14 avril 2008
The analysis of information
Keywords
I used the Google suggestion and Wikiwax to fine some keywords.
The keywords that we used are: Web2.0, Web3.0, Web2.0 Social Networking, Web2.0 definition.
Tools
The tools that we used are:
This is a most popular tools and engine in the world. 85% of people use it.
Because of its good algorithm, the results in the first page are nice.
Mamma
I find that most of time the result of mamma are more precise.
When I search “Web2.0 Social Networking”, the results were more interesting for me.
Kartoo
It is a funny engine. Kartoo is a visual meta search engine.
The results are visible. It is also a way to fine more keywords, which can go more close to my needs.
For example, I want to find some articles about the news of web3.0, so I click the news cloud.
Vivisimo
Another meta-engine is Vivisimo.
Like Kartoo, these kind of engine can let you find right domain of the information.
If I want to see the definition of web2.0, just click on definition. And also I can see the number of articles in each domain. So I can know which domain it concerns most.
03 avril 2008
Web2.0–All about Social Networking
Web2.0 is a phenomenal topic in the present arena. Infact, the topic has grown to much debatable phase as each one of us is trying to derive an inference to it, without getting the actual meaning unexplored. Everyone one of us related to Search engine Industry is trying to explore this very topic. So the exact meaning of Web2.0 is open to debate. According to Wikipedia’s definition “ Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.” According to Tim O’Reilly “Web2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.Web2.0 is all about linking, sharing and collaborating with people.” Examples of Web2.0- Google, Amazon etc.
Common features of typical “Web 2.0″ sites :
1. Web2.0 is simple. Simplicity means you need to achieve and to get those, you have to use certain features in your website. That’s the way it works.
2. Websites should be centrally layed. The lay out of the websites are centrally allocated. This means sites that sit straight front & center feel more simple, bold and honest.
3. Web 2.0 allows users to use applications only through web browser e.g google spreadsheets and docs. So you can share and edit documents and information with others at the same time, online.
4. The key aspects of Web 2.0 sites are: 
a). Rich and interactive user interfaces.
b). Involving others for active participation through social networking.
c). Improved and continuous upgradation of software of data at a very quick pace.
d). Modifications and remixes by other users to the content to add more value and consequently encouraging data consumption.
e). It’s a global platform linked with Social Media to generate traffic via Social Networking and Social Media’s.
How doesWeb2.0 helps in E-Marketing?
Web2.0 is the combination of three applications i.e. RIA (Rich Internet Applications), SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) & Social web. Well most of us are aware of Social media, Tagging sites and Buzzwords. These includes terms like Blogging, Mashups, Ajax, Youtube, Flickers RSS, Feeds, Web services and other like buzzwords .The users tend to coin Web2.0 as “user generated” content sites listed in that group. The end user forms an integral part in integrating and implementing all the above mentioned applications to expose its functionality in order to provide quality set of applications ever. Web2.0 is all about exposing its functionality for the other set of applications to expand and integrate the functionality for a much better set of applications altogether. If you are an online marketer, then the Web2.0 formulae will be much clearer to you than a normal person. When your website visitors will participate and submit content (text, images, pictures, videos), links, participate to discuss and comment, build network around as a end user (both you and your site visitors), then it will enormously help you to generate more online traffic and this whole process will be services and applications of Web2.0. While on the need to understand Web2.0, I have concluded some basic point so as to how Web2.0 can be advantageous for us. These are as follows:
1. Encourage and motivate people, via Social Networking, to make quality contributions to the content on offer. This would not only make proper justification to the same but also add value to it. So it is very important to encourage and motivate others to participate and contribute so that it continually improves the whole service for all of us.
2. Always make the content open to modifications and edit purposes. This will help your input most successfully. Encourage unintended users to contribute quality and sharable information like Wiki does these days.
3. The services that you offer must be informative, intriguing and valuable to others. Justify the web services you use starting from building simple, atomic and straightforward interface instead of complex ones.
4. Use your website content as RSSfeeds/Web services. You may not know what RSS, feeds are but it may happen that you are using it ignorantly probably through another website using it. We all go for quality aspect of the website and not presentations. Google is a very good example of that. In near future, most influential web users will go for feed more .So make sure your web site offers its content up as feeds or Web services from now on.
5. Try and create good network. Involve your groups to establish and build reputations while interaction. Make sure you know each other well in your network so that you can achieve a good balance between privacy reputations better. This will definitely help your e-business do wonders.
