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March 10, 2008

The Myth of A Listers and Influencers

by: Guy Kawasaki

GrabberRaster 0000.jpg

Continuing on the theme of Duncan Watts and the demise of influencers and A listers, CNET Networks conducted a three-part study called "The Influencer Study from CNET Networks: Challenging Perceptions." It explored the structure of social networks, the motivations for giving advice, and methods of acquiring information.

Continue reading "The Myth of A Listers and Influencers" »

March 9, 2008

Twitter in Plain English (and Visual Thinking)

by: David Armano

This is by far the BEST description of Twitter I have ever come across. Though it leaves out many of Twitter's other uses such as link sharing and the fact that some use it as a chat client--it serves as a great "de-mystification" of the service.

Continue reading "Twitter in Plain English (and Visual Thinking)" »

March 8, 2008

Social Media and Social Network Marketing

by: Scott Goodson

Ever since the Brian Morrissey, Adweek piece came out last week stating that "Agencies 'Don't Get' Social Media" there has been heightened desire by major consumer advertisers to know what social media is, who is doing it best, and how can they benefit from it.

Continue reading "Social Media and Social Network Marketing" »

February 28, 2008

The Globalization of Facebook

by: Scott Goodson

Fred Wilson points out in his blog that Facebook is not experiencing a decline but rather it has reached a plateau in the USA. Look a few feet outside the US border and we see a very different picture.

Continue reading "The Globalization of Facebook" »

February 26, 2008

The Communist Manifesto of Chris Anderson

by: Ilya Vedrashko



Deep under the layers of acquired historical meanings lies an often overlooked core of the economic theory that describes production of goods under public ownership, their free exchange, and their free consumption by all members of the society according to their needs.

Continue reading "The Communist Manifesto of Chris Anderson" »

February 25, 2008

Thinking Through The "3 U's"...

by: David Armano

I'm updating some thinking on the "3 U's". The word and idea of "Unity" doesn't quite work even though there is some overlap in my thinking. So here's another take swapping the idea of "ubiquity" for "unity". Seems more appropriate. Let me know what you think.

Continue reading "Thinking Through The "3 U's"..." »

February 24, 2008

The 3 U's: A Model for "Advertising" in the App Economy

by: David Armano

BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum recently wrote a terrific post in which he dissects the effects of social media in the business world. In part of his write up, he analyzes the My Vegas effort. While of course I think that's great--what he says here really stuck with me:

Continue reading "The 3 U's: A Model for "Advertising" in the App Economy" »

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

by: danah boyd

When I was last in DC, I had lunch with Daniel Solove and we were talking about book publishing. He had been thinking of making his book downloadable under Creative Commons and I was like DO IT DO IT! This is the kind of book that is sooo relevant so many different audiences who would never hear about it through traditional advertising. My thought is that if it were available online, it could whet folks appetite before buying it (cuz printing it out is painful and reading it online is not wonderful either and your Kindle doesn't support PDFs). Introducing...

Continue reading "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet" »

February 21, 2008

Clusters + Connectors

by: David Armano

I've described tightly knit online communities as "clusters" and manifestations of social media such as blogs (or widgets) as "connectors".  In recent weeks I've read a couple of perspectives that emphasize preferences for one over the other.  Some of us like forums:

Continue reading "Clusters + Connectors" »

February 18, 2008

The Clue Train 10 years on

by: Karl Long

The cluetrain manifesto, a book conceived 10 years ago, predicted and described many of the forces that have been most disruptive to business enabled through "web 2.0″.

Continue reading "The Clue Train 10 years on" »

February 16, 2008

Discover Magazine video of moi

by: danah boyd

Last fall, I did an interview for Discover Magazine about my research. I still think that I look strange in video, but I figured others might appreciate it.

Continue reading "Discover Magazine video of moi" »

February 13, 2008

The Application Economy

by: David Armano

Over at Forrester's Groundswell blog, Josh Bernoff recently wrote this in the context of social applications doing well in a recession:

Continue reading "The Application Economy" »

February 9, 2008

Alan Cooper: "Best of Market Trumps First to Market"

by: David Armano

Alan Cooper, widely respected in the field of Interaction Design and related practices kicked off Interaction 08 with a simple but profound message.

