First up the timeline view of my profile:

Facebook timeline

Next up: the activity log:

Arkid Mitra - Activity Log

dNext up : The washington post social reader:

Washington post - news reader

We will write more about these massive changes as we use Facebook over the next couple of days. Get in touch with the writer at mitra[dot]arkid[at]gmail[dot]com

So, what has Facebook done to lose its charm? I would say-”Copied Google plus and Twitter“. The very essence of Facebook was to recreate the joys of college life in the virtual space. I am not an avid Facebook user, but yes I do end up spending 5-10 minutes reading through my news feed that includes the stupid but cute updates of the girl I have a crush on (Maybe!!!).  A couple of days back, Facebook launched the subscribe option and I was all excited. Wow!!! Now I can subscribe to Mark Zuckerberg,  Joe Hewitt, M.G Siegler, Robert Scoble and a lot more people.

Few days into this subscription thingy and my news feed was full of content from the social media whores and my cute crush was nowhere to be found on my news feed (I know I can use my smart list to get to her). Each one of these people such as Scoble are very happy that Facebook did this. They are supposed to be happy. They can now push their content to even more people. That is what their job is.

Alright!!! I can unsubscribe from the feeds of these people (I have not done that yet). But, these are smart people. They write viral content and they will get it shared by one friend or other.And my personal space will be invaded (too much intellect will come in).  Facebook was supposed to be my personal space, where I see those cute rants. Isn’t it?

Facebook can still get us out of all this mess by creating a separate tab for subscribed content (if my friends share it after seeing it on their feed, I can’t do much). Facebook must understand that it is fun to be on the network, because there is not much intellect push going on. Facebook must stick to what it stands for and not become my daily newspaper like twitter is. Twitter is supposed to be the space where celebrities share their bullshit and I enjoy it. Facebook, please O please, don’t try to become the next Myspace. Facebook doesn’t need to look like Techcrunch or hacker news either. I know Google plus is leading you into all this but you better understand what you stand for.

Get in touch with the writer at mitra[dot]arkid[at]gmail[dot]com.

“A lot of nerds get that”, says Daniel Gross on what Greplin stands for. For the rest of us (who are not quite nerds), ‘Greplin’ stems its name from ‘grep’, a popular CS terminology for search. Search as an online experience (a need rather), is second to none. Google has been around for a while now, to do the job for us, well in most parts. There are different verticals to online search. Google controls the majority but there still is space left in the search market for smaller players to innovate -- Blekko’s slash tag is an example. While Google can powerfully crawl the entire web, there are places, a search engine can’t go. Where exactly ? Password protected user data in the cloud and the social online data of those, that it isn’t on sweetest of terms with.

Greplin tries to be your search partner into these areas. Greplin is a a user-authorized search that can access your data on the cloud -- Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and more. Founded by Daniel Gross, a 19 year old from Israel, 48hrs before his YC DDay (Y Combinator Demo Day). An intersting story -- his own words. One might think why didn’t Google build something such themselves. Well, they could have if they wanted to. But being the search giant they are, they would have had stiff resistance getting into the cloud data of rival social networks and perhaps to a certain extent on the user front as well. So, this vertical of search had to be explored by a newbie.

It wasn’t a smooth go for Gross at YC with Amazon screwing his initial DDAY project over, completely. And just when the kid was getting a little restless, Paul Graham was there with his simple, yet magical words -- go, build something that you yourself are a target audience for. Thanks Paul -- those words mean something to all of us, me included ! And with a scratch model of Greplin, Gross took the stage. Struggle followed for the series A funding. But once he had it, things only went uphill -- securing another round of VC funding from Sequoia Capital, getting Robby Walker on board. And the valley has been sweet on Greplin since !

