There is always something to dislike about Facebook. The mobile experience needs serious improvement, the current news feed is convoluted and many teens no longer think it’s cool, to name a few. As Zuckerberg and company roll out their updated news feed in the coming weeks, however, it’s worth noting that the redesign takes a cue from Pinterest and Instagram (which Facebook owns). The experience will focus on larger visuals; images and links will be prominent and front and center.

Yes, this new format is preferable to advertisers and by extension the investor community, but it also clearly points to a larger trend of social media content consumption. It is all about images and video. Pinterest and Instagram are viral, and YouTube as well as other rich media sharing sites are growing exponentially. About fifty percent of Facebook posts include a photo or video, compared to twenty-five percent just over a year ago.

Businesses that wish to have a strong social media presence must provide visuals that are worth sharing. And when Facebook, the granddaddy of social media sites with well over one billion users worldwide, shifts its focus to a visuals-centered design, we all should take note. Whether Facebook has lost some of its cool is debatable, but it still matters.

Photo from New York Times

So I’ve just started Swipping. Yes, Swipping.

Launched this week, Swipp is a social platform that allows you to find out what the world thinks about anything at any given moment. Kind of like Yelp, Swipp is a rating system that provides you with an opportunity to provide your opinion on anything: from your thoughts about the U.S. Congress to Lady Gaga, from McDonald’s to that new restaurant you tried last week, it’s all fair game on Swipp.

The platform is structured around topics instead of people, however you can easily see what your friends are Swipping. Using the ‘explore’ feature on the dashboard, you can see what topics are trending now all over the world. Even better, and appealing to the data dork in me, you can expand each topic to view if your friends Swipped it, its current Swipp score, lifetime Swipp score, Swipp score by male/female and Swipp score throughout regions of the world.

Once enough people start using it, I can see how Swipp could be another tool marketers use to take a temperature check of their companies’ brand or products across the social web. Right now, it’s just fun.

My family and I are in the middle of moving residences, so I have started setting up utilities in our new home. We really needed to evaluate our media consumption habits because I just did not feel like we were getting our money’s worth from our cable television service. Turns out, I’m not the only one.

According to Parks Associates, the shift from cable and satellite to IPTV (Internet Protocol television) is on the rise. The firm is predicting that IPTV subscribers will increase from 8.8 to 18.6 million by 2017 in the United States alone. I must really be behind the eight ball, because even PBS has published a step-by-step guide on how to cancel cable and stream to your television.

After taking a look at what we watch and when we watch it, I realized cable television just does not make sense for us anymore. Enter Roku, a brilliant piece of hardware that allows you stream programming to your television directly from your internet connection. There are several hardware devices on the market that do this. The PBS article does a good job of explaining each one. Aside from our iPhones, we are not really a Mac family (insert audible gasp), so we decided on the Roku because it is easy to set up, a PC is not needed and there are no additional monthly fees with the exception of our existing subscriptions like Netflix and Hulu Plus. We can also play games, listen to internet radio and enjoy music, photos and videos from our smartphones. Sold yet?

This is where television consumption is heading. Telecommunications companies see this and are marketing their high-speed broadband services as the market moves from cable and satellite services to IPTV. It will be interesting to see how the market shifts in this direction over the next several years.

With all of the iPhone 5 hoopla, I couldn’t help but wonder what the big deal is. Yes, it’s Apple. Yes, it’s a new iPhone. Apparently, that is enough to warrant a bazillion news articles and blog posts about Apple’s latest iteration.
Then I came across the latest LEAP Index by New Media Metrix. LEAP stands for Leveraging Emotional Attachment for Profit, and the firm measures peoples’ attachment to 350 brands across 45 categories. iPhone ranked #1 for 2012, edging out iPod that reigned supreme for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple and its product brands took 4 of the top 10 spots, technology brands 7 of the 10. The study clearly indicates we are becoming increasingly attached to technology, devices and brands that aim to streamline our lives. We like gadgets and we like our iPhones.
By most accounts, iPhone 5 is not revolutionary. It is sleeker, prettier, a tad faster with a larger screen; some argue its style trumps its substance. The brand, however, is strong enough to overcome that, largely in part from its predeccesors, which arguably were quite revolutionary. We could spend days discussing all of the other parts that contribute to the power and mystique of a standout brand, but let’s not go there just yet. I’ve got an iPhone 5 to preorder.

