YouTube has announced their extended API to be available for 3rd party developers.
New API allows developers to use YouTube content in their online or offline applications more extensivelly. Here are some key features:
- Create a web front end to let people view videos about specific topics.
- Create a desktop application or plugin that plays videos in a customized environment.
- Add related, dynamic video content to your website or application.
- Customise the Flash player to fit the look and feel of your site, device or application
- Add feeds of videos from each of YouTube’s 18 international domains
More technical details in Google code website.
Keeping up with the “I post what you post, you post what I post” paradigm, I feel obliged to inform you that MySpace has launched their development platform which is based on OpenSocial API.
As opposed to Facebook, MySpace are going to have two or so month lead in period, so to allow fair play for all developers. Until that moment has passed no application is allowed to have more than ten or so installs.
A little bit worrying comment is this:
As for OpenSocial compatibility, company representatives say that 90% of MySpace’s platform aligns with the OpenSocial specification, meaning that OpenSocial developers will have to do a little bit of reengineering to get their applications to work.
What are the 10% delta we’ll soon to find out. I have to admit that I don’t yet have MySpace account, which is a shame. So first thing on today’s agenda is get myself an account and start playing with the platform.
Google is experimenting with new voting engine for the search results. Users have the following options:
- Like it?
- Don’t like it?
- Know of a better webpage?
It’s all experimental and in testing phase.
Emphasis is on the social note. However to work properly I believe it has to be tightly integrated into existing social networks. Ideally, search results should not be influenced by the whole internet community, but only by the preferences of the close friends group.
Syrian government blocked access to FaceBook on Friday in an attempt to control political activism on the internet.
Thousands in Syrian use Facebook to communicate with relatives and friends abroad. The social network also links groups with political and cultural interests. Syrians who have pages on the site include businessmen with links to the ruling class and pro-government commentators.
Seems that the major authorities concern is the articles posted by activists that criticises the government.
Came across another interesting project - SocialRank by MindValley.
Let me first start with MindValley themselves. It’s a young company and growing quite rapidly:
From working in our pajamas with an initial investment of $500 bucks we built a million-dollar company in 2 years (without any venture capital, business plans or loans).
MindValley acts as an idea incubator. They launch 2-3 companies every year, that specialises in one of the three areas: Technology, Media and Marketing.
Now, what so special about SocialRank? It is claimed to work under the same principle as Google page rank, but only for blog posts. The algorithm is meant to identify hottest blogs posts in specific niche.
Relativelly recently they have launched 50 SocialRank sites dedicated to specific niches:
- AgileDaily.com - Agile Development
- AllNightCoder.com - Programming
- AppleFever.com - Apple
- BikingCircle.com - Biking
- ChallengeReligion.com - Atheism
- DailyMovieGuide.com - Movies and Film
- DailyPhotoblogs.com - Photoblogs
- GadgetRoll.com - Gadgets and Technology
- DailyVoices.com - The talk of the town, for any given area
- JournalismDaily.com - Journalism
- JustFlashing.com - Flash and Macromedia/Adobe
- KittyCatCentral.com - Cats and Kittens (Meow!)
- KnittingFriends.com - Knitting
- LearningSignal.com - eLearning
- MarketingLens.com - Marketing
- MathBloggers.com - Mathematics
- MightyBlogger.com - Blog Monetization
- MyCupofJava.com - Java Programming
- NewMediaSignal.com - New Media
- ProductivityZen.com - Productivity
- PRVoices.com - Public Relations
- PythonBytes.com - Python
- QueerFever.com - Queer Lifestyle
- StartupSignal.com - Entrepreneurship
- SweetGaming.com - Computer Games
- SweetSecondLife.com - The World of Second Life
- TheCarInsider.com - Automobiles
- TheLibraryShelf.com - Librarian
- TheMomsWorld.com - Motherhood
- TomorrowsBrands.com - Advertising
- CraftyRascal.com - Kids Crafts
- DailyDogWatch.com - Dogs
- FeministFocus.com - Feminism
- FilmMakerDaily.com - Film Making
- HomeBusinessDaily.com - Home Business
- IndieFilmWatch.com - Independent Films
- InsideManga.com - Manga
- MakeSomethingToday.com
- MicrosoftGate.com - Microsoft
- OracleInsider.com - Oracle
- ParentingWatch.com - Parenting
- PhotoshopWatch.com - Photoshop
- PopFart.com - Pop Culture
- RecruitingWatch.com - Recruiting
- SmallBusinessRadar.com - Small Business
- TechnoratiTop100.com - Technorati TOP 100
- TheBlueAmerica.com - Liberal US Politics
- TheRedAmerica.com - Conservative US Politics
- TheToySociety.com - Toys
- DailyVentures.com - Venture Capital
- RubyGalore.com - Ruby on Rails
And that is just the beginning:
Our goal is to identify the top 1,000 niches on the Net and launch sites to cater to each of these blogger communities. Often we get surprised at the niches we discovered.
On the negative side:
These sites are just one step above spam. The social rank is not a transparent ranking and does not identify the most important posts, but rather is clearly set to get bloggers (who used to at least link to each other) competing for the right to get on a list so that these folks get fresh stuff to put against their adsense.
One might wonder, how is this all related to social networking? Very simple, if this catches up, it allows identifying and forming social groups of similar niche interests automatically.
Very funny application. Lets you calculate your social network value. In fact it’s just a game, but concept is very interesting.
If only it gathered data from social networks and online search engines… Something similar to this service (or rather calculator) for blogs.
By the way, my network value is rather low comparing to “similar profiles”, yet it is valued £76′000. Any suggestions how to monetise at least a bit of it?? :)
Some interesting links and news from social networking arena.
DanceJam is YouTube for Dance. People would post video clips where they dance and then can compete with other dances. Check out this interview for more details. Their web site is still closed, but stay tuned if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
UpDown proves once again that social networking is not only for fun. Project is built upon an idea that community of like minded people can perform better analysis and come up with better investing strategies. UpDown offers many different services, such as investing competitions and allows creating your personal investing profiles. So far this service is receiving very positive feedback.
BeliefNet is a social network dedicated to religious devotees, spiritual leaders, and faith-based group. This once again proves that social networks are no longer dating and band fan gathering places.
Befaft is a very interesting or rather unusual network. This social network is dedicated to plastic surgery patients. Users can ask for advise whether they need plastic surgery in the first place. The site also offers tools to simulate effects of the plastic surgery. Ex-patients can post their pre and post surgery pictures.
PetSugar is yet another social network, but not really for us, humans… It’s a social network for girlie dogs! Polls, votings, comments, suggestions, pet food selections, even pet celebrities. All you (sorry, your dog) can find on PetSugar.
Enemybook plays rather negative note. List your enemies, unite with enemies of your enemies. Tell others why your enemies are in the list. It’s not a social network site, it is a Facebook application however. There are more networks that represent the opposite side of social networks. Coming back to security in the social networks one should always keep in mind that socialising online can sometimes cause a lot of grief.
Possibly, assuming Facebook accepts this invitation, OpenSocial will unite most of the major players in social networking arena. From the moment Google introduced their OpenSocial platform, where developers can write applications for all participating networks (MySpace is one of them), Facebook was somehow reluctant to join.
Although Facebook is seen as a major competitor for MySpace, there is an opinion that in fact they can co-exist and they are not as similar as they might appear at the first glance.
Being able to develop applications for social networks without worrying about transportability and making them available across the board is a great thing and hopefully Facebook will join Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING on the OpenSocial platform.
