Facebook Timeline predict the future?

Have you inserted photos into your timeline in the past? You have, haven't you. Carefully constructing the past on your timeline, the college photos, the old vacations, even the baby photos. Not just personal timelines, but also the world Timeline is being filled in too. Example, did you know you can check out the Timeline of the 2nd World War as it unfolded.

What started off as a sequential Timeline to record your Now moments as you post, has also taken on the role of recording the past. Lets us time travel and reverse into our pasts. That got me thinking... so, if we can Reverse into our past on Timeline, can we then also Fast Forward into our future on Timeline?

Figment of my imagination? Think again - it's hypothetically very possible. How? Facebook's other new feature - the Graph Search.

It's the pattern analysis / predictive technology behind the Graph Search could hold the key to the Future. Facebook analyses your Like!s, posts, comments, locations, and makes predictions that helps your friends search for you, or for you to search for them and practically anything else. Example, "friends who like sushi and are going on vacation to Europe this summer"

As the old saying goes (and also remembering my history teacher in school who repeatedly emphasized the relevance of learning history), "by studying the past, we can predict the future". Facebook could use all that pattern analysis to predict what you might do tomorrow. Based on predictive extrapolation and geographic data, Facebook could hypothetically predict who you might bump into "coincidentally" at the airport. How about predicting the cliched "romance is in the air as the planet of love moves into your star" - that could very well be Facebook knowing someone's secretly in love with you! I can see the marketing caption "Facebook - the new Horoscope, more accurate than any other cos its real science!"

I digress. Predicting personal future on the Timeline is fun but what would make much more impact would be predicting the World. The future of Mankind. It is hypothetically possible.

For now, after happily playing with Timeline the Now, and then Timeline the Past, I'm ready for Timeline the Future. The current Timeline stops at Now. It would be so awesome to be able to just slide it forward into the future, and discover your future life, perhaps you attending your favorite band's concert coming up (hint: advertising dollars!!!). Facebook Timeline the Future would also be so one-up on the upcoming Google Now, which Google is promising would stay one step ahead of you and show you everything you want to know now before you know it. Why just one step ahead when you can fast forward into the future - just slide on the Timeline into the Future - time travel is real - the Future is Now, Now is the Future. I'm ready for Timelining into my Future.

That Parallel Universe - s01e01 - something about WeChat, Facebook video call, morphing clones and all that

I was reading this article about how Facebook is trying out video calls in their messenger app (WIRED: Facebook Could Bury Video Calling Partner Skype...) I can’t help thinking : the social media in that parallel universe (aka China) is actually one-up on this one. Traditionally more known for its “cloning” ability rather than one-up-ness, where each newborn Social Media killer-app would generate similar clone(s) in the parallel universe, the social media giants of China seem to be finding their own feet.

For months, I’ve actually been happily been using video calls (and also video calls without the video) from within my social media hangout/ecosystem on the phone, without thinking much about it. It’s just there without much fanfare. Done it on wifi, done it on 3G as well - the audio call qualities were certainly good enough for business discussions too (not the choppy “hello hello do you hear me” kind in the early days of VOIP).

It’s WeChat (Weixin as it is more commonly known in China). So what is this WeChat?

Well it was born more like Whatsapp, once it’s installed, it reads your mobile phone book and tells you everyone in it that also has WeChat installed, after which you can message each other... very much like Whatsapp. Then it developed further.

Added “Moments”, a facebook/instagram like feature where you can make posts (with up to 9 photos per post) and friends could “Like” and/or comment. That morphed the Whatsapp-clone into Facebook/Twitter type of ecosystems of social hangouts. Like any ecosystems, it could have been embarrassing quiet with little activity. No worries here, partly helped by the fact the its parent is Tencent (the company’s other product is QQ, the ICQ-clone which morphed into hands down still the largest social media ecosystem in China. I’ll write more about that in another post)

Within 14 months of WeChat launch, it hit the 100 million users benchmark in March 2012. Impressive, isn’t it? Now what do you think of this... the next 100 million came within a mere 6 months! Yes, by Sep 2012, WeChat had 200 million users. And as I write this, the Jan 2013 figures shows it has gone past 300 million users (that’s a 100 million in a little over 3 months) While that’s still a farcry from Facebook’s Billion, it’s not hard to gasp at 300 million users in 24 months. And mind you, it’s not just numbers - as a user it is VERY noticeable too how many more friends are on there now and how much more bustling it has become.

