SocialNetSavvy

Twitter's paradigm shift

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:19:00 +0000

The original paradigm for twitter was for users to tell others what they are doing in real time. For the most part, the new paradigm for twitter is for users to send out a broadcast message of thought snippets, rendez-vous with GPS coordinates or gossip to casual acquaintances or friends of friends. Many celebrities do not twitter themselves, but use hired hands to promote their persona. In short, Twitter has become more of a medium of conversation, a big after-dinner party where everyone keeps a watchful eye and ear of their surroundings albeit discreetly and not always in tune.

Twitter has kept some similarities with blogging. For example, less than 20 percent of Twitter users create content for the other 80 percent. In addition, like blogs, Twitter is appealing to large corporations as a new channel to reach digitally savvy customers. Blogs reach customers through online ads and corporate branding through corporate blogs. How does twitter help corporations since there is no advertising. Well corporations are using twitter in different ways, such as getting immediate feedback from partners and customers on a new product or service before launching them in the real marketplace.

Therefore, despite any new advances in applications on smartphones, Titter will keep its place as a broadcast medium whether for the individual or the corporation. This paradigm shift has already begun. In conclusion, Twitter will remain as a low cost and effective messaging platform. This fits into an environment with ever growing volume of content yet ever shorter attention spans.

Expanding Your Blog Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:23:00 +0000

Ping Servers allow users to locate your blog more easily by updating search engines dedicated to blogs.

To this end, there are two valuable services that allow you to expand your blog audience. The first is Ping-o-matic. This service is free, very easy to use and connects to many other ping servers and a real time saver. The other place to add your blog url to is the Google Blog Search. Since Google owns Blogger it is highly likely that Goggle is already indexing your site adequately.

Finally, it is good practice to use product or service specific words. Therefore, sales people and colleagues interested in these products or services will find you and want to chat or collaborate with you.

There are a number of services that allow enterprises to monitor what the blogosphere is saying about them, namely Nielsen Buzzmetrics - Blogpulse, Radian 6 - Radian6, Cymphony - Influence 2.0 and Techrigy - SM2. If you are looking for a global player your best bet is Nielsen Buzzmetrics, they have offices around the world.

Building Blocks to Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:23:00 +0000

I highly recommend the book titled Enterprise 2.0 Implementation from authors Newman and Thomas. This book covers not only the technology, but the cultural changes an enterprise must have to implement web 2.0 internally.

Some of the short-term goals an enterprise seeks to attain after implementing web 2.0 is a substantial reduction in intra-company email, greater communication with customers, greater collaboration among employees. Over the long term a company can achieve more product innovation from employee collaboration, improved recruitment faster sales cycles and increased customer retention. p.25-26. In terms of the short term goals, I would add a richer communication experience, because web 2.0 technologies facilitate the use of multi-media. In regards to long term goals an enterprise can also improve service innovation in addition to product innovation.

There are several social networking vendors that serve the enterprise such as Awareness, IBM Lotus Connections, Jive Clearspace, Weblingo and Hive Live. p.52-53 & 203. The other option is to try multiple products and only implement the best component from each. For example, Clearspace has terrific Forums and personal profile features. Confluence is great for wikis. One thing that the author fails to mention is the differences between the user experience and the programmers experience. For example, Clearspace Jive software provides terrific user experience, but the backend capabilities are less comprehensive than Atlassian Confluence. The latter provides comprehensive development tools and plugins, but the user interface is much less appealing. In some cases, simply seeing a demo of the product is not enough for evaluating each vendor. The IT department will need to setup a pilot with each vendor and determine the benefits of each product based on the user experience and backend capabilities.

At Cisco many vendors are used that provide the same feature sets, but are deployed in different areas of the business. The vendor that achieves the fastest and greatest adoption levels eventually wins the contract to deploy at the enterprise level. However, if there are more than one software solutions with high levels of adoption, then they continue to co-exist at Cisco. Having an SOA framework allows the company to integrate the services of multiple vendors into multiple legacy systems. The enterprise can reap the benefits of solution diversity with strengths and weaknesses playing out for each software solution. Unfortunately, a major drawback is that senior management is unable to see the entire picture rolled-up into one interface, because there are too many software solutions providing different information.

In short, Cisco is successful with its implementation of web 2.0, because it already has the building blocks in place, such as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) allowing legacy systems to inter-operate. The enterprise can create mashups using rich Internet applications (RIAs) and its legacy systems. The SOA allows information from legacy systems to become discoverable greatly increasing the information within them. Another key component is a rich employee directory that connects to web 2.0 applications. For example, a wiki using the teamphoto macro will show an employee photo and also link to the employee directory where LinkedIn style information is stored.

Attaching social information (such as tagging and voting) to existing enterprise data repositories improves the relevancy of information being searched and used. Another key building block to successful web 2.0 implementation is to have a master data set where the user has a single version of the truth from across a diverse set of applications and repositories. p.82 Some of the web standards to achieve this are Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State transfer (REST). They allow the systems to become inter-operable and web 2.0 enabled.

Another building block needed for successful web 2.0 implementation to to have search 2.0 capability. For example, search 2.0 includes search results with information from blogs, wikis and forums. In addition, the enterprise search has social tagging (folksonomy) added to the search results. Unless the information from blogs wikis and forums is searchable, their value is greatly reduced and user adoption of web 2.0 technologies will inevitably decline. p.81 The authors provide a short list of social bookmarking vendors, namely Scuttle (open-source), Cogenz and Connectbeam.p.142. Other open-source social networking software is available at vivalogo Implementing search 2.0 can be disruptive, because information that was once under tight control can become accessible to all. Therefore, is is a good approach to implement this technology in a phased approach and only target a functional area or division initially. p.114 Using specialized crawlers will allow the marking of information that is deemed too sensitive and remove it from the web 2.0 indexing and authentication.

Source
Enterprise 2.0 Implementation, Aaron C. Newman & Jeremy Thomas, McGraw Hill Publ.,2008, ISBN 978-0-07-159160-7.

Wild West of Advertising in Web 2.0 Era

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:45:00 +0000

We are all aware of Amazon's sophisticated product recommendation engine based on a customer's previous behavior. What would happen if Amazon partnered with Google and was able to determine the entire behavior online? Therefore instead of just having data on an individual's purchasing behavior they have insight into their anxieties or dreams based on search patterns? Social networking sites are invading the privacy of their members using a combination of opt-in and/or opt-out principles without oversight. Members of these sites are aware of the attack on their privacy, but many are not.

However, there is a growing number of social networking users that are comfortable with greater openness and are comfortable with sharing their lives online. Some have realized that this information is now accessible to their employers and they sometimes lose hiring opportunities, because some of their personal behaviors displayed online is inappropriate for the employer. This is a growing concern, but for now is left unchecked.

My biggest concern is a cataclysmic event, where the invasion and abuse of privacy is done on a large scale and users/consumers generate a backlash that affects all advertisers. A few years ago Google Earth raised some concerns concerning privacy when users of Google Earth could zoom in on people acting inapropriately. Another similar situation will be location awareness that comes with GPS and mobile devices. Today many online advertisers are sending ads that are location specific. This will raise similar ethical concerns as to the advertiser is aware that you are at a ball game when you should be at work. As more and more of our lives are done online, on mobile devices, on IPTV, YouTube and other emerging media, the more advertisers will peer into our lives with greater accuracy and effectiveness.

So far, advertisers are experimenting with greater access to behavioral and social data online and creating better targeting. However, there are no checks and balances. The only way to stop an advertiser from abusing the use of personal information online is through grassroots awareness at the customer base of social networking sites. My fear is that it is only a matter of time before an unscrupulous marketer merges social networking information with a Google search and GPS information and create a mega database. Can our governments create a do not call list for an information system with tentacles into all parts of our online lives? Facebook was forced to change its policies regarding its beacon program, because of user backlash. In essence user awareness is what made a difference in the advertisers' behavior.