"Best of market trumps first to market"

Continue reading "Alan Cooper: "Best of Market Trumps First to Market"" »

February 5, 2008

Green Content Syndication: Part III - Activating Diggers

by: David Wigder

Today, dozens of social news sites exist where users bookmark content for the site's community to view and rate. Specific content related to the environment is available on both general news sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Propeller (AOL) or Reddit and green vertical sites such as C2NN, Hugg, Five Limes and plant change (Aus). Squareoak Media provides a fairly comprehensive list of social news sites categorized by vertical.

Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part III - Activating Diggers" »

February 4, 2008

just because we can, doesn't mean we should

by: danah boyd

Learning to moderate desires and balance consequences is a sign of maturity. I could eat only chocolate for all of my meals, but it doesn't mean that I should. If I choose to do so anyhow, I might be forced to face consequences that I will not like. "Just because I can doesn't mean I should" is a decision dilemma and it doesn't just apply to personal decisions. On a nation-state level, think about the cold war. Just because we could nuke Russia doesn't mean that we should've. But, just like with most selfish children, our nation-state thought that it would be infinitely fun to sit on the edge of that decision regardless of the external stress that it caused. We managed to grow up and grow out of that stage (although I would argue that our current leadership regressed us back to infancy).

Continue reading "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" »

February 2, 2008

After The Click

by: David Armano

"...Journalists and PR professionals, the influence brokers of traditional media, have lost a huge degree of influence on the web in large part because they don't link to anything. While traditional media brands are still powerful channels on the web, they are losing influence everyday to the link-driven web network -- journalists and PR professionals can no longer depend on controlling these former monopoly channels to exert influence online."
~The New Influentials (PSFK)

Continue reading "After The Click" »

January 29, 2008

Influence Ripples, Tipping Points + Toast

by: David Armano

Consider this:

I got the latest Fast Company nearly a week ago.  I browsed the cover and noticed the "Un-Tipping Point" headline on the cover.  I then packed the magazine in my bag planning to read it on the train.

I never did.

Continue reading "Influence Ripples, Tipping Points + Toast" »

January 27, 2008

Forget the A-List After All

by: Guy Kawasaki

Picture 1.jpg

You've got to read "Is the Tipping Point Toast?" by Clive Thompson in FastCompany. The gist of Thompson's piece, based on the work of Duncan Watts of Yahoo Research, is that the theory that a select few "key influencers" matter more than "the rest of us" when it comes to viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is flawed.

Continue reading "Forget the A-List After All" »

January 23, 2008

10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession

 by: David Armano

The question isn’t if we’re heading into a recession. It’s how bad will it be—and what we learn from it? As marketing budgets feel the squeeze of the housing crisis and a slowing U.S. Economy, now is a good time to think about opportunities. That’s right. Opportunities. It just happens that the digital medium could be your best friend in a time when belts tighten. Here’s a few starters for how digital can help your business or brand thrive in a recession:

Continue reading "10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession" »

January 18, 2008

let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?

by: danah boyd

In writing Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Nicole Ellison and I wrote many iterations of the definition of the term "social network sites" and why we chose to use this instead of "social networking sites."

Continue reading "let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?" »

January 15, 2008

MySpace Builds Game Portal?

by: Ilya Vedrashko (via Business & Games)

Looks like MySpace is working on a gaming portal. The URL for this page is games.myspace.com. This could be a hit if the games are less like the ones you can find on other casual game destinations (Yahoo Games, for example) and more like Facebook app games with a stronger social component to them. Social advergames on MySpace would also be an interesting ad channel.

Continue reading "MySpace Builds Game Portal?" »

The Economist Debate on Social "Networking"

by: danah boyd

The Economist is doing an "Oxford-style debate" on the following proposition:

"Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to
educational methods, in and out of the classroom"


Given that MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous, can social networking be defined as the "collective power of community to help inform perspectives that would not be unilaterally formed" or is it simply a distraction for students? Can these tools could be used in the classroom?

Continue reading "The Economist Debate on Social "Networking"" »

January 11, 2008

Technology and the World of Consumption

by: danah boyd

I had just finished giving a talk about youth culture to a room full of professionals who worked in the retail industry when a woman raised her hand to tell me a story. It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this mother was that her daughter's approach to shopping was completely different than her own.

Continue reading "Technology and the World of Consumption" »

January 9, 2008

Infinite Touch Points

by: David Armano

I am fairly certain that we are moving toward a time where the way we interact with brands and their products and services will seem infinite.

Continue reading "Infinite Touch Points" »

January 8, 2008

"Spamturitis" and Facebook's Signal to Noise Factor

by: David Armano

"Spamturitis" is the combination of too much spam combined with too many features.  If you look at the above (below) note from Marcus Brown—you can see he's had enough of Facebook.