Web2.0 and Social Media
Web2.0 is all about Social networking of Social Media, or to be more precise, it’s all about connecting to each other through Social Media sites. Social Media includes Social Photo Sharing (flickr, picasa, photobucket, etc.), Social Networks (MySpace, Facebook, etc), Social Bookmarking (del.icio.us, diigo, furl) .Now lets Discuss these combinations individually to have some idea how it works on.
Social Bookmarking:
Social Bookmarking is helpful to drive more traffic for a site that may convert into potential sales. It is the popular way to store and share links through the internet. It helps you bookmark the important WebPages you feel are important to you. Social Bookmarking services help you to boost traffic and allow users to Web Feeds based logs. So with the help of some popular sites like My Yahoo, Del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Bluedot, ma.gnolia.com, TekTag, Linklog, CloudyTags, Spurl you can drive more traffic to your site. Most of these services have become very keen to the proposition of promoting what’s popular and most popular. The pages that display “recently bookmarked” or “most popular bookmarks” along with popular tags, like Social News, this space in Social Media also offers genre specific sites.
Social Photo Sharing Sites:
Not much explanation needed for this section. We are aware of some great sites like Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket , Webshots Community, Kodak Gallery, ImageShack, SnapFish where we can share, upload and download digital pictures. These sites make it easy and fun to view, organize, edit and share the digital photos on our PC. We get to interact with more and increased number of people all around the globe and share images, videos with excellent picture sharing tools. Flickr is the most popular social pictures sharing site but photobucket is used widely.
Social Video Sharing Sites:
Sites like YouTube, Google Videos, Jumpcut, Joost, Grouper, Revver, Blip.TV, VideoEgg, Daily Motion. Not much explanation is needed here too as Social Video Sharing offers a lot of what Social Photo Sharing, but some sites add in more “sharing” features in the form of subscriptions to channels, rating the video and offering code to embed the players on social networks or blogs.
Social Networking Sites:
This is a very important section where we build up networks all round the Globe. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Live Journal, TagWorld, Disney XD, Toyota Prius, MSN Groups, Yahoo 360. The term itself describes its features as this section of Social Media explains the sole method of creating and building social relationship out of nodes and ties. Well its pretty obvious how these social networking sites helps in tie-in up of different social network, all round.
Social News Sharing Sites :
Sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Newsvine, I-Am-Bored, Searchmob, Shoutwire, Bringr are Social news sites, the community members or users submit news articles and community votes, comments upon those e-submissions and conversations.
Other Important Sites that constitutes Social Media:
Sites like Wikipedia (social encyclopedia), MyBlogLog (social blog networking), LinkedIn (social professional networking) has enormous importance towards E-marketing where you get to learn, promote and share a e-relationships. Also sites like Buzzlogic, BlogPulse, Technorati, Feedburner helps you to measure and analyze Social Media.
As explained earlier in the post, we can use Social Media in SEO work. You can start a blog on a site you are optimizing for SE’sO. You can write a great article on your website and submit a social site like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, or del.icio.us. The work does not end here as Web2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end user. Here, by end user we mean both the user and the one who participates in tagging the blogs and articles, contributes in something in Wiki, as a podcaster, blogger. You can even make a cool video related somewhat to your product,service on your website and make sure to add the URL when you edit the video. Whatever you create, develop or improve, unless and until you promote it, the whole effort of yours is wasted. Use Social Media to promote your creation and information. Share and interact in forums and other social gathering places mentioned in Social Media above.
While I discuss a few of the more popular ways of taking advantage of social media, the possibilities are really limitless. In the end, I would say that the emphasis needs to be placed on the fact that these are communication tools. Its all about understanding how to communicate to your desired audience is important, so you need to study the services out and see how they fit for your needs.So, I have put my best possible efforts to provide you quality facts about how Web2.0 helps in E-marketing with the help of above mentioned Social Media’s. Since a lot of people have different ideas about Social Media and what it does or doesn’t include, there’s no one solid answer. Well my goal was to guide my readers to the best possible options and channels that you can utilize both for your customers and yourself, to help your business flourish better.
Related Links :
Help your website to bubble with Web2.0
Recommended Books for Web2.0
Web 2.0: The Future of the Internet and Technology Economy and How Entrepreneurs, Investors, Executives & Consumers Can Take Ad- by Dermot A. McCormack
Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer- by Justin Gehtland
Professional Web 2.0 Programming- by Eric van der Vlist
Web 2.0 Report- by O’Reilly
Digital Web 2.0 (Mage: The Ascension)- by Roger Gaudreau, S. John Ross, Jen Clodius, and Jaymi Wiley
Mute Vol II #4 - Web 2.0- by Mute
Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0
One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently is how people can leverage Web 2.0 techniques in their applications and infrastructure today. Now that it's getting more well known, more people seem to be actively interested in making immediate, practical use of Web 2.0 ideas. For example, Microsoft is getting ever increasing buzz about their Mix 06 conference, and ZDNet's David Berlind has been raving about Mashup Camp, an event that will essentially teach folks how to create new remixed applications like ZeroBars out of Web services in literally a handful of minutes. For that matter, as a cautionary note on how history repeated, read Berlind's great write-up on how a newly mashed-up compatible Web 2.0 world will recreate the danger and white-knuckle thrills of dealing with decentralized, hand-rolled PC software just like we did during the dawn of local area networks 15 years ago.
