Filed under: Games, Internet, Social Software

It seems the recent addition of Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm to the Xbox Live experience is proving to be a hit! The jury’s still out on whether Twitter has been such a huge success on the PS3, but I’m sure Sony will release a statement soon to compete with Microsoft.

According to a spokesman from Microsoft, over 2 million users logged into Facebook using their console… in just the first week! Not only did they log in and poke their cute prospective girlfriends and answer banal questions about each other, they also created half a million Last.fm accounts and streamed a total of 120 million minutes of music — again, in just the first week!

These crazy numbers are shocking; it’s truly a case of build-it-and-they-will-come. The break-neck pace at which Microsoft and Sony update their consoles is a sure sign that competition between the PS3 and Xbox is still hotting up.

The console war is not yet over! Poor Wii… there’s a new Zelda title coming soon, right?

[via CNET]

Social media a smash hit on the Xbox — 2 million users in its first week! originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging

Are you one of the many, many people who seem to be up in arms about Twitter’s implementation of retweets? A neat little Greasemonkey script called Retweet Avatars might go a long way toward making you feel better about the new system. Instead of showing the original poster’s icon, it shows your retweeting friend’s icon, with a much smaller inset for the original tweeter.

This two-icon system is similar to the way some third-party clients plan to support retweets, and I think it’s a good compromise. You still have “strangers in your stream,” but their icons aren’t displayed as prominently as those of the people you actually follow. Maybe Twitter should go ahead and use this system by default. Until they do, though, the script works for Greasemonkey in Firefox, although I couldn’t get it working in Greasekit for Safari.

As a side-note: if you prefer to switch the icons, so the original poster’s is larger, you can do that by making a 1-character change to the script. Instructions are on the userscripts.org page.

Greasemonkey script fixes Twitter’s new retweets originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Facebook made a promise earlier this year to listen to user input about any changes to its terms of service and privacy policy, and so far they’ve followed through. Facebook opened up a comment period on an update to the privacy policy earlier this month, and now the users have spoken and approved the changes. During the process, the Facebook Site Governance fan page doubled its membership, growing to almost 500,000 fans.

The new privacy policy was written from scratch, so it’s hard to point to item-by-item changes. In general, the new terms are stricter about the kind of data Facebook can share with third parties, and the degree of access advertisers have to Facebook users. Facebook has raised the ire of users in the past with programs like Facebook Beacon (which published your activity on third-party sites to your Facebook account). Beacon has been discontinued under the new privacy policy.

Share
[via AppScout]

Facebook users approve new privacy policy originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

It’s been a number of months (if not longer) since Yahoo showed any love to its Upcoming events service. Since acquiring the service in October 2005, the service has seen just one re-design - and few additional features since. However, in a largely-uncovered announcement earlier in the week, Upcoming now offers a new Jumpstart feature that scans your Pandora, last.fm and iTunes libraries and then follows your favourite artists on the service - alerting you to forthcoming gigs listed on Upcoming.

Whilst other services, including last.fm, allow you to easily view your favourite artists, it’s an interesting addition to the Upcoming service - and hopefully means that Yahoo are now looking at ways to build on a largely unloved product.

Back from the dead? Yahoo Upcoming gets some surprise feature love originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Windows, Microsoft, Freeware, Social Software

When Microsoft introduced us to Silverlight 4 the other day, the demoed a slick Facebook application. It’s called Fishbowl, and it’s now available for download. Not only does Fishbowl provide a nice, clean display of your stream (read: free of sidebar annoyances), but it’s packed with excellent features, responsive, and extremely intuitive to use.

It’s also ready to add some sizzle to your Windows 7 taskbar with jumplist and Aero Peek goodness. Read on after the break!

Continue reading Fishbowl is a kick-ass Facebook client for Windows 7

Fishbowl is a kick-ass Facebook client for Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Social Software, iPhone

Trillian, the excellent all-purpose chat app we’ve loved for years on the PC, just made the leap to the iPhone.