Continue reading ""Spamturitis" and Facebook's Signal to Noise Factor" »

January 5, 2008

remix culture and fair use: a new study

by: danah boyd

Folks over at the Center for Social Media have just released a new study on copyright and creativity. They identify nine common types of re-appropriation practices that use copyrighted material:

Continue reading "remix culture and fair use: a new study" »

January 4, 2008

A few more social networking sites

by: Dick Stroud

Thanks to Chuck Nyren the list of 50-plus social networking sites has grown a little longer. See his comments to my recent post.

Continue reading " A few more social networking sites" »

January 3, 2008

B2B Public Relations & Blogs: Policy, Resources, Process & Promotion

by: Josh Hawkins

A recent survey of business reporters shows that over 80 percent say they use, or would use, blogs as a primary or secondary source of information for news stories. This is a pretty serious wakeup call for anyone doing B2B PR. If you don't already have a social media program in place, it's time to get started. But while the mechanics of launching a blog are straightforward, there are a number of questions to ask and strategic decisions you need to make in order to ensure a successful blog initiative.

Continue reading "B2B Public Relations & Blogs: Policy, Resources, Process & Promotion" »

January 2, 2008

50 New B2B Marketing Blogs

by: Jon Miller

Here are 50 more blogs about business-to-business marketing, bringing the total on the complete Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs to 138 blogs.

B2B marketing still lags far behind other categories of marketing blogs, so please keep letting me know via comments if you find any B2B blogs that I missed.

As always, here is the updated B2B marketing blog OPML file.

Continue reading "50 New B2B Marketing Blogs" »

Lists of social networking sites – mainly for the 50-plus

by: Dick Stroud

For the past 3 months I have had a Post-It note on my computer screen saying: “publish a list of social networking sites”. Because I harp-on about the subject so much I often get approached to provide a list of 50-plus sites. Rather than keep doing it by e-mail I thought I would get the details onto my blog. That was in September but other stuff kept getting in the way.

Continue reading " Lists of social networking sites – mainly for the 50-plus" »

January 1, 2008

Converging Toys, Part II

by: C. Sven Johnson

Some time back I wrote a blog entry titled, “Converging Toys, Part I” with the intention of writing a “Part II” shortly after. Needless to say, this follow-up is a long time in coming, but I can’t think of a better time than now, as it comes so soon after Christmas.

Continue reading "Converging Toys, Part II" »

December 30, 2007

A Few 2008 Predictions (Not Exhaustive) and Happy New Year to You All!

by: Idris Mootee

I guess this is the time to make some predictions. This is by no means exhaustive and some are more important than others. Here they are but not particular order of importance other than just some random thoughts at this time of the year in front of my fireplace. If you have some good ones to add, pls send them this way.

Continue reading "A Few 2008 Predictions (Not Exhaustive) and Happy New Year to You All!" »

December 29, 2007

Pew on teen social media practices (with interesting bits on class)

by: danah boyd

While I was off struggling with Leopard and pants, Pew put out another great report: Teens and Social Media. This report fleshes out what I noticed earlier - teens are much more protective of the content they post online than adults are. Yet, this report is sooo much more than that.

Continue reading "Pew on teen social media practices (with interesting bits on class)" »

December 28, 2007

Social Systems

by: David Armano

When we think about social networks—we tend to focus on the connecting nodes.  The links that bind us and what makes a network, a network.  But the less frequently told story is the one where we spend countless hours building and maintaining our own little "social solar systems".  In these "social systems" we have multiple planetary ecosystems revolving around us.

Continue reading "Social Systems" »

December 27, 2007

Flashy Micro-sites Are So 2007. Look for Distributed Content Experiences in 2008.

by: David Armano

Update:
I'm having a real-time Twitter conversation with Adweek's Brian Morrissey who, as an avid runner is not a fan of the site and offers this opinion:

"the content is one-size-fits-all lame, the redirect to forums sucks out loud and it's still nike talking at me."

Continue reading "Flashy Micro-sites Are So 2007. Look for Distributed Content Experiences in 2008." »

December 19, 2007

Matt Cutts and Blogging for Traffic

by: Roger Dooley

Got a brand new website you want to promote? Wondering how to get traffic and improve Google rankings? Google’s webmaster Svengali Matt Cutts clued us in at the recent Pubcon in Las Vegas: start a blog. (You were expecting, maybe, “buy a bunch of links?” ;) ) Matt pointed out that Wordpress was mostly pre-optimized for search engines - the latest versions reduce duplicate content issues, page structure, titles, etc., fit Google’s recommendations, and keyword URLs are easy to generate. We’ve been blog advocates for years, but Matt’s blunt recommendations was still a bit of a surprise. Let’s look at why adding a blog to a new (or even old) site can be a good idea.

