For so long commentators and bloggers have been speculating on the rise of facebook not to mention it’s profitability and walled garden mentality.
And here’s Open Graph. There are privacy issues to be sure but most of these can be taken care of by locking down your Facebook account. My main concern would be that Facebook privacy options should default to private rather than open. So that less technically minded users are protected from the start. Facebook would much rather we shared as much information as possible though as that’s what adds value to their enormous network of users.
What I love about Open Graph though is that it’s a two way street. Users can easily “single click” a “like” or “recommend” button on any site and as long as they’re logged in to Facebook they can share their link automatically or even comment on it easily too. There are a fair few features already available at launch time.
I was really pleased to see the term “like” appear as a replacement for “become a fan” and in this context it makes more sense still. It’s easy enough to change the verb from “like” to “recommend” within the developer settings if that’s more suitable too.
Here’s the facebook developer link to several social plugins that are already available – http://developers.facebook.com/plugins
I had started to wonder if the ever growing sub-set of the web that was Facebook (and certainly Social Networking as a phenomenon) would soon BE the web for many people.
Rather than making websites redundant Open Graph has added value. For now at any rate. Can’t wait to see what happens next hehe!
I was really pleased to hear that one of the many new partners with Facebook Open Graph was Pandora so I went back to take a look for the first time in ages. And got this apology from Pandora. The service wasn’t originally available in the UK, then it was for a time and now it isn’t available again. Licensing issues again, which become complicated because of the difference in licensing laws from one country to another. It’s easy enough to circumvent if you’re that bothered using a US proxy service or VPN.
Personally I much prefer Last.fm for radio style listening and have been an enthusiastic scrobbler for a few years now too. Which means that Last.fm have introduced me to some amazing new bands and artists that I may not have come across any other way.
For on demand listening Spotify has a nice slick interface that also allows users to scrobble to Last.fm. We7 is a very similar service but from a web browser. It doesn’t need any downloads or even a sign up (unless you want to remember what you were listening to or create playlists) and allows users to scrobble to Last.fm now too. Both of those play ad’s occasionally between tracks for their free service and offer a paid service without ad’s. I’m sticking with the ad’s for now. At least until one of them can offer a more varied & comprehensive catalogue.
The service which provides by far the best catalogue, has to be Grooveshark. I’ve seen it’s legality questioned in the past but Grooveshark seem pretty certain that it’s all above board http://help.grooveshark.com/is-grooveshark-legal/. The free service is pretty comprehensive as mentioned but there’s a “VIP” paid service for 3$ per month or 30$ per year which also offers scrobbling to Last.fm, Grooveshark mobile (to some phones) and no ad’s. I use the noscript extension with firefox so I don’t even see the ad’s.
It’s a great time to be a music fan despite all of the licensing issues. Competition between music streaming and on demand services has to be good, despite the dreaded and draconian UK digital economy bill.
I think I can live without Pandora in the meantime too.
Let’s hope that the music industry support online music services though. Then in the long term listeners as well as artists will ultimately benefit.
Changed the site to use much more friendly looking links and more importantly SEO friendly using Wordpress built in Permalink settings.
Previously pages and posts used links like – http://technotik.co.uk/?p=6 but now we have http://technotik.co.uk/2010/04/15/thank-you-internet/
Setting up in Wordpress was a doddle as always but it’s the first time I’ve had to enable mod_rewrite on an Ubuntu server to get that working. All the more easy to do thanks to this site (amongst others) http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/05/enable-mod_rewrite-in-a-ubuntu-server/ so thank you GHacks and thank you Internet 
