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Louis Gray Tops Robert Scoble in Web Presence

Posted on September 24, 2008 by jessestay

As many are aware, it’s hard to avoid personalities like Louis Gray and Robert Scoble on the internet these days. Chances are that if you belong to a social network, and have friended them, they have interacted with your updates on the particular networks you belong to in one way or another. Louis and Robert seem to have a particular “omnipresence” to them, and both have an amazing knack for tracking the latest news and updates, and most importantly staying up with the actual people they follow. If you mention one of their names anywhere on the internet, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll know and respond in some fashion or another.

Louis Gray is relatively new to this however. Scoble has touted him as being “the next Scoble“, but in reality he has only become popular in just the last year or so. Scoble has been pretty popular for several years now, and a lot of his ability to be in so many networks at a time comes from experience. I’ve witnessed both of their abilities to multi-task and share and follow activities of others they follow first-hand, and it’s quite amazing to watch! Both are just as good at actually listening to most of the people they follow on each network they belong to.

A great example of this is in a panel at BlogWorld Expo last week, Stowe Boyd (aka StoBo) said something which Drew Olanoff re-tweeted. Scoble just so happened to be driving back home, but next thing we know, Robert was joining the conversation through FriendFeed and Twitter, all from the wheel of his car! We hope that Maryame was the one driving. Both of their abilities to know what is being said that is important at any given time is amazing.

In doing some research today though, it appears that Louis Gray may have surpassed Robert Scoble in the number of networks he belongs to. Doing some research on the recently announced usernamecheck.com, the username, “scobleizer” is on 26 of the listed networks. I am unaware of any other username that Robert Scoble uses around the internet, so we have to assume this is all for him. “louisgray”, the main username for Louis Gray, is on 18 networks. However, if we take the username, “louismg”, another username he uses (taken from his FriendFeed shares), we get 15 more networks he belongs to. Add to that the username, “asypta”, which Louis uses on stumbleupon and delicious, we get 5 more. That would, assuming these are all his usernames, make Louis Gray involved in a total of 38 networks. This is why Louis Gray has been so successful over the last year. I believe Louis Gray has just become “omnipresent”.

Any other names you can think of that rival Louis Gray or Robert Scoble in network involvement? I believe these two are tops in my book.

Going to BlogWorld Expo!

Posted on September 18, 2008 by jessestay

Picture 12.png I’ll be at BlogWorld Expo over the coming weekend starting tomorrow morning covering the event and hopefully sharing some of the highlights I think are innovative and interesting for you. Stay tuned here and I’ll share what I can. Some things I’m looking for: Microblogging, Lifestreaming, and the evolution of blogging and new trends towards blogging as a conduit instead of destination. I’ve also got another great post I’ve been brainstorming for LouisGray.com so keep a watch there as well.

I still don’t quite know what my schedule will be, but feel free to look me up while you’re there. You can always call me at (801) 853-8339.

Oh, and keep an eye out on http://i.TV – we’re set to go live in the app store any moment now after being set back just a bit by the iTunes 8 launch. It is our prediction that we’ll be number 1 in the App store in very short time with what we have to offer. I’ll also update you here when that happens.

A Little More Information Regarding Beacon…

Posted on September 18, 2008 by jessestay

After posting my article yesterday, the beacon controversy seems to have come back with a vengence, with articles by Mashable, TechCrunch, and even Valleywag (I’m actually not much of a Fantasy Football Enthusiast, but they can certainly call me one), to name a few. Today I received communication from Facebook clarifying where Facebook stands on the matter, and I thought I’d share so all are clear.

Let’s start with what Beacon is – I believe all, even I, have been unclear as to what it is, since only a few partners were brought on when it launched. Per an e-mail I received from Facebook, “We don’t charge developers, users or sites for Beacon or Connect use. Neither product is at all associated with advertising — no participating sites pay nor are they required to be advertisers.”

I mentioned that Facebook never took down their text about how to sign up for Beacon. Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook.com further clarified this by stating that Fandango and Kongregate and others were still using Beacon, even after people stopped blogging about it. ComputerWorld also has a great article mentioning that fact. Facebook has clarified this with the following statement:

“Since late 2007, Beacon has been available on dozens of participating sites after we made a series of improvements to ensure that users have control over what information is shared to their friends on Facebook. We are not accepting new developers into the program, and this is not using Facebook Connect.”

