Mobile Reshapes Social Networking--and Vice Versa
By Jason Ankeny
The symbiotic relationship between social networking and mobile technology grew even deeper and more binding throughout 2008, to the point where it's increasingly difficult to determine where one begins and the other ends--record numbers of on-the-go consumers are updating their status, commenting on friends' pages and uploading photos from their mobile devices, in effect documenting life as it happens.
The volume of U.S. wireless subscribers who accessed social networks via mobile handset increased 182 percent between September 2007 and October 2008 according to a recent consumer study conducted by research firms The Kelsey Group and ConStat--in all, about 9.6 percent of U.S. subscribers ages 18 and over connected with a social network via mobile handset during the past year, compared to just 3.4 percent 12 months earlier.
A separate user study released this fall by market analysis firm ABI Research reports close to half of all social networking users have now visited destinations like MySpace and Facebook via mobile device. Forty-six percent of social network members have visited their favorite sites on their phones, with more than half of them checking for comments and messages from their friends--about 45 percent have also posted status updates.
ABI adds that among all mobile social networking users, nearly 70 percent have visited MySpace, with another 67 percent checking their Facebook accounts. No other social networking destination achieved 15 percent mobile adoption. ABI suggests that consumers do not wish to create new and separate social networking profiles for the mobile platform, but instead prefer to access their existing social networking accounts on the go.
Both Facebook and MySpace enjoyed banner years in mobile. In November, Facebook announced its mobile userbase has expanded from 5 million to 15 million since the beginning of 2008--writing on The Facebook Blog, mobile team engineer Wayne Chang adds that in the 24 hours after the site began allowing subscribers to comment on their friends' status updates via the Facebook mobile site, users posted close to a million status comments. No less impressive, MySpace announced that same month that its integrated mobile solution customized for device maker Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones generated more than 400,000 downloads in its first seven days of release, an all-time high for both MySpace and RIM in terms of first-week downloads.
Perhaps most important, the success of the BlackBerry MySpace app underscores social networking's growing profile among enterprise users--for many smartphone-toting professionals, 2008 was the year they abandoned their Rolodexes in favor of making and nurturing their contacts via the virtual world. [FierceMobileContent]
MySpace and Facebook Fast Becoming the Leading Mobile Social Networks
According to a recent online survey* conducted by ABI Research, nearly half (46%) of those who use social networks have also visited a social network through a mobile phone. Of these, nearly 70% have visited MySpace and another 67% had visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15% adoption mobile adoption.
“As in the online social networking space, there is clearly a large gap between the big two (MySpace and Facebook) social networks and the others,” says research director Michael Wolf. “ABI Research believes this is because consumers do not want to recreate entirely new and separate social networks for mobile, but rather want to tap into their existing social network and have it go with them via the mobile phone. For most, this means MySpace, Facebook, or even both.”
So what are these consumers doing when they access their mobile social network? The biggest features consumers use when accessing a social network on their phone is checking for comments and messages from their friends, with both of these features registering above 50% for mobile social network users. Posting status updates also has proven popular, with over 45% of mobile social users letting others what they are up to via their phone.
“The social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for communication across online and mobile domains for many consumers,” said Wolf. “To a degree, it allows them to centralize messaging, communication and even digital media consumption through a centralized property on various screens. We believe this centralization of a consumer’s digital lifestyle through social networks will only increase adoption of mobile social networking in coming years.” [ABI Research]
JuiceCaster, Photobucket Partner on User-Generated Content
By Jason Ankeny
Mobile social networking service JuiceCaster announced an agreement with online digital media aggregator Photobucket to enable users to instantly post mobile videos and photos from their handsets to their Photobucket account.
Photobucket boasts more than 44 million unique users worldwide, with uploads of new personal photos, graphics and videos surpassing the 10 million mark each day, while JuiceCaster offers users the tools to post and share mobile video and images in real-time across myriad social networking sites, blogs and related websites.
According to JuiceCaster, Photobucket will be a featured channel on its online Flash player, which may be embedded on websites including Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal. [FierceMobileContent]
Masyarakat Indonesian Gunakan Mobile Web Untuk Komunikasi Dengan Teman
Kondisi Mobile Web Opera juga merepresentasikan Long Tail dari suatu situs mobile
Indonesia masih tetap menjadi salah satu dari 3 negara dengan jumlah pengguna terbesar Opera Mini untuk mengakses Web secara utuh. Hal ini berdasarkan Laporan Mobile Web dari Opera Software yang diterbitkan hari ini. Sementara situs-situs besar seperti Google.com dan Yahoo.com mendapatkan perhatian dan trafik yang signifikan pada mobile Web. Masyarakat Indonesia juga gemar mengakses situs jejaring sosial, seperti Friendster.com, untuk berinteraksi dengan sesama pengguna. Situs ini merupakan situs yang lebih kecil, namun menggerakkan pengunjung terbanyak.
