Micro-messaging service Twitter offers a simple way to tell the world what you’re up to, and see what your friends are doing. The problem is that it’s missing social context to help you find other users you’d be interested in following. As Twitter has grown to millions of users over the last year or so, the problem has magnified: More and more random strangers are looking for relevant people to follow. Enter an increasing number of companies that want to solve the problem by adding social context to Twitter. The one I’ve been testing out for the last few days...
In some respects, MySpace, FriendFinder, and every other social networking site could be considered a human flesh search engine. So could Google, Yahoo, and the rest of the online search portals, particularly when combined with incognito-based browsing. But in China, the seemingly sexual term takes on a completely different meaning than the first one that most likely popped into your head.Instead, the term refers to vigilante cybermobs who collaborate online to hunt down who they perceive as wrongdoers deserving of the cybermobs' own brand of justice. Take for example of the case of Wang Fei, a former advertising executive. His...
Last night I happened across a stealth startup that’s growing quickly entitled Mr. Tweet. The site bills itself as your “personal assistant for Twitter,” but it functions as a very interesting version of Facebook’s friend finder. The site asks you for your Twitter username, and then processes your connections and the content of your tweets. I input my name this morning, and by late this afternoon, it DM’d me with my ready report. The report comes in two parts. The first part gives you a list of people outside your network that you should be following, assuming you’re interested in...
Where is that friend of mine? Who else likes to go there? Where is that place on the map? It's simple, useful questions like this that location based social network Shizzow aims to answer and the service just opened up today to users outside of beta location Portland, Oregon to now include users anywhere in California. There are lots of location based social networks available, but this one is refreshingly simple. Is that enough to effectively differentiate Shizzow? It's going to have to be, because there's not much else about the service that's unique. Most features are easily reproduced, however,...
Useful Networks, a mobile location firm that has been operating in the U.K. and Scandinavia, announced Monday that it has brought its mobile and Facebook-integrated friend finder, Sniff, to the U.S. through the Sprint Network. Sniff allows users to find friends automatically and in real-time and provides them with exact coordinates to let them know exactly where they are throughout the day. In order to alert its users to their friend's location, Sniff automatically sends a text message to their mobile phone or a note through the company's Facebook application. Once users ask to follow friends, Sniff requests the...
While a handset providing your exact location might border on the side of creepy, it's apparently pretty popular in the U.K. and Scandinavia. And it's coming to the U.S. on Sprint's network. "sniff", which stands for Social Network Integrated Friend Finder, can tell you where your friends are in real-time. That's a little different than where they uploaded their last photo or the zip code they just sent a tweet from and of course, there's a huge privacy factor. However, the Useful Networks folks that provide the sniff service say that you're in complete control of which friends can...
Did you get this email? If not, you might have to check your old email address, the one you used to sign up for MySpace back in 2005. We’ve added a great new feature to MySpace! Just click the link below, and you’ll be able to automatically find people you may know, and easily add them as friends: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=peopleyoumayknow The new feature looks for people who you share two or more friends with, but who you aren’t already friends with. The tool is similar to Facebook’s Friend Finder. This is another step toward MySpace becoming more useful. It’s connecting what...
Thanks to cool apps like Twitter and Friend Feed we no longer need to start conversations with "What are you doing?" A simple look at their updates and you can start the conversation with “Did you like the concert” or “How did the meeting go”. What about starting the conversation with “Where are you”? Well, thanks to a whole plethora of friend finding apps, this can be addressed too. These applications use your location to update your friends where you are making it easier to grab lunch with someone or invite local friends to your party. Read on after...
Yesterday evening, at a beachside dinner organized by our investors, True Ventures, I sat at a table full of relatively young entrepreneurs (I’m pretty sure I raised the average age by a few years.) Most of us had iPhones — both old and new — and most were Twitter users. So it should come as no surprise that we all had an opinion about Twitterrfic, an iPhone client for Twitter. To sum up everyone’s thoughts in one word: horrific. Scrolling through messages should come naturally; it doesn’t. And the UI manages to leave you feeling about as satisfied as a...
The iPhone's location-aware APIs are being used by developers for all sorts of applications. I wrote some of my initial thoughts about the implementation on Friday. I've downloaded a ton of applications, but these are the ones that I have so far found to be most noteworthy. I am sure that by the end of the month I will have an entirely new list. If you don't have an iPhone these posts are going to seem monotonous and echo-chambery. I can understand that; hearing constantly about a gadget you don't use is annoying. However, I think that what is...
The iPhone's location-aware APIs are being used by developers for all sorts of applications. I wrote some of my initial thoughts about the implementation on Friday. I've downloaded a ton of applications, but these are the ones that I have so far found to be most noteworthy. I am sure that by the end of the month I will have an entirely new list. If you don't have an iPhone these posts are going to seem monotonous and echo-chambery. I can understand that; hearing constantly about a gadget you don't use is annoying. However, I think that what is...
I’ve been thinking about what happened to Jaiku lately and making some enquiries. It’s amazing to think that last year people were talking about Jaiku and Twitter in the same breath. Today Jaiku feels almost invisible. But threading the information I’ve been drawing together now suggests that Google will use Jaiku’s early, ground-breaking features, to kill off Twitter. Here’s how… Founded in July 2006 by Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Kopponen, Jaiku is a micro-blogging and social networking site which was acquired by Google last year. After that we heard very little. Most presumed it had been quitely forgotten by Google....
We updated Browzmi with a few new features today. We now have a friend-finder page that allows you to search your email contacts for friends that are already Browzmi users. And the page allows you to search for users, add our Facebook app, and send out invites to join Browzmi. You can navigate to this page from the Friends tab and Surf with Friends widget.In addition, if you are using the Browzmi Homebase Firefox extension, then you and others can see that in your profile as well as in your updates - indicated with the little house icon. Homebase allows...
