Thoughts from the Shelf

Throughout 2007 The Shelf has extensively featured some of the most popular bits of technology released. From Facebook to the iPhone to the PS3 we have featured articles on all three, but as we move into the New Year The Shelf looks at some technologies that could have a bright twelve months ahead of them over the next five days.

The first technology sees us look at the mobile internet. Currently restricted to where there is an internet connection, web applications have there restrictions, and although mobile internet access is becoming increasingly popular unlimited connectivity regardless of location is a long way off.

Last year we saw three technologies launched by Google, Adobe and Microsoft that are aimed at blurring the boundaries between offline and online environments. Named Gears, Air and Silverlight respectively, each application aims to take endless achieves of web content and make them available offline.

Adobe’s has already demonstrated an Ebay type Desktop application using Air which allows users to do all the work of setting auctions up offline, with the auction going live the next time the user connects to the internet.

“Adobe AIR lets developers use their existing web development skills in HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop”

Silverlight offers and reversal of this service in that it allows desktop applications to be built and run within a web browser.

“Silverlight enables developers and designers to easily use existing skills and tools to deliver media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”

Gears does not allow the creation of new applications but does allow users to take web applications offline. Google Gears would therefore allow developers of online office package Zoho to use Gears to allow users to use their applications in a similar way to that of a normal desktop program.

“Google Gears Beta is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs”

As part of The Shelf’s first technology of 2008 we tip more examples of applications built with or using these three tools to further merge the online and offline user experience.

Social networking site Bebo yesterday announced plans to link up with rival Facebook that will allow software developers to create applications that can be used across both sites. With nearly 100 million the move will provide developers with the opportunity to develop compatible features for both networks.

Recently The Shelf documented plans from Google to create Open Social, a similar cross network development strategy for which a number of big social networking sites signed up for, excluding Facebook. Open Social was supported by Myspace which alone has 110 million users.

Facebook had huge success after first opening up its network to developers, and now within a few hours the same application could be run on Bebo. Since Facebook started to allow third party applications six months ago thousands of applications have been developed for the social networking site.

As part of the deal however Bebo profiles will not be able to link directly to Facebook users, a step that acknowledges both Facebook and Bebo audiences use each social network for differing purposes.

“We think people use social networks for different things: Facebook is a great social utility, whereas you use Bebo to share media and entertainment.”

Bebo is part of the Open Social alliance as well and is the only network to complete deals that cross both alliances. The interaction of both APIs will be live by early 2008.

As a regular post topic on The Shelf Facebook has again been hitting the headlines this week, this time with a detailed study of visitor statistics and user trends that I found interesting.

After August 2007 statistics were released Facebook was ranked third in terms of pageviews, and furthermore is claimed to be winning users from Myspace. In August Facebook logged 26 million visits and being that Facebook allows only restricted activity without a membership, 22 million of these visits were new applicants. I personally wonder whether this huge influx of new members is as a direct result of Facebook opening up member profiles to Google, meaning anyone can Google a friend and find their Facebook profile in Google search results.

User trends of Myspace and Facebook (as the two big social networking players) are already thought to be significantly different. Myspace users are thought to be more tech savvy being able to control basic elements of their web pages, whilst Facebook users are thought more professional, using the site much as an extended e mail. So can Facebook actually be attracting visitors form its competitor when they have such different needs.

Of the 22 million visits to Facebook, 21 million spend their time viewing their own profiles or profiles of friends. Beyond this 14 million interacted with Facebook applications which themselves are responsible for capturing more time per session than any other activity on the site. 16 million visitors browsed photos, of which 150 were viewed on average per user over the month. 80k poked other people, an action on each user’s profile.

Interestingly Facebook’s Marketplace was used by 1.3 million visitors with an average of 2.27 minutes per visit, whilst group activity and networks browsing accounted for 8 million and 5 million visits respectively.

Reading these statistics it does seem Facebook Applications and picture sharing account for the large majority of user’s time, and some reports state that applications alone account for 37% of Facebook’s growth. This will have direct competition from Google’s upcoming project involving the building applications for all social networking sites in the OpenSocial partnership, of which Facebook is the only big player no to be involved. It will be interesting to see if this move slows Facebook’s growth at all in the future.

Regardless of future developments and without all the hype of Facebook’s astonishing growth rate, it is however important to remember that currently Facebook is only where Myspace was two years ago in terms of total traffic. Since its launch it has come on leaps and bounds but still has a way to go to become top social networking dog.

I read a nice post the other day that detailed the top 50 websites ranked by unique visitors in September 2007. Interesting enough five of the top ten gainers throughout September 2007 were content sharing sites Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and Digg.

