Social Address Book,Next Killer App:Part 2

This article is in continuation to my previous post where I talked about details of Social Address Book. Some of the early applications that caught my attention are yahoo’s OneConnect , Plaxo pulse , Zyb and Fidgt . I was overwhelmed to see yahoo’s OneConnect, which in more ways represents Social Address Book platform. I guess from a mobile application standpoint, yahoo is a step ahead of Google. Off course, you cannot discount Google ambitious project android. Apparently, OneConnect looks more like what Google is trying to achieve with its most publicized OpenSocial,Social Graph API and Android.

I have to admit, yahoo OneConnet looks very promising and I just loved the whole idea of connecting different social networking interface and other applications into one single interface.

“ Yahoo’s oneConnect will feature the ability to tie together popular emailing and instant messaging clients from the likes of not only Yahoo, but also Google, AOL and Microsoft. It will also feature the ability to send and receive updates from most social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn as well as many other popular social tools such as Twitter, Flickr and Last.fm. “

Check out these two videos to get more insight on OneConnect. It’s a must watch










Some of the features to mention are:

Socially-connected address book
Provide users the capability to integrate activity from popular social networks, professional networks, and communities into their address book, keeping it always in sync. Consumers will be able to view status updates, photo uploads, and the recent activity ("pulse") of contacts across all their networks.

Integrated mobile messaging
Offer seamless integration of IM and SMS, including threaded conversations. Any messaging service will be able to use Yahoo! oneConnect's open APIs to plug into the application's messaging feature - enabling consumers to access a wide range of popular services, such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google(R) Talk, AOL(R) Instant Messenger and MSN(TM) Messenger.

Status
Give consumers the capability to view their contacts by their most recent status updates on popular social networks, as well as update their own status on their favorite social networks - in one easy step - and automatically broadcast it to their friends.

Pulse
Provide consumers the functionality to see a dynamic overview of what friends are up to, including recent photos, their status, profile updates, and recommendations based on their most recent actions on popular social networks.

Favorites
Keep the people consumers interact with most at their fingertips. Users will be able to set up messaging shortcuts to make reaching out as quick as possible.

Social contact card
Allow users to aggregate the most relevant information on any given contact, including archives of past communications, detailed pulse history, and one-click ways to initiate communication.

Innovative location-sensing technology
Provide new ways to locate, chat with, and exchange contact information with nearby Yahoo! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify consumers when a contact enters their vicinity.

Talking about zyb, they started off as a phone book and calendar sync up service. Using a phone that supports SyncML you can back up and restore to and from their servers. I guess they realized that just being a phonebook syncup is not going to take them any place. Well, looks like they are also moving in the direction of social connected address book. Thinking beyond the plain old address book. It can aggregate your activities from services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. and share them as a feed with your friends. The plan is to bring this functionality to your phone too in the form of a Java app. Also in the cards are location information of buddies and location mapping.

I guess plaxo should be a perfect example of address book. Initially they were aggregating email address book, and now they have moved beyond this basic aggregation. How can we forget what happened to Robert scobleizer when he tried to import all his contacts from facebook through Plaxo. I guess this issue kind of gave more ammunition to data portability. Plaxo is well positioned in this space. Well, iam tired of hearing so many rumors of plaxo being acquired.



Fidgt is another social address book I came across recently. For now, they support aggregating friends and media from flickr, last.fm,AIM,MSN,Yahoo.

If you guys know of any social address book application, please let me know.