Comments on: On widgets, social networks and the nature of existence http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/ Nic Brisbourne's view from London on venture capital and exploiting change in technology and media Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:08:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Social gaming gets hot | The Equity Kicker http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-2916 Social gaming gets hot | The Equity Kicker Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:09:18 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-2916 [...] the beginning of the year I blogged a bit about games in social networks (here and here), since then the category has gone from strength to strength as measured by app installs [...] [...] the beginning of the year I blogged a bit about games in social networks (here and here), since then the category has gone from strength to strength as measured by app installs [...]

]]> By: Kristian Segerstrale http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1347 Kristian Segerstrale Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:18:30 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1347 Thanks for the great post. Let me add a little to it from the perspective of video games. After all, we are used to the idea of existing purely in the context of different platforms created by 3rd parties. Socnets make great game platforms - perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here's why : 1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don't know who your friends are - be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii. 2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games - even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of. 3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms. Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms. So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them - particularly at the casual end of the market. This turned out more as a post than a comment - but there you go. :) More on the subject here: http://blog.playfish.com Thanks for the great post. Let me add a little to it from the perspective of video games. After all, we are used to the idea of existing purely in the context of different platforms created by 3rd parties.

Socnets make great game platforms – perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here’s why :

1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don’t know who your friends are – be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii.

2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games – even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of.

3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms.

Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms.

So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them – particularly at the casual end of the market.

This turned out more as a post than a comment – but there you go. :)

More on the subject here:
http://blog.playfish.com

]]> By: Kristian Segerstrale http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11087 Kristian Segerstrale Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:18:00 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11087 Thanks for the great post. Let me add a little to it from the perspective of video games. After all, we are used to the idea of existing purely in the context of different platforms created by 3rd parties. Socnets make great game platforms - perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here's why : 1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don't know who your friends are - be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii. 2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games - even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of. 3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms. Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms. So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them - particularly at the casual end of the market. This turned out more as a post than a comment - but there you go. :) More on the subject here: http://blog.playfish.com Thanks for the great post. Let me add a little to it from the perspective of video games. After all, we are used to the idea of existing purely in the context of different platforms created by 3rd parties.

Socnets make great game platforms – perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here’s why :

1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don’t know who your friends are – be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii.

2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games – even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of.

3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms.

Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms.

So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them – particularly at the casual end of the market.

This turned out more as a post than a comment – but there you go. :)

More on the subject here:
http://blog.playfish.com

]]> By: Luke Razzell http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1344 Luke Razzell Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:22:23 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1344 Nic - Great point about English English spelling, something I insist on at Blog Friends also. Let's start a campaign! ; ) Your "web brand virtualisation via open social nets" point is well taken. As you say, Blog Friends within Facebook is an example of this trend. However, we are now building a central presence for Blog Friends beyond 3rd-party sites. To start with, we plan to deploy some key new Blog Friends features exclusively at i-together.com, over the next month or so, keeping the main feedreader service within Facebook. Then we intend to comprehensively re-architect Blog Friends around a set of APIs, which will make it relatively trivial to deploy (or for others to deploy) Blog Friends on diverse platforms and devices. (Incidentally, we didn't start off with an API-based approach back in June 2007 because we knew we had to get Blog Friends out as soon as possible to catch the Facebook adoption wave—a decision we still regard as correct.) But why do we not feel that spreading across multiple social nets alone is an optimum strategy? Two reasons: firstly, having our own "place" on the web gives us an air of solid independence; it safeguards us against the varying fortunes of any given 3rd-party platform (witness Facebook's fall from grace amongst the In Crowd of late). Secondly, it is *so* much quicker to implement and test features when e.g. FBML and FBJS are not involved, and those features can be a lot richer and run much faster. With our tiny development resources (three of us!), and with competition breathing down our neck, we can't afford to waste even an ounce of effort. Presence distribution is immensely valuable as a strategy, but the current state of the web and the tech that powers it, along with startup resource limitations can necessitate some toughly pragmatic tactical choices. [This comment also <a href="http://www.weaverluke.com/blog/2008/01/hacking-nature-of-existence.html" rel="nofollow">blogged </a>.] Nic – Great point about English English spelling, something I insist on at Blog Friends also. Let’s start a campaign! ; )

Your “web brand virtualisation via open social nets” point is well taken. As you say, Blog Friends within Facebook is an example of this trend.

However, we are now building a central presence for Blog Friends beyond 3rd-party sites. To start with, we plan to deploy some key new Blog Friends features exclusively at i-together.com, over the next month or so, keeping the main feedreader service within Facebook. Then we intend to comprehensively re-architect Blog Friends around a set of APIs, which will make it relatively trivial to deploy (or for others to deploy) Blog Friends on diverse platforms and devices. (Incidentally, we didn’t start off with an API-based approach back in June 2007 because we knew we had to get Blog Friends out as soon as possible to catch the Facebook adoption wave—a decision we still regard as correct.)