Konten dari Long Tail ini membuktikan bahwa penggunaan mobile Web terus menyamai komputer tradisional, karena kemampuan browsers yang meningkat dan para pengguna yang sudah lebih terbiasa dengan pengalaman yang didapat pada mobile Web. Laporan lengkapnya dapat diakses di: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/.
Temuan seorang jurnalis majalah Wired, Chris Anderson, dan melalui penjelasannya pada bukunya, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More", (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail) dimana Long Tail tersebut mengilustrasikan suatu nilai nyata dari Web, sehingga semakin banyak orang dapat mengakses bermacam-macam situs sesuai minat mereka. Opera sejak dulu berpendapat bahwa akses Web melalui perangkat bergerak (mobile device) akan meningkat, dan masyarakat dapat mengakses Web secara penuh. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa tren tersebut sedang berlangsung.
"Pada sebagian besar wilayah di dunia, masyarakat sedang mengunjungi sebuah situs Web seutuhnya," ujar Jon con Tetzchner, CEO Opera Software. "Fakta dari Long Tail pada mobile Web membuktikan bahwa masyarakat akan menjelajahi Web dari ponsel mereka sebagaimana mereka mengakses Web di rumah menggunakan PC, dimana nilai dari Long Tail telah ditunjukkan secara berulang-ulang. Hal inilah yang juga menyebabkan mengapa Web mengalahkan platform mobile yang lain dan misi kami akan One Web menjadi nyata.
"Secara garis besar, kondisi Mobile Web, berdasarkan laporan bulan Agustus 2008, sebagai berikut : Pada bulan Agustus, Opera Mini digunakan oleh sekitar 17,3 juta pengguna, meningkat 9,1% per bulan sejak bulan Juli dan lebih dari 357% dibandingkan bulan Agustus tahun sebelumnya.
Pengguna Opera Mini melihat lebih dari 4,1 milyar halaman pada bulan Agustus. Masing-masing pengguna Opera Mini melihat rata-rata 242 halaman. Sejak bulan Juli, halaman yang dilihat meningkat 11,7%. Sejak Agustus 2007 angka ini mencapai 337%.
Pada bulan Agustus, 17,3 juta pengguna Opera Mini menggunakan data sebesar 60,3 juta MB di seluruh dunia. Sejak bulan Juli, data yang dikonsumsi meningkat 12,1%. Data pada Opera Mini dikompres sekitar 90%. Dimana, pengguna Opera Mini telah mengakses data melampaui 603 juta MB pada bulan Agustus.
10 Situs Teratas Indonesia (diurutkan berdasarkan pengguna unik):
1) friendster.com
2) google.com
3) gamejump.com
4) yahoo.com
5) peperonity.com
6) wikipedia.org
7) getjar.com (back on the list)
8) ebuddy.com (up from 10)
9) mobile9.com (new)
10)mocospace.com (new)
Data pada laporan ini didasarkan pada pengumpulan statistik dari Opera Mini server dan data statistik lainnya. Semua prosentase berdasarkan pada rekaman dari 100 situs teratas di masing-masing wilayah. Tak hanya menyediakan rekaman tren penjelajahan halaman Web di seluruh dunia, kondisi mobile Web Opera juga menyoroti tren penelusuran halaman web di sepuluh negara pengguna Opera Mini terbesar, yakni : Rusia, Cina, Indonesia, India, Amerika Serikat, Inggris, Jerman, Polandia, Afrika Selatan dan Ukrania. /PR
SK Telecom Launches Sky Buddy Mobile Social Networking Service for Users in Korea and Japan
By Jason Ankeny
SK Telecom announced today that it has launched Sky Buddy, the first mobile networking service that enables users of SK Telecom and three leading Japanese Telecom carriers - NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank - to share user generated content and diverse information as well as interactive communication.
With Sky Buddy's real-time auto-translation feature, mobile users in Korea and Japan could now freely socialize and make friends without language and geographical barriers.
Su Hyuk Lee, Director of Culture & Life Business Office, SK Telecom said: "Sky Buddy successfully combines the advantage of mobile technology and auto translation solution, thus connecting users in different countries anytime anywhere without language barriers. We plan to further expand the service to access the entire Asian market including China."
On top of the content uploaded by users in Korea and Japan, Sky Buddy also provides local language information services from Weathernews, including "Sky News", which are weather and video news clips presented by Weather Jockeys; as well as a "Korea-Japan Info Zone", which introduces more than 1,000 top restaurants and tourist destinations in both countries.
In line with the launch of the Sky Buddy service, SK Telecom is offering Korean users two monthly flat rate plans, ‘Sky Buddy Plan' and ‘Sky Buddy T Map Plan' to lower data communication tariffs.
