Microsoft showed off two social-networking projects at TechFest on Tuesday that show that the company wants to do more in this area than just invest in Facebook.
One project, known as Salsa, aims to use one’s corporate data to piece together their social network, or at least their network of co-workers. In its current form, the software is a plug-in to Outlook that shows social-networking information such as a photo and profile next to an incoming e-mail message. The program also pieces together a list of “friends” based on e-mail frequency and other data.
“When you start looking there is a surprising amount of information that gets locked in e-mail,” said Shane Williams, one of the Microsoft Research team that worked on Salsa.
Lili Cheng, the Microsoft veteran who heads the social-computing team at Microsoft Research, said that part of the power of Salsa is simply putting a human face on e-mail. She said her own use of the site has borne out the power of that, noting it is harder to argue with a colleague when she sees a picture of them with their cute kid or pet.
“E-mail can be very dehumanizing,” Cheng said.
Cheng said that in addition to deploying it inside Microsoft, she’d like to see how Salsa works within one or two other large companies to see if it is more broadly useful.
In another project from Cheng’s group, known as C2, Microsoft researchers have created a Windows application that pieces together contact data from a variety of social-networking sites. For the purposes of Tuesday’s demonstration, the researchers focused on Windows Live Spaces and Facebook. Researcher Steve Ickman said he chose those two because they represent among the most open (Spaces) and closed (Facebook) when it comes to data sharing.
Although Facebook is notoriously restrictive when it comes to members scraping their data, Ickman said that he believes he was able to stay within Facebook’s terms of service by grabbing only approved data from one’s own contacts and not caching the information long-term. “It’s totally legal, at least at this point.”
The project is more of a technology demonstration than anything geared toward a specific product, Ickman said, adding that he hoped it would demonstrate to the product teams that they can be more ambitious. “We tend to cancel things because they are too hard,” he said.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Internet, Microsoft, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Facebook is planning on allowing users to add activities from third party social networking site directly into their Facebook news feed, we’ve confirmed. The goal is to centralize all that activity in one place.
Third parties can already integrate directly today via the Facebook API, Beacon and the Facebook Platform, but adoption from these companies, which are indirectly also competing with Facebook, has been slow. Now, users can add the content stream directly. Users simply tell Facebook what third party services they use the most, along with their credentials or public feed for the site. The content stream is then pulled into your Facebook News Feed.
What this means: in your friends news feed, you may start to see more content from Flickr, Twitter, Digg and other third party services. This competes directly with what a number of startups are doing – namely FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse and the more recently launched Iminta.
This is certainly an opening up of Facebook. And given that so many tens of millions of users spend so much time on the site already, it could remove the wind from the FriendFeed/Plaxo sails.
But don’t expect to see a RSS feed or widgets showing what you or your friends are up to any time soon. The data feeds that Facebook opened up last year do not extend to the News Feed. And from what we hear, Facebook hasn’t made a decision to open it up yet. Until they do, there is still plenty of breathing room for competitors.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Facebook, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Australian singer Kylie Minogue capped her comeback from breast cancer on Monday with a new single and the launch of a mobile phone social networking site that its designers said was a first for a major pop act.
Minogue’s spokesman also confirmed she had discussed the possibility of a world tour in 2008, when she will be 40, but that no decision had been made.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported on Monday that Minogue had cancelled a forthcoming tour due to concerns over her health.
“Kylie has not been told by her doctors that touring ‘could seriously harm her health’,” Murray Chalmers of record label EMI said in a statement.
“Touring is something that she is still considering for the future. Her health remains excellent,” he said, adding that Minogue’s representatives had demanded a “prominent apology for today’s highly damaging story” from the Mail.
Minogue, one of the most successful female artists in Britain with hits from “I Should Be So Lucky” to “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” released her new single “2 Hearts” digitally on Monday. It will be in shops a week later.
Her album “X” appears on November 26.
“2 Hearts” has already been branded a “surefire No.1″ by the Sun tabloid, reflecting Minogue’s popularity in Britain. Her worldwide album sales are estimated at around 40 million.
SOAP ACTRESS TO POP FAME
Having transformed herself from a 1980s soap actress into an international fashion icon and top-selling pop star, her appeal was further enhanced by her battle with cancer.
“If Kylie won admiration for her pop success, her courage and dignity in the face of her 2005 battle against breast cancer earned the public’s enduring respect,” Hello magazine wrote.
Minogue was forced to suspend her “Showgirl Tour” when she underwent surgery in Melbourne, followed by chemotherapy in Paris where her then boyfriend had a home.
“When you are stripped of everything and you have to grow your eyelashes back, grow your hair back, it’s astonishing,” Minogue told Glamour magazine in a recent interview.
“It’s hard to express what I’ve learnt from that, but a deep psychological and emotional shift has obviously taken place.”
During her recovery, Minogue penned a children’s book and made occasional public appearances before returning to the stage in Sydney a year ago to resume her tour.
To coincide with the new single, Minogue has launched her own social networking Web site www.KylieKonnect.com allowing fans to register on their mobile phones, blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video.
Its designers, New Visions Mobile, believe it is a more mobile and flexible model than social network sites like MySpace and Facebook, already important marketing tools for pop stars. It also allows Minogue to sell music online.
“The whole thing is set up so that Kylie can update her blog and have a closer connection with fans,” said Julia McNally, business development director at New Visions Mobile.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Entertainment, Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
