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New Media News Every Morning

AT&T Goes to Infinity and Beyond with New Social Recommendation Tool, Buzz.com

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AT&T has launched its newest interactive product called Buzz.com. Interestingly, aside from the similarity with Google Buzz, it seems that both service might tend to overlap in terms of function and purpose. AT&T’s Buzz is a social recommendation site with a dash of local search function. It’s a new service for sharing local tips or “buzz” with your friends.

Similar to most social media sites, Buzz.com also taps into the growing social networks. Hence you can register using your Facebook credentials. So, once you register to Buzz.com using your Facebook profile, you don’t really need to build a new community of friends or sift through rants and raves from strangers.

Buzz.com also provides personalized local search based on the recommendations of people you know and trust. Again, another vital ingredient of a successful social recommendation site.

David Krantz, AT&T President and CEO Interactive said that Buzz.com was built on the strong foundation influnced by AT&T Interactive’s leadership and success in local search.

“By offering buzz.com alongside our other local search properties like YP.COM, we create opportunity to reach a broader – and growing user segment that relies on their community to make decisions. For favorited businesses, it means immediate recognition of a loyal customer and positive exposure among a network of friends,” said Mr. Krantz.

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Originally posted on April 20, 2010 @ 5:47 pm

Facebook Begins its Digital World Domination

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There’s a lot of things going on right now at the Facebook camp, coinciding with their f8 Developer’s Conference. But with the several new things that Facebook unveiled today, one thing is certain, Mark Zuckerberg and his gang is out to conquer the social digital world. You still got time, either you opt-in or opt-out now.

Facebook’s plan of dominating the digital world is a three-point attack right now. This is only its initial salvo. I’m pretty sure there are more to come. In the meantime, let’s take at look at these three strategies which were just announced at the f8 gig.

Docs for Facebook

Zuckerberg knows quite well that Google has already dominated the search dominion and it would take a lot of effort to beat Google into this game. So, why not attack something which Google is starting to dominate – the cloud computing space. Enter Docs for Facebook, which interestingly Facebook is launching in cooperation with Microsoft.

Simply put, Docs for Facebook is like Google Docs, only this time it’s main focus is document collaboration and sharing within the Facebook ecosystem and not just anywhere else.  Docs for Facebook is pretty simple right now. You can create documents or upload existing ones and then share it with your Facebook friends, via Facebook and within Facebook.  Can it give Google Docs a run for its money? We’ll know soon enough, once it becomes available to the public.

Facebook’s Take on Social Recommendation with Yelp

Gowalla and Foursqure might have something to be worried about.  Facebook is finally taking the social recommendation, location-aware social networking space for a spin. And it brought along Yelp, Gowalla and Foursquare’s fiercest rivals.

With the Facebook and Yelp partnership, you will be able to see which among your Facebook friends have reviewed a business and read their reviews. You can also find out who among your friends have like a particular business as well as  view feed of what your friends are doing.

Facebook and Pandora Spike Up the Social Music Sphere

There’s not much details yet about how Facebook and Pandora are teaming up. But one thing is for sure, MySpace which has been dominating the social music niche has something to be worried about.  All we know is that when you log in to Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, the music site can immediately start playings songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. It will also show you friends who also like the same songs as you while you are playing or listening to a music.

There you go, three major strategies that will trigger the start of Facebook’s digital world domination. Are you ready for it?

Originally posted on April 21, 2010 @ 5:50 pm

Google Turns its Bookmarking Service into a Collaborative Tool

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To be honest about it I forgot all about Google Bookmarks since the first time I encountered it. And that was a long time ago. For awhile I thought it ceased to exist since Google was not really active in promoting it. Until now, as Google just announced a new of Google Bookmarks – List.

In case you’re not aware, Google Bookmarks lets you save shortcuts to your favorite webpages and navigate to them easily and quickly. Google Bookmarks are similar to your usual bookmarking facility, desktop or browser except for the fact that items you bookmark are not saved on your computer but on your Google account instead.

Previously, Google Bookmarks allow you to organize your items by categories.  Now, the new feature lets you organize your bookmark items by lists.  Google Bookmarks lists are easy to manage and update but more importantly can be shared to others.  Even better is the fact that your friends and contacts can add items to your shared lists as well. Hence, making Google Bookmarks an online collaboration tool.

In addition, you can also view videos and other content such as reviews, maps and more on your list.

List is currently an experimental feature of Google Bookmarks. To try it out, simply visit  Google Bookmarks on google.com.

Originally posted on March 24, 2010 @ 11:22 pm