social
Microsoft leaks Tulalip internal project, planning to launch social search… thing?
Google’s Social Search may have to make room for an extra guest at the table, now that Microsoft has leaked the homepage for what looks like a new social service — of some sort. Fusible first discovered the page sitting at socl.com, a domain that MS recently purchased. Known as Tulalip (also the name of a group of Native American tribes near Redmond), the project promises to help users “find what you need and share what you know easier than ever” — which, at this early stage, is pretty difficult to do, considering that the page’s search field is non-functioning. The platform also features sign-in buttons for Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which leads to an authorization page explaining that Tulalip is an “experimental app,” and that it will be able to “update your profile” and “post tweets for you” (see the screenshot, after the break). It’s too early, of course, to say whether or not the service will launch as a direct competitor to Social Search, or if it’ll even get off the ground, though Microsoft insists that it didn’t mean to tip its hand so early. The Socl.com welcome page now reads: “Socl.com is an internal design project from one of Microsoft’s research teams which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest.”
[Thanks, Brian]
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Microsoft leaks Tulalip internal project, planning to launch social search… thing? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comcast plugs in to Facebook, Intel to make TV more interactive
The television is getting more interactive, at least for Comcast subscribers.
The cable company on Tuesday announced partnerships with Facebook, Intel and others to bring social media integration and application support to its content service, Xfinity TV.
“This new experience transforms the way consumers watch television with a new guide and user interface that makes the TV screen more interactive, personal and social,” Comcast stated in an official release.
Comcast’s current user interface is in dire need of an upgrade and pales in comparison to competitors, such as AT&T’s Uverse cable service.
Also in need of an update is the current crop of underpowered set-top boxes the company provides to its subscribers to access content, which are mostly manufactured by Motorola. Per the partnership announcement, Comcast will use an Intel-based set-top box, manufactured by Pace, to power both the new apps and the added integration with Facebook’s network.
The company did not mention anything about remote controls, which are known for having a plethora of useless and unnecessary buttons.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will give a live demo of the new service at the cable industry trade event The Cable Show Thursday, which will be available via live stream at 10 a.m. EST (7 a.m. PST) on Comcast’s website.
It is unknown at this time if the new service, which is already being tested in Augusta, Georgia, will integrate with Comcast’s recently announced plans to add Skype integration to its HDTV service, which the company announced Monday.
Filed under: Business and Technology, media, News, social, Social Media, VentureBeat
Google Maps for Android Adds Location History, Makes Using Latitude Seem Actually Worthwhile [Updates]
Android: Google Maps rolled out some new features for their location-tracking Latitude app today, letting you view summaries of where you go and spend most of your time. It's pretty cool—so cool, they make us actually want to use Latitude. More »
How retailers and brand manufacturers will evolve through social e-commerce
One of the big shifts in online shopping last year was the emergence of e-commerce. Brands and retailers started to realize that social networks are a channel not just to extend reach, but to drive actual revenue.
The power of social e-commerce can be understood when you couple the fact that 90 percent of people trust recommendations of friends above any form of advertising with these statistics:
- U.S. Internet users spent 41.1 billion minutes on Facebook, surpassing Google 39.8 billion minutes for the first time (according to comScore).
- 1 in 4 minutes spent on the Internet in the US is spent on Facebook.
- Facebook has 500 million users, adding over 100 million in the past 7 months, and 50% of the active ones log on daily.
The infrastructure of the Internet now enables the sharing of information among networks at a velocity and scale that has been impossible in the offline world. Businesses must identify ways to leverage this dynamic to influence the purchasing process and to ultimately drive revenue. To that end, a plethora of social e-commerce solutions have hit the market and are evolving as quickly as the social networking phenomena.
To help bring some clarity to this trend, we can divide social e-commerce into three distinct phases: first, second and third generation social e-commerce.
- Phase one: Social distribution. The first phase of social e-commerce is defined by companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, or GiltGroup. They were the first to deploy retail models that leveraged the power of the social Web. These companies generate a viral distribution platform that help businesses drive sales, liquidate inventory and leverage the social web for marketing. These businesses will continue to have a critical role in social e-commerce but we expect businesses to adopt some of their tactics to work within their own customer networks.
- Phase two: Throwing money at social features. Brands and retailers with a critical mass of customers are realizing they can employ the same tactics within their own customer networks. They are experimenting with various social features, or point solutions, including but not limited to couponing, social shopping, private sales, social wish lists, reviews and ratings, Facebook shopping carts, badging, and more. These solutions add interesting social experiences and will be the subject of much focus in 2011. We talk to many retailers and brands that have conducted these experiments and they like the social aspects these features introduce, yet they realize they have limited if any at all integration with the most important data in e-commerce –- the customer transaction.
- Phase three: Social e-commerce platform: The third phase of social e-commerce solutions addresses the needs of progressive retailers and brands that are looking to optimize their customer networks to drive revenue. For example, if you are looking to incent your network to share a link to your product or service, you want to reward them not just for the number of times shared, but rather on the number of customers they have referred, the products they have rated and shared, the social coupons passed along, or the order volume and revenue driven. But if your badging software or referral tracking system has limited connection to couponing, ratings or reviews, the Facebook shopping cart, or your core e-commerce, how can this be managed? This is where a social e-commerce platform built from the ground up to be social, with comprehensive eCommerce functionality and the ability to work with existing commerce systems becomes critical.
Customer network optimization: The new SEO
Over the next five years, we expect customer network optimization to become as important as search engine optimization and search optimization has in the past 10. Looking back at the beginning of SEO there were rudimentary technologies, no best practices and very few experts, yet today more than $13 billion is spent annually on SEO services and $26 billion spent on paid search advertising.
Long-term success in customer network optimization lies in a comprehensive approach to the entire funnel from product consideration to purchase, and having a holistic, complete view of the influence value of a customer and their transactions. This requires a platform approach where companies can extend an integrated shopping experience into Facebook, other social networks or promotional sites, and centrally manage this channel with others in your e-commerce system. Social promotions, like badging, incentive programs, or private sales will be deployed in an intelligent manner, using all the critical customer and purchase history to truly optimize customer networks and activate them around products and services within social networks.
In 2011, we expect that all retailers and brands have a slice of their budget set aside to deploy social e-commerce. Some brands and retailers may continue to work with distribution platforms and point solutions as a way to amplify their offers. But we anticipate leading brands and retailers will want to retain control of the experience, test and optimize social promotions and merchandising, and refine their approach to a more comprehensive social e-commerce platform.
Matt Compton is chief executive at ShopIgniter, a provider of social e-commerce solutions. Prior to ShopIgniter, Matt was a venture partner at Madrona Ventures, an early stage technology venture investor, and he also spent several years at Yahoo.