There are a lot of things to love about this pocket-sized version of Trillian, including its great-looking interface and its support for several different chat services. You’ll need to sign up for a free Astra account if you don’t already have one, but it’s nice that Trilian’s existing desktop users can just plug and play with no account setup required.

Little perks of Trillian on the iPhone include push notifications (yay!) and the ability to send photos. Managing contacts is also pretty easy. In fact, Trillian’s the first iPhone chat app I’ve seen that has a straightforward way of moving contacts between groups.

I do have a couple of minor bones to pick with Trillian, though. First, no landscape keyboard? Seriously? IM is a typing-intensive activity, and the iPhone’s small portrait keyboard doesn’t cut it for fast and furious chats.

Second: it takes two clicks to close your current chat (the “more” button and then “end conversation”). Can’t we just get a close button? These are minor issues with what’s otherwise a great app, and a decent value at $4.99, especially if you use more than one chat service at a time.

[via CNET]

Trillian brings impressive multi-network chat to the iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Social Software

Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site in the world, but its photo upload tool has always been clunky and frustrating to use. No longer, thanks to a prototype New Photo Uploader that will hopefully displace the current upload tool very, very soon. Instead of the slow, tough-to-navigate system that loads up thumbnails of every. photo. in. your. pictures. folder. by default (ugh!), this new version has navigation that looks a lot more like what you’re used to in Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder.

Facebook ditched the old-school Java uploader they’d been using since 2005, and built a plug-in from scratch with newer tools. Aside from looking better and running a lot more smoothly, the new uploader can also run in the background, so you don’t have to stop browsing while you wait for your pics to upload. The first time you try to upload photos after turning on the prototype, you’ll be prompted to install the Facebook plugin. It doesn’t take long, and it’s well worth the extra 30 seconds to get a better, faster photo uploader.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Facebook is trying out a new photo upload tool, and it doesn’t suck! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

With everyone going gaga over Twitter lists, it was only a matter of time before someone built a third-party service for creating and managing lists. Enter Listerine. Instead of making you go through pages upon pages of people you follow, this handy web app shows all your Twitter friends in a drag-and-drop interface.

The friends display shows mutual friends with a heart icon, and people who don’t follow you back with a star. There’s a search field, in case you follow so many people that even this compact grid layout is too difficult to navigate. To add a friend to a list, just grab their icon and drag it. Perhaps Listerine’s coolest feature is the ability to direct-message everyone on a list. This works great if you want to invite your local list to an event, or DM your team at work.

[via Lifehacker]

Listerine is a fresh and clean Twitter list organizer originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Windows, Social Software, Microblogging

Seesmic sure picked a weird time to announce a new Windows-native Twitter client. It’s one of the most popular clients running on Adobe’s cross-platform AIR platform, which just hit version 2.0. AIR was everyone’s biggest complaint about Seesmic, so it makes sense that they’d want to ditch AIR on at least one OS. Creating a native app also allows for drag-and-drop Twitter list management and plug-ins for various third-party Twitter services.

Plugins so far include the user recommendation service MrTweet and the index of popular links, Tweetmeme. Other Twitter-like services will also be able to integrate with Seesmic through the new service. This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of development for the AIR version of Seesmic, unless they come out with a native Mac client too. The Mac Twitter space already has a lot of great apps, though, so I’m not sure that’ll happen.

To get beta access to the new Windows client, you’ll have to sign up for Team Seesmic.

Seesmic launches native Windows Twitter client originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Filed under: Developer, Social Software, Microblogging

Third-party Twitter apps have access to nearly all of Twitter’s functions. Even the new lists feature and the new retweet format can be supported by any ambitious developer. It’s sort of strange then, that Twitter’s people search is just now getting an API.

Now that this missing API is finally here, the ability to search for users should be popping up in your favorite Twitter program very soon. “Find people” on Twitter’s site works by search both name and username, which is something apps couldn’t achieve with the (admittedly very handy) “go to user ” function.

If you’re a curious developer, go check out the official announcement on Twitter’s API announcements list.

Twitter apps now have people search, thanks to a new API originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here