Social Network

I just finished reading an interesting post over at Howtosplitanatom.com about brand slogans. The article talks about the classics like: “Always Coca-Cola” , “Just Do It” and “Think Different”. After reading the post I started thinking about the slogans of some of the social networks out there and what they really said.

The article makes a point to mention that some slogans appear to be after thoughts created with no real perspective. Having worked in marketing I find this hard to believe. Marketing people spend hours looking over the finest details.

With my new mission I decided to look at the slogans of some of the popular social networks and see what they said about their product. Certainly this is all up to interpretation, but it never hurts to look back at a product to figure.

MySpace: “a place for friends”

MySpace is the giant of social networking. In retrospect it is ironic that the MySpace logo is “a place for friends” since one of the major complaints is that a large portion of the profiles are fake. The slogan however embodies what MySpace was trying to accomplish, a place for friends to meet and stay in touch.

hi5: “Who’s in?”

Hi5 has the most inviting slogan of all the social networks. I think this makes sense since hi5 has created itself a truly international community feel. Their network slogan gives a sense of, “come see if you don’t like it we won’t be offended.”

bebo: “EXPLORE”

Bebo’s slogan makes the most sense out of all of the social networks. Bebo focuses on providing content rich experience that allows users to explore and discover new media. By connecting with people on bebo you can find explore their world of entertainment.

Facebook: “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”

While Facebook’s slogan isn’t very catchy it says quite a bit about the social platform. Facebook has taken a very utilitarian stance on providing a social network. They have created a framework and are expecting you to do most of the work. I do not use Facebook to meet new people, but instead use it to maintain connections.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on these slogans. I find it interesting how a slogan can me something different to different people. Let me know what your thoughts are on these slogans and maybe you could suggest some better ones.

Facebook’s surprise announcement that they will encourage adoption of their Platform standard by other social networks has of course been interpreted as a challenge to OpenSocial. Just as Google announced their free and open standard from a position of weakness, Facebook have plainly decided to share their Platform from a position of potential weakness – the fear that a standard shared by every other network would be irresistible to developers and users.

At first glance, we imagine a world filled with Platform clones would signify victory for Facebook. But compare that scenario to a world where OpenSocial has been adopted by all social networks including Facebook. Pride aside, how is Facebook’s competitiveness enhanced by the ubiquity of their platform over the ubiquity of Google’s standard across all networks? Either way, all social networks would share the same mechanism for hosting third-party applications. The only difference is who invented it. But who cares?

Recall the unnecessary debate between Blu-ray and HD DVD. Two separate camps flexed their muscles claiming that theirs was the superior of two largely indistinguishable standards. It’s a fight to the death – that kills consumers in the cross-fire as much as it is likely to kill the competition.

Surely Facebook isn’t stupid enough to start the same type of war?

Facebook is not offering an indistinguishable standard to OpenSocial. Facebook believes correctly that Platform offers a far more robust – and moreover existent - standard than Google’s rush-job. At least for social networks on Facebook or Bebo’s scale, the server-based might of Platform is the correct answer. In the long tail of smaller “Web 2.0″ communities, perhaps Javascript widgets will find their place.

Google’s alternative to Facebook’s innovative Platform was announced without so much as a hat-tip to Facebook’s ingenuity. And worse, it was drafted in ignorance of the Platform’s tried and tested design.

Sure, Facebook might prefer if no other social networks get around to incorporating third-party apps. Its next best offer would be for each competitor to build its own inferior mechanism – although even Facebook would be tempted by the thought that a unified standard could enhance the whole social networking sector. Anyway, Google has already blown the whistle on separate standards, and large enough groups of rivals are likely to stick together that Facebook should be scared to stand alone.

What Facebook seems to have announced today is what Google should have tried to negotiate in the first place, instead of hiding from Facebook while cooking up OpenSocial. Except Facebook would have been unlikely to throw their jewels to the opposition without the threat of OpenSocial. At the end of all this, if the only thing that the OpenSocial announcement has done is draw Facebook into sharing their platform for the benefit of the entire social networking sector, perhaps the consumer is the winner after all.

