Social Networking – Page 3

Watwet Opens Up Their Platform Through Public API

July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 MMM

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has gone on and taken another big step forward by releasing a public API covering the different methods and functionalities of the service.

Methods covered include ones to get user and friend timelines, search, follow and unfollow users, retrieve lists of followers and friends, and of course send updates, among others.

This means that developers can now easily integrate the different Watwet functionalities into other web, mobile and desktop applications.

The full documentation for the Watwet API is available at developer.watwet.com.

This comes not long after them providing users the possibility to link their Watwet and Twitter accounts, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa.

On another note, Watwet also went ahead and changed its interface moving to a simple “following/follower” model, instead of the previous “friendship” model that was based on reciprocal agreement from two people to become friends.

Twatweet & TN Labs: Following Tunisians On Twitter

July 8, 2009July 8, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

Over the past year, Twitter has taken off in Tunisia, much like everywhere else in the world, with more and more users getting on board every day, and it becoming a source for instant information and news about what’s going on in the country.

To make it easier to follow tweets coming out of Tunisia, two projects have surfaced to aggregate tweets from Tunisian twitter users: Twatweet and TN Labs.

Twatweet is based on WordPress and uses FeedWordpress and the Twitter API to aggregate tweets from Tunisian users being followed by the @twatweet user. Users who want to be included in the aggregator can follow @twatweet which will follow them back if they’re Tunisian, and users who don’t want to be included can simply block the @twatweet user.

The service uses a theme that matches Twitter’s design so as to keep the experience quite similar.

Twatweet also includes a search engine that enables users to search among tweets by Tunisian users.

Twatweet was founded by Jazem Halioui (@jazinthecity) and Houeida Anouar (@Houeida), and currently aggregates 217 active users.

TN Labs, on the other hand, was developed on a Java/JSP backend using Twitter’s streaming API to aggregate tweets in realtime from Tunisian twitter users, automatically updating the timeline.
Users are added by the founder of the service, and have to contact him to be added or removed.

Some of the other features it has is that a preview of links that are posted in tweets are displayed whenever possible, by hovering on the icon next to the link; and hash tags link to their respective search pages on Twitter (not to TN Labs’ own search).

As for search on TN Labs, although it allows for realtime search, it is on all of Twitter not just on tweets from Tunisian users.

An interesting new addition is the possibility to view discussions, with an icon at the end of a certain tweet, opening up a layer with the original tweet and the different replies that followed around it by different users.

TN Labs has a rougher design as the focus has been more on experimenting with features than the overall design.
TN Labs was founded by Sami Ben Romdhane (@samiTunis), and currently aggregates around 237 active users.

Both services provide links to redirect users to the Twitter interface to retweet or reply to a certain tweet; a list of the active Tunisian users they’re following, allowing people either to hover or click through for more details about each user; as well as RSS feeds for updates from Tunisians users.

Twatweet and TN Labs are both still early stage projects, and I’m guessing we’ll be seeing more development happening on both fronts.

Folowen Releases Public Beta With New Features

June 23, 2009June 23, 2009 MMM 3 Comments

Folowen, the social media search tool that aggregates social profiles of people and organization’s on several social media sites into one search result, and that was previously covered here, has just gone into public beta.

The tool makes it easier for users to follow a person or organization’s social web; be it a Facebook profile, page, group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles in 20 social media sites.

A number of new features have been introduced with this public beta, based on the feedback received from the private beta users, among them are:

– Search is now open without sign up.

– Search results will list up to 4 links for each service for you to browse through to find the account you want to follow.

– Direct Follow: It is now possible for you to directly follow the person/organization you searched for directly from the search results page. This feature is currently enabled for only four services (Twitter, YouTube, FriendFeed and Facebook) that you need to connect folowen to from your Settings/Direct Follow page.

Twitvid And TwitterFon To Bring Video Tweeting To iPhone 3GS

June 9, 2009June 9, 2009 MMM

TwitVid.com, the instant video tweeting service previously reviewed here, and TwitterFon, the most popular Twitter application for the iPhone, announced a partnership where the TwitVid video service will be integrated into the TwitterFon iPhone application, enabling its large base of iPhone users to easily Tweet mobile videos to their Twitter followers who can begin watching the videos instantly, even before the upload from the source iPhone is completed.