So back to the video calling function, I do look forward to Facebook rolling out the feature to everyone (instead of iOS-USA only as it is now), so I speak with friends in this world (WeChat’s footprint in this world is as close to zero as you could get, zero, nought, nihil).

And then back the topic of that parallel world - over there these days it’s not just about cloning where the copy is a lesser product anymore you know. That was one era ago. It’s on to the next era now where the born-clones has a very vibrant and enormous environment, full of nutrients and resources, to grow in its own way such that it exceeds its origin. Ahhh how sweet, isn’t that what every parent wants of their offspring? Would the clone’s origins feel the same of their clones too : ) Or would we all start running around clutching our hair screaming “end of the world - end of the world - clones that think - clones are taking over the world”

Whatever your perspective is - positive or negative, engage or barricade - that parallel universe is there, not going away, alive and kicking, breathing and growing. And quite often than not, surprisingly different from your mental image and can be refreshingly new.

[note: Please don’t take this blog tooo seriously. It’s written light-heartedly, time off from all the serious thinking, always from my perspective with a dash of my oddball humor. I do invite you to a conversation if something I wrote interests you and you’ve got something to say - positive or negative, serious or light-hearted - conversations are always welcome]

What if +1 was named +Godzillion…

Google’s +1 has not been doing well in getting followers to click on that +1 Button. Just passed its half month mark, +1 is only managing single digits where right next to it, the rival buttons are getting 10s, 100s, 1000s of Likes, Tweets and so forth. I’ve written an article today on Bright Side of News looking at exactly how bad (or good) +1 is now. In short, not good. The news vine is also starting to write about this disappointing start. What’s wrong? Is it too harsh to start judging +1 now already?

It’s already tough enough to be doing catch up against the golden boys Facebook and Twitter, much less saddled with a bad start. Adding followers one at a time is not quite going to work. Just imagine how different it could be if only +1 was named +Godzillion right from the start…

Check out my +1 reporting on Bright Side of News here : Is Google +1 Yet Another Social Media Dud?

ps. remember to +1 the articles! Without the power of +Godzillion, Google needs every +1 of you…

Happy (belated) Birthday IBM : 100 Years Old

IBM, a name we don’t hear much anymore. Not in the feeds, not in the tweets. IBM, the mighty Apple-killer… I have fond memories of how I traded in my Apple II compatible for an IBM PC compatible. I wrote a blog post today about it - which is now published on BrightSideofNews.com (BSN*) - reflecting on its past glory, a gentle reminder that the movers and shakers of today - Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Nokia (this one might be on the way already) - could be the grandpa’s of tomorrow.

Have you also once had an IBM PC back then? Did you also totally miss this 100 year old birthday? Can’t be bothered? Feel free to share your thoughts, and memories about it. Comment here, or Twitter @AddLikeFollow

Happy (belated) Birthday IBM : 100 Years Old!
IBM had its 100th birthday yesterday, and I missed it. I did see the news flash by yesterday in by daily news watch, but I was just too busy to write about it. It wasn’t on my to-write list, not on my agenda and disappointingly not on my social media birthday calendars which I have come to rely on. Facebook, Skype, MSN, LinkedIn, iPhone, you name it… noone reminded me of his birthday, shame on you. In fact, probably the only reason it is being news’ed about is because a publisher is pimping the book IBM 100 Years! If IBM has become so off-center in our worlds today, why then do I feel compelled to write about it? And felt it was worth writing about a birthday a day late? … read more here …

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/6/17/happy-(belated)-birthday-ibm-100-years-old!.aspx

Lovers Spurned #1 : Facebook & Apple

Earlier this month, Apple announced and showed off “deep integration” of Twitter in the new iOS 5. Meaning wherever an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch goes, Twitter is there - the hot new celeb couple in town!

News (and gosh leaked photos too) is circulating in the feeds showing Apple’s ex-lover to be none-other than Facebook – Twitter’s archrival. The circulating pictures of unreleased betas are showing that same “deep integration” with Facebook, exactly where Twitter is now. After all Facebook is the undisputed king of social media, many times larger than Twitter.

How did that Apple and Facebook relationship run into the rocks? Is it a clash of egos? Jealousy? Who ditched whom? Some say the cracks started with the Apple’s Ping social music network which was supposed to be a service with “iTunes on Facebook”. Some say it’s because of Facebook being in bed already with Microsoft in Windows Phone 7.