Sky Buddy Plan offers unlimited access to all Sky Buddy services at a flat rate of KRW 3,000 a month without charging extra data usage tariff. Sky Buddy T Map Plan allows customers to use both Sky Buddy and T Map navigation services at KRW 7,000 a month. Moreover, customers can use T Map navigation service without data usage tariff and data communication tariff. [FierceWireless]
Samsung and GyPSii Sign Multi-year Agreement for LBS and Social Networking
GeoSentric Oyj's, GeoSolutions BV Business Unit (GyPSii), the market-leading mobile digital lifestyle application and geo-mobility social networking platform, today announced it has entered into a multi-year worldwide agreement with Samsung Electronics Co., LTD, a world leading provider of telecommunication network systems and handsets.
Under the terms of the agreement, GyPSii will provide technology, products, worldwide data center infrastructure, and GyPSii branding rights to Samsung, on a worldwide non-exclusive basis for a range of Samsung products. GyPSii's leading mobility digital lifestyle application will be initially be bundled on Samsung's Omnia (SGH-i900) and SGH-i780 as an embedded application.
Samsung's customers will be able to take full advantage of the location-based social networking digital lifestyle features of the GyPSii suite and create and share user generated content (UGC) with GyPSii's global user community, and other interoperable socialnetworks such as Facebook. The agreement has provisions for revenue sharing between GyPSii and Samsung, utilizing the business models enabled by GyPSii.
"This is an industry-defining event for mobile social networking and geo-location based services." said Dan Harple, CEO at GyPSii. "Our Distribution and partnership agreement with Samsung is further validation of our business model, our technology and our go-to-market distribution model. We continue to build momentum, and are rapidly giving millions of users access to GyPSii, worldwide, across an increasing array of mobile and Internet-connected devices.
He added, "This distribution and partnership agreement brings GyPSii to millions of new users, enabling us to penetrate new markets, expand our global footprint and leverage the strength of the Samsung brand to drive marketing, distribution and new revenue streams."
As the world's second largest mobile manufacturer, Samsung will provide the new GyPSii enabled handsets on a global basis. The application will be made available to users in numerous local languages, with GyPSii providing the global infrastructure and operating platform to Samsung customers. GyPSii's PlaceRank technology will be utilized to deliver highly contextual and personally relevant user generated content, regional POI (points ofinterest) and location-targeted advertising to users.
"Social networking and location-based services on the mobile phone are now mainstream, so we looked to emerging innovators in the industry to support and deliver these value-added services," said WS Lee, Vice President of R&D, at Samsung Electronics Mobile Business.
GyPSii currently interoperates on Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry devices, as well as the Apple iPhone, along with browser-based Internet connected devices. It can be accessed on the web at www.gypsii.com or a compatible phone's mobile browser at www.gypsii.com/m. [FierceWireless]
Salesforce Summer ’08 Delivers Additional New Features for Salesforce Content
Salesforce Summer ’08 delivers additional new features for Salesforce Content including:
- Global Availability – Recognizing that it is becoming increasingly important for businesses of all sizes to work with companies across the globe, salesforce.com is making Salesforce Content now available in all supported 15 languages. Users can now tap into the power of multi-language search to find relevant materials, no matter where they are or what language they speak.
- Content Analytics – Content Analytics ends the guessing game when it comes to the effectiveness of corporate materials. Usage metrics can now effectively be tracked to determine the most frequently used content among sales reps, marketers and other users. Based on the data gathered from dashboards and reports, the documents, presentations and other materials in Salesforce Content are optimized for maximum effect.
The second pillar in salesforce.com’s collaboration applications is Salesforce Ideas, an entirely new type of application that enables customers to tap into the innovative power of their customer, partner or employee communities by allowing them to post, discuss, and vote on ideas.
Leveraging the power of Force.com Platform-as-a-Service, Salesforce Ideas makes it easy to manage top ideas from inception to implementation. Since its release, Salesforce Ideas has enabled companies to effectively engage with their internal and customer communities. With the release of Salesforce Summer ’08, companies can capture the unique perspective of their partner community by including Salesforce Ideas in the Salesforce Partner Portal.
With Salesforce Summer ’08, Salesforce Ideas benefits from additional new features including:
- Multiple Communities – This new feature enables companies to create multiple communities in order to better organize and segment the ideas coming from different groups, and provide participants with a forum to engage with the specific communities that most apply to them.
- Customizable Ideas – With Salesforce Summer ’08, users can customize fields in Salesforce Ideas and expose data directly to the original posting. Closely integrated with the Force.com Platform-as-a-Service, Customizable Ideas also allows users to set up validation rules, workflows and Apex triggers off keywords alerting companies to relevant conversations taking place within their communities. With Customizable Ideas, companies can monitor and respond more effectively to the demands of their communities.