The partnership comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement at WWDC ’09 yesterday that the new iPhone 3GS will incorporate the possibility to capture and edit videos directly on the phone.

Kazuho Okui, CTO of naan studio, Inc., creator of TwitterFon, said that they chose to work with Twitvid and not other video uploading applications because it offers the best user experience and high-quality video, along with its unique ability to offer instant playback of Tweeted videos as soon as the video begins uploading, a patent-pending technology created by Eatlime, the company behind Twitvid.

Twitvid has been working on a number of new features ever since their release, among these are the following:
– The possibility to record videos directly from a user’s webcam.
– The conversion of uploaded videos to High Quality video.
– The ability to chat with people when watching a video.
– The Creation of playlists by uploading several videos at the same time.
– The possibility to send videos directly to YouTube after they’re uploaded on Twitvid.

The TwitVid enabled TwitterFon iPhone application will be available at www.twitterfon.com.

Folowen, A New Social Media Search Tool (Private Beta Invites)

May 31, 2009May 31, 2009 MMM 17 Comments

folowen is a new social media search tool that just went live in private beta and enables users to search for the social profiles of different people and organizations on several social media sites, returning all found profiles in one search result.

The aim is to make it simpler for anyone to find and follow a person or organization’s social activities online, be it a Facebook profile, page or group; a Twitter account; a LinkedIn profile; a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles on 19 different social media sites including three Arab ones: Questler, Ikbis and Watwet.

Search is only the first piece in the bigger puzzle that folowen wants to build, and this ongoing private beta is concentrated on perfecting that to make sure that users are getting the right results for their searches. Once out of private beta, the search will be open to anyone without any need to sign up for the service.

Signed up users also have the possibility of having their search history saved automatically so that they can go back to them and view their results at any time.

The next step after search will be to enable signed up users to link up folowen into some of the supported social services to be able to follow/connect right from folowen without having to go to that service. This obviously will only be available for services that have APIs that are open and allow this.

folowen doesn’t aim to be another social network now, or a social activity aggregator, just a facilitator to help people find and connect to each other over several platforms.

folowen is founded by the same team Jordan-based team that was behind Questler: Razan Khatib, Alma Khasawnih and Hassan Shahin.

If you’re interested in getting an invite to play around with folowen, just drop a little comment below and I’ll send you one as soon as possible.

TasmeemME: An Online Networking Service For Creative Talents In The Middle East

May 25, 2009May 25, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

TasmeemME, Tasmeem Middle East, is a new service that was launched in its beta version from Jordan, and which its creators describe as the first online networking site for creative talents across the region.

TasmeemME recognizes the link between social connections and finding the right job (if you’re an individual) or the right person for a job (if you’re a company), even more so when it comes to creative talent that is mainly available for freelance work.

The site caters to the creative niche by putting together a service that allows creative people to build their profiles, showcase their portfolios, connect with one another and sell their services; and provides clients with the possibility to post their projects and search for the best talents to work on them.

The service being in beta, it might still need some tweaks and fixes here and there, but overall it’s in pretty good shape. Still, there are a number of important features that are still under work to be added soon; among them are the following:

Bidding on projects: Clients will be able to post their projects with certain specifications for interested users to bid on; and then they’ll be able to choose after comparing talent portfolios and proposals.
Marketplace: Users will be able to post some of their work; such as logos, templates, photos and more; as ready-to-buy products for set prices.
An online payment system will be introduced to make the whole issue of payments more straightforward and secure.
A rating system through which clients get to rate the talent’s work, and vice versa.

The site, which is available in English only, was founded by Noor El-Fadl, Tamam Mango and Khaled Abu Gharbieh, and developed by Indemaj Technology.

# TasmeemME

Watwet’s New Version With Twitter Link, Channels And Better Language Support

May 20, 2009May 20, 2009 MMM 8 Comments

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has released a new version of their web application code named ‘Suzie’, and with it come a bunch of really interesting new features.