But why do we not feel that spreading across multiple social nets alone is an optimum strategy?

Two reasons: firstly, having our own “place” on the web gives us an air of solid independence; it safeguards us against the varying fortunes of any given 3rd-party platform (witness Facebook’s fall from grace amongst the In Crowd of late). Secondly, it is *so* much quicker to implement and test features when e.g. FBML and FBJS are not involved, and those features can be a lot richer and run much faster. With our tiny development resources (three of us!), and with competition breathing down our neck, we can’t afford to waste even an ounce of effort.

Presence distribution is immensely valuable as a strategy, but the current state of the web and the tech that powers it, along with startup resource limitations can necessitate some toughly pragmatic tactical choices.

[This comment also blogged .]

]]> By: Luke Razzell http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11086 Luke Razzell Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:22:00 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11086 Nic - Great point about English English spelling, something I insist on at Blog Friends also. Let's start a campaign! ; ) Your "web brand virtualisation via open social nets" point is well taken. As you say, Blog Friends within Facebook is an example of this trend. However, we are now building a central presence for Blog Friends beyond 3rd-party sites. To start with, we plan to deploy some key new Blog Friends features exclusively at i-together.com, over the next month or so, keeping the main feedreader service within Facebook. Then we intend to comprehensively re-architect Blog Friends around a set of APIs, which will make it relatively trivial to deploy (or for others to deploy) Blog Friends on diverse platforms and devices. (Incidentally, we didn't start off with an API-based approach back in June 2007 because we knew we had to get Blog Friends out as soon as possible to catch the Facebook adoption wave—a decision we still regard as correct.) But why do we not feel that spreading across multiple social nets alone is an optimum strategy? Two reasons: firstly, having our own "place" on the web gives us an air of solid independence; it safeguards us against the varying fortunes of any given 3rd-party platform (witness Facebook's fall from grace amongst the In Crowd of late). Secondly, it is *so* much quicker to implement and test features when e.g. FBML and FBJS are not involved, and those features can be a lot richer and run much faster. With our tiny development resources (three of us!), and with competition breathing down our neck, we can't afford to waste even an ounce of effort. Presence distribution is immensely valuable as a strategy, but the current state of the web and the tech that powers it, along with startup resource limitations can necessitate some toughly pragmatic tactical choices. [This comment also <a href="http://www.weaverluke.com/blog/2008/01/hacking-nature-of-existence.html" rel="nofollow">blogged </a>.] Nic – Great point about English English spelling, something I insist on at Blog Friends also. Let’s start a campaign! ; )

Your “web brand virtualisation via open social nets” point is well taken. As you say, Blog Friends within Facebook is an example of this trend.

However, we are now building a central presence for Blog Friends beyond 3rd-party sites. To start with, we plan to deploy some key new Blog Friends features exclusively at i-together.com, over the next month or so, keeping the main feedreader service within Facebook. Then we intend to comprehensively re-architect Blog Friends around a set of APIs, which will make it relatively trivial to deploy (or for others to deploy) Blog Friends on diverse platforms and devices. (Incidentally, we didn’t start off with an API-based approach back in June 2007 because we knew we had to get Blog Friends out as soon as possible to catch the Facebook adoption wave—a decision we still regard as correct.)

But why do we not feel that spreading across multiple social nets alone is an optimum strategy?

Two reasons: firstly, having our own “place” on the web gives us an air of solid independence; it safeguards us against the varying fortunes of any given 3rd-party platform (witness Facebook’s fall from grace amongst the In Crowd of late). Secondly, it is *so* much quicker to implement and test features when e.g. FBML and FBJS are not involved, and those features can be a lot richer and run much faster. With our tiny development resources (three of us!), and with competition breathing down our neck, we can’t afford to waste even an ounce of effort.

Presence distribution is immensely valuable as a strategy, but the current state of the web and the tech that powers it, along with startup resource limitations can necessitate some toughly pragmatic tactical choices.

[This comment also blogged .]

]]> By: Fergus Burns http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1343 Fergus Burns Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:51:32 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-1343 Great post Nic - you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence Best Regards Fergus Great post Nic – you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence

Best Regards
Fergus

]]> By: Fergus Burns http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11085 Fergus Burns Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:51:00 +0000 http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/01/14/on-widgets-social-networks-and-the-nature-of-existence/#comment-11085 Great post Nic - you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence Best Regards Fergus Great post Nic – you hit the nail on the head with your last sentence

Best Regards
Fergus

]]>