Google's Social Graph API - Making a social application really social!!

Google recently released a new web API called the Social Graph API.

Now, this I feel is really cool.. because it lets social networks "understand" eachother. Yes.. it lets social network only understand each other and NOT communicate with each other (thats what I have understood from their blog.. please correct me if i am wrong).

So, whats the big deal about social networks understanding eachother. Well, rather than me trying hard to explain to you.. i suggest you see this video below where this Google Engineer (Brad Fitzpatrick) explains very clear what this is all about.


If you don't have a good broadband connection, then please read this Google blog post on Social Graph API.

Would be great one day when social networks also talk to each other. But why would that happen.. if I were to develop a social network site, I would rather use the Social Graph API, the way it is today to invite more friends to my social network.

Social networking is the current vogue and it is no brainer that Google would want to ensure that social network related search is also taken care of.

Btw, I also found this post from Dare Obasanjo on his thoughts on Google Social Graph API. Who the hell is Dare Obasanjo.. :) ??!!

I just found out that he is product manager at Microsoft. Interesting to see a guy from Microsoft appreciating the useful of Google's social graph API.

What is more interesting is the fact that he is the son of former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo :)

Interesting perspective: Social Networking behaviors are analogous to those in Tribal Societies

A very interesting and thought provoking read in The New York Times about Social Networking. The author of this article investigates social networking behavior as a type of orality observed in may tribal societies.

The article states that online social networking behaviors and tribal behaviors are similar:

In tribal societies, people routinely give each other jewelry, weapons and ritual objects to cement their social ties. On Facebook, people accomplish the same thing by trading symbolic sock monkeys, disco balls and hula girls.

“It’s reminiscent of how people exchange gifts in tribal cultures,” says Dr. Strate, whose MySpace page lists his 1,335 “friends” along with his academic credentials and his predilection for “Battlestar Galactica.”

The article acknowledges that there are major differences between these two:

As intriguing as these parallels may be, they only stretch so far. There are big differences between real oral cultures and the virtual kind. In tribal societies, forging social bonds is a matter of survival; on the Internet, far less so. There is presumably no tribal antecedent for popular Facebook rituals like “poking,” virtual sheep-tossing or drunk-dialing your friends.

Then there’s the question of who really counts as a “friend.” In tribal societies, people develop bonds through direct, ongoing face-to-face contact. The Web eliminates that need for physical proximity, enabling people to declare friendships on the basis of otherwise flimsy connections.

This approach to studying online social networking is good. In the sense, we can probably come up with new features in social networking sites based on what has worked on the real world Oral societies.

Happy for Jaiku. It was always better than Twitter.

One of the reviews that I had been postponing for a very long time is that comparing Jaiku with Twitter. Will definitely come up with this review soon.

Though I have accounts in both Twitter and Jaiku, I always found Jaiku to be far more advanced that Twitter. If you follow some of the older post in Jaiku, I would have given a comparison of Jaiku versus Twitter.

I am really happy that Jaiku is joining Google. They really deserve this.

Ditching Google Bookmarks and moving to..

I finally had to ditch Google Bookmarks because of its deficiencies (which I will explain below). The only regret is that I am moving my bookmarks outside the Google ecosystem. Maybe, if I keep using Google Bookmarks for quite some time, it might improve and there might be better integration of Google Bookmarks with their other services which would make my life easier.

What I mean by advantages of Google ecosystem and its integration is that, say for example, I can create a document in Google Docs and later on I can post that as a blog into my blogger account (I might have given a bad example.. if you have a better example, please let me know). So, it lets me move my information and thoughts across different web applications with ease. All my information is consolidated. That's what I mean by "Google ecosystem and its integration advantages".

I might still be updating or taking copies of bookmarks in Google Bookmarks for the above mentioned reasons. But it depends on my time.

Now, I don't blame Google for its deficiencies in Google Bookmark because they never claimed that it was a social bookmarking site. In fact, its a pretty decent personal bookmarking web service. Its just that I am need of some advanced features which are available only in some good social bookmarking sites. Let me just list out as to what kind of features will take it from "good to great" bookmarking service.

Sharing of bookmark: This is one of the main reasons why I want to move out. When Google has been great at exposing information in the form of RSS feeds in most of their web service (for example, feeds from blogger or shared items in Google Reader), I could not understand why they could not do so for such a simple but yet powerful web service.

Private and Public bookmarks: Of course, I can ask for this feature only if the first one is implemented. I would like to share some bookmarks and hide some of them.

Integration with Social Networking sites: This is an era of social networking and if you are an average user, I can bet that you must be having an account in at least one of the following: Orkut; Facebook; MySpace. Most of the other web applications provide ways to share their application in these kind of social networking sites. For example, I can put my twitter profile in Facebook. So, it would be great if I can share my bookmarks in such social networking sites.

Grouping Tags: Its good that I can tag my bookmarks. But it would be great if I can group them into categories or folders. When I could do this in Google Reader then why not in Google Bookmarks.

Blog Integration: Allowing me to add link and/or tag roll widgets into my blog is missing in Google Bookmarks.

Basically, I am asking Google Bookmarks to mature from a personal bookmarking site into a social bookmarking site.

I know Google has been working towards an other web service called Google Share Stuff which is an effort at bringing in the concept social bookmarking. But it is still in its infant stages and has a long way to go before it matures (out of the Google Labs as well.. talking of Google Labs and their beta applications, I am not if Google Bookmarks has graduated out of Google Labs.. I am assuming it did).

Now, I went out hunting for a good bookmarking site. Not many useful reviews or comparisons were available (at least I could not find them). But I did get some pointers on which were the most famous one. And after quick look at each of these services and considering their usability and look'n'feel, I decided to go with Del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us deserves a separate post for itself where I would like to explain its features and advantages. But for now, to tell you in short, its a great web service.