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Google Me – quick thoughts for and against…

June 30, 2010 By Dan Thornton

So the rumours are building about the ‘Facebook killer’ being worked on at Google. And whenever there are big rumours, the blogosphere rushes to comment. For example, Mike Arrington argues Google should clone Facebook, Kim-Mai Cutler argues the opposite.

My own thoughts are mixed, but I’ve had a couple of ideas which I don’t seem to have seen elsewhere:

For Google:

Android. 5 million activations a month, a focus on mobile first (as said by Eric Schmidt), and working across mobiles and the merging tablet market (in terms of tablets now getting mainstream coverage and adoption post iPad).
Data knowledge. They might not have completely aced social search and the social graph yet, but they’re used to working with humungous data sets.
Understanding the need for users to own their own data, as shown by the ‘Data Liberation Front’
Adsense – allowing users to instantly monetise with a proven model.
Does it have to beat Facebook? With Google Me and the rumoured Google Music, perhaps picking up ex-Myspace users is a better first step. If it can pick up people leaving Myspace and Facebook, social networks become a two horse race, with Google in the game.
Location – combining social graph with location-based apps and great mapping software.

Against Google:

Previous approaches haven’t resulted in great design and usability.
Fragmented approach with Google Profiles, Google Buzz, Googlemail, Orkut, etc.
Orkut has had success in some territories, but is up against Facebook and a global reach of 500 million +
Remember their interest in Jaiku as a Twitter rival?
Google Buzz being shoe-horned into Googlemail, and the privacy uproar it created.
Mainstream social network users aren’t showing a huge global response to privacy concerns yet.

That’s pretty much a summary so far. When it comes to whether or not Google can create something that will succeed, none of us can possibly tell until we see a product actually launching. But what we can see is that Google has some significant advantages in the market which it has so far failed to utilise for Google Buzz, Orkut or Jaiku, but which could transform any new product.

Great news for Facebook page security

June 15, 2010 By Dan Thornton

There’s good news for every company and employee currently involved in running a Facebook page on the social network – you can finally remove the creator of a brand page.

Until now, the original creator of a Facebook page couldn’t remove themselves or be removed, without personal intervention by someone in the Facebook team. Which meant you were completely screwed if your marketing agency started the page but you’d parted company, if you’ve sold your page, or particularly if you’d created a page as an employee and since left that company.

That was exactly what happened to me in the past – having left a company, I couldn’t remove my access as an administrator to any of their pages. Luckily I was never overcome by the urge to do something mischievous, and the biggest worry was that someone, or something, else would befall their page and they might mistakenly think it was me.

So it’s great news that you can finally be removed by other admins – of course, now any other admin could mount a coup d’etat by removing you at any point, as the option is always there, rather than something you can select to appear when you might choose to leave. But it’s nice to see a change by a social network to aid users and brands alike.

To remove someone, just go to ‘Edit Page’ and scroll down to their entry under admins in the right-hand page column.

The best social games on any platform…

February 22, 2010 By Dan Thornton

Social Gaming is one of the trends of the moment, and the best examples of the genre are Farmville, which has reached 80 million users via Facebook, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox, which has topped $1 billion in sales since November 2009.

Despite the fact they are both very different games on different platforms, they both share many similar attributes which have seen two radically different audiences become engrossed, enthralled, and in some cases obsessed and possibly addicted.

1. Shareability: Using Facebook as a platform means Farmville is easily able to spread across 300 million users. Although Call of Duty is in a walled garden by only working with people on the same system (whether Xbox, Playstation or PC), all three options now allow for friends lists and invites into games, allowing me to be invited into a social group as soon as I turn on the games console. When Call of Duty launched I could see 20+ of my friends were playing, meaning the pull to join them was incredibly strong.

2. Grindability: Something that’s been noted in social gaming is the ability to ‘level up’ and progress simply by investing plenty of time (or by paying to skip the time requirement). Both Farmville and Call of Duty reward you simply for spending time with them, even if you don’t do particularly well. Even if you constantly kill your crops, Farmville gives you ways to keep going, and Call of Duty gives you bonuses for finishing a multiplayer match or benefitting from the skill of your teammates.

Modern Warfare 2 - can't wait to get home!!!

Image by Flyinace2000 on Flickr, used under CC Licence.

3. Accessibility: Both games allow you to jump in and start playing quickly without barriers. Although you can earn better rewards in both games, in Farmville they are really just enhancing the same game mechanic you already have – and in Call of Duty the weapons you unlock aren’t that much better than the ones you start with. Instead of leaving the all powerful weapons for players who have spent months with the game, this means that as a beginner, you can still do OK in a game to give you a reason to carry on.

