Technology

How Yahoo Killed Flickr & Lost the Internet

Grab yourself a cold beverage, a comfy seat, and settle in for this long read from Gizmodo about how Yahoo killed Flickr and lost the Internet. While short on named sources and long on a childish and gratuotious use of the F-word, it’s an interesting piece about how far ahead of the social game Flickr/Yahoo was back in 2005 and how they let it all slip away.

It’s hard to remember, but back in 2005, Yahoo seemed like it had its game on. After losing out on search dominance to Google, it snapped up a bunch of small-but-cool socially oriented companies like Flickr (social photos), Delicious (social bookmarking), and Upcoming (social calendaring). There was a real sense that Yahoo was doing the right thing. It was, to some extent, out in front of what would come to be widely known as Web 2.0: the participatory Internet.

Also interesting is the discussion thread in the comments about how Flickr hasn’t died but instead morphed into a site where actual photographers (as opposed to iPhone snapshot takers) share photos.

UX Roundtable: Designing for Interactions

Last week, Mike and Tim from the Nerdery’s UX department lead a discussion about how to communicate their ideas effectively with clients.

“Static wireframes are excellent for showing architecture, but as applications and websites become more complex, it becomes equally important to document and demonstrate interactions. In this roundtable, Mike S. and Tim W. lead the group as they consider the potential use of code-based wireframes to enhance our bond with development and stakeholder expectations.”

John P took some “rough” notes during the presentation, which as expected from the UX Department look better than anything I’d ever be able to make. He’s shared them publicly on Google Plus.

Nerdery Kitchen Table – Web Deployment

Last week, eight Nerdery Nerds gathered around a big table to munch on pizza and discuss their experiences with deploying websites. The discussion was informal and the recording of it – which you can find below – is an experimental project we’re calling “Nerdery Kitchen Table” which is based on this nifty organization in New York. The goal of Kitchen Table is to provide an informal forum where Nerds with different experiences dealing with the same issue can come together and knock heads, hopefully providing some insight on the topic for the listener. In their discussion, our nerds went over how to work with a client to be prepared in advance of deployment, timeline considerations, technical tools that can make deployment easier and what their experiences with the Overnight Website Challenge‘s extremely tight timeline taught them about their day-to-day work.

So give the recording a listen and let us know if you have any questions about the project.

Participants
Tom O. – Chief Strategy Officer
Isaac R. – Internal Projects Technical Lead
Philip B. – Developer Tools Engineer
David L. – .Net Software Engineer
Ken B.- .Net Software Engineer
Nick L. – Java Software Engineer
Brian E. – Software Project Manager
Matt Y. – Software Project Manager

Stats Behind the Ever-accelerating Use of Social Networking

As a Technology Evangelist at The Nerdery, I frequently visit with partners across the country to talk about different engagements and data to validate the implementation of new platforms and technology. I started to collect a mass of stats pertaining to many topics, including social networks. My hope is that providing this data will help you have a better understanding of how technology can be used as part of communication, business, and the human experience.

Social network usage is accelerating. Facebook is still the largest and most used network, but others are growing rapidly too. The majority of users are accessing these networks on their mobile devices.

• 52% of AddThis users save to Facebook and 14% to Twitter. – AddThis
• Sharing via mobile devices grew 6x in 2011. – AddThis
• Facebook usage accounts for 10% of all the mobile data iPhone users consume and 5% for Android users. – Mashable
• Today nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users visit social networks and blogs. Close to 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone. – Nielsen
• 53% of active social networkers follow a brand and 32% follow a celebrity. – Nielsen
• The median number of Facebook friends is 401. – buffer
• Instagram is growing at over 2 million new users a month. – socialfresh
• Instagram grew from 1 million to 12 million users in 2011 alone. – Instagram
• Path acquired 2 million new users within 2 months of the launch of Path 2. – All Things D
• Pinterest had 12 million unique visitors in January 2012. A 56% increase over the previous month. – comScore

Likeable: We’re a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer

The Nerdery today became a Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) of Facebook® Apps. Facebook established its PMD program to represent the various technologies in the Facebook ecosystem and to recognize companies that develop holistic solutions. To qualify, The Nerdery included examples of its development work on the Facebook platform in its application, including apps created – some with ad agency partners – for EA Sports, Kraft, Norton, Purina, and Tampico.

As part of the rites to passage in becoming a Preferred Marketing Developer, Nerdery software development manager Dan Krueger attended an invitation-only developer conference at Facebook’s Menlo Park, CA campus. Find The Nerdery’s Facebook PMD profile by searching companies in the Preferred Marking Developers Directory.

The Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer program recognizes companies that have developed technologies in one or more of the following specialty areas: Page management solutions, ads management solutions, services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations, and/or tools for Page Insights analysis.

“The application process was highly selective so we compliment you on your success,” wrote a Facebook representative to selected companies on the competitive climate among applicants for the Preferred Marketing Developer program, whose mission is to help developers build products that make social marketing easier and more effective. The Nerdery is among 141 new companies added to Facebook’s PMD program, which has 232 interactive firms from 35 countries overall.