With the recent migration to the Rails 2.2 framework, they’ve worked on better language support on Watwet, which translates into better handling of Arabic in this version, but also opens the door for other languages like French, Farsi, Turkish and Swahili, that are in their future plans.

Something interesting they’ve also gone and opened up is the possibility for anyone to create a channel of their own, without having to go through the Watwet team like they used to in the past.
It should be interesting to see how many people and businesses start using this feature; and when/if we’ll start seeing the concept of sponsored channels.
Complementing this move, the public timeline of Watwet now also shows the watwets coming from channels too, along with the watwets coming from the users.

Another good move with this version is the possibility to link a Watwet account to a Twitter account, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa. A simple settings page available under ‘Twitter Link’ turns this on for the user.
This makes it easier and more efficient for people who mainly use one of the services, but also want to try out the other, or who want to streamline their status and lifestreaming activities across both platforms.
I expect more focus will be put on the integration with Twitter in the future to try and lure more Twitter users to play around with Watwet, growing their user base and activity level through it to make the service even more interesting to use.

Other than these mentioned points, they’ve also worked on some design and layout tweaks for the interface, as well as on browser compatibility issues.

Some really exciting moves in this release by Watwet, paving the way for some pretty interesting possibilities in the future and for some other features they seem to have hidden up their sleeves.

H2O New Media Announces SODA CMS With Support For Location Based Services

May 16, 2009May 16, 2009 MMM

H2O New Media has just announced the availability of the SODA Content Management System which they describe as the first Web 2.0 Content Management system to support location based services.

These location based services should allow members of any social community built on the SODA content management system to send its users emails, SMS messages and alerts based on a users physical location.

Steve Vaile, CEO of H2O New Media, says that “The SODA CMS allows any community member to receive notifications either by SMS, MMS, Video or by email to their mobile phone based on their location. The development will enable our publishing and corporate customers to offer innovative new services and applications to their customers and internal based on location and vicinity on their mobile phone. Social communities should operate seamlessly between both web PC & mobile handsets, and with SODA taking advantage of location based services its really one of the first social media technology platforms to create a bridge between the online and the physical world.”

He continues to say that “with SODA a customer can deploy a social media platform that will allow its users not only to communicate with each other but to know where each other are, based on their preferences of course. For example if you are a member of a social community you can receive an SMS text when you are close to your friends, marketers can use it to message users are close to a store that has a promotional offer.”

H2O New Media provides social media applications based on software as a service (SaaS) model to corporate companies in the Middle East. H2O New Media clients include United Business Media, Sian Events, Channels Exhibitions, CSM, G2 Publishing and many other leading events and media companies.

Salam Business Club Launches Arabic Version Of Their Business Social Networking Service

April 4, 2009April 4, 2009 MMM 8 Comments

Salam Business Club, the social business network built especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world, has just launched an Arabic version of their service.

SalamBC was previously called MuslimBC, before undergoing a rebranding aimed at showing that the service isn’t just strictly for Muslims, and that anyone interested in joining, networking and getting into business with Muslims and Muslim countries from all over the world can join.

As with other business social networks, people can sign up and create their professional profile, then search for people they know on the service or invite them, building up their business network. Groups can also be created around different subjects where discussions can be launched with other members.

An internal messaging system makes it easier for users to get in touch and interact with each other.
Users also get their own personal blog on the service where they can write and share their articles and thoughts, and other members can leave their comments on. RSS feeds will be made available for these blogs in the future too.

The interface is pretty simple and geared towards making it as friendly a place as possible for business professionals to connect and interact with each other, share interesting information and resources, and access the latest business news from various sources.

Among the other languages available on SalamBC are English, German, French, Urdu and Turkish; making the service available and accessible to a wide base of business people from different countries and backgrounds.

SalamBC was founded by Rias A. Sherzad and Farid Zazai in 2007. The company is based in Hamburg, Germany and is self and angel funded so far. I met with co-founder Farid Zazai in Dubai on a recent trip of his, and understood that they are also keeping an eye open for possible VC investments.

They’re also working on a really interesting service within SalamBC that no one else has ventured into yet, but I’ll get into that in more detail later, once I get the green light from them to talk about it.

# Salam Business Club