The other day I came across this Pictogame, a site that allowed users to upload their pictures, and turn their pictures into games and share with their friends. The games created are allowed to embed onto an user’s personal blog, or their Blogger, Friendster, Tagged, Multiply or their MySpace accounts. I can see this site will gain popular in the future based on several reasons here: the game creation process is truly simple, i.e. three steps involved as per their site stated, upload picture, choose a game template, and rotate the direction of the picture as one want. Moreover, this site invented is based on the belief that people nowadays want fun, and one of the funniest things to do is to create game. But I must say this site is very clever, for a new startup, offering the services that targeting at the niche and smaller market is a clever strategy. Maybe I’m wrong, blogging or social networking industry is not small, albeit perhaps the number of services that can be embedded into the social networking sites or blogs are too many to count for.

Below is the sample game that I made on Pictogame. Kick me!

Put this game on your blog   Create your own   More games

Jangl has released the public beta last year but it seems that it found the direction in secured partnerships for its unique VOIP services. To use Jangl, a user must register to get an unique Jangl ID or a special Jangl widget with the Jangl phone number, i.e. ten-digit number and his/her friends can use their own Jangl phone numbers to call this user or vice versa. The actual phone number, be it the landline or cell phone is safe. The Jangl phone number is a special number that provided by Jangl. In other words, Jangl is the VOIP provider for this type of free phone calling services available for the U.S. consumers.

Jangl seems to building the necessary products for the social network industry. In fact, social networking is a huge market that should not be overlooked by any player in the market. You’ll come across a newly launched social networking site in every week inevitably. They have partnered with Match.com by offering a matchTalk services for the Match.com’s members in November last year. I tend to believe that Jangl is making the necessary products with the exceptional quality for the use of social network, by this logic, they will achieve the success they need eventually. They’re now allowing their Jangl’s widget to post on the member profiles of Tagged and hence, this widget will automatically generates a private phone number enabling user to connect with their Tagged friends over any phone, without exchanging their true phone number, according to the latest news of Jangl.

This move helped Jangl to provide their VOIP phone services to the members of Tagged, currently amounted to 40 million people. However, I’m quite skeptical about this type of service. If you’re an existing Tagged user, will you pick up a phone call when you really do not know the caller, albeit that your Jangl phone number suppose to be privately owned by your friends? How many percent of the existing Tagged users will post the Jangl’s widget onto their personal profiles remain a big question now? Will you say: “Oh! What the heck!” Meanwhile, I know social network supposedly to be opened, but to what extent this type of network should be opened?