The new version of TweetDeck (v0.30) has added MySpace and Facebook into its pack of Twitter powered features.

Many users swear by TweetDeck’s groups which allow them to organize their Twitter stream into bite size chunks. The same concept has been applied to Facebook too. TweetDeck users can now organize their friends on Facebook into smaller groups, view photos, videos, links, wall posts and more in TweetDeck. Just a few clicks, and you can write on your Facebook wall, comment and make update Pages directly from TweetDeck.

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Recently I was introduced to a site which has a nice matrix of comparison of online video sharing sites based on the following parameters:

• Price
• Converts file?
• Download files?
• Max upload size
• Storage space
• Privacy
• Time Limit
• Revenue sharing
• Ease of account creation
• Ease of Uploading a video
• Video quality
• Recording tools
• Editing tools
• ….

you can find it here: http://www.blogtechguy.com/video_ebook/video_comparison_matrix.html

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 Recently I was introduced to a very useful service for people who are into videos and have a need of submitting their videos to online video networks. You can be an Individual,  Company, Marketer, Web Agency or an Artist.

It is called hey! spread and using the tool you can submit your video files to the best video networks out there. You need to have accounts on all the supported networks on which you want to submit your videos.

The list of supported networks includes:

• YouTube
• MySpace
• Google Videos
• Yahoo Videos
• Dailymotion
• Blip.tv
• Photobucket
• Metacafe
• Bolt
• Putfile

The limits on the video are around 10 min and 100 MB.

Submission is a three step process. In the first step you upload your video file (with a title, description, tags and a category information)

In step two: you need to enter your login details for all the supported networks on which you have accounts.

In step three you have an option to receive all your links in an email to you.

By paying a fees, you can also get your video network listed there.

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The Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama has launched his own social network called MyBarackObama.com.  The site invites supporters to create a profile, blog their campaign experiences, plan and attend events, find other supporters, and help raise funds for the campaign. Obama already has an official presence on Facebook and YouTube.

Online videos seem to be very popular among the presidential candidates this time: Democrat potential candidate Barack Obama has a channel on Brightcove, along with Republican Sam Brownback, while others such as Chris Dodd (Democrat) are using YouTube.

In the age of social networks, sites like YouTube, MySpace, Brightcove etc. allow presidential candidates to reach millions of users, allowing them to connect to people as well as collect fund for their campaign.

Source: Barack Obama launches social network

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Proto.in - a premier event to showcase new products, technologies and companies to a selected gathering in India (on the lines of DEMO in US) - held from Jan 20-21st, 2007 was a huge success and 27 companies were showcased out of the 40 that were shortlisted.

I am going to interview few companies from the shortlisted companies in this multi-post series.

The first in this series is SaffronConnect which is a South Asian social networking site focused on audio and video content sharing and download. It was officially launched in October 2006. SaffronConnect.com is funded by Duggal Dimensions, LLC., a New York based company providing Visual Solutions to the Image Makers. It is being managed by Divine Arts Inc., a California based company providing digital distribution services for content from the Indian subcontinent.

In an interview with SaffronConnect I asked Manu Kaushish (CEO, SaffronConnect) some basic questions and here are the answers to them (received via Alisa Patel, Public Relations, Saffron-Media LLC)

Q. What is SaffronConnect all about?

SaffronConnect.com is a social networking and music distribution portal that is centered around music from the Indian sub-continent. It allows content owners such as bands/musicians/artists/record labels to upload, distribute and monetize their content for downloads on sites such as iTunes, Real Networks, Yahoo Music, SaffronConnect and more and allows music fans to network and connect with their favorite bands/musicians/artists/record labels.

The portal also integrates social networking features such as web profiles,
blogs, instant messaging, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups,
chatrooms, and user forums to create a connected community of Indians.
SaffronConnect brings features of iTunes and MySpace into one platform -
targeted towards the market from the Indian sub-continent.

Q. How and what inspired this idea?

In 2004, Real Networks, Inc., looking for legal downloadable Indian music content, approached Divine Arts, Inc. that had recently started aggregating content from India. Divine Arts, Inc. struck a deal with Saregama India Limited (one of India’s oldest music companies) for digital content aggregation & distribution. Divine Arts, Inc. began providing music content to Real Networks. They went on further to signs distribution agreements with over 100 digital download stores. Independent artists begin contacting Divine Arts for Self-Distribution and users started demanding more Independent music content from the Indian Sub-continent. This led to the launch of SaffronConnect.

