social

Flud, a popular social RSS client on iOS, has been released for Windows Phone. We previously looked at Flud when it appeared at the Mobile Acceleration Week in New York back in November. With Flud you'll be able to know what your friends (fellow "Fluders") are reading, and vice-versa. This appears to be the norm with every social app now - to see exactly what your friends are up to.

The app itself is nicely designed with a clean Metro UI and features some interesting functionality, including Google Reader integration. Be sure to add "WPCentral.com" as a news source to get the latest from our feed. A quick run down of the features available in Flud:

• Find Fluders who share your interests in news, blogs, and topics
• Flud articles you love and share them with your followers
• See what your followers are reading with the Activity Feed
• Access your Reading List wherever you are, no Internet required
• Easily add, reorder, or remove feeds
• Connect to Google Reader, Twitter, and Facebook

You can download Flud from the Marketplace for free.

Via: GoWindowsGo; Thanks to everyone who tipped us on this.

HeyTell, a popular cross-platform voice messaging service, has released an app for Windows Phone. HeyTell allows one to send and receive voice recorded messages, which can prove more efficient than standard SMS. The service requires no account to be created, just add an email and/or phone number and you're good to go.

Some highlighted features:

• Send/Receive messages to and from contacts on Android and iOS.
• Low data usage.
• Toast notifications.
• Messages can be saved and played offline.
• Send/Receive current GPS location.

You can download HeyTell from the Marketplace for free. Note you may occur charges from your carrier from usage.

Torchbear, a mobile geolocation based social network game, which went live on the Marketplace a few months ago, has been updated to version 1.3. The update is pretty big with more features and improvements being applied to the app. A quick walkthrough on what's included:

• Added Search for player and torches to the main page
• Added World News and Local News
• Added auto exchanges for pending torches longer than 3 days
• Added instant exchanges for players who have stopped playing
• Exchange distance has been increased
• Added support for Miles or Kilometers
• New Player Points system
• Improved loading performance
• New Leaderboards (World, Nearby, and Following)
• Ability to save any photo to your phone (including profile pics)
• Can now exchange torches with a person who has held the torch before

You can download Torchbear for free from the Marketplace. Be sure to check out the official website too.

Joe Marini, Windows Phone principle manager at Microsoft, was in the social media spotlight with three tweets that caught the eye of not only his followers, but news sites and readers all around. Geekwire reports that a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the news this morning that Marini had left the company he'd joined in 2003, but failed to elaborate on the reasons why.

The first tweet of three in question Joe published was detailing that he was was using a Nokia Windows Phone handset. A fellow Twitter user asked him what he'd rate the device out of 10 and Joe answered with the second tweet, scoring the mysterious handset an 8 and praising the solid feel, good camera, responsive UI, and nice little touches on the body construction. The last tweet posted by Joe was stating what he'd like to see improved, namely the screen size. 

Microsoft calls on its employees, according to its social media and blogging policy (PDF), to "be smart" and not to share any details that would otherwise be disclosed as confidential. Hopefully more information will be made available soon as to what the actual reasons for his departure were.

Source: Geekwire, via: TNW

Here's an odd little number: Dotastic hit the Marketplace sometime today and it's yet another official app from Microsoft, specifically their FUSE Labs, which specialize in social networking technology (see the WP7 'Project Emporia'). If you're not familiar with them here's their mission statement:

"FUSE Labs works in partnership with product and research teams to ideate, develop, and deliver new social, real-time, and media-rich experiences for home and work."

Dotastic is an app that mixes a to-do list with the fun and pressure of social networking--its motto is "Achieve Together". Think of it as broadcasting things to get done to your friends, where you then compete against each other by collecting points upon task completion. It's a method of using social pressure but in a positive way, which we think is pretty ingenious (so long as your task isn't too private, ahem). From the app description:

"Dotastic is a fun way to challenge your friends and help each other get things done. Earn points for completing tasks and compete with your friends to be at the top of the leaderboard. Incentives and social pressure helps you stay motivated as you complete your tasks and share your achievements with everyone."

It's like Twitter, but with a point. The app seems to coincide with the website www.dotastic.com, which is not yet live. We imagine that website will allow you to access your account (which is done via Facebook) and use it as primary interface, whereas the mobile app is for...well, when you're on the go.

