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Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

December 10, 2009

Facebook New Privacy Settings… Better Now?!

Finally! Facebook has caved in and revamped their privacy system and settings in hopes of resolving some of its privacy woes. Hopefully, this new system will save some hapless chaps and gals  from losing their jobs because they can’t help themselves when it comes to over sharing.

So what are those new settings?

You can share yourself with ...

You can share yourself with ...

The new privacy option went live on Wednesday. Upon login the user will be forced (yes!) all 350 million of them, to set up his privacy settings and set up what he wants to share with whom. The new privacy settings will allow users more control and granularity over their content. Users will be able to define who sees information such as age, name, status updates, and photos based on three settings groups. You will be able to share your Facebook profile with either everyone, friends, or friends of friends. There is also a fourth setting that will allow you to create custom groups so you can keep that nosy boss of yours from seeing last Saturday’s rowdy party pics.

Also, Facebook has gotten rid of geographic networks, so you will no longer be part of the New York network or any other city, which I doubt anyone would miss. Those networks no longer have any significance since they have grown considerably and no longer provide the facility of connecting with others in your network since its almost like opening the yellow pages and trying to randomly dialing numbers. [read full article >>]

Filed under: Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 3:56 pm

October 13, 2009

Fact: Real-time Search Satisfies 40% of User Queries!

An interesting white paper published at OneRiot’s blog claims that 40% of users’ search queries across major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask are best satisfied by real-time search results. That is, indeed, quite an impressive number that shows the huge potential market for real-time search engines. It also – somehow – explains the huge buzz around Twitter and the continuous talk about the potential threat it poses to other traditional search engines, especially Google.

Real-time search engines fail to gain market share

Aside from Twitter, other – recently emerged – real-time search engines are finding a hard time proving their business model and gaining market share, in spite of the potential huge market. We, here at Thoughtpick, have been monitoring this market since our coverage of 9 real-time search engines a few months ago. Unfortunately, according to compete stats, there has been no major gains in the last 3 months, on the contrary, most services showed a decline in numbers of visitors. In fact, OneRiot which is the most successful in this category, with 150k more visitors than its second competitor Twingly, shows a drop of 100k visitors in the last 3 months.

Oneriot.com, Twingly, Collecta, Socialmention and Scoopler traffic [compete.com]

Oneriot, Twingly, Collecta, Socialmention and Scoopler traffic

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Future of the Web — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Fadi @ 4:30 pm

October 2, 2009

Google Wave: Revolutionizing Collaboration but Will the Wave Crash?

Since Google Wave’s unveiling in May, it was quite interesting to try to figure out heads or tails of how the application will be received once it’s released. And now, we are inching closer and closer to when it opens for the general public. Closed Beta testing has been open for a few chosen developers who have been actively providing feedback on Google products. Will Wave be able to create a tsunami upon its release?

So what is Wave?

Wave, in the word of its co-creator, Lars Rasmussen:

Google Wave

Google Wave

“Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

Wave’s Engulfing The Islands of  Sharepoint & Lotus

Given that we trust Google to provide us with intuitive user interfaces within a very low learning curve, its entry into the corporate world will be quite smooth and exponential - if we only consider those two facets - more about that later on.

The threat it poses is probably the greatest to IBM and Microsoft’s collaborative Business software. Combined with the other Google services and its source nature, it promises to take cloud computing and social networking to the next level.

[read full article >>]

Filed under: App Reviews, Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 4:41 pm

September 11, 2009

4 App Ideas to Expect When Location-Tweets Hit Mainstream

Trending Places

Trending Places

When people of Iran were enraged earlier this year, post the Iranian elections, people around the world were hooked on Twitter in order to get real-time news updates as it happened. Iranian authorities figured out the threat of Twitter, and sought after local Iranian twitterers based on their profile locations and time zone settings in order to shut them down. People around the world wanted to help those protesters, and started changing their own profiles to make it seem as if they all live in Iran in order to make Iranian authorities mission harder.

That is something from the past, 3 months have passed, today, Twitter is working on adding geo-locations to tweets which will allow us to signal the exact location of where we are tweeting from by allowing apps to attach our latitude and longitude coordinates to tweets we specifically choose to carry such information. That will sure open a whole new dimension to real-time location information.

4 applications you can expect when location-tweets hit mainstream…

What does real-time location tweets mean? and how will it affect our lives? We know that it raises privacy concerns for many legitimate reasons, but we also know that it can be the next big thing which will open the door for many useful applications to take advantage of, and thus we, here at Thoughtpick, decided to voice out what kind of applications we see hitting our doors in the near future:

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Fadi @ 8:25 pm

July 24, 2009

Startup advice: A Metropolitan 4-Layered View of the Web & Time Invested

Most people invest a great multitude of both time and effort into the Web. Some of them like to share thoughts and media content, while others seek to share their experiences through specialized blogs. Regardless of the effort any of us provides, every time we use the web, we expect something in return; whether it be self satisfaction, money or reach. With that said, for each level of effort invested, there is a different ROI that can be expected or even reached as a maximum.

Busy New York - by Amy Strycula

Busy New York - by Amy Strycula

Through extensive research and my humble experience, I was able to come up with an analogy of the Web’s contribution levels comparing it with a city made up of 4 different layers.

1. The Web Citizen:

The web citizen is the minimal level of web existence and it requires less effort, money and/or time in order to become a part of an online community. For example, uploading a YouTube video, posting a comment, or uploading a couple of photos to Flickr. There is no question that these events add value to the Web, and give personal satisfaction to the user. But can a user, with more time and resources, do more, and give back more to the Web?

That’s where the second level comes to play…

2. The Cafes & Restaurants of the Internet – the communities:

This is the community and social circles part of our city analogy including blogs, YouTube channels, Facebook and Twitter social circles. By creating an account on any of these, you build a community around yourself (or brand). Now, the effort you’re spending is more organized, benefiting more people, and in return benefiting you by allowing you to reach more people, and maybe make a bit of money if you add adverts to your Blog or YouTube channel. But information, videos and photos are so common, and there is nothing you cannot find online if you look in the right places.

The next level up is offering Web utilities and services…

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations, Research-Based Topics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 2:50 pm
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