Archive for: October, 2008
October 29th, 2008
LinkedIn apps arrive - another platform play
LinkedIn has finally switched on its own OpenSocial-powered apps platform, which, on the surface at least, borrows quite a bit from Facebook. Unlike Facebook, however, apps are being heavily vetted by LinkedIn to ensure that they remain focused on helping members enhance their professional profile, as well as collaborate on work projects and become productive.
As co-founder Reid Hoffman explains: “This initial roll out features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.”
Initial launch partners include Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress. Read the rest of this entry »
October 27th, 2008
Social Web news: Twitter terrorism, YouTube ads, Social Networking on TV
A few interesting links from today on news relating to the Social Web…
Twitter could be a tool for terrorists. From Wired.com: “Could Twitter become terrorists’ newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.” (Wired)
YouTube hoping to attract advertisers through long form studio content. YouTube has begun running full-length episodes of TV shows, starting with a test of three CBS-owned shows: Star Trek, MacGyver and Beverly Hills, 90210. The move is being seen in part as a response to the success of Hulu, which as proved particularly attractive to advertisers. One analyst tells USA Today: “If you’re an advertiser, where will you put your money? In front of content you’re not sure about, or behind a series like 30 Rock, a known brand?” (USA Today)
Social networking through your television. Microsoft likes to boast that it has the biggest social network on television via its XBox Live service. Now others are hoping to emulate that success by bringing the ‘community features’ of the Web into the living room. (WSJ)
MySpace sued. A woman was ‘consumed with anger’ after MySpace took down her profile on the social networking site and has decided to sue. However, there’s more to the story: her profile page was set up specifically to verify official celebrity MySpace pages, who upon verification could display the plaintiff’s badge on their page. (Tech Dirt)
October 20th, 2008
Celebs on Twitter: Britney, Lance Armstrong, Stephen Fry and more
The tech blogosphere went crazy over the weekend with news that Britney Spears had opened a Twitter account. Or more accurately, someone from Britney’s PR team has begun Twittering on her behalf. That may still be a big deal in itself as it suggests that the micro-blogging service could go mainstream yet.
It also got me asking which other celebs actively use Twitter, either directly or through their PR agent? Putting that question out as a Tweet (a trick borrowed from the Marshall Kirkpatrick school of blogging), I got the following tip offs:
@lancearmstrong - Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner and “full time cancer fighter” (his words)
@stephenfry - Stephen Fry, Comedian, TV presenter and all round geek. Did you know that Fry is an avid Mac fan and was reportedly the second person in the UK to own an original 1984 Macintosh.
@johncleese - John Cleese, best known for his Monty Python antics :-) “Yes, I am still indeed alive, contrary to rumour, and I am making video podcasts”, reads his Twitter bio.
@bobbyllew - Bobby Llewellyn, producer, writer TV presenter, one time actor best known for role of Kryten in BBC comedy sci-fi series Red Dwarf!
Obviously these only scratch the surface. Know of any others? Please leave a comment.
October 17th, 2008
Social Web news: Facebook, MySpace, Google, StockTwits
A few interesting links from today on news relating to the Social Web…
Facebook considering MySpace Music response. The ’social utility’ is talking to a number of streaming music services about an outsourcing deal that would more deeply integrate their music experience into Facebook, sources tell the New York Post. (New York Post)
MySpace on target to do $1B in sales this year. Sources tell VentureBeat that the News Corp-owned social networking site is set to defy the wider economy and bring in revenue this year of $1B or “within a hair’s breadth of that number.” (VentureBeat)
Google exposing user profile to search engines. Google has been letting people create profiles for a while now , but until recently, public profiles remained hidden from search engines. (ZDNet: Googling Google)
‘StockTwits’, a Twitter tracker for stocks. Another Twitter mashup, StockTwits asks “What are you trading?” and tracks messages on Twitter that carry mention of a stock by encouraging users to preface a company ticker with a $ sign e.g. $GOOG. (AVC)
October 17th, 2008
Yahoo wants to be your social web 'control panel' too
Yahoo has begun rolling out a new profile page for its users as part of its ‘Yahoo! Open Strategy’, a major project to rewire the company’s web properties to make them more “open and social“.
Described by Jim Stoneham, the company’s Vice President Communities, as a “centralized control panel”, the new Yahoo! Profiles will let users manage their “identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo! — and eventually the entire Web”. While a unified user profile and friends list across all of Yahoo’s offerings - Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, Mail etc. - seems like a no-brainer, Stoneham’s reference to a social ‘control panel’ for the entire Web is far more ambitious and sounds very similar to the thinking behind recent products from Facebook (Facebook Connect), MySpace (Data Availabiliy), Microsoft (Mesh) and Google (Friend Connect).
