Archive for the ‘Facebook’ category

Buzz Is Already Successful!

February 15th, 2010

I’m surely going against lots of tech pundits and social media experts by saying this…let me take a long breadth..phew!

You may disagree, and you can definitely debate here. I will put my thoughts here why I think buzz is already successful.

First of all, if you are using buzz you might noticed that you see some people on your list, not idle but sharing some stuff and most of them not even on your twitter/friendfeed or facebook followers list. Interestingly, most of them don’t use twitter/friendfeed even facebook but they are using buzz right? But you know them very well, don’t you? Well, in my case I have noticed around 60% people don’t even have twitter or friendfeed accounts. Interesting eh….So what’s happening here, buzz is bringing new people in this (technically) social world as well as twitter/facebook/friendfeed friends. It’s allowing you to be more public with people you know already. Automatically, I had around 60+ people followed and followed back and I noticed buzz didn’t make any mistake to choose them for my followers list. To me this is one of the biggest success for buzz that it’s bringing new people for me in social world and letting me know what they are up to…

 

 

Buzz - not just status message

Buzz - not just status message

 

 

Now think, people who are using this social tools for the first time, is there any chance they will start switching to twitter and never use buzz again? I don’t think so…so these new users are an asset for buzz, How many users will be like that out of tens of (approximately) millions of gmail users? Even if it’s 25% new social network users come out of it that will be huge thing for buzz. That means buzz is already starting it’s journey with a huge users base.

I have been stopped using friendfeed since the day I got buzz enabled in my gmail, why? Because buzz got the same features with improved ideas and easy sharing facilities. And people I follow on friendfeed are already on my twitter friends list, so I didn’t lose anything there…don’t you think there will be more users from friendfeed to buzz like me? I have already seen lots of people switching to buzz from friendfeed.

Buzz allows you to make your post public or private, though as an user you didn’t have much control over privacy at the beginning but buzz updated their status on privacy and gave more control to users’ hand. Certainly, this going to bring more users to buzz.

It’s certainly not twitter, its better than twitter! You can share almost everything on buzz which you can’t do on twitter. So these need will make users to use buzz, no? And why not when you want to share the things from google itself?

It’s in the browser! You don’t have to start another application or you don’t have to open another tab on your browser to use it. You don’t even have to sign in to use it…isn’t it cool? No worries about what platform you are using….i know Desktop client like Seesmic and TweetDeck will integrate buzz soon but buzz web client itself is already a good one, no doubt about it.

You have inbox integration, you can email any content to anyone like you use gmail with the same interface. You can read all comments in your gmail and reply them from right there…cool eh…

Last but not the list, it’s Google dude. There will be less chance to see buzz is down like twitter ;)

I know I’m just talking about all these positive things of buzz, well that’s all I think and I know there are some negative things of buzz as well. Like if we think it as a twitter, then we will see some features are missing. We will see how buzz comes up with their updates in near future. But to me, buzz is already successful. What do you think? Let me hear you…

What Are You Doing?

September 11th, 2009

Sometimes, I wonder how many developers are working behind this question. How many dollars being invested to get this answer. Not only developers but some psychiatrists as well, probably? I don’t know who started this status system first, was it Facebook? Or someone else? anyways, Facebook was really modest about this status updates from the beginning. They didn’t give much concentration on it at the beginning and so far I can recall people used to update their status when there was something “really” important and something that makes sense. Something educational, something that helps others?

And then we moved. New tools came, Twitter became extremely popular with some simple ideas. There were lot’s of new tools launched following Twitter’s success. FriendFeed was one of them, though their concept was a little bit different than twitter. We people got too many options to answer “what’s on our mind” or “what we are doing”.


Not only, we have options to choose where we want to say what we are doing but also we have so many third party softwares whos making our life even easier. We can say something on LinkedIn and it can come to Twitter, Friendfeed and then Facebook. We can use such tool like SocialToo that allows to update status to multiple places. Same goes for Desktop client TweetDeck, Seesmic or web client Brizzly. And then, Junal becomes really busy when one of them updates their software and adds new feature.

What we usually answer to these status taker? A lot of things! And almost 90% of them are about ourselves. What we like and what we don’t like. What we have and what we don’t have…and then a big sigh! We are still not satisfied…..


But are we not being social? Wait, let me correct….we are being “technically” social. And I guess we are doing 110% on this part. I have been keeping myself busy with this so called “Technically Social” world for last 2/3 years. No, I don’t have regret for what I have been doing or what I have done. But I regretted few days ago, after my marriage, when I realized that I was actually in a different world. When I had to visit to my relatives house with my wife, I felt there was something calling me back. I don’t blame myself for being too much addicted with this technical world but I do blame myself for not being in keep in touch with the actual society. I can remember, when I arrived in my village, how people received us. How our present gave them fun. My grandmother is about 105 years old. Every years she waits for me to see. But Junal never can manage time for her – sigh! I regret.