Whatever it is, Apple’s jumping straight into bed with arch rival Twitter is surely not making things smoother. So, skip the “let’s be friends” politeness, and get straight into the cat fight of spurned lovers. meowwrrrrrr.

Facebook attacking Apple with HTML5 App Store for iOS devices
Coming soon Facebook’s very own App Store for your iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch. Seriously. Currently the only way to get apps are through Apple’s iTunes Apps. Facebook is determined to break that monopoly and shift Apple users onto Facebook’s own ecosystem. The project is still in development, a pure coincidence that it is being leaked now, right after the leaks of the Apple-Facebook integration.

Apple Game Center in iOS 5 mirrors Facebook gaming
An amazing 53% of Facebook users play games on Facebook. Based on the latest numbers of 700m Facebook users, it means Facebook Games has more than 350m gamers! Far far ahead of the last September launched Apple Game Center with 50m subscribers. So to compete, Apple is launching new look and new features in iOS 5 that makes Game Center more like Facebook’s Games page!

Actions of a spurned lover? Or root of the break-up? Watch out. Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned.

Dumb and dumber is more numbers

Before you jump to conclusion, this post is not about the movie dumb and dumber, although it is in the field of entertainment – games, phone games, social games to be precise. We play games to entertain ourselves and sometimes to socialise – traditionally it would be a game of cards, chess, hide and seek, or even table tennis. That brings me to Pong, the forefather of electronic games. Since then computing power and hardware abilities has grown massively in one direction. Each new game machine delivered more, faster, higher def. With more processing power crunching more graphics, the games got more high definition, more realistic, more complex, more sensational. Games started to look and feel like Hollywood, and costs more to produce and even more to buy.

Well that is until Nintendo’s Wii came along a couple of years ago, totally reversing the trend. With less development resources and less money to risk, Nintendo could not take on Microsoft and Sony in the game of biggger badder hardware and epic game developments. Cleverly, Wii went back to the basics, simple, fun and enterta( ining. You don’t need to spend hours building up your character, or understanding the plot. Not only Pa and Ma can play, even Grandpa, Grandma and baby sis can play too! Now that´s numbers!

The runaway success of Wii has proven dumber is more numbers! More fun, simpler to play, more people can and will play.

So what’s next? What is dumber than Wii games… yup… phone games, social media games. Even shorter, even simpler, even more no-brainer so you can simply stop thinking and just play. Game over? Try again. Try again. I swear just one more time. The popularity of Angry Birds just knows no boundaries!

This is the article I came across last week that started me thinking about simple mindless games – Apple’s Game Center outnumbers Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Fact is, Apple’s Game Center (think iPhone/iPad app games) has hit 50m members in just NINE months, overtaking Xbox Live’s 35m members which has been running much longer. The picture used in this article is the introduction of Apple’s Game Center just September last year. 50m in just this 9 months!

iPhone/iPad games, Android games, Facebook games… even Skype has joined in with Skype game. I wonder what will a Twitter game look like (edit: hitting that ReTweet button 5ox a minute is NOT a game). The days of dumb and dumber games has just started. Well as the saying goes in marketing, Keep It Simple and Stupid. Watch the numbers grow!

Will you be Facebook-ing on dutch design Sofa?

The saying goes “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. Everyone knows this. Apply this to company acquisitions, and this is exactly what Facebook has done in buying Sofa, a design-interface-software company based in (i.e. till now) Amsterdam, best known for Mac apps like Kaleidoscope and Versions.

“The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto in the coming weeks – and we’ll make sure to infuse some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook” – says Sofa on its blog

The news broke already late last week, especially the dutch media seems thrilled with this acknowledgment of dutch design prowess. I thought and wondered… here’s a team of design talents letting go of its past work, uprooting and shipping themselves across the oceans. There must be more than exciting opportunities, there must be creative space! At least I sure hope so for the Sofa team.

Indeed, the Facebook acquisition of Sofa is not about buying the software products in the company’s portfolio. Products are specifically left OUT of the deal. It’s all about buying the Sofa Team, the team that creates not only great working software, but also great looking software – it’s the experience they create. “Buy a great product; you have a product for today. Buy an awesome team; and you have awesome products for a lifetime.”

“The team will contribute to a wide selection of the products that the design team works on. Typically, each Facebook product has a designer who is a core part of the team.” – says Facebook in a statement

Take a look at Sofa’s past work Kaleidoscope, Versions, Checkout, Enstore and their website / blog. Check out their app/web design style and interface.

