Last month we launched our Skype contest and announced that we would give out Skype Buddy Kits to the five people who could give us the best answer to the following question: “What Social Feature Are You Missing in Skype?” We wanted to share with you some of the best answers we received:

1) Roy Rubin feels that what is missing in Skype is “better integration with other social media services. Skype should have a much stronger user’s profile page, with links to twitter and FB for example.”

2) Anat Eshel wishes there was Skype share – the abillity to share part of the chat on social networks, such as facebook or twitter.

3) Doron Sanders suggests that Skype add a Chatroulette feature that will allow you to talk to random people on Camera.

4) Ilan Yogev simply wants a “e-hugging” feature.

5) Oren Todoros would love if Skype had a “Record and Podcast It” button. He wants a feature that would allow him to record the conversation (video or voice) and enable him to publish it straight to his blog, hassle free.

6) Benyamin Shoham would like to be able to add his friends from other IM services to skype: Import friends from Gtalk, Facebook chat, twitter etc. and show which of his contacts has skype.

7) Ted Russ suggests: “I’d love for selected people to be able to message me on Skype and have it sent to my mobile phone.”

8 ) Jesper Åström adds: “I am missing the feature of “Person x is currently talking to person y”. I would like to have a “Join this conversation” button and a “Private conversation” button for those convos that aren’t open. Perhaps a bit intrusive, but highly social. That way people would “hang” on Skype for longer periods of time, just random…”

9) Nir Soffer would love to be able to preselect certain groups (Friends, Family, Work, etc.) and have the capability to assign different statuses to each group (busy to work, invisible to family, online to friends), assign different forwarding numbers to each group (have a work phone, family phone, etc.) and assign a different SkypeIn number for each group. He would also love to be able message the entire group.

10) Skype’s lack of integration with other social networks was the most popular answer. As Jonathan Ross comically expressed: “There are times u just want to be able to see all your evil henchmen and collaborate via video on your latest project for world domination, (or is that antisocial media?) It would make it infinitely easier if Skype connected my Twitter contacts/ friends/ followers.”

We enjoyed reading all your creative answers and will make sure to deliver this feedback to Skype. You might just see some of these ideas integrated in Skype’s next version.

So with no further ado, the winners of our contest are…..(drumroll):

1) Doron Sanders

2) Jonathan Ross

3) Ilan Yogev

4) Oren Todoros

5) Jesper Åström

Congratz to the winners! Thanks to everyone who participated from Buddy, Skype and the Blonde 2.0 Team.

I will contact the 5 winners via Facebook and get your shipping details so that I can get Buddy on his way to you.

If we look back in history , we will find that much before Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, there was ICQ. For anyone who doesn’t know, ICQ was created in 1996 and is now wholly owned by AOL. ICQ was THE pioneer of social media and real time updates. It introduced us to instant messaging and a revolutionary new way to communicate with people instantly in real time. ICQ could have been Facebook or Twitter a long time ago. It’s taken ICQ quite a long time to get back to its status as a social pioneer but now with it’s new client, ICQ is getting back to what it was about all the way from the beginning – a place to interact with your friends everywhere. Everybody Everywhere is after all ICQ’s slogan and being an ICQ veteran myself, I am very excited to announce the launch of the new ICQ 7.

ICQ 7 is a client that brings together all your social interactions from across the Web. Instead of having to open a few different pages and applications to get my friends’ status updates on Facebook, to read tweets of my favorite people and to follow what’s happening on other sites as well such as Youtube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious.  ICQ 7 allows me to use one personal communication tool to integrate all my online social activities.  I am able to syndicate my updates to all of my social networks with a single click and get status updates & tweets from all my friends in my networks in one single platform.

ICQ 7 enables real-time updates from content sharing sites and top social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg and Delicious and will soon announce the integration of local social networks. Found side by side with the ICQ Contact List, users can find a separate tab of real time feeds and updates from their friends from their various social networks. Users will no longer need to open up a new browser and log in to separate networks that they’re members of each time they want to comment on their friend’s updates. From now on, consider ICQ to be your social networks’ one-stop-shop no longer will I need to search for content on different platforms – the content finds me.  ICQ 7′s interface is also improved with software that is fully compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7.

My Status: Status updates I make on ICQ can be automatically posted in my other supported networks as well.  I can also easily share pictures and links.

