Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Michael Jackson’s Single “Another Day” Leaked in Youtube

January 4th, 2010 Jojo Agot


Michael Jackson fans will surely go crazy about this. Few minutes ago, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore twitted about Another Day, the new Michael Jackson single that leaked in Youtube. It’s an unfinished song that lasted only 1 minute and 24 seconds with Lenny Kravitz collaborating with the King of Pop. This is the second leak of MJ’s songs after his passing away in 2009, the first being This Is It. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Oh and if you ask me, I think the video is kind of boring but the song definitely rocks. Too bad he’s gone before he finished it.

YouTube Preview Image

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How to Protect Your Personal Brand Online

December 21st, 2009 Jojo Agot

Few weeks ago, Seth Godin, the famous internet marketing guru, posted something about protecting your brilliant ideas in this digital age. His advise? Don’t protect them! Instead of wasting your time and money chasing after people who “pirated” your ideas, build  a platform for commerce instead. Make money out of it and let those ideas spread.

But if you really must be paranoid about the content you wrote in your website, there are some ways you can track those who copied your materials. First I suggest you check Copyscape. Copyscape is a script that analyzes your site content and searches the entire web looking for duplicate copies of your original material. All you need to do is type your domain name in the Copyscape website and hit the Go button. In a matter of seconds, you will see all the sites that contain copies of your material. You even get to see the exact word count if you follow the link.

Another way to keep track of your brand is to use SocialOomph. Although this service is intended for other purposes (delayed posting for Twitter and Wordpress), I found out that it can also be used to “listen” to the conversations on Twitter. You can use it to tell you whenever you or your brand is mentioned in the Tweets. This doesn’t work like Copyscape but in a way, it could be a great tool to keep track of what people are saying about you.

I was able to use this function more than a month ago when a guy from London accused me of hacking his website. He sent me an email about it and we were able to fix the problem (turned out that we were both hacked) but I didn’t know that he tweeted it many times to his followers. By using SocialOomph, I learned of his tweets against me and I asked him to delete them. He graciously agreed.

The third way to protect your personal brand on the internet is to use Google alerts. This is far more advanced than SocialOomph as it scours the entire web, not just Twitter. You can set the keywords that you would like to monitor and Google will email you whenever you are mentioned anywhere.

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Friendster’s Redeeming Features

December 6th, 2009 Jojo Agot

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/images/2008/05/09/friendster_logo.jpgDespite my bland reaction when I saw the new Friendster makeover, I did manage to find some interesting features that I think would bring this site forward.

The first that caught my attention is the inclusion of free classified ads. Unlike other countries, online buying is still at its early stages in the Philippines. Pinoy internet users are still paranoid about paying without money but this could change anytime soon. With free advertisements on Friendster, people will get used to the idea of doing transactions online and may eventually try it out. Sure we’ve seen this in eBay but the difference here is that the ads are built into the social networking site. Somehow this sounds reliable community to me. Kudos to the Friendster team for this genius idea.

The second feature that I found interesting is Globe Telecom’s GCash. For us Filipinos, this is like finally finding the connection between our online and offline lives. In the past, internet felt like a separate fantasy world you plug yourself in whenever you open a browser and you get out of it the moment you logout. With GCash being integrated to Friendster, our currencies can now crossover the boundaries of online and offline worlds. I have a hunch t that if Friendster is ever going to reclaim its share in the social networking pie, GCash is going to have an important role in it, at least in the Philippines.

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Revamped Friendster Still Looks Boring

December 5th, 2009 Jojo Agot

http://images.chareyes.multiply.com/image/1/photos/upload/300x300/SX8x2woKCDQAAH6hxAU1/friendster-nav-logo.png?et=m1ASA%2B8bepHCBQ5sfhnEog&nmid=0So this is what Pinoy bloggers have all been talking about, the grand, exciting, most awaited (?) come back of Friendster to Asian market. For weeks I’ve been religiously following the rumors that the first social networking site that I used to love (and later hated) is about to launch something exciting to win back its users that have happily migrated to Facebook. I was skeptical of course. I was thinking that whatever changes Friendster will make, it will be too late for them to catch up with the times.

Today I opened my Friendster account to to see if reality lived up to the hype that preceded the launch and frankly, I’m bored with with I saw. Let me tell me you why:

1. Home page is still cluttered. A short comment on your friend’s profile takes up a lot of space.

2. Home page side bar took up almost half of the space, with the boring, poorly designed Haboo ads taking the other half of the page.

3. Beige and green color combination looks terrible. I know we need to think green and act green and live green but the Friendster green just doesn’t look nice at all.

4. In profile page, pictures are enlarged. My old pictures that used to look fine now have missing heads. One picture emphasized the mouth and it looks terrible considering I don’t have the sexiest mouth in the cyberworld.

5. The largest piece of monstrosity is the treasure chest that now sits at the center of my page.

6. My profile shoutout now have large fonts, taking up considerable space. And speaking of space (which is generally considered a real estate in web development), Friendster is leaving lots of open spaces around, making the site look bare and boring.

7. Did I already mention that the logo looks very elementary? I tried searching Google for the new logo and guess what, as of this writing, nobody seemed interested to post it anywhere yet. I did find one that says: Laos na ang Friendster… (Literally, Friendster’s glory days are over).

I know the upgrades aren’t done yet. There will be more to come next year but until then, I’d still be the guy who’s disappointed that it took Friendster years to listen to the needs of its target market.

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Facebook Is Changing, Again

December 2nd, 2009 Jojo Agot

Brace yourselves. In the next few weeks, Facebook will launch a massive upgrade in their system. This time, they will remove all the existing regional networks to give you more control on your privacy settings. Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg posted an open letter on Facebook today explaining why these changes have to be done.

According to him, Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around networks or communities like school, country of region. However, due to the sheer number of users in these networks, they reached the conclusion that it is no longer the best way to control the privacy of users.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload.

Sounds like a good plan to me, except that this is really nothing new to social networks. If you remember, this has always been a staple feature in Friendster and Multiply for years. I’m even surprised Facebook is the last one to jump into this user controlled privacy settings. What does this make them, late bloomers?

The question now is whether this is a positive sign for the future of Facebook or not. I think people like Facebook for what it is, not for what it’s going to be. I remember the last time they did “some upgrades” barely a month ago. People were so confused with status update and newsfeed that for weeks I could still see complaints in my home page.

How about you, you think you’re ready for Facebook evolution yet?

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