Social media and social networking are huge now-a-days, with Twitter, Facebook and the like being hugely successful at keeping friends and family in touch. Now only that, but social networks are huge for charities, with many causes being supported and heavily promoted via social networking. Corporations and business use social networking too to promote their products and services to users in a manner which is so relevant that they tend not to annoy as is generally the case with more corporate advertising.
With the currently in development, Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed Lucid Lynx, the development road map is set to take huge advantage of the major social networks. Common social networking actions, such as updating your Facebook status, or sending a Tweet to your friends are set to be integrated directly into the operating system allowing users to keep their friends up-to-date and share information without the need to even open a web browser.
Take a look at the image below. This is a basic mock-up of the new social menu codenamed the ‘Me Menu’, which is aimed to become to a simple, centralised way to manage your social activities. It has options for a user avatar, multiple social networks, instant messaging and microblogging services and the setting and broadcast of custom and preset statuses and microblogs.
This clever menu will link into other social applications, like your instance messaging application. In others words, you set your status in the me menu, and the update is reflected automatically in all your social networks and configured social applications. Related to this, in the diagram above, ‘Chat Accounts…’ will refer to all forms of instant messaging and direct communications, while ‘Broadcast Accounts’ will refer to social networks which allow you to share a status update such as Twitter, Facebook and identi.ca.
The Ubuntu One service will also be integrated into the Me Menu and Ubuntu’s new social infrastructure. This will allow social network information to be synchronised and related to your Ubuntu One login, along with the existing file synchronisation, contact management and note synchronisation services already offered by Ubuntu One.
The Me Menu will be the overall representation of ‘you’ within Ubuntu. If you want more information regarding the Me Menu, which is to become the central social network integrations of Ubuntu, you can take a look at the design specification.
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[...] Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx’s Social Networking Features Social media and social networking are huge now-a-days, with Twitter, Facebook and the like being hugely successful at keeping friends and family in touch. Now only that, but social networks are huge for charities, with many causes being supported and heavily promoted via social networking. Corporations and business use social networking too to promote their products and services to users in a manner which is so relevant that they tend not to annoy as is generally the case with more corporate advertising. [...]
Glad this is just a panel app.
I personally do not care for the idea of social network integration. I believe if people want to update such sites they can do so it other ways. “Old fashioned” ways or use 3rd party applications.
Tons of other things need to be worked on before Social integration.
isnt it a good thing to bring a bigger audience to linux and create a bigger user base. most people dont use linux. most people use windows and mac because those os’s are easier to use to do the things that they want to do. if you show that its possible to do those things for free your talking a growing os and a growing population of people supporting it
[...] previously discussed some of the new social networking aspects coming in Ubuntu 10.04. These mainly focus on the brand new Me Menu which is a personalised menu that holds and controls [...]
[...] Lynx, the development road map is set to take huge advantage of the major social networks More here Common social networking actions, such as updating your Facebook status, or sending a Tweet to your [...]
[...] menus have been split into two distinct icons, marking the first steps into the development of Ubuntu 10.04’s social networking features including the ‘Me [...]
Perhaps “Broadcast Accounts” would be better names “Social Accounts”, or “Social Networks”. I think the meaning those would be more easily recognized by most users.