Feeds from Friends: Updates made by user’s friends on leading social networks and content sharing sites appear in real time in the “Feeds from Friends” tab on the contact list.  The user can comment on these updates directly from his/her ICQ and the comment will appear also in the relevant social network/site.  ICQ users can see updates from all their friends in the various social networks – not just from friends that have ICQ.

My Box: The “My Box” tab on the ICQ Contact List is the place where ICQ users get all notifications of their personal online activity – who commented on my status and in which site, who liked the photos I uploaded, etc.

New User Profile: ICQ 7 presents a more enhanced user profile – both within the client and on the Website.  The user profile is the place where users can display who they are by sharing pictures and personal updates on their page.  The new user profile is now offered in color schemes that are fully customizable to suit the user’s mood. Additionally, the new user profile allows ICQ users to view their friends’ contact lists and add new people to their own contact list, thereby increasing their circle of friends.

Picture-Sharing Tool: A new, quick and fun application for sharing pictures with friends:

Faster, Lighter: ICQ 7 performance has been vastly improved with installation time reduced by nearly 50% and requested space for installation reduced approximately by 30%.

ICQ 7 offers a Social Messaging client that enables quick and easy communication friends from across networks, ability to view real-time updates from: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious. ICQ’s Managing Director, Eliav Moshe, says:

“ICQ 7 brings Social Messaging into play, integrating users’ online social world with their personal communication tool.  The new version answers users’ needs for a quick and easy communication tool that also helps you be up to date with everything that’s going on in multiple social networks and content sharing sites.  With a loyal community of over 42 million users worldwide, we are working on the upcoming integration of local social networks into ICQ 7 as well.”

It is only fitting that the company that was the pioneer of the Web 2.0 era has now integrated this Web 2.0 world into one manageable space in the best possible manner.  Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. In my opinion it offers the best solution we have today for one platform which integrates all my social interactions into one convenient platform.

Become an ICQ fan on Facebook

Check out their Twitter

(Disclosure: Blonde 2.0 is ICQ’s social media firm)

I was invited yesterday morning to the Biz Stone press conference hosted by the College of Management . For me personally it was very exciting to meet one of the founders of the social platform that I love and admire the most. Biz didn’t surprise us with any new acquisition in Israel but mostly talked about the role that twitter has been playing until now and what the future holds for twitter. He did mention that 2010 is the year that twitter will start making real money.

For everyone who wanted to be there, but couldn’t, don’t say i didn’t think of you…here’s the video (separated into two due to Youtube limitations):

Last week Eytan Galai, brother of Yaron Galai (Founder of Quigo which was sold to AOL) came to our offices to show us all the latest                   that’s been happening with Outbrain. For anyone who doesn’t know, Outbrain has recently  launched its revenue program OutLoud. For $10 a month, you can submit an interesting article to OutLoud. Outbrain will then take the articles you submitted and recommend them on relevant pages across the thousands of sites using their content recommendation engine, from USA Today, Slate, Fox and Tribune to Golf.com, and the SportingNews.

When I started questioning the high monthly fee, Eytan insisted that I give him any two links I desire which he will then put into the system and let me see the results for myself.  Last Wednesday I sent Outbrain the links and they were put into the system on Friday. Once I activated my account online I was able to get into the section called “Advertising Report” – there I found and could follow analytics data such as # of impressions and clicks for each link submitted.

From the start of our activity until now, I must say that the number of impressions has been quite high but the number of clicks significantly lower than I expected it to be based on the fact that the links were supposed to be directed at a specific audience who enjoyed similar content. As my friend Eze Vidra from VCCafe put it:

“In essence, OutLoud provides a cost-effective way to target sponsored articles to organic content on leading publisher sites and thousands of blogs. In comparison with ‘normal’ PPC advertising, Outloud catches the users in a ‘reading mode’ rather than a ‘researching’ or ’shopping’ mode, which is often the case with SEM promotion.”

Please note that I was told by Outbrain on Sunday that one of my links was not indexed properly so I should be seeing better results pretty soon. Today – Monday I must say I do like the fact that there’s no limitations on how many impressions I can receive for each link submitted.