So just to be clear, Beacon, according to Facebook, is considered part of the developer Platform, not their advertising program. In addition to that, as of this moment, no new developers are being accepted into the program. Facebook has still neglected to remove the option to request to be part of Beacon on their advertisers page however, so I am still a little unclear as to their future intentions for this. In a further communication from them to me they did mention they have no further plans to expand at the time being. Facebook also mentioned they have about 30 developers as part of their original program started in 2007, and that they have “continued to make improvements in the UI since then.”

As I mentioned, I still welcome the new options Beacon seems to be giving users. I’m now empowered as a user to decide if I want Beacon to send things to my Mini Feed on Facebook or not. It will be interesting to see if Facebook continues the program, or if it gets phased out as Facebook Connect emerges.

Beacon Makes a Comeback, With More Choices and Options

Posted on September 17, 2008 by jessestay

UPDATE: A Facebook Representative has clarified this a little further by saying Facebook Beacon is actually a free product. Per their statement, “We don’t charge developers, users or sites for Beacon or Connect use. Neither product is at all associated with advertising — no participating sites pay nor are they required to be advertisers.” I have corrected the article below to reflect that.

In addition, as Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook.com states (and I alluded to below), Beacon never really went away. Fandango and others have used and have been using Beacon even though people stopped blogging about it. Per a statement by Facebook they are not accepting any new users into the program however. See my follow up to this post here.

A message appeared from a top poster on the Facebook Developer Forums today which seems to indicate that beacon may be making a comeback. Facebook Developer, Tom Kincaid, noticed an interesting message when signing up for CBS Sportsline on Tuesday. After signing up, a popup appeared, mentioning, “CBSSports.com is sending this to your Facebook profile: Tom joined Free Fantasy Football – CBSSports.com on CBSSports.com Fantasy”. It then gave him the option to close the popup, decline the message, or mention it wasn’t him.

Sure enough, trying this myself, I was able to see it myself. You can verify by signing up for CBS Sportsline, and then signing up for a Fantasy Football team. The message stays up for about 5-10 seconds, then it minimizes to the bottom of the window with a little “show” button to make it re-appear. Oddly enough, it appears there is a bug with the “show” button, because clicking on it made the popup disappear forever.

Looking at the source reveals this code, confirming this is indeed the comeback of Beacon:

http://www.facebook.com/beacon/beacon.js.php?source=10228841580

Going back to Facebook, it appears that Facebook is now giving you the option to post it to your mini feed or not. If you select “okay”, it gets posted straight to your mini-feed for your friends to see. So it seems Facebook this time may be doing it right, making the users choose before a message goes back to their mini feed.

I’ve mentioned previously that Facebook has never removed the information about beacon for advertisers. Even today you can go to “Advertising“, then “More business solutions” at the bottom of the page, and then you will be given the option to e-mail Facebook about signing up for the service. I mentioned before that it was unclear if they were actually fulfilling these requests, but it appears they may just be doing so. The beacon message even appears to have a fresh new design to it.

As it never really went anywhere, users can still go into their privacy settings and turn off beacon as they choose, but it defaults to on currently. With choice, maybe this isn’t so bad though.

Facebook has mentioned before that they are approaching revolutionary new methods of advertising to better monetize their network. I believe this may just be the start of doing so. This is powerful, and important technology, and puts Facebook up just one above their competitors in the battle to become the social networking platform for all.

We talk about the beacon controversy in “I’m on Facebook–Now What???“. Purchase a copy to learn more about its controversial history and more.

5 Features Developers Will Like in the New Facebook Design

Posted on September 16, 2008 by jessestay

I recently covered 5 general features most people may like in the new Facebook redesign being rolled out to all last week and this week. One of the biggest complaints of the new design is that it is bad for developers, reduces traffic to apps, and discourages users from using apps they have installed. While this is true for apps that haven’t adapted, there are still some very good features introduced by the new design, that, in my opinion, bring even more integration points to developers, and allow for more creativity to developers while still maintaining the user experience. I’d like to cover 5 of my favorites.

1. Your Application Now Gets an Entire Tab on the User’s profile

While profile boxes still remain, developers now have an additional option to create an entire tab devoted to your app on a user’s profile page. While you can’t advertise on this tab or monetize it in any way, the user profile page is the most traffic’d page on Facebook, and if you can grab a user’s attention by offering a little more information about your application and about the user themselves, other users are much more likely to engage and use the parts of your application you can monetize. More space to do this is a good thing, and the tab appearing on a user’s profile makes it appear as though your app is actually a part of their profile page. Consider this one giant advertisement for your application.

