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Foursquareとは

最近何かと名前を見かけるFoursquareですが、この記事を発端に、急に話題になっているらしく、昨日から僕のアカウントにも20以上のフレンドリクエストが届いています。僕も使い始めたばかりなのですが、話題になるだけあって、ありそうでなかった仕掛けがいくつも見受けられます。

基本的な内容としては、自分が実際に訪れた場所を、携帯電話やスマートフォンのGPS機能で検知し、その場で投稿する、という今までにもありそうなサービスですが、特徴的なのは：

• ポイントやメイヤーシップ、バッヂを用いたモチベーションアップ施策
• 大体の場所から、周辺のプレイスを選択してチェックインできるため、正確な現在地をアップする必要がない。
• プレイスがまだ存在していない場合は、新たに登録でき、ポイントが貰えてインセンティブにもなる。
• プレイスにティップスを残すことができ、例えばラーメン屋なら、うまいメニューを教えることができる。
• あとから訪れた人や、友達のタイムラインから興味のあるティップスを見つけた人は、Todoリストに加えることで、あとで思い出すことができる。

こんな感じで、ユーザーが増えれば増えるほど、見るのが楽しくなるサービスです。まだ他にも魅力があるかもしれませんが、もうしばらく使ってみたいと思います。

ところで、このFoursquare、当たり前のように流行り始めていますが、実はいくつもの、今後当たり前になるであろうトレンドを押さえています。

近未来サービスの王道

ソーシャルである

なんだよ、当たり前じゃん、とか言わないでください。ええ、当たり前です。今後は、ほとんどのサービスがソーシャル前提になるでしょう。流行るサービスをクチコミで広めるには、よほどでない限り、ウェブ上でソーシャルに展開するのが有利なのは、このブログを読んでいるような方には、説明するまでもないと思います。

Foursquareでも、ソーシャルであることで、友達がチェックインした場所はもちろん、その場所のティップスを見つけやすくなっています。

Facebook Connect / Twitterに対応

新しいサービスがFacebook ConnectやTwitterに対応するのは、もう欧米では常識になりつつあるようです。いずれも、新規登録の煩雑な作業をスキップする目的でも、多くのサービスで役立てられています。FoursquareはFacebookでログインしても、結局いろいろ情報入力させられましたが・・・。うまいところは、ほとんど情報入力なしで登録することができます。

Foursquareで面白いのは、自分のプロフィールURLを決めなくとも、Twitterのアカウントを紐付けることで、TwitterのスクリーンネームがそのままURLになることです。(これはTwitterが海外でプロフィールページとしても認識されつつあることの証左ですが、この話はまた別の機会に・・・)

友達リストをインポート

今回僕が多くのフレンドリクエストをもらった理由のひとつに、Twitterのフォロワーから友達を見つける機能があったことも挙げられるでしょう。Twitterからインポートしたフォローリストから、既に登録済みのユーザーをフィルタリングして一覧表示し、クリックひとつでフレンドリクエストを出せるエクスペリエンスは、今後も様々なサービスが対応していくと思われます。もちろんFoursquareでは、Facebookの友達リストを使っても、同様のことができます。

アクティビティをフィードバック

ソーシャルサービスと連携する何よりの理由は、アクティビティストリームです。Twitterならタイムライン、Facebookなら最新情報にフィードバックを投稿できることで、繋がっているユーザーの注意を惹く事ができます。

また、このフィードバックにより、リアルタイムなイベントの共有も可能になってきます。例えばTwitter上のいっせいバルスや、昨年のクリスマスイブのUstreamによるDJプレイなど、最近ウェブ上では、Twitterを中心としたリアルタイムイベント共有が当たり前になってきています。

Foursquareでも、チェックインした時にアクティビティをフィードバックすることができますので、たまたま同じ場所にいることをTwitter経由で知り、落ち合うなんて話は珍しくなくなるでしょう。

iPhone / Android対応

ウェブサービスとセットで、iPhoneやAndroidで専用アプリを出すサービスも増えてきています。単純にスマートフォンで動きます、というだけでなく、「その場所だからできること」を生かしたサービスなら、嫌でもその傾向は強まるでしょう。

