“Gifts for someone who has everything”

Another example of a great Foursquare promotion

The Xbox Live Preview updates the popular gaming console to bring social networking to your TV. With the update, you’ll be able to access your Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm accounts from your Xbox…. which effectively brings all of these social services into your living room, or wherever you have your Xbox connected.

Twitter on your Xbox

Twitter on the Xbox is a vanilla implementation, but the overall effect of reading and tweeting from your console is pleasant. It’s a very accessible implementation - but it’s also where the realities of the Xbox experience will hit you the hardest. Namely, you can’t browse the Internet from your Xbox… so all the links that your tweeps are sharing and conversing about will be utterly, annoyingly useless. It’s the most glaring issue with the notion of bringing social functionality to the Xbox… without built-in Internet browsing - how engaging can these services be?

Here’s an example… it’s hard to read, but of the four tweets listed in this photo - 3 have links. Can I follow any of these links from my Xbox? Nope. So, you can imagine how hard it is to follow up on these conversations.

The lack of a keyboard as standard equipment on the Xbox (or any console for that matter) means that for most users entering just 140 characters will be an amazingly painful experience. You’re going to want one of these.

Facebook on your Xbox

To access Facebook or Twitter from your Xbox you’ll need to go to the “My Community” section. This to me is another example of how the overall social implementation could be much more interesting. Ultimately, services like Facebook or Twitter work best when they augment what you’re already doing… like surfing the web, or posting photos, or in this case playing games or watching TV. Why not hook into Facebook from your console to brag about your achievements, or chat about what you’re playing or watching? Sure, there are other ways to post these types of updates, but a social platform integration with the Xbox experience would be a much more compelling experience. I’m sure this will eventually come about in one way or another - but for now the experience is still largely a siloed experience. Social silos within another social silo.

Facebook helpfully shows an image of the Xbox 360 Messenger Kit. Again, this is a must have unless you’re a complete masochist.

It is nice to be able to connect easily to Facebook friends who also have Xbox LIVE accounts. This has been a chore in the past - as the Xbox Live and Facebook social graphs were difficult to associate. Once you login from your Xbox, you’ll notice an Xbox LIVE application added to your Facebook profile.

The Facebook Xbox interface is easy to use, though the Xbox Experience card model is a bit forced at times. On the home screen, for instance, the first card cycles through your friends most recent status updates.

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Updating from your Xbox works like a charm and shows the client as “Xbox LIVE”.

Photo albums are easily the best part of the Facebook implementation as you can now view slideshows of your photos (or your friends) on “the biggest screen in your house.” The slideshow implementation is almost exactly like the standard Xbox slideshow… think Ken Burns without the music. Once you watch a few, it’s easy to see how quickly Facebook could be at the center of your living room.

Apart from the slideshow, you can click into a photo and read the comments - or rather, parts of the comments. Here’s another place where the card model seems a bit forced… comments and captions are often truncated as a result.

But overall the photo functionality is slick… and the ease of browsing your photos and those of your friends will surely inspire a whole new level of creeping.

But the same content problems on Twitter are even more painful on Facebook. Not only can you not click on shared links - you also can’t view videos or use any Facebook applications. This makes it in my mind the least functional version of Facebook I’ve seen… you can’t view links, you can’t view videos, you can’t use apps, and there isn’t any significant upside to this lack of functionality since you can’t tie into your Xbox activity directly. Unless you count the slideshow, that is.

Last.fm on your Xbox

The implementation of the Last.fm music discovery service on the Xbox is fantastic. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the service, Last.fm is a service similar to Pandora in that it recommends music to a user based on a user’s tastes - the end result being a personalized radio station that still exposes a user to new music. Read more on the service here.

You can now scrobble from your Xbox (note that you like or dislike a song). I know you’re excited. Those of you with smartphones know that services like Pandora and Last.fm get better the more you interact with them - so the ability to scrobble is significant.