Continue reading "Matt Cutts and Blogging for Traffic" »

Driving successfully web 2.0 into the enterprise

by: Christian Smagg

Web20atWork_WhiteBoard

There are risks and challenges associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. 

It is quickly becoming evident that successful implementation is arising from business strategy, aligned with clearly defined outcomes & objectives, and supported by organisational structures, company's culture and adapted technologies. Like any other project, it requires thought, preparation, support, energy, and communication.

Continue reading "Driving successfully web 2.0 into the enterprise" »

December 17, 2007

Advertising During Recession

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Buckle up.

Washington Post (Nov 26, 2007): "Widespread expectations of a recession could be self-fulfilling because of how financial markets and mainstream America are interconnected. If investors are sufficiently convinced a recession is ahead, they would be reluctant to lend money to businesses that want to expand, making it so."

Continue reading "Advertising During Recession" »

adults' views on privacy (new PEW report)

by: danah boyd

PEW has a new report out on adults and privacy: Digital Footprints. It's a solid report on the state of adults' perception of privacy wrt the internet. Of course, what humors me is that adults are saying one thing and doing another.

Continue reading "adults' views on privacy (new PEW report)" »

December 15, 2007

valuing inefficiencies and unreliability

by: danah boyd

Two deeply embedded values in the world of technology development are efficiency and reliability. Companies pride themselves in maximizing efficiency and reliability and, for the most part, consumers agree. We like when our search engines produce results quickly and reliably. Yet, when it comes to social technologies, I suspect that efficiency and reliability are not the ideal metrics.

Continue reading "valuing inefficiencies and unreliability" »

December 12, 2007

Facebook's "Opt-out" Precedent

by: danah boyd

I've been watching the public outcry over Facebook's Beacon (social ads) program with great interest. For those who managed to miss this, Facebook introduced a new feature called Beacon. Whenever you visit one of their partners' sites, some of your actions were automagically sent to Facebook and published on your News Feed. The list of actions is unknown, although through experimentation folks have learned that they include writing reviews on Yelp, renting movies from Blockbuster, and buying things on certain sites.

Continue reading "Facebook's "Opt-out" Precedent" »

December 5, 2007

"Information Access in a Networked World"

by: danah boyd

Last month, I participated on a panel at Pearson Publishing along with three others from MacArthur's digital learning initiatives. I gave a talk there about the future of information access and I wanted to make the crib available for all who might find it of interest:

"Information Access in a Networked World"

Continue reading ""Information Access in a Networked World"" »

December 4, 2007

Who Clicks on Ads? And What Might This Mean?

by: danah boyd

Advertising is the bread and butter of the web, yet most of my friends claim that they never click on ads, typically using a peacock tone that signals their pride in being ad-averse. The geekier amongst them go out of their way to run Mozilla scripts to scrape ads away, bemoaning the presence of consumer culture. Yet, companies increasingly rely on ad revenue to turn a profit and, while clicking on ads ?may? be declining, it certainly hasn't gone away. This raises a critical question: Who are the people that click on ads?

Continue reading "Who Clicks on Ads? And What Might This Mean?" »

December 3, 2007

Six Apart Sells LiveJournal. Baroo??

by: danah boyd

In 2005, I penned an article in Salon ("Turmoil in blogland") to address my concerns over Six Apart's acquisition of LiveJournal.

When Six Apart bought LiveJournal, it did not simply purchase a tool -- it bought a culture. LJ challenges a lot of assumptions about blogging, and its users have different needs. They typically value communication and identity development over publishing and reaching mass audiences.

Continue reading "Six Apart Sells LiveJournal. Baroo??" »

December 2, 2007

Boyd's Law of Social Network Sites

by: danah boyd

::giggle:: While I was off the grid, Cory Doctorow created a law of social network sites and named it after me:

Continue reading "Boyd's Law of Social Network Sites" »

Must see video: "We Think" vs."The Cult of the Amateur"

by: Alain Thys

Have you ever wondered what would happen if  We Think's Charles Leadbeater would meet Silicon Valley's self-proclaimed anti-christ Andrew Keen who's written The Cult of the Amateur ?