Q. What are the revenue streams?

• Online advertising sales, online content promotion sales.
• 30% of the revenue from all content sold on SaffronConnect or on all distribution channels including iTunes, Real Networks, Yahoo Music and more.
• SMS revenue from photo sharing mobile product (currently being tested)

Q. What technologies does SaffronConnect use?

PHP/MySQL/Integration APIs for music conversion and distribution.

Q. What are the future plans?

Our immediate plans are around adding mobile products such as uploading photos directly from mobile phones to the site. We are also working on adding television tie-ins for featuring content from our site.

I went ahead and played around with the site a little bit and would like to summarize the site features:

Music: Members can search, play, and download music based on albums, new releases, genres etc. Artists can upload music for sale and distribution.
Browse: Members can search for friends, update profiles, chat, and see who is online.
Gallery: Members can post photographs to be viewed by other members
Rate: Members can rate photographs and users.
Blogs: Members can post blogs as well as share thoughts and ideas.
Events: Members can post and browse city specific events.
Groups: Members can join different groups based on interests, etc…
Forum: Members can post questions and initiate discussions.
Poll: Members can post questions online and get feedback.

The site has a very user friendly interface and I liked the flash-based audio player. Their Alexa rank as of today stands at 79,367.

A report from Soundbuzz suggests that India will become the second market (after South Korea) where digital music sales overtake those of physical. Over-the-air will be the major driver as broadband uptake (currently around 2M subscribers) is low and the market is more culturally-focused on mobile. FiveEight magazine say that the value of the Indian music industry stood at $329M in 2005, but could leap almost threefold to $930M by 2009; of this, mobile will account for a staggering $810M (up from $102M in 2005). Physical sales, meanwhile, could slump from $22.7M to $11.36M over the same period. Beyond India, Soundbuzz is predicting that mobile sales across the Asia Pacific region will leap from $2.89B in 2005 to $8.57B by 2009.

The future looks bright for SaffronConnect as the digital media market is sure to grow exponentially. I anticipate lot of new site like this to spring up in near future.

SaffronConnect have received some decent press coverage and here are links to some of them:

The Economic Times
November 13, 2006 : Cashing in on community

DNA INDIA
October 24, 2006 : Desi tunes get wired

Yahoo News
October 17, 2006 : Launch of Premier Online Music and Social Networking Destination

WebYantra.com
October 12, 2006 : PROTO…showcasing the best Indian tech startups

WebYantra.com
October 3, 2006 : SaffronConnect..music centered social networking site for South Asians

IndianTelevision.com
October 3, 2006 : South Asian music & social networking portal SaffronConnect.com launched

IndiaPRWire
October 3, 2006 : Launch of the Premier Online South Asian Music & Social Networking Destination - SaffronConnect.com

I wish the very best to SaffronConnect.

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Libraries have been the storehouse of knowledge for centuries. People go to libraries to enjoy the quietness and immerse themselves into reading. But all this is changing.

In Belgium, librarians Eric Van der Straeten and Danny Theuwis began experimenting with the idea of libraries as a social gathering place - not just for the teens but for adults too. It is speed-dating, but in a new setting - with books.They call it “bib-dating” (Dutch for library-dating).

Mr Theuwis experimented with the idea three years ago, combining 14 single bookworms - most between 18 and 35 - with novels. “I got some flowers for the tables, candles and gave those who came a glass of red wine,” he said. “I got a lot of e-mails after that saying it was a pity it was only a one-off.”

The pair have conducted sessions at the Antwerp’s Dutch-language Permeke library to train librarians from 306 libraries on hosting bib-dating.

Here is how it works:

Participants begin by drawing a question, for example, what was your favorite book as a child. They go around the room with the question and mingle. For the second round, readers reach for the three favorite books or passages they were asked to bring, and like speed dating, share their thoughts one-to-one with others for a few minutes before switching to a new partner. At the end of the session, participants fill in a note to be placed in the book of the person they would like to meet again. “The ultimate is to plan another bib-date, or meet elsewhere in the library”.

It is a safe way to meet up with people who share your interests in literature. Lot of libraries have caught up on this and are turning into cultural hub.

State Library of Victoria in Australia started Text Appeal: Literary Dating, a new take on the traditional dating formula wherein each person brings a book which acts as a conversation starter. Jane Austen may find Patrick O’Brien, Salman Rushdie could be captivated by Zadie Smith, and JK Rowling - can take her pick. The books people bring may reveal who they are, who they aren’t and perhaps who they are looking for, all in a three-minute conversation. It started in December of 2006 and will continue till 14th February, 2007.

