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This has been an exciting month at Next2Friends.  It began with our announcement that Next2Friends had developed the world’s first application for broadcasting live mobile video on the BlackBerry OS.  This was quickly followed by the release of Next2Friends Live for the BlackBerry Bold.  Since then we’ve seen a flurry of interest and activity.

The first large blog to break our news was Gizmodo, the highly trafficked gadget and tech blog.  Several others followed suit including JKOnTheRun, TheNextWeb, and dozens of others.

Next was a great article by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch around the BlackBerry Bold release.

AppAppeal, a web based application review site, also had some great things to say.

But perhaps the best part of all this activity is that we’re welcoming scores of new folks from around the world into our community.  It’s very exciting to watch this platform we’ve created become useful to people in all the ways we imagined it could.  One of our new members is Anthony Papillion, an enthusiastic tech writer and creator of CajunTechie.com.  He not only wrote a nice piece on Next2Friends he made a comment that really means a lot to us:

“Next2Friends has an incredible community that immediately makes you feel welcomed and comfortable - even when you’re a newbie making stupid mistakes.”

Sure the recent press is reaffirming but it’s really comments like these that act as our guide.  Our goal is and always has been to strengthen connections and build community through technology and if members are understanding and valuing the community we’ve built then we’re doing our job.  Thanks everyone and we’ll see you on Next2Friends!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

A handful of announcements this week regarding the Android OS add momentum to the uptake of Google’s nascent mobile platform.  First, ASUS, the well known computer hardware manufacturer, has announced it’s intention to create Android based handsets for release by mid year 2009.  Looks like they will be testing the models in the Taiwanese market first then bringing them to the west.

Asustek’s 3.5G P552w PDA phonePhoto: CJ Liu, Digitimes, October 2008

Second, Motorola has announced that it will be using the Android platform for nearly ALL  of it’s mid-level phones.  This was an even greater pledge than was first thought a few weeks ago. Motorola also announced that they will be cutting the number of operating systems that they build for from six to three.

Android is very much in it’s infancy.  It is only availble on one handset, the G1 by HTC, but there is very serious work being done to ensure its spread.  Google has begun talking to some of the leading universities in the US about building curriculum around Android.  Universities like Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon.  And companies such as Motorola are using Android in products other than mobile phones such as set top boxes for TV.

Add to all this that just this week WalMart and T-Mobile announced they will be offering the HTC G1 at all WalMart stores for $148.88.  Putting an Android phone into one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked chains is definitely a good idea.  It will be interesting to watch the sales numbers.

The future could be bright for this open source platform.  As many others have predicted, we may be set to watch a showdown between an “open” model (Android) and a “closed” model (Apple OS).  This could very well be the Apple verses PC struggle of the new millennium.

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

Forrester Research, which publishes surveys and data around social media usage, has come out with their 2008 Technographics Data.  Don’t let the name scare you.  Technographics is Forrester’s method of analyzing consumer behavior.  Here is a nice visual of how they categorize people “technographically”:

As you can see they’ve devided people up into 6 different categories based on their level of involvment with social media.  So to find the information Forrester compiled data from tens of thousands of people in North America, Canada, Europe and Asia. Their results were very telling.

All categories have seen an increase besides “inactives”.  The number of “spectators” increased by a whopping 21 percentage points.  That means more people are on the sidelines watching the action even if they aren’t participating by being “joiners” or “critics”.  But “joiners”, “collectors”, “critics” and “creators” all saw an increase over the past year.  But let’s return to those “inactives” a minute, they’ve nearly halved over the year!  That’s right, that means the number of people untouched by technology is shrinking.

As Josh Bernoff puts it on the Forrester blog, “If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence.”  Indeed you did!

Use of social media has seen it’s greatest growth among people 33-45 years old, with 45-54 year olds also posting modest gains as well.  Josh puts it best again,

“It will soon be no more remarkable that your grandmother reads a blog than that she reads email. Social content is going mainstream. Social content ranks high on search engines because it changes so frequently and gets linked to more often, so more and more online adults are becoming exposed to it, accepting it, and embracing it.”

