Amazon looks to users to socially-share their purchases

OK, I downloaded Aloe Blacc's "I Need a Dollar" covered by Pixie Lott.  Don't shoot me.

But what was more interesting was the fact that Amazon now allows me to share my purchase across Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

This is the kind of retail social sharing that sites such as Blippy have built a business model around. Blippy is now known as the "Twitter of personal finance", facilitating discussion and comparison-shopping amongst its user base.

Amazon has been a pioneer in creating social content within the Amazon platform itself through user-based product reviews & customer discussions. However this new move allows Amazon to push content out into the establshed social networks.  And there are two key benefits.

The obvious one is greater brand visibility on Facebook/Twitter through increased social interactions.  But the second relates to search engine optimisation as social content becomes increasingly indexed and important to search algorithms.

I'm still not convinced that consumers want to share all their purchases socially  -  but we'll see.

And the Pixie Lott single was free.  Not that I am looking for an excuse, you know.

Twitter's new Activity feed

Today Twitter launched a new Facebook-style 'Activity' tab where users can view a stream of their followers' recent Twitter action.  So you can see who your followers have recently followed, who they have added to lists, or what tweets they have added to their favourites.

Additionally, the 'Mentions' tab has been replaced by a "@username" tab.  Here users can see an activity stream of those people who have retweeted, mentioned or followed them. 

The Activity tab is a neat feature that gives users a better sense of what's going on in their follower community.  No doubt it's designed to ensure continued follower-growth, but it will be most useful for brands & businesses.  It will give brands extra reach because every time they are followed the 'Activity' tab allows a much wider audience to be exposed to that brand interaction and to potentially follow that brand themselves.

A beginner's guide to 4G mobile services

4G is the name for the next (4th) generation of mobile services that are likely to be heading our way in 2013 and 2014. 

But what are these new standards and what do they mean for consumers?

Well, first and foremost, 4G will mean much faster internet connections for our mobile and wireless devices.  Initially, users will be getting mobile internet speeds  that will be comparable with current home broadband speeds (from 1Mbps up to 12Mbs) but, ultimately, 4G will reach speeds of up to 100Mbps.

This will mean that users will be able to download all types of multimedia content on-the-move: from playing on-line video games, downloading movies (and other large data files) and watching streaming high-definition video content.

The international standards are still being agreed for 4G, but currently there are three different protocols in the mix. These are: WiMAX, LTE & HSPA+.

1. WiMAX
WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.  It uses microwave technology to create a network of hotspots (very much like WiFi hotspots) that overlap to minimise black-spots/areas without a signal.  However, because it uses microwaves it has much less interference than WiFi and the range of each WiMAX transmitter can be up to 30miles.

In the US, the carrier Sprint is using WiMAX technology for its 4G services offering download speeds of up to 128Mbps.

2. LTE
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and is a competitor standard to WiMAX.  It uses radio waves and has been described as more of a 'successor' to the current GSM-based (Global System for Mobile communications) 3G mobile phone networks that we're all used to.  It's called Long Term Evolution as it has been seen as the evolution of both land-line & wireless internet connections.

Verizon's 4G service (again in the US) is based on LTE  offering data transfer speeds of up to 100Mbps.

3. HSPA+
This stands for Evolved High-Speed Packet Access.  In essence this is an extension of the current 3G technology - and so has been dubbed near-4G.  However it's not really a new 4th generation standard.


Now it's argued that the 'battle' between WiMAX and LTE is not really a battle of completely different standards.  Being based on the same OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) there may be opportunities for interoperability between the two systems.  And that would be a good thing from a user perspective - as the last thing users want is the 'gamble' of choosing one technology over another - only to be left backing the wrong horse.

However, as we've seen before with standards - these tend to get branded and badged (think Blu-ray vs HD-DVD) and, ultimately, consumers will select the handsets & tariffs that offer the most from these differing technologies.

The biggest issue will be the speed that the mobile and technology companies roll-out the infrastructure to support 4G.  In the UK the mobile operators are still paying off the £21bn they spent on 3G licences and so are have been slow in moving towards 4G.  Other countries, however, such as the US and Russia.are already rolling out services. 

There's no doubt that wireless internet is the future of an 'always connected' society.  4G will bring the speeds that we're familiar with at home and will mean the creation of new services and business models that weren't previously possible.     