Foursquareはもちろんその典型例ですので、iPhone版もAndroid版もPalm Pre版も、アプリケーションが用意されています。

日本では？

それでは翻って、日本で同様のことをやってみるのはどうなのでしょう？各項目について、検証してみます。

• ソーシャルである：
  これはまあ、当たり前ですよね。
• Facebook Connect / Twitterに対応：
  Twitterに対応するサービスは増えてきていますが、Facebookは国内だとユーザーが少ないため、あまり積極的に対応はされていないようです。ここで思い出されるのは、mixi ConnectやGREE Connectの存在ですが、いずれもまだ一般に公開されていないため、今後に期待されます。
• アクティビティストリームにフィードバック：
  これもConnect技術とセットで語られる部分ですが、受け側のアクティビティストリームの整備も重要になってきます。まだ国内のサービスでは、タイムライン(またはストリーム)という考え方が根付いているとは言えず、せいぜいGREEのひとこと機能が先日公開されたくらいです。mixiに至っては、mixiアプリのアクティビティストリームも最大限生かされていない状況ですので、Connect技術同様、今後に期待というところです。
• iPhone / Android対応
  スマートフォン対応は、現在の国内の状況でも、すぐにできそうですね。

こうして分析してみると、国産サービス勢が手をこまねいている間に、Twitterのバイラル性を生かしたソーシャルサービスが登場してもおかしくない状況であることが分かります。いや、ぶっちゃけ狙い目です！

まとめ

今回はFoursquareを例に、近未来のソーシャルウェブ像をご紹介しました。もしどこがすごいのかわからなければ、逆に考えると面白いと思います。ソーシャルじゃなくて、友達リストがインポートできなくて、アクティビティもフィードバックできなくて・・・。イメージしてみると、過去に失敗した、似たようなサービスがあった気もしますよね。

今回のような特徴を備えたサービスとして、他にもニュースサイトのHuffington Postや、ローカル情報サイトのCitySearchもぜひ、チェックしてみてください。

また、一年近く前になりますが、最初のSocialWeb勉強会の冒頭でお話させていただいたソーシャルウェブの話が、まだかなり有用だと思います。ぜひこちらも改めて御覧下さい。

As Google Chrome for Mac (dev-channel) goes available with Extensions, I’ve started to use it as my primary browser. More extensible than Safari, faster than Firefox, Google Chrome is really good browser. Simple, but efficient.

Chrome is even easy to develop extensions on top of its extensibility. So this is my first Chrome extension called Social Graph Analyzer.

How to Use

By installing Social Graph Analyzer shows person icon on top right of your browser. To use this extension, just click this button on profile page of someone on any social services. By clicking it, pop up show up his / her other services’ profile page link. Of course, you can click them to see those pages.

I won’t describe how this is implemented, but if those profile pages include technologies like microformat or FOAF, detection possibility will go up.

In the future

Planning to show badge, how many sites are detected before clicking the button. Tracing social graph sounds nice too.

Twitter is a good place to try out. Check it out.

Download from here: Social Graph Analyzer

On early 13th Jan. (JST), Google unveiled something we’ve been calling “GDrive”, as part of Google Docs’ functionality. You can use up to 1GB for free, add 1GB/$0.25 per year. Slightly different from what we(maybe only I)’ve expected was, Google doesn’t offer client application for this. But don’t worry, there’s already an API. Sooner or later, Google itself, or third party will definitely release Dropbox-like client software, I’m sure.

By the way, did you notice that this online storage means more than just a storage?

SocialWeb and Access Control

I’ve been insisting that, web will act like operating system in the future, and social web will be important part of it. Here’s ideas:

• SocialWeb will be too common to notice it exists.
• Global identity will be required.
• Social Graph will be tied with identity and will be portable.
• Social Graph will be ported to phones, TVs, etc. as well as web services.
• Social Graph will control accesses, as well as used to share or invite someone.
• File systems will eventually have ACL using Social Graph.

I’ve been thinking the last one will be future, but…

ACL on Google Docs

Google Docs Storage seems to have social ACL functionality. As you know, Google Docs originally have Access Control: When you create a doc, it’s basically private. Then, you can publish it to public, or share it with groups or people individually, by specifying his/her email address. Mail address of course, will be auto-completed as you type, derived from Gmail contact list. You can give read/write access to them.

