Thoughts from the Shelf

Google has developed it OpenSocial platform by introducing a series of tools aimed at enhancing the way in which users interact with friends over the internet.

The service called Friends Connect is aimed at allowing sites that are not part of the social network scene, to provide a more social experience for their users. This can be done through the provision of various social gadgets created by Google and OpenSocial.

It works by providing social gadgets through a Friends Connect administration site which can then be used based on the needs of an individuals site. The site owner simply copies across the necessary code across to their site providing a range of social features without the need for sophisticated programming.

As part of the service site owners can then link to a range of sites for various functions, including Facebook, Yahoo and AOL. Users can also user the Google talk instant messaging system.

With this a list of contacts and friends can be imported from other social networks, where you can see names and photos of friends who are members of a specific site.

“Google Friend Connect is like giving Webmasters a salt shaker full of ’social’ that they can sprinkle on their sites to add social capabilities,” David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google told a conference call of reporters Monday.

One of the early advantages to sites is that Friend Connect provides a means of user identification through an existing log in on AOL, Yahoo and many more from the emerging OpenID standard.

The Friends Connect service is based on the OpenSocial platform that up until now has remained a way to write applications for a range sites across the partnership.

Recently MySpace announced plans to loosen its hold on data of an estimated 200 million personal profiles that currently use it’s site, a deal that would enable members to share information to be shared with four partners, Yahoo, PhotoBucket, Twitter and eBay.

The user would be tied to MySpace as a central profile for use across all sites, encouraging users to store all their data needed for a complete web experience at the site to begin with.

Facebook also entered a deal a day after the MySpace announcement with its 70 million users, allowing profiles to be shared with any site wanting to host them.

“It’s a smart move by Google which is trying to play the role of United Nations secretary general by making sure everyone talks nicely to one another, getting the data to where they want to move it back and forward, and participate in open standards.” – Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester

Currently 99% of sites are not socially enabled so there is a huge market for the Friend Connect service, and the user data flow through the service is a lucrative offering.

In these early stages however there are things that are yet to be decided. One major decision is how Google intends to share the information that is collated through the Friends Connect service with web publishers. Currently user details of those who log into a site through Friends Connect will not be given to site owners. This may change in the future, but there are issues residing as to how sites like Google, and Facebook or MySpace have very different privacy objectives.

As can be seen with the Facebook and MySpace data sharing announcements, existing social network sites are looking to make their networks the place for a central profile from which users will adopt a complete identity across the web. Google on the other hand is not currently prioritising these social network profiles, instead focusing around small web publishers harvesting the flow of data with its AdSense advertising network which is already serving millions of sites.

With Google expected to approve a few dozen more sites to the Friends Connect service, and MySpace and Facebook due to roll out their offerings over the next few weeks I guess we will have to wait and see how this one develops.

Microsoft today launched their new Messenger TV service (Screen shots of which are here), an add-on to their popular MSN instant messaging service, allowing users to watch videos online whilst exchanging messages.

Through the Windows Live Messaging console these videos can then be easily shared amongst friends in your IM community, creating what is said to be a unique social experience and opening up an untapped advertising market.

The service will provide a range of TV clips several minutes in length, provided by companies such as UK based Channel 4. Channel 4 will provide clips of shows including Peep Show, Property Ladder, Father Ted and Shameless, whilst other content producers will include ITN, Reuters and National Geographic as well as record label EMI.

Other content tipped to be played on the service includes South Park and Pimp My Ride, as well as music videos from Kylie to Britney Spears. The service will run adverts ahead of the clip as well as an advertising banner throughout the duration of playback.

The service is initially being launched in 20 countries, many throughout Europe, which is home to 95 million Windows Messenger users. Microsoft has around 14 million monthly unique users of Windows Live Messenger in the UK alone. It will also launch in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada and Mexico but not the United States.

“We see Windows Live Messenger as media in its own right, one that has been somewhat untapped as an opportunity,” – MSN UK exec producer Peter Bale.

Channel 4’s director of new media technology John Gisby commented on the deal with Microsoft.

“Our core audience is spending increasing amounts of time online and expects to be able to watch its favourite Channel 4 shows this way.”

John Mangelaars, the vice-president, EMEA, of consumer and online for Microsoft said “Online video has exploded in popularity over the last year, but to date it has been something people watch on their own. Messenger TV is set to change all that,”

The move by Microsoft comes less than a week after they pulled out of a long run take over approach for Yahoo, aimed primarily at its position in the online advertising market. This move certainly demonstrates the company’s eagerness to expand into that market.

Yahoo has implemented technology into it search facility that will provide a warning for users if they are about to click onto a site that hosts viruses, spyware or spam.

Using SiteAdvisor from McAfee Yahoo will warn users via a SearchScan facility of potentially risky sites. The SearchScan facility will be in place as default to produce on screen alerts to its users.

“Our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the sites they visit,” said Yahoo’s Priyank Garg.

The tool that is being introduced as a free embedded tool which will warn users of three types of security risks, browser exploits, dangerous downloads and unsolicited emails.

The facility went live today and an example error warning can be seen with a search for ‘free music’ with a red explanation mark highlighting potentially hazardous sites.

By teaming up with McAfee Yahoo are trying to calm fears from users who accidentally click on wrong links in search results.

“Yahoo users have clearly told us that among the most important concerns for them are all these lurking threats on the Internet,” said Priyank Garg, director of product management for Yahoo’s search division. “They know the damage they can do but they don’t know how to protect themselves.“

The add on demonstrates Yahoo’s plan to grab a bigger proportion of the search market amid a recent financial slump after a takeover bid from Microsoft was withdrawn seeing shares slump by 15%.

Politicians in the Europe have voted against measures that would see illegal file sharers thrown off of the internet.

Ideas that were outlined on The Shelf earlier in April in the post titled Virgin Media to Pilot Three Strike Policy? were including in a report on creative industries written for European parliament.

In the vote MEP’s backed an amendment that said the proposed termination of users contracts conflicted with “civil liberties and human rights”. The ruling went against the numerous European governments who are trying to implement tough action against pirates on the internet.

“The vote shows that MEPs want to strike a balance between the interests of rights holders and those of consumers, and that big measures like cutting off internet access shouldn’t be used,” said a spokeswoman for the European Parliament after the vote.

However the amendment called on nations to “avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access.”

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) who represents Europe’s music industry accused the amendment of being badly drafted and stated that

“We (The IFPI) look forward to a full discussion in the European Parliament in the coming months on how best to address copyright theft online,” said the IFPI.

In more news regarding the BBC iPlayer and following on from last months post about the service launching on both the iPhone and iTouch, iPlayer Launched on iPhone and iPod Touch, it seems the service has stepped up a gear and is now available on the Nintendo Wii.

Having struck deals with Apple to be the first mobile platforms to support the service, it seems the BBC is now pushing the service into living rooms of the public through the Nintendo Wii.

It has been rumoured that both Sony and Microsoft were eager to sign the iPlayer for their respective PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, but the deal feel through due to increasing demands of the games console manufacturers.

“If you want to get [iPlayer] on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience; they want it done within their shop, and their shop only.” - head of BBC Future Media and Technology Erik Huggers

Darren Waters, BBC technology editor said “The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery of claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”

With Xbox live having no browser it seems Microsoft are unwilling to work with the BBC without retaining control over the look and feel of content delivery, however with the ‘open platform’ of the PS3 it does seem inevitable that the iPlayer will find its way to the PS3 before long.

“[Sony] has said often that PS3 is an ‘open platform’ and all it would take is a small update to let gamers access iPlayer in the web browser.” – Darren Waters, BBC technology editor

With the majority of iPlayer customers currently accessing BBC content through a PC, the publicly funded broadcaster is taking steps to make its services available directly to the big screen television set, and it sees the Japanese games console as a means of doing so.

Currently users can view content downloaded from the iPlayer through their television sets, although it requires using the S-video output on most notebooks and a suitable S-Video to Scart cable. For LCD or plasma screen screens this could be replaced by a higher quality VGA input/ output.

The advantage of this latest deal for the iPlayer is that the Wii consoles are already rigged up to TV set, and therefore programmes can be viewed directly on the console.

Wii players will need to install the Internet Channel which will cost 500 Wii points or £3.50 but there are plans for a free alternative in the future.

The service will remain in beta initially as the BBC experiments with the optimal video encoding techniques for superior playback. The BBC already encodes all 400 hours of weekly iPlayer video, and now must do the same again for the high quality H.264 iPhone streams, and the Wii.

Wii encoding will be of a poorer quality as the Wii only supports Flash 7.This is because of the fact that initially the Wii was only designed to support lower quality Youtube style video.

“Our regular Flash content is encoded at 500Kbps. We chose that bitrate because it’s the highest quality that could be reliably streamed on pretty much any UK broadband internet connection. However, for Wii we had to increase the bitrate to 820Kbps because the Sorenson codec used by Wii simply needs more bits to achieve the same picture quality,” – BBC’s Anthony Rose