You can downland the app by clicking this link, but understand at this time it's currently not working. The app needs to communicate with the Dotastic server, which is that aforementioned website. Until that goes live, you won't be able to complete the setup. One thing is for certain, Microsoft is having fun playing around with social networks, apps and technologies akin to Google (but nicer looking).

via: WindowsPhoneMetro

Twitter, the social network that has skyrocketed out of control, has been bombarded with API connections and tweets being published and re-tweeted through exceptional growth. Ryan Sarver, who is a member of the Platform Team at Twitter, announced that they've updated their Terms of Service to help mainstream the Twitter experience and ensure users are connecting to (and using the) service in the same way.

With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever. As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app. It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps. 

Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter. Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more. Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter. 

More after the break.

Bubblegum is a new app from two Microsoft employees, Sriram Krishnan (Program Manager for Microsoft’s Windows Azure; also of Browser Plus fame) and Aarthi Ramamurthy (Program Manager for Microsoft’s XNA) which, though we hate to make comparisons, is an Instagram clone. Instagram, for those who don't know, is a very popular photo sharing app/site for the iPhone that allows you share pics with your friends, add effects to the photo and even see it on a map.

While we don't have Instagram on WP7, Bubblegum seeks to fill that gap by offering basically those same features. But with the launch of Flickr for Windows Phone literally on the same day as Bubblegum's, we have to ask, is it necessary? At first blush (and on paper), the answer is no.

But then something happened: we downloaded and tried it. And truth be told, it's an exceptional experience. Smooth transitions, excellent graphics and superb integration with Twitter, Foursqaure and Facebook make it quite compelling and tough to ignore. How it works is you sign up for an account (on the phone, it's very quick) which then logs you in to the network. From there you can add friends (manually search for their name or tap into your Twitter/Facebook contacts). It's that latter part that's really neat: you type in your login info for Facebook or Twitter and it finds just those contacts who are also on Bubblegum (for me it was Manan and Microsoft's Charlie Kindel)--you can then follow them to see their photo uploads in your stream. As for effects, you have Black&White, Woodstock, Frosty, Grunge, Tilt Shift, Cyano, Aurora, History (sepia), Betty (it's better than butter).

The whole thing is like Twitter but without the drama. It's focused on the visual instead of the text.

Oh and there's a Yoda quote in there, which totally wins nerd points. The two developers responsible are a husband and wife team who have a geeky sense of humor and it just gives this app feeling of fun. Sure, in our social-networked lives with 900 services, it's not clear we need another, but Bubblegum at least makes the argument for one more. The app is free in the Marketplace here and we urge you to just take it for a spin--it could be our own homespun next-big-thing on Windows Phone.

ps I'm listed as "malatesta" on there.

via: @ckindel; additional info: MobileCrunch

Microsoft has been busy updating their Bing service, adding Zune store support, access to social sites like Twitter and overall just making it a real solid competitor to Google's platform.

Recently at that Cannes Lions advertising conference, Bing on Windows Phone 7 was demoed and it brings the same search plus all that new stuff as well. Some of these advanced features are the following, as detailed by 1800PocketPC:

• Twitter and Facebook Search about the keyword with one click – It looks like you can also drill down to results by your friends only.
• Share with your Friends
• Barcode and CoverArt Scan and Bing gives you info on that product

Interestingly, a lot of these same features are already available on another mobile OS--yeah, that one. On June 22nd, Microsoft rolled up a nice update for the iPhone/iPad which included all of the above, including that bar-code scanner feature which rivals Google's Shopper/Bar Code apps on Android.

While we're pretty excited to see Bing and Zune get front and center on Windows Phone 7, we're still hoping that Microsoft hasn't forgotten WM6.x and will update their Bing software soon, you know for the rest of us. If and when it comes, you can bet the above feature set should be included.

Check out the video here, specifically at 9:10 and 14:03.

[Thanks, Saijo]

Ah, Foursquare. Either you love it or you think it is even more dumb than Twitter. Either way, the fledgling social service which is now available in the Microsoft Marketplace and soon for Windows Phone 7, has updated some of their code to prevent people from cheating on 'check ins'.

See, the more often you 'check in' with Foursquare at a specific location, the better chance you have at being the number one visitor. Upon that amazing (or sad) achievement, you are awarded badges or the most coveted 'mayorship'. Yes, yes, it's also silly and a bit odd for adults, especially if it's a place of ill repute to indulge in your lascivious ways.

As bad as all that is, evidently people were cheating to get those awards by spoofing their location. For shame people. Well, Foursquare wants you to know they frown upon such behavior and have attempted to put an end to your evil-doing ways.

So there, neener-neener.