I predict that a growing trend will emerge in the form of new digital privacy protectors. Several non-profit organizations will spring up with the main goal of providing simple social networks that are safe from invasive marketers. People will share their personal information in the form of blogs and videos, but access will be protected and through invitation only. Only non-profits will have the integrity that users seek to share their private information. Online stores will provide access to their products, but personal data will be scrubbed clean before leaving the social network to reach the online retailers. The non-profits will survive with government subsidies or subscription fees or the donation of a large foundation. This new web 2.0 model will occur probably within 10 years, but for the time being the wild west in advertising is upon us.

Web 2.0 Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:39:00 +0000

I recently read a book titled Web 2.0 Heroes from the author Bradley L. Jones. In it the author interviews 20 influential people of Web 2.0 properties. I think the most useful property for the enterprise would be Linked-In. Their vision for the future is very practical an useful for large companies.

They have a two part strategy for using APIs. The first part allows users to access their LinkedIn network anywhere on the web and leverage this information. "On Business Week you'll be able to access your linked-in network, find out who you know in that company or how many degrees away you are from someone you want to know in the company. You'll then be able to take action on that article -- whether you want to do a deal with them, work for them, research them, or whatever it might be. You can find a company insider on anything that's been written." ..."That part of our API approach -- being able to combine publisher's content with Web 2.0 sort of network of people technology that LinkedIn has." p.126

The second part is following Facebook's lead and allowing publishers and developers to create APIs for the LinkedIn platform. They are also talking of using Google's Open Social platform. One that they demo is a merging of LinkedIn profile information with events information in a form of mashup. The mashup will provide information to the user on who is attending the event and if they are part of their LinkedIn network. "It maps out for you, in black and white, what the professional environment looks like -- who is there, who's connected to whom, and shows how you fit into that and how you can make use of that. And it's all databased; and it introduces much more precision into going to something like a conference and getting a lot out of it." p.127

These two API features should be licensed to large companies that are not tech savvy, but have thousands of employees, such as Pfizer, J&J, P&G and Exxon. Most large high-tech companies, such as IBM, Cisco and HP most likely have developed these features in-house or are planning to do so. Many large companies are a microcosm of the internet itself with lots of content to distribute and read and people to interact with globally. Strategically as an acquisition target, I think that Linked-In would be a good fit for the likes of IBM, Yahoo, Google or Cisco just for the intellectual property that Linked-In has developed. The intellectual property would help speed-up in-house development of these features. At the very least, Linked-In should focus on partnering more with large companies and not on focus on providing functionality for corporate recruiters. There is a lot of potential to extend the LinkedIn platform into many different parts of the business such as sales & marketing, customer service and corporate communications.

Source: Web 2.0 heroes, Bradley L. Jones, 2008, Wiley Publishing Inc, p. 273, ISBN 978-0-470-24199-8

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:04:00 +0000

I finished reading a wonderful book from the author Amy Shuen. It is a well researched book that discusses in detail, how to monetize of web 2.0 solution. I think that the quote "Don't build applications. Build contexts for interaction." p.9 summarizes what web 2.0 is all about.

The image on the left shows the key roles and linkages in social networks.
There are Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen(woman). Unfortunately, finding these players requires intense manual effort from the support team through web analytics and manually reviewing the activities of influential and active participants on your web 2.0 platform. The author describes in detail the theory, but not how to execute. Providing tactical questions as the author does is the easy part , but finding a solution and executing on them is the hard part.

Based on my experience at Cisco, another important player is the support personnel to make the web 2.0 experience as easy and valuable to the end customer. To grow the user base, our team provided training and ongoing customer support through email, online help, chat and virtual meetings globally.

In short, the user interface can be as easy as making toast, but your web 2.0 platform needs to provide support for super users and very novice users. Users that fall in-between these two groups usually get the information they need from their peers. Regardless, of the size of each customer segment, the organization running the show needs to put in place a formal support network.

Despite the dominance of social networking players like MySpace and FaceBook the total pie is large enough to welcome new players with fresh new ideas. Eventually, all these social spaces will interconnect and a user will no longer have to login to all these social networks to get their key information from each. Most likely, Google or Yahoo will create a social networking aggregator that pushes all of this information through one funnel to the user's mobile device or desktop.

Finally, the author provides three key takeaways from the book:

Online network effects are a powerful multiplying force (e.g there is a tipping point say >50% where one particular player becomes the dominant force and their value doubles in comparison to the other players).
A few active uploaders can create online critical mass and community (This relates somewhat to the roles of salesmen(woman), connectors and mavens and their impact on quickly growing the user base overall).
Viral distribution and cooperative advantage can build eco-systems rapidly. (Certain web tools, such as RSS can speedup the distribution of knowledge and web applications at a much faster rate that word of mouth alone).

I would add to this list two other key takeaways namely,

4. To grow rapidly, your web 2.0 platform requires a good support network and rich tracking tools.

5. Your platform must focus on ease of use more than rich functionality, if you want a broad user base as opposed to a smaller tech savvy niche of users.

Source: Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, Amy Shuen, O'Reilly Publ., 2008, p.243, ISBN 978-0-596-52996-3

Wiki best practices

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:25:00 +0000

I would like to think that developing wikis for the enterprise is something new but it is not. Nevertheless there is great value in creating wikis for the enterprise. Currently, I am part of a team of web 2.0 developers who have become efficient at churning out wikis for internal customers of Cisco. The ten best practices to have the top web 2.0 development team that I wish to share with you are as follows:

Create wiki templates that are easy to use and most of all provide something that drives adoption. For example, our templates facilitate group provides templates for team management, multimedia distribution, discussion forums, ideation management, social networking, virtual education, surveys, knowledge management and project management.
Automate tracking of new customer engagements.
Monitor user adoption through detailed web(wiki) metrics.
Participate in awards programs for new web 2.0 technologies and services.
Keep a watchful eye of competing technologies and internal services, by making sure your team is the best in customer service, technology and capability.
If at all possible, offer your services for free (meaning do not depend on internal financing of projects).
Focus on service metrics and delivery to show to senior management your teams' worth and value-add for additional funding and resources.
Develop comprehensive virtual user training material so that the development team can focus on innovative projects instead of basic user training.
Explore new ways to increase wiki adoption and listen to customer needs.
Finally, after wiki adoption has arrived at critical mass, focus on experimental innovative projects that raise the bar and create buzz within the organization.

Wiki are only a small part of web 2.0 technologies that are transforming the workplace, but I encourage you to promote its adoption within your organization. The next frontier is wiki expansion into the mobile space more comprehensively. However, some obstacles in network security need to be addressed before more enterprises adopt the wiki for the mobile space.

Wikis for the Workplace

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Working at Cisco, I am part of a small team of dedicated experts that develop sophisticated yet easy to use solutions for our wiki community. I am truly amazed at what we can do with wikis. Coding for a wiki solution is relatively easy, but sometimes a bit time consuming to get things visually perfect. The development tools for the wiki are not as advanced a as Adobe's Dreamweaver, but with good knowledge of style sheets and macros, you can tackle most problems.

It is best to setup some guidelines when providing a solution to a customer. For example, wikis are great to:

streamline team communication & reduce emails and meetings .
collaborate more effectively with remote users over larger geographic areas .
capture team project status, calendars & timelines .
locate SMEs, then collect & share technical knowledge with them.
remove silos & bring greater openness within the organization.
create ad-hoc & self-organized virtual teams to quickly brainstorm.
generate a greater number new ideas quickly.
improve decision-making based on voting from peers.
develop more effective business strategies, planning or forecasting.
exchange media in multiple formats with peers.

Our wiki development team provides solutions that leverage these ten strengths that wikis offer to the organization. As part of the planning process, we usually ask the customer about their role, the potential size of their team or wiki community. This helps the development team determine the resources for training and coaching of new users.

Every user of the enterprise wiki has a different level of interaction with the wiki community as well as proficiency to create wiki pages. For example, some users are good at finding information, others are good at posting information on wikis, still others interact with other users and provide their comments on wiki pages. Finally there is a set of advanced users that setup and facilitate online forums, gather ideas from the community to improve a process or develop a new service or product. Therefore, it is best to determine the number of users that fit into each persona in order to measure the degree of engagement and the overall health of the wiki community.