See also: Powering Facebook’s proverbial brain: your Identity, Social Graph, and Lifestream data
Although each company’s implementation differs, the broad concept (often disingenuously dressed up as data-portability) is the same. First, offer users a single place to maintain their profile and manage their social graph (friends list) that can then be synced with third-party sites through a publicly available and secure API. That way any update to your central profile or a new connection added, ripples through to those other social destinations that are linked, and at the same time conveniently locks users into the original source of that data. Secondly, enable certain data to flow back in - any social activity elsewhere on the Web - so that the central profile also acts as a lifestream or social web aggregator. The end result is a kind of ’social control panel’ for the web OS, a term that Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft and Google don’t actually use, but which Yahoo is actively embracing.
October 14th, 2008
Top Digger helps launch Tip'd, a Digg clone for financial news
Tip’d, which launched today, describes itself as “a place for investors… to meet, share, discuss, comment, and vote on what’s happening on both Wall Street and Main Street.” Essentially, it’s another Digg clone targeting a particular vertical. In this case, financial news.
Content categories include Commodities, Economy, Personal Finance, Stocks, and Tech. Instead of Digging a story submission, users vote by hitting the “Tip It” button. Just like Digg, only those stories that receive enough votes feature on the site’s homepage.
However, what makes Tip’d standout from similar Digg clones is the person appointed to help cultivate and manage the community — Muhamad Saleem. For it’s the community in which any social news site lives or dies by. Over the last few years Saleem has lived and breathed social media. He’s a top user on Digg itself, as well as being very active on other social media sites such as StumbleUpon and Reddit. He’s also a paid user of AOL’s own Digg clone Propeller, as well as a prolific blogger in his own right.
It’s also hard not to think that in a rather perverse way, the timing of the site’s launch couldn’t be better as the financial crisis means that all eyes are on the economy. Never before has Main Street paid so much attention to Wall Street. Read the rest of this entry »
October 13th, 2008
Why MySpace's MyAds won't be the next Google AdWords
When it comes to online advertising everybody wants to be the next Google, and News Corp-owned MySpace is no exception. Today the company rolled out its latest advertising platform called MyAds, designed to service “individuals and small businesses” rather than the big name brands that the social networking site’s existing ad offerings cater for.
The new self-serve system enables anybody - “from local retailers to musicians and politicians” - to create customized Cost-Per-Click (CPC) banner ads that target specific demographics and interest groups using MySpace’s HyperTargeting technology. A technology that was previously only available to the company’s largest blue-chip brand advertisers.
Placing an ad comprises of “a few easy steps”:
- Sign-up on advertise.myspace.com
- Create a display ad using the MyAds Builder Tool
- Select a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000
- HyperTarget to customers (based on self-expressed interests available on MySpace profiles, along with age, sex and geographical location)
- Measure ad performance with MyAds analytics reporting
The end result, says MySpace, is to democratize online advertising. Or to borrow another phrase from the Web 2.0 bible, the company is attempting to monetize the Long Tail.
If that all sounds very Google-esque to you, you’re not alone. Read the rest of this entry »
October 9th, 2008
Kevin Rose: advertising, can you Digg it?
Social news site, Digg, faces two big challenges going forward. How to expand its user-base (and therefore content) beyond its geeky roots, and in turn, how to increase ad revenue.
Speaking at the Future of Web Apps conference in London earlier today, Digg co-founder Kevin Rose spent considerable time addressing the first issue — how “to expand beyond the geek set and get some real-world relevance”, reports CNet’s Caroline McCarthy — but also revealed that the site is contemplating a new potential revenue stream: “Diggable ads”. Read the rest of this entry »
October 6th, 2008
LinkedIn and Xing set to benefit from downturn?
LinkedIn, the social network for “professionals”, could actually be benefiting from the downturn, says the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. That’s because the site’s value proposition really kicks in for those that have or fear that they might be about to lose their job.
The site provides a simple way to publish a resume online along with references, as well as sophisticated tools for networking in order to make new introductions, check out potential new employers, and get spotted by recruiters.
Referring to LinkedIn’s job hunting utility, Cellan-Jones once jokingly called it a “Facebook for losers”. But in this time of economic uncertainly, LinkedIn, and other sites like it, could turn out to be the real winners. Read the rest of this entry »
October 2nd, 2008
Obama launches iPhone app; US election good for Twitter
During each presidential election the techniques and practices employed to organize and engage voters becomes ever more sophisticated, with new technology increasingly playing its part. Enter Apple’s iPhone, which the Obama campaign is hoping to turn into a political recruiting tool like none seen before.
The most notable feature of the new “Obama for America” iPhone application, available as a free download via the iTunes store, is the ability to tap your iPhone’s existing address book in order to prioritize your contacts “by key battleground states”, presumably so that you’ll call them up to persuade them to vote Obama. It’s key battlegrounds - states that could go either way - that Obama will need to win if he’s to become president. Read the rest of this entry »
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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