Do you think people post way too many baby photos on Facebook? Apparently, enough people feel this way, as someone has developed a filter you can install via Google Chrome so that friends’ baby photos are replaced by photos of dogs, cats or anything else you think is cool. The filter is called unbaby.me:
A chrome extension that deletes babies from your newsfeed permanently––by replacing them with awesome stuff.

As a new mom myself, I find this extension brilliant and hilarious. When it comes to posting baby photos on Facebook, I am a repeat offender, guilty as charged. I understand, however, that not everyone wants to see my little nine month old trying to put the dog’s bone in his mouth for the tenth time. So go ahead, filter away, but just don’t tell me that my baby photo you liked on Facebook was actually a photo of a dog in a Halloween costume. Ignorance is bliss.

Shameless baby photo post. But isn’t he adorable?

Heading to London for some Olympics reveling? Fear not, because there are more apps than ever to help you find your way. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorites:

London 2012 Join In – The official app from the London Organising Committee offers itinerary planning, games results and the ability to find events, ATMs and refreshments. FREE

Hailo Black Cab – Yes, London public transportation is relatively clean and reliable, but an app that promises to hail you a cab in about 2 minutes? Yes please. FREE

Photo Wizard - Easy to use and intuitive, this photo editing app lets you do all sorts of fun things to your Olympics photos. Share on your favorite social sites and brag to your friends you watched Michael Phelps win his umpteenth medal. $0.99 for iOS (limited price reduction)

London Pub Crawl – Most importantly, find that perfect London pub or imbibe with the locals at favorite watering holes. Cheers to that. FREE to £4.99

If you’ve ever wanted to play your favorite mobile or social game – Angry Birds anyone? – on your TV, you’re in luck. Enter Ouya, an Android-based console that is getting as much buzz as it is funding. As of today, crowdfunding website Kickstarter is reporting $4 million has been raised, well beyond Ouya’s initial goal of $950,000 in 30 days.

Ouya offers an intriguing alternative to traditional console gaming systems. Granted, it will only support small scale gaming, the types of games you can download to your phone or iPad, but at $99, it is drastically less expensive than the typical $300 unit.

It is open source, which means no hefty development kits to purchase and no licensing or publishing fees. This helps keep game development costs down, which in turn keeps game pricing lower, much lower than the $60 per game from most publishers. And with the explosion of smartphone and tablet gaming, coupled with a troubled economy and families with less disposable cash, the excitement brewing around Ouya is no surprise.

Airtime is being described as a free browser-based Skype/Google+ hangout/Facebook chat web application, with a little bit of Chatroulette thrown in.  This person-to-person video calling application was built by Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker and is built on top of the Facebook platform so it does require a Facebook account for use.

Fanning and Parker call this a “social discovery” application, as it aims to help people make new friends online by allowing users to chat with people they don’t know via a video call.  Users will log in through Facebook and will then be able to get Airtime alerts through instant messages.  Airtime will also be able to find people a partner based on common interests and mutual friends.  If calls with strangers isn’t your thing, that’s okay because the app works for friends too, similarly to Skype.  Though this app has a lot of fun features: being able to watch videos together, give each other props by having a shower of stars take over the screen, there are a few functions that are not available including sharing music and multiparty chats.

The Airtime launch had a lot of celebrity backing at their launch yesterday, but it’s still up in the air whether this will be an app that sticks or comes and goes like Chatroulette.  What do our readers think, will you be trying this app?

For more information: http://allthingsd.com/20120605/sean-parker-and-shawn-fannings-airtime-finally-launches-today-interview/