Continue reading "Must see video: "We Think" vs."The Cult of the Amateur"" »

December 1, 2007

Green Marketing on Social Networks

by: David Wigder

Participation in social networks continues to grow seemingly without bounds as more people seek to connect, share and collaborate with likeminded individuals online. Today, hundreds of millions of online users have already signed up, with an increasing number belonging to more than one network.

Continue reading "Green Marketing on Social Networks" »

November 15, 2007

The Purpose Driven Blog

by: David Armano

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question. Should digital agencies be blogging? I mean, we are out there advising clients on "social media" and how it's evolving the way we interact with brands and each other. Some folks felt that the question was silly. Isn't this a no brainer? Well, not exactly. The best part of the post came in the comments (no surprise) and the post itself got picked up by several agencies who use internal blogs to discuss issues like this. This means that they are having conversations in private vs. publicly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But wouldn't you like to be fly on that agency's wall? I would.

Continue reading "The Purpose Driven Blog" »

November 13, 2007

Serious Games Bring the Mall to Web Browsers

by: Eliane Alhadeff

A web based virtual shopping mall launched in New Zealand, allows users to navigate a three dimensional space to browse and buy products, bringing what the company says is the same shopping experience as in the real world. http://www.themallplus.com/ is not a portal that redirects consumers to third party websites, instead creating an online virtual shopping mall.

Continue reading "Serious Games Bring the Mall to Web Browsers" »

It's Live! New JCMC on Social Network Sites

by: danah boyd

It gives me unquantifiable amounts of joy to announce that the JCMC special theme issue on "Social Network Sites" is now completely birthed. It was a long and intense labor, but all eight newborn articles are doing just fine and the new mommies are as proud as could be. So please, join us in our celebration by heading on over to the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication and snuggling up to an article or two. The more you love them, the more they'll prosper!

Continue reading "It's Live! New JCMC on Social Network Sites" »

November 12, 2007

Explaining The Social Graph

by: David Armano

Everyone's talking about Social Graphs and Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a wonderful and brief synapsis of what a Social Graph is and what it means to your business.

Continue reading "Explaining The Social Graph" »

November 11, 2007

Office Influentials

by: David Armano

"When you think “social media” a few names and images come to mind. You might think of Robert Scoble who is essentially a “Weblebrity” or Jeff Jarvis who leveraged his blog to amplify his gripes with Dell’s customer service creating “Dell Hell”. But there’s a new reality that’s much less dramatic and becoming more pervasive if not mainstream in the modern day office. Some of your employees may be leading double lives which often blurs the lines between personal and career—they are “super-connecters” who leverage social media tools to amplify their communications and conversations with hundreds and possibly thousands of people across the globe…

Continue reading "Office Influentials" »

November 10, 2007

Yahoo, the "Moral Pygmy" problem and reputation on the Internet

by: Dominic Basulto

Morally_you_are_pygmies One minute you're the CEO of one of the most powerful Internet companies in the world, the next you're a "moral pygmy" being disgraced by media publications all over the world. Reputation on the Internet can be difficult to measure, and even more difficult to protect.

Continue reading "Yahoo, the "Moral Pygmy" problem and reputation on the Internet" »

November 9, 2007

Social Networks Used as Back-doors by Scammers for Online Fraud

by: Yann Gourvennec

In a Wall Street Journal article entitled Web Scammer Targets Senior U.S. Executives is an amazing account of a Mr Stewart’s chase for the uncovering of a Romanian scammer, complete with Mr Stewart’s extraordinary biography (a guy who 15 years ago was mopping the floor is in McDonald’s restaurants and had barely a dime and couldn’t even buy a computer, and has now become a world leading expert in computer security).

Continue reading "Social Networks Used as Back-doors by Scammers for Online Fraud" »

November 4, 2007

Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Differences in Usage of Facebook and MySpace

by: Danah Boyd

In June, I wrote a controversial blog essay about how U.S. teens appeared to be self-dividing by class on MySpace and Facebook during the 2006-2007 school year. This piece got me into loads of trouble for all sorts of reasons, forcing me to respond to some of the most intense critiques.

Continue reading "Race/Ethnicity and Parent Education Differences in Usage of Facebook and MySpace" »

Open Social - the Social Network For Companies Scared Of Facebook

by: Karl Long

And myspace might be saying “Thanks for the add” to google as well.

