Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?

Grok Headline matches for Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?

Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?

Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares? 05/22/2004 05:16 PM
I'm speaking at the Churchill Club on blogging and social networking, June 3rd in Palo Alto. Should be lively event, moderated by Dan Gillmor and Tony Perkins. Other panelists include Jason Calacanis, Charlene Li, Mark Pincus and Ben Smith. These...

Churchill Club Blogging Panel: Date
Change

Churchill Club Blogging Panel: Date
Change 06/02/2004 10:19 AM

The Churchill Club panel discussion on blogging and social networking, which I'm co-moderating, has been moved to June 17. It was originally scheduled for tomorrow. Details here.

eTwine.com Launches Fun & Interactive
Free Blogging Tool and Becomes First
Social Site to Integrate Blogs with
Social Networking & Online Dating
Features

eTwine.com Launches Fun & Interactive
Free Blogging Tool and Becomes First
Social Site to Integrate Blogs with
Social Networking & Online Dating
Features 08/13/2004 12:47 PM
eTwine.com integrates new interactive blogging tool with its existing social networking, online dating, and event planning features. Members can share their blogs entries with friends and other members, as well as rate other blogs, add comments to any entry, and sort entries by most popular and highest rated in this unique feature. [PRWEB Aug 13, 2004]

Online Dating Innovator eTwine.com
Officially Launches its Wildly Popular
Social Networking and Online Dating
Website with Several Thousand Members
Following Completion of Beta Testing
Phase. Unique website integrates online
dating with social networking, event
planning, and bl0gs.

Online Dating Innovator eTwine.com
Officially Launches its Wildly Popular
Social Networking and Online Dating
Website with Several Thousand Members
Following Completion of Beta Testing
Phase. Unique website integrates online
dating with social networking, event
planning, and bl0gs. 09/15/2004 02:13 AM
eTwine.com has officially launched its unique online dating and social networking website after several months of beta testing. eTwine integrates online dating with social networking, event planning & management and an interactive blogging tool to create the most complete social site on the net. [PRWEB Sep 15, 2004]

Yahoo 360! Gets into Blogging and Social
Networking

Yahoo 360! Gets into Blogging and Social
Networking 03/17/2005 02:33 AM
"Yahoo Inc. is preparing to introduce a new service that blends several of its Web site's popular features with two of the Internet's fastest growing activities — blogging and social networking."

Incentivized viral word of mouth
permission based email marketing and
branded hosted event websites with
social networking functionality as
promotion services for event planners,
venues, charitable organizations,
political campaigns, business seminars,
musicians, conferences, etc

Incentivized viral word of mouth
permission based email marketing and
branded hosted event websites with
social networking functionality as
promotion services for event planners,
venues, charitable organizations,
political campaigns, business seminars,
musicians, conferences, etc 09/15/2004 02:22 AM

Peter Caputa unveils one of his secret weapons.

How to make money from Events.

This is just the beginning of a new era - where smart entreprenuers like Peter show us how to make money from micro-content.

Congrats to Peter and the WhizSpark team!

No wonder he's been so busy. But NOT too busy to help start OpenEvents!

Here's Peter's post.....

Welcome to the Unveiling of WhizSpark's secret Sauce. Most of you have seen the social network - mailing list tools - event directory part of WhizSpark.

And then you thought... "Do they really think they will make any money from that site?". The answer is probably no. That won't pay the bills or bring us to our next liquidation event. Unless, of course, we follow the monetization path of Friendster and MySpace of littering your screen with ads.

So, what will?

(Take a deep breath b4 you read this next sentence)

We are providing incentivized viral word of mouth permission based email marketing and branded hosted event websites with social networking functionality as promotion services for event planners, venues, charitable organizations, political campaigns, business seminars, musicians, conferences, etc etc..

I was waiting until I could show it, to talk about it. Because it is obviously not that easy to explain.

We are pleased to announce our first 3 big events/sales:

Edd ie Kennison Foundation's Celebrity Fashion Show, Dinner, Silent & Live Auction, Comedy Show.

Wor mtownnightlife.com 2005 Madden VideoGame Tournament.

Red 1888's Model Search Competition by Spothound.com (R-rated)

So, if you know anyone that qualifies as a customer (see the aforementioned list above), please send me an email or them an email. We'd love some referrals.

And if you are interested in any of those events, let me know and I can hook you up.

