Blogs

I recently blogged that "Flexibility is required for .au domain registration, renewal periods", after my participation in the Australian Domain Administrator (auDA) 2010 Names Policy Panel.

I stressed particularly that the 2-year minimum/maximum domain registration period is contrary to the needs of business, and I pushed for the auDA Board to allow 1 year to 5 year registrations of .com.au domain names to bring Australia in line with other countries.

This discussion, as well as the dozen or so more that the 2010 auDA Names Policy Panel analysed is part of a Discussion Paper we released for public discourse. Please click here to read.

You are also encouraged to take part in a survey, where the domain name registration period is one of a number of questions you are able to respond to, thus become part of the Australian domain name policy setting process.

Please click here and complete the survey BEFORE 21 January.

A new social network startup has been getting a lot of attention. It is called Path – the Personal Network. Hmm, personal? Does this not translate to anti-social?

Path is a San Francisco-based startup with some high profile employees from the tech industry. Dave Morin, who helped build Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform, left the company this year to start his own venture and be the company’s CEO. Shawn Fanning, the co-founder of Napster, is also heavily involved in the project. Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, is an investor.

The Path Blog issued a statement conceptualising their network,

“Path is the personal network.  A place to be yourself and share life with close friends and family. The personal network doesn’t replace your existing social networks – it augments them.

Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 closest friends and family in your life who matter most.

Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

A concept that makes it unique: You're limited to 50 friends.  Yes, 50 (and no more than 50) of your closest friends.

This magical number of 50 was based on the research of Robin Dunbar, an Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology, claims that the average human can only maintain about 150 stable relationships. For some reason, Dave Morin decided we can have no more than 50.

Apparently, there is such a thing as having too many friends and I think this is the problem Path team is trying to solve. When you follow hundreds and hundreds of people on Twitter, or have more “friends” on Facebook than you could actually know, you lose the closeness that those networks intend you to have with the people that you care about.

And what else is new on path: Path lets you know who's seen your photos. That's not possible with Facebook, but another social media service, LinkedIn, lets you know who's seen your profile, so it's not entirely new.

And now I’m wondering if Path will catch on. Aren’t there too many social networks already? Isn't any newcomer going to have trouble competing against that 500-million-user Facebook? And Path's 50-friend limit... It is their differetiator, but is it their advantage? Time will tell.

Is the Google and Facebook war heating up?

A new addition has been made to the Terms of Service for the Google Contacts API:

5.8. Google supports data portability. By accessing Content through the Contacts Data API or Portable Contacts API for use in your service or application, you are agreeing to enable your users to export their contacts data to other services or applications of their choice in a way that’s substantially as fast and easy as exporting such data from Google Contacts, subject to applicable laws.

What does this mean?

The change means that users will no longer be able to import Gmail contacts directly to sites like Facebook until they let their users export their contacts.

Consider these points:

1.    At the start of your sign up onto Facebook, you’re run through a series of prompts asking you to enter your Google account information so that Facebook can import the email addresses of your contacts. This is a very powerful feature because it helps new users instantly connect with dozens of their friends. And Google is turning it off.

“We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation  - and that this move will encourage other websites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts, as well,” said the Google spokesperson.

2.    Facebook has claimed in the past that there are sensitive issues around exporting contact information. Facebook has never allowed users to export the contact information of their friends. Yes, you can get the list of their names but not their contact details such as emails or phone numbers.

Google made one small change to its Terms of Service that will have a big impact on the world’s biggest social network.

And despite a change to the company’s Contacts API terms of use, Facebook is continuing to allow users to import their Google Contacts.

Do we sense a war heating up between Facebook and Google, who are big competitors in the online arena?

Let us all wait and see how the social networking giant Facebook responds to this search giant Google’s move.