Some of the business results that are possible using a wiki solution are:

a shorter project time-line.
reduced project costs.
more efficient resource allocation.
increased satisfaction from our customers / partners.
new our products / services to reaching markets faster.
a better ROI or IRR for our product / service.
a significant process improvement.

In short, regardless of the wiki solution provided to the customer, a positive business result is key the the long term health of the wiki community. If senior management does not see proof of business value, the resources allocated to using and developing the wiki community will be difficult to justify. In the end, without resources and a vibrant community of users, the enterprise wiki will not find its place as a favorable alternative to intranet web pages or emails for employee collaboration and communication. The solution is two-fold. First, to monitor metrics regarding user adoption and business results. Second, communicate these metrics to senior management to keep them happy and willing to fund the required infrastructure, hire developers, etc...

Some valuable resources to improve wiki user adoption within your organization are wikipatterns by author Stewart Mader and Wikinomics by authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Finally hiring a good social anthropologist/researcher can help determine the various persona at your organization and a corresponding strategy to promote use and increase the overall size of the community.

Cisco Helps Build Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:01:00 +0000

Cisco known for building the infrastructure for Internet and VOIP communications is strategically targeting web 2.0 as its next business opportunity with its new entertainment operating system. It will allow entertainment companies to build their online communities. The system will facilitate targeted advertising to community members based on their online activities. This is something similar to what Facebook launched a few months ago. Although there are competing product sin the marketplace, Cisco has the deep pockets to succeed in this new business arena.

This strategic move seems the first stage in merging collaborative technologies with social networking application. WebEx is a new collaborative platform that Cisco recently acquired. This platform will inevitably incorporate social networking capabilities over the long term. The next steps of this puzzle would be is adding a mobile social networking platform and possibly virtualization, such as Second Life. The trick is to balance user security and identity while maintaining openness and ease of use in interactive capabilities. The need to secure real individual identities may require investments in encryption technologies or physical recognition systems, such as optical scanning or fingerprints. In some cases users will want to remain anonymous in their virtual interactions while securely maintaining their true identities from hackers or identity theft.

Microsoft often lost the battle in preventing hackers from taking advantage of weaknesses inherent in the Wintel client-server architecture. Hopefully, Cisco can provide users with bullet proof technologies that allow greater online social interaction while maintaining a deep trust among users regarding their online identities.

If Cisco wants to become he dominant player in social networking platforms, it needs to tackle the greater obstacle of Eos becoming the defacto international standard in social networking platforms. Defining the standard, using an open platform and then getting it adopted globally is difficult even for Internet titans like Google. Unlike Microsoft, Cisco is not known for its leadership in software products. Yet it has a very strong brand that conveys reliability and technological leadership for its routers and other Internet technologies. This will certainly help it overcome many obstacles tied to user adoption of its Eos platform.

Sources:
Wall Street Journal, Cisco Plan Targets the Media, System Will Help Firms Build Social Networks And Manage the Internet, By BOBBY WHITEJanuary 8, 2008; Page B3, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119973082626572521.html

Targeted Ads and Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:30:00 +0000

Both Facebook and MySpace have decided to monetize their web sites by tracking and targeting their user's lives. Today, fewer and fewer people are clicking on online ads. From January to December 2006, the click through rate on major web sites like AOL, MSN and Yahoo had declined from 0.75 percent to 0.27 percent. (See chart on left) Despite getting targeted ads, most users of social networking websites rarely want to leave these sites to go elsewhere online and shop.

Facebook has started to use targeted ads based on a user's profile and interests and where they attend school. In addition to a user's profile, they also look at which web sites the user has visited. (3) However, web-savvy users the less likely to click on an banner ads. Marketers can often see a 30 to 300 percent increase in click rates when their ads are targeted.(2) MySpace currently uses algorithms to track changes users make on their web pages as they move through different stages of their life, such as graduating from college, working and getting married. Early next year advertisers on MySpace will have the same targeting tools that Facebook started offering this month. According to eMarketer Inc., ad spending on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook may almost triple to 3.63 billion globally by 2001.(1)

A better way to commercialize these social networks is to leverage the use of user product recommendations. A friend's opinion about a product is certainly a great influencing agent to buy the product. The website Lemonade.com is using this mechanism to generate sales through user recommendations. Certain online retailers like Amazon.com could also benefit from this system when users recommend a book they bought from them. In short, this is a form of viral marketing that is very effective if the targeted friend is connected to many other friends on a social network. To this end, Facebook has recently created a new advertising scheme, where an image of a product is sent out alongside a users photo and product recommendation. However, the Facebook user does not get a cut of the sales revenue as do users participating in the Amazon associates program.

Facebook is looking to push this ad scheme even further by partnering with companies like BlockBuster. For example, say you visit Blockbuster online and add a movie to your rental queue, now with the help of Facebook, you will see a message asking whether you want to promote this movie and Blockbuster to your friends. If, for some odd reason, you want everyone to know that you just rented the first three seasons of The Sopranos from Blockbuster.com, you can do so very easily. Some users will gladly live as online billboards championing products like Nike and Gap to all their friends. However, I suspect that most will see this activity to be annoying at best. (5)

The Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington group that advocates for more stringent privacy rules, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's and MySpace's advertising efforts. (4) As a result, on Nov. 1st the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began hearing related to consumer privacy and online advertising, such as targeted ads. Consumer advocacy groups hope that the FTC will restrict the amount of data Google and Yahoo collect as a basis for targeted ads. Online advertisers are being proactive and creating standards to protect a user's data. Nevertheless there is ample room for abuse and an industry led self-policing mechanism may not be enough to curtail attacks on user privacy.(2)

The big question arise with the users themselves, will they tolerate the targeted ads and the continued erosion of their privacy. A backlash of sorts has already begun with several bloggers saying that Facebook and MySpace have sold out and they began removing all personal information from their profiles except for basic contact information.

Sources:

1- MySpace Lets Advertisers Target Users in Life Stages (Update1)
By Gillian Wee, Nov. 9, Bloomberg.com , http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aml8Vp9xw_0M

2- So Many Ads, So Few Clicks Can more targeted pitches on Facebook and other sites reverse the shrinking response to online ads?, BusinessWeek, Nov. 12, 2007, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_46/b4058053.htm

3- MySpace, Facebook Expand Targeted Ads, Marketers Tap Into Web's Social Networks
By Catherine Rampell, Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page D03 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110501628.html

4- Facebook: Marketers Are Your 'Friends', The social network's new ad system delivers everything you say, do, and buy to marketers—with no opt out, by Catherine Holahan, BusinessWekk, November 7, 2007, http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc2007116_289111.htm

5- Wednesday, November 07, 2007 9:31 AM PT Posted by Kyle Sutton
Facebook Puts Users to Work Pitching Products, http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005875.html

The Future of Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:02:00 +0000

One of the reasons why social networking and blogging is growing so fast is the barrier to entry is practically zero. An individual can start their own social network using Ning or their own blog with Blogger, blogslive, today.com or wordpress to name a few. In the October 21st issue of the SF Chronicle, Sam Zuckerman provides a quick bio of several bloggers that started small and now have full fledged businesses. One example is TechCrunch a popular go-to site that covers web startups in the Silicon Valley. In August, over a million people visited the site. As a result, the large number of visitors attracted many advertisers an a valuable revenue stream for the blog's authors, approximately $240,000 a month.

Some media companies are specializing in the blogosphere, such as Federated Media that sells advertising for 130 independent blogs and related online media. Of course bloggers can also tap other sources of revenue, such as subscriptions, posting special events and selling products. Despite all the possible sources of revenue, it is rare that a successful blog entity will hire more than a dozen full-time employees. Funding through Venture Capital is always a possibility, and Sequoia Capital has been an active player. Overall, the future looks bright for a would-be star blogger with a particular niche market within the blogosphere.