[pc4media]

Yahoo 360 blends bl0gging, social
networking

Yahoo 360 blends bl0gging, social
networking 03/17/2005 03:49 AM
Xinhua News Agency Mar 17 2005 7:19AM GMT

Yahoo Service Combines Blogging, Social
Networking

Yahoo Service Combines Blogging, Social
Networking 03/17/2005 03:23 AM
Yahoo will begin beta testing Yahoo 360, which combines blogging tools with social networking, as it aims to help people "do a better job of keeping up with the relationships that they already have."

Sharing Ideas Just Got Easier: Blogging,
Keyword Tagging, File Sharing, Social
Networking … And That’s Just For
Starters!

Sharing Ideas Just Got Easier: Blogging,
Keyword Tagging, File Sharing, Social
Networking … And That’s Just For
Starters! 03/23/2005 04:46 AM
Launched this month, Apcala is a web system that allows you to share photographs, audio, video, documents and personalised profiles with friends, family, other Apcala users and the Internet at large. It’s advertising free and free to use. [PRWEB Mar 23, 2005]

Social people don't need social
networking

Social people don't need social
networking 12/14/2003 09:54 PM
Kevin Werbach points out that social networking sites like LinkedIn and Tribe and so forth have very little to offer highly connected people like Esther Dyson, who would nevertheless be a real asset to the network:

Esther and Pierre don't need LinkedIn to reach pretty much anyone they want to contact. Yet there are a whole lot of folks who want to reach them, and don't have a personal connection to do so. So the service worsens their email overload with little corresponding benefit.

Link

How do I best present myself at a
networking event?

How do I best present myself at a
networking event? 06/24/2005 07:08 PM

Dave, I’ve just started attending professional networking events and don’t really know how best to present myself and my company to the people who attend. Are there some tips or tricks you can share regarding how to talk about myself and how to make a good impression? I have the usual interests in partnering with others, gaining new customers and clients, etc….

Direct and Related Links for 'How do I best present myself at a networking event?'

iPodlounge sponsors Playlist Club event
in Philadelphia

iPodlounge sponsors Playlist Club event
in Philadelphia 03/19/2005 03:26 AM
iPodlounge has teamed up with the UK's Playlist Club to bring its unique iPod-DJing experience to the US, Playlist Philadelphia. Held on Monday, March 28, at The Khyber, 56 S. 2nd Street (2nd & Chestnut) at 8:00 p.m., Playlist Philadelphia will feature free admission and prizes courtesy of iPodlounge. "Playlist invites music lovers, mixers and makers to turn up with their best 15-minute set of tunes on their iPod and play their songs through the club PA for our audience of music fans and critical judges. The best DJs on the night win great prizes, and judges get a free drink on us."

Black Professional Monthly Networking
Event

Black Professional Monthly Networking
Event 09/10/2004 10:59 AM
Monthly gathering were Black Professionals from all over the New York City area can come together in a social and informal setting to make new friends and contacts in the professional genre.At the time plenty of groups already exist to provide the social atmosphere that many blacks desire but none of them were focused on the specific needs of black professionals or dedicated to networking on an upscale and professional level. Desiring to form a networking event filled with positive black professionals [PRWEB Sep 10, 2004]

MSNBC - Blogging Beyond the Men's Club

MSNBC - Blogging Beyond the Men's Club 03/14/2005 04:50 PM
diversity problem .. Newsweek article .. Steven Levy

msnbc.msn.com/id/7160264/site/newsweek
track this site | 4 links

Social Networking?

Social Networking? 08/17/2004 05:42 PM
So I have this account - that I spent some time setting up and inviting people to by the way - on one of the social networking services, but I can't remember which one.

Get Yer Social Networking Here

Get Yer Social Networking Here 01/24/2004 09:30 PM
Sometime in December, somebody flipped a big switch and all of a sudden everyone was inviting me to join their Linkedin network. Then suddenly last week the Kozmick Finger pointed at Orkut, and near as I can tell, all the geeks on the planet have spent this weekend busily inviting each other to be Orkut pals. It all seems mostly harmless; mind you, I haven’t actually got any use out of either of ’em. For what it’s worth, all the Orkutians seem to be heavy geeks, while about half the Linkedincrowd is VCs and businesspeople. I don’t think it’s gonna change the world, but I’ve been wrong before. To those whose invitations I’ve declined: sorry, nothing personal, it’s just that I feel I ought to either have spent some face-to-face time with you or been in some substantial online interaction.

