among Silicon Valley’s technology community, but has yet to really break out to a wider user base. There’s a host of others, including Socialthing, recently bought by AOL; Plaxo, bought by Comcast; Strands, Spokeo, Profilelinker, and so on. A number of other companies, such as Orgoo, want to let you message pretty much any way you want, such as with IM, email, SMS or video chat. But even these haven’t done too well, in part because Google and others are starting to let you do pretty much the same thing from one place.
However, Power.com, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, says it brings something new to the table by being able to synchronize your profiles and messages much more easily — by not forcing you to use a third site. You can use Power.com to update any of the existing networks you use — and it does so in bi-directional way. If you update your profile in one place, say on Facebook, it updates your profile elsewhere, for example on Hi5, and vice versa. While FriendFeed is a repository of what you do at other sites, Power.com lets you update your profile from its own site or at any other site. Same with messages: You can message anywhere from anywhere, and in any format. Or at least that’s the vision.
To begin with, Power.com’s actual launch offering is more limited. In the U.S. it lets you synchronize with MySpace, Facebook, Google, MSN, and Hi5. It will soon launch syncing with other services, including LinkedIn and Twitter. It will also soon let you sign in with your mobile phone number.
However, here’s the caveat: To begin using its service, it forces you to sign into all of your networks from a single page at Power.com. (Screenshot of the login page is below.) In this way, it is like the IM aggregator Meebo. Meebo lets you sign into all the IM services you want to use, and lets you do so from a single Web page.
Power.com has been surprisingly secretive to date. It has worked in stealth for two years, and says 5 million people have registered to use it. Some 500,000 visitors come each day, with 300,000 of them coming to Power.com directly to use as their start page. That’s serious usage for a company that hasn’t officially launched. It has remained quiet by focusing mainly on Orkut (Google’s social network) users, the bulk of whom reside in Brazil and India. The viral growth has come from promotions the company uses, for example it provides a link to Power.com each time a user messages a friend using the service.
The company has a whopping 70 employees, and has eaten through about $8 million in funding over the last year, $6 million of which came from Silicon Valley’s venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Founder Steve Vachani, who previously was chief executive of direct marketing company Qool Media, gave me a demo of the service this morning.
The company does have an air of rush to it. Only last week did it expand from its Orkut base to let users sync with their Facebook, MySpace and MSN accounts. That may be because the downturn is forcing it to move with more urgency. Vachani said the company is looking to raise its second round of venture capital, and that the public launch is designed to prove its viability. But there are other bugs that show its not ready for primetime. For example, in its “Upcoming Birthdays” feature, none of the people or the birthdays are actually accurate (see left). Vachani tells me this is a bug that is being fixed.
The company has me torn in two. There’s part of me that says it’s tried diligently to think through every instance of how you’d update a profile or message from within a profile and makes it extremely easily to synchronize it all — with all the right cues and options. For instance, you’ll be able to update an application on MySpace, and Power will update that application via the OpenSocial protocol so that the changes are reflected on apps on your other networks.
There’s no doubt it is on to something. The company says it is the first to introduce “social internetworking,” which it defines as “your social network, email, instant messenger, and mobile phone accounts, content and contacts always synchronized, interoperable and connected together.”
However, there’s another side of me that is skeptical, that thinks it is overkill and has so many features that it’s way too confusing for regular users to adapt to it quickly. In this way, it reminds me of Blue Lithium’s effort last year to launch a social network called MingleNow — that effort took months as the MingleNow engineers thought through every possible scenario you could use a network, and it ended up going out of business because it simply did too much.
Still, it’s true that no one else has succeeded in making social internetworking super simple. Here are the competing efforts to Power.com:
1) The big social networks are walled gardens, but they’re trying to open, with things like Facebook Connect, Google Connect and Microsoft Passport — letting you sign on to other services with your existing login info. However, these services all keep the major networks at the center, and people must log into those central networks to do anything.
2) Shared gates between gardens: OpenSocial, OpenID. Downside: Microsoft and Facebook never joined OpenSocial. To agree to the common standards in OpenSocial, applications have to agree to lowest denominator functionality, which limits their use.
3) Third parties that build on top of the gardens: Trillium and Meebo for IM, Web 2.0 mashups. However, these services are based on APIs, and they are one-directional. Other services, such as FriendFeed and Plaxo are able to access their data only via APIs and feeds.