Once you log in you’ll find all your existing stations and history. Once you start listening the interface is simple - displaying the familiar icons of the Last.fm service. Additionally while a song is playing, you can pull up biographical information on the band.

And the best part is, as you’re listening to a station, Last.fm cycles through slideshows of whatever band is playing. It’s a simple Ken Burns effect, but still a nice touch, and makes the experience perfect for parties or background music.

Oh, but what have we here? I didn’t see an advertisement - but I did see this placeholder for one. Hopefully they won’t interrupt the playlist and will just show in the background…. but without the ability to act on these spots as you would with say an online banner - I’m guessing these are going to function more like TV spots and less like online - which means you should expect commercial breaks with sound.

Overall Impression

While it is great to have the option to access these social services, the experience also has great room for improvement. Without a keyboard of some sort, I’d say don’t even try to access the services - you’ll find just signing in to be a horrible chore. And even with a keyboard, the inability to watch videos or even view links on the Xbox takes much of the utility and, dare I say, fun out of these popular social services. These are internet-based services after all… links are important.

Bottom line: for now if you have any type of smart phone, you’ll probably end up continuing to use it while you’re on your couch… at least you can view the links your friends are sharing… maybe you’ll scrobble or share some photos on that big screen of yours, but chances are … for accessing your social networks, the Xbox will come in a distant third, behind your desktop and your phone.

Google Wave is such a complex tool that I hadn’t really considered that there might be a mobile version of it. With Google having such a robust web-based mobile offering, it seemed like a possibility, but given that Wave is only in preview release - and stretches the limits of a desktop browser - it seemed like a remote possibility at best. So, when I tried to access Google Wave on my iPhone, I found what I expected to find:

A roadblock telling me my browser wasn’t supported. Fair enough. But then I noticed the last line - “If you want to continue at your own peril, go ahead” - all but encouraging me to continue and see what folly awaits. Boy, was I surprised at what I found….

What loaded up was a fully-baked mobile UI. Pretty even, by mobile standards. Surely, none of this could work… preview release and all, it must be a mistake… a build that was released in error to be rolled back ASAP… so I clicked on a wave to test…

And the whole wave loaded up… well, except for the extensions. Truly, I don’t expect most Wave extensions to make the jump to mobile well, if at all. But the rest of the wave was there, playback controls included.

This wave’s extention was fully functional from the iPhone.

I could create a new wave…

And even comment on existing waves.

Honestly, I’m now more excited about the mobile version of Wave than the desktop version. Something about the mobile interface makes the whole concept of a wave more digestible and friendly. Sure, maybe all the extensions won’t work, and maybe the real-time execution on mobile will come across as a little less real-time…

The point is, Google clearly isn’t treating Wave on mobile devices as an afterthought. Which makes Wave even more of a game-changer than it already was.

QUICK UPDATE:

Further evidence that mobile Wave isn’t an afterthought:

When you bookmark Google Wave from Safari, you’ll see the above icon.

I wrote earlier about the Rule of 5 - an idea that implies that larger conversations have diminishing returns.  Another idea I’d like to share is called “The Rule of 50” - and it also comes from the fine folks leading the Worldgroup conference in Richmond.

The Rule of 50 is a rule intended for effective leadership and refers to the amount of times an idea needs to be repeated before it becomes transformational.  I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially the rule is that you’ll need to say something 50 times before anyone is listening.  Once they’re listening, you’ll need to say it another 50 times for anyone to really understand what you’re saying.  And once they understand what you’re saying, you’ll need to say it another 50 times to drive your idea home.

Of course you don’t have to take the 50 literally - but the idea of repetition of a message has always been good business sense.  And if you think about what this means for social communications - then the implication is that the repetition of a message is beneficial, if not necessary for that message to gain any traction.  So the next time you’re stuck looking for something new to say - something about yourself, your brand, or your industry - maybe think about what you’ve already said… and say it again.