So who submits links to OutLoud? According to Outbrain:

• The excited marketer wanting to drive word-of-mouth by amplifying positive reviews and articles about their company
• The proud blogger who wants their most brilliant posts to reach a larger audience
• The innovative PR professional trying to find new ways to distribute press releases and earned media
• The social media director, trying to build community by exposing larger audiences to a company blog, or to conversations happening on other sites about their products
• The passionate blog reader who fell in love with an article which perfectly expresses her point-of-view and who wants to make sure others are exposed to it too

The Link/s that are put in the OutLoud system continuously receive more and more impressions. As Outbrain say on their blog:

“At $10, OutLoud is really a no-brainer. If you analyze the opportunity for more than a few minutes, you’ve already spent more than you would by just trying it. Imagine, thousands of people exposed to your chosen content for less than the cost of a beet salad.”

While this is all true, and I think the idea itself is excellent, $10 is still quite a substantial fee for which I still think I deserve a cool feature like knowing which specific blogs my link appeared on and how many clicks it got in each blog.

Despite the lower than expected click through rate I am experiencing at this point I am more than confident in Outbrain’s capability to deliver at the end due to its strong team. Outbrain is turning out to be an innovative thinker in finding ways to monetize itself and at the same time stick to its philosophy of giving more value to readers. The question is: Will it be able to monetize and at the same time promise completely relevant content all the time?  Time will tell. I have a lot of faith in these guys who I believe have gathered quite a substantial amount of information about blogs until now and will continue to grow the number of sites using their content recommendation engine. Such factors will obviously determine the success of OutLoud and its ability to keep even paid links of top quality and relevant to the content at hand.

These days we live in an era of a historian’s wet dream. We are consistently recording history through all our social tools. Our actions, feelings, thoughts, our everything, constantly being recorded. From where we are eating to what we are annoyed about to what it is that makes us tick. Not only are we recording the “big” things but we are recording EVRYTHING. It’s history without hiccups.

Ben Parr wrote an excellent post on Mashable on the topic. Parr: ” For the first time in human history, the day-to-day interactions between people are being permanently recorded and formatted in easily organizable segments of information.”

Millions of us are publicly recording our daily activities on our twitter feeds for the world to know for the rest of time. All details are recorded from who we were with and what we were doing to when and where. Historians in the future will not need to guess any details. They’ll have all the information right in front of them.They’ll actually probably know more than they care to know. With pictures on flickr and videos on youtube and texts on twitter and links on facebook and top it all of, personal blogs, historians will have all the info they need and more about each and every one of us and our interactions with one another.

I can already see future museums displaying this era as an era of communications galore when everyone (well, almost everyone) was about transparency and openess – kind of like the 60′s but digital – free social love for all. We cannot share enough of our daily doings with one another and we cannot hear enough. We long for the feedback from our surroundings and the immortality of our souls by recording everything we do. We feed on the interactions surrounding us.

It is not a coincidence that today Reality TV is one of the most (if not THE most) popular TV genres. People like to watch other people’s lives. For this same reason social tools are also so popular – people like to see what others are doing and interact with them while they’re doing it. People are looking for ways to connect more with one another no matter what geographical location they’re at. In what other age was it so easy to interact with someone two continents away from you?

We are learning more about each other’s cultures, actions, relating more to one another. Perhaps world peace will be achievable? Perhaps we’ll learn to get along? Social media tools are definitely changing the face of history. I cannot write such a post of course without mentioning the story of how the U.S. State Department reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled in June 2009 in order to allow Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election that took place on June 12. Twitter moved the upgrade to a later time. Lev Grossman from Time.com writes: “Twitter didn’t start the protests in Iran, nor did it make them possible. But there’s no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before.”

There is no question that social tools are changing the face of history. The real question is: Are we fully ready for the change and its future consequences? Are we all ready for an era of total transparency?

Picture credit: Andrew Long

Guest Post written by Ilan Peer

For the past two years I have been active on twitter and only recently (as of June 2008) my close friends and colleagues began to show up on twitter and therefore increased the amount of related and relevant content for me. twitter has become a daily tool of communication which I use via Web browser, additional applications and on my mobile device.
Unlike other social networks, twitter is about connecting people in a way that appeals to me the most. The lack of
approval needed to follow others enables mass networking. The many-to-many interaction is fascinating and the academic world is starting to study the social behavior on twitter and other mass networking platforms.

I think eventually twitter (and other communication services) will change the way we think, act, make friends, shop and of course consume media.