Separately, Power.com lets you mix up all your data into a new experience. It uses a programming language called Powerscript. For now, it’s controlling that mashup experience, offering specific modules at its home page. Later, however, it will release an API for developers to build on it. It isn’t saying too much about that for now. But, it says it isn’t transgressing the terms of service of Facebook or others, because it doesn’t copy or move any content out of Facebook: “We are passing through their site and content dynamically. We have seen Digsby doing some of these things for a while,” says Vachani. He says Google has been aware of Power.com’s use of Orkut data for a year and hasn’t complained.
One cool feature is that it lets you browse your friends from a central place, wherever they may reside, and lets you add them to your IM client contact list without you having to cut and paste anything or even be conscious what IM service you’re using. Power.com takes care of the protocol connection quietly on the back end.
Its browser functionality keeps you at a Power.com URL even while you surf your favorite default site — the only difference is that gives you a way to peer across the other networks by letting message or communicate with people who have profiles on other pages.
My advice to try it out and see what you think. It could be quite powerful for some users willing to experiment with it. For some users, it could be simpler than using FriendFeed.
In summary, here are the main features it offers right now:
–Enjoy all your friends from your Facebook, Myspace, Google, MSN, and other sites, brought together on Power.com
–Read and respond to your messages from all your sites in one place at Power.com
–Enter and browse all your social network, email, and IM accounts simultaneously with one login at Power.com
–Use MSN Messenger inside your Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, and Orkut at Power.com (Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk, and AOL Instant Messenger coming soon)
–Send messages, photos, and videos to multiple friends simultaneously on all your sites, email, and IM from Power.com
–Access Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, or Myspace from blocked computers at work or school through Power.com
–Interact with with users from all social networks around the world in Power.com chat rooms
–Use Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook Mail, and work email together in one place at Power.com (coming soon)
–Synchronize and manage all your photos, music, applications, blogs, and videos on all sites at Power.com (coming soon)
–Add LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, Blogger, and Skype to your Power.com start page (coming soon)
Power.com is an ambitious social utility that brings together all the networks you have on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, as well on instant-messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger.
If you have have a presence on more than one network, it's worth a look, though it has its own interface that awkwardly sits on top of your existing services when you use it.
The biggest draw of Power.com is that it really does bring everyone in your networks together for you. On the Power.com start page, you can see all your contacts from all your networks, and all their status updates, and then quickly jump to user profile pages on whatever network they're on, or drop users messages. What Meebo does for instant messaging, Power.com does for social networks as well.
Power.com gives you one dashboard for all your social-network activity.
Meebo for social networks
Like Meebo, Power.com lets you connect to users without bothering with which network they're from. From the Send Message window in Power.com, you can select any number of your friends, from any of your networks, and send the same message to all of them. You don't even need a new login for Power.com; you can use one from one of your existing social networks.
One feature I was unable to test is the utility of updating all your social-network profiles when you update just one. So if, for example, you change your profile picture or a photo album on Facebook, you can have it changed for you on MySpace and Hi5. Or if you add an OpenSocial-compliant app on one service, you can also have it show up on the others.
The service puts its own interface on top of social networks like Facebook when you use it as your control center.
I see the utility, but can't say that I enjoyed using the service. It works by placing a navigation bar on top of your social networks. The look and feel is different from your social networks, and I found switching between the Power.com interface and the native interface on my networks a little jarring. The options available in the bar change depending on which network you're using. And Power.com doesn't blend your contacts together; if a friend of yours is on Facebook as well as MySpace, the system doesn't offer any utility that leverages the fact they they are the same person.
If you're using Power.com to access pages inside your social network, you will also see Power.com features injected into your sites. For example, when viewing a Facebook profile, a tool to message multiple users at once (across all your networks) will show up underneath the usual entry box to post on another user's wall. If you go to Facebook directly, you don't get the new link.
The system will appear to embed new features inside existing social-network pages (Facebook shown).
When I used the service, I did find it cool to be able to see all my social-network friends in one place, on my Power.com dashboard, and to see my personal data feeds from all my networks aggregated into one.
I tried a version of Power.com that's become popular in Brazil and India over the past few months (Power.com is a Brazillian company). It has over 5 million users, Power.com execs told me. A new version of Power.com, targeted at U.S. users, is due to open up today. Support for services LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, AOL Instant Messenger and Skype should arrive shortly, the company says.