With social media as hot as it is, competition from Twitter following right on their heels and Google fuming green with envy, Facebook is upping their game with hyperactivity - changes and new features like Happening Now, FriendFeed, Facebook Lite etc. In a time where User Interface shapes user behavior, this is a truly timely acquisition.

Will Facebook start looking and feeling like Twitter? Will Twitter start looking and feeling like Facebook? Will I be Twittering from Facebook? Or Facebooking from Twitter? Or will I Facebook/Twitter in Google or iOS? The kettle is boiling as we speak and the landscape is about change.

Where will they put their brand new Sofa shipped in all the way from Amsterdam? Or will each and every programmer, developer, marketer and all get to rest their creativity bums on their very own dutch-flavored Sofa? Or will the Sofa simply be left in a corner in the recreation room? Time will tell how much Dutch user interface and design signature we will see.

As a user, I’ll be looking forward to enjoying a Facebook on my dutch Sofa.

Good luck, goede reis en veel succes!

What’s social hierarchy gotta do with marketing?

So you watched the video and had a laugh? Jokes aside, did you notice the pick order of the pack? The obvious ones, The Leader (Google), The Loser (MySpace), The Challenger (Facebook) and the rest.

In every group environment, there is a social hierarchy – there is always an unofficial leader and more often than not, also an unofficial loser who seems to be at the receiving end of jokes and yet still does his best to be part of the group. Some of the other common characters are the challenger, the clown, the worker-bee, the thinker etc, many of which I’m sure you recognise .

Now if you think of a particular market space and the various brands / companies in it as a group environment, then there must also be a social hierarchy since brand / company image do interact in the marketspace (press news, user comments, editorial etc). Social media undoubtedly put this interaction on speed.

In the video you see The Leader (Google) gathering his group in an attempt to put down The Challenger (Facebook). The Juniors (Twitter, Foursquare) take stage to sling mud at The Challenger, while the Seniors (Youtube, LinkedIn) watch quietly from the sidelines. Juniors have less to lose and thus are typically more vocal. Seniors because of the weight they carry, tend to remain silent and weigh each word carefully before publicly expressing them. Like in the human world, The Loser always still gets his airtime (oddly, everyone would have preferred otherwise), and predictively would clumsily solidify his position as The Loser. And common sense tells you, being associated with The Loser is not good news for your position - see Gizmodo wince when mentioned by MySpace : )

Every Brand / Company in a market space should take a good look at which position the brand / company has in the social hierarchy. In this way, the brand / company can actively take control of its interaction in the group dynamics. Without that understanding, any interaction would be passive following the group dynamics and seem out of control.

As a new comer into an existing market, it is even more important. The brand / company needs to know who the players and their positions are. Just like a new boy in the class, the newcomer’s position in the group is determined by the group. Played right and positioned right, the brand / company’s every move seem like social magic. Got put in the wrong corner and every action would just come out wrong, there would be just no doing right.

Instead of merely looking at how a brand / company is communicating with its users, we should engage group dynamics.

You might say the video is scripted by people so it mirrors people behaviour. True. But the video is merely a convenient way to illustrate the social hierarchy. Put the video aside, pick a marketspace (socialmedia, tablets, cola, fashion… )and look its social hierarchy. Tell me if you too see the various characters alive and kicking. Have fun.

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Video “The Roast of Facebook” at CollegeHumor
Appearing in the video (did you spot them all?): Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Foursquare, JDate, Youtube, Netflix, StumbleUpon, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Tumblr, Paypal, Digg, Hulu, Pandora, Gizmodo, Reddit, Friendster, CollegeHumor

ps. did you wonder so where is Apple in all this? Remember in your class, wasn’t there this one guy, independent, walk-his-own-path, odd, aloof, seems too cool or too something to be part of the group, never showed up at the prom, and later in life turns out to be either a hugely successful billionaire or a wannabe cross between pink floyd and andy warhol.

MySpace troubles… It’s in the name, doh.

MySpace barely made the news recently and it ain’t good… Newscorp the owner who bought it for $580m is trying to offload it, hoping to get back $100m, but embarrassingly sources say there’s only 1 bidder (in all due respect that’s not bidding). MySpace was one of the earliest social media site and once was the place to be. But ever since the rise of Facebook, MySpace could do no right. Traffic tanked and continues to tank. A re-make, with facelift and new logo, to re-market itself as entertainment hub, a space for bands and musicians looks good visually, but is still not helping the numbers… traffic still continues to tank. Yes, there has been mistakes, and competition is formidable, but nobody can truly explain how the fortunes of the once almighty MySpace can sink like the Titanic. I guess that’s socialmedia, hot today cold tomorrow, you’re it or you’re not. At the rate traffic is leaving like a tsunami alert, the single bidder could end up being the new owners of his very very own uhm space, literally.

