Social Networking Goes Back to School

Remember the "good old days" of Facebook? If you were on Facebook before 2008, you probably have fond memories of the then college-only social network.

Memories like awkwardly changing relationship statuses, throwing virtual livestock at your friends, and the freedom to post embarrassing photos without worrying about parents/potential employers seeing you doing keg stands or tequila shots.

That's why the launch of a new, college-exclusive social network called CollegeOnly caught my eye. Like the name suggests, it is only open to someone with a college email address from one of three schools (Princeton, Yale and Cornell) currently registered. The network itself is a hodgepodge of existing social media features, with everything from your basic status posting and photo uploads to geo-tagging and a Craigslist-style "Missed Connections" feature.

Besides the strict entrance requirements and multitude of features, there is one other interesting thing about the site. Most social networks are "opt-in," where you start with no friends and then add connections, building your network from the ground up. But CollegeOnly is more of an "opt-out" style network, because you are automatically connected with everyone on the network upon signing up and then block users you don't want to be connected with.

Obviously, CollegeOnly will need to expand if they ever want to gain ground in the social media oligarchy. But it sounds like its creators have done their best to try and return social networking to its early days, before you had to worry about your mom or dad looking in on your personal life.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Facebook pictures I need to delete...

iPad Finally Answers the Question We've All Been Asking

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPad, the Apple faithful had a twinkle in their eye, tech geeks pondered the implications and companies pondered the opportunities to incorporate it into their business plans.

But the rest of us had one question: who needs a device that is essentially a giant iPhone?

Despite big sales numbers and glowing reviews, that question has never really been answered...until now.

I recently came across a story about the Sumo Association in Japan purchasing iPads to help keep the various sumo stables. The reason for why they chose iPads over any other form of communication device is that the wrestlers' fingers are too thick for traditional texting methods.

So I'm sure this isn't quite the target demographic Apple had in mind when they basically super-sized their iPod Touch and launched the tablet craze. However, it is always interesting to see existing products being adopted by new and unique user segments.

And for Apple, the 60 iPads bought by the Sumo Association may be a drop in the bucket financially, but is an I-told-you-so moment Jobs can point to when people question who would ever need a giant iPhone or iPod Touch.

Google's Axiom-Style Promotion

I'm thinking Google may have taken a page out of Axiom's book with their upcoming promotion for the new Google Voice calling technology.

Google's plan is to put red telephone booths in public venues (mostly airports and college campuses) to generate buzz about Google Voice. And these phone booths aren't just meant to sit around and look pretty, they are working phones integrated with the Google Voice feature. Step into one of the booths and you can test out the feature with free domestic and international calls.

If the idea of phone booths sounds familiar, it should. That's because here on the Daily Axioms blog I've made many references to our own Axiom phone booth that sits in our lobby.


Hey communication is communication, right? So why not feature one of the early versions of it. Also, I'm all for any promotion that infuse a little nostalgia with some product testing. Hopefully, this will inspire more phone booth-focused promotions in the future.

Not Just A Flash In The Pan(dora)

On August 29th the music-streaming site Pandora will turn 5, which is quite the achievement in Internet years. It was launched when YouTube was only six months old, a year before Twitter even hit the market, and way before Facebook was anywhere near the online juggernaut it is today.

Pandora has been one of the quieter online success stories over the years. Despite little press coverage, the site has not only seen near-steady growth in 2010 but has become a cultural icon and one of the first things people think of when they think of online music.

Pandora's format hasn't really gone under any drastic changes over the years other than offering premium paid services. However, they recently announced the launch of genre-based stations that would focus on a wider range of music instead of a band or song.

Is this a game-changing innovation? Probably not, but with more and more music-streaming sites popping up, it's important that existing sites continue to innovate.

3 Reasons Social Gaming Is An Industry All Its Own

Just last week I wrote a post mentioning the growth of social gaming, and a new study strengthens the case that the growth will continue. Here are three key stats from that study.

1 out of 5 Americans over the age of six has played an online social game at least once.

Obviously, that number is just based on who was polled. But if you extrapolate that out, nearly 60 million Americans have or are playing social games. That's a huge number of users.

$2.2 billion worth of virtual goods were bought in 2009; expected to increase to $6 billion by 2013.

This is the major reason why social gaming isn't going away in the near future. The amount of money social gaming has already brought in is massive, and experts think that number is going to triple. As long as people are buying virtual goods, companies will continue to provide them.

35% of social gamers have no previous gaming experience whatsoever.

This was the most surprising stat to me, because ever since social games hit the market they've been compared to (and grouped with) traditional games. To me, this says that social gaming is becoming a completely different market, separate from the Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox-dominated industry of traditional gaming.

This is great news for social networks and bad news for the gaming industry. For social networks, social gaming provides monetization options other than just ads and banners. Unfortunately for the gaming industry, their struggles over the past couple of years are most likely to continue, because over a third of that social gaming demographic aren't playing traditional video games.

That being said, the gaming industry isn't beyond hope. However, it will take serious innovation and a continued push towards online gaming. The biggest takeaway is that social games like Farmville won't be put out to pasture anytime soon.