Imagine this strong access control feature is adopted to your other files like music, photos, videos…and you can access them from desktop, iPhone, Android. Files are synced with cloud. ACL is managed easily using global identities like email address, WebFinger, OpenID. Isn’t it nice?

This is what we call: Web OS.

Summary

Some people say Google is behind Facebook, because Google doesn’t own SNS. But it’s just about application platform. Google is building something better than that, slowly but surely, as you can see on Google Docs Storage: web OS platform. In the future, Chrome OS will take advantage of this, their concept will see its completion. Their layer is lower than Facebook’s.

Someday, Facebook will notice, that they are just playing on Google’s palm top.

Happy New Year!

It’s been a while since I last updated this blog because I was too busy taking care of my kids. Today, I’d like to write down some thoughts on Social Web (mainly about Japanese Market) and its prediction for this year.

2009 was a huge mile stone for Japanese Social Web, there emerged the first OpenSocial container, Social Application market, on horizon. mixi Appli have been doing quite well and interests around social application market seems getting even bigger. Other japanese big SNS, like Mobage is awaiting to release its mobile social application platform too. 2009 can be recorded as the first year of Social Web for Japanese. And it’s my honor to be able to have got involved in it.

By the way, I’ve posted an article “Predicting Social Web 2009” in the beginning of 2009 (Japanese only), which was influenced by Mr. John McCrea’s article.

Reviewing my prediction for 2009

Like John McCrea has done, I review my prediction here.

Google turns to Social Network

In the article, I predicted that Google will put their social graph into iGoogle (meaning OpenSocial-ize) including the ones on FriendConnect, and make their whole services more social. Yes, iGoogle now is OpenSocial container, but they haven’t associated it with FriendConnect yet.

Meanwhile, services like Wave, Docs, Calendar, Android shares the same social graph which Google Contacts (part of Gmail) provide. This means Google is turning itself more social. Slowly, but steadily, Google is being Socialized. I’ll keep my eyes on Google’s socialization.

Market platforms

iPhone App Store emerged in 2008 as an example, I foresited that there might be various markets, selling videos, music… Market for creators.
I might be able to say mixi Appli, Android market were answers for this, but they are just for developers. Not quite matching my prediction.

Social Ad platform wars

I predicted there would be social ad platforms and its war. On top of Facebook expanding its online ad share, Google revealed social ad platform using FriendConnect. These may be counted as the beginning of social ad war, aren’t they? ;)

Predicting Social Web 2010

So, my prediction for 2009 was not totally wrong, but a bit going further than it actually was. But never mind, I try the same thing again for this year :)

Twitter

Twitter will stay on top issue around web 2010. Including Japenese prime minister, a lot of celebrities are starting to tweet in Japan. Talking about celebrities, Ameba Now should be the strongest micro blogging service candidate to hire, but Twitter is attracting and making them start to tweet by themselves. So it’s clear that Twitter will be talked a lot in 2010.

Realtime web

Realtime web will also be focused on in Japan this year. You might say, you’ve been able to use mobile and talk with people real time on 2 channel already, but the realtime web in 2010 is social. Looking at Twitter, it is needless to say social realtime web is comfortable to dive in, mixi Voice or GREE Hitokoto will trail the path. Don’t forget that one timeline is enough for one person.

Activity Streams

As you may know, yet another open spec ActivityStream has been drafted by people from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc. It’s already been deployed on Facebook, MySpace and will be included in OpenSocial spec. ActivityStream is extension of Atom and can describe more semantic and thus social than the one in OpenSocial’s current spec. Also, AS is one of the essential component of realtime web. Since timeline on micro blogs and AS are good suit, they are tend to be merged, just like GREE’s Hitokoto or Facebook. PubsubHubbub will help its realtime-ness too.

Federated Identities

With specs like OpenID, OAuth, individual’s personality will be reflected on the web clearer than before. OpenID getting more common, APIs like social graph, activity, payment will strengthen a person with its online identity. Similar services as Facebook Connect, Google FriendConnect should drive these tendencies too.