[Dan Lester is a cross-platform specialist, on Wednesdays anyway.]

As useful as importing your Orkut profile into Facebook, the MyOrkut application enables you to do the same thing but for Orkut. Developed in India by Jeetu Mirchandani, this application does exactly what it claims to do. It is extremely simple and displays only your profile and your Orkut “scraps.” There are already over 2,700 active daily users and over 10,000 installs.

When Jeetu’s Google AdWords account gets cancelled, I won’t be surprised. He is currently placing ads within this application. I’d imagine that Google wants to be the only one making money from their social networking site. While the application is limited in its feature set, it gets the job done. If you are an avid Orkut user, go grab the MyOrkut application.

Orkut Application Screenshot

Orkut Application Profile View

Yesterday I covered the TouchGraph application which provides another way to visualize your Facebook friends’ relationships. In contrast to TouchGraph which provides a method of directly interacting and controlling the visualization, Friend Wheel (created by Thomas Fletcher and Tim Halbert) creates a static wheel that displays the relationships of your friends. I have a feeling that we will see more of these visualizations in the future. This one is fairly simple but creates a great looking wheel that is displayed on your profile. While this application will add to the clutter on your page, it is fun to try it out and see what your Friend Wheel looks like. If you want a cool way to visualize the interconnectedness of your friends, go grab the Friend Wheel application.

This has to be the coolest application that I have seen yet. The TouchGraph application allows you to visualize your friends that are connected to at least one other person in your network besides yourself. Ultimately this ends up displaying your closest friends through an amazing interface. Zoom in and view the pictures of your friends, drag networks and people around, and see which friends are the most connected to your other friends. This is hands down one of the sweetest applications I have seen yet. You can also visualize which of your friends overlap your various networks. If you are part of a lot of networks (and connected to those networks on Facebook) this application will surely keep you entertained for a while. So if you want to visualize your Facebook relationships, go grab the TouchGraph application. A demo video is posted below.

According to VentureBeat, Friendster experienced a 40 percent page view boost in May resulting in a whopping 9 billion page views. This is pretty impressive given the massive competition created by Facebook. This provides a little bit of support to any argument suggesting that Facebook will not be the sole social graph of the future. Do all social networks need to open their platform to become competitive in the current environment? Maybe not. Personally I think so but given the growth of last month it may not be necessary. I will be interested in seeing what takes place in coming months. According to the VentureBeat article, Friendster is still not profitable. That is pretty pathetic given the amount of time that they have been around. I guess in the world of social networking it is a first mover disadvantage. Below are the traffic statistics for the top social-networks on the web:

While Friendster has had some incredible growth check out Facebook’s growth. Between April and May Facebook grew over 20 percent. I have a feeling this past month was significantly higher. It will be interesting to see once the June statistics come out. One thing is for sure, social networking is still experiencing rapid growth years after it begun.

Two days ago I was talking with my co-worker about how someone needs to develop an application that tracks the demographics of your friends. Then yesterday Joshua Fraser of Clemson University launched Platypus. Platypus is a simple application that you install and it automatically runs through your friends to get their demographics. It breaks down the gender and relationship status of your friends. It would be cool if there were additional features such as geographic location, etc. This is definitely a great start though. What is most impressive is how quickly ideas come to fruition on the Facebook development platform. There are tons of developers that are openly sharing their code and solutions to problems that they are facing. Just today, the first New York Facebook developers meetup took place and people shared their applications and problems that they were having. This is truly a revolution taking place before our eyes. Regardless of all the revolutionary stuff, take a look at Joshua’s Platypus application and graph your friends’ demographics.

A lot of people are using the unofficial delicious app, but guess what? The official Delicious app for facebook just went live! Now we can all share our Del.icio.us links automatically. A brilliant move by the Del.icio.us team. Thanks guys!

Which one do you want? Here’s some comparisons:

• The official app updates approximately the same amount as the unofficial app which is every 15 mins or so.
• The official app lets you show the Del.icio.us tags you chose for each link in a wide style app or have a more simplistic, narrow style app. The unofficial app only comes in the narrow style without tags.

So if you have a del.icio.us account go grab the new application now!