Not sure we’re ready for that one, grandma, are you reading this!?!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

We’ve gotten a slew of new signups this week, including continued activity from BlackBerry Pearl and Curve users, and now BlackBerry Bold users from around the world.  This week has capped off one of our biggest months yet!  So we thought it appropriate to highlight one of our newest members.  Jason1100 has his status posted as “HAPPY” and he should be, he’s a new father!  Such a great example of how Next2Friends allows you to share the most important moments of life.  Jason took us into the hospital in the moments after his daughter was born:

And here is another shot of his new daughter, Madalyn, sleeping. She looks quite content!

Keep the broadcasts coming Jason, congratulations to you and your beautiful new family!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

We have been very hard at work lately.  Some of you may know that a few weeks ago we announced the world’s first free Live Mobile Broadcasting solution for the BlackBerry OS as we brought Next2Friends Live to the BlackBerry Curve and the Pearl.  Well now we’re adding to that list one of the most talked about phones by RIM in a while, the BlackBerry Bold.

The Bold is a fantastic new phone that features all the goodies you’d expect, Wifi, 3G connectivity, a 2MP camera, and the ability to connect to almost any network worldwide, to name a few.  Add to that having a display about which CNET writer Bonnie Cha says, “I was absolutely blown away. I can pretty much say I’ve never seen a better-looking display on a smartphone.”

Next2Friends Live turns a mobile phone into a live video broadcasting tool.  Live video broadcasting from mobile has been notably absent for BlackBerry devices, owing largly to the difficulty in working with the BlackBerry OS.  Next2Friends set about correcting this early this past summer.  There just were too many ways that live mobile broadcasting could be useful to the primarily business set who use BlackBerrys, from tradeshows to conferences to beaming images back home while traveling.

Singing up for an account is free and Next2Friends Live is just one of the mobile offerings from Next2Friends.  Our Social Suite is comprised of SnapUp, truly two click photo capture and upload to the internet, Ask, real time opinion polling, and Tag, real world profile matching.  Besides providing a comprehensive set of real time media tools, the Social Suite delivers much of the functionality of the website to mobile so members can look at and comment on photos, read emails and follow their friends’ latest activity from anywhere.

Here is a demonstration of how to get Next2Friends Live up and running on a BlackBerry Pearl, Curve or Bold.  Happy Streaming!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

It’s Friday and that means it’s time to highlight some of the great activity on Next2Friends!  The past couple weeks have been busy with the release of Next2Friends Live for RIM’s BlackBerry devices, and we’ve seen a tremendous surge in new members streaming live video from around the world!  This weeks member of the week is no exception.  Drewligan hails from the UK and by the looks of it is a typical teen having a good time with his friends:

We can’t help but marvel at the power of live streamed video to take us places we’ve never been while simultaneously showing us just how similar we are.  Anyone who’s been an adolescent (which should be all of you) should be able to relate to Drewligan and his buddies.  Here is a funny video of him in cooking class.  Not sure I’d eat those Drew!

Great stuff! Keep the videos coming!  Just try not to break anything…well, aside from a few hearts.

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

We’ve been hard at work lately developing all sorts of new features and improvements.  The biggest of which was our development of Next2Friends Live for RIM’s BlackBerry Curve and Pearl.  But something slipped by virtually unnoticed lately (except by our members) and that is the launch of the Next2Friends Live embeddable widget.

Essentially it is a widget that displays your live videos.  You can embed it into anywhere that will let you use HTML code, like Myspace or a personal website.  It’s quite simple to use, just copy the embed code from the landing page of your (or anyone’s) Next2Friends Profile, paste it and away you go:

Already members are jumping on this new tool.  Have a look at how new member and active blogger dotlizard has utilized the widget on her website.  It’s also great for musicians, lifecasters, and anyone with something to promote.  It’s pretty clear that fans of virtually anything appreciate the intimacy of live broadcasts from artists and personalities.  But that is not to count out how families and friends are using it to offer a window into their life’s little happenings for one another.  All great stuff, we’re quite pleased with the response so far and ask that you stay tuned for even more features in the coming weeks!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!