Comments (0) Filed under: product description Tags: network conversations
Organizing a person’s contacts and extended social network based on the semantics of the link type lets Careeb develop applications that facilitate better bonding between people.
One such application is Network Conversations. The primary networks on Careeb are School Friends, College Friends, Grad School Friends, Work/Professional Contacts and Family and Relatives.
How to reach? Do this…
My > Networks (Show a list of your Networks) > Click on the link “<X> Conversations and <Y> messages” located under each Network name. X and Y are the number of conversations and messages in that particular Network respectively.
Network Conversations allow people in one Network to communicate with eachother on a common message board. A person belonging to the Network can start a new conversation and attach tags to it. Other people in the Network can then post replies and build the conversation which is displayed as a nested thread.
Some tips on starting conversations in your Networks:
- If you need to make an announcement. Type your message and tag it as ‘announcement‘ or ‘news‘.
- Start a discussion about a movie. Write your review and get reviews from your contacts and network members.
- Share a joke.
- Ask a question.
How else you can use your Network Conversations is only limited by your imagination :)
Comments (0) Filed under: product description, semantic networks Tags: content distribution, semantic networks, social web
As we all know, Careeb is a different kind of social network where people are connected through links that carry “structured semantics”.
What is structured semantics?
In conventional social networks, any two people A and B are allowed to link as ‘friend’. As all links are equivalent, there are no semantics here.
In some other models A and B add semantics to the link, like “we met at grad school” or “know eachother through a mutual friend” etc. But how does this help? The semantics here can be anything A and B choose. There is no structure to these semantics. Apparently this is not of much benefit to the users.
At Careeb we let people label their links with one or more of the 6 link types given below:
School Friends, College Friends, Grad School Friends, Work/Business/Professional Contacts, Family and Relatives, Just Friends.
As of now, Careeb users can choose only from the above given link types. Here semantics that links carry are “structured” because they are limited and user are urged to choose from among them only. Mapping the relationships between people in this fashion results in what I call “Semantic Networks“.
Description of a Semantic Network
Let the person A have 10 people linked to him as “Family and Relatives“. Let these 10 people in turn be linked to 15 other people (excluding A) through the same link type (Family and Relatives) and so on…
Think about it for a few seconds and let the idea soak in.
A community or group of people all linked through same link type can be envisioned. Such a community is known as a “Semantic Network”.
Discover related people in your Semantic Network
Weak tie hypothesis says: If A is strongly bonded to both B and C, then the bond between B and C always exists, either weak or strong. Applying this hypothesis to a Careeb semantic network gives interesing results.
Let A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H comprise a College Friends Network (all the links in this network are labeled as “College Friends”).
Let PE(XY) represent the probablity that the bond between X and Y exists. Let PS(XY) represent the probablity that the bond between X and Y is strong.
PE(AE) = 1 (As per weak tie hypothesis)
PS(AE) = 1/2 (equal chance that the tie be weak or strong)
PE(AH) = PS(AE) = 1/2; PS(AH) = PS(AE) X 1/2 = 1/4
PE(CH) = PS(AH) = 1/4
Similarly it can be proved that the probablity of a tie between any two people in a semantic network is greater than zero. The probability that a tie could exist suggests that people you discover in your network are relavant to you and not strangers.
Communicate and share content within your network
Uploading content like videos and photos to a network is more beneficial and comfortable for both content publishers and consumers.
For content consumers: If you want to browse photos uploaded by all of your Work Friends, traditionally you would have to go to each and everyone’s profile. Its a hassle! Semantic Networks make life more easier as you can access all the content uploaded by a particular group of your contacts in one place instead of wandering from profile to profile.
For content publishers: Upload once and reach 10-fold or 50-fold people as compared to uploading to your own Album. People in your network can then forward your content to other networks (based on your privacy restrictions). Your content reaches large number of people without you having to put a lot of effort.
I will post a more elaborate description about content sharing and privacy in the subsequent posts. Meanwhile, login to your Careeb account, invite your contacts, build your networks and experience the network effects :)
The most important thing, in my opinion, that goes into building a great product and a company is ‘passion‘. Not many people will differ with me. Atleast not Edwin Aoki a technology fellow at AOL. Speaking at the Future of Web Applications conference at London, he urged developers to create applications out of passion and for the community rather than doing it just for money.