As more and more blogs crowd out traditional print publishing houses and broadcasters, television is also going to go through a similar transformation. Current a news TV channel using video podcasts and stories sent by readers is very popular among many demographic groups that advertisers favor. Former Vice President, Al Gore is the Chairman behind this successful experiment and thankfully is not only interested in environmental issues, but a new business model for television. Current is a great business model, because it combines the best of what social networking is all about, live participation from the audience in an informative and intelligent manner unlike the stupid content, so called reality TV in the form of Survivor, Big Brother and the Bachelor.

The blogosphere has many strengths and weaknesses

The blogging world has tremendous strengths - original voices, provocative opinions, imagination and intimate knowledge of a variety of subjects. But it is also an industry struggling to mature, many observers argue. They say blogging companies must overcome the industry's reputation as a sort of digital Wild West where anything goes, and confront such questions as conflicts of interest, product hype, bias and low standards of accuracy. 1

To improve accuracy and improve standards, some blogging sites such as Helium are also encouraging readers to report plagiarism to the editors. As this new medium matures, new standards will separate the fluff from the real content, and new software will maintain authenticity of authorship, just as images are tagged with watermarks today. We will have a sort of Verisign for the blogosphere with special tags for video and print embedded in the media to verify authenticity. Universities will begin offering courses in ethics and blogging and traditional broadcasters and publishers with create their own independent blogs just to survive, because a growing proportion of the very large advertising pie is moving to the Internet.

In conclusion, as with all other forms of media, professional bloggers will crowd out the amateurs and collect the lion's share of the advertising dollar. The reading masses will follow the professional blogger, because they want authenticity, credibility, yet maintain their ability to interact with the author. As long as the authors maintain a somewhat close attachment with their readers, they will be rewarded with an active, invloved group of readers. The difficulty will be to keep an unbiased opinion that is not tied to corporate interests or the demands of advertisers.

Sources:
1- Yes, some blogs are profitable - very profitable, Sam Zuckerman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2007, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/21/BUVJSNSTC.DTL

2- Current Television, http://current.com/

Web 2.0 Valuations

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:38:00 +0000

Based on figures from Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young, venture capital for Web 2.0 outfits in the first half of 2007 is $464 million. The next most likely targets are RockYou (a Facebook widget advertiser) at $500 million. Microsoft is said to be interested in buying a five percent stake in Facebook for about $500 million. Linked-In would be a likely candidate to become an IPO in 2008 if not sooner.

Source: BusinessWeek, OCTOBER 22, 2007, NEWS, What in the Web Are They Thinking?
Believe it or not, the crazy sums tech and media giants are paying for startups may ultimately make sense, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_43/b4055055.htm?chan=search

Internet Censorship

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:30:00 +0000

In the latest issue of the MIT Technology review Clark Boyd provides us with a map revealing a growing phenomena, namely Internet censorship. The map below shows the geographical hot spots of Internet censorship in terms of social filtering (porn) and political filtering (political dissent).

Map Description: Political Filtering: Filtering of sites devoted to political opposition, religious freedom, or human-rights issues (top map). Social Filtering: Filtering of sites related to sex, gambling, or drugs, in some cases by institutions such as libraries (bottom map). See mulitmedia link below for larger image with color index. Credit: Bryan Christie

"...China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia remain top blockers, stamping out porn, political, human-rights, and religious sites. Other countries target specific categories: for example, Libya filters political content. In western nations, the story is more nuanced: U.S. libraries block some sites, and private parties remove copyrighted material to avoid lawsuits; in Germany, Nazi sites are banned. See opennet.net for details."

Obviously the implications for social networking and web 2.0 are disconcerting at best. It is through openness and the free exchange of ideas where social networks can flourish. Censorship essentially shuts down this process and slows the idea of a global community that is not tied to political or social boundaries.

Source: Technology review, September/October 2007, Mapping Censorhip, When it comes to Internet Censorship, China and Iran top the list. By Clark Boyd, http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=19161&ch=infotech&a=f

Next Generation of Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:13:00 +0000

Yesterday, I attended an event sponsored by the WebGuild in the Silicon Valley, at Google HQ. The main topics were 1- Growing trends in social networking, 2- What are the key ingredients to a successful social network? 3- What is the best way to monetize advertising within social networks? 4- What characterizes Web 3.0? 5- When will we see Mobile 2.0?

1- Growing Trends in Social Networking

Jonathan Abrams, founder of Socializr said that the first growing trends was the increased use of implicit data to complement the use of user data known as explicit data. In short, social networks are becoming more intelligent by providing users with user interest generated lists. This is similar technology that Amazon uses to recommend purchase a shopper might like based on their existing shopping patterns and matching it with multitudes of other shoppers. The second trend that Abrams mentions is that more social networking features are appearing in the on mobile networks. Currently, text messaging a primitive form of social networking is growing fast in the United States.

2- What are the key ingredients for a successful a social network?

Jia Shen, CTO of RockYou shared his insight on the monetization of advertising to support widgets for Facebook. To have a successful social network you need two key ingredients namely a killer app and gain critical mass on your social network. He disagreed with the other guest speakers on the openness of Facebook (from a technical standpoint) arguing that Facebook is open enough in terms of monetization of advertising for widgets creators. To achieve critical mass the social network must draw users with its new so called killer app. that is structured on software as a service architecture (SaaS). Ajax and DOM scripting are replacements to Flash applications, the latter being something that his group focused on initially, but then abandoned in favor of software better suited for open social networking platforms, such as Facebook.. The main obstacle to generating critical mass is that a typical user has already invested a lot of time and explicit data within their chosen social network. In addition, existing social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have no interest in sharing their data among themselves. If a social network is to achieve commercial success over the long term, then it must follow the changing life path of a typical user. For example, MySpace caters to a younger crowd, where there is a lot of vanity, profanity and a strong dating scene. However, as a user matures, their needs change and the social network must cater to these changes. Therefore, the more conservative social networks that still can appeal to the younger crowds and also their parents will achieve the greatest success over the long term. Facebook is a good example of this.

3-What is the best way to monetize advertising within a social network?

All three guest speakers were in agreement that advertisers have not yet cracked the code to achieve successful monetization of advertising within the context of the consumer. Currently, the conversion rates from any form of advertising within a social network is very low. The main reason for this is that members of a social network never want to leave the network to conduct purchases on an external site. Their solution: create advertising that best parallels the social graph. In other words, use viral distribution of product recommendations based on the recommendations between friends within a social network. As each recommendation moves from one friend to another , the conversion rate improves along with this exchange.

4-What characterizes Web 3.0?

I asked the guest speakers what would be the main characteristics of Web 3.0? For example, wold we see a greater use of web bots or agents that would manage all the explicit data for users and also facilitate the extension of implicit data. All were in agreement, that this would be a key characteristic of web 3.0.

5- When will we see Mobile 2.0?

The speakers said that social networking has already begun in the United States in the primitive form of text messaging. Unfortunately, the U.S. is very far behind countries, such as Japan and countries in Europe. For example, the mobile infrastructure in Japan is very advanced and users interact on many different ways over the web. In many emerging markets, the computer is not part of the inventory of gadgets they own. As a result, the phone becomes the main form of communication and is more prone to faster adoption rates for social networking on mobile networks. When can we expect advanced social networking on mobile networks in the United States? We can expect to wait almost a decade before advanced social networks become ubiquitous in the U.S.

Source: Next Generation of Social Networking, October 17, 2007 from 6 - 9:30 p.m.6 p.m. - Reception; 7 p.m. - PresentationGoogle, 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy., Building 43

eCommerce 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:02:00 +0000

Online Product Reviews

Many online stores are tapping product review services to enhance the shopping experience of Internet shoppers. This is an example of the power of web 2.0 on growing online revenues. Companies such as Bazaarvoice and Power Reviews offer a product referral service based on consumer input and target their services to small and large online stores.

Merchants say ratings and reviews boost sales,
increase customer satisfaction, and reduce returns.