As a Preferred Marketing Developer, The Nerdery is deemed sufficiently Nerdy to create Facebook apps with features such as:

• Facebook Mobile Platform – Single sign on, authenticated referrals, invites/requests.
• Open Graph Protocol Integrations – Adding proper Open Graph meta-tagging to websites to optimize social sharing and integration with Pages, ads, and apps.
• Devices/TVs – Facebook functionality for devices other than desktop or mobile browser experiences.
• Graph API – Login, requests/invites, friend activity, photos, wall posts, profile information.
• Facebook Plugins – Like, Send, Comment, Register, etc.
• Social Commerce – Implementations specifically targeted towards selling products or media.
• Facebook Credits – Allows users to pay for digital content with Facebook’s payments system.

Said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a recent letter to investors, “We have a saying: ‘Move fast and break things.’ The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.” The Nerdery endeavors to be a good steward within the development community regarding keep current on Facebook platform changes – and equally diligent about keeping clients and partners informed about how platform changes may affect apps/business, including these communiques:

• Interactive Primer Notes: New Facebook Timeline for Brands
• Nerdery Webinar: Facebook Breaking Change, Sky Falling
• Don’t Go Breaking My App
• Forewarning: Significant Facebook Changes are Coming
• Facebook Breaking Change to Launch October 1
• Your Facebook Qs have been Aed
• The Tabs on Facebook They are A Changin’

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc. For that matter, The Nerdery is a servicemark of The Nerdery.

If you only read one thing about the Instragram acquisition, make it this one from Waxy

There has been many pixels spilled (in the olden days we’d say ink spilled, but you know times being what they are) about Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram. A lot of the posts haven’t offered too much information — lots of outrage and hand wringing about this new tech bubble.

What Andy Baio at Waxy did was cobble together some numbers to see how Instagram’s buyout measured up to other big tech acquisitions.

He’s got a great spreadsheet you can take a look at that explains with more depth, this chart:

Nerdery Primer: Utilizing Adobe’s CQ5 Content Management System

Adobe CQ5, which came to Adobe through their acquisition of Day Software in 2010, has a lot of people impressed – including our own Nerds. In fact, a dozen of our Nerds recently completed a week-long CQ5 advanced developer training session on the ins and outs of Adobe’s content management system. Two of those Nerds, Jordan C and Sean K, are itching to share what they’ve learned of CQ5’s abilities as a content management system. They will cover:

• A recap of CQ5’s past, present and (projected) future
• CQ5’s powerful out-of-the-box metrics capabilities and low barrier to entry
• Strengths and weaknesses relative to other CMS options
• Questions and answers in the time remaining
  

RSVP for one of two free webinars Tuesday, March 27 at 10:15 a.m. CDT or Thursday, March 29 at 3:15 p.m. CDT to learn when Adobe’s CQ5 content management system is the right fit for you or your clients.

Why old people hate the Internet

Okay, ageism aside (who says it’s only old people?) Buzzfeed’s Why Old People Hate the Internet finds Buzzfeed writer John Herrman deciding “to see what life is like in internet hell, running at 56k speeds, in Internet Explorer 6, on Windows ME, at a resolution of 1024 x 768. (For reference, that’s about 25 percent more space than an iPhone screen.)”

In the post he shares load times, how broken some sites are, and in my favorite observation: “Gmail only took six seconds, amazingly, but it looks nothing like today’s Gmail: It’s a stripped-down HTML-only version that actually looks almost exactly like Gmail 1.0, circa 2005. I don’t mind this one.”

A paean to the pocket calculator

The New York Times has a lovely little love letter to the pocket calculator and its inevitable demise. For old timers like me, pocket calculators were very high-tech swanky devices back in the day. For real. In sixth grade we did a whole unit on calculators and they were kept in a felt-lined locked wooden box. Reflecting back that might seem like overkill, because the Apple computer we played “Oregon Trail” was just sitting out in the wild.

From the Times’ article:

Computers were still enormous, so expensive and complicated that only specially trained technicians were allowed to operate them, and so noisy and prone to overheating that they had to be sealed away inside air-conditioned rooms. A pocket calculator was the closest that most 1970s consumers came to owning anything with computational power, even if all it could do was basic math. Those tiny gizmos seemed enticing because they offered rare glimpses into the enigmatic world of technology, and the Sinclair Executive also had the élan of being the first one.

Facebook rolls out Timeline to Fan Pages today

Your favorite Facebook Fan pages might have a new look today. Facebook announced they have started rolling out the new Timeline to Fan pages with the rollout expected to be complete by March 30. The look shouldn’t come as a total surprise, the Timeline landed on individual profile pages earlier this year.

The new feature allows businesses, brands, and organizations to engage users in new a innovative ways. There are some fundamental changes to the layout and they way users access applications. Applications will now be accessed from the thumbnail buttons under the splash photo and will load in a new page.

If you want to see the new pages in action take a look at pages by Harley-Davidson, The Today Show, and Dove. If you want to learn more about the changes and get started building your own Timeline Fan page, there’s a tutorial for that.