Social media, types of media where everyday people can publish and subscribe to what one another publishes, have changed the world. At least in the United States, though, their rapid expansion through acquisition of new users may be over.
Facebook specialist Eric Eldon published a compilation of statistics from around the web this week on TechCrunch that pointed towards US and Canadian market saturation this past year for Facebook. Surely Facebook represents the forward line of all social media. Academic and tech industry analyst Vivek Wadhwa posted a set of predictions for 2012 in the Washington Post last night, starting with a prediction that the period of rapid growth for social media is over. In the future it will be a feature, not a product, he argues. To startups and investors, Wadha says "It's time to jump on the next bandwagon, folks."
Trover, a free mobile app for exploring places through photos, has launched an Android version after a good start on iOS in July. The Seattle-based startup is focused on what it calls "spatial browsing." Trover is a photo-sharing app that arranges discoveries on a map, so that users can either explore sights right around them or browse places around the world.
"Most of the apps out there today that are location-specific are delivering lists of content back to the user," says CEO Jason Karas. "We feel that exploring a space is not really done best through lists, that it's done through information that's organized in a spatial way. You can literally stroll around with our UI and take in the neighborhood just like you would when you're walking around."
In case you've fallen behind in your farm machinery reading, a recent video from Farm Equipment Magazine is worth giving some special attention. The video below gives a preview of a new product called the Kinze Autonomy Project, a new set of tractor and grain cart unveiled this Summer that drive themselves to harvest crops and that can make "intelligent operational decisions in real time based on field conditions."
Designed to reduce the need for skilled labor operating the machinery, the system would mean that farmers could do other higher-level planning work and operate the tractor all night long by itself. Presumably the whole thing is networked, collects data and will make some analytics available. Hello, Internet of Things, goodbye Old MacDonald? I'm not sure what to think of this - but large scale agriculture has probably been far enough from a city dweller's idyllic vision of farming to be creepy for a long time anyway. There's something about this video that feels especially creepy to me though.
The 4th largest international sporting event in the world kicked off this week in New Zealand. The Rugby World Cup is surpassed in scale only by the soccer World Cup, the Summer Olympics and the Tour de France. Due to New Zealand's time zones, rugby fans all over the world may be relying on the Web to keep up with the action. Given that ReadWriteWeb was founded in New Zealand, it behooves us to provide you with all the details!
In this post we tell you how to monitor the Rugby World Cup online, using a range of impressive official websites and social media accounts.
I'm thousands of feet in the air, speeding across the United States, flying from Portland, Oregon to Austin, Texas. When I land, I'm going to send a picture of myself to my nieces back home - but it won't just be a picture of one of their favorite uncles in a place they've never been. There will be a familiar avatar in the picture with me - a Flat Stanley.
That's an experience that children all over the world have had. Flat Stanley calls itself the longest-running literacy and community building program on the web. The program encourages participants to carry, mail or otherwise send a cardboard cut-out figure called Flat Stanley to faraway places and interesting circumstances. When the same Flat Stanley that was in a classroom in South Africa shows up in a photo perched on a snow bank in the United States - something magical happens in the minds of the children who sent it across the world. It's as if those faraway places become more real, now the child has a connection with the place and the prospect of making that trip themselves feels more possible. Anything that expands a person's understanding of what's possible is a good thing. Now the Flat Stanley experience is available in a new mobile app, making it easier than ever to use.
United Airlines has announced it is converting to paperless flight decks and deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. This is yet another sign that tablets - and in particular Apple's iPad - are changing the way people access and interact with content. We've already extensively covered how iPads have impacted the magazine and newspaper industries, but nowadays it's even more interesting to track how iPads are impacting non-content industries.
United is labeling the iPad manual an "electronic flight bag" (EFB). It will completely replace paper flight manuals for all pilots by the end of this year. In addition, the pilots will use an iPad app to replace paper aeronautical navigational charts. Below we check out a short video of what United pilots will see, plus some screenshots.
Trover, a photo-driven app for exploring places, has launched out of private beta. Trover lets users share location-tagged photos and browse them by time and location.
Though Trover is a photo-sharing app, it is organized for exploration, not just for browsing images. Don't think Instagram; Trover's roots within Seattle-based travel startup Travelpost are apparent. Trover shows what's around you to help you explore the place.
One of the most interesting aspects of Web technology and social media nowadays is how it's being deployed by non-techies. Recently I had the chance to connect with the U.S. Army to find out how it is using the Web. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online video and more is currently in operation at U.S. Army HQ.
I spoke to Suzanne Nagel, Digital Chief, U.S. Army Accessions Command, who walked me through how the Web is being used for recruitment and community. We started off by discussing a blog called Army Strong Stories, which enables people to hear authentic stories from U.S. Army soldiers.
The most important thing you need to know about Banjo, the Palo Alto-based startup launching its new mobile app today, is that it's not another social network. "Banjo is a social discovery service," explains CEO Damien Patton. "It's a layer on top." What he means is that you don't have to build a community on Banjo, you don't have to add or remove friends - in fact, you don't even have to create a profile to use it.
Instead, Banjo, when launched, shows you the people around you. It's a social network based on who's present at any given location.
