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Facebook – Its Social Graph API and its take on the Future of the Web

jdb — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:48:13 +0000

Facebook recently announced plans for the Social Graph API which allows external sites to host facebook features on their respective sites. This means instead of companies currently trying to establish a presence on facebook via facebook’s fan pages, external sites can now interact with users right on their respective web sites displaying other friends that may have visited their sites, left messages, etc. Liz Gannes of Gigaom.com calls this the “Dawn of Facebook’s people organized web.” She believes this will transform facebook into a hub that better connects people to the web (i.e. others, products, services, etc) via their own friends/friends of friends/larger circles. Although, this seems like a possibility, to what extent Facebook will revolutionize the way people get around in the web is still highly debatable.

Impacts

With the Social Graph API, external sites can now host facebook like features and publish and connect people to their social circles within the context of this external site. With the right amount of user participation one’s social circle may influence one to participate with the external site/offering, whereas previously that level of comfort to engage with an external site may not have existed. This is helpful for all involved parties. Additionally, retailers can track and offer incentives for people promoting their brand.

Hurdles

Google! While Facebook is starting to explore this new avenue of connecting people to the web via their friends (or friends or friends, etc), Google already has massive amounts of data about its users via its own services such as gmail, Google Search, Subscriptions, Android mobile. Google also houses massive amounts of data over the web and via its Ad Words (advertising), it’s own services, and the web it pretty much has more than enough information to connect a users’ or demographic’s pattern to better understand how best to serve the web to its users. See the illustration below.

Facebook's Vs. Google's Strategy

Participation is a critical component if facebook’s Social Graph API strategy needs to take off. Firstly, organizations need to be interested in connecting with facebook. Some industries such as fashion, music, etc will greatly benefit from this and so they may be the first adopters. However, it will be important to have a lot of these web sites participate. Additionally, it is also important for consumers to participate. Most people would rather be seen not promoting any one specific brand. If organizations can figure out a way to incent people (i.e. reward them without making them look like an Amway sales person), then consumer participation may not be so much of an issue.

Conclusion

Facebook is definitely transforming itself into a more pervasive entity on the web with the Social Graph API. This opening up of facebook, where external sites now can now connect with individuals on a more personal level surely has the potential to transform the way customers interact with products and services on the web. However, Facebook has a long road ahead of it especially with Google way ahead in this race.

Artwork/Thumbnail by Gauldo on Flickr

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Google’s Real-time Search Prediction

jdb — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:15:52 +0000

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking the unthinkable – is Google so big that it can’t see beyond itself. Although, Google undeniably has a culture of innovation, it simply hasn’t been able to produce game changing trends on the internet, well ever since it came up with it’s search engine. However, being as big as it is, it is simply enough for Google to invest in those ever evolving trends to make a significant impact on those trends. Case in point, Google’s Real-Time Search. Although the real-time web has been evolving over the last year or two, Google’s entry into this market could potentially be game changing. Last week Google unveiled its Real-time search capability. This means if I typed in “Climate Copenhagen” I could potentially get information on exactly what was happening with the summit at Copenhagen at any given moment. Ofcourse, I didn’t search that, but I did search “Christmas Shopping Deals”. I still had better success executing a standard search – see image below.

Real-time Search Results

Standard Search Results

The feeds currently point to Twitter, Craigslist or other real-time content sources and now mostly produce meaningless results (as seen from the searches above). However, if you make an assumption that this real-time content will become more relevant over time, you could see how potentially Google’s Real-time search could provide anyone and everyone all the information they ever needed as it was happening. In order for this to happen Google working with others such as Twitter, Foursquare, etc will need to figure out an effective way to weed out noise.

Artwork/Thumbnail by dullhunk on Flickr

Youtube Direct – A great platform to power-up citizen video journalism

Youtube Direct – A great platform to power-up citizen video journalism

jdb — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:36:03 +0000

Although citizen journalism has been growing by leaps and bounds empowered by sites like Digg, Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube and others. Youtube’s focussed entry into this space could be potentially game changing. Today Google announced the launch of Youtube Direct, a service primarily targeted towards Google’s existing news media partners, but which can potentially become a platform to launch and support citizen journalists. Currently, the service comes with a simple workflow to moderate uploaded content and also to directly upload videos to Youtube (without having to leave the web-site in question). Currently, the offering is primarily targeted towards Google’s existing news partners and as such does not provide a comprehensive framework for citizen reporting, just yet. However, Google has made the framework open-source in the hopes of having developers contribute and enrich the product.

In order to build a robust work-flow for citizen reporting the moderation tool must be extended beyond its current scope. It must support two forms of moderation – 1) a decentralized one where others users on one’s site can rank and categorize videos and 2) a centralized one, like the one they provide now but extended further to support large number of file uploads. Additionally, it will also be great if the search capability for videos is narrowed to search within a specific site’s content. Finally, Youtube must support much faster uploads from cameras phone (see offerings from Elemental Technologies).

With these extensions in place, Youtube can look to become the platform that will launch and support the next generation of news media sites.