Bricklin on event bl0gging

Bricklin on event bl0gging 07/30/2004 05:12 PM
Dan Bricklin has a post on what we're starting to learn about event blogging. Dan's doing a service by turning this into a topic... In passing, Dan responds to Charles Coopers' post at CNET. Dan says that we're only at the beginning of learning about event blogging and about the relationship of blogging and journalism. To this I would only add: Cooper is judging blogging as if it were wannabe journalism. What I was doing at the Convention wasn't journalism. I'm not sure what to call what I was doing, except maybe "blogging." Was it worthwhile even thought it wasn't...

London UXnet May Social Event

London UXnet May Social Event 06/05/2005 11:12 PM
You're invited to the monthly social meeting in London for the User Experience Design community.

Social Networking Hangover

Social Networking Hangover 02/10/2004 02:41 AM
As many, many people have predicted, there's a point at which all of these social networking services become... kind of pointless. Everyone piles in, and "connects" with anyone they've ever emailed and then you get the big "um... what do we do now?" question. It appears that despite the early rush into sites like Friendster, the fad is losing steam, just as it did five years ago with sixdegrees.com. It's cool for a few months, and then you realize there's nothing else to do. The various services are desperately trying to add on features that will bring back users and keep them engaged, but it turns out that the thing that seems to attract most people to these sites is the signing up and linking part - and after that, there's not much interest. The article includes the interesting stat that, despite five million registered users, Friendster received less than 1 million unique visitors in December.

social networking as a web service

social networking as a web service 01/27/2004 02:23 AM

These folks totally groks it..... (their names are Grant and Cyndie Berg.)

back and forth over the social portal play. Zawodny on the point missed: Stokes misses it not just once , but twic e.

Om nearl y follows him off the "they just want my rolodex and why should I give it to them" cliff, but veers at the last instant and manages to strike a glancing blow at a worthy target by alluding to social networking services embedded in client applications -- and spawns some interesting comments. Marc Canter's beating the FOAF drum again. I'm looking forward to peopleaggregator's next rev. Sifry's apparently working on FOAFing up Technorati, too. It isn't an accident that Sifry's tagline is web services for bloggers.

Anyway... back on topic...

Look, Friendster didn't get $10m solely on the basis of its current business model. It sure as shit didn't get it on the basis of its software / infrastructure [and I hope they're spending some of that money on some engineers].

They got it because, as Jon Udell and others have pointed out (can't find link -- may be misattributing), user-contributed data is a valid currency for the next generation of online [web] service[s] businesses. And anyone who can succeed at being a primary conduit for user contributed data which has bearing on purchase decisions and product / technology adoption/popularity has a great opportunity.

What Stokes seemed to miss, which Jeremy alluded to initially and Marc re-iterates from another vector:


"The place to make the money is by adding value added, functionality, tools, services - what have - AROUND these most basic of all instinctful notions. Not by charging for the right to do them - in the first place!

So a PeopleFinder or FriendRanking or Introduction manager or Private email or IM enabler kind of platform - would be augmented with value added tools - to become a new business model. This what I mean by 'new kinds of tools."


... is that web services technologies are going to enable a Friendster, an Amazon, and a Google to operate in a unified manner delivering synergistic services to groups of connected (define it any way you want) people with shared interests.

This is what people are hopping up and down about, and I think there's some solid cause [lineofsight - code + words + pictures]

I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy.  2004 is looking to be pretty interesting.

