I have put together a pretty extensive chart on the leading mobile social networking players. I can't verify that 100% of the information is accurate, but I did a pretty thorough job. I'd be happy to make any changes if there's any mistaken info. This kind of information gathering takes time to do and is worth sharing. I included our product Fidg't. We've been one of the thought leaders in this space for a long time. Just take a look at the gearON project on our site under the mobileUI tag. Here is the link to the spreadsheet. Mobile Social Networking Comparative Chart

This could be interesting. http://mobile.hhill.org/ I'll be on a panel this Friday 09/12/08.

As I said in a previous post we're continuing development on Fidg't. In the next few months we'll be shutting down this site to bring up a new an improved version of Fidg't. We haven't put much energy into maintaining this site right now. If you want to get a feel for Fidg't I recommend downloading the visualizer. Please be patient as we get ready to launch our next revision.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we're still working on the next release for Fidg't. Lots of cool stuff happening behind the scenes. We will keep you posted.

I've been testing Fidg't on the N95 and it works really well so far. I was surprised because I had thought that there were some issues writing the cache to the file system but this is not the case. So for all of you that have the N95 load up Fidg't. Also we're busy working on V1 of Fidg't and should have a release in the next few months here. Obviously the big thing will be supporting additional networks. We have Facebook working internally, which many of you requested. We will also have much wider mobile support.

I'm here in Chicago, my hometown for the Designing for User Experience Conference. I will be giving a talk on Wednesday about the future of social networking. With the recent developments regarding OpenSocial, this is clearly a space in flux. I think from the beginning we've had the right perspective with Fidg't. You are the network, the social graph should be in your hands with lots of ways to interact with your friends.

The Fidgt Visualizer source code has been posted to SourceForge. Here is the link, so have at it. I was reading today about the roots of the open source movement and the parallels that can be found in the writings on urban planning and architecture published in the late 1970s by Christopher Alexander, a Berkeley professor of architecture. He coined the term "pattern language" and has encouraged the sharing of single design solutions with the aim of creating more generalized solutions to a particular problem space. Fidgt aims to be a solution to the general problem of disparate social network data, so take a look under the hood, and compare it to your own solutions, whether they be manual solutions or automated ones. Perhaps we can find an appropriate existing design pattern for social networking software, or come up with something entirely new.

There's a post today by Dave Winer on how he's stitched up Twitter, Flickr, and the iPhone. He's got it right presence sharing isn't just about text, it's about media as well. Our mobile app essentially does this in a fully integrated way and supports AIM, YIM, and MSN Messenger. When you launch the mobile app you see all your Flickr contacts and you can see their latest photo right in the main buddy-list. You can also browse through their Photostreams. If they take a new photo it shows up in the buddy-list instantly. The mobile app supports taking photos and directly posting them to Flickr. You can also comment on photos and read comments from others. Right now our mobile app only runs on a few Nokia Nseries phones. We're working hard to support more phones down the line. In the short run we're working on supporting more networks on the Web.

Thanks to Casey Reas for putting our Visualizer up on the Processing Home Page. Developing and sketching out the ideas that went into this visualizer was immensely facilitated through the use of Processing, and the reaction we've received regarding the visualizer has been really amazing, which I see as a result of the iterative nature of the Processing environment. We also decided, based on a lot of feedback and excitement around the App, to open up the source for the visualizer, so soon there'll be a sourceforge page where you'll be able to download the code and play around with it yourself, applying the visualization model to whatever your little mind can dream up.

Comparative chart of leading social networking aggregators

I've pulled out a chart from our business plan that I want to share. One of the challenges with early-stage technology is communicating and educating people about what's unique about your solution. I will admit that this chart may be biased, but I think there's a valuable perspective expressed here. The vast majority of social networking aggregators only aggregate a single set of identities for the individual using the service. We do this but we also aggregate the identities for your friends and we merge/match them together to create a single point of contact. The other key difference in our solution is that we're cross-platform- Web, desktop, and mobile. Most of the aggregators out there are Web only. That's not necessarily a bad thing since that's where most of the initial traction will be. I will admit that we're lacking in support for social networks, but we're hard at work on a plug-in architecture to add social networks. It is still an early stage for these services and the ideal solution is non-trivial. I'm excited about the future and being able to add our perspective to the mix. Happy aggregating.

Chart comparing leading social networking aggregators.

There's a great post by Peter Magnusson on the iPhone's missing killer app: social networking. I commented that it's true that the iPhone doesn't even hint at what mobile social networking could be. The physical interaction model on the iPhone is new but the social interaction model is old school. I think that part of the problem is that we're still trying to figure out what shape the mobile Web should take. In some ways it's analogous to the first motor driven vehicles- they were designed like horse carriages. I think the mobile Web is largely about synchronization and integration with your contact list. I want to be able to glance down at my phone and know what's happening with my social network- with my people. As cool as the iPhone main menu icons are I really don't care- I don't want icons I want people.

Hey. Apologies for the long gap between posts, but we've been busy working on some new features. The first of these new features, an Analytics page for your social networks, is now available from your account page. Currently, the analytics tool allows you to see the distribution of your various contacts across our supported networks and view the percentage of those contacts that you have made active (or visible) and the percentage of your contacts that are meta contacts. We've also added a view that allows you to see how you stack up to other Fidg't users, so you can compare, for example, how many Flickr contacts you have vs. the average number of Flickr contacts amongst other Fidg't users. This is an early step at allowing you a view into your network, so keep posted as we continue to develop this idea, integrating more useful data into the analytics tool. Additionally, we'd love to know what your thoughts are - what other kind of data do you want to see? How can we make this tool more useful? Thanks, and we hope you enjoy.

Will Carter from our Fidg't Team will be at the Maker Faire this weekend (5/19 & 20) showing his wicked project Mobzombies. Also our good friends from Moto are introducing their new collaborative tangible interface platform at labs.moto.com at the Maker Faire so check them out!

Update: Things should be working again We've been having some issues loading Fidg't users into the visualizer due to a minor problem with one of our web services. This issue should be resolved shortly, but for now you'll just be able to load in flickr or lastfm contacts into the visualizer. Thanks!