Tumblr has plenty of reasons to celebrate after it hit 10 billion posts Friday. We reported last week that the microblogging service was closing in on the milestone and the landmark figure has now been reached. To celebrate the occasion, Tumblr has posted a message on the dashboard which reads, “We’ve just hit our 10 billionth post! Thank you so much for being a part of this awesome journey.” Meanwhile, the Tumblr dashboard has a stream of falling confetti. Awesome indeed. Congratulations to everyone at Tumblr on hitting this milestone, which comes less then 3 months after it passed WordPress.com for the highest number of hosted blogs.
In the last 15 years, a lot has changed. The landscape of the world has changed dramatically, but one of the things that has evolved the most since 1996 is the Internet. Social networking services have become increasingly prominent as technology has become more ubiquitous, but the face of the Internet, the World Wide Web (as it was more commonly known in 1996), has changed almost beyond recognition. A new infographic published by Online University takes a look at just how much the Internet has changed since 1996. The number of Internet users in the U.S. has increased from 20 million to 245 million, while Americans are now using the Web an average of 27 hours per month compared with 30 minutes per month 15 years ago. The Google network of websites (which didn’t even exist 15 years ago) now reaches 85.1 percent of Internet users. Yahoo and Microsoft websites reach 83.2 percent and 80.9 percent of Internet users respectively, while Facebook reaches 75 percent of all Internet users. Of these, only Yahoo was in the top 10 websites based on percentage of users reached in 1996. How times have changed. The infographic, which you can click to enlarge, also looks at how certain websites have changed since 1996.
A new social network called FaceGlat launched in Israel last month to give Orthodox Jews a Facebook-like experience that’s catered specifically to their religion. The network has many of the same basic features as Facebook — users can chat online, share pictures and add friends — but here’s the thing: men and women are strictly separated like they would be in a synagogue. FaceGlat was developed by Yaakov Swisa, a 25-year-old Hasidic man, who derived the name from 2 words: Facebook, the social network it’s modeled after, and “glatt,” which means highly kosher. He developed the idea after a friend expressed interest about a social network where genders would be kept separate. Swisa explains:
One day, a couple of friends paid me a visit, and while we were chatting, the young woman said it was a pity that there was no website where she could share pictures with her female friends without other people being able to see them. We started thinking about a religious social network, where there would be no indecent pictures, and which would guarantee that men could not see photos posted by women, and vice versa.
He created the social network 6 months later with skills he taught himself on his family computer. The social network doesn’t just separate men and women, but it also has strict rules against profanity and indecent pictures. FaceGlat uses a program that tracks and deletes inappropriate words, and users who post indecent photos (like photos of men in the section for women or photos of women in the section for men) are banned from the site. In the future Swisa hopes to buy a program that can automatically delete pictures that show too much skin. Perhaps Swisa should hire a team to develop the program? Worldcrunch reports that while the website is new, it has already garnered 2,000 users and about 100 accounts are created each week. Swisa describes his user base to be mostly men from Israel, but 15 percent of users live in Russia. At the time of this writing, the social network is available in English and Hebrew, but Swisa plans to translate it to Russian and French in the coming weeks. He also plans to advertise on orthodox forums and Facebook Pages of religious singers.
Zynga has launched “Adventure World,” its biggest and most feature-rich social game to date, on Facebook. The game allows you to explore 5 worlds and 30 dynamic environments as you take on nasty creatures and find clues to discover the lost secrets of El Dorado. You can customize your own 3D avatar and choose from an inventory of tools and gadgets — including machetes, grappling hooks, dynamite, whips and pickaxes — to help you pass dangerous booby traps and make your way across wild environments. Of course, this being a Zynga game, you can recruit some Facebook friends to help you make your way across the game boards. You can control a crew of up to 12 friends and use their special tools and abilities to help you battle enemies, solve puzzles and progress through the game.
The total game board is more than 40 times the size of previous Zynga games such as “FarmVille.” There are also more art and game assets than any previous Zynga game has had at launch — for instance, you will have to contend with 5 types of snakes, 4 kinds of spiders and 2 kinds of rams as you work through the game. “Adventure World” has more than 200 quests and there are more than 20,000 objects across its 30 maps. You can also choose from more than 10,000 avatar variations so you will be spoiled for choice when creating your avatar. This is the first game that has been developed by the Zynga Boston studio, which created a brand new game engine for “Adventure World.” The engine includes advanced rendering technology with fast performance, high frame rates and 3D environments. It also has a world editor that allows the developers to create larger, more detailed game worlds and interactive environments with puzzle-based gameplay.
Nabeel Hyatt, general manager of Zynga Boston, said:
When we joined the Zynga family a year ago, our goal was to not only create a game unlike any other in the social gaming space today, but to create a completely new genre. We call this genre social adventure, one where players can explore, discover and team up with friends on an adventure of a lifetime. We hope our players have as much fun playing the game as we had building it.
The game, which was announced last month, is being made available in 8 languages at launch: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Norwegian. The launch of “Adventure World” follows on from several other social games and expansions to existing games that Zynga has launched in recent months. These include “The Pioneer Trail” for “FrontierVille,” “CityVille Hometown” and “Hanging With Friends,” while it has ported its popular “Words With Friends” mobile game to Facebook.
You can check “Adventure World” out for yourself by installing it on Facebook.
You could say there is no right way to design and build a Web site – but you'll find plenty of wrong ways. KISSmetrics outlines eight of them with an infographic that answers the question "what makes someone leave a website? If you're designing or responsible for a site for a business, you might want to pay close and particular attention.
I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to #6 (boring content, boring design) at least when it comes to theboring design part. Why? Content is king, presentation comes second. If a site has the content I'm looking for, I'll stick around as long as it isn't hideous or afflicted with some of the other sins mentioned.
For example, obtrusive audio and video? I'm gone. I hate playing "find the tab that's playing audio" when a site decides to start playing video or audio. Bad content structure is another killer – make it easy to find what I'm looking for. Far too many sites, especially in the enterprise space, make it easy to find what the marketing department wants me to see. That's not the same thing as what I'm looking for, usually.
