As a developer myself, it normally takes quite a bit to impress me. I’m sceptical of many new web services to hit the web, as often they are old ideas repackaged as something else. Recently however, I’ve discovered couple of truly unique ideas for web applications that have left an impression with me. I’ve no doubt that these services are going to be huge and definitely need to be shared. So here we go..
One True Fan
One True Fan is a service which enables a deeper level of interaction with your website, by using game theory. You can think of it as a Foursquare type service for websites, where check-in’s are performed on every website you visit to achieve points. The more sites you check-in to, the more points you accumulate. The more actions you perform (e.g. social sharing) the higher your score again.
When you become the current leader – what they term the ‘One True Fan’, an email is sent to the person who lost that position, and to you, to let you know you are now in the lead. This information can be utilised by the publisher to work out which individual playing the game is driving the most traffic, and pageviews back to the site. It’s a simple concept, and once you start playing, it is insanely addictive. The Team are ex-MyBlogLog, and know a thing or two about social connections online, to date they’ve received $1.2M in funding, and I can see a real and viable business model emerging with a couple of angles.
One True Fan is genius on two levels. Firstly, they’ve added a new social layer to the web. There’s absolutely nothing out there on the web at the minute that allows you to see, (and connect) with your social circle live on the websites that you visit, and One True Fan brings that to it’s users. I’ve no doubt that as the service grows in popularity, this will be built out to enable real time interaction other friends viewing the same website as you. e.g. chat features etc. This is all achieved by leveraging your existing social profiles that exist on Facebook and Twitter, and installing a browser plugin, for the websites that don’t yet implement One True Fan’s javascript. Secondly, they’ve provided incentive for users to start the sharing process, and the seeding of content. This is a service that you’ll absolutely see a lot more of as publishers realise the benefits, and as the web realise how much fun it is to stalk follow the websites that other people in their circle are visiting. Simply awesome.
Empire Avenue
Empire Avenue is another web application with a social layer which is alot of fun. Essentially, you can think of it as a virtual stock trading game, where you setup your account, and connect your different social profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts) so that an overall picture of your influence can be built up. Your influence is then translated into stock inside Empire Avenue that others can buy. As your influence grows, so too does your share price. The more you do online, the greater your influence and the faster your stock will rise. Blogging ,tweeting and updating social statuses all affect your overall price, and increase your reach.
From a business model point of view, influencers will be given control over the advertising they carry, and rewarded within the game for doing so, with an increase in share price, working in a similar way to a affiliate marketing. Empire Avenue sets itself apart not only in its unique feature set, but also by employing a revenue sharing model unlike other major advertising networks. As you can pick and choose what to advertise, this is much more of an endorsement than an advertisement, and is likely to be received in higher regard by your peers.
Once I got setup and logged in, and attached the variety of accounts at my disposal, straight away I received notifications of people buying a stake in me, which in turn set me off on a bit of a buying spree myself. Obviously new members are hot property as they are much more likely to rise in value. The aim of the game is not only to raise your own value, but to find valuable other players that already exist in your network and are likely to be influential. It’s an insanely addictive little product, that reminds me alot of Celebdaq, with a new and social spin on it. Well worth taking for a test drive. (Oh by the way, my stock ticker is WEBIRE – feel free to buy up a slice of goodness :0)
Datasift
URL: http://datasift.net/
If you’ve used Twitter search before, you’ll know that it isn’t exactly up to scratch. It’s an area that is technically difficult for them to perform, as there are literally billions of tweets to process into a manageable form. Fortunately DataSift hopes to change all of that. Created by the folks behind services such as TweetMeme and Fav.or.it, Datasift exposes a new GUI and API Engine to interface with Twitter’s data, essentially offering much improved curation of the stream to developers
Datasift can be thought of as a Yahoo pipes product for a Twitter stream, that will also allow you to filter the retuned results. Sentiment analysis is also performed on top of Tweets to give deeper understanding and meaning to existing information, which is something many developers are screaming out for. They have two revenue models. If you consume the service for free there is in stream advertising. To those who want the technology to utilise in there own application without advertising, there is a paid option for that.
With more and more information being shared on Twitter DataSift appears to be a very exciting product, with very real application in the social media sphere, and just recently went into Alpha. Definitely an app worth looking out for.
linky
posted:June 11, 2011 2:21 am
I’d have to say you’re spot on about Empire Avenue. I have to say this because I’m border-line addict on the thing. LOVE it. So very valuable in making connections with savvy people! Oh, and please buy me: (e)OHSO
Carole Baker