Once you sign up for the product, you are asked to add your online accounts -- Gmail/Facebook/Twittter/Google Docs/LinkedIn and the like one by one, some 5-10 mins for initial indexing (depending upon how extensive your online presence is!) and you are good to go. A clean intuitive UI helps too! Once you start typing your search query, you start getting indexed results, much like google instant. Corresponding to a search query, you get search results in the form of messages, people, streams from across your indexed networks.. The business model adopted is freemium. Basic necessary indexes are free (Gmail/Facebook/Twitter/Dropbox/Google Docs/LinkedIn) while other Applications like Yammer/Salesforc/Basecamp etc require you to choose a ‘Premium model’. Free and Premium models also differ on the no of messages/people/streams/files indexed. Greplin also plan on rolling out Google Voice and Google Reader soon !

On security concerns, Gross says :

For the bulk of the services that we offer for indexing today, we never actually capture your username and password, which I think is important to a lot of users. So you know, if one day, lets say, somehow, our accounts are compromised your password was never exposed to us. So it would still theoretically be safe.

While fundamentals work fine, there are glitches too. Sometimes a search query shows multiple instances of the same search result (mostly in case of a multi-threaded Gmail conversation). While users can index multiple Twitter profiles, the same support for Gmail/Facebook doesnot seem to be there at the moment. Also, perhaps the no. of messages/streams is a little less in the free model, as I couldn’t get hold of an year old Facebook update. I’d take the liberty to propose one refinement in the indexing algorithm (considering the limited no. on the messages/streams for FREE users) -- the user’s streams/messages should be indexed first and then probably those of his friends (this is to say if my understanding is right !). Another feature that I as a user would like (maybe in days to come) : indexing of the user comments on the Facebook status updates. But it again boils down to a trade off between how deep the indexing is being done for a particular model ! And yes, one last thing -- that chrome plugin ad right in the middle of the page is a NO !

Have actually written to Greplin support on these. Hopefully, they will listen to these little demands from their prospective users and provide a better user experience.

Overall Greplin is a yes for me.

Why ? One, because the user in me feels a need for the service (even though the frequency will be say 1/100th of Google search, but that is only going to increase over time) and two, because the developer in me would love to be a part of this project !

I can be reached at vikashbitmesra@gmail.com. My twitter feed @_Vikash.

Search Buzz Overall:  Internet was always about organizing all the information in the world. Google was the first company which thought of a viable solution for the same. Over the last few months, there has been a lot of criticism about the Google Search Results losing their quality. People have gone all out against companies like DemandMedia for creating what we now call content farming. There have been people who have asked me to try out Blekko orDuckDuckGo. There has been the Google-Microsoft Episode where Matt Cutts calls Micrsoft a cheater. There has been a lot of buzz about real-time search as well as social search.

What do I think about the Google Search Quality, Blekko and DuckDuckGo?: For me, Google is the best search engine much easier to say than saying IPhone is  the best smart phone.  I am biased for sure. My queries on Google are stuff, which Content Farmers will never write about, and hence the Google Search Quality remains high and has in fact improved for me over the last few years. The mere fact that Google has the biggest hardware power amongst all search engines (and the best indexing power) takes it way ahead of other search engines (Algorithm is no more the secret). I tried Blekk0 and DuckDuckGo and I admit that I was not too impressed. My queries were not too well answered by these search engines. I will just wait and watch and hope that Blekko and DuckDuckGo become as good or even better than Google.

My thoughts on Demand Media: I wonder why the community is so harsh on Demand Media. Actually, I don’t get the point in it. All you blogging guys do it to make money. All of you want to capture that buzzword. Everyone wants to rake in the ad revenues. It is just that Richard Rosenblatt was shrewd enough to take this very unorganized yet well known form of money making to an organized level. Richard Rosenblatt has been long known for coming up with great ideas (He was called an idea machine in one of the blogs I read about him). So, how does Google respond? They have actually responded by tweaking their algorithm in a way that these content farming sites get a lower rating in the search pages. Has it worked? I have heard, that it has worked but as I told you, I was never effected. There is a chrome addon , which lets us block certain websites from appearing in our search results once we block them and yes, I am using it. Come on, we all need a healthy Google to organize all the worlds information (yes, even recipes) in a better way.