Yes, many of Web 2.0 techniques can (and will) be leveraged by almost anybody who cares to learn (see Ning and Suprglu if you need confirmation.)
But mash-ups are just one aspect of Web 2.0 that can be used to add value to new or existing software. There are numerous ways this can be done, with varying levels of difficulty, that you can start incorporating right now to add the power and capabilities which successful Web 2.0 sites have been taking advantage of for years now.
Here is a run-down of a few of the more significant ways to add Web 2.0 capabilities to your software. As always, agree or disagree with these, but please use the feedback area below to comment on or extend this list.
Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0
1. Encourage Social Contributions With Individual Benefit. This is one of the key ingredients for creating good social software and should really common sense when you think about it, yet it is neglected far too often. The social bookmarking service, del.icio.us, however does this perhaps better than anyone else. The idea is that most people will not spend the time to contribute content or enrichment to a web site unless they are getting something out of it. With social bookmarking, it's the fact that your bookmarks are uniquely valuable to you personally, regardless of whether they are socially shared. Never mind the fact that they can provide you even more value through sharing with others via affinity services and other add-ons. The core concept here is to provide personal motivation to the individual to contribute information or get involved in other types of participation that continually improves the entire service for everyone else.
2. Make Content Editable Whenever Possible. The read/write Web is about making users co-creators of content on a massive scale. Armed with foreknowledge of the effectiveness of the Wisdom of Crowds, you can take advantage of the fact that none of us is as smart as all of us. Wiki sites turn this editable dial all the way to the right for example, and let every page be editable by anyone who is allowed. Far too many sites don't take advantage of the fact that you can give people an ownership stake, and get them immersed in working on improving what you offer, all just by letting them have the ability to change an appropriate level of content. The better wiki software keeps a copy of all versions so that no permanent damage can ever be done and that all information contributed is ultimately shareable. Note that there are still some barriers to fully exploiting this, including preventing mischievious users from causing havoc. But there are ways to limit and control this now emerging as I've written about before.
3. Encourage Unintended Uses. Too much software assumes beforehand how it will be used. Poor design decisions often severely limit how what you've built can be mashed-up and remixed by others, thus limiting your overall value to the community, commercial or otherwise. Start from the beginning with the assumption that others will find your service or information valuable. Then don't preclude them from using it in their own service because of limiting design decisions, particularly by making things complex. This means identifying and using remix-friendly techniques and technologies. Using REST and XML over HTTP instead of SOAP or WS-*. Using simple XML formats, even microformats, instead of complex schemas and XSD validation. Make your Ajax functionality includable in other sites like Google Maps does. Build simple, atomic, stateless services with straightforward interfaces instead of complex, conversational, or stateful services with byzantine interfaces. Document how your services work and please, please make the pieces and documentation easy to find. And if you must charge for your Web services, be reasonable.
4. Provide Continuous, Interactive User Experiences. Applications with lots of page loads are so five years ago. People are increasingly busy in their personal and professional lives and they can't spend the 5 or 10 minutes of personal time that page loading can suck up, especially if they use your application daily or weekly. Never mind the frustration that static forms-based software triggers. No autocomplete? Please, we don't have the time. Never mind that native software is also really fast in comparison with simple Web pages. Fortunately, techniques like Ajax, Flash, and Lazslo can do so much better now with the Rich Internet Application (RIA) model. You can deliver an entire application within a single web page and with the latest techniques, it doesn't even break the browser experience with bookmarks or the back button. Of course, you do not have to provide an Ajax user interface to be Web 2.0 compliant, but for many types of applications, it's practically mandatory nowadays.
5. Make Your Sure Your Site Offers Its Content as Feeds and/or Web services. This might seem obvious to some but you'd be surprised. The Web is increasingly becoming about pure data instead of web pages in HTML. Not sure about this? Think about the Google home page. There is virtually no presentation and the primary service it provides is simple lists of search results, or pure data. Not presentation. You don't go to Google for the looks. Yet Google search is probably the most widespread application in use today (I use it dozens, and often hundreds, of times a day.) Not only that, but just about everything will be an RSS feed in the near future. You may not know what RSS or a feed is yet but chances are you are using them all the time already, though probably through another Web site which is using RSS underneath. Furthermore, users on the Web, particularly the early adopters and influential users, are using browsers less and less, and information aggregators like RSS feed readers more and more. Advice: Make sure your web site offers its content up as feeds or Web services. If you don't offer, you will be an island unto yourself that people have no choice but to route around in favor of those that do.