Facebook Real World: wife traps husband with fake profile, or so she thinks…

If you see this 17-year old girl Jessica Studebaker hooking up with you on Facebook, be warned, it’s too hot to be true. It’s the fake profile of an unhappy wife set up on Facebook to lure and trap her husband, as basis for divorce. Much to her joy, husband walks into trap, so it seems. They develop a friendship and husband starts talking about eloping, sharing information about putting a GPS tracker on the wife´s car and, and *you gotta sit down for this* wanting the wife to be “out of the picture” (aka kapish, zilch, wiped out). wow. This is the kind of stuff you see only on TV Soaps… it’s now gone onto Facebook. Does this also make Facebook an accessory to murder (in the event that the murder does happen)?

The soap elements continue… there’s a 360 degree twist. Husband knew all along and was playing to it, to catch the wife’s actions as (you guessed it) basis for divorce. geez. How can he prove it? He’s written an affidavit, stating his suspicion that it his wife and that he is merely going along with it, which he deposited with a notary at the bank, and also made a copy kept at a relative. Apparently he was not too dumb to disbelieve that a hot 17 year old girl would hit on him (37 years old).

What a mess. The whole case is now in court, we’ll have to see what the judge thinks of it all. Every week, every day, Facebook is showing up in very real world situations, very real life places, the good, the freakish as well as the ugly. I’m taking bets on when (not if) we’ll see reality shows (ala MTV Real World) on Facebook… I wonder which name it would be – a) Facebook Real World b) Facebook Raw c) Facebook The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Facebook party 1500 guest & 100 police

Yet another Facebook party invitation gone wild, gone viral, gone out of hand – Thessa, German girl in Hamburg happily throws a Sweet 16 birthday party and puts her party invitation up on Facebook – as would any teen with any social (media) cred these days, pretty normal so far isn’t it? Problem is that with her privacy settings, the invitation went public, meaning everyone is invited. 15,000 signed up for the party! Uhm, she must have noticed that. Eventually 1500 actually turned up, and to keep the crowd in order, throw in 100 police – the power of social media!

She tried to cancel the party but it was too late – it’s already gone viral and there’s no stopping the crowd once it gets moving as you can see in the video. So what have we learnt? Not only can social media over throw governments, social media can also throw awesome parties, like it or not.

Interesting numbers actually : 15,000 confirmations, 1,500 shows up, that’s 10% show-up for a “public” event. No event marketing needed, no secretariat chasing RSVPs, not even invitation cards / postage costs, almost no cost involved in marketing and she’s got 1,500 guests!

Follow Follow

We all know how Facebook has single handedly reduced our complex world of “Loves” and “Hates” into “Like”. I used to Love some stuff, and Hate some others, and got all passionate about it, esp. with other similar or opposites. And in one couple of Facebook years it’s all been simplified to “Like”, not even dislike, just Like. One up for positivity! The popularity of “Like” is massive, was thought out to be. It’s simple, it’s positive, it spreads positivity, and most importantly I have to do nothing else – just one click, and nothing else, no typing, no thinking of what to say.

Following the footsteps of “Like”, comes “Follow” – equally simple, equally hip, equally just one click… follow. Why Subscribe (thinks of subscription forms) and why Add (yikes mathematics), when you can simply Follow.

So all the Google, Youtube subscribes and adds have turned into follow, and to complete the story, Twitter has too joined in and launched the “Follow” button. The king of 140-word simplification realised that even 140-word could be too much to ask, for the fact that there are so many non-active Twitter. Well, what’s simpler and more passive … Let’s Follow.

Well after all the active finger exercise typing this text, let me catch up on the simplicity of positive passiveness… Like Like Follow Follow Like Like Like

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A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words > Twitter goes Photos

How do you expand a company/service beyond 140 words? Well, how about a 1000 words! That's what Twitter is saying. Twitter goes photos (& videos). Already live now, your twitter search shows also photos and videos in addition to tweets. Soon, you will also be able to directly upload photos into your tweets, kindly powered by Photobucket. Funny to see if soon there will also be Twitter Apps and Twitter Games! How about a Twitter Like button too? ; p What we'll have then is a Facebook with lots of # @ RT and a happy tweety bird ; )

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