My thoughts on the Google-Microsoft Episode: Stop whining Google. Just stop it. Bing is a good search engine (Bing is not Google) and Microsoft has invested a lot in making it a decent one. So, don’t expect them to play it all fair and not copy your search results. Take it in your stride and just keep focusing on your own product. And, haven’t you guys ever stolen a thing?  Didn’t you guys copy the layout of Bing Image Search. Don’t you guys have all the yelp information on you Places? So, just stop crying that Microsoft stole this an they stole that. It is very similar to the way in which news publishers (Rupert Murdoch) saying Google is using our news. You are still the best search engine by far and just by copying your results, Bing won’t win. They can win by writing better code and by increasing their indexing power and concentrating on their own thing than yours.

My thoughts on Realtime Search, Social Search and  Facebook:  There are days when an event is going on I end up using Google Real-time search which is more or less same as Twitter Search (and to some extent a little bit of limited Facebook search), i do find relevant results. I find those streaming links, which I need and I find the current score faster and I am also able to track people’s view on a certain event much better. I get all this and much more but also a lot of spam. Google is already indexing this information but the question is how do they rate it? How do they make these real-time updates a part of the actual search? They are already doing it but they aren’t doing it too well. Isn’t it? This brings us to the question of People Rank (whose updates need to be given attention and it cant be just by no of followers) and the key is in the hands of websites like Stackoverflow, Quora, LinkedIn etc. People rank and using them can be a part of another blog and that is for another day.

So, Who are Google’s actual competitors? To call Stackoverflow, Quora, Formspring etc a competitor of Google would be harsh. Whenever I would need a programming query resolved, I would search Stackoverflow (through Google because the Stackoverflow search sucks). Whenever I need to know in detail about something which I know is well known, I would just go to Wikipedia. Whenever, I need a piece of opinion about something, I would go to Quora. Whenever I need to know anything about cricket, I would go to Cricinfo. Whenever, I need to search someone I would use Facebook or LinkedIn.  But does this behavior of mine affect Google? I would say, not to a very large extent. I am an informed user and Google depends more on the uninformed users. Overall, my Google Search timespans have decreased as I write the site name along side and get an optimized result.

Can Facebook bulid a search engine by hiring a lot of Google employees? No. They can’t. Facebook can give Google a run for its money in online advertising but not in search. One of my friends argued with me that the rate at which Facebook is hiring Google employees, it seems apparent that they will one day have the Google Search Algorithm on their table and they will add their knowledge of social and people’s likes to make a better search engine. But, it doesn’t work that way. Does It? You don’t make a great technology by mixing this and that and copying this and that. If they really want to make a better search engine, they need to reinvent the wheel to a certain extent. They need to make it their own way. They have their social information and they have their own great engineers. Let them try their own brain and not use what the Google Engineers are carrying with themselves in their brains. Facebook shouldn’t try and recreate a better Google. They need to create a better search which leverages social.

These were some of my thoughts on the buzz on Search in the last couple of months and I didn’t find Bing’s increased search share worth discussing, as I don’t think it reflects anything.

You can get in touch with me at mitra[dot]arkid[at]gmail[dot]com.

A week or so back during the F8 developer conference, Facebook came out with its master-plan to rule the Internet. At the name of competing over becoming your online identity, Facebook just ripped apart of little left privacy. Facebook told us all, during the F8 that their “evil” like button could be put up in every website (Including Ours) and these will then help them provide instant personalization of certain websites we use.  And believe me 99% of Facebook users wouldn’t care much, they were happy to find their favorite “like” button all around on the internet. Facebook made sure, except of the few developers and tech bloggers who need “masala” to write, the normal Facebook user never got to know that the default setting was set as zero privacy for everyone. What was even more interesting was the fact that these settings where very difficult to find and I found them through One of my favorite  analysts’ on the internet, Avinash Kaushik‘s tweet.