6. Let Users Establish and Build On Their Reputations. All great communities are built by groups of people that generally respect each other. As I've written before, this can be as simple as associating a user's actions with their user ID or can be a full blown reputation tracking system like eBay, and there are numerous other approaches. This implies that other users are aware of each other and their actions are visible and transparent. The old adage of don't do anything you wouldn't want the whole world to know about comes into play here. People act more responsible and are far more personally invested in any actions they take if their reputations are on the line. Let your users establish and build on their reputations as they interact with your service. Achieving a good balance between privacy and reputations can often be difficult but the results will be worth it.
7. Allow Low-Friction Enrichment of Your Information. While the read/write Write has major advantages, the fact is the majority of your users won't have time to responsibly edit or improve your content. So while making content editable is nice, there are other ways of continuously improving it. This is via low-barrier enrichment mechanisms like tagging, ranking, rating, and even comments. Enrichment doesn't alter the original data and it adds useful and informative metadata which is attached to individual chunks of information. Digg is a classic example of this in that news items on Digg can't be edited by anyone, even the submitters, but everyone can "digg" can item, creating a richly annotated content database that identifies the most relevant and interesting submissions.
8. Give Users the Right To Remix. It doesn't matter if you give people the ability to remix your information and services if your license agreement doesn't let them do it legally. I tried to add Google News to Suprglu and I was stopped because SuprGlu did not have a license to remix from all the underlying content sources. This was a major frustration and essentially prevented me from using their terrific service on a regular basis. And it didn't make me think too highly of Google either. If people are beating a path to your door to remix your service, figure out how to do it. Or they will just go somewhere else. Suggestion: Learn the ins and outs of the Creative Commons license.
9. Reuse Other Services Aggressively One of the classic problems developers have is the need to reinvent the wheel, never mind that wheels in terms of software are situational things that are hard to reuse in general. Fortunately, the barrier to reuse is rapidly going down with advent of loosely coupled Web services like RSS. But the lightweight programming models of Web 2.0 also lowers the cost of re-implementing functionality so it might be a wash. But recreating information and content is still extremely hard, and so it pays big dividends to reuse the databases of the Google Maps, Craigslists, and EVDBs of the world. In fact, with Web 2.0, most content and functionality will eventually just be wired together instead of created from scratch and that's why capable mash-up skills are going to be an ever hotter employment commodity.
10. Build Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. Monolothic software is dead. If it was ever alive. This means don't build giant Ajax apps in a single Web page. This means don't build large swiss-army knife services that try to do everything. It means to build functionality one feature at a time, to do one thing well, and move on and create the next new service, or Ajax widget, or web page. Let your content and functionality grow organically. Make it easy to fix thing. Get rid of the ones that don't work, or improve them, all without affecting everything else. Learn how to develop chunks that can be reassembled, rearranged, and extended naturally. You'll find your deliver improvement more quickly and others will reuse your pieces with ease.
These are just ten good ideas from the tenets of Web 2.0 that you can use to create better, more flexible, richer, online software that is engaging and that communities can be built upon and thrive. There are many others and I haven't even touched yet upon permalinks, software above the level of single device, and many more. Web 2.0 is indeed quite a set of interlocking and reinforcing ideas.
30 mars 2008
Web 2.0, mashups and social networking - what is it all about?
3 different terms - Web 2.0, mashup and social networking, but all intertwined in the brave new Internet, the so-called second phase of the evolution of the online world. But what does it all mean?
Some companies have made the claim of using "Web 2.0" as a marketing strategy, but it seems in many cases it may be unfounded.
Do you really need to have a "New! Improved by Web 2.0" slogan on your site in order to survive and thrive? Not really, it's somewhat of a buzzword, but it's good to understand what this jargon means and to begin thinking about how your site can evolve to take advantage of the direction the web is heading in.
Long gone is the the concept of the Internet geek - the loner in a darkened room engaged in uber-technical pursuits. The web is cool with teens, it's a vital tool and recreation area for Generation X, the web is happening with senior citizens and as a result, it's becoming increasingly user driven rather than tech-geek dictated.
What is Web 2.0?