I had initially thought this story from Tech Crunch was like a formation of a “coalition of the willing” with the other social networks, but I’m begining to think it might have much bigger implications.

Continue reading "Open Social - the Social Network For Companies Scared Of Facebook" »

November 2, 2007

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

by: danah boyd

For over a year now, Nicole Ellison and I have been working on putting together a special issue of JCMC on "Social Network Sites." Not all of the pieces are live yet, so I'm going to wait until they are before highlighting them and encouraging you to go there. (But! If you want to get a taste, their abstracts are all up on the site as temporary holders.)

Continue reading "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" »

October 30, 2007

Innovation's Social Externalities

by: danah boyd

In business, the economic concept of "externalities" has tremendous salience. In short, an externality is a cost that a third party must bear due to the actions of others. For example, air pollution is considered an externality of manufacturing. In theory, as protectors of the public good, reasonable governments should regulate corporate externalities through imposed taxes. (In reality...) More and more, discussion of environment externalities is a core part of business.

Continue reading "Innovation's Social Externalities" »

October 29, 2007

Choose Your Own Ethnography

by: danah boyd

For this year's Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) conference, I put together a paper reflecting on my methodological choices in pursuing an understanding of how youth engage with networked publics. In it, I try to lay out my decisions, my successes, and my failures. This paper is written in loving memory of my advisor Peter Lyman.

"Choose Your Own Ethnography: In Search of (Un)Mediated Life"

Enjoy!

Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/10/25/choose_your_own.html

October 28, 2007

The Looming Dark Horizon: When the IP Mess Hits Industrial Design & Co.

by: C. Sven Johnson

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my primary interest in tracking the intellectual property issues currently plaguing the music and movie industries, waiting in the ebook wings for book publishers, and even frustrating hordes of bloggers whose content is appropriated and used to create spamblogs, is that at some point their problems become my problems; becomes the problem of anyone who designs and fabricates real products for a living.

Continue reading "The Looming Dark Horizon: When the IP Mess Hits Industrial Design & Co." »

October 27, 2007

Web Trend Map 2.0

by: Dominic Basulto

Web_trends_20_map The Japanese Web site Information Architects has once again created a wonderful graphical representation of the most popular Internet destinations. (click to enlarge)

Continue reading "Web Trend Map 2.0" »

We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes

by: Karl Long

Todd linked to this excellent viral homage to some of the notable viral videos of the last few years. Believe me they list a hell of a lot, but what I found interesting was the number of deliberate commercial “virals” for want of a better word. These are the companies/people that managed to achieve what I believe is quite a feat, to launch a deliberate campaign that “goes viral”.

Continue reading "We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes" »

October 26, 2007

Interesting Snippets: The Book

by: Lynette Webb

Ta da... after a stupidly long delay, finally the book is ready. :-)

Ironically the hold up wasn't getting the content together, it was finding a cover image and binding that I liked - it took me 3 goes to get right!

Continue reading "Interesting Snippets: The Book" »

Some Comments on the Microsoft / Facebook Deal

By: Stefan Kolle

Although we usually tend to steer clear from pure news related events, as these tend to be discussed in so many other places, I do want to add a few quick comments on the Microsoft / Facebook deal. (In the rather unlikely case you have missed it - here's the story)

I'd like to make two seemingly contradictory obervations:
A. Facebook will be a disappointment in the long run, particularly from an advertisers perspective
B. Microsoft did a brilliant deal and will make it's money back several times over.

Continue reading "Some Comments on the Microsoft / Facebook Deal" »

October 19, 2007

Web 2.0 and the 4 Cs

by: Idris Mootee

Web 2.0 is a loaded term that is unarguably subject to enormous amount of hype but now also a lot of serious corporate interest. Different people define Web 2.0 in different ways, which are often confusing and is understandable (same as branding, strategy and many other words). I have written a lot the last few weeks on Web 2.0 and Media 2.0.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 and the 4 Cs" »

October 18, 2007

Three Traits of Successful Blogs - Focus, Passion, and Originality

by: Karl Long

Someone on LinkedIn just posed this question “How can one make Blogs more enjoyable or What is that you do to maintain the popularity/readership of your blog?“. Here are my thoughts on this, this may not be all that leads to a successful blog, but these are for me pretty essential ingredients: Focus, Passion, and Originality.

