Category: Web 2.0
LinkedIn goes mobile with new WAP site
There’s been a lot of talk about mobile social networking in recent months, but it’s mostly focused on the big consumer sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. However, business-focused social network LinkedIn has just announced its move into mobile, with a new WAP site.
Opinion: Why I'm not surprised people are bored of Facebook!
Jonathan Weinberg writes…
You can have too much of a good thing, isn’t that how the saying goes. Who wants sex, chocolate and alcohol every minute of the day? Eventually you’re going to getting a little tired of the same old daily routine.
I speak as a self-confessed Facebook addict when it first launched. I spent ages on there, ensuring I had more friends than everyone else on my friends-list, updating my status every five seconds, adding new pictures and sitting there transfixed by what my increasing social circle was up to. It’s like voyerism, only legal, and without the naughty stuff.
Why did it bothered me X was visiting the farm, or Y was updating their profile from their mobile while sitting on the toilet? I’ll tell you why, because it was new, it was innovative and it was a distraction from everyday life.
But since Facebook has become my everyday life, my interest has waned. I’ve not changed my status in nearly a week, last put snaps up before Christmas and my Blackberry battery is staying juiced-up for longer as I neglect to check it while on the move.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Facebook’s user numbers are falling. So-called “Facebook fatigue” has been highlighted with a five per cent drop from 8.9 million unique visitors to the website in December to 8.5 million last month. But it’s still 712 per cent higher than a year ago and nine per cent higher than three months ago….
Harley Davidson owners get their own social network
Good news for men with big hair, big beards and big bikes. You’ve now got your very own social network based around Harley Davidson bikes. It’s called Harley Social, and it lets you create a blog, and upload photos and videos of your glorious vehicle.
Qype claims Facebook falloff is due to "group spam and pointless pokes"
Earlier this week, it was reported that Facebook saw its visitors fall in January for the first time in 17 months. Has the bubble burst for the social network? UGC site Qype reckons it might have.
Over 17 million programmes watched on iPlayer, claims BBC
According to the BBC, over 17 million programmes were watched or downloaded on demand via the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service in the first seven weeks of its full launch, with the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson comparing its the arrival to that of colour TV in the 1960s.
BBC TV comes to iTunes Store, for a price
It seems all the BBC is doing right now is pushing out its content into every Web 2.0 and online orifice going. The latest development is that it expects the good old British public (who already fund the BBC) to pay for content via the iTunes Store.
For just £1.89 per episode, users can download a range of popular Beeb fare including Torchwood, Life on Mars, Little Britain, Spooks, Robin Hood, and other BBC classics.
There’s now quite a bewildering choice of methods by which you can get your fix of Auntie, and depending on how organised you are, how much you care about quality, and the state of your bank balance / credit limit.
New web start-up YouNoodle dashes/boosts the hopes of other web start-ups
YouNoodle! YouNoodle! If this start-up doesn’t do well based purely on that name, there’s no hope for any of us.
The NY Times has championed the ‘start-up predictor’ in a recent article on the founders, two former Oxford University students in Silicon Valley, who claim they can sort the wheat from the chaff and determine exactly which start-up ideas will succeed, and which…
BBC launches widgets for Radio Times, Good Food, and Top Gear web sites
The BBC is certainly keen to get their content out beyond the gogglebox in the living room. Last month, they put classic TV clips on MySpaceTV, they’ve put classic Parkinson and EastEnders on YouTube, and their iPlayer is booming, so it’s probably no surprise that they’ve now developed widgets which can be used on the desktop, on social networking sites, and popular blog platforms.
RadioTimes.com, BBCGoodFood.com, and TopGear.com, all now provide widgets which give regular feeds of the latest news and information.
Facebook to limit how many invitations users get. No more spam?
Facebook is changing the way that application invites are handled, meaning that the user experience should be improved from “not another @&£?$#! invite” to… well, a bit more peace and quiet.
They’ve already changed the way notifications are sent out, so that they vary based upon how “spammed” users are feeling.
Instead of the fixed limit of 20 invitations per user per day, the new dynamic limits will be based upon a user’s historical invitation acceptance rate, whether an application forces users to invite friends (ARGH!), and some additional undisclosed factors which “reflect the affinity users show for the application as a whole”. Whatever they may be.
Bebo $1bn acquisition "definitely happened", sources claim
Anyone interested more in the financial side of social networks, rather than simply adding tons of weird applications and spending hours turning down odd friend requests and notifications, may like to know that, according to “a high level source”, the social network Bebo has signed an acquisition deal thought to be worth $1bn.
Yes, that’s a whole lot of cash. Previosuly, Facebook had been “valued” at anywhere from $6bn to $15bn, though the rumoured Microsoft take-over never happened.