The roots of the term "Web 2.0" were in a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International in 2004. It referred to a change of thinking about how the applications of the future should be developed. Even before the term existed, Web 2.0 type applications were already around; e.g. blogging software. The brainstorming session sought to identify the common elements of these popular applications and services as a model for the future.
Web 2.0 applications and services have at least several of the following elements common:
- fresh, useful data is the core
- the ability for other parties to manipulate that data
- "living" applications that can be easily adapted
- harnessing the collective experience
- the web as a platform, independent of user platform
- primary focus of participation, rather than publishing
- trusting of users to provide reliable content
Other examples of applications and services with strong Web 2.0 influences are bookmark sharing, Google AdSense, RSS web feeds, Wikipedia and the thousands of mashups currently in existence. Personally, I see forums as a Web 2.0 type of application, but I don't see them recognized as such.
The very interesting point I find about the whole Web 2.0 movement is that in one particular aspect, it's really nothing new. In the 70's the technology boffins were desperately trying to get away from the mainframe/dumb terminal infrastructure and in some ways, we're heading back to that - just with hugely increased flexibility.
For a very much more detailed description of Web 2.0 concepts, something not overly technical, I highly recommend this article by Tim O'Reilly of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
What is a mashup?
The term "mashup" originated in the music industry - it's music that is made up of other songs already released, usually by other artists. I often find myself saying to my daughters that the "new" song they think is so cool is actually the bass line from X artist circa 1974 and the electric guitar riffs from X song originally recorded in 1982. Pah! Modern music, don't get me started ;).
Anyway, mashups in the web development world are actually very useful things ;). A mashup is usually a web-based application that combines content and functionality from a variety of sources using technologies including RSS and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML).
Mashups generally don't require a programming degree, hence the rapid uptake of the concept. A company will release an API (Application Programming Interface) which is the interface that allows for external requests to be made to whatever content the company is offering. Instead of it being just a rigid reproduction of information, there is a high degree of interactivity and for the developer/user to manipulate that data - hence its tie in with Web 2.0 concepts.
So, between the API implementation and the user/developer's additional work to manipulate the content for use within another application - that's a mashup; although some purists might argue more than one API needs to be used to qualify for that term.
Mashups can be very simple or extraordinarily complex; for example, VirtualPlaces is a mashup of APIs provided by Amazon Web Services, Weather.com, Flickr, MSN Search, Feedmap and GeoURL.
If you'd like to start messing around in the world of mashups, there's some very good mashup tutorials here.
What are social networking applications?
There's a huge difference between social networking and social engineering - I've seen a few people get mixed up between the two.
Social engineering is a term related to hacking. It's the process by which a hacker or fraudster elicits information from people in order to get access to their/their company's systems. For example, a hacker may call an employee posing as a senior executive and ask for details relating to a certain client in order to access the profile and create havoc.
Generally speaking, social networking services relating to the web are where a group of people launch a highly interactive service based on common interests between users and easy to use communications tools to detail and promote those interests to others.
They then invite their friends and colleagues to join and encourage them to also to invite people they know who have similar interests. Introductions are then made between these people that have been invited throughout the various tiers of the process.
Via common connections these processes connect businesses to consumers, consumers to consumers and businesses to businesses whom otherwise may not have met. It also helps establish a network of credibility - "oh, X knows Y so Y must be ok". If Y is making a recommendation about a product or service, then that single recommendation may wield a great deal of purchasing influence.
A great example of social networking is the hugely popular MySpace.com - an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends and colleagues. A single profile can generate a little "world" of people who have similar interests, with these worlds eventually overlapping with other worlds. It's useful to the user and a marketers dream :). MySpace has really found it's niche in music and band branding - many of the top bands in the world have MySpace pages.
Another pioneer that has become extraordinarily successful is Friendster.
From an ecommerce aspect, LinkedIn is a great example, with over 4 million members. I've been a member of LinkedIn for a while and it's very interesting to see who knows whom. Big players such as Google and Adobe have representation in the network, allowing LinkedIn members a route via their network of connections to some of the decision makers within large companies.
The popularity of social networking applications reinforces the validity of the theory of "six degrees of separation"; that is, that any two human beings, regardless of age, color, creed or social status have some sort of connection within five intermediaries. For example:
- I know Fred, who works in the Department of Commerce
- Fred regularly communicates with his boss
- His boss meets with the agency head once a week
- The agency head communicates with one of the President's inner circle
- That person lunches with the President every month to discuss issues.
While I'm based in Australia and have never met the President of the USA, I have "connections" to him, only separated by 5 degrees. Web based social networking applications will probably decrease the number of degrees of separation for millions of people in the years ahead.
