Archive for Facebook
by Darla Mack
June 4, 2008 at 2:19 am · Filed under Facebook, M:Metrics, Mobile Research, Research, Social Networking, Studies + Research, Usage + Usability, mobile data statistics
In a release published by M:Metrics last month, a study shows that the American population spends over 4.5 hours browsing on their smartphones.
Looking at the trend it seems the most popular site visited by US users was Craigslist. To me, that’s surprising… then again I’m not a big Craigslist user. UK consumers favored Facebook, which was also another site visited by US consumers.
What is interesting is the time spent browsing. According to the data collected in March, US users spent an average of 1 hour and 39 minutes out of the month browsing Craigslist, while UK users spent an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes of their time browsing Facebook.
Not to take away from web browsing, but I hope developers are paying some attention to these trends. This would be the opportunity to create dedicated applications instead of having to rely on the browsers themselves. I know I’ve become a happy person since the Ebay application came out.
“People are becoming increasingly engaged in the mobile medium,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89 percent year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent. Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time-intensive interaction with mobile Web sites—even without an iPhone.”
by Imran Ali
December 26, 2007 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Communication, Email, Facebook, Gmail, Mobile messaging 2.0, Voicemail
Recently, here at Mobile Messaging 2.0, there’s been much discussion as to the definition of a ‘mobile message’.
There’s been some great commentary and debate with a focus on context, usage, the means of transmission, however there’s a parallel question which I believe to be of some importance - our messages exist in various places, how can we ensure that those messages have mobility?
More specifically, as messaging usage fragments across many services and devices, how do we make sure that those messages - the emotional and professional fragments of our lives - can move with us when we switch services or devices.
Voice messages, text messages, email, photomessages, Twitters, RSS posts and Facebook messages aren’t simply dry digital constructs, but the ‘emotional bits‘ that comprise a large part of our individual and collective memories, yet our tools for archiving and mobilising them are crudely shortsighted.
- The last voice message from a recently deceased relative is a precious memory, yet voicemail is treated ephemerally often disappearing after just a few days, with no way to archive.
- People often keep precious text messages from loved for long periods of time on their handsets, yet when they switch phones, there are no consistent mechanisms to port messages from one phone to another.
- I’ve been a Hotmail user since 1999 - after 8 years I’d love to switch to Gmail, but Microsoft offer me no mechanism to export eight years of deeply personal content to another service. Damn, I’d even pay them for such a feature.
Google’s recent adoption of IMAP for Gmail is one of the first clear moves by a major messaging provider to support such needs. In a recent interview, Gmail Product Manager, Keith Coleman, stated that:
Millions of people start using Gmail each month, and many of them tell us how hard it can be to switch email accounts, particularly when switching from a service that doesn’t offer POP, IMAP or forwarding. We didn’t want Gmail users to have to go through that if they ever wanted to move away.
Thought Google’s intentions are noble, IMAP doesn’t go far enough in providing the level of openness that is neccessary; Google’s own support documents illustrate that Gmail’s innovative message labelling doesn’t map directly onto the antiquated IMAP folder structure…also, it’s only good for email!
What’s needed is an open data format supported by all messaging applications such that mailboxes can be imported, exported or synced - preserving the message metadata and content, whether text, video or audio.
For service providers concerned about user retention, adding such capabilities may even add further value. I don’t mind keeping my voicemail with O2, as long as I can archive it to Gmail, or leaving photomessages on my mobile handset as long as my Flickr account can pull them into a longer term archive.
Perhaps a combination of embedded microformats, IMAP and mbox could provide the technological framework of a new Open Message Box standard for mobilising our messages.
by Darla Mack
November 30, 2007 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Facebook, Mobile messaging 2.0, mobile social networking
Social media megaspot, Facebook has some limits that I’m just not happy with. Ironically it has to do with providers. I enjoy receiving text alerts to my mobile whenever someone pokes me or leaves me a message. But for some reason T-Mobile isn’t listed as one of the providers that this works with.
With social media being among the most popular channel of networking, why is my provider not listed?
Now the reason that I’m being choosy is this… I have unlimited messaging with T-Mobile and limited messaging with AT&T. Facebook users know that at some points alot of messages pop through, some to which are not of any importance. But I consider myself an avid Facebook user and I like to be in the know of what’s going on.
For AT&T users, you might have noticed that Facebook is listed in the MediaNet menu. I cannot speak for the other providers. But not having T-Mobile listed kind of bothers me.
And it isn’t just the US. The only UK provider is O2. No T-Mobile there either. Maybe its just a personal gripe on my part, but for something so advancing as social media, shouldn’t all avenues of providers be covered?
by Ewan Spence
November 29, 2007 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Advertising, Facebook
There’s a lot of discussion going at the moment in blogging and social network circles around Facebook and their advertising strategy, namely the Beacon project. This is where your purchases made in certain online stores are shared with other Facebook users in an almost “celebrity endorsement†style ‘Ewan just bought this’ river of news alert.
