Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: Quaffs, quaffs.com, Social Networking
Quaffs is one of the more innovative Asian portals that combines 2 activities that the local web-savvy crowd loves- Social Networking & Shopping. It has everything you get from a usual social networking site such as Facebook or Friendster, with a chic black background for the profile page as seen below.
The difference between this social networking site and any other would be that they offer an online store where users can purchase items using normal currency or points from their point system.
Screenshot of Quaffs Profile Page
You get “Quaffs Dollars” (Q$) either by introducing friends to the Quaffs website or by purchasing items on their website with real cash. The catch, however, with the Q$ you have “earned” through introducing friends is that you have to qualify the reward points by making a purchase on the Quaffs store in the same month or the Q$ will be disqualified.
The prices of the items in the Quaffs store are generally about the same price as the other major stores, perhaps with a slight discount. The prices are not compelling enough to make you want to buy something but if you already have the intention of making that purchase, having Quaffs points is better than having no reward system. However, it is not obvious from the site how many Q$ you get from making purchases with S$.
In order for Quaffs to really succeed, I believe they should fight on the shopping side of their business and give even better deals in their stores. They may even have to subsidize the purchases initially until they can get critical mass and as a result be able to ask for bigger discounts from the distributors.
As they currently still have a closed development platform, the number of social functions their site is able to perform can never surpass those with open platforms. If the reason for people to maintain another online social network is not compelling enough, they will definitely stick with the big names as more of their friends would be on it.
Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: Facebook, Firefox Extension, IE Extension, Toolbar
Facebook is a renowned time wasting application and many companies have already banned the use of Facebook within the company. To take over your life even further, Facebook developed a toolbar extension for Firefox last year where you have the option to search on Facebook, keep track of the latest notifications or even look at your friend’s page.
As this toolbar is only available for Firefox, third-party developers have just launched My FB Toolbar (screenshot above) which is the extension for Internet Explorer users. This version has even more functionalities than the Firefox version and is definitely capable of taking up more of your time.
Maybe Facebook should open up the toolbar for third party developers as well and we can all send SuperPokes through the toolbar.
Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: Computer Science, Facebook, Facebook Applications, National University of Singapore, NUS
Back in November, the National University of Singapore (NUS) announced that they were organizing a new course named “Software Development on Evolving Platforms” which essentially centers on developing Facebook applications. This course will be taught by Dr Ben Leong who is an MIT alumni.
The following are some interesting statistics of Stanford’s Facebook course:
- The apps created in the entire course chalked up a total of 16 Million installs with 925,000 active users daily
- 5 of the apps had more than 1 Million installs
- 6 of the apps had more than 100,000 active users
I do not expect the NUS course to emulate such success as Facebook Apps are reaching a point of saturation, but a couple of success stories from this course will definitely generate more interest in this industry and get more students into Computer Science.
Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: Facebook, News Feed, Social Networking
Social networking site, Facebook, has revolutionized the way information about you is sent to your friends when they realized the news feed function in 2006. Due to its popularity, other social networking sites such as LinkedIn & Plaxo have copied this function over as well.
This video illustrates a fun way of how this news feed could be presented to the public. Warning: You need to be a Facebook user to have the slightest idea what this video is about.
Filed under: Social Networking, Technology | Tags: LinkedIn, OpenSocial, Social Networking
Professional social networking site LinkedIn has launched a new beta version of it’s homepage today. LinkedIn essentially lets you build up your professional profile online, somewhat like your resume, and add your business contacts into your network. As this is a business oriented portal, do not expect the fun games and widgets that you may see on Facebook or MySpace.
LinkedIn is widely used as a tool for headhunters to find talents online and also has a job section for users to look for jobs. Another way LinkedIn is used is its services section where companies can find contractors or freelancers to outsource their work to. This is a great article by Guy Kawasaki on how to best utilize LinkedIn.
The new homepage packs 3 new major functions. Firstly, there will be a company news section which shows the articles that people within your network are reading. The second new function is essentially what Facebook is doing with news feeds which shows all your network’s activities and the final addition is the ability to add modules to customize your homepage to your needs. This I presume is where OpenSocial comes into play where 3rd party developers will create widgets that you can add to enhance your user experience. Read more about the new features.
Like all social websites, LinkedIn depends heavily on the Network Effect. The popularity of LinkedIn within Asia may not be high as that in US or Europe, and hence people do not find a compelling need to sign up, but I urge users to be patient as the uptake is picking up and LinkedIn may very well provide a new dimension to your business life very soon.
