Altly – ready to do battle with Facebook

May 28, 2011 under Cyber Culture, News, Social Media


CTO Dimitry Shapiro once upon a time helped build Myspace, the first real mainstream social networking site and before this brought us VEOH.

It seems that there was a bee in his bonnet about Facebook (FB). Since FB started to use specific user information to target adverts on a more personal level more and more people have been worried about how easy it is for our details to get out and be abused. Shapiro particularly believes that although FB started out okay it now needs a competitor that can promise to keep things private and allow people to control their right to control their every move and control how much data is actually used against you to market products.

This new idea, FB would argue is silly because they are already doing their job, has spurred on despite there being past companies who have tried and seemingly failed. I have written a bit a bout Diaspora is a past blog and how this has not really shown much sign of life.

There is a nice long manifesto on the Altly site that also includes a mentioning about how it feels, and another website can prove, FB has actually changed and watered down its privacy policy rather than strengthen it. This site on its own has merit. With FB being on the news it seems that bad publicity on their part could also help the rise of the Altly site.

“A recent CNN story titled “Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages”, cites that ”A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.”  http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-29/tech/facebook.job-seekers_1_facebook-hiring-online-reputation “

With a quick mention of how Google did not decline there was a new planet to evolve a social platform called Google Circles, it really does seem that there is a change in mentality rising up from the digital world. More and more ‘doers’ are coming forward from the background and challenging some of the big digital giants. From the days where McDonalds and Sony are being challenged it seems the trend to challenge large online companies is the new boundary to break.

With some serious investment put behind this project, it seems that Altly could be the next big thing, and could be the first company to rival FB. The reality is that no matter how fast communication is, only time can tell what will work and fail.

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WordPress rid IE6 support

May 27, 2011 under News, Technology

WordPress over the years has been one of many digital factor that have helped create develop and shape ‘the web’ becoming ‘your web’ and further fulfilling the cyber culture prophecy of living in a ‘global village’.

The internet in general is now available through our phones and applications and also allowed other opportunities for better, more efficiently run browsers. The first real browser that I seem to remember would be Netscape where the loading sign was the star rising over the Times New Roman ‘N’ symbol.

So as we develop onwards, so we must forget and bury our past. In this case its Microsofts Internet Explorer. Over the years it has become clearer to many people, mainly the geeks who understand the pixelated heartbeat of how the web is run, how bad this browser is. Having said this, most people are still can only just about afford a cheap PC with windows on it, and by windows i mean XP upwards! So in many ways the digital culture is aiming for people to simply move over to the next best browser, Chrome FireFox (in my opinion).

As IE6 dies slowly it seems WordPress are now saying that it is “increasingly complex code trickery to make the WordPress dashboard work,”. In order to keep their product up to date they always bring out new updates. In the case on users viewing WordPress sites on IE6 it seems that even WordPress have now said “it just won’t function very well”.

Okay so may theres more to this story. WordPress have actually changed a few bits and bobs and spruced the dashboard up through 3.2, consequently it has meant they just cant support difficult to work with browsers that are now at the bottom of their list.

One day in the far future I am sure we will look back at IE6, maybe in a museum too, and say how wonder it was, until we learnt the truth. The strange thing is that even Microsoft have launched a global campaign to end the browser.

drop files here
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Delicious devoured by YouTube

April 27, 2011 under News, Social Media

Most people would have bet on Yahoo doing the buying or at least keeping something as marvelous as Delicious. Today the Delicious blog just published they are happy about moving to YouTube. The marriage does not seem obvious at first sight to me but like most digital platforms, the product depends on the next level of innovation. Here is what the Del.BLog said:

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. They are committed to running and improving Delicious going forward.

Providing a seamless transition for users is incredibly important for both companies. Yahoo! will continue to operate Delicious until approximately July 2011. When the transition period is complete, your information will be moved over to Delicious’ new owner.

Starting today, we will ask you to login to Delicious again and agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to the new owner. That way, you’ll enjoy uninterrupted use of the service and will keep your account and all of your bookmarks when we make the transition. For more information on the Delicious transition, please refer to this FAQ.
Thank you for your patience in this time of transition and thank you for using Delicious!

Founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen said:

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

But then John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo surprisingly said:

“We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,”


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Survey Monkey acquires WuFoo

April 26, 2011 under News, Technology

Its always interesting to see which company merges who whom. In this case both companies are fairly young and oddly enough do a similar thing. Its reported that SurveryMonkey have ‘acquired’ WuFoo.

SurveyMonkey
Everyone from activists, market researchers to local governments have been taking full advantage of SurveyMonkey for quiet some time with no real problems. In fact you could argue its been a success since 1999 when it was first founded. Like most large comapnies it also had a good leg up from people like Dave Goldberg, the former Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Music GM who joined as CEO in 2009.

Wufoo
WuFoo began as one of the first companies to graduate from Y Cominbator’s accelerator program in the winter 2006 under the company name Infinity Box Inc. To my memory, it was also on of the first few companies that created a brand based on the founders personal likes – Wh-Tang-Clan and Foo Fighters !

Finally…
Althoug not a lot was said about the deal we do know its worth $35 million. It seems that the personalised emails from the WuFoo camp states clearly that this is only the beginning and that the merging of the two companies is meant to strengthen and unite their existing services.

Whats also clear is that SurveyMonkey are not keeping still. Earlier in January 2011 sources say it acquired a 49.9 percent interest in Clicktools. When you take a look at that company and mix it up, I think theres still a lot more work to be done in the web world.

The Announcement!

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Foursquare Day

April 21, 2011 under News, Social Media

Having Google’d when did foursquare launch I have found this really cool link that is dated 13.03.2009 13:06:00. Since then they have come on leaps and bounds to having their own Foursquare Day.

What seems even bigger is the 3 million checkin’s during the 24-hour period of Foursquare day, which took place on 16.04.2011. Their first Foursquare Day was only a year ago as well!

None the less forever more
16th Apri is
Foursquare Day

courtesy of flickr.

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Twitter to buy out Tweetdeck

April 19, 2011 under News, Social Media

Ever since the arrival of tweetdeck it seems there have been a doom of how people could potentially manage twitter, in fact the demand was always there. As far as I am aware, Twitter and Tweetdeck are two separate pieces…but not for so long.

Tweet deck is now one of the established twitter client brands that is unsurprisingly born in the UK. With team of 15 people the team have managed to devise a great tool that acts and performs well and yet nobody cares about how it was build. The sleek Adobe Flash like exterior should be a bad thing when it comes to todays web world, however the Tweetdeck team have turned this around and provide their service for many varied platforms, proving that the looks do match whats under the bonnet.

If Twitter we re to acquire Tweetdeck then open the doors for Twitter to be an even bigger success. Having said this it would be interesting to see the hybrid iphone app that stems from both these companies!

It seems that The Wall Street Journal published a story claiming that Twitter is in talks to acquire TweetDeck on 18th April. Some other reports also came from CNN that and Techcrunch however initial reports were pointing towards twitter app companies working together to create a new rival. From this the news, also know as gossip, has given birth to Twitter wanting to buy Tweetdeck.

Earlier this year it seems that UberMedia was in talks to purchase TweetDeck for $30 million. As you have guessed, the news has not become reality so it seems logical that another #bigfish like Twitter comes into play. It also seems logical that UberMedias original $30 million is topped by Twitter’s $50 Million offer. Like any good soap, we have a little battle on our hands, but it all seems to be quiet polite really. UberMedia started out as a company that was going to create Twitter ads and now ts relationship with Twitter has reportedly deteriorated. Within there somewhere Twitter has also managed to ban UberMedia for an API violation. This bring us to today where they are now in a bidding war!

There are also speculative mentions of Ubermedia changing the way in which it will take charge of Tweetdeck and changing things around so much that it could take up 20% of the ecosystem, which clearly Twitter would dislike.

This new is all very through the grapevine however there are some other sources who have written about the same bit of news. If you fancy reading more about this news you may like the below links. Otherwise its just a case of waiting till a decision is made on what the next move is in on digital chess set.

The Telegraph . Business Insider . Mashable . Wall Street Journal

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