Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

AT&T Inc.  has just announced  the launch of "My Communities," a new downloadable gateway that lets users create and manage multiple social networking accounts through a single dashboard view on their mobile phone.

My Communities was developed by Intercasting Corporation, a leading mobile social networking company. The launch coincides with recent data showing that a majority of social networking users maintain multiple accounts and that a growing number are maintaining their social networks primarily by using wireless handsets.

Uh….Where’s FaceBook?

At first glace this looks great, but digging deeper into this, even with MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal and many more, FaceBook somehow fell off the face of this offering.

A few cool features though:

• Through My Communities, subscribers can register for social sites directly from their phone without ever having to go to the Web, a feature not common with most other social networking applications
• From an easy-to-use dashboard view, My Communities users can upload photos from their phone, view and respond to new messages, approve and deny friend requests and view and post new comments across multiple sites. Users can alternatively click to enter a specific site for a more customized experience. Updates are synched across mobile and online channels in real time.
• Subscribers can also access their phone, camera, media gallery and address book while My Communities is running, which enables them, for example, to upload photos to use on one or more social networks and send site content to phone contacts without closing the application.

If you have an iPhone, you can download most free Social Networking sites and not have to pay for this type of service.

My Communities is available on more than 30 devices for a monthly subscription of $2.99. It can be downloaded from the AT&T MEdia Mall, accessible via AT&T handsets and online at www.att.com/mediamall.

My suggestion:  upgrade to the iPhone and get on any major social network for free.

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

AT&T has a FaceBook page.... seems like it’s mostly aimed at college students.

Source: gigaom.com

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

I am very happy to see fellow blogger Alec Saunders‘ iotum going global with it’s FREE Conference Calls application on facebook. iotum is supported by a international group of companies. Namely they are, Truphone in the U.K., Abbeynet in Italy and MOI Telecom in France. Following is the Press release by iotum and I suggest you also read, VoIP Watch article by Andy Abramson, one of the people responsible (I hope that gentle push came from you Andy, not MOI, Forgive me for guessing.) for this marvelous marriage (Only place I agree on Polygamy is market place). Andy, I think I am in need to find some purple minutes.

OTTAWA & February 27, 2008– iotum today announced global availability of its popular FREE Conference Calls application on Facebook under agreements with Internet communications partners Truphone in the U.K., Abbeynet in Italy and MOI Telecom in France.

Iotum CEO Alec Saunders said the global expansion of FREE Conference Calls is in response to demand from users of the application launched on Facebook last September. "Now, thanks to our partnership agreements, anyone can join a FREE Conference Calls from anywhere in the world."

"FREE Conference Calls has many standard features not available from other providers," he said. "We give our users the ability to provide agendas for their calls; moderators can mute or unmute the calls; record a podcast; schedule calls in advance, or provide reminders. Hosts can also queue participants to speak, and we even provide a live "writing wall" for interactive text chat."

Since launch, Iotum’s FREE Conference Calls service on Facebook has attracted more than 90,000 users. Conference calls have been created to hold public teleseminars, private meetings, family events, New Year’s Eve countdowns, political discussions and to record multiperson podcasts.

Starting today, users can join an iotum FREE Conference Call using one of three methods:

• Direct dial from home, office, or mobile. In the United States, Canada and France, users can dial the conference server directly using an ordinary call and be joined to the FREE Conference Call. Iotum intends to roll out more directdial countries in the future by recruiting additional partners to service other parts of the world.
• VoIP. From anywhere in the world, users can call using their PCs. All that’s required is an active Internet connection, and clicking on the FREE Conference Calls application icon in Facebook.
• Call back. A user can be called back simply by entering into the FREE Conference Calls application on Facebook the phone number where his or her call is to be received.

"Participants don’t have to be on Facebook, but it’s more valuable for them if they are," Saunders said. "And it’s easy. Facebook users simply install the iotum FREE Conference Calls application and invite friends for a group chat."