The humble blog can also be considered to be a form of social networking application. It invites others to comment on items and the blog itself "pings" another blog when a post is made that relates to the other blog. It's a more insular world, but very effective nonetheless for building large networks. Many bloggers, through the exchange of links and post quoting, build up huge networks - not just of users and subscribers, but of other bloggers.
What does all this mean for online business?
For those of us who have established online businesses as somewhat of a way to avoid human interaction, I have bad news :). Heavy participation with our audiences is becoming increasingly expected. In the years ahead, it will become more difficult to have a successful, fully automated site where you can take off for a week and ignore what's happening.
A great example of this is blogging. I've read a few stories where once successful bloggers became a little slack in updating and lost their visitors very, very quickly - forever. Blogging is a powerful tool that can become useless if it isn't kept relatively fresh.
For those who run social networking services such as MySpace, they need to continually have their finger on the pulse of what their users want. Many social networking services will spring up during the years ahead, but I believe relatively few will thrive due to this frenetic pace of adapting to user demands.
Given the availability and relative ease of implementation of mashups, people will also demand more from us smaller players. For example, not so long ago, having a basic map to your premises on your site was a great customer service. In the time ahead, people will want detailed instructions of getting to your premises from wherever they are - street by street, road by road, turn by turn - complete with photos of surrounding buildings and landmarks.
It appears that thinking too hard is becoming an optional extra for human existence ;) - although, with many of us becoming "specialists" in given areas in our lives and with data overload becoming a real problem, perhaps we just don't have the headspace for thinking about "menial" issues any more.
General user communities will also become increasingly important - using forums as a marketing tool only or just for traffic generation will fall by the wayside in many cases - it's already very tough to make a forum succeed. Clients and visitors want to interact with each other, but also with you and the wider related communities. It's all very tribal :).
Getting into Web 2.0 - the easy way
There's no need to start scurrying to implement mashup applications right away - simple as they are in many cases, there's still a learning curve and developing your own API's is a more complex task.
For starters, I suggest if you have content you wish for others to reproduce, while offering articles directly from your site is a great way to go, you may want to consider automating this somewhat using an RSS web feed - it's pretty simple to implement.
In doing this, you may also be able to get broader exposure by providing data for mashup developers to include in their applications and for industry commentators and journalists to have an easy way to keep up to date with what's happening in your sector. It doesn't have to be just articles you use. You may have a catalog with items containing technical specifications which could be useful to other sites. Just be sure that there's an easy way for the person viewing the content on the other site to make their way back to you.
Invite developers to comment on your feeds; ask them how it should evolve. You may find some of them wanting to collaborate with you in improving your feeds in a way that will benefit you as much as them.
If your site doesn't offer content for reproduction, I suggest starting a blog or a forum and implementing an RSS feed around that. It's just a matter of posting news items from your industry, but not just repeated in a parrot-type fashion; inject your own spin and opinions and relate it back to your own business if possible. Encouraging comment is also important, it keeps a topic alive and interesting.
If time allows, get involved with other social networking services; use them as a launching pad for getting the word out about your company - just as many bands are doing via MySpace.
While the new "connected" generation presents us all with many challenges, especially those of us whom are smaller players; there's some great opportunities as well. The popularity of Web 2.0, mashups and social networking applications will allow for viral marketing in ways and with reach not possible before.
Social Network Fatigue and the Missing Web 2.0 Address Book
SunFeb 11 2007 Tim O'Reilly
Jon Udell just wrote a thought-provoking piece about the difficulty of new social networks reaching critical mass, and the obvious fact that there already is an uber-social network at critical mass, if only we can make things interoperate:
Years ago at BYTE Magazine my friend Ben Smith, who was a Unix greybeard even then (now he’s a Unix whitebeard), made a memorable comment that’s always stuck with me. We were in the midst of evaluating a batch of LAN email products. “One of these days,” Ben said in, I think, 1991, “everyone’s going to look up from their little islands of LAN email and see this giant mothership hovering overhead called the Internet.”
Increasingly I’ve begun to feel the same way about the various social networks. How many networks can one person join? How many different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal with?
Recently Gary McGraw echoed Ben Smith’s 1991 observation. “People keep asking me to join the LinkedIn network,” he said, “but I’m already part of a network, it’s called the Internet.”
Jon very much echoes my own sentiments. What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?
When one of the big communications vendors (email, IM OR phone) gets this right, simply by instrumenting our communications so that the social network becomes visible (and under the control of the user), it seems to me that they could blow away a lot of the existing social network froth. That being said, when I've had this conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, he's pointed out that he's well aware of that possibility, and has been working for years to layer additional value on top of the raw social network data. And he's very right about that.