Rescuing Social Networking

Rescuing Social Networking 06/17/2005 03:27 PM

Recent reports of the demise of Social Networking Applications (SNAs), voted "technology of the year" by Business 2.0 just two years ago, are increasing. Most recently C|Net's Molly Wood reported on Five Reasons Social Networking Doesn't Work. While LinkedIn and eCademy are hanging in there, many of the other entrants into the SNA space are really struggling. I reported last year on what I thought was wrong with the first generation of social networking applications, and I haven't seen any significant improvements become mainstream since then. Wood complains that existing SNAs offer the user little to do, take too much time, don't provide a customized audience, are socially awkward, and don't provide much that other features of the Internet don't do as well or better. It's not clear what problem they're trying to solve, other than to provide a list of not-very-well qualified contacts for people online who are looking (mostly for customers, employers or dates). They remind me a lot of Chamber of Commerce meetings, with consultants and agents outnumbering 'real' businesspeople, five sellers for every buyer. I belong to several SNAs but use them rarely, since my blog provides me with a more robust network than any SNA could ever hope to do. The challenge, as with most business and social problems, is getting attention. Because good stories, useful, researched advice and helpful, informative conversations command attention, these are the tools of the trade in face-to-face networking events. Face to face meetings also provide a huge amount of non-verbal information that allows people to make considered judgements and to establish trust, which virtual forums can only accomplish awkwardly, and over time. The lowly telephone, and Skype, are an improvement. Most of us can converse iteratively faster and more competently in a voice conversation than in a message thread, and get past the awkwardness and misunderstandings faster as a result. I've had some excellent Skype conversations with people I have never met in person, and some ghastly ones. I have proposed a more robust, multimedia, multi-view Simple Virtual Presence (SVP) tool such as what is illustrated above. There are people more technologically competent and agile than I am who are achieving such presence using a combination of tools now, but for most of us this is still just a dream. SNAs are therefore inherently not very good for building relationships or for collaborative work. How are they at finding people for valuable personal or business relationships? Once again we're back to the too many sellers, too few buyers problem (it's the same with dating services, I'm told). Useful SNAs need to be under the control of the customer, not the vendor. They would be better advised to reinvent themselves as a kind of very detailed person-to-person 'yellow pages', to separate users' 'what I have' and 'what I need' personas, and to focus specifically on the former, in a lot more detail, with credentials and samples of offerings. In a way, that's what blogs do, providing a space for one individual to exhibit as much of himself as possible in as much detail as possible, which is why many recruiters are now starting to peruse blogs in the search for extraordinary people or matches for very difficult fits. So a good SNA could offer a condensed version of this: Who I am, What I offer, Who recommends me, and Samples of what I do. Then the buyer can browse this 'catalogue' and, if he thinks I might have what he's looking for (personally or professionally) he is given contact information (ideally with the richness of Simple Virtual Presence) to confirm through conversation that my offer meets his requirements. Simple as that. Forget about the discussion forums and the form-filling and all the other bells and whistles that just complicate use and chew up time. Just give me a yellow pages on steroids. Once some standards emerge on formats for this information, it could then be possible for people to post this information anywhere, in the agreed-upon 'SNA2' format, so that we would no longer have to post my information to each SNA 'yellow page' directory -- the SNA tools could go out and harvest it automatically wherever we posted it, so we would only have to maintain it once (perhaps on our blog-jacke t, personal website, or other online space). So then we would have three easy-to-use SNA tools, working in tandem, all built around the 'customer', the guy looking for something: The standard-format 'yellow pages' displaying our personal 'offerings', A Simple Virtual Presence tool to qualify those offerings and to enable powerful conversations, and Blogs as 'personal filing cabinets' that people could browse if we were away from our phone/SVP tool, or if they wanted to see some more of our stuff before attempting to call us and offer us a job, a contract or a date. What would really make SVP cool would be if we could meter it, so that the tool could track time we spent on each call and, with the agreement of the other party, automatically bill them and pay us for our time at an agreed-upon rate. Because it's the value you add person-to-person, helping them in their personal context, once the introductions are over and they know they've found the person they want to 'hire', that could finally realize the promise of online commerce.

Bringing social networking to everything

Bringing social networking to everything 04/25/2004 02:40 AM

I'm sorry I disagree.....[read response after article].......

The next big thing in online social networking.

According to Reuters Social networking sites, which look to introduce friends of friends or people with common interests, have grabbed the attention of Internet users and venture capitalists but many are still looking for ways to make money.

Online dating siteTickle ( >2million profiles) launched a People Search service on its network that includes AskJeeves' . The partnership fuses the uncertain social networking phenomenon with a search model that has proven invaluable to both consumers and marketers on the public Internet.

Kolabora news expert Scott Allen blogs in his Social Networking News: According to Tickle CEO James Currier, “Search is a natural way for online social networking to move forward”. (..) "Tickle people search brings online search full circle, back to letting us find the right people to talk to.”

Reuters press release (April 22)

read more in the full articles quoted from three blogs

- Ask Jeeves Brings Search to Tickle (ClickZNews)< BR>- Jeeves, what’s the next big thing in online social networking? (Online Business Networks)
- Education — the real "next big thing" in online social networking (Online Business Networks)

[Smart Mobs]

I'm certainly in favor of putting social networking into context - but search is not a context.  It's sort of like getting it backwards.