As it has been mentioned in a series of articles on The Shelf, a special note goes to Facebook whose traffic increased by 14.6 million visits placing it the 22nd most popular site on unique visits. In the same period Myspace traffic also increased by 10.2 million visits placing the social network site in sixth spot, but the growth of Facebook will certainly challenge its position as the most popular social networking site in the future. Interestingly Facebook visitors on average spend twice as long on the site as their Facebook counterparts as well.

AdultFriendFinder has also shown signs of continued growth with nearly 24 million unique visitors, an increase of 8.8M this year putting it in 22nd place. In a similar sector Fling has started to catch up quickly gaining a whopping 17.4 million visitors in the past 12 months to reach 18.7 million unique visitors in September and lying in 31st place.

Another mention should go to Digg, the social bookmarking site whose growth surpassed that of Facebook and recorded the fifth largest growth rate of unique visitors, ahead of Google.

Reduced unique visits were recorded to only eight of the existing top 50 domains with Amazon controlled IMDB and Amazon itself among the losers. These sites were the 40th and 12th most visited sites respectively. In a similar vein Microsoft recorded a reduction in unique visits to both passport.net and MSN.com, 39th and 4th, although this traffic can be reflected in the increased 10.2 million visitors to live.com which moved up to the 5th most visited site.

*graphs from blog.compete.com
For the complete list of top 50 sites see The Shelf Referrences

In even more news on social networking, Google has released plans to launch OpenSocial application programming interfaces after losing an ongoing battle to buy into Facebook. Microsoft eventually beat Google to the punch and bough a 1.5% stake for $240, valuing Facebook at $15billion.

The launch of the Google OpenSocial APIs aims to provide users with the ability to use applications across a range of partner social networking sites similar to the way Facebook opened up its interface to developers in May. Google have recruited several of Facebook’s fiercest competitors in Myspace, Bebo and Xing who will provide guidance on platform standards and through OpenSocial APIs will allow developers access to data required to build applications across all participating social network sites. This integration across a range of social networking sites will save developers building individual applications for each.

The OpenSocial partnership also includes , Friendster, LinkedIn, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com and Google’s own social networking site Orkut, but with Google’s latest addition of Myspace, the worlds biggest social network, OpenSocial sites now account for 5.1% of all US visited websites. Without Myspace the OpenSocial consortium could only boast 0.097% of total US web visits with Facebook alone accounting for 0.96%. However Facebook remains the fastest growing social networking site increasing from 14m to 50m users a month from September 2006 to September 2007.

It seems both partners and developers are optimistic about the OpenSocial idea as for developers it lowers the cost of developing for individual platforms. For partners it is an opportunity to break down walls of Facebook and Myspace who have attempted to create closed web operating systems, grabbing valuable real estate in the process.

As a result of this partnership it seems Facebook is up against it, and in response is expected to unveil a new advertising strategy that is likely to involve selling targeted ads to members that will justify its $15billion price tag. But figuring out a method of serving the right ads in real time to the correct people is the challenge, and whether Facebook can develop such a system, justifying its price tag in the process remains to be seen.

“That’s a very difficult problem at large scale, with so many ads and millions of people,” said Greg Linden

There is no doubt that Facebook have a data gold mine, but it is exploiting it that could be the problem.

In relation to previous posts on The Shelf titled ‘the cost of social networking’ and ‘facebook leads social networking’ I thought it appropriate to comment on the latest competitor in the sector of social networking, Saga.

For most Saga would be a name that on face value would not tie in well with the concept of social networking, a new hip trend that up until now has be dominated by sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, whose extensive user base made up primarily of teenagers and young adults.

For a company that is more commonly associated with insurance and other financial products for the over 50’s, you would be forgiven for making the assumption it didn’t belong there. There is however on distinct difference between Saga and its social networking ambitions in that its aims to remain targeted towards the over 50’s much in keeping with other services the company offers, and certainly exploiting an untapped area of the social networking scene.

As more and more social networking sites are lauched, increasingly catering towards niche audiences in a saturated market, Saga does have the potential to grab the attention of a significant share of the market. Surveys have identified that a third of all time spent online is by the over 50s who individually spend on average 30% of their time online, but how many of these computer literate silver surfers find themselves requiring a social networking service remains to be seen.

Sagazone was launched in beta in February and attracted 13,000 members over an initial four month trial period. Focused around topics including gardening tips, recipe swaps and advice for the housebound, there are notable differences to other social networking services already available. If one thing is for sure it is that Sagazone expects to cash in on the increasing proportion of older surfers on the internet.

‘Now, rather than being a demographic to be avoided, the ‘grey pound’ is being hailed as a lucrative one.’ Quote from fair investment