Posts Tagged ‘social software’

Facebook Connect pulled from Apple’s iTunes Ping

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Facebook Connect is missing from Apple’s new social network, iTunes Ping, after it was apparently working on Wednesday night. There seem to be mixed messages coming from Apple, according to interviews that All Things D’s Kara Swisher conducted with Apple honcho Steve Jobs and VP Phil Schiller.

Jobs said Facebook Connect wasn’t in Ping, and gave a dismissive “I guess we could do that.” Meanwhile, Schiller said you can absolutely find your friends on Ping using Facebook Connect. Both are wrong, though: Apple apparently DID do that, and now the feature is gone.

However, there are clues that Facebook Connect was meant to be in iTunes. If you’re following no one, you’ll see a message on your People page that says, “You are not following anyone. Connect with Facebook, search for people, invite friends, or follow recommended people to get started.” Facebook Connect is even mentioned in the Welcome to Ping email you get when you first sign up.

At this point, it’s a mystery whether Facebook Connect will be back, but I hope it will. Although Jobs says Facebook demanded “onerous terms” from Apple, using Facebook Connect is way faster than manually adding all your friends to Ping. Hey Steve, can we get a Twitter or Gmail connect, at least?

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »

New Digg has tons of issues, Kevin Rose responds

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Everyone knows that users hate change, so it’s no surprise that the new version of Digg has got people up in arms. Despite new user registration for the site going way up since the launch of v.4, people have identified about a dozen separate issues with the new layout, from actual bugs to petty nitpicks. Digg’s Kevin Rose addressed them in a new blog post, explaining the reasoning behind some changes, and promising fixes for others.

Here are the key points:

The Upcoming section, removed because it got only a tiny percentage of Digg’s total page views, is coming back in some form. The bury button is also gone, but it’s not coming back. Rose says removing the button was a way of shutting down the organized “bury brigades,” who were systematically censoring certain viewpoints and topics on Digg.

There are a ton of bugs that Rose acknowledges and promises to fix, including issues with RSS feeds, third-party Digg tools, and missing favorites. It sounds like some people think the new design of the site ought to be filed as a bug, but Kevin’s response, apart from pledging to look into some specific usability issues, is basically that you’ll just have to get used to it.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »

Hey Twitter, you wanna fix this crap?

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Look, Twitter, I know you’re busy taking care of things like possible revenue streams and performance glitches, but do you think we could maybe take some time and do something about all the malicious link spam crudding up the joint?

When the site redesign was launched a while back, the inclusion of the public stream and trending topics seemed like a good way to show potential Twitter initiates what the service is all about. And that’s exactly what it does, though maybe not in quite the way I’d like it to.

See, every day I get people asking me what Twitter is and what you can do on the site. Based on what I see in the public stream, there’s every chance that you’ll get hijacked, infected, or otherwise violated via your browser — right on the landing page at twitter.com!

Twitter is simply too big to keep allowing this kind of stuff to go on unabated. So come on, crew… How’s about putting a stop to some of the scambots? Hey, you might even free up some resources and chase away a few whales in the process…

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Internet Technology | No Comments »