I changed my Facebook settings and set it all to private to my friends’.  My Facebook status said:

Some Hidden Facebook Privacy Setting Each One of Us Should review http://zqi.me/cBjHhi http://zqi.me/aAMFLXhttp://zqi.me/ag92V9 http://zqi.me/aQzMDl Also, Always log off else your data is still shared to personalize sites, even with all other settings opted out. via Avinash Kaushik. Donot forget to check out all these settings would be my advise to all all of you.

All this happened one week after I told two of my friends’ about Google Web History. For someone, who doesn’t know about Google Web History, it can be quite a shock and believe me I caught both of my friends’ off the hook. For Avinash Kaushik (Evangelist of Google Analytics) to tweet about Facebook settings was a bit like saying “Google is your husband and is entitled to see you naked but not Facebook. He is just a friend.“. I am sure, not many people know about Google Web History too. Do check it guys. Some day some friend of yours like me will show your web history to you may feel quite embarrassed.  Now, with Chrome becoming increasingly popular, every key-press on the browser is getting recorded by you personalized advertisement serving secretary in Google. For a funny peek into the future, look at this video.

So, with everyone running after your privacy, what do we do? Actually, we can do absolutely nothing. Google and Facebook are things we can’t live without. Privacy is a thing of the past. Google and Facebook may create multiple settings (and not tell people about them) and tell people that they will turn off tracking you, but Should i believe?

What is the future of online privacy?

I would say -- None at all. My brother owns a Nexus One and tells me it it more tightly integrated to Google than he would have ever desired. iPhone’s upcoming versions will have Facebook integration. So, What is next? Are Android and iPhone OS going to hear our calls, do some voice processing and serve us Ads based on what we talk. Is that not a possibility? I wonder…

Google SideWiki could have done for Google what the Facebook‘s Social Plugin’s will do for them now. So, yet again Google is losing this social game. Google never realized the  potential they had with sidewiki.

Now with Facebook coming out with the social plugins, I hope Google understands the potential of SideWiki and comes up with some enhancements for the sidewiki(A javascript  plugin, A like for the Sidewiki entries and maybe a like and dislike for the website). Take my word, the number of referrals coming from Facebook because of these social plugins is going to be incredible. Facebook, which is already the most used website in the US is all set to become the “Referrer”  on Internet.

The problem with Google is that it is company which doesn’t understand this social(Youtube is an exception) thing too well. Along with Buzz, Sidewiki could still provide an alternative for @anywhere and Facebook Social Plugins.

Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn,  Facebook and Google Buzz.

Find Microreviews on Facebook and Twitter.

Game 2.0 is simply an integration of simple games made on some server side scripts, action scripts like JS or ajax, Flash and implemented on Web 2.0 (aka social networking).

For the newbies, let me tell you that social games are web based games which you can play with friends, mostly on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc. In this post I will give a brief about the biggest players in development of social games, and compare them in terms of market share, funding, revenue and business model.

We are already familiar with the popularity of the first generation social networking startups like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut etc. Now a new generation of application developers have taken center stage, who are based mostly on these gen1 social networking sites, and are making big money. The top 3 in my list are:

1. Company: Zynga (www.zynga.com)
   Funding: $219M
   Major Apps: Farmville- 61M Players, Mafia Wars- 25.8M , Yoville- 19.8M, Texas Hold Em’ Poker- 18.3M
   Revenue: Estimated $200M
   Zynga is a srong candidate for 2010 IPO.
2. Company: Playfish (www.playfish.com)
   Acquired: by Electronic Arts (EA Sports) for $400M
   Major Apps: Pet Society- 20.5M, Restaurant City-17.3M, Country Story- 8M
   Revenue: Estimated $135M
3. Company: Playdom (www.playdom.com)
   Funding: $47M
   Major Apps: Mobsters -14M, Bumper Stickers-11.7M, Own Your Friends-10.1M, Sorority Life-7.1M, Mobsters 2-3.5M, Poker Palace- 1.5M
   Revenue: Estimated $60M

Let me just remind you that these companies are startups and have existed for not more than three years. So, how are they making this much of BIG money? All of them have two revenue models, and these two models are like the necessary practices for companies in this domain.