2. You can now allow users to share additional information about themselves via your application

Some of the most successful applications on Facebook are those that allow users to express themselves in certain ways. Applications that can allow a user to share more about themselves tend to be more engaging, and have a much more likely chance of a user sharing that application with their friends. Let’s face it – the days of an app spreading itself due to the new nature of the Facebook platform are long gone. Now, it is the developer’s responsibility to employ traditional marketing techniques to get the users to share these applications with their friends themselves.

The “info” tab is one way they can do this. Your application can give users an option to click on a simple button that allows them to add additional information to their “info” tab, provided by your application. Again, the profile is the most traffic’d place on Facebook, and this is an excellent way to get your app in front of a lot more people.

3. The new design is more organized, therefore giving your app more potential to be “one of few”

With the new design, most applications get organized into a “Boxes” tab on the user’s profile. This requires an additional click to learn about a user’s applications that they use. However, for applications that enable it, a user can optionally add any of those application boxes to their “wall” tab, putting it among just a few of their favorite applications for their friends to see and use.

If you can create an application that users will like, use, and want to share with their friends, the chances of your app appearing among those few are greater. I don’t have any numbers, but I really think there are only a few applications utilizing this feature right now, upping your chances even further of being one of those users like to feature on their “wall” tab. To me, this actually makes the potential for your app being successful even greater.

4. There are now 3 types of News/Mini Feed items your application can post

While your application can’t necessarily force news feed items to Facebook without the user’s explicate permission any more, you can utilize “feed forms” to allow the user to share one line posts to their mini feed, small summaries to their mini feed, or an entire story to their mini feed. If you can make your app useful enough to encourage the users to share the larger feeds (which were not available before), your app has a far greater chance of getting in the face of your users’ friends, encouraging even further virality. Not only that, but good marketing shows that when a user actually wants to share something, their friends are more likely to listen and participate. Giving your users choice is a very good thing, and will result in a much more devoted audience in the future.

5. With the new design, you can now deploy FBML, right in an iFrame

A new feature established in Facebook Connect enables any website to utilize the Facebook Javascript Client Library to allow a developer with an app set up to parse and load FBML on any page on the web. This means that you can now load FBML right in your iFrame’d pages.

Why use FBML? FBML will guarantee, as Facebook changes their look and feel, that you don’t have to change your look and feel with them. It all happens automatically. Before this, Facebook required all FBML to be loaded and parsed on their servers. Now you can load it directly on your own servers, which means greater flexibility with Javascript, more options when integrating with other platforms like OpenSocial, and less coding overall since Facebook takes care of the details for you. Best of all, you can implement this on any website, even outside of Facebook, and with Facebook Connect, you can even authenticate and retrieve data from Facebook for users, right on your own website! You can learn more about FBML via my book, FBML Essentials (shameless plug).

While I understand the frustration of developers with the new design, and especially the fact that applications aren’t quite as in-your-face as they used to and can’t do things as easily on behalf of users, overall I think this is a good thing for the overall Facebook experience. Now Facebook has provided more integration points for developers than ever before, while at the same time making the experience better for users, making users want to continue coming back to the network. Users coming back is always a good thing for your application on Facebook.

What are your favorite features, as a developer, within the new design?

i.TV Announces TV & Movies App for the iPhone

Posted on September 10, 2008 by jessestay

Today my new employer, i.TV, an up-and-coming startup with headquarters in Palo Alto, announced our first release of the “TV & Movies” App for the iPhone. The TV & Movies App we feel will change the way you watch TV and Movies. We intend to revolutionize entertainment so that you see what you want to see on TV and in the Movies, and that starts with your iPhone.

When you open up the TV & Movies App for the iPhone it starts by asking you your location, and, based on GPS coordinates, it finds your location, and recommends your local TV providers in the area (I’m using Louis Gray’s screenshots for this – he did such a great job on them!). It then downloads listings from your area, right to your iPhone, along with Movie Theater listings around your area.

From the TV listings, you can click through, choose your favorites, rate each TV show, view actors and upcoming episodes, choose star ratings for each, along with post reviews about each show and see what others have shared. You can rate reviews even and share how helpful they were to you.

Beyond just TV listings, we let you look up what movies are playing in your area. We’ll display the theaters closest to you and let you choose from the list and see all movies showing from those theaters at given times. From each movie listing you can do the same things you can do from TV shows – write reviews, rate your favorite movies, and more!