Salesforce for Google Apps – First Cloud Computing Suite for Business Productivity. In April of 2008, salesforce.com and Google came together to announce their second joint product, Salesforce for Google Apps, an entirely new way for business professionals to communicate, collaborate, and work together in real time over the Web.
A simple, yet powerful combination of essential applications for business productivity (email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging) and CRM (sales, marketing, service and support, partners), Salesforce for Google Apps offers a complete way for businesses to harness the power of cloud computing without the cost and complexity of managing hardware or software infrastructure.
Availability
Salesforce Summer ‘08 is available immediately to all salesforce.com subscribers. Salesforce Content is available at $35 per user, per month. Salesforce Ideas is currently available for customer, partner, and employee communities. It is included with all CRM editions for internal use, with the exception of Group Edition, at no additional cost. For additional employees, Ideas Only licenses can be purchased for $5 per user, per month.
For customers and partners accessing Salesforce Ideas through the portal, standard portal pricing applies. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. /PR
Visualforce is Now Live – Enabling the Creation of Any User Interface
A breakthrough for the Platform-as-a-Service industry, Visualforce is a new technology for developing powerful user interfaces (UIs) for any application built on Force.com, including Salesforce. Now, salesforce.com customers, partners and developers can develop interfaces just as elegant as the industry’s leading technologies. Visualforce includes all the resources developers need to build rich, interactive applications and user experiences for a variety of audiences, applications, and devices. More than 4,000 developers have already created more than 11,000 custom interfaces in the Visualforce developer preview program.
Combined with the powerful logic and workflow intelligence provided by Apex Code, Visualforce offers the flexibility to meet the requirements of applications that feature many different types of users on a variety of devices. Visualforce uses the best of Internet technology, including HTML, AJAX and Adobe Flex, for business applications, making them as innovative and as effective as their consumer Web counterparts. Visualforce features include:
- Pages – this capability enables the design definition of an application’s user interface.
- Components – this provides the ability to create new applications that automatically match the look and feel of Salesforce applications or easily customize and extend the Salesforce user interface to specific customer and user requirements.
- Apex Controllers - The controller enables customers to build any user interface
behavior. - Static Resources - Provides the capability to easily create, reference, and manage the assets used to create UIs—including images, style sheets, JavaScript libraries, and other browser components.
- Inline Page and Controller Editing - In Visualforce development mode, customers can edit Visualforce pages and Apex controllers directly from the runtime view of any page.
Harnessing the Power of Collaboration for Employees, Customers and Partners Salesforce Summer ’08 empowers companies to use Web 2.0 collaboration technologies to transform their business and partner, customer and employee communities.
Salesforce Content brings the power of SaaS to managing unstructured data within an enterprise by utilizing the best of consumer Web technologies such as tagging, subscriptions and recommendations. Salesforce Content users manage their documents and unstructured data directly in Salesforce to improve productivity and effectiveness in every corner of the enterprise.
Salesforce Content, with the introduction of Summer ’08, is the perfect complement to all of the Salesforce CRM applications. Companies can now collaborate in Salesforce Content with their partners and customers in the Salesforce Partner Portal and Salesforce Customer Portal. Using the appropriate portals, partners and customers will be able to quickly and easily gain access to relevant content.
“Now we can collaborate with our entire community. With Salesforce Content, we have enhanced the experience of our customers by delivering the right information when it’s needed most,” said Steven Frers, Vice-President of Service and Support at CompassLearning. /PR
Salesforce Content Brings the Power of Web 2.0 Collaboration to Your Employees, Customers and Partners
Salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced that Salesforce Summer ’08 is live to all 43,600 salesforce.com customers. Salesforce Summer ’08 represents salesforce.com’s 26th release in 9 years and delivers the power of cloud computing to the enterprise. Part of the Force.com platform, Visualforce is now live in every edition of Salesforce, enabling users to develop any interface entirely in the cloud.
Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas are also delivering new levels of customer success in Salesforce Summer ’08 including the support of external communities, delivering true Web 2.0 collaboration capabilities to users globally. In total, more than 50 new CRM features are also live with Salesforce Summer ’08, raising the bar for industry innovation.
“Consumers have been enjoying Web 2.0 features like voting and social networking on consumer web applications like Digg and Facebook for years. But traditional enterprise applications are still stuck in the ‘90s,” said George Hu, executive vice president marketing, applications and education at salesforce.com. “Salesforce.com is changing all that by delivering Web 2.0 interfaces and collaboration technologies in Salesforce Summer 08.”
“As the CRM market continues to evolve, the integration of Web 2.0 technologies into CRM processes is a key step in driving greater end user productivity by making applications more intuitive to use,” said Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research. “Salesforce.com's advances in content and ideas management - as well as the release of Visualforce - in Salesforce Summer '08 gives developers more tools and options to drive greater collaboration and increased productivity for users.” /PR
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