• The first model is very simple and straight forward. It begins when you start playing any of these games. Initially everything is free in the game. But as you move ahead in the game you will need a lot of virtual stuff -- like seeds for your farm or guns for your gang -- which you would have to buy from an online store using a credit card, PayPal etc. The idea is very simple here -- get addicted to the free version, then start spending real money for virtual stuff. Playdom has gone a step ahead and even opened offlinestores for virtual goods.
• The second model is the traditional online revenue model using ad clicks, lead generation and toolbar installation, but in an entirely new fashion. If you do not have a credit card or a PayPal account, then you sign up on some other website to get virtual money, which you can use to buy some virtual stuff. The cache here is that when you sign up for that website you are actually generating leads for them. When you signed up on the other website, the gaming company gets real money for the lead generation. You can call this SGL (Social Game Lead), and this lead to companies is a guaranteed lead, as the user needs the virtual stuff, which means he is willing to pay if you can sell him the virtual stuff, i.e. if you can do some SGM (Social Game Marketing).
• Toolbar installation revenue model is more interesting. When you install a toolbar, it will make Ask.com (say) the default search engine on your browser. Ask.com makes money from search ads and pays money to gaming company or the toolbar developer for every installation of the toolbar. Ask.com pays about $1-$2 for every installation. Just imagine how the money is flowing back to the game developer. Ask --> Toolbar developer -->Zynga --> Facebook (for ads) --> Zynga. This is an endless circle. Hats off to this revenue model.

In the beginning of this post I had quoted a tagline - …why play akele (i.e. why play alone)? This tagline is being used by an upcoming Indian social gaming website -Ibibo.com. The tagline suggests how new players are trying to capture the potentially large Indian market. The reason I wrote ‘potentially’ large market was that though the Indian market is very large, but the revenue models might not work out here that easily. You will find less than 5% of the Indian gamers buying online stuff. So, your game might be a very big hit here, but you might not be making any money out of it.

If you were not able to make money out of this market, then this potentially big market could turn out into a potential risky market. Another reason why I say so is that these game developers are not paying any attention to localization, rather Indian-ization, of the games. The big developers have simply imported their international versions to India, and the local developers are merely copying the international games. They have not even cared to give Indian names. For instance, Ibibo has a game called Teen Patti, which is a card game. They have explained the rules using names like Aces and Jacks, which most of the Indian audience would not understand. Had they cared to mentioned that Ace means ‘Ekka’ and Jack means ‘Gulaam’ the public out here would have simply loved it.

Zynga and Playdom have opened up their Indian development centers in Bangalore, and they are planning to develop games purely for the Indian audience. I hope they keep their promise, and also hope that the Indian developers like Ibibo give some genuine thought rather than simply copying ideas. The competition is going to become more fierce as biggies like EA are soon going to join the race.

We still have a few unanswered questions to ponder over - will the potentially big Indian market grow into a real market for the developers, and what new things can be integrated with social networks to make more money out of this seemingly big market?

Your views and comments are welcome.

Reblogged from GeekonNet.com

Getting a very well branded fan page is a little bit of work (It is as good as getting a micro-site done)  for sure, but getting a basic beautiful fan page with a landing tab other than the wall tab is not so difficult. I am not a master at making a super cool fan pages but here are some small tips which will help you make a fan page which won’t look extremely same as the other fan pages. Please try not to pay people for making some cool tabs for your fan page if it is not super intensive page. If you really wan’t to pay, try paying me .

Step#1 :  Add the static FBML Application to your fan page. It is available here.

• Step#2 : When you click on the Add to my page link, you get a pop-up like the one shown below
  

  Choosing the page to add static FBML tab to

• Step#3 : Now that you have added the staic FBML , you can now create a custom tab in your facebook fan page.

• Step# 4 : Now that you have added the static FBML, go and edit your FBML tab.

• Step # 5 : Now that you are editing the fan page, you need get to see the list of applications including the Static FBML application, you just added as shown below.

• Step#6 : Now click on editing the Static FBML page and you see the window shown below. Edit the Box title to what you want the tab to be named.