Facebook introduces Smart Lists to compete with Google+ Circles

You may have noticed when logging into Facebook recently that it's added functionality to the way that users can update their Status.  The Status box now includes options for location, friends names and additional control over which friends get to see different status updates.  Now some of this functionality was already available on Facebook - but this revision to the Status box makes it easier to control these features.

Additionally, Mashable this week also revealed some screen shots of Facebook's new Smart Lists.  This will automatically group friends into one of three categories: 'work colleagues', 'old classmates' and those 'that live within 50 miles' of you.  This is intended to mirror the Google+ Circles so that the user can more easily choose how to share information with different groups of contacts.

Users will still be able to create custom lists using an updated Friends List tool (see below).

Smart Lists are is currently limited to select users prior to its roll-out.

Facebook switches on new facial recognition software

Anyone uploading a number of photos with friends in them may have noticed the new "Tag Suggestions" system from Facebook.  It uses facial recognition software to identify people's faces within your photographs as the photos are uploaded.  It then groups the faces it recognises as the same and even suggests a person's name if they are a friend.  It's really quite eerie.

As always there has been a great degree of controversy about this - but it looks like Facebook has silently rolled this out after an initial trial in the US.  Once again users are opted-in to the feature automatically - but this setting can be changes within privacy settings.

It’s the utility, stupid

Article first published as It's the Utility Stupid on Technorati.

Google+ is not a ‘product’ apparently.  It’s still a ‘project’.  And it’s out in what looks to be a limited beta release as ‘Field Trial’ – but which feels more like a ‘throttled release’ as new users can then start to pass invites on.  

Google clearly feels that this is all a work in progress. 

However, it doesn’t feel like work in progress. It has hit 10m users in a few short weeks making it one of the fastest growing network launches ever, according to Mashable. The interface is clean and slick – and Circles makes the concept of ‘groups’ easy to implement and manage.  Even the animation when you add a friend or contact to a group is a great little piece of interactive design.

And there are other features not found elsewhere.  ‘Sparks’ looks like it could build into a powerful content recommendation engine, especially once Google+ gains scale.  It also provides a good benefit for users to actually ‘Google +1’ content they find or that their friends may like.  It could also be strong opportunity to monetise the platform as brands looks to promote their own content.

‘Hangout’s are fundamentally video chat (though trying to get that to actually work is a little tricky) – and Facebook’s video chat via Skype looks like it could trump that feature right off the bat.

And I suppose that’s the problem with Google+ so far.  There’s no killer feature.  There’s no compelling reason why this should be my new social network of choice – no reason to give up Facebook.  And I don’t need yet another network in my life.

Even Google’s own FAQs include the question “Why don’t you have killer feature X?”.

So far, I wager that a large proportion of Google+’s growth has been driven by its limited access and exclusivity.  

It’s the power of scarcity. 

Everyone in the digerati wanted an invite and the power to send invites.  How many of Facebook’s News Feed updates were posted from Google+ - just to demonstrate one’s own personal sense of digital status?

But where’s Google+’s utility? Where does it add value to my life that no other platform does? Facebook created that social utility by connecting people with their friends - and it became the dominant social network by doing that better than anyone else.  And it continuously evolved functionality that was useful: from pokes, picture tagging, status updates to Like’s, Fan pages and Facebook plug-ins.

However, Facebook needs to continue being useful.  As Mark Choueke says in Marketing Week, unless it continues to evolve its utility, people will start to drift away from the constant wall of trivial personal updates and stilted brand updates.  (I’m really not sure I can take another brand asking what I am up to for the weekend, each Friday afternoon).

There is some interesting data that shows that although Facebook is growing globally, in some more mature markets Facebook is seeing a decline.  For example in the US (according to Inside Facebook) it lost 6 million users during May this year and in Canada it lost 8% of users (1.52million out of its 16.6m base).  

And this trend is mirrored in the UK. According to Hitwise, Facebook has also seen a declining market share losing ground to both Twitter and YouTube.   

Now, of course, this doesn’t for a second mean that this is even the beginning of the end for Facebook. 

But it does demonstrate the need to keep things fresh and, most importantly, useful.  It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s Skype partnership adds to its utility and how Google+ intends to create some significant space between it and Facebook.

Facebook's new messaging sidebar

Looks like Facebook is rolling out its new messaging toolbar.  Now only the centre of the page scrolls down - so users can move down through the News Feed etc but their side menu (on the left) and messaging sidebar (on the right) remain static.  The sidebar can be hidden -- but allows quick access to friends for messaging (including the new video call options).  Looks like inter-friend messaging is Facebook's new push.