To use Ben Smith's analogy about the internet as mother ship: if you were a proprietary LAN vendor trying to fight the internet, it was game over. But if you were a LAN vendor who was on the right bandwagon, you became Cisco.
Web 2.0 Social Networking Apps List
by robyn on December 12, 2005
- Social Bookmarking (Gewinner: del.icio.us)
- Web 2.0 Start Pages (Netvibes)
- Online To Do Lists (Voo2do)
- Peer Production News (Digg)
- Image Storage and Sharing (Flickr)
- 3rd Party Online File Storage (Openomy)
- Blog Filters (Memeorandum)
- Grassroots Use of Web 2.0 (Katrina List Network)
- Web-Based Word Processing (Writeley)
- Online Calendars (Calendarhub)
- Project Management & Team Collaboration (Basecamp)
What are you opinions? I like Trumba for a good calendar and BackPackIt for To Do Lists. I've not heard of Calendarhub and Voo2do, but you can bet I'll be checking them out now.
Web 2.0, social networking can endanger corporate security, analyst says
October 02, 2007 (Computerworld) -- With the Web becoming central to the way companies do business, cybercriminals are taking increasing advantage of Web 2.0 and social networking sites to launch attacks, according to IDC analyst Christian Christiansen.
The Web isn't the benign resource for information that people once saw it as, said Christiansen, who spoke today at Kaspersky Lab Inc.'s Surviving CyberCrime conference in Waltham, Mass. "One of the things that's happened that's disconcerting -- and it's been growing over the last 10 years -- is the blending of people's private lives with their corporate lives," he said.
Employees' personal lives -- their online shopping habits and interactions with friends and families -- get intermingled with the interactions they have at work with customers, fellow employees, partners and suppliers, he said. "So that creates a perforated perimeter where there isn't a hard, fast separation between the corporate world and the personal world," he said.
The problem is that employees don't always follow their companies' security policies -- probably because they don't know what those policies are, just as they don't know what their companies' acceptable use policies are. The result: employees don't know what's allowed and what they're barred from doing. Sometimes, Christiansen said, the very people who set up the corporate policies don't even follow them.
Problems also occur when an IT department no longer controls the products being connected to the corporate network. That list could include everything from smart phones to new and untested laptop and desktop computers to various application environments, he said.
"We're seeing the realization that the internal security problem is growing -- the threats are coming from inside the network," he said.
The latest threats to network security now are coming from collaboration and Web 2.0 environments -- where employees casually click on links that could lead them to malware. And they're coming from the wide variety of devices that may be accessing private as well as corporate networks, he said.
"We're seeing a change in the threat environment," he said. "Instead of the threats -- the malicious code -- being distributed as e-mail attachments, we're seeing more and more that they're being embedded in Web 2.0 links," he said. "In the past, what you saw was an immediate effect. Now we're seeing much greater levels of subterfuge and much more sophisticated attacks."
To better avoid potential problems, IT departments need to control user behavior, the types of devices being used to access information, the applications being used and content contributions.
"Risk reduction requires policy managements and layered protection -- at the gateway to the Internet as well as at the endpoint [desktops, laptops and servers]," he said. "You need a whole series of checks and balances."
Defining Web 2.0 Social Networking
A definitive definition of a Web 2.0 “Social Network” is as hard to come by as a definitive definition of Web 2.0 itself.
Tim Berners-Lee recently noted (see “Evolving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0”) the seeming futility of encapsulating fluid and amorphous interactive applications into digital sound bites saying: “I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.”
Nobody may know what a Web 2.0 “Social Network” means either.
In “Del.icio.us is already a social network,” Fred Stutzman takes exception, and rightly so, with the notion that Del.icio.us, a social book marking service, would not be considered a social network.
Not only is the tag line of Del.icio.us “social bookmarking,” two of its three call-out slogans to users foster personal communication and interaction, or networking socially:
all your bookmarks in one place
bookmark things for yourself and friends
check out what other people are bookmarking
Del.icio.us wants its users to embrace social bookmarking to network socially:
What is del.icio.us?
del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's.What is social bookmarking?
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web…First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend's computer.
Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else..
Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember…
Stutzman on how people create and share bookmarks to connect through a “sociality in the network” of del.icio.us:
Social networks connect us - something that del.icio.us has been doing since its very inception. The difference here is that the link is the object center of the sociality in the network. It is most useful to compare to Flickr. In Flickr, we browse photographs through a number of paths - tags, groups, pools - and while the photographs are still the center of the network, these social features enable a deeper form of sharing and browsing. The social aspects compliment the core content, rather than replacing it.