Here are my personal twitter ethics and morals I live by:

Be nice, be polite – leave your rants to your blog or anonymous comments. Due to the vast search capability, it is likely you will show up on someone’s radar even if it wasn’t your intention.

Watch your language – if you tweet in other languages rather than English, make sure not to swamp your English
readers feed with a language they cannot understand. If you want to target one specific audience who are non-English
speakers, think about creating a separate account.

Think of your copy writing – try and conserve characters (even though you have up to 140 characters to begin with) If you hope to get retweeted , do not use up all of the 140 characters. Leave room so that when a person retweets the message, there is enough space for their user-name and the complete original tweet. This is a thoughtful way to make sure the entirety of the message is redistributed to the retweeter’s stream.

It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality – For a personal account you don’t actually need 30 thousand followers, and if you do – chances are you will lose the human touch (hey, that’s why we’re here in the first place). Try to find followers and be followed in a natural and organic manner. Don’t feel like you are in a race for increasing numbers. Get to know your community and let them get to know you.

Choose whatever twitter application is right for you – in my opinion there is no top application or service that beats them all. I’ve been using the same ol’ twitterfox for months now. I did try other tools but I didn’t stick with them.  twitterfox is  the most convenient way for me to tweet, and that is why I still use it.  As far as mobile goes, I can’t let go of my symbian application called Gravity. I’m so happy with that it made me a paying costumer even though there are other free mobile clients and apps.

Use all different kinds of media – take pictures with your mobile and upload them to twitpic or other twitter photo services, shoot videos and use twitter to spread them. Technology is so handy and these extra and rich tools add a lot of personal touch.

Be coherent and relevant – if you reply a tweet use the little reply arrow, this way the back and forth conversation between two users allows bystanders to follow the conversation.

Find your own way – there is no right or wrong, good or bad (you can even dismiss this whole post) on twitter. twitter is a personal communication tool where people  decide for themselves what is the best way to use the service. Try and get the most out of it and if you don’t see the need (nor understand the hype) give it a rest.  Somewhere down the line another service will come along and fill the  need for a mass communication tool.

if you want to connect with me on twitter, i am @ilan_peer.
Good luck!

photo credit to: gesamtbild

This past weekend, Qype expanded its European presence and launched its Italian site.  For anyone who hasn’t heard of Qype before, the site originally  launched in 2005 in Germany. Qype now boasts over 350,000 active users, who have contributed over 1 million local reviews. I previously wrote about Qype when I visited them at Seedcamp.

You can now access Qype in the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil and Italy.

Qype lets users discover places based on user generated reviews. Qype provides tips and recommendations about locations, so you know what to expect before you even walk in the door. Qype provides user generated reviews of restaurants, bars, shopping outlets, theaters, movies, clubs, spas, and other venues throughout Europe. Similar to Yelp (which only operates in North America and the United Kingdom), Qype and Yelp both share the UK market. It will be interesting to see which site comes out ahead in England.

Stephen Taylor, CEO of Qype, said “We’re very pleased to announce the arrival of Qype Italy, the tenth market in our growing brood. The launch comes after an overwhelming demand from our growing Italian user base, who will now have access to local reviews and experiences in their own language – and the ability to find Italian reviews for destinations all over the world.”

For Qype Italy, the launch not only provides a useful site for Italian users, but it also brings Qype Radar, the company’s popular mobile application, to the Italian market. Qype Radar is a smart mobile app that lets you find the best places around your location. According to the company, 1 in 4 people with an iPhone in Germany have installed Qype Radar.

Qype Radar has also been featured on the iPhone ads in Germany.

As Qype takes over the Italian market, it seems that they are poised to conquer Europe and keep Yelp out of the European market. I wonder if they’ll succeed.

Hashtags are becoming a useful way to organize information in today’s information age, when data is spread over a multitude of platforms. It is incredibly time consuming to log into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and every other niche network that you have an account on and update the same information over and over again. However, with the launch of a new hashtag service from Mobypicture, it is getting easier.

Mobypicture uploads all of your mobile pictures to the top platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, etc.) simultaneously. If you don’t know more about Mobypicture, Ciara Byrne previous wrote about them on TechCrunch. Since her post, Mobypicture has announced their new hashtag service. It enables companies and niche platforms to attach a hashtag to a platform. For example, if TechCrunch integrated with Mobypicture, using #tc could mean the posting is also routed to the editors at TechCrunch, the TechCrunch Facebook group, and other areas in which TC has a presence.

