An archive of my writings from 2007 till 2011. If you're interested in the recent stuff, visit my Tumblr at dvirreznik.com.
Excellent question. The answer could have been tricky, but luckily, there’s an app for it, courtesy of Gary Hayes at Personalize Media. You can filter by Social Media, Mobile (even more interesting!) or Games, and determine the time period (now, day, week, month, year). Leave this tab open and come back in 10min. You’ll be surprised [widget not available in RSS, goto original post].
And if it wasn’t Dr. Idan’s birthday, I would have missed it.. Thanks Arad!
Facebook are planning to rule the world, and with almost 500 million unique visitors a month, they are heading in the right direction. In January facebook surpassed Yahoo! as the #2 site in the US, with over 133 million unique visitors. In terms of attention (time spent on site as a percentage of all time spent online), facebook.com is leading the pack, more than Google+Yahoo! combined.
Matt McKeon (IBM Research Center for Social Software) created an amazing infograph, illustrating how our personal information has been exposed to more and more people due to the changed Privacy Policy over the last 5 years. The original animation (plus methodology) is available here, also posted at All Facebook and 140.co.il [Hebrew]. To make things simple, I modified the original, showing the beginning (2005) and present time (April 2010). Over those 5 years there were 6 changes to facebook’s privacy policy, half of them (3) made in the last 8 months (!) – as seen in the original infograph, at the bottom of this post.
Facebook's default privacy settings, 2005 vs 2010
If you’re still on facebook using the default settings, now is the time to make a change. Here are couple of guides:
FastCompany (April 2010) –Time to audit your facebook privacy settings
AllFacebook.com (Dec 2009) – 10 new privacy settings every user should know
Holesinthenet.co.il (May 2010, Hebrew) – 8 tips for keeping your facebook information private
Original infograph:
Conan O’Brien has some free time, so he is doing a tour across 30 US cities, before his new TBS show kicks-off coming November. Last week he stopped by at Google, part of At Google Talks series.
Techonomy 2010
Although Techonomy is only in its 2nd year, it’s shaping up to be THE technology/entrepreneur event in Israel, giving 6 (7 this year) start-ups a prominent stage to present their product/service, before a panel of distinguished judges and a loving crowd. Techonomy is organized and produced by Orli Yakuel and Eddie Resnick.
7 companies presented yesterday at Techonomy 2010: AppsFire (video), Bulloonz (video), Fiddme (video), Interlude (video), Omek Interactive (video), SircleIt (video), and ZBang (video). Each presenter is allocated 10min, followed by a Q&A section from judges (and crowd). Voting is done by audience, text messaging their winner (SMS). Videos courtesy of Geek Media.
Interlude.fm
Interlude.fm took 1st place, after a brilliant demo by founder, Israeli musician Yoni Bloch. Interlude developed an interactive platform for video, that allows users to interact with the video, choosing various paths, thus altering the original timeline of the clip. Each selection impacts both audio and video, but Yoni explained that you can put restrictions, such as pre-defined opening and closing scenes, director’s cut, and more. According to Robert Scoble, interlude could save MySpace and is a really cool tech for musicians. In a recent project featuring a 3min video, interlude technology tripled the average time on site, to 9min (!) with 1m unique visitors. Yoni’s demo (video below) at Techonomy was shot at his house in Tel Aviv and offers 256 options, complied of 38 different scenes shot on-location.
Fiddme
In 2nd place, very close to interlude.fm, came Fiddme, a social network for foodies, from founders Yosi Taguri, Eran Kampf, Naor Suki, and Udi Milo. Fiddme allows foodies to share their food, by taking a picture and uploading it to fiddme community, using iPhone app or the web. I’ve known Yosi and Eran for some time now, and their passion for the product (started capturing food roughly 2 years ago), along with a beautiful user experience, and the location-based buzz (@foursquare integration coming very-very soon), will make Fiddme one of the best viral apps out there.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is upon us, kicking-off June 11 in Africa. Although not a big soccer fan, World Cup is once every 4 years, so I decided to make an exception. I’ve compiled a list of the little things [careful, pdf] that will help you follow your favorite country, all the way to the Finals. If you have something to add, comment away and I’ll include it in the original list.
Have to say that I’m somewhat disappointed at the minimal usage FIFA are doing with social media services in one of the most (maybe even #1) popular sports in the world – no official twitter account, facebook group, foursquare venues, youtube channel (not active), only non-official blog. I know it’s in a developing continent, but still, there will be plenty of soccer-loving-social-media-junkies out there, that can help those at home keep track of the action. The World Cup sponsors however (and South Africa’s government), are not counting on FIFA, and promoting their own campaigns, such as Sony-Ericcson’s Twitter Cup, which shows an interactive stadium that fills based on the number of tweets. Budweiser will host Bud House [twitter], a rendition of The Real World, focused on soccer of course. Coca-Cola will launch their advertising campaign May 15, in 90 markets and heavy YouTube partnership, under the ‘Quest‘ name.
That’s it, for now. In the meantime, the NBA Playoffs are at Conference Semi-Finals (East/West) – you can follow the action at nba.com or youtube.com.