It's not about bringing search to social networking.  It's about bringing social networking to everything.

Fees come to social networking

Fees come to social networking 01/27/2004 12:09 AM
Tickle, the Friendster competitor formerly known as Emode, is first out of the gate with fees for some social networking services.

Anti-social networking

Anti-social networking 06/17/2005 04:25 PM
Glenn Fleishman writes in the NY Times about a Seattle cafe that gives free wifi on weekdays but is wifi-free on weekends in order to encourage conversation......

Social Networking Blues

Social Networking Blues 01/25/2004 05:16 PM
I'm on Ryze. I'm on LinkedIn. I never touched Friendster. For some reason, Orkut appealed to me. Perhaps its the "in affiliation with Google" tagline? It's getting to the point where we need a Trillian for these types of sites. FriendFan is coming. Microsoft already has Wallop. When will it ever end? How many friends does one really need? Infinity (plus one). Won't you be my neighbor?...

Social Television Networking

Social Television Networking 06/28/2004 05:22 AM
While lots of media companies have been trying to figure out how the whole "social networking" phenomenon impacts their business, it looks like AOL is trying to take the concept to the next level while also being true to their plans of "convergence." They've patented the concept of buddy list TV sharing. The idea is that you could see what your friends were watching on TV and immediately tune in yourself. It's not too hard to see how this would work. Already, the latest version of Yahoo Messenger includes the ability to see what music your friends are listening to and immediately tuning in yourself. This idea tries to go a bit further. For instance, someone could set up a chat room around a particular TV show, and could then play that show, while everyone else could discuss it in real-time. To understand what you're watching, it would require a set-top box that would tie into your internet connection as well. Of course, it's unclear how such a system will work in an age of TiVo when no-one watches a show at the same time.

Social networking for fish

Social networking for fish 11/17/2003 03:07 PM
Ken Rinaldo's amazing 'augmented reality robotic fish tanks' will have their first showing in Lille on the 6th Dec: "Augmented...

Transcendental Social Networking

Transcendental Social Networking 02/10/2004 09:21 PM
Stewart Butterfield and Co with some really groovy stuff. Motto: Don't build application, build contexts for interaction. The architecture of entertainment has been shaped by the idea of Immersion. Play is about people, not places [Thumbs Up] to this. Architecture...

Decentralised social networking

Decentralised social networking 01/05/2004 10:24 PM

I know I'm late to the party, but my recent experiments with LinkedIn and Friendster have got me all interested in the potential of software that bulids on top of people's own social networks. There's just one thing that's been bugging me, best explained by this quote from Om Malik:

The question I have is: why the F**K should I share my network of contacts with these commercial entities. They are like BlogSpot that does nothing for my brand equity and in many ways chews me out after making the network connections. Thus what I want is a "MoveableType" of social networking. Blogs took off because it was about one person - me. My social networks should be of my making for me. Lets figure out a way to cut out the middlemen.

Via John Battelle, here's the answer: Plink, a social search engine which uses information crawled from decentralised FOAF files. It's nicely put together and could be just the incentive I need to finally put together my own FOAF file.

Plink is also a nice example of the kind of thing the semantic web hopes to offer. People provide information in easily parsed formats, then others bulid third party applications on top of them that may never have been envisaged by the creators of the original standards. Feedster is another great example of this effect in action.

Lycos tries to tap into social
networking with new look

Lycos tries to tap into social
networking with new look 02/11/2004 08:34 PM
Another recently debuted site is Orkut.com, designed by a Google engineer, though the site's connection to the search company is unclear. ...

Is Social Networking a Snore?

Is Social Networking a Snore? 06/25/2004 05:22 PM

David Hornik (Venture Blog): All Social Networking Panels Are the Same. So in an effort to save you a bunch of time and aggravation, here's a transcription of this evening's event. I believe that it is essentially a transcription of all past and all future social software panels, so read it and free yourself of the need to ever attend such an event yourself.

Really, read it for yourself...

UXnet London June Social Event

UXnet London June Social Event 06/22/2005 02:15 AM
You’re invited to the monthly social meeting in London for the User Experience Design community.