I believe the del.icio.us will stick firmly to keeping the link the object center of the network. By adding social features, we'll have new ways to find content - and we'll be able to find out more about the people who share content. This will be very valuable to those who use del.icio.us for research and analysis - and it stands to unite communities of practice. When I see 10 other people bookmarking an obscure link about social networks, I want to know more about those people. With lightweight social features, we all stand to gain from our link-centric connections.
Del.icio.us’s link-centric connections foster social networking just as the MySpace and Facebook profile-centric connections do.
MySpace calls out to its “friends” to “share photos, journals and interests,” Facebook calls out to its “students” to “share information” and Del.icio.us calls out to everyone to “share links.”
In Web 2.0 Social Networking, sharing is interactive caring.
The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models
The term Web 2.0 describes a new generation of websites allowing users to share content and create networks in online public forums. To kick off the session, Moderator Peter Schwartz, Chairman, Global Business Network, USA, asked Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YouTube, USA, for his definition. "Web 2.0 is an overused buzzword, but there is in fact a movement to leverage the power of people and community," Hurley replied. His online video-sharing service grew out of the frustration that he and his partner experienced with exchanging and distributing their own videos.
Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA, called Web 2.0 "a return to the roots of the Web. What was exciting in 1995-96 was that everyone was publishing. But we all had to be power users and learn html (a website design program). We got distracted by the dot.com and e-commerce wave, but now with more people online and with more access to broadband, we are getting back to the roots."
"I am happy to hear that the Internet is finally going back to the people," said Viviane Reding, Commissioner, Information Society and Media, European Commission, Brussels. "My principle is: keep the hands of the government off the Internet."
Mark G. Parker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nike, USA, described an interactive element of his company’s website that allows customers to design their own shoes. "People are making sneakers, creating a customized product," he said. "These new developments on the Web are enabling a fundamental shift in power to the consumer."
William H. Gates III, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, USA, mentioned developments on the near horizon:
- Television programming on demand via the Internet: "TV is still broadcast," he said. "As you get the TV to the Internet, you can see what you want when you want."
- High-quality three-dimensional content
- A viable micro-payments system
- A digital rights model to protect content producers: "Because there is no digital rights model, content creators are hesitant to dive in," Gates said.
Reding also picked up on the digital copyrights issue. "All of the rules are for old media," she said. "We must have a new model for IPR [intellectual property rights] and content production."
Schwartz and Challenger Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor, Forbes Magazine, USA, asked the panellists to examine what, if anything, these new technologies mean for business and society. "We are changing the world because everybody has a voice," reported Hurley. Gates noted that, "These are tools of empowerment. They are not changing society but we’re letting people express themselves." He did, however, add that "there is incredible promise in the areas that most interest me, education and healthcare."
On the business side, Parker warned companies to not ignore Web 2.0. "If you don’t embrace this you are at risk," he said. "I think it could be deadly."
If today is the age of Web 2.0, that leaves an obvious question about the future: will there be a Web 3.0? "If the next buzzword is Web 3.0, I think we have a lack of creativity in buzzwords," quipped Gates. "But as we get 3D and speech, and as we decide that things like textbooks do not have to be on paper, we’ll have enough developments in the next 10 years for four new buzzwords," he said.
Web 2.0 Social Networks: Cool but marginal and unprofitable?
Is Cisco making the RIGHT BET on Social Networks?
Not according to Om Malik who offers a "News flash" for Cisco:
This social software thing – it is too marginal, doesn’t make money and can’t make you cool.
Really? Apparently Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. CEO and proud corporate owner of MySpace, didn’t get the memo!
Why did News Corp. bring MySpace into its space?
Murdoch shared his strategic thought process on the acquisition and its now far from marginal financial impact on News Corp. at the Media Summit in New York City last month:
Two to two and a half years ago we were living in a booming economy…but print advertising and television advertising was not growing at the rate they would have in the past…we looked at where the money was going, a lot of money was going to the Internet…it was time to move there seriously.
MySpace is now growing faster than we expected, we had to almost put the brakes on it physically, handling the traffic, we needed a lot more hardware, a lot more servers…not a vast amount of money needed to support, though…
The advertising revenues have gone from basically nothing to $25 million a month, growing monthly, 30% every quarter, next year search revenue from Google kicks in…we are looking at a billion dollars in revenue…
Murdoch projected that revenues from MySpace and other Fox Interactive Media sites such as IGN could represent as much as 10 percent of News Corp.'s total revenue within the next five years.
Malik's “news flash” for Cisco is headlined “Cisco’s wrong bet on Social Networks.”
Perhaps it was Murdoch’s News Corp. MySpace $1 billion revenues “news flash” in NYC that is reinforcing Cisco’s RIGHT BET on Social Networks!