Within each movie or TV show you have the capability to also view pictures from the show, from movies you can watch the preview for the movie right on your iPhone (something that will keep you surfing for quite awhile!). You can also recommend movies and TV shows to your friends via e-mail.

There is an entire section devoted to search. So, for instance, I can type in “football” and see everything playing related to football at a given time. Or I can type in “computers”, or “fishing”, or you name it and find out what’s playing related to that term at the given time. You can also add any show or movie to your favorites (when you give it a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, it also adds it to your “My Media” page.

What attracted me to this company is what is coming soon after our launch though. Above each listing is a button that says, “watch”. In the near future you’ll soon be able to save to a Tivo, stream your favorite episodes, and more, all right on your iPhone!

I have been hired onto i.TV as their Chief Community Officer – my responsibilities include Social Product Strategies for the company, and I’m currently working on a social application that I think will blow your socks off if you’re a TV or Movie junkie like myself. Stay tuned to our blog for much more news to come – this is only the beginning of Media, My Way.

We are simply awaiting iTunes to post the App to the iTunes store (we were expecting it to appear today, but due to the iTunes 8 launch it may be in the next day or two). We will update you via our blog and Twitter (we’ll update Twitter first!) when it’s available. You can read the official announcement here: http://mediamyway.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/itv-not-in-app-store-yetcoming-soon/. Check out our video here (YouTube Channel coming soon!): http://i.tv.

5 Features You’ll Like in the New Facebook Design

Posted on September 9, 2008 by jessestay

I track the Facebook Forums pretty regularly to make sure I’m getting all the info I need, and that I’m able to help on particular issues as I have time to help. One common thread I’ve seen throughout the last week is the continued complaints about the new Facebook design and how people don’t want to be forced into change. I was among the complainers myself at one point, but as Facebook has improved the site since they first allowed people to opt into the new design, I have really grown to like the new features Facebook provides. Here are 5 of my favorite features:

1. The Live Feed

Just about a week ago, Facebook launched a completely live Feed, that automatically refreshes with every update of every friend in your friends list. As new updates come through, you can comment and interact with the items that post to the feed, encouraging much more interactivity between friends. Facebook could definitely improve this more by opening up the Feed to third parties as Twitter, Identi.ca, or FriendFeed do, but it’s a step in the right direction, and Facebook allows you to peek into the lives of those you associate with much better than Twitter or FriendFeed do.

2. Feed Filtering

Also a recent update to the new design, users can display only the top stories, only the status updates, only the photos, or only the posted items of their friends. In addition, users can filter by only posts from applications they have added. This also includes Pages, Groups, and Events. Or, you can pick a specific Friends List (You are organizing your friends into Friends lists, right?) and filter by only those friends within a particular list. This makes sorting through all the information much better to only find the information you are looking for. Me, I like the firehose and I generally turn to the live feed.

3. Facebook for the iPhone

One thing the new design has enabled is a better architecture for handling better design on mobile devices such as the iPhone. The new Facebook iPhone app enables you to very easily set your status, browse what your friends are up to, post and browse through photos, look up a friend’s cell phone number, and more. Better yet, there’s an even better version in the works that is said to do things like allow tagging of individuals in photos right on the iPhone.

4. Application Tabs

If the developers of your favorite apps are savvy, they can enable their application to be added as a tab to your Facebook profile. This enables your friends to have an additional, even more expanded view of you when they browse your profile. For instance, if someone visits my profile, they can view all the songs I like via the iLike tab on my profile, or look at which of my friends are also family members of mine. This could also be a useful area for a resume, or any other useful information you want to share about yourself. Check with the developers of your favorite apps to learn if they provide this functionality or not.

5. Pages are no longer cluttered with Applications

Perhaps my favorite part of the new design is that it is much cleaner than the previous design. There is much more order and structure to it all. Now, the majority of your application boxes are saved to the “Boxes” tab, with the exception of a few that have adopted to the new design. You can always move an application out of the Boxes tab by clicking on the edit pencil icon and selecting “move to wall tab”. However, it appears Facebook is trying to give users more choice in this – now you can choose much easier and better ways of organizing your profile so others can learn what you want them to know about you.

The new design is definitely a big change, but I think as people spend some time in it they will find that it is actually an improvement, and will allow for even greater control and flexibility than it used to be. I suggest you give it a chance, play around with it and respond below with your own favorite features!