Sherman Hu, producer and host of the ShermanLive.com blog, wrote: "As a coach to thousands of business owners about the innovative combination and profitable deployment of blogs, podcasts, video and social media for business, I see the ability to conduct training calls and have anyone outside of North America dial in from anywhere in the world at no charge as a priceless benefit. This initiative will have farreaching impact for my global business."

At Truphone, Platform Director Dean Elwood said: "Truphone already has built a reputation for telephony innovation by providing free mobiletomobile calls via the Internet. This tieup with Iotum fits perfectly with our vision of providing new ways for people to call each other without heed to old world boundaries and pricing structures."

Source: gigaom.com

Source: gigaom.com

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

It’s 640 AM on the west coast. I have spent the last 50 minutes doing nothing but reading, replying and deleting emails.

Many are simple Google notifications, some of which lead to blog posts. Some Google alerts are related to clients. Other emails, many Facebook notifications are simply junk.

I use multiple email accounts as filters (i.e use different accounts for different purposes) but we can’t do that with FaceBook. As a result all the FaceBook spam that comes my way goes to my primary account. So while I’d like the important notifications from real and trusted friends to come to me there, I really don’t want the invites from people I don’t know, notifications about new apps I could care less about coming there.

This is one of the big issues with FaceBook. It has a simple binary nature to it. It’s either on, or off. There’s no middle ground. If Facebook doesn’t get a handle on this, my guess more people will turn it off.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

PaidCotent.org has two very interesting stories that are worth reading.

Yahoo may be making massive job cuts.

Facebook and Nokia may be working together.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Client Alec Saunders reports on the rapid adoption of the free Facebook conference calling application that iotum has developed.

With three clients (iotum, Truphone and Voxalot) who have developed really cool apps for FaceBook, I’m seeing Jeff Pulver’s claim that FaceBook is really an operating system take hold. My one modifier to that is its more a platform than an OS, but I think we’re saying the same thing.

With iotum crossing the 50,000 user mark this clearly shows people want to do more than just have text and photos on Facebook. It also shows that their is a large audience which wants real-time symmetrical communications. This bodes well for Voxalot and Truphone too.

Source: gigaom.com

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Take a look at this if you’re part of the Facebook developer crowd or thinking there will be money in Facebook.

My feeling has always been that Facebook apps get lots of attention week of release and tail off.

Stuart’s stats that Alec links to begins to prove that out.

Source: goebel.net

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You know that I bashed Facebook very hard for being a terrible time sucker. Many Web 2.0 applications need too much attention, compared to their value. But there are some utilizations that make me smile, because the unleash the potential of Web 2.0 without wasting my precious time and money. Like Voxalot’s latest Facebook application, VoxCall for Facebook, that really disrupts telecommunications. It let’s me make free phone calls without touching the PSTN. Read the announcement:

On Monday 19th Nov 2007 Voxalot will be officially launching our new social communications application for Facebook called VoxCall.

VoxCall is an exciting new initiative from Voxalot that allows Facebook users to click on their friends and initiate phone calls. The beauty of VoxCall is that it is self-organising in that if your VoxCall friend changes their contact phone number, you don’t even have to be notified… VoxCall will use whatever number they have registered.

VoxCall also offers both public and private chat rooms where VoxCall friends can get together for a group discussion.

The underlying technology that VoxCall uses to connect calls is Voice over IP addresses (often known as SIP URIs). When you add the VoxCall application, you will be prompted to enter your SIP URI. To ensure that you are the rightful owner of that number, VoxCall will display a PIN number on the screen and then call the number you entered. Your phone will ring and you will be prompted to enter the PIN, which is validated.

As such, VoxCall supports calls between friends that belong to *any* "open" voice network (not just Voxalot).

The beauty is that VoxCall uses VoIP without touching the PSTN. My buddies just enter their SIP URI and I can call them with just one click in Facebook. When they change their SIP address I don’t have to bother to update my data since their Facebook button stays the same. We stay connected for free from SIP to SIP.

I find this much more nifty than the Facebook apps from Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, Rebtel, IVR Technologies, iotum, Sitfono or Grandcentral. They also connect people on Facebook and let them call me for free, in most cases. But there is always a telephone number involved, so that someone has to pay an incumbent telco which provides them.