Of course the online retailer needs to capture a lot a reviews to benefit the buying customer. To this end, the retailer can use promotional campaigns to increase the number of product reviews. For example, the retailer can offer a small discount on a future online purchase. To be most effective, the retailer then needs to leverage the information from these product reviews to promote available top rated products to improve the conversion rate. The product reviews also help online retailers identify vendors with poorly rated products and encourage them to reassess their product lines.

Web 2.0 Retailing

A disruptive force in online retailing is on the horizon. Many online retailers will lose some of their most valuable customers to online stores run by savvy individual product reviewers. Now an individual that is passionate about a particular group of products can comment on them and then sell them through a web service called lemonade. Lemonade users can incorporate a lemonade widget onto there social networking page, blog or personal home page and then collect money from product sales. And unlike a lemonade stand that you could find on a street corner, these small online retailers have a global reach thanks to a fast growing market on the Internet.

Sources:

Wall Street Journal, Business Technology section, Sept. 11, 2007, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118946406034923071.html

Lemonade, http://www.lemonade.com/

More Advertising Moving to the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 05:04:00 +0000

More and more advertising is moving to the web away from popular print magazines, such as BusinessWeek, Forbes an Fortune. Sites with the most free content are the most popular. Ever since Rupert Murdoch acquired the Wall Street Journal, there is talk that the online content of the WSJ will become free and rely on advertising instead of a paid subscription model. For details of advertising declines see chart on left.

Source: WSJ, Friday October 12th, 2007 p.B4, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119214635778456669.html

Best Strategy for Web 2.0 Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 03:30:00 +0000

After reading the Online Advertising Playbook, I thought it necessary to comment on the strategy of Brian McAndrews, CEO of aQuantive. McAndrews describes a four pronged strategy.
1- Target and personalize every marketing interaction. (Consumers now decide when to consume content and whether to consume advertising as well. Therefore better targeting and personalization making the ad more relevant to the consumer. The ultimate goal is to always send the right message, at the right time to the right person eliminating wasted advertising dollars)

I think that the emarketer has plenty of tools to effectively use personalization and targeting. However, the growing concern over the protection of privacy will require methods that instill greater consumer confidence and trust in sharing their data over devices that allow for communication, but have underdeveloped security measures in place. For example, the most vulnerable areas are wireless communications, such as wi-fi and portable USB storage devices and memory cards for portable devices, where access information is often stored.

2- Make your web site the central expression of your brand. (The web is a unique medium in that it can service three channels combined, such as advertising, sales and CRM. Therefore marketers must maximize this capability instead of previously using the web as "brochure ware")

I think that these three channels each share obstacles that the emarketer has less control over. For example, some advertisers feel insecure in placing ads on social networking sites, where the content can change from a conservative point of view to a radical political protest regarding a recent news story on the environment or human rights violation.

3- Integrate your digital messaging vertically. (The marketer must integrate information across all digital channels, such display advertising, search, the website and email marketing, etc... in have one view of the consumer in order to engage them effectively and efficiently in a meaningful dialog.)

As emarketers integrate their information from multiple sources to achieve a single view of the customer, they must be vigilant in their use of this information. For example, Europe has stricter standards than the United States regarding the sharing of personal information with third parties. As more and more information is shared globally, the emarketer must consider local laws regarding privacy and build adaptable infrastructures to support regional differences in laws and customs.

4- Test and experiment in emerging media. (Today experiments are founding in blogging, pod casting and social networking, video on demand and more mobile content. Each new media is accompanied by new risks. The goal is to maximize learning while minimizing investment and risk.)

Experimentation provides a great source of opportunity and peril. The emarketer must not only worry about ROI and risk, but also develop a strategy that adapts itself to two new developments such as a multilingual domain structure and a content management system that can easily translate content into multiple language to answer the growing world population not willing to use the roman character set to communicate with one another. For example, the Chinese language is the second most popular on the web with 15.7 percent of total online population.

As of June 20, 2007, the top ten languages on the web are:
(percent of total Internet users)

1- English 31.2
2- Chinese 15.7
3- Spanish 8.7
4- Japanese 7.4
5- French 5.0
6- German 5.0
7- Portuguese 4.0
8- Korean 2.9
9- Italian 2.7
10 Arabic 2.5

Luckily there are some professional web content management systems that have integrated language translation systems, such as SDl Tridion. This particular system is particularly suited for managing content that targets the growing non-English population.

Source:

1-Joe Plummer, Steve Rappaport, Taddy Hall, Robert Barocci, The Online Advertising Playbook, 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-05105-4

2- What's the Hindi Word for Dot-Com?, By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS, October 11, 2007; Page B1, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119204776102055002.html

Job Agents - A Review

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:06:00 +0000

Today a job seeker has many options for finding work using job boards and more specifically job agents. Based on the parameters below, certain websites offer better results than others.

job alert parameters

frequency: daily
keywords: web, internet, online, ecom, ebus, content, community, product, project, program
job title:manager
exclude these keywords: engineer, sales, developer, programmer, qa, assistant, data, architect, account, analyst
location: within 30 miles of zip code

Unfortunately, not all job agents allow the user to exclude keywords from their search parameters. Therefore, the final results of my research will be skewed in favor of those agents that provide this feature.

Yahoo HotJobs: This agent often return no hits based on job title but return a few hits based on related jobs I might be interested in. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. Accuracy is 2 out of 3 hits.

DICE: Provides approximately 34 hits based on job title and about the same amount of hits based on related jobs that I might be interested in. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. Accuracy is 14 out of 34 hits with an additional 20 of of 50 related jobs.

Monster: Provides a dozen hits based on job title. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. Accuracy is 4 out of 10 hits.

Indeed: Provides the first 20 matches and user must visit to see the full list. It aggregates the results from multiple job boards and also provides a date stamp, a brief description of each job, as well as the job title, company and location. Accuracy is 18 out of 20 hits.

CareerBuilder: Provides approximately 25 hits based on job title and about the same amount of hits based on related jobs that I might be interested in. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. Accuracy is 4 out of 25 hits based on job title and an additional 30 of of 44 for related job hits.

JustTechJobs: Provides only 3 to 5 jobs based on job title. Also provides a date stamp and the salary or pay rate with brief description of each position. Accuracy is 1 out of 5 hits.

SimplyHired: Provides ten hits based on job title. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. Accuracy is 3 out of 10 hits.

JobFox: Provides about 10 hits based on job title with very few relevant positions.

The Ladders: Provides 10 hits based on job title. Jobs are classified by job title, company and location. The salary is also displayed in the results when available. Accuracy is 9 out of 10 hits.

Venture Loop: This job agent specializes in positions located at small start-ups. I did not receive any hits from this site.

Based on my findings, the top three job agents are 1- DICE, 2-Career Builder and 3- Indeed. However, some job boards offer the user more full-time permanent positions and others offer more contract postings. For example, CareerBuilder and Monster offer more full-time permanent positions and DICE focuses on contract jobs. This research was skewed towards an IT management position and other job types will probably generate very different results.

Web Content Management Systems - A Review

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:37:00 +0000

Forrester Research recently published a report on content management systems used for external web sites. Here is a summary of their findings in graphic form. The top three products based on features and market presence are Interwoven, Oracle and Red Dot Solutions. Based on my experience the EMC products once cutting edge have lost their market leadership. There is room for consolidation, with Vignette, FatWire and SDL Tridion the most likely candidates.

The Tridion product offers integration with multiple language translation capability and runs on the Windows platform. FatWire has an very intuitive user-interface and also provides multi-site management and delivery capabilities. It also has strong personalization capabilities, but lacks multi-stage deployment capability offered by Interwoven. FatWire is built on the J2EE platform. Interwoven offers a product that caters to organizations with a complex set of metadata requirements. It also allows non-technical personnel to have greater participation in the creative process. Vignette is J2EE based and provides a lot of similar functionality of its rivals, but requires more resources for implementation and management. It is best suited for large scale complex web sites. The Percussion product does not differentiates itself with its rivals and is built on the J2EE platform. Its strongest feature set is in personalization. Red Dot has an intuitive interface for users and developers alike. Consequently, it is easier to use than most rivals, but it lacks multi-stage delivery capability and integration with wikis and blogs.
Oracle provides a broad spectrum of capabilities, but will require further integration with Seibel to provide features for the targeted interactive customer, area that Interwoven provides with ease. EMC has lost customers due to its poor support structure. The remaining contenders from Microsoft, IBM ad Day Software are working hard to catch up to their rivals and deserve a closer look in 12 months.

