Archive for the 'networking' Category

Experiencing viral growth

Published on 2010-01-30 in marketing, networking and portfolio. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

This is something to hear and talk about it but this is something totally different to experience it, it’s thrilling, even on modest scales.

Since my LibraryThing application for Facebook is out it has clearly had a viral growth curve. So far there are only 435 users and every week I am looking for an inflection of this tendency. I know there will be one because there is a limited number of LibraryThing users on Facebook. My goal, right now, is to attract as many of them as possible on this application.

The next step will be to attract Facebook users to LibraryThing. But I know that for this I will need help from Tim Spalding and the LibraryThing team. I have always been grateful for their work but I must admit that I have been quite disappointed recently as I was trying to contact them and they constantly ignored me.

I am also thinking about open-sourcing the application, because I think it is both a good use case for people who are developing Python/Django applications on Google AppEngine and those who are developing for the Facebook platform. I still have to choose a license but the GNU Affero General Public License seems like a good match.

Anyway, if you love books, got plenty of them and want to share your readings, do not forget to give LibraryThing a try and once your are convinced, join the Facebook application, with this application you can:

  • Add a tab and a box to your profile, listing your most recent books
  • Choose the number of books to display in your profile tab
  • Choose whether you want to display them with covers only or as a list which will include your ratings and reviews
  • If you grant the application the right to publish to your stream it will publish books you add to LibraryThing on your wall
  • It will also publish reviews as you write them on LibraryThing

You can also:

  • Browse your Facebook friend’s books
  • Find books on the search page
  • Share a book you like or comment on it (those are Facebook only features and will not appear in LibraryThing)
  • Add a book to your LibraryThing collection with a single click

Enjoy :)

Facebook connect for WordPress

Published on 2008-12-05 in networking and technology. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

It did not take long to find a Facebook Connect Wordpres plugin…

It is in version 0.5 and is provided by Sociable! a social media blog in spanish. Not everything is perfect but you can already see it in action here!

Bye bye Google Friend Connect…

Update: Version 0.7 is already out…

Is the war already over?

Published on 2008-12-05 in networking and technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Some time ago I wrote that a war was coming, yesterday the strike begun.

Yesterday, Google and Facebook both launched their respective “connect” infrastructure. I received the Google mail announcement at 6pm and Facebook announced it on the developpers’ blog at 12pm. I actually had subscribed to receive news from Facebook Connect but never received any mail. It seems like Google has credit for the first move.

This morning, I started trying to add “Connect” features to this site…

Google Friend Connect

I started by adding the Google Friend Connect widget (it is still there).

It initially took me less than 5 minutes to setup my Google Friend Connect account and get working code for a widget to put in here. As easy as using Google AdSense, follow the wizard and you are done. It then took me 5 other minutes to tweak the site’s design.

10 minutes and every Google, Orkut or Plaxo user can register to this site and I can invite my friends on those platform to join me in. Problem is I do not use Orkut nor Plaxo and a very small amount of my friends actually have a Google account.

But they almost all have a Facebook account.

Facebook Connect

Then, I went to the Facebook Connect documentation and followed the instructions.

Instead of a wizard and files to download you have to follow instructions, create new files and copy/paste code. And then you can have a “Facebook Connect” button on your site. Nothing else. To do more you need to understand the Facebook platform, read the documentation and hand-code some FBML.

This is going to take me more than 10 minutes to be able to invite my friends here…

I guess the Google announcement forced them to release Facebook Connect with missing bits but there already seem to be rumors about a Connect plugin for WordPress. I think I can wait a week or two :)

The Winner

Facebook wins, my mother is on Facebook…

The Second Coming

Published on 2008-05-17 in networking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats.

There is something coming, as opposed to Yeats I don’t think it will be the end of the civilization, but there is a war coming.

Weapons are ready and skirmishes have begun.

Google Friend Connect Launched

Published on 2008-05-14 in networking and technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Google just released a preview of their new Google Friend Connect service.

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.

This is not a social network by itself, this is something that enables you to turn your own web site into a social network. I can’t wait to try it myself on this blog and build my own social network…