OpenStack

OpenStack used to have OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, XRDS-Simple, PortableContacts. 2010 seems to add ActivityStreams, Salmon Protocol, PubsubHubbub, Webfinger. This is plan more than prediction though.

Social Media Marketing

Although there’s been Social Media Marketing(SMM) already, 2010’s SMM will be more realtime and direct.
In old SMM, people try to make buzz indirectly by creating contents on media like Youtube, blogs, etc. They tend to refuse responding to users’ comments and was one way communication.
In recent SMM, there’s increasing number of cases where marketers join social activity like on Twitter, Facebook, and communicate with other users directly. These activities fit in SNS (explicit social graph) more than blogs (implicit social graph).

Finally

Please join SocialWeb Japan. It’s a community sharing infomations like this post. (Sorry we speak japanese only there)

I’ve made a presentation about OpenSocial’s Architecture an event: Tokyo GTUG #4. Here I publish the slide I’ve used though it’s all in Japanese. Hope this will help someone.

There’ll be Aizu IT Summer Forum held on 18th Sept. in Aizu Fukushima, Japan. I’m going to have a session there, which will be about “Architectural overview on OpenSocial”.

On the next day, 19th Sept. there’ll be OpenSocial Hackathon in Aizu at the same place for as an accompanying event of Mashup Awards5.

If you happen to be in Aizu, please join us :)

Details and application form (written in Japanese):

OpenSocial Hackathon in Aizu

Snow Leopard has got PHP 5.3, so it’s nice to install Partuza and Shindig. Because you can do without installing entropy.

But I needed to do a little tweak to get MySQL work on Snow Leopard. Here’s a memo.

Download MySQL

Download binary of MySQL from here. Choose Mac OS 10.5(x86_64) on download list close to the bottom.

Install MySQL

Installing can be done only with GUI. Install Prefpane and Startup Item as well. Configure PATH too.

Create ~/.bash_profile and paste, or append following:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
export PATH

You can utilize it by doing:

> source ~/.bash_profile

Do the tweak

You have to do following to get MySQL properly work on PHP:

>  cd /usr/local/mysql
>  sudo ./script/mysql_install_db

then…

>  sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php/ini
>  sudo vim /etc/php.ini

change following part:

mysqli.default_socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock

to something like this:

mysqli.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

That’s it! Now you should be able to start MySQL from Preference Pane and see MySQL working on PHP.

Note: This makes Partuza working, but if you want to do something else, you may need some more work.

プライベートのブログに書いてた内容ですが、ぜひ紹介したいのでこちらにも。

勉強会などによく行くようになって、前々から個人名刺が欲しいとずっと思ってました。かといってよくある小さいサイズのはヤだし、名刺を作ってくれるサービスはたくさんあるのでなかなか手を付けられず・・・そんな時に見つけた記事がこれ。

ブロガー名刺、送料込みで１０００円じゃすと！

デザインにこだわりたかったし、値段も安かったのでこれは！と思い、早速申し込みました。

フルカラー100枚ながら1300円、加えて何度でもデザインをやり直してくれるという太っ腹ぶり。お言葉に甘え、仕上がりまで1ヶ月程度を要しましたが、ついに完成しました。

ブロガー名刺という話でしたが、最近勉強会で会う人などにはTwitterが最も通じやすいので、Twitterをメインにし、OpenSocial関係はおまけ。肩書きはSocialWeb Japanにしました。もちろんブログのURLも入れて。

というわけで、仕上がりには満足してます。まだ嫁にしか渡してません。早く誰かもらって！

この値段でこの仕上がり、前川企画印刷さんに大感謝です！みなさんもどうぞ！

“Web will become more social” This has been what I kept telling people after 2005, when I’d joined goo. There’s so much things we can do when we make social graphs as a platform.  First thing I tried was to make a social platform on a portal site, which turns out to be goo Home.

I already had an image of the future at that time: the social graph will be expanded to external web and it will tie any other services into one with social connections. It was before we laungh goo Home when Facebook emerged.