London UXnet March Social Event

London UXnet March Social Event 03/14/2005 06:08 PM
You’re invited to the monthly social meeting in London for the User Experience Design community.

When it gets to dogs, this social
networking thing has gone to far

When it gets to dogs, this social
networking thing has gone to far 09/03/2004 04:57 AM
Today I received an long 'zine email from David Weinberger, who reminded me that he had set up a neighborhood on the fashionable new geographically-based academia-powered social networking site, i-Neighbors, so I went and checked out North Berkeley, the neighborhood that I, slave to blog-fashion and still hoping that somewhere, somehow, someday, I will find out what these social networking sites are good for, had created after reading David's initial post. To my great surprise I was no longer the only member of the i-hood, quite a few other people had moved in. As I was checking out their pages, I saw that one of them had a link with his pet's name. I clicked and was taken to ... Dogster. Apparently this is old news to many, but it was the first I had heard of it, and its companion site, Catster. On one hand this makes sense. There may even be a business model buried in there somewhere -- a lot of pet owners are fanatical about their pets, as anyone who has recently followed San Francisco politics and the battles between the dog owners vs. the Natural Areas Program can attest. And they spend a lot of money -- Americans spent 32.4 billion dollars on their pets last year, and upscale pet businesses are doing well. Or there may not be a business here -- remember the sock puppet? Whatever the business rationale, this is nuts. Social networking for pets? Give me a break. It is a symptom, not a cause, but what does it say about what our priorities are in this country? Nothing that sits well in my stomach....

1UP: putting social networking into
context

1UP: putting social networking into
context 07/03/2004 01:29 PM

I've waited a few days for it to settle - but it looks like the world's first digital lifestyle aggregator is live! It's called 1UP.com - and put out by Ziff-Davis Media.

Yes - THAT Ziff-Davis. After selling off their on-line properties to CNet (including Dan Farber and the ZDNet crowd) - Ziff-Davis is back in the on-line business in a big way.

They appraoched me in December (thanks to Geoff Workman) to help them build a killer, no holds barred, get a lot of attention and go out on a limb - cutting edge system - which would combine social networking, personal publishing and what ended up to be 26 portal front-doors.

The site is about gamers and gaming.

It puts social networking into a context of gamers by matching them up to each other - based upon what games they own, what games they want to play and even matches wish-trade lists.

There are some NEW things for social networkers - like a PeoplePlace - that feature both People and Club 'pings' and a nice Facewall search results screen. Gamers can search for folks via name, location, games, interests, age or game genre - or any combination.

There's all sorts of folks coming to the site - from wunderkid editors and gamerdudes to grannie gamers and metro sexual gamers.]

There's an 11,000 game database built in, and your typical game portal features - like cheats, downloads, reviews, top 10 lists, news - blah blah blah - the list of features goes on and on.

I'm having fun with customers - creating custom clubs, special promos and eventually new kinds of tournaments. We created allot in four-five months, so we're not done yet, but you can expect this system to support RSS, FOAF, OpenReviews and every other new format coming out representing new kinds of micro-content and communications.

This will be THE site that all the other gaming sites will copy in the next 12 months. In the mean time - there's plenty of other ways of positioning DLAs - into web services, content, on-line communities and all sorts of brands.

Hardware and software companies will ALL offer DLAs within five years - so the only question is: "who comes first?" In each sector DLAs will change the playing field - making it possible for after-market revenues, viral marketing and sticky happy customers.

So now all my ranting and raving may make sense.

Gamers review games, like to buy things and certainly want to interact with each others. Watch for a traveling roadshow to connect cyberspace to meatspace "meet your cyber buddy at the Cow Palace!"

Gamers are blogers now, have lots of friends and are joing Clubs in droves. Oh yah - for every action a gamer does, he/she gets points - which are then used for contests and to redeem objects.

So the next time someone asks "what's a DLA" - you just tell them - 1UP.com.

So what's YOUR context? Been wondering how ot make sense of social networking and personal publishing? Let Broadband Mechanics get you there.

We plan on building lots of these DLAs over the next five years - before we get bought out. Apple and Microsoft are doing it - so should YOU! So we're open for business - interested parties inquire here.

BTW - in case you're wondering - I'm "TheMacroMind".

Mix and Match social networking features

Mix and Match social networking features 01/12/2004 03:01 AM
Ch ristopher Allen on Social Network Services....

Christopher Allen on Social Network Services…

Posted Jan 11, 2004, 11:11 PM ET by Judith Meskill

Christopher Allen, founder of Alacrity Ventures, an angel capital investment firm, writes a two part series in his weblog — Evaluating Social Network Services and Followup to “Evaluating Social Network Services”……… — on the accounts he has created with Ryze, Tribe.Net, LinkedIn, and Friendster. Chris reflects, on what works and what doesn’t work for him with each of these services. He concludes his first post with a description of what he feels would be “The Perfect Social Networking Service”:

My ideal service would have the the multiple professional affiliation features of LinkedIn, but also allow me to show non-professional affilations. It would allow me to form intentional communities like Tribes.Net, but would also let me do a Wiki in addition to a message board. It would have meeting/party invite services like eVite, and blogging features like LiveJournal. It would have an endorsement system like LinkedIn integrated not only with professional endorsements, but personal endorsements as well, and you could even endorse intentional communities. It would let me better map and control my network, giving different friends different privileges. It would handle the release of my personal information like Ryse, but less clunky.

What would your “Perfect Social Networking Service” look like?

 [The Social Software Weblog]

The story of Social Networking - part II

The story of Social Networking - part II 01/07/2004 05:17 PM

LA Times on history of social software sites.. LA Times has a rehash on the history of Ryze, Friendster, Tribe.net and LinkedIn. Friendster founder Abrams signed up with a fledgling Ryze in August 2001 and helped with its first real-world mixer in Palo Alto. Soon he was talking to Scott and others about a site simply for dating that would echo the real-world way people meet -- through their friends. A serial entrepreneur, Abrams did a substantial amount of work on Friendster alone in his apartment. Then he raised money from several individuals. Among the first investors were Tribe founder Mark Pincus and his friend Reid Hoffman, who later launched LinkedIn. Both put down an initial $7,500 and now own 5% of the company between them. Friendster gets some revenue from advertisers and aims to turn a profit next year, though it won't say how. "Neither of us thought it was going to be a good investment," Pincus said. But that view changed this spring, when Friendster got him "a really good date," he said. "That made me a believer." [The Social Software Weblog]

 

Online social networking: Friend or foe?

Online social networking: Friend or foe? 01/26/2004 07:41 PM
Google recently unveiled an online social networking service, dubbed Orkut www.orkut.com, that it hopes can successfully compete with the likes of Friendster. ...

Towards a non-evil social networking
service

Towards a non-evil social networking
service 01/26/2004 11:29 AM
Within an hour of the launch of Orkut, Google's new YASNS (Yet Another Social Networking Service), I had written a mail filter that silently discarded invitations to join (it's the same filter that tosses out mail from Ryze, Friendster and all those other services, which drive me completely bonkers, since I already know who my friends are, am not actively trying to get laid, and don't need the "service" of having to risk offending near-strangers who want me to confirm some notional "friendship" between us a dozen times a day and I certainly can't think of a good reason to entrust some commercial outfit with my personal relationship data).

Do these things have to suck? Damnifiknow. I know that there's a bunch of stuff I'd like from a social network analysis of my own inbox, voicecalls, and so forth. Today, I have an iTunes playlist ("Old friends") that just plays highly rated songs that haven't been played in the past 30 days. Why not a smart to-do list that reminds me to email old friends that I haven't called or written in the last season (credit: Alice)? Hell, how about something that gives me a distinctive ringtone for calls from out-of-touch old pals and the option to define attention-grabbing behavior (a chime, a prioritization, coloring) when they email?

Foe Romeo talks about how Google could have launched a YASNS that actually provided a useful service that end-users could still control but that Google could add a lot of value to: a FOAF explorer:

Google would not create its own closed social network, Orkut, but would instead make FOAF one of its quick searches, so that FOAF:Fiona Romeo would return my FOAF file as the primary search result, with friend and location filtering options. (Content about Fiona Romeo would also be returned but would be differentiated.)

Perhaps Google could add value by introducing a sense of authentication to FOAF, by indicating reciprocal links between FOAF files. I know that this result for Fiona Romeo is the correct one because her friends link to it. Oh, and I know that Matt Jones is really a friend of Fiona Romeo, because he says so too. (Plink, a FOAF search tool, gets this bit right.)

Link
Grok Description matches for Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?
GrokA matches for Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?

Churchill Club Event: Blogging & Social Networking: Who Cares?