Social Apps by SocialBoy

discovered my own blog today

niyogi — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:24:00 +0000

Wow – just discovered this blog 3 years after I last posted anything (and all due to updating a Gravatar image). who knew?

For now, I blog at http://niyogi.tumblr.com. Wish there were a way to cross-blog (there probably is).

Developer egos disgust me

niyogi — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:20:21 +0000

I’ve noticed through many interactions with individual developers and app companies how unbelievably proud they are. They carry conversations like kings of the hill and as if their applications are works of wonder. Frankly speaking, they think they are hot shit.

I sincerely feel bad for the ad networks serving social app platforms trying to convince developers to use their network. Conversations with developers must be hair-pulling.

The problem is that as much buzz as surrounds social applications, the market is pretty tiny with just the bulk of app volume being made up by about 2 to 3 dozens distinct entities. It’s just a matter of time until there are as many monetization companies as there app developers! Then it’ll be a real circus!

A winning social media strategy for Brands

niyogi — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 05:45:02 +0000

UHere’s the theory: Brands feel so insecure about spreading awareness through social media that they resort to “loud” methods such as plastering their message and logo in ads, social applications, and other promotional vehicles. This post is about what I’ve observed to be a very successful social media strategy where a brand builds a social application but employs subtle tactics in getting their brand “out there”.

Take a look at the Facebook application Parking Wars. 482,000 monthly active users – not bad. The owner? A&E television. I wasn’t even sure what the connection between the two was until I read the description but I *think* that was the point. The logo is planted fairly lightly on the About Page of the application and when you add the app, you’ll notice that apart from the logo in the heading and a small promotion of another TV show in the corner, that’s about the only branding they do.

The non-intrusive stance taken in the design and deployment of this app is the reason the application is as successful as it is. It’s possible the number of daily active users has trickled over the months since it was initially launched but still admirable for how it has held on considering the category of it’s proprietor A&E.

In contrast, Target and Coke joined forces to create an application called Target and Coke Virtual Dorm. 6500 monthly active users (the application is fairly new) but not in a position to succeed (other than by brute force promotion on the ad networks such as Rock You or SocialMedia. A couple of problems:

The About Page looks like a page out of a retailer circular – that is a turn OFF
The application itself makes you feel like you feel like there is a catch when you’re using it.

The fact is: social networking “users” (read: people) have brand radars in their heads and just do not like brands meddling with their experience. While brands aim to get eyeballs in front of their logo, users actually repel from these initiatives. Better that a brand simply sponsor an application by almost being out of the way with a logo in the corner or on specific pages.

Friendster is OpenSocial-zied but half-baked

niyogi — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:43:05 +0000

Well, here I go again regurgitating news you probably already know: Friendster now supports OpenSocial. I had an opportunity to try the platform and am unhappy to report: it’s half-baked. A few things you cannot do (yet):

add any real viral channel to your app (you can’t post Activities, send Notification Messages, or share the App – I’ve personally gotten many “notImplemented” errors when trying myself)
add icons to your OpenSocial app – you CAN however add icons to a Friendster widget
submit your OpenSocial application to the directory
get a response back from Developer Support about problems you’re having

While it’s fantastic that Friendster has finally jumped on the OpenSocial bandwagon (it took about an hour to port my app over from another OpenSocial container to Friendster), it really is frustrating when things don’t work exactly how they are suppose to. I must mention that other OpenSocial containers also have half-baked OpenSocial implementations out in the wild. Myspace has a fairly crippled version of OpenSocial and Bebo doesn’t even support it even though it is listed as an OpenSocial partner.

Hi5 is probably the most “advanced” user of OpenSocial with bold moves such as releasing real viral channels and keeping in tune with the OpenSocial shindig project.

Considering Facebook has the most successful application platform around (largely due to being the first mover in the space) and because viral channels were very liberal when it was first launched, you’d think that the others would follow suite and be even MORE liberal (not the opposite). What to say.

OpenSocial progress is so unbelievably slow…

niyogi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:21:54 +0000

I’ve been working with the OpenSocial platform for a while now and what can I say other than that it is not moving forward as fast as the Internet! We’ve been at version 0.7 for months now and are tapping fingers for the next version since before 0.7 came out.

Viral channels are missing or are crippled. The Myspace implementation is not in any way catching up with Facebook (due to the platform being mismanaged and a premature policing on the viral channels). It is ridiculous that publishers cannot even decide what text in notification messages they’d like to have anchor linked to the app. If Myspace had any smart folks in the Platform group, they would know that the way to catch UP to Facebook in terms of a platform strategy would be to completely RELEASE viral channels and let users go nuts and invite their friends. I hardly think Myspace cared that much about the user experience considering they follow an “open” garden philosophy than a “walled” one.

What is the big deal with Twitter?

niyogi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:55:38 +0000

The blogosphere rattles with information about Twitter almost daily. Here’s one post about Twitter moving down the road. Who the hell cares? Another post on Techcrunch about how they are pulling service in UK should indicate to all the fanboys out there that they don’t really know what they are doing with the service. If my company gave a way free BMWs, I’d have a pretty rad company – that wouldn’t necessarily mean I was newsworthy the way Twitter has been.

The company doesn’t have a revenue model and gets more press coverage than it deserves. Techcrunch repeatedly runs stories about uptime/downtime of the service and it’s not used a whole lot by folks outside the state of California.

In a twist of irony, I say the following: bloggers blog for the sake of blogging sometimes. They have nothing to write about, so content is “invented” to take up what should or could just be empty space. Now’d I’d probably do the same if blogging were my business, but still – not on Twitter and perhaps something that really rivals the stories in the New York Times perhaps?

Scrabulous gets shut down. Good.

niyogi — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:52:31 +0000

The blogosphere’s been buzzing about Scrabulous getting shut down by Facebook. It seems the general public opinion is that Scrabulous did what Hasbro should have done with the game on the platform. What people should think about is the fact that Scrabulous was built on a game brought forth into our lifestyle as a direct result of the marketing and availability of the game on store shelves that Hasbro paid for. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if the name weren’t to bear any resemblance to “Scrabble”, it wouldn’t have done as well as it did. Yes, names matter that much.

Facebook has relatively speaking been a “free for all” development zone and the maintainers have until recently been taking a “let the markets decide” approach decide to almost anything: from what happens when you allow too many notification requests to be sent to letting sleazy mobile offers litter the application landscape. Eventually, however, these things have to be taken seriously enough that intervention is required – and so Facebook takes this step. Hasbro did start their legal pursuit of Scrabulous several months ago – back then Facebook did not touch Scrabulous. However (and this is pure speculation), if Hasbro wants to market their application through the Facebook advertising platform, a conflict of interest emerges.

Scrabulous, good luck.

Thanks for visiting!

niyogi — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:57:16 +0000

I’ve been building social applications since the launch of the F8 platform last May and have been involved with social advertising since that time. I’ve seen the ins and outs of almost every aspect of the social apps space – working with Fortune 500 clients to lifting apps off the ground for tiny companies thinking they have the Next Big Thing.

It’s about time I get my thoughts down somewhere and so that is what this intends to be – a scratchpad for things I am thinking about related to all things related to social applications, social media, and social networks.

I will do a lot of regurgitation of media pieces covered by other blogs – but only because I believe its fair that even their insight be critiqued the same way they take the democratic liberty to voice their opinions.

Subscribe to the RSS feed now and stay tuned for regular updates (sometimes short and sweet, sometimes a long ramble, hopefully always beneficial to you in some shape or form)