People are, just, well, bored of social networks reports The Register, quoting comScore numbers, processed by Creative Capital.

The average length of time users spend on all of the top three sites is on the slide. Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all took double-digit percentage hits in the last months of 2007. December could perhaps be forgiven as a seasonal blip when people see their real friends and family, but the trend was already south.

The "user engagement" is dropping off, which should be of particular concern for the sales people struggling to turn these free services into profit-making businesses.

This time around, expect spinners to work on massaging the comScore figures, and happy-clappy bloggers to leap to social networking's defence by claiming the falls are sign of the market maturing, and of fierce competition. They could be right, but it still means that the individual business are not the goldmine their greedy backers slavered over.

On Facebook people "join, accumulate dozens of semi-friends, spy on a few exes for a bit, play some Scrabulous, get bored, then get on with your life, occasionally dropping in to respond to a message or see some photos that have been posted".

That's exactly what I did! I am nearly healed from the Facebook virus, just logging in once a week. Facebook is so 2007!

I love The Register for their expertise and vocabulary.

Labels: Facebook, Media, Web_2.0

                                      

"I despise Facebook," writes Tom Hodgkinson today in The Guardian.

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

Mainly, Hodgkinson has a go at Facebook's backers, Peter Thiel and Jim Breyer. He presents an entire conspiracy theory about how Facebook is funded and aided by the CIA and neocon circles to exploit its users, who create all the content only to see it sold as advertising space which makes a few people even richer. He also writes:

After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".

As far as I remember 9/11 happed in 2001. So if the CIA discovered its interested in internet startups already in 1999, it had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and the subsequent War on Terrorism. Still the text is interesting to read and could make me shiver if I knew that it's entirely true. But from my desk in Berlin I just can't check the facts, whether in favour or against Facebook. However I can perfectly understand the story of Hodgkinson's friend who spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk.

What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

At least Facebook always eats up more time than I had planned to spend and it hasn't give me much in return. At least it's free and I can switch off its email notifications.

Labels: Facebook, Media, Web_2.0

                                      

Pat Phelan has a very interesting blog post about "what's the cost of Twitter?". He extrapolates that the worldwide economy will loose $13.5bn in 2008 because people waste time with silly Twitter updates. His thought provoking text caused a big discussion and reminds me of last year's story "Facebook surfers cost their bosses billions". But while Pat seems to agree that Facebook is a terrible time sucker, he still declares Twitter a "tool I couldn't live without". For me they are of the same category.

I like Pat very much. But I don't need a status update every time his airplain is delayed, he buys a CD of Take That or answers a friend's question. That's the kind of information I find in Twitter feeds. For me that's not useful and causes a false sense of intimacy. That's why I don't like Twitter. I am very happy that Pat doesn't publish his "Daily Tweets" so often anymore, blog posts where he just mirrors his Twitter feed. They are mostly noise between his excellent articles. As a technology journalist I have to follow hundreds of blogs and filter out such distracting information.

That's what Twitter costs me, although I don't even use that tool. I whish my browser had some kind of Adblocker for irrelevant Web2.0 crap.

Labels: Facebook, Media, Twitter, Web_2.0

                                      

You know that I bashed Facebook very hard for being a terrible time sucker. Many Web 2.0 applications need too much attention, compared to their value. But there are some utilizations that make me smile, because the unleash the potential of Web 2.0 without wasting my precious time and money. Like Voxalot's latest Facebook application, VoxCall for Facebook, that really disrupts telecommunications. It let's me make free phone calls without touching the PSTN. Read the announcement:

On Monday 19th Nov 2007 Voxalot will be officially launching our new social communications application for Facebook called VoxCall.

VoxCall is an exciting new initiative from Voxalot that allows Facebook users to click on their friends and initiate phone calls. The beauty of VoxCall is that it is self-organising in that if your VoxCall friend changes their contact phone number, you don't even have to be notified... VoxCall will use whatever number they have registered.

VoxCall also offers both public and private chat rooms where VoxCall friends can get together for a group discussion.

The underlying technology that VoxCall uses to connect calls is Voice over IP addresses (often known as SIP URIs). When you add the VoxCall application, you will be prompted to enter your SIP URI. To ensure that you are the rightful owner of that number, VoxCall will display a PIN number on the screen and then call the number you entered. Your phone will ring and you will be prompted to enter the PIN, which is validated.

As such, VoxCall supports calls between friends that belong to *any* "open" voice network (not just Voxalot).

The beauty is that VoxCall uses VoIP without touching the PSTN. My buddies just enter their SIP URI and I can call them with just one click in Facebook. When they change their SIP address I don't have to bother to update my data since their Facebook button stays the same. We stay connected for free from SIP to SIP.

I find this much more nifty than the Facebook apps from Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, Rebtel, IVR Technologies, iotum, Sitófono or Grandcentral. They also connect people on Facebook and let them call me for free, in most cases. But there is always a telephone number involved, so that someone has to pay an incumbent telco which provides them.

Labels: Facebook, Grandcentral, iotum, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, PSTN, Rebtel, SIP, Sitòfono, VoIP, Voxalot, Voxcall, Web_2.0

                                      

Now that's great news: Just two days after that Om Malik and his fellow VoIP blogger James Seng from Singapore declared that there is no excitement in VoIP anymore comes the next breakthrough. The UK company Truphone is the first to bring VoIP to Apple's iPhone. They showcased it yesterday at the startup fair DEMO. The Launchpad for Emerging Technology in San Diego. Blognation USA has a comprehensive report:

To say the application isn’t yet ready for prime time would be a pretty major understatement as it currently requires the use of terminal on the iPhone to tell the iPhone to use its on-board SIP stack to place the call over WiFi instead of via the SIM card. To use the terminal application, in turn requires that you first Jailbreak the phone using an application like iBrickr or iFuntastic. This is not an application for the inexperienced or the faint of heart.

That will all change however as the company tells me that it intends to finish development on the application which will include simplifying the activation and adding seamless switching back and forth between VoIP when open WiFi is available and the use of the SIM card when out of WiFi range. It is important to note that it is NOT NECESSARY to break the SIM lock to use TruPhone’s iPhone VoIP application.

Voip User's Dean Elwood is glad "to see that Truphone got an industry first in getting VoIP onto Apples latest device - a lot of hard work has gone into that. Good work Team Truphone". I couldn't have said it better. Kudos come also from all over the world and Andy Abramson, acknowledged VoIP blogger and Truphone PR consultant, even made a video.

Meanwhile the first impatient Truphone fans already ask where to sign up with their iPhones. Until now Truphone worked only on Nokia's E and N series. But at their stand at DEMO Truphone showed versions also working on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the new HP Smartphone running Windows 6.0 and another Windows Mobile device that goes by various names like the DASH, reports Andy Abramson.

In fact TC40 and DEMO made VoIP fans quite happy these days with the launches of Maxrom and the Tru(i)phone. I hope that Truphone can soon make a full fledged iPhone application out of their demoed command line tinkering. And hopefully they consider to extend their free calls offer to iPhone users for a longer time, like they do to the Nokia users yet for months now. This would spice up their PR strategy and assure to be mentioned in media all over the world. One has to show off as long as one is sexy! Soon other companies will follow to bring their VoIP to the iPhone. The Apple factor is always a great tool to get some media attention.

After all the Nokia E and N series users are few because of the high price tag. But the iPhone is a mass product with very much sex appeal. (Although it isn't cheaper than the Nokias it makes people clutch stacks of twenties until after midnight in Apples 24 hour store in New York's Fifth Avenue.) Also I imagine that Truphone can soon bring VoIP to the iPod touch. It already works on Sony's Playstation Portable and the Touch seems to be a mere iPhone without GSM.

UPDATE:

The Truphone press office has more information on the iPhone, also about a new Facebook application from Truphone.