• Step#7: The problem now is how to write the FBML script. Actually, writing FBML is very similar to writing HTML and hence you need help. Okay, I admit you need to learn that. However, I will provide a couple of ready to go scripts which i wrote once i read a little bit of FBML today.(A 10 min reading will do.)

1. A small piece of code to open a tab to invite friends is here.

The small FBML required is:

<fb:request-form
method=”post”
action=”microreviewsorg?ref=ts”
type=”Microreviews.org”
invite=”true”
content=”Microreviews<fb:req-choice url=’PAGE URL’ ‘ label=’GO’ /> “>

<fb:multi-friend-selector actiontext=”Invite Your Friends to Microreviews” rows=”3″ showborder=”true” />
</fb:request-form>

• Make sure you replace the http://microreviews.org with your web page’s URL

To Change the default landing tab to your newly made Static FBML page, you just need to click on the settings link available on the fan page for an admin and change the default landing tab. This doesnot show up for admin and so ask your friend or logout and check if the default landing tab setting is working. Check the image below.

In the next post, I will discuss how you can make some commonly used tabs like Flickr, Youtube Channel, Twitter etc.

I hope you like this post. Please let me know your suggestions.

Google Buzz is being considered a threat to Facebook and Twitter, but hold on. I see the activity on Buzz going down already. Google  Buzz is actually being used by people who don’t use Facebook and Twitter too much. That for me is a pattern. The community is not small but these people are not used to making a zillion status updates a day like the Twitterati and the FB addicts. One of the major reasons for the success of Twitter and Facebook has been their clean API. FB connect has made sure that your Facebook profile information is fast becoming your identity on the internet.

So, here goes my sneak peak into what all is going in the Buzz developer community.

Here is a small list of applications which have come up:

• http://www.buzzcantweet.com/ Yes, now you can Buzz and Tweet together.
• http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=327268316969 Update Facebook with your Buzz.
• http://www.buzzcounter.net/ Get a Buzz counter for your website.(No official app yet.)
• http://apps.facebook.com/BuzzNow/ Facebook app to Buzz.

With Google Buzz undergoing tweaks everyday and applications coming up everyday, we will try and keep you updated.

So, what is the future of Twitter and Facebook?

Stop making these comparisons, i would say. Twitter will always have its position as a marketing tool, as people are more addicted to Twitter than anything else. With a super cool API and the zillion of applications made with the help of Twitter, it remains the new age digital press.

Facebook is the new age social network, and with so many applications to play with. With a flurry of developers making so much money through facebook application development, Facebook  isn’t dying too. Facebook is a fun place, where people play  fun games and and join causes and try to create the so called online buzz on “Social Causes.”

What does Google Buzz do then?

• There are a number of these very close friends on my gmail contact list and I forgot to read their blog updates and lost track of what they are doing. Now with their blogs updated directly to the Buzz(through Google Reader), I started going through them again.
• Google Buzz is what i expected from Twitter a while back when they released their retweet feature. Commenting on twitter statuses was cool for me.
• It pushes your updates to people who matter the most, because in you Gmail contacts you add people who are really necessary for you to get stuff done.
• If Google is able to control spam, the click through rates may just be much higher than a twitter or a facebook.
• Buzz already has a list system, and a way to push updates only to a list . No one else provides that to me as yet. This feature can be immensely useful to me and many others.

Who looses out the most?

I see Google Buzz getting integrated to Google apps and then a lot of companies who were giving out this social intranet thing, notably Salesforce’s chatter are  completely destroyed.

What I expect from Buzz next?

• A clean way to search the public Buzz updates.
• A cleaner way to search people on Buzz inside Gmail interface only.
• A good API for us developers to play around with.
• Buzz for Google Apps gives immense power to start-ups. It almost solves all their intranet problems.

With mashable and techcrunch already up with their buzz it buttons, I need to start writing one quickly. My verdict, Buzz is not Google Wave or Google Knol, it just works.

Images are courtsey: buzz.google.com