4. Social standing: Whether in Farmville or Call of Duty, you’re rewarded with marks of your progress which give you an element of social standing with your friends – in Farmville it’s buildings, pets and better crops. In Call of Duty, once you’ve finally got through 70 multiplayer ranks, you’re then given the option to reset every reward, but now you get a badge to show you’re ‘prestiged’. And you can do it again, and again, up to 10 times apparently.

I’ve dabbled with Farmville, but the small social group whose respect is probably more relevant to me are on Call of Duty, which is why I’ve spent a seemingly ridiculous amount of time on the game in the last few months.

5. Ways to rank: With Farmville you can rank for experience, levels, and by helping your friends and neighbours – if I help a friend they get a message telling them how lovely I am. By the same token, Call of Duty not only gives you an overall level, but scores you on score, wins, kills and accuracy, meaning that there’s always someone you know that’s just ahead in one of the leaderboards, and you’ll always have one score that’s respectable.

A world of gamers:

I’ve written before about why the time is now right for pervasive social gaming. It’s now backed up by Windows Mobile 7 including Xbox Live. Gamers are not a niche group of teenagers – they’re the 55% of female Farmville players who are 43 years old on average, or the middle-aged guys who have gone from an early 90s console to the latest Xbox or Playstation after work or their kids are in bed.

This doesn’t mean that the current media (TV, radio, print etc), can’t still command huge audiences, but they’re converging more and more (Pop Idol etc using text voting, user-controlled radio (disclosure, I work on dabbl), the use of QR codes and augmented reality to brief new technological life into print, etc. Games have pervaded everything as much as story-telling, even if the critical debate about them is still in the early stages of evolution.

Will customer service come to social media?

January 12, 2010 By Dan Thornton

Despite the constant call for companies to engage in customer service via social media, it’s rare anyone points out that the people running the social platforms are generally a bit rubbish at servicing customers themselves…

John Batelle writes about the challenge Google faces with the Nexus One – in that it’s not a company geared for customer service. Something that’s not a surprise if you’re a user of Feedburner for example.

I’m fortunate enough to have been introduced to a couple of very wonderful people at both Facebook and Twitter, which means I can get a bit more help than most people. But not only has that been a relatively recent development, but those contacts are only for my work activity (And I’m afraid I won’t be sharing their details, as I suspect they’d be bombarded with emails and probably never speak to me again.)

For my personal accounts I use the same customer service routes as everyone else – and like everyone else, I face a load of impersonal FAQs, contact forms, and seemingly circular links to try and get an answer from anyone to solve my problems…

And yet at the same time, I’m joining everyone else in proclaiming how useful social networks are in solving customer service issues and engaging with people to get them responses.

The only reason that the networks escape a lot of criticism appears to be either down to the fact we’re still sympathetic to the plucky little startups they once were, we’re worried about getting deleted if we complain, or we’re all waiting for the market to evolve to the point where social network customer service is as important to us as changes to the news stream or the way we Retweet.

Until then, we’ll have to live with the fact we’re trying to become open and transparent on networks which do their best to avoid hearing from us…

One week, two new services…

December 5, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It’s been a bit of a busy week at work, with not one, but two major projects launching on Friday night.

One is Absolute 80s, a new station which does what it says on the tin online, on DAB in London, and on your TV, mobile, etc.

The other is dabbl, the user-controlled station which was originally launched in beta as part of One Golden Square Labs. As a beta it broadcast 7pm -6am online and on DAB in London, but to coincide with the launch of Absolute 80s, it now has a much larger music library as an evolution of what was Absolute Xtreme. It’s also 24/7 online, as well as on DAB across Swindon, Bristol and Essex.

What’s been immediately interesting is how for me, dabbl combines some of the benefits of radio (not having to make an individual playlist, hearing new tracks, sharing with people who aren’t online etc), with some of the benefits of playlist-based services (being able to pick music I like).

And also looking at initial traffic, Facebook page support and Twitter messages for both stations. Obviously it’s incredibly early to draw any conclusions, but so far the response has been really positive, which is fantastic.

If you want to be supportive:

Absolute 80s on Facebook

Absolute 80s on Twitter

dabbl on Facebook

dabbl on Twitter

Oh, and if you want to listen to both stations while you’re out of the house, they’ve joined Absolute Radio and Absolute Classic Rock in the freshly-updated Absolute Radio iAmp for the iPhone and for Android Phones, available on iTunes and in the Android Marketplace now.

Not bad a bad week, especially when you consider there’s also been a load of other stuff going on (for instance 3 special Christmas sessions in a church in London), plus there are a load of other projects and plans which will be revealed in the near future.

And behind the scenes, it’s been continual proof of how talented the people are in the building. And the thing is this combination of talent and innovation continually means raising the game, which is fantastic (if a little scary at times!).

Right, time to go and do some voting on dabbl…