Labels: Apple, Facebook, iPhone, Maxroam, Playstation Portable, Truphone, VoIP

                                      

Luca was so nice to invite all members of the Sitòfono group on Facebook to try out his service for free. For one year I am a Sitòfono user too and you can call me for nothing by clicking this button:


The bill for these calls pay Luca Filigheddu and his company Abbeynet. Normally the service costs € 499 / year (about $669) and I already have compared it to Voxalot's Virtuall Toll Free in a former blog post, called "Who needs Sitófono when he can have that for free from Voxalot?". Now I will be able to answer this cuestion by myself.

I already tried to hack it by putting a number that I want to call and waiting for Sitòfono to connect us. But it didn't work, although Voxalot's click-to-call button can be used for that. Luca is planning something similar anyway, as he states in Facebook:

Luca Filigheddu (Italy) wrote on Aug 24, 2007 at 12:29 AM
In the following weeks Sitòfono is going to become much more than what it is now. Today customers are using it to receive unlimited calls from any part of the world from their website's visitors. This is helping them to convert more visitors into paying customers.

The idea is to let them use Sitòfono from their backoffice area in order to MAKE unlimited calls to their customers worldwide. For the same annual fee, they can RECEIVE and MAKE calls from and to their customers.

Do you think this feature can increase the perceived value of the service ?

Well, of course I think so, Luca. € 499 / $669 is quite a lot of money and I guess that you can easily cover a fair use flatrate for outgoing calls with it too.

Labels: Abbeynet, Facebook, free phone calls, Sitòfono, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

That was a funny to read yesterday: VoIP guru Jeff Pulver published the manifesto "Social Communications. A way of Life for me.", stating that "advent of Social Media provides us all with a great set of online tools we can use to build friendships and conduct business". He tells how he feels connected with hundreds of friends and collaborators without the need to ever meet the person face-to-face and declares 2007 as his year when social media extended itself into his life and changed everything.

Sometime during 2007, with the advent of my discovery/obsession with twitter and my recent adoption of Facebook as my iHome, the result of my actions have accelerated the way I have been able to create new relationships with people. These are people whom I've never met, yet over time people whom I feel truly connected with. And I would include in this list some of the people whose blogs I read as well as some of the people who have taken the time to leave a comment on my blog and whom I got to know afterwards.

The text ends with an invitation to join him on Facebook and Twitter, where we can read important information like "Good morning! Looks like a great day. I just hope the weather stays like this for my drive/ferry/drive to Boston on Thursday." or "Jeff is sleeping and dreaming about Jerusalem ROCKS!".

I nearly cracked up laughing when directly afterwards I read the post "Facebook Crap" on the Wireless Utopia blog. The writer Rajiv, a programmer from Bangalore, came straight to the point:

I finally have to admit it: I have not been able to figure out Facebook. No, not their business model. But what to do with it. I am on it and so are a decent amount of friends. But I hardly ever go beyond the home page. I see all my friends adding all sorts of applications, running quizzes, giving each other gifts, reading fortune cookies and whatnot. They seem to be having a good time.

But somehow I fail to enjoy it. None of the apps are really interesting. Or useful. To be frank, some of them are downright childish. Fortune cookies, comparing likes and dislikes. Who has the time for these things.

You are so right Rajiv! I feel the same. Facebook is a great time sucker.

On purpose I made there only "friends" who should be serious people: CEOs, CTOs, analysts, investors, sales people, journalists. I hoped to get in interesting discussions and to learn something. But what do I see? Messages like "Andy Abramson is going to dinner, about to drink wine..." or adult people pretending to be Zombies and virtually bite each other.

The groups, where we could have discussions, are barely updated with new posted items or wall posts. Even the page of the Rebtel group, with 153 members, didn't change in the last 12 days. Other groups that sounded interesting (EQO Mobile, Jajah, Ooma, FWD, ...) didn't develop further than some introductory statements.

Twitter is worse because it's only silly personal status messages. Have fun to read Jeff Pulver saying mostly "Good morning" and talking about the wheather on his Twitter page.

Who needs this? I wonder what Jeff Pulver would say.


UPDATE:

Reuters: Facebook surfers cost their bosses billions
Mon Aug 20, 2007 6:29AM EDT

Labels: EQO Mobile, Facebook, FWD, Jajah, Ooma, Rebtel, Twitter, Web_2.0