It’s fair to say that Facebook haven’t exactly taken the purest white route in this project. Yes you can opt out of it (on an advertiser by advertiser basis) and you do get an on screen option per purchase (but only for a short period of time before it vanishes and your consent is assumed); but this project seems designed with more in favour to the advertiser than the user of Facebook. There’s always a certain give and take in the balance a site maintains between the members and the revenue streams, and I’m confident over the next month Facebook are going to alter the Beacon project to bring this balance back. And there’ll probably be a pres release at some point about ‘how “user power†made them think twice and isn’t it great we listen to then?’
I still think that the easiest solution won’t be taken up. Whatever route Zuckerberg’s Behemoth goes down, I doubt it would be as simple as my route… a rev-share on the money that Facebook makes from each endorsement/Beacon advert.
After all, if they want to use my face to sell a pair of trainers, at least give me my percentage.
by Russell Shaw
November 14, 2007 at 8:44 am · Filed under FOMM, Facebook, Mobile Etiquette, Privacy + Security
I believe we are reaching a point in which the privacy-violating implications of mobile messaging are reaching a flashpoint.
I explored an aspect of this in a ZDNet blog posting I made yesterday. Seems as though we’re seeing the start of a trend in which students take camera-enabled cell phones (aren’t they all?) to school, take unflattering photos and videos of their teachers, attach these photos to SMS and MMS messages, and then post them on sites such as MySpace and YouTube.
These actions hit home for me. The girlfriend just recently taught photography to some vivacious middle schoolers. She’s described giddy kids taking pictures of their friends, their non-friends, and yes, even their teachers. And although these images were captured via camera, and not via camera phones, these kids all have cell phones anyway.
What’s to prevent their new-found enthusiasm and expertise from being applied to photos taken with their cell and then spread to each other as well as posted on the Internet?
And I need to tell you, we’re not just looking at kids, here.
While my mobile does not have video capture and MMS capability, It’s just a couple of clicks from my camera phone to a posting on my Facebook or Flickr photostream. If I were spurious or mean-spirited, I see funky stuff every day that I could photograph and either SMS or post. A homeless person pushing a shopping cart. A guy picking his nose. Even just something as innocent as a traffic jam- with license plate numbers revealed.
I guess my point is that while camera-enabled and video-enabled cell phones substantially enable us to obtain a more varied and ubiquitous view of our world, let us not just gratuitously use these tools just because we can.
by Ewan Spence
October 25, 2007 at 12:30 am · Filed under Apple, CTIA, Convergence, Devices, Events + Conferences, Facebook, Google, MMS, Microsoft, Mobile Advertising, Podcasts, iPhone
The second day at CTIA IT and Entertainment 2007 in San Francisco, and Debi, Paul and I meet up at the end of the day to discuss the major issues as we see them. In this podcast, we’re talking about the resurgence of voice, but in applications; the new forms that mobile messaging could take; monetisation and making mobile payments; why aren’t we talking about MMS as the new message?; Microsoft’s $240 million dollar deal with Facebook; what that deal means for Google and their opening up of mobile; and a few points about hype.
by Russell Shaw
September 26, 2007 at 8:04 am · Filed under Facebook
Sam from the UK Blognation site has obtained news and images of a friendvox Facebook IM application that is due for a beta release this Friday.
“What I like about this Facebook app is there is nothing to download or install, no registration and best of all, all of your friends in Facebook can use it instantly,” he writes.
I tend to say, “hey Facebook, what took you so long?” Social networks are ideal potting soil for IM and texting applications. That being obvious, Facebook may be doing this because they felt it was only a matter of time before a whole parade of third-party developers- sanctioned or not- would start building texting and IM apps for the platform.
Instead, Facebook is in control of this utility.
IMs will look like this:
I’m anxious to try this on one of my mobiles.
by Imran Ali
September 10, 2007 at 4:27 am · Filed under Bluetooth, Facebook, Mobile messaging 2.0, mobile social networking
A few weeks ago, researchers at bath University in the UK, launched Cityware, a mashup of Bluetooth and Facebook that gathers data about Facebook users who have been in the same physical place at the same time.
Various sites in Bath, London, San Diego have been equipped with nodes that scan for Bluetooth devices and their registered IDs. Cityware then uses these IDs to lookup the respective Facebook profiles of each user in that location at the time.
Though ostensibly an interesting mashup, Cityware is part of a broader study into ubiquitous and pervasive computing, particularly in urban spaces. What such experimentation may give rise to is some interesting developments in machine messaging as our mobile devices silently negotiate and discover people in our vicinity…perhaps a kind of mobile bacn!
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