What Facebook was trying to do was not like what I initially imagined: getting external services into their service. It was totally opposite to what I was imagining, but I realized our ultimate goal must be the same. Making web social. After a few month, OpenSocial got announced.

OpenSocial decides its spec democratic and open. Openness is good. Imagine you want to tie 2 systems social. Needless to say, it’s easier when the spec is something standard. You can omit communication cost as well as technical endeavor.

On top of that, with open spec, a lot of product may be expected. Taking OpenSocial as example, there’s Yoichiro Tanaka’s OpenSocial Development Environment, OpenSocial Client Library, OAuth related libraries, OpenSocial Signed Request Library which I developed… Whole bunch of open source products help latter joining developers.

And the primal open source product among OpenSocial is Shindig, OpenSocial container’s reference implementation.

Shindig was my textbook to learn existing spec of OpenSocial. There was almost no one else in Japan who looked into Shindig, so I was invited to become an Google API Expert.

I’ve also wrote a lot of patches to Shindig on my way to developing goo Home. And 1 and half years have passed…

I have become a committer of Apache Shindig

I made my first contact with Mr. Chris Chabot who has been the main committer of PHP Shindig. I met him in person at Google IO 2008, occasionally chatting on messenger, he recommended me to become Shindig committer.

To become a committer in Apache Software Foundation, you have to get voted. And luckily, I was approved.

PHP Shindig is said to be used be more than 26 SNS with 5 million users. I was really excited to know that.

To me, OpenSocial is just a tool to make my ideal social web possible. But at least in Japan, there’s no other choice now and OpenSocial IS the standard. And Shindig which is used in mixi and goo, is the one which support its core.

I’m hoping to make Social Web happen in Japan and support it as a Shindig committer.

goo Home just launched its Outbound OAuth support from today. Now, any gadget developers on goo Home can easily mash up external contents authorized using OAuth.

For demonstration purpose, I’ve developed a gadget, which I believe is the world’s first Twitter client on OpenSocial using OAuth, called “GadgeTweetr“. GadgeTweetr is simple, but powerful, even on comparing to other desktop Twitter clients.

Major features

• OAuth Login
• Tabs
• Show In-Reply-To
• Search
• Multi-account

OAuth Login

With support of OAuth, GadgeTweetr can let users login to Twitter without giving credentials to goo Home. Just by clicking “Login” button, a new window opens with clear indication that the browser is showing page on twitter.com, users can login to Twitter safely without worrying this is phishing.

Tabs

Using OpenSocial tabset feature, GadgeTweetr provides view of various status pages like some other Twitter clients do. Timeline, Mentions, Direct Message, Favorites, etc.

Show In-Reply-To

If the status is in-reply-to someone, GadgeTweetr shows “reply to:” beside its date. Clicking it will insert source status just blow that, so that you can drill down (up?) to the original tweet.

Search

You can search on Twitter. GadgeTweetr opens search result tab.

Multi-account

User can embed multiple copies of GadgeTweetr gadgets on goo Home’s home page with different authentications. So you have multiple Twitter accounts in one view!

Misc features

3 views

GadgeTweetr has 3 views: home, profile and canvas. Home view provides Timeline, Mentions tabs, profile view provides its owner’s timeline, canvas view provides Timeline, Mentions, Direct Message, Favorites tabs as default.

Auto link

GadgeTweetr detects @ and # and hyper link it, as well as external link. External link will open new window. @ and # opens new tab in GadgeTweetr showing respective status.

ReTweet

By clicking ReTweet button, you can tweet copy of your favorite status message with indication of ReTweet: “RT”. Of course, you can add your comment just as you do on your own tweet.

Show profile

Clicking thumbnail of a user shows profile dialog with description of the person, numbers of friends, followers, tweets.

Follow, unfollow

On profile dialog, you can even follow or unfollow the user depending on your relationship with the user.

Summary

So, this is the “GadgeTweetr”. Sorry but this gadget only works on goo Home for now, since I don’t know any other containers which supports OAuth properly designed to deploy this kind of gadget.

However, this gadget is already supporting English and is ready to serve to other containers. Although current version is just a plain Twitter client, I’m planning to implement more SOCIAL functionality as well.

Hope this helps the evolution of social web!