For more details on the capabilities of each WCM product, please refer to the Forrester report.

Source: The Forrester Wave, Web Content Management for External Sites, Q3 2007.

Blogosphere

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Wired Magazine offered a supplement to Wired this month with its Geekipedia (Image above is not available from online Geekipedia).The Illustrator Bryan Christie offers readers with a wonderful image of the Blogosphere. Based on this diagram, the most important blogs on the Internet are 1- Boing Boing, 2- Daily Kos, 3- Instapundit, 4- Gizmodo and 5- Perez Hilton. Each of these large planets has generated many smaller satellites, such as Endgaget, Drudge Report, Slashdot, Gigaom, Kottke.org, Michelle Malkin, Techcrunch and Wonkette.

If we ignore for a moment the content on these sites and focus on the layout and navigation, the best blogs based on these two metrics are: 1-Huffington Post, 2- Gizmodo, 3- Daily Kos, 4- Techcrunch, 5- Slashdot, 6- Engadget, 7- Gigaom 8- Drudge Report

Source: Wired Geekipedia, http://www.wired.com/culture/geekipedia

Facebook Selling Out or Selling In

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:16:00 +0000

In the latest issue of Wired Magazine, the evolution of Facebook is presented along with Mark Zukerberg's long term strategy and reaction to billion dollar offers.

Zukerberg's Vision:

Zuckerberg wanted the site to be more than a campus thing. He wanted to supplant and surpass MySpace and make Facebook the largest social network on the planet. He wanted it to become the next Google, a site that people of all ages would find useful in their daily lives. But that hadn't happened. Facebook had cornered the market for college students, but its 11-month-old effort to capture the attention of high school students — and take users away from MySpace — was going nowhere. Indeed, Facebook's growth was leveling off, inching its way toward 8 million members, while MySpace's continued to surge, with 100 million members in August of 2006 [...] Zuckerberg designed Facebook to re-create online what he calls the "social graph" — the web of people's real-world relationships. That was different than most social networks. Sites like MySpace practically encouraged users to create new identities and meet and link to people they barely knew. Zuckerberg didn't care about using the Internet to make new friends. "People already have their friends, acquaintances, and business connections," he explains. "So rather than building new connections, what we are doing is just mapping them out." [..] Facebook promises to become an online identity for recruiters, bosses, and colleagues looking to hire and promote; a souped-up business card for job hunters; and a dossier of people's likes and dislikes that vendors can use to provide targeted products and services. Salesforce's Benioff even imagines Facebook pages serving as universal health records.1

Selling Out...Almost!

After several generous offers from various potential suitors, Yahoo came calling with a bid of $1 billion in cash. The pressure became too much for Facebook's founder and he relented in July, verbally agreeing to become acquired. Soon after, Yahoo's CEO at the time, Terry Semel, renegotiated the deal and offered $200 million less. Zuckerberg, smartly walked away from the deal and decided that Facebook would be worth more on its own despite Semel attempt to save the deal by fixing the price upwards again at one billion. As a result of these dealings, Zuckerberg became famous as the cocky youngster who turned down $1 billion deal. By the end of August Facebook has 36 million registered users and venture capitalists say that a Facebook IPO could fetch more than $5 billion, five times more than what Yahoo had offered Facebook.

Facebook's Long Term Strategy - for Selling-In:

1- Enhance communication between users: News Feed, a feature that automatically broadcasts users' most important activities, (i.e. adding a friend, posting a photo, or installing a widget) to everyone in their networks.
Users can opt out of this service.

2- Open Facebook to everyone: Facebook is now open to eveyone, whereas in the past, Zuckerberg had tightly controlled Facebook's user base, opening membership gradually to universities, high schools, and a few businesses.

3- Grow development community for Facebook platform: Facebook has become an open platform for independent developers. News Feed instantly and automatically notifies friends whenever someone downloads a new application on their pages while creating a new model for disseminating software. Consequently, even the most modest developer is given the opportunity to become successful through Facebook's P2P recommendations. As a result, users no longer need to search for apps that they may want; instead, the applications find them automatically. By allowing developers to collect revenues for their software or advertising, Facebook provides a system for these programmers to generate income for themselves. Now venture capitalists are lining up to fund developers of Facebook applications.

True Business Value of Facebook:

For all the excitement, one sobering fact remains: Facebook has yet to prove itself as a business. The site's nearly 40 million active users generate more than a billion page-views a day, but ad click-through rates are low. An estimated half of its $150 million in revenue comes from an advertising deal with Microsoft. Independent developers are drawn to Facebook because Zuckerberg lets them keep any advertising revenue their applications generate; if Facebook can't prove itself as an advertising venue, the deluge of new applications will slow to a trickle.1

Another roadblock that the Wall Street Journal presented in the article of October 3rd, is the fear advertisers have with unpredictable content. Since users generate most of the content, the type of content presented can sometimes be inappropriate for advertisers to appear next to, such as unwanted images or pornography. All social networks face this obstacle and how they best control content without offending users is key to increasing advertising revenue.2

Sources:

1- How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web's Hottest PlatformBy Fred Vogelstein 09.06.07 2:00 AM, Contributing editor Fred Vogelstein (fred_vogelstein@wired.com) wrote about blogger Michael Arrington in issue 15.07. See http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/09/ff_facebook?currentPage=all

2- Google Cuts Ads From Orkut Service
By ANTONIO REGALADO, October 3, 2007; Page B3, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119136986121247087.html

The Perils of Developing Software for Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:15:00 +0000

Michael Alington from TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/ ) recently discussed the perils of developing software for Facebook.

So Facebook will finally allow users to group friends and control information flow based on friend type. For guys like Robert Scoble, who have 5,000 friends (the limit), this may be a way to finally sort through the real friends from the fans. It’s a much needed feature that people have been requesting for a long time.
It also shows the steady maturity of Facebook from a college network to a full on world network, where friendships, business contacts, family and other types of relationships need to be more fully described. And this is also as much about privacy as it is about organization - users will be able to limit the information that certain friend groups receive.
A few existing applications are going to be affected, like Slide’s Top Friends application, the most popular third party app on Facebook. Lots of other applications will likely need to be tweaked to work properly when this launches (so many of them access the friends list). And this will shut down at least one “startup” we’ve been tracking that was creating this exact feature as an application. At least they can quit now and stop putting good time and money after bad.
Building Facebook applications is a big dice roll. If it’s too popular or too obvious of an idea (even if it hasn’t been done yet), Facebook is just as likely to compete with you as pay a few bucks and just buy you (they are probably more likely to compete with you than buy you, actually).
Some developers will probably wonder if getting a cash grant from Facebook’s just-announced fbFund will lessen the likelihood of direct competition from the company. Only time will tell.

I think that Facebook is not alone in shepherding developers to building a community and more customers and then deciding to play opportunist when a very profitable idea is hatched. Companies such as Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle also acquired or competed against add-on software when the profit motive was too strong to ignore. The difference with Facebook is the speed at which deterministic outcomes are reached. Basically, the cloud where software resides has radically shortened the development cycle, reducing the risk timeline associated with bringing new products to market. It reminds me of adult crocodiles eating their young to preserve the herd over the long term. If there are too many crocodiles during times of struggles then more crocodiles will die overall.

Over the years, Microsoft was accused of unfair competition by bundling software and using its software platform to prevent competitors from offering more innovative products. In the case of Facebook, the same accusations could occur in the near future. Is Facebook allowing sufficient competition? Currently, the speed at which new apps appear tends to cloud our judgement of what could potentially be a replay of Microsoft's past digressions.

