A different way to spend a Sunday - yesterday saw Facebook executives and senior members of the Facebook development team stopping by the Facebook Developer Garage Hackathon in central London. The aim of a ‘hackathon’ is to bash out a complete Facebook application in one afternoon (or one afternoon and a full night for those with the stamina), mirroring an exercise Facebook carries out internally to generate platform ideas.
Steve from Nudge talking through an idea with Mark Zuckerberg
Teams presented their entries to a panel of high-profile judges including Mr Mark Zuckerberg himself, with three winning teams going on to present their hacks to attendees and the general press at Monday’s special edition of the Facebook Developer Garage.
Nudge scored a great result, with a team headed up by Toby being chosen as one of the three winners. The app, titled “Tube Warning”, pairs Facebook Event data with the freshly released London Underground API to create a mashup that warns users of impending travel problems before they leave for their specific event.
A good (long) day was had by all - as well as some great idea’s being presented, it was also a great opportunity to chat face to face with Zuckerberg about Facebook’s intentions regarding Open Graph and Facebook for websites.
See more photos over at the Nudge Facebook Page
I’m not crazy about politics, but after a fairly ‘exciting’ build up to the precedent-setting hot debate between the big three last night, I thought I’d fire up Facebook (not the Quattro) and play along with the real time ‘Rate the Debate’ tools on the Democracy UK Facebook page.
Seems I wasn’t the only one – who would have guessed that the servers would be unprepared for the mass of like minded people all wanting to get interactive and play along with the debate. After about 20 minutes the app tab was limping back into action, but the moral of the story for us all is how eager everyone was to join in and make their feelings known. The social platforms are unique in this ability to rally people in a way that passive TV just can’t.
The Nudge Value Index has been live for about a month, so we thought we’d share how your individual ‘magic’ value is calculated!
If you haven’t had a go yet, the value index has been designed as a way of benchmarking your activity, popularity and influence amongst your friends and contacts on Facebook - basically how much presence you have in your own network.
Behind the scenes we’ve broken down user-behaviour into three areas:
- Activity:
- Amount of status updates (last 30 days)
- Amount of uploaded photos (last 30 days)
- Amount of links posted (last 30 days)
- Social:
- Amount of groups you’re part of (ever)
- Amount of events you’ve been invited to (last four months)
- Amount of photos you’ve been tagged in (last 30 days)
- Popularity:
- How many friends you currently have
- Percentage of your friends that have the value index app installed
We give each of these three main areas a weighting, then add them up, which gives you your final value (can be recalculated once a day).
So not voodoo then, and not just random. We’ve tried to take into account as many aspects of activity and friend-participation as possible and not just gone for a popularity contest. Would be great to hear your feedback - think it’s well balanced? Maybe we should be taking something else into account? Or just not happy with your ranking? At the time of writing I’m 4776th so you’re not the only one…
So, lots of industry furore over the way Skittles gave control to the masses and social-mediarized™ 90% of their website.
Now you can do it too in less than a minute - behold my own personalised version of the Skittles site, make yours at Skittlr.com. Include Twitter searches, Facebook, Flickr, anything you like really - who needs a social media agency?
So says this article on the BBC News website.
Not really sure that Facebook is the place that people “share documents and collaborate in ideas” but it’s certainly true that it can help teams and colleagues gel together. It’s a bit like the pub session after work where you find out things over a beer with someone that you never knew, and would probably never have known with just a polite chat next to the stationery cupboard.
In a similar way to the culling of available friends in my Messenger list during working hours, there are disadvantages to not giving people freedom to communicate online in the workplace. I know I’ve pinged questions to friends over Messenger that were beneficial in a work-related way, that I wouldn’t have bothered picking up the phone for otherwise.
Obviously you’ll always get people that take advantage of these things, but the same people will find other ways to time-waste online anyway, regardless of the channel.
So I’ve been having a spin around Pet Society’s world this week - more quality Facebook entertainment from Playfish.
In a large nod towards Animal Crossing on the Nintendo platforms, it’s a character-building, wander-around-town affair. You’re rewarded for beefing up your avatar in the way of clothes, collectables and additions to your home, as well as being responsible for health, hygiene and happiness. It’s well polished and has hidden depths in the form of trophy achievements, hurdling(!) and other events.
What grabbed me about Pet Society is its closeness to the aforementioned console series whilst remaining accessible in a web-based format. Its platform also means there’s no additional financial outlay in terms of hardware for the player - find a web browser and you’re away. Admittedly it’s not quite the same experience in terms of depth, but you’ve got pretty comparable gameplay for the casual gamer without the need to buy a DS or Wii (and you can hop in and out of a stealthy game at work).
Connectivity is also made easier by being web/Facebook based. Hooking up with a friend on a Nintendo DS involves finding a Wi-Fi connection and prearranging identifying tags. Including a friend in Pet Society takes about two clicks - you’re already online if you’re playing, and your Facebook friend list is always to hand.
Obviously this is light comparison with Facebook and the console world, but it’s an area which will be opening up more in the near future. As the Flash Player advances and 3D libraries mature, there are interesting (and fun) times ahead.