Features still to come include useful mobile phone support; the current mobile version is very limited. The company is pitching Power.com as not just an end-user tool but a platform for building sites that enable "social Internetworking," or the linking of profiles and networks.
Useful, but not pretty
I like what Power.com is about. Like the products that bridge instant messaging networks (Trillian, Meebo, Adium, Digsby, Pidgin, etc.), Power.com performs the very useful service of bridging social networks. However, I did find Power.com's approach to bridge-building intrusive and confusing. I find managing my social networks baffling enough. Power.com gave me more capabilities, but it did not make things easier.
See also: Friendfeed.
Facebook Connect--the service launched last spring that lets members log onto other Web sites using their Facebook profile--appears to be entering a new phase.
The New York Times, in a big-picture story Sunday about the social network's plans to extend its reach across the Web, notes that the Facebook Connect service is gearing up for expansion:
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni, and the online video hub Hulu.
And TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimed in with a related post about Facebook Connect and other such services, noting that Facebook had slated Sunday as the start of "a big press push" for Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect was launched in May as a way for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites, much like services offered by rivals MySpace and Google. Members can use their Facebook identities across the Web, including profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook handles the authentication process and the company has stressed that user security will be a priority.
Some of the other announced Facebook Connect partners include: Movable Type, Amiando, CBS.com, CNET (that's us, of course) CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo, and Xobni.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 |
Check out some of the latest makeuseof discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For even more app reviews subscribe to makeuseof directory. Want to submit your application to MakeUseOf directory ? See how here. |
(1) CrappyGraphs -Quick graph sketching tool that provides you with an easy way to draw graphs online and then share them with others. You can either create simple line graphs or 2/3 circle Venn diagrams. Read more: CrappyGraphs - Draw Quick Graphs Online.
(2) Doitdoitdone - Dead simple to-do list app. In just two clicks you can start creating your to-do list for the day. A URL is created for your to-do list and you could bookmark it and then keep modifying your to-do list as and when possible. Read more: Doitdoitdone - A Quick And Easy To-do List.
(3) GigFreaks - Enter your favorite artist or band and get a list of upcoming live concerts you might like. Read more: GigFreaks - Find Live Concerts in Your Area.
(4) GoingToRain - Tells you if it is going to rain or not. You do not have to type in your whereabouts or do anything else, just go to the website and it will auto-detect your location and tell you if is going to rain today. Read more: GoingToRain - Tells You If It Is Going To Rain Today.
(5) imfdb - This handy user-maintained wiki site gives you a comprehensive info on what guns were used in pretty much any action movie. Read more: imfdb - Check What Guns Were Used In Any Movie.
(6) Newsified - Get a birds-eye view of popular social news sites and see featured items from all sites on one page. Read more: Newsified - Popular Social News Organized On One Page.
(7) NotifyMeWhenItsUp - Monitor any temporarily down page and get an email alert when it goes back online. Read more: NotifyMeWhenItsUp - Get Notified When Error Pages are Back Up.
(8) PicClick - If you are an eBay or Amazon user then you would certainly love this tool. PicClick provides a better way to search through the thousands of eBay and Amazon items. Read more: PicClick - Visual Search Engine For eBay And Amazon.
(9) Textme2Day - Send sms to mobile right from your computer. There is no sign up or registration needed. Read more: TextMe2Day - Send Free SMS To Any Mobile From Computer.
(10) WebInMail - Access your favorite websites via email. Send an email to browse@webinmail.com with the name of the website in subject line (e.g. www.makeuseof.com ) and shortly after get the webpage as an email. Read more: WebInMail - Access Blocked Websites via Email.
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last 3-4 days. If you want us to send you daily round-up of all cool websites we come across leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.
(By) Aibek, the guy behind MakeUseOf.com.
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Brad Stone / New York Times:
Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web — PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After numerous online retailers predicted dismal sales on Black Friday, it looks like their nervousness may have been a bit premature.
Both eBay and Amazon saw consumer turnout higher than expected, most of which was searching for electronics of course. Reuters is reporting that the most searched for product on eBay was the Nintendo Wii, which 3,171 were sold on the site.
How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on bow you do the counting.
(Credit: 148Apps)Apple watchers this weekend have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:
In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we’ve put up a special page. More on this after the weekend.
(We’ll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that “10,000 apps!” special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)
MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached “in the next few days”:
While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today’s count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released).
The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737), and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at $3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at $899.99.