Passion fuels the enthusiasm and optimism required to keep going during good times and bad. Ofcourse, business plans and revenue models do matter at the end of the day but starting a company with a pure business perspective would be akin to working backwards; which is not successful always. Even if it is, the impact it makes is feeble.
On the other hand, starting a company with a passion to create something useful, meaningful and that is of value to the end consumer will sooner or later lead to business plans and revenue models that were not apparent before. Apple is a classic example of a company built with passion as its lifeblood. Driven by passion, Apple made Ken Olsen, founder and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, eat his own words : “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.“
My most favorite task at Careeb is web design. I like it much more than writing fancy Ajax or Javascript code or designing a short and powerful PHP function. When I get into design work I spend hours at a stretch, but never does it feel boring or burdensome.
Joshua Porter, a web designer has crafted 5 web design principles. One of them is “Great design is invisible“. Joshua hits the nail in the head with this one. It is absolutely true that great design is invisible. We take it for granted and it looks obvious.
Me and Imdad felt exactly the same thing while coding the search and sorting functionality in the Contacts and Browse Network Members pages. So much effort and work goes into designing a good user interface but at the end of the day it all looks obvious and natural.
More from Joshua:
“An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted. It works so well that we forget that creative effort was involved to bring it about. Sometimes, like with the lowly spoon, the object is so simplistic that it seems obvious, and we disregard that at one point in history it wasn’t. Other times, like with the automobile, the object is so sophisticated yet easy-to-use that we’re blinded to the fact that millions and millions of human-hours went into getting it to this point. That’s a shame…every great design has a rich history. And every design has behind it a designer or designers who tried to make the world a better place by solving some problem or another.
Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use. It is awkward, difficult, and complex. In a great irony of the world, bad design is much easier to see than good design. It raps us on the head like a bully. Because of its success, great design is often invisible.”
Phew! Its has been a hectic week since Eid last thurday. We have been busy honing the new set of features for version 2 of Careeb. As a part of unveiling version 2, today we have launched a little feature called ‘User Ranks’.
Your rank is a measure of how popular you are. Among other things, it is based on how many contacts you have and how many new people you have invited to Careeb.
By the way, my rank is 3!
As kids we were taught something like this:
A for apple (the fruit), B for boy, C for cat and so on…
But as the Internet permeates our day to day lives, I guess kids will be taught something like this:
A for Apple (the company)
B for Blog
C for Click
D for Download
E for Email
F for Friends
G for Google
H for HTML
I for Internet, iPod
J for Java
K for Keyword
L for Login, Logout
M for Mac
N for Nerd, Noob
O for Online
P for Programmer
Q for QuickTime
R for RIAA
S for Signup
T for Torrent
U for Ubuntu
V for Virus
W for Web
X for Xbox
Y for Youtube
Z for Zoom
Feel free to post your own version of A,B,C in the comments :-)
Comments (0) Filed under: non-technical Tags: careeb, introduction, push the envelope
Thanks for stopping by to read our blog. This being the first post on Careeb blog, lets get to know eachother. My name is Naveed Ahmed, I live in India and I am the founder of Careeb, a social network platform on the Web.
This blog is a forum where I look forward to share with you what we are building at Careeb, how we are doing it and most importantly learn from you what you think about our product and put our heads down and work towards fine tuning our product development to your liking.
Why is this blog called ‘Push The Envelope‘?
The formal definition and meaning of Push The Envelope can be found here. When you strive to go beyond commonly accepted standards of performance you are pushing the envelope. When you dare venturing into uncharted territories to realize a vision.. you are pushing the envelope.
Its not just the title of this blog, but the fundamental philosophy that empowers the Careeb team. We are a team of 4 guys. Every morning we come to work to realize a dream - to build something remarkable. In the due course of time I will let you know how we at Careeb are pushing the envelope.
I will now sign off. Hope to keep in touch with you. Do leave a comment or two.
- Imdad Ahmed (works at Careeb)
- David Meerman Scott (most impressive internet marketing concepts)
- Seth Godin (Marketing guru, but in my opinion Scott is better)
- Evan Williams (Creator of Blogger and Twitter
- Zaheer Ahmed (Internet enthusiast)