Don't speak digital...I'm an artist!

If all artists had to move away from the myth that an artist is a strange being, scared from anything that is logical, technical and/or digital they would realize that the social web is much more social and as a result, fits their free spirit much more than they think. Some projects are evidence of how free spirits have used digital to extend their love for art and warm emotions:

www.twistori.com

www.earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html

www.wefeelfine.org

and finally, as geekiest and artistic as can be:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joann_kuchera_morin_tours_the_allosphere.html

MySpace still leading in the US

The above chart is taken from an article run by emarketer.com about Social Media Advertising in the US. Locally there are at least 24,000 users subscribed to the Malta network on Facebook. This excludes people who have not joined the network but still have a facebook profile, others on Hi5 which seems to be the most popular network locally, MySpace and social networks in general. Avoiding the local online community is like not being present in a very successful and highly attended trade fair.

5 weeks of Facebook Chat

5 weeks ago, Facebook discretely launched its real-time chat service. The concept of chat within social networking is a first (at least for the big networks I hold a profile in and my blabnet experiment). The idea, as Josh at Facebook puts it, is very simple immediacy: extending what has so far been messages, pokes and notification anytime you log-in, to real-conversation. Even friends' News-feeds will be incorporate in a real-time conversation as they happen.

from Facebook's blog post:
"The Wall and Inbox have been the primary ways to communicate, but when more immediacy is necessary—for example when making plans for lunch in half an hour"

I am particularly fascinated by the discrete way in which this new feature is being launched, unveiled slowly slowly in select network, without any need to download any applications or add-friends. The new Facebook Chat sits there...waiting quietly to "pull features of the site into the real- time Chat world", enhancing the Facebook experience.

Flock

From Shawn Harding's post dated Nov. 3:

"It is my sincere pleasure to announce the release of Flock version 1.0. The Social Web Browser is now available to download from www.flock.com. This event marks a significant milestone for our company. When I arrived at Flock one year ago, the primary goal I set for the company was to transform us from a great idea company into a world-class innovation and execution company."

Flock incorporates Facebook, Youtube and all the other Social networks. Seems browsing is becoming ever more social!

Kylie goes for Social Networking

Kylie Minogue and Parlophone, the singer's record label, have just launched KylieConnect.com. KylieConnect.com is the first Social Networking Site dedicated to an artist's current and prospective fans. The site allows fans to setup their own profile and the good news is that the site may also be accessed over mobile. Haven't checked the site fully but the interactive idea definitely deserves a BLAB.

Google just can't help it...Google OpenSocial! (Part1)

Google has to have a share of the attention being drawn upon Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook. True, Google has Orkut, its own SNS, but that is not enough!

Google has over this past week launched Google OpenSocial which is an easy to use API based on Java and HTML allowing the development of third-party applications for sites such as Hi5 and LinkedIn. The good news (for Google) is that MySpace is also adopting Google OpenSocial, allowing the serving of third-party applications to its 200 million accounts.

Google OpenSocial is also good news for third-party developers such as Slide which were also present at the OpenSocial Campfire. Slide is basically a widget network serving widgets to 134 million unique viewers a month.

Below is my (very) simple Slide widget featuring a number of companies involved in the OpenSocial project.

Marketers and big brands may advertise and get their brands across using widget networks such as Slide's. Marketers will definitely seek to make good use of this extended network of widgets and applications, yet what about lonely $15 billion worth Facebook which managed to get a mention on today's Sunday Times of Malta and is currently the hot topic on the most popular marketing blogs and websites (the latter being far more important to 24 yr. old CEO Mark Elliot Zuckerberg)?

OpenSocial is definitely more attractive than Facebook's FBML (Facebook MarkUp Language), a mark-up language used to develop widgets but which restricts these applications to run only on Facebook. Should Facebook join the crowd?