 Which brings me to social networks around this idea. LibraryThing, which is still in beta, is creating a community of people where each individual can enter what he/she is reading or his/her whole library. LibraryThing connects users based on the books they share.

There is an interesting news on literary-dating being tried in a Boston-area bookstore: The book of love: Literary Speed Dating brings author-ity to singles’ events.

There is still some time before the Valentine’s day, may be you can convince your library to host bib-dating

Source: Looking for Love

Technorati Tags: bib-dating, - literary-dating, - valentine’s-day, - library-dating, - dating, - books, - library, - LibraryThing, - love, - text-appeal, - literary-dating

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In his blog post titled A couple updates …, Digg founder Kevin Rose announced that they were going to take off the “Top Diggers” page. This decision he cited was taken in light of the fact that some top diggers were being blamed by some outlets as leading efforts to manipulate Digg. He also goes ahead to say that the decision to remove the “Top Diggers” page was taken after considerable internal debate and consultation with many of those who make up the top digger list.

In reply to that, Christopher Finke used screen scrapping techniques to create his own (unofficial) list of top 100 Digg users here. He could do that because the information is still available on Digg on each user’s profile page It is generated by tracking the stories that hit the homepage and the users that submitted them, not simply by grabbing the rank value on each profile page. It then uses the last available data available from the official Top Users list to determine the latest top users[Thanks for the feedback Christopher Finke]. His reasoning was that people who have worked hard to submit content should be given proper recognition.

I came across another post here where in randfish presents an interesting analysis on how top 100 Digg users control 56% of Digg’s home page content. This shows that a select group of users is dominating the home page content. That means they carry the potential within them to promote things they want.

All this made me thinking on whether removal of the top Digg users page was right or not.

I think that Kevin took that step in good faith but that was not the right way to handle this situation. You cannot/should not give power to the users and then cut that power out when you desire. It is just like saying, you have a democracy and if you select a bad leader, we will overrule people’s verdict.

Here is what he could have done or should do (it is not too late):

1) Open the discussion to Digg users and let them decide on this, let them vote on it. Digg has become synonymous with user power so no decision like this should be taken within a selected group of people. It should be taken by the Digg community.

2) He should have tried to identify or detect patterns in the postings of the Top Diggers to see if they are doing some manipulation. If not then let it slip by and if yes then take action against those users (by bringing them in the limelight). If nothing is being done intentionally then there is no one at fault.

I sincerely wish of Digg to come out of this clean and I do not wish any of the honest Top Diggers to suffer or miss the limelight they used to have on the Top Diggers page.

I look forward to comments/thoughts/opinion of the user community on this topic.

Technorati tags: Digg, Top Diggers, Removal of Top Diggers page, Christopher Finke , unofficial top diggers page, Kevin Rose

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Orkut is celebrating its 3rd birthday. I was introduced to Orkut by my wife and I really liked the ease of usage. I also liked the fact that I could find lot of my high school and undergrad friends out there in India on Orkut.

Some background on Orkut:

Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Facebook and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called “communities”) of users. Until recently, Orkut was invitation only, but it now permits users to create accounts without an invitation.

The number of Brazilian Orkut users is just under 59% of the total users, followed by The United States and India, with about 16.5% and 12.5%. As of January 22, 2006, the number of members was over 40.42 million.

I had a believe that Orkut is picking up within the user community, if not in U.S., definitely in India. To convince myself, I did Alexa search for some leading social networking sites (MySpace, Orkut, Xanga, Hi5, Facebook) and here is a snapshot of their daily reach (as per Alexa):

(click on the image to enlarge it)

As you can see Orkut was slow in growth for most of first half of 2006 but after that it has gained momentum and is catching up with MySpace.

What I personally like about Orkut is the ability to connect to people from various countries, which MySpace lacks to a great extent.

Orkut has recently introduced a new service Orkut SMS. With Orkut’s new SMS feature, you can scrap your friends, look up their contact information and receive scrap notifications. Now you can send scraps from the bus, bar or bathroom, and your friends can get notified of those scraps when on bicycle, beach or bed.

Considering the fact that SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores update, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS, Orkut should see substantial growth in near future in India.

TechBuzz has an article covering Orkut’s birthday and the new SMS feature.

answers.com carries a list of various kinds of social networking sites with their user count here.

Technorati Tags: orkut, alexa, hi5, myspace, facebook, xanga, social networks, birthday

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