Photos are going social with apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic, and now Color, which is poised to become the next mega-app thanks to some interesting technical and social innovations that are a reflection of how the world has come to view social apps.

A few feats of engineering brilliance hide under Color’s slick surface. How does the app determine who’s in the same room with you? Not with GPS, which is flummoxed by floors because it can’t distinguish vertical distances between people. So Nguyen’s team taught Color to use a phone’s lighting and audio sensors, stitching their signals together with the sound and light environments of nearby devices to determine which user is where–it’s almost like a bat’s senses.

Color may also be the first social app that never requires you to name your friends, list your contacts or follow someone. Instead, it watches your interactions and builds your so-called elastic network of friends based on your real relationships. The startup created those algorithms with the help of D.J. Patil, the star data scientist with stints at Google and LinkedIn on his resume. The result: no more fake digital friendships.

Fast Company reports that Apple is getting in on the social photo space with some updates to iPhoto.

The World According to USAID

This animated cartogram, created by William and Mary student Ashley Ingram and blogged by Mike Tierney at AidData’s The First Tranche, shows aid flows from the US government to the rest of the world from 1985 to 2008.

Why the Poor Can Least Afford Bad Design

Companies also need to understand their obligations to their customers. “When you go into the BOP, your obligations are that much clearer. Your responsibilities as a corporation are that much greater because the people you are effecting with your products and services tend to have lower margins for error” he explains.”What is so compelling about what you produce that someone is willing to put so much on the line? Can you really imagine (the equivalent of) giving up your car for this product?”

Ghana Conducts Constitutional Review via SMS

In December 2010, Kobina Graham discovered just how much was riding on the social media project he had been working on. At the launch of the Constitution Review Commission’s text campaign he was told ‘This is the first campaign of its type in Ghana. If it works, it will be a model to follow. If it fails it will be held up as the reason why we should never do social media campaigns in Ghana again.’ No pressure.

A month later, and with over 20,000 text submissions under his belt, Kobina is breathing a little easier.

Operator Billing: Or why M-PESA is leading the way for the whole world, not just the developing world

One of the major changes 2011 is going to bring is the start of operator billing on the web. It will provide a user-friendly way of making mobile (and web) payments without those silly credit cards that are preventing the majority of the world to participate.

Operator billing is nothing new. Premium SMS (see for instance Verizon’s FAQ) , where the user pays something extra to receive news items or ringtones, or vote in a TV show, has existed for ages. The price is automatically charged to your operator account.

The most advanced country on earth when it comes to mobile payments is Kenya. About 50% of the population handles about 20% of GDP by mobile phones these days. The social consequences are profound, and operator Safaricom became the biggest bank in East Africa in the process.

Banks and credit card companies of the world, be very afraid. The operators will come to take your business away.

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/operator_billin.html

A World of Tweets

Heatmap of tweets worldwide (via)

A Social Media Boom Begins in Africa

Studies suggest that when Africans go online (predominantly with their mobile phones) they spend much of their time on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on). Sending and reading e-mails, reading news and posting research queries have become less important activities for Africans.

In recent months Facebook — the major social media platform worldwide and currently the most visited website in most of Africa — has seen massive growth on the continent. The number of African Facebook users now stands at over 17 million, up from 10 million in 2009. More than 15 per cent of people online in Africa are currently using the platform, compared to 11 per cent in Asia. Two other social networking websites, Twitter and YouTube, rank among the most visited websites in most African countries. (more)

See also: Africa’s Facebook bright spots

Rural farmers in Cameroon using Twitter?

Twitter’s deal with MTN Cameroon is already being seen a boon for cost-conscious startups. Among the biggest barriers for those building mobile information services is the prohibitive cost of SMS, currently priced at 50 francs (10 cents) for sending an out of network SMS. Even at bulk SMS gateway rates, these costs can quickly add up to the majority of a lean startup’s burn rate. Many enterprising techies have already begun exploring ways to use Twitter as a no-cost group SMS platform. Paul Graham would love this, since one of his three tenets of creating a startup is to spend as little money as possible. One early entrant in this space is Agro-Hub, an ActivSpaces social business that aims to quickly build a user base by delivering market data, news and sustainable farming tips at no cost. Until recently, the bulk of their costs have gone into paying for SMS. Agro-hub: “Twitter slashes outbound SMS expenditure by almost 75% giving a tremendous boost for the start-up to take off smoothly.”

Agro-Hub realizes that their target audience—smallholder farmers in Cameroon—aren’t willing to pay for an unproven SMS service, so their model is based on providing free updates. After farmers follow Agro-Hub:Informer on Twitter with their mobiles, Agro-Hub:Trader aims to earn revenue from nominal fees collected when goods are sold directly to the end consumer. Farmers benefit from economies of scale by organizing into cooperatives and bypassing exploitative middlemen, while consumers get local produce at reduced costs.

This model stands in contrast to Google’s innovative SMS offering that launched with fanfare to serve Uganda’s poor only to see usage plummet when mobile operators started charging a premium for the SMSs.

A new iPhone game allows users to influence the development of a Ugandan village:

Raise the Village puts you in charge of managing and customizing a village, as its name implies. Unlike other virtual community management sims, however, the village in this app represents a real one in Uganda (Kapir Atiira, specifically). You purchase items in-game through Apple’s in-app purchasing iOS feature to improve the virtual village, and then the company behind the app uses those funds to purchase the same items in the real world for use in the actual Ugandan community. The relationship isn’t one-to-one, and uses a group-for-one giving model, but player choices influence real-world decisions.