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
30 mars 2008
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!