Continue reading "Three Traits of Successful Blogs - Focus, Passion, and Originality" »

October 16, 2007

Interactive Agency Blogs and “the long and the short of it” Podcast

by: Karl Long

At the Forrester Consumer forum David Armano successfully goaded me into doing a podcast, with his promise of creating a logo for me, and the condition that he can be my first guest i acquiesce. His suggestion was to call it “The long and the short of it”, which I kind of like, it plays nicely off my last name, and seems like an appropriate homage to one of my favorite podcasts, American Copywriter. The connection is of course the infamous American Copywriter drinking game which is you take a drink any time someone says “The long and the short of it” amongst other things.

Continue reading "Interactive Agency Blogs and “the long and the short of it” Podcast" »

October 13, 2007

My role in a marketer's dream

by: Danah Boyd

This morning, I spoke on a panel at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The day before, a guy from Unilever gave a presentation on what happens when users take up your content and spread it all across the web. He was invited to be on the panel at the last moment because of a cancellation and because his presentation was so well received wrt Web 2.0. Right before we go on, I'm informed that the guy from Unilever was talking about the Dove Evolution campaign that was spread all over YouTube.  This is the moment where I went white.

Continue reading "My role in a marketer's dream" »

October 12, 2007

Ad Agency's Disruptive Future? Can the Old Dogs Survive It?

by: Idris Mootee

"Password to Marketers' Meeting: Digital" as reported in a headline today by Suznee Vranica of WSJ. Wonder how many marketers have those secret passwords? In this crazy business environment, marketing is ready to be reinvented. No one is sure to who is taking the lead to drive this change. I have some ideas. I am sure you do too.

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October 10, 2007

AdWeek on Target's and Wal-Mart's Facebook Efforts

by: Ilya Vedrashko

AdWeek runs a kind of post-mortem on the two nearly identical Facebook back-to-school campaigns by Target and Wal-Mart. Nothing really new here; Target's was apparently successful, and Wal-Mart's became a board for voicing broader anti-company concerns.

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The Shifting Balance of Power: When CRM becomes CMR

by: Christian Smagg

Many organisations aspire to be customer-centric, yet few have figured out the recipe for successfully transforming their business. It seems like it was just yesterday that companies were discovering the importance of implementing CRM technologies and strategies aimed at acquiring new customers, managing effectively customer interactions, selling more to current customers, analysing the effectiveness of marketing activities and providing better customer service. All in the name of building stronger, longer lasting business relationships. Well, today is a new day, and the customers now decide who they do business with, as well as how and when they will do so.

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October 9, 2007

Beyond Viral: 3 ideas for Co-Creative Marketing

by: Karl Long

So this is some early experimental thinking here so feel free to poke holes, call bullshit, or add your own take in the comments.

I’m using the term co-creative marketing here as I think it’s a better more holistic term than “viral”. I still think viral is a totally valid tactic, but I don’t think it’s a strategy. Viral in most cases is not much better than a 30 second spot except it’s distribution is cheaper, I guess that’s why marketers and advertisers are so generally comfortable with the concept.

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October 5, 2007

Social Roles in Web Communities

by: Roger Dooley

Every community operator knows that it takes different kinds of participants to be successful. Some people come looking for answers, others come to help. Some like to expound at length, while others say little. Some are lurkers, others are prolific contributors. Researchers from Cornell and Microsoft have produced some interesting research that graphically represents different community roles.

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The Road to Dell: Part One

by: David Armano

Img_0825

Unlike Jarvis, my journey on the road to Dell didn't start as a customer—it started as a blogger.

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October 1, 2007

The Greening of P.R.: Read All About It

by: Joel Makower

You wouldn't think that the world of green business would need much more publicity, given all the media stories, blogs, websites, TV shows, billboards, events, and other shout-outs plugging green companies, products, and services.

Continue reading "The Greening of P.R.: Read All About It" »

September 29, 2007

Google Powered Serious Games: A New Virtual World?

by: Eliane Alhadeff  (also see Business & Games)


TechCrunch, among several other sites, recaps the rumors of a Google powered virtual world based on Google Earth which surfaced in January; over the weekend there was word that Google might be testing their virtual world at Arizona State University (ASU).

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September 27, 2007

A Collection of Virtual World News Items

by: C. Sven Johnson via Business & Games

Well, there’s been so much buzz about the possibility Google is creating a multi-user virtual world it’s kind of hard to miss. What’s equally hard for me to miss is the apparent surprise being registered by so many people. Hello? Are Google and Microsoft investing time and money in creating 3D representations of the Earth so that we can simply be impressed? so that we can download their applications and wander around them in social isolation like some modern version of The Omega Man… minus vampires? C’mon, already.

