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From Friendster to Facebook: Social networking do's and don'ts
Have you ever heard of Pownce? How about Jaiku? Maybe even something called Yahoo 360? If you haven't, don't worry. You're probably not alone. These are just a few of the many social networks that have come and gone, most of them vanishing either through acquisition or simply due to lack of audience adoption. That's surprising, when you think about the sheer volume of social networks that have come our way over the years and the few that remain. Let's face it: There are only a handful of social networks these days that people care about; namely, Facebook, Twitter and, to a certain extent, Google+, even as newcomers like Ello emerge. Some oldies like Myspace and Friendster are still hanging on, but as very different incarnations of themselves. Myspace, for example, is now almost entirely about music discovery, while Friendster currently describes itself as a social gaming site; a far cry from its heyday as one of the "original" social networks. So what does it take for a social network to resonate with the public? And what makes one succeed where others fail? Here, we examine lessons learned from social networks past and present to see if we can suss out what they should or should not do to prevail in the ever-changing winds of the fickle internet.
MoodBlast 3.0.7.1 adds Pownce support
If you're a social-network-junkie (and most of us here at TUAW are to a certain extent), keeping all the services up to date has always been a bit of a chore. Thankfully, MoodBlast (written by our very own Brett Terpstra) arrived on the scene to cure our service-update blues, making life super simple when it came to letting people know exactly what we're doing.One of the most frequently-requested features has been Pownce integration -- something that's not been possible due to Pownce's lack of a full API allowing 3rd-party applications to post to the service. Pownce has since released a new version of the API with posting, and Brett has been quick to add the service to MoodBlast with version 3.0.7.1, released today. Simply enter your Pownce details into MoodBlast, check the Pownce box to ensure you're posting to it, and click 'Blast' as you normally would.MoodBlast remains donationware, and is available to download now.
iRovr: social networking for iPhone only
Our good friends over at DLS just posted some news about a service called iRovr, which purports to be a "unique social experience" made exclusively for the iPhone. Basically, you sign up, and are given a set of email addresses to which you can send content directly from your iPhone (including blogs, photos, videos, and even comments), which is then archived on their pages. It's definitely an interesting concept, and even if you aren't ready to join yet another social networking service (especially since Twitter is already on the iPhone, and Pownce is sure to follow), I actually entertained myself for way longer than I planned to just browsing through the content that's been uploaded.You have to give iRovr credit for using email hackery, a squeezed design, and probably a heck of a backend just for getting this all working smoothly together as an app that is completely accessed only by the iPhone. I'm sure an app like this is just what Jobsy had in mind when he spoke of the "very sweet solution."