Mobypicture is currently working on finding platform partners and is currently focusing on niche publishers. Mobypicture was recently used to promote Gay Pride in Amsterdam. This enabled users to post photos directly to the live broadcast. TV stations then used Mobypicture’s integration on the AT5 news site to report news of the event on their channels. This enabled them to get user-generated content about the event, that would have otherwise gone unreported.

The hashtag integration works with over 200 services, such as Tweetie, Twittelator, Gravity, Twibble, iPhoto2Twitter, Seesmic, and Slandr.

By adding the hashtag of an integrated company or platform, users can just add their hashtag using over 200 applications and it will post throughout their platforms. For example, you can post pictures to your Facebook wall by adding #Fb. By adding the #at5 hashtag, your post is sent to Amsterdam’s AT5 news site, which then displays your post throughout the McDonalds and subways in that city. Mobypicture has also worked on hashtag integration with MTV. They also offer a white label service to allow providers and content partners to use Mobypicture’s technology with their own branding.

Of course, while it’s great that there are over 200 services that users can post their hashtag to, more effort needs to be made in finding content partners in which the content is distributed to. It’s great that there are tons of apps, but there still need to be more niche platforms and content partners in order for the service to reach its full potential.

The company is looking for more niche platforms to partner with and it already has a solid revenue model to generate partnerships. Currently, however, the service is somewhat limited due to the relatively small number of content partners that have joined. Mobypicture has big plans to generate new partnerships, so there is plenty of room for growth and this service will be very exciting when the number of participants and content partners grow.

I also had the pleasure to speak to Mathys of Mobypicture while I was in London last month. Here is his introduction to the service:

This is a repost from TechCrunch

While at the recent Seedcamp Speed Dating event, I was introduced to UberVU. UberVU provides a single location to track conversations across multiple locations and sites. This social aggregation tool provides a conversational graph of threaded conversations. UberVU get comments, reactions, and mentions around a story from multiple services. This can be used by corporations to monitor the buzz surrounding a brand, but it also allows users to take part in the entire conversation.

For example, with the plugin, someone reading an article in Google Reader can see what others are saying about a post. I wonder, though, if we’re already inundated with information and if there’s a need for yet another aggregator. A case in point: a recent story in the Guardian (and this happens on many other news sites) has 300 comments (many of which are by trolls and don’t provide much insight) and a recent post on TechCrunch Europe has 44 comments. Multiply that by the number of comments on other sites and it’s pretty overwhelming.

In the video below, Vladimir Oane, one of the co-founders of UberVU, explains how the service works and its potential for expansion. Developers can add the UberVU plug in to their own sites. Vladimir also explains how it can be used for personal branding as well as brand management.

I recently attended the Facebook Developers Garage in Tel Aviv.  At the Garage, my good friend Net Jacobsson from Facebook, whom I worked with at ICQ, gave a lecture about the new evolution of Facebook– Facebook Connect.

Nat began his lecture by emphasising that Facebook has always seen themselves as a platform for change with the mission of giving users “the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”  Over 140 million active users use the Facebook platform to connect with their friends, organize events and mobilize their communities and social graphs for change.  Facebook looked for ways to give users even more ways to connect and to improve the quality of their experience on Facebook.  Facebook began by translating the site into different languages and actively searching for quality applications and even funding them.  However, Facebook Connect takes the platform to a whole new level, allowing users to take their friends with them to third party sites, creating a whole new experience on the Web.  Facebook Connect is, in Net’s words, “the natural evolution of the Facebook platform.”

Facebook Connect allows you to use your Facebook profile around the Web as your personal identity card.  You can use it to easily create your profile in participating sites, find your Facebook friends on these sites and easily send your activity and content from these sites back to your Facebook feed.  This is great for Facebook because it drives new content to their site and great for participating sites because it drives traffic back to them as well.  Everything is also opt-in so none of your online actions will be published to Facebook without your permission.

Facebook Connect introduces a new way for users to connect with friends, share and control information across the Web.  It will be exciting to see where Facebook goes from here!

To see Net’s full lecture, check out the videos below. Due to YouTube regulations, I had to divide the lecture into 3 videos: