Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise

Grok Headline matches for Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise

Social Networking Services In The
Enterprise Bringing Out Critics

Social Networking Services In The
Enterprise Bringing Out Critics 12/15/2003 04:37 PM
I've written about my doubts concerning social networking services in the past. I was part of a company that tried to build just such a solution in the 90s, and we discovered that people who have valuable rolodexes realize there's value in keeping those rolodexes private. They're not comfortable with handing them out. At the same time, the people who most need to use such a service are those with the fewest connections. In other words, social networking services are often a system for subsidizing the poor networking skills of the unconnected with the strong networking skills of the well connected. The people who are the most valuable to the system only end up with more spam from random people trying to reach them. Kevin Werbach has noticed that LinkedIn hasn't been able to get him in touch with someone he couldn't have reached otherwise, and in the case of Spoke Software, pointed out useless links that wasted people's time, rather than helping them. Now, others are beginning to wonder if there really is value in social networking services for the enterprise. If anything, it sounds like these tools are a feature of a CRM-type offering, but not products by themselves. My own experiences with these products hasn't been very useful. I've passed on one LinkedIn request that went through me - but it was across such a long chain of such loosely connected people to be useless (and, my friend who I passed it on to later complained about the annoyance). I just made one successful connection via LinkedIn, but it could just as easily have been done by email (and, actually, was initiated by email, but the person I sent it to suggested I use LinkedIn to demonstrate how it works). Products like Spoke that scrape through your email box and make their own connections are even worse. As Kevin Werbach notes, knowing someone is very different sending them a random email once. Also, knowing someone is quite different from "endorsing" someone. I've received LinkedIn requests from people I barely know or trust - who I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable connecting to some others. Furthermore, there are huge privacy concerns with scraping-based systems like Spoke. Already I've heard stories of people receiving misdirected (very) confidential information from someone trying to make a Spoke contact. Also, sales people I've spoken to get a horrified look on their face when I describe Spoke. One senior sales exec told me if his company forced it on him, he'd start doing all of his important sales email via a private email account to keep the snooping away.

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]

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]

SMC Expands Enterprise Wireless Solution
Set to Extend Enterprise Networking

SMC Expands Enterprise Wireless Solution
Set to Extend Enterprise Networking 06/05/2005 11:19 PM
New EliteConnect™ 802.11b/g wireless accessories extend network reach with the security, range, flexibility, interoperability and throughput that Enterprise wireless applications demand [PRWEB May 25, 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

Vendors aid convergence of networking,
security

Vendors aid convergence of networking,
security 02/13/2004 05:19 PM
The trend toward the integration of core networking technologies with security and policy management features gathered momentum this week with two separate vendor announcements.

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.

AIM Connects with Enterprise IM Vendors

AIM Connects with Enterprise IM Vendors 04/14/2005 05:03 PM
Four enterprise instant messaging systems gain the ability to communicate with AOL's market-leading IM service, in another sign of growing support for messaging interoperability.

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 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 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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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......

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.

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. ...

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.

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...

Vendors Step Up Enterprise Management

Vendors Step Up Enterprise Management 07/29/2004 08:19 PM
Startup Performance IT is launching version 3.1 of its ProIT suite, while BMC Software prepares function-specific modules for its Patrol Express midmarket offering.

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. ...

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]

 

Social networking is NOT a market - dude

Social networking is NOT a market - dude 05/04/2004 07:45 PM

No Business in Social Networking. David Coursey can't find the value in paying to find out who his friends know. So where's the business model for LinkedIn, Ryze and other business "social networking" sites ? [eWEEK.com Messaging and Collaboration]

Somebody please tell David Coursey to stop thinking that social networks are the answer.  They're only the path to enlightenment.  Yes people are important - but people as a business model is nto going to happen - and is a no-no anyway.

It's what you do WITH the people that matters. Why is that so hard for folks like DavidCoursey to grok?

Online Social Networking MiniGuide

Online Social Networking MiniGuide 08/27/2004 01:30 PM
I have just completed my latest Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation titled "Online Social Networking" and this 13 page research paper lists many resources both new and existing that will help anyone who is attempting to do information and knowledge research about online social networks currently available the Internet. It is freely available as a .pdf file (674KB) at the below link from the Virtual Private Library™:

Online Social Networking an Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A.

http://VirtualPrivateLibrary.BlogSpot.com/Online Social Networks.pdf

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....

New Social Networking Service from
ObjectsSearch.com

New Social Networking Service from
ObjectsSearch.com 03/22/2005 04:55 PM
ObjectsSpace is a new free service designed to let users stay in touch with friends and colleagues. [PRWEB Mar 22, 2005]

Google's Social Networking Entry

Google's Social Networking Entry 01/25/2004 10:32 AM

Google Tries Out Its Own Friendster-Style Service: The social networking space is getting awfully crowded, capped now by Google's entry.

The launch of Orkut comes after Friendster's rejection late last year of Google's offer to buy the site that has become known as an online venue for hooking up friends of friends.

It also arrives as new social networking sites are cropping up at a frenzied pace, fueled by venture capital investments in companies like Friendster and the business-oriented networking service LinkedIn.

Still doesn't beat Dogster, which prompted Anil Dash to plead, "Please God, make it stopster."

Click here to comment on this entry

Eurekster Social Networking Engine

Eurekster Social Networking Engine 01/22/2004 02:11 AM
"...trying to combine the social networking craze with search engines. Invite your friends, form a group, and get searches personalized based on the group search habits."

Lycos Taps Into Social Networking

Lycos Taps Into Social Networking 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. ...

Are Enterprises Ready for Social
Networking?

Are Enterprises Ready for Social
Networking? 01/07/2004 01:53 PM
While vendors prep new offerings, enterprises are looking for examples of ROI and assurances that the technology won't violate privacy or damage hard-earned relationships.

Lycos Taps Into Social Networking (AP)

Lycos Taps Into Social Networking (AP) 02/11/2004 04:32 PM
AP - Terra Lycos, trying to carve a niche in a Web portal realm dominated by its rivals, hopes an overhaul will make it a major player in the trendy Internet field of "social networking."

My Take on Social Networking Business
Models

My Take on Social Networking Business
Models 01/25/2004 06:22 PM
The launch of Orkut has re-ignited the debates about whether or not there's any money in this whole "social networking" game. More specifically, many folks wonder if a purely social networking company can make money without becoming part of a larger (Google, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay) company. I'm of two minds on this issue. First, this social networking craze is really just the beginning. The services we see today are too numerous and require far too much of our time,...

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

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...

Orkut - Google Social Networking

Orkut - Google Social Networking 01/23/2004 02:22 PM
Google (kinda) Offers Social Networking called Orkut
Acording to this CNET artice, Orkut is the outgrowth of a personal project by Google Engineers Orkut Buyukkokten. He created "Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects". And oh, by the way:

"Membership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join."

Social Networking Stretches its Reach

Social Networking Stretches its Reach 04/09/2004 03:58 PM
Two smaller companies move to integrate the concept of mapping social connections with mobile-phone text messaging and with Web conferencing.
Grok Description matches for Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise
GrokA matches for Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise

Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: