Ford is diving into the burgeoning social media world head first. Based on the success of its Fiesta Movement, the Blue Oval has decided to launch a new program called Fusion 41 – so named because of the Fusion Hybrid's 41 mile-per-gallon EPA estimate in the city and the fact that Ford is looking for 41 participants to take part in its new game.
A total of eight Fusion or Fusion Hybrid owners will be chosen from all applicants received based on their social media presence, and those drivers will each choose four friends or family members to join their team. Ford will then hand out assignments that must be completed with photo and video proof that is to be uploaded to the driver's Facebook profile. Ford is calling the program an "automotive relay race," whatever that means.
So, what's the incentive to participate? For starters, each team will be given a new Fusion for the challenge, and the winning team captain will have their own Fusion or Fusion Hybrid paid off by Ford. Not bad, eh? Plus, participating team members from the winning group will earn free gas for one full year. Want to know more? Click past the break for the press release and visit www.fusion41.com before November 6th to enter the contest.
Ning, a popular web service that lets you set up your own Facebook-style social network (and hosts it for you) just added something that Facebook and MySpace have had for quite a while now: apps. Like applications on those other, bigger, networks, Ning Apps are powered by OpenSocial, a much-hyped API for building third-party apps that work on multiple social networks. Open Social has been around for years, making slow progress: maybe becoming available on Ning's 1.5 million different sites will help.
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The folks over at Facebook decided their social network's user interface needed to lose some weight. So, after a few weeks on a treadmill, Facebook Lite is now available for public preview. This new fat-free version of Facebook looks to put Twitter in its sights as far as simplicity is concerned; it's more straight-to-the-point and less "just in case you're interested."
On the inside, Facebook Lite seems to load and run significantly faster than the standard interface. It uses far less styling and scripting, and conveys simpler information to the user. In fact, after using the regular version for so long, Facebook Lite starts to feel somewhat like a mobile website. For on-the-go people, this should speed up the social networking workflow a little bit.
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Facebook is changing its privacy settings again, to fall in line with the recommendations of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner. The Commissioner was primarily concerned with how much access third-party apps were getting to user data on Facebook. As a result, apps will have to be more specific about the data they use, letting you know precisely which info they need and whether they access your friends' profile info.
From a developer standpoint, this means changes to the API in the coming months, so apps will have a uniform way to tell users which data they're accessing. This could slow the growth of some of the popular viral (or spam-based, depending on your perspective) apps that rely on surreptitiously sending out messages to your entire network to get new users. With greater transparency, it'll be easier for users to make informed decisions about which information to share, and with whom.
Car-obsessed readers of Autoblog may not have any problem thinking of their car as a social expression of who they are, but that's not necessarily true for the majority of the population of the world. Many people consider their car a necessary appliance, something required in life that they care little about. But recently, stylish, trendy and lovable vehicles are causing more people to form a personal attachment to their car, one that they would like to share with others. A look at social networking sites such as Facebook shows that people are interested in getting to know other drivers with the same type of car.
So, with that information established, what kind of car is most likely to attract attention? According to a recent survey by the U.K. "used car hypermarket" Carcraft shows that MINI owners are the most likely to reach out on the interwebs, with Honda Civic owners coming in at a distant second. Follow the break for Carcraft's list of the Top Ten "Friendliest" Cars.