Maybe Facebook could devise a sort of credit system where it acquires a lofty rival, but a portion of the profits would go back into a trust fund with a mission of encouraging the development of new applications. As a result, Facebook would be increasing its profits, but also feeding the greater good, namely innovation through new applications from newly minted start ups.

Scaling the Social Web

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 04:09:00 +0000

In the October 8th issue of BusinessWeek, readers are get a very insightful article on the status of the social networking scene and many of the key players.

In some cases, such as with Yahoo's (YHOO) long-rumored "Y! Mash," which began invitation-only testing this month, and Playboy Enterprises' (PLA) newly launched PlayboyU, companies have created full-fledged MySpace competitors. (BusinessWeek, 3/14/07).

I think that mashups are the indicators of a new web development cycle. In the mid-nineties, the web was a new thing and web developers had a sort of mystique. HTML was only beginning to take hold and developers held the knowledge and were paid handsomely. As Wysiwyg editors became popular, web developers lost their mystique and everyone began creating their own web pages in communities such as geocities. Today web developers with knowledge of Ajax and Dom scripting hold the knowledge and mashups will once again take away their mystique. Eventually, everyone will use mashups and the web will become as easy as changing channels on the TV remote. Those that hold the knowledge will move on to other media distribution channels, such as automobiles, commercial aircraft and other modes of transportation. Soon communication between electronic devices will also become the new cool thing to master. Robotics, nano technology will become the new frontiers of social communication. The web environment will be left to grade school children to play with and slow adult adapters.

User attention has always been a key metric in targeting ad dollars and generating revenue for web sites. In the early day we were concerned with page hits, then page views, then click throughs. Based on Web measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings, the key metrics are how long a user stays on a site and how many unique visitors there are. Based on these metrics, Facebook and MySpace are among the web most popular sites and most valuable to advertisers. This is another reason why Rupert Murdoch paid millions for MySpace and Facebook is generating a lot of buzz on WallStreet with a potential valuation of a billion dollars.

MySpace, the largest social network with 70 million-plus U.S. visitors, and Facebook, MySpace's closest U.S. competitor with 30-million-plus U.S. users, are among the top destinations, judging by time spent per user. On average, members spend more than three hours a month on those sites, according to Web measurement service comScore (SCOR). Not only that, but the same users keep coming back, to check in on pals, make new contacts, and tweak profiles to reflect changing interests, activities—even moods.

There are a lot of tools on the web, such as Ning, Blogcatalog, BlogLines, BlogPatrol, MyBlogLog, Stumble upon, Technorati, Digg and Del.icio.us that assist bloggers and web publishers to improve their web/blog metrics.

Companies looking to foster user engagement and loyalty are turning to resources like Ning, a startup that helps Web publishers create social networks around their content. More than 100,000 sites have used Ning's tools to add their own networks. [...] This month, news and media-sharing site Digg unleashed a host of social networking features aimed at giving more users a compelling reason to spend time on Digg's site. [...] "This enhancement of our social networking features will bring users in," says Digg CEO Jay Adelson. "Then there is another side effect, that they go and get their friends and pull them into it." [...] Similarly, eBay is developing a section of its site, called "neighborhoods," that functions like a social network around shopping. Neighborhoods will enable users to find others with similar interests, say in coin collecting or Boston Red Sox memorabilia, and form communities around those hobbies (BusinessWeek, 9/19/07).

Traditional online publications, such as USA Today and Dow Jones are also following suit with similar offerings. However, all this interest in social networking is causing social network fatigue. I have lived through this situation myself, as I have sent invitations to my friends to join yet another social network many have ignored these request and decided to focus their attention on their existing networks. I think that social sites that offer easy portability of information will be the winners. Currently, Bebo, and Plaxo Pulse allow users to synchronize their information with Linked-In and other popular sites.

In conclusion, with the exponential growth of the web overall, there will be greater segmentation and consolidation over time following a similar pattern that occurred with television. Initially there were only three networks, and now there are hundred of channels to watch. Viewers have become segmented into smaller and smaller increments. The same will occur with social networks over the web. MySpace and Facebook will become too big for the average user to feel connected on a human level. Over time the need for privacy will show its dangerous underpinnings. False identities and spam a nuisance on MYSpace will make these large behemoths easy targets for abuse. As a result, instead of large homogeneous masses of people, users will become much more independent than before and create their own private spaces with mashups 2.0 and other interactive technologies yet to be created. This month, I attended a PDMA conference on Web 2.0 at Yahoo in Mountain View, CA. One of the guest speakers was from Symantec, he said that Ajax is vulnerable to hackers and that several corporate entities are hesitant to use ajax for commercial purposes. In short, web 2.0 is great for personal communication between friends, but large financial institutions and holders of large databases should be cautious to jump in.

Source: Businessweek, Move over, MySpace. Online players from media giant Viacom to auctioneer eBay are adding networking features for their users, by Catherine Holahan, October 8th, 2007
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2007/tc20070920_608784.htm

Most Advanced Starter Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:47:00 +0000

Here is a short list of some of the most advanced personalized start pages, namely iGoogle, MyYahoo, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Webwag, Windows Live and Yourminis.

iGoogle offers Popular items, Tools, News, Fun & Games. Its most useful features not offered by Yahoo are world clocks and a to-do list. The variety and depth of content is less, but changing the layout is easier since the user does not have to click to a separate page to move things around.

Unlike iGoolge, My Yahoo allows the user to add a richer array of content,
Entertainment , Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, Money, News, Science, Sports, Technology, Travel, Editor's Picks, Top Blogs & Podcasts ,International and AT&T Yahoo services, the ability to change the layout or colors of web elements. In addition, you can include RSS feeds. Finally MyYahoo allows users to add Editors' Picks Cool sources chosen by our editors, from aerospace to zebras. And what is currently the most popular on the web, see Popular From the Web

NetVibes has gone one step ahead of MyYahoo and iGoogle in that it has integrated itself with the most popular web sites around, such as Facebook, Flickr and Technorati. Setting up tabs is even simpler than iGoogle, because they are automatically built based on a set of categories the user picks from. A user can also read their email simply by signing in. Unfortunately, for users with multiple accounts, they have to do some tweaking to include them all. In addition, NetVibes does not rely on a single search engine, but incorporates a multitude of basic search engines and also search boxes for photos and blogs. NetVibes also provides a wealth of widgets and API that the user can add to their home page. This certainly puts them on the cutting edge of providing users with easy to use web 2.0 technology. NetVibes recently announced a new feature, namely Personal Universes.

Personal Universes provide users with two pages, one public and one private, that they can fully customize with their own content as you would expect. The public page can be passed along to your friends to read.
Soon, every single Netvibes user will be able to create a personal Netvibes Universe, that is, a Netvibes page that you can build using the content and widgets that you want — and make it available to the world at large.
Netvibes users will soon have two pages for every account: a private page, where you subscribe to all the content for your personal, everyday use, and a public page, where you can allow others to access your favorite content — everything that you love on the web.
However, I wanted to draw attention to the branded Netvibes Universe pages. Netvibes will be creating public pages for hundreds of “your favorite musicians and media outlets”. While the “your favorite musicians” part gives me haunting images in my mind that Netvibes will go the way of MySpace, I am absolutely loving the fact that Universe pages will be created for large content publishers like Time, Forbes, etcetera.

Like all start pages reviewed here, they need provide a default page that makes it easier for multiple users of a desktop computer to easily view their own content through a higher level tab, allowing each user to chose their own tab with personalized content. Nevertheless, the site designers have definitely done their homework in providing a highly intuitive, slick interface.

Pageflakes has a lot of the same functionality as NetVibes, but the key differences are its close integration with podcasting. I also has multiple language capability. However, few languages are represented. Some key languages that are missing are Farsi (apparently has a large blogging population), French, Spanish, Italian and German. In regards to layout, this site stands out allowing four columns instead of the standard three. I could not add my gmail account, yet it was a breeze to do so with NetVibes. PageFlakes does incorporate some social neworking aspects, namely the ability to add a public profile and inviting friends or groups to the site and share content. Pageflakes also allows the user to create whatever they like with and Anything Flake. This has wonderful potential and should be promoted as an area of distinction from other starter sites.

