Piclens makes Flash slideshows look like something from the last decade

Every so often you bump into something on the web and you just think “wow, thats really cool” shortly in my case followed by “damn I’d really like to hire the developer who created that!”. This was exactly my reaction on installing Piclens fantastic add-on to Firefox.

It even runs OK on my 4 year old Pentium M 1.6 Thinkpad (which I might add despite being shortly replaced by a Thinkpad X300 is probably the most sturdy reliable piece of hardware I have ever owned – I cannot compliment it enough, no wonder IBM Thinkpads have such a reputation with serious computer users). Anyway, back to Piclens. Rather than me waffle on trying to describe it, I suggest you simply install it and try it out.

SocialNetwork Apps and Widgets – Notes from the Social Graphing Patterns West 2008

These are my snippets from the sessions about developing Social Networking apps and widgets.

Rock You – Jia Shen, CTO

FB Young, and women

Newsfeeds, Notifications, Invites – most important marketing elements

Which channel does it fit in? (Rummble is probably in Content or Self Expression – clarifying this might increase our conversion rate and usage)

What are the call to actions?

Do users like it? (break viral barrier)

Tune growth (install vs uninstall)

Viral multiplier – 1users causes atleast 1 other install

Tune – track everything. Rock You built a tracking system that tracks all input and output. Track spam blocking of notifications – work out what works.

Non-user pages are now more important; better contact as people check app before install

Open Social

Do not miss this opportunity – HUGE audience

Promiscuity factor – different audience

Myspace, Orkut, Hi5 – will all be there at launch in March

Practise agile development – APIs are changing almost daily. Built quick, role out quick.

 

 

R. Tyler Balance @ Slide

Utilise the things available – FBML, Mock AJAX, FQL, Mobile, etc.

Widgets are not applications

 

Kevin Marks @ Google

Stop planning, start developing on 0.7

Hi5 and Myspace will be active within a month

If you’re an application provider, get writing

If you’re a social site, implement Shindig/Opensocial