Continue reading "A Collection of Virtual World News Items" »

Ten Questions with Chris Brogan

by: Guy Kawasaki

Brogan.jpg

Chris Brogan is a social media expert specializing in building communities using digital tools. He is co-founder of PodCamp, a free unconference exploring the use of social media like podcasting and videoblogging to build relationships. He produces the Video on the Net conference for Pulvermedia and blogs at Chrisbrogan.com

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September 25, 2007

Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll is published

by: David Jennings

Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll coverMy book is out in the UK. If you buy it from Amazon.co.ukBuy Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll from Amazon.co.uk, you'll make me happy. If you can add to the reviews for the book, you'll make me even happier.

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September 24, 2007

Which consumer 2.0 are you?

by: Christian Smagg

Blogs, podcasts, video-sharing sites, social networks ... You will find below great graphical representations of Forrester's Social Technographics® research results … a very informative set of charts as to the demographics of Internet users and how they spend their time online.

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September 23, 2007

Taking Care of Your Best Community Members

by: Roger Dooley

Online community builders love to toss around gross numbers - twenty thousand members, two million posts, and so on. Amid all the statistics, it’s important to recognize that all community members aren’t created equal - some are a lot more prolific.

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September 21, 2007

Social Networking Site for Avatars Launches

by: Ilya Vedrashko

This is too meta. Koinup, a social networking site for avatars from across all virtual worlds, just sent a press release about its launch: "In Koinup you can create your profile and publish pics, videos (machinima) and stories you created in virtual worlds as Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU and also games as The Sims 2 and many others.

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September 13, 2007

A Perscription For Marketers

by: David Armano

Next Wednesday I find myself on a social media related panel at Promo 2007.  Why am I going?  Event Marketing is a little out of my range, but Herb Sawer from Carmichael Lych put together an interesting line-up including Noah Brier from Naked Communications and Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy PR.

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September 12, 2007

Enterprise 2.0 … Show me the ROI

by: Christian Smagg

While Enterprise 2.0 is often described as “web 2.0 meets the enterprise”, what Enterprise 2.0 encompasses is much bigger. Enterprise 2.0 represents a radical change in the way businesses operate and is as much about the people, the culture and the processes as it is about the technology, tools and platforms.

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September 11, 2007

Why Users Create Content

by: Roger Dooley

A key aspect of Web 2.0 is letting users create or enhance a site’s content. This sounds great, but in practice can be hard to achieve. The Web is littered with dead forums, unreviewed products, spammed-out wikis, and other failed attempts to build user-created sites.

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September 10, 2007

SNS visibility norms (a response to Scoble)

by: Danah Boyd

A few days ago, I lamented the tech crowd's Facebook fetish. Scoble raised the bar by responding to all of my nitpicks. Now, it's my turn again. Tehehe.

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September 9, 2007

Controlling your public appearance

by: Danah Boyd

In the last month, I've received almost a dozen panicked emails from people who had commented on my blog at one point or another and were horrified to find that their comment was at the top of Google's search for their name.

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September 8, 2007

Code Of Ethics For Blogger Outreach Programs

by: Karl Long

In the last couple of years the idea of reaching out to bloggers as a PR/Marketing tactic has started to become a mainstay for companies looking to engage early adopters and technology leaders. I’ve personally been amazed at the sophistication and scale of programs that I have been privy to.

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September 7, 2007

What's Wrong with what Mary Digby did

by: John Caddell

No, she wasn't caught partying with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan. She wasn't arrested or sent to rehab.

As described in a front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal (link - $$), musician Marie Digby made simple videos of herself singing cover songs, posted them on YouTube, got millions of views, and parlayed that into gigs on the Carson Daly show, local LA radio, and general buzz as a true YouTube discovery.

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Evangelism, Transparency, and Integrity in the blogosphere

by: Karl Long

I was just reading a post on Scoblizer where Robert is talking about the iPhone price drop and in the middle of the post I came across this statement:

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September 6, 2007

Confused by Facebook

by: Danah Boyd

Social network sites have become powerful tools and platforms for all sorts of content and cultural producers. Starting with Friendster, artists leveraged the network capabilities to communicate with their fans. This took on a new level with MySpace, resulting in the explicit creation of artist profiles. Even within the constraints of Facebook, artists built groups and found other ways to collect and communicate with their fans.

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Questions For The Agency Executive

by: David Armano

Many of the senior folks who work at a variety of agencies (