This year when I went to my village with my wife Tamanna, My grandmother was really happy. I saw a smile that I will never forget. She has nothing to do except sitting idle and counting the day she has in this beautiful world. I wonder how many people ask her what she is doing? She doesn’t have much options there, unfortunately.

One the way to my village

One the way to my village

It makes me feel how selfish I’m. I don’t have much time for my relatives to visit them. Lots of my village people are coming in my mind right now. People who never get a chance to answer to someone about their life, their problems, their needs or anything…. but these people never complain! Still they smile, smile with 100% happiness when we people got 100+ complains about our life even after getting lots of facilities.

My grandmother, 105 years old!

My grandmother, 105 years old!

I know, I wouldn’t meet these much relatives if I didn’t get married recently. I have this realization that we are totally in a different world. A world that makes us more selfish, more self centric and we are getting out of actual society day by day.

I don't know what they made for us, but that was very sweet of them

I don't know what they made for us, but that was very sweet of them

Do we have time to give ourselves sometimes to realize if we are really getting out of our actual society?

Personally, I have decided to meet this actual society often to ask “What are you doing”.

Quiz Monster is Really a Monster for Your Facebook Homepage!

May 23rd, 2009

We don’t believe in what our horoscope says, but still want to have a look at our daily horoscope. We don’t believe in astrologist, but still when someone wants to see our palm and tell us the future, we don’t mind eh?

We always have this curiosity to know about ourselves, things that yet to come are mostly make us curious. Some examples are…

  • When will you get married?
  • What’s your actual age?
  • What is first letter of the person you will marry?
  • What does your birthday say about you?
  • How many kids will you have?

Ah, ok i’m stopping….. but, do all these make you annoyed? Aren’t these questions  like your horoscope that you don’t believe but you don’t mind to check it out?

Well, these are the facts why “Quiz Monster” is so popular now. I was hiding all these applications since redesigned facebook launched and lately, I have realized that I can’t actually stop these news feed by hiding one or few applications. Why ? Because this application allows you to create another quiz application! with another freaking question! So, that means I have to wait until my friends decide “ok we have had enough“. And till then I have to face this monster on my home stream.

But hey, Quiz Monster played really well with us. We cant blame it directly right. It’s our friends who are creating another quiz application to check out his/her next curiosity. Got to say well done Quiz Monster!

Presenting “Developing Facebook Application” at PHPExperts Semianr 2009

May 17th, 2009

Today, I was really honored to present “how to develop facebook application” at PHPExperts Semianr 2009. Indeed, that was a great experience for me to be in front of bunch of talent guys from whole Bangladesh. Though, it was not possible to show all important points/notes/stories by one presentation at a time, so my target audience were those who were willing to start developing facebook application and my aim was to make it as simple as possible, so that they can start…..

I dont know how successful I was for this…but I will be really happy if I see people are getting interest about developing facebook application.

Personally, I’m very much thrilled after this seminar, because I met lots of people I know from twitter, friendfeed or facebook. Now, i’m pretty sure we have this natural bonding between us. I would like to thank everybody whom I met or who enjoyed my presentation. Your suggestions are always welcome to me. If I ever get any chance again in any other seminar, I will try to talk about advance facebook application developing.

Thanks to all PHPExperts!

DOWNLOAD the source codes of the example i showed in the presentation

Check out the reference from here

Twitter Desktop Client War Between TweetDeck and Seesmic!

May 4th, 2009

I have just played with Seesmic new twitter desktop client. Though i have been using TweetDeck for last couple of months. Just wanted to try out the new twitter desktop client as there is a huge buzz about it on twitter and friendfeed. So, what’s so difference between TweetDeck and Seesmic? Well, everything is almost same just facebook integration on new Seesmic desktop client simply rocks. But wait, you gotta call Seesmic a clever jack! Why? Because they just used the new “Open Stream API” and “Facebook for Adobe AIR” very smartly. Facebook Open Stream API was just released a few days ago.I just think if TweetDeck’s last release was little bit delayed it would be great for them. Because then, they would include all these stuffs that Seesmic added. I’m pretty sure now TweetDeck will move it’s ass really fast to get all these new facebook api features enabled in their stomach. And well, facebook made a great move allowing developers to access users’ home stream. Seesmic is the latest result of that move and we gotta wait to see more applications based on this new API. By the way, I’m enjoying Seesmic client for now, let’s have a look at some screenshots.


and well, I guess war is just begun. I asked TweetDeck on twitter to know if they are gonna add new Seesmic’s features in their next version. and they said there will be “big differences in the next version, we have different path“. Smart answer Tweetdeck!

I’m sure next version of TweetDeck is gonna be exciting. What do you think?

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