Webwag has one useful distinction from the other starter pages; the user can easily add multiple email accounts and separate them using tabs. This starter site strongly promotes the use of widgets and has a great inventory of them. Unfortunately, the web TV interface is intuitive, but I was never able to get any channel to appear. This starter page also has mobile capability that is very intuitive and easy to format. The user simply clicks on the x icon to remove content and easily move content around by dragging the mouse. I think if NetVibes merged with Webwag, you would have a perfect combination of cutting edge technology and easy of use. Unfortunately, NetVibes and Webwag are two hungry upstarts that need greater market penetration to reach the sizable market share of Google and Yahoo. Despite their current lack of features, Google and Yahoo have the deep pockets to eventually buyout their smaller innovative rivals (NetVibes & Webwag, with Pageflakes of lesser value) or add more resources to develop similar technologies in-house. I suspect that acquisition is still the preferred choice for both these two behemoths.

Microsoft backed WindowsLive is certainly a respectable player in this space, albeit a bit boring and lacking panache. When registering, WindowsLive asks for an awful lot of personal information and gives you the uneasy feeling of Big Brother watching over you. It feels more like a desktop application than a personalized starter page. I am sure that there are very few people in their twenties and thirties using this site, because it has a strong corporate feel to it. In addition, it is more a self description tool than social networking site. I does not fit into the starter category either. It is basically acceptable technology without a clear vision of the future or reason for being. Microsoft needs to hire more young hip professionals to work on WindowsLive if it wants to grow web market share. I think that they should re-brand WindowsLive for large corporate intranets where employees can share their bios and project related information, etc...

Yourminis is a wonderful sight to see with lots of technology and is visually stunning. I love the fact that the user can resize and easily move around content. Instead of placing content within a set of columns, all the boxes can be placed anywhere on the page. This starter page lack many features of its competitors, such as ipod integration and mobile connectivity. In summary, It has the absolute best GUI, but requires greater depth of functionality.

In conclusion, the three starter pages that standout are NetVibes for its usefulness, WebWag for its cutting edge technology and Yourminis for its stellar interface and Pageflakes is a distant fourth. Hopefully, if one of the three larger players decides to acquire one of these startups, that they will preserve their independence in terms of software development and web design.

Source: Paul Stamatiou, TechNew reviews Guides, See http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/04/17/netvibes-announces-netvibes-universe/

MySpace vs. Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Innovation Specialist) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:53:00 +0000

This is a republished article from Ben Gold as an introduction to the types of comparisons I will be doing for all categories of social networking sites.

Facebook Hammers MySpace on Almost All Key FeaturesJune 10, 2007 — 07:57 AM PDT — by Ben Gold — Share This

When you think of social networks you probably think of MySpace. But recently, Facebook has been gaining popularity - since it opened up beyond college users, it has enjoyed a flood of new users, boosted further by the launch of Facebook apps. It’s time these two social networks fought it out.

Round 1: Design Layout: Facebook wins here because the profiles are well set up and neatly organized and it’s easy to navigate through the profiles to find the info you want. It mainly beats MySpace because most profiles are so ugly and inconsistent.Overall Site Design: Facebook is obviously the winner here. MySpace looks so unprofessionally done when compared to Facebook, mainly again because of it’s inconsistent design. This time its MySpace themselves, not the users, who make the site difficult to use.Profiles: This is a tie because MySpace has a lot of customization, but Facebook’s default looks better than MySpace’s and it’s very neat and well organized.Customization: MySpace and Facebook tie here. While Facebook lets you add and remove applications, MySpace lets you do whatever you want with the pages, if you know a little HTML that is. Unfortunately thats the reason MySpace’s design is so unruly for the most part.Site Organization: Both site are pretty well organized. However, Facebook wins because of its clean layout that allows you to find everything right away, and it’s start page is a link to everything you need in neat and tidy boxes.Round Winner: Facebook!

Round 2: Media Pictures: Facebook wins here because of its well-organized picture section and the ability to tag people and have people tag themselves. Also, with the apps recently released you can now add Fiickr and other photosharing site streams to your profile. However, Fox now owns Photobucket, which provides photo hosting to MySpace users.Videos: This one is a tie because both MySpace and Facebook let you upload video and they both have their own flash player. MySpace will let you embed video into your profile but you can post videos to Facebook as well.Music: MySpace wins, but only just - we all know that every band ever has a MySpace account . However, with the new Facebook apps you can add your data from music tracking sites like Last.fm and iLike: in fact the top app on Facebook at the moment is the iLike app.Sharing: Now, Facebook’s advantage here is only a slight one. Facebook allows you to share media links very easily and i fact automatically though the Facebook feed, something that I’m sure many MySpace users would like to be able to do (MySpace News isn’t really suited to this). You can, however, grab embedded media like videos from other profiles to repost on MySpace.Round Winner: Facebook!

Round 3: Community Relationships: A big difference on Facebook is that the friends you add are usually your real friends. It’s not a contest like on MySpace where everyone is trying to have the most friends. On Facebook it about talking to the people you know and sharing things with them.Groups: Both sites have groups, but Facebook makes them more prominent. They are a bigger part of the service and there are a lot of people using them for clever uses like planning meet up and giving info to fans.Keeping Track of What’s New: Facebook kills MySpace here. On MySpace the only way to know if a friend added something new to their profile is to go look at it, and the only way to know if you made a new friends is to look for the person. Facebook has two feeds. One tells you what’s new with you, like who accepted your friend request or your posted items, etc. The other feed tells you what’s up with all your friends, like who they added and what groups they joined.Messaging: This is a tie. They both have a place where people can leave messages on your profile and they both have a basic mail system.Co-Workers: Facebook can be used as a tool to talk to the people you work with also and see what’s new with them. You can even join a network for your company. MySpace was really designed for teens so it doesn’t really have these types of features.Round Winner: Facebook!
Round 4: Usefulness Finding Old Friends: One of the major reasons for joining a social network is to reconnect with old friends or classmates. Facebook makes this really easy because the whole site is organized by schools and now by locations too. So unless you forgot your friends name you will probably be able to find them if they have an account. MySpace lets you search for school friends, but doesn’t put the emphasis on real friendships.Communication:Facebook is a good way to contact people if you don’t know their contact info. Someone is more likely to notice a Facebook message than a MySpace Message due to the fact that there is less Facebook spam.Promoting Yourself: MySpace wins here. Thousands of bands use MySpace to promote their music and their fans use it to show their support. This isn’t nearly as evident on Facebook, although groups allow companies to promote themselves.Getting Laid: If you are looking for action, then you’ll probably want to go with MySpace - see our survey for the reasons behind this. Round Winner: MySpace!

Round 5: Ease of Use Adding Friends: MySpace wins here because adding new friends and accepting friends requests is usually a one click process. The major advance here over Facebook is the ability to add large amounts of friends at once which for some reason was never added to Facebook.Search: The winner here is a little bit surprising when you consider Google does the search for the loser. Facebook’s search beats MySpace by a mile. Even though the search engine giant Google is providing MySpace’s search, its results are not nearly as useful as Facebook’s. The big issue here is that MySpace’s search looks in the whole profile, even when just looking for a person, Facebook’s is smart enough to know if you are looking for a user or a movie in someone’s interests.Navigation: Both MySpace and Facebook have pretty decent navigation, but Facebook beats MySpace when it comes to getting to specific people’s profiles due to its superior search.Privacy: Facebook makes it really easy to hide info from certain people and to not show information that you want to be kept private. So, if you only want you close friends to see you contact info, it only takes a second. MySpace has privacy too, but it’s far less granular.Round Winner: Facebook!

An the Winner is… Facebook!! MySpace was a great social network for a while, but now there are too many spammers and the developers have stopped innovating. Facebook is just starting to become popular (well, popular with those who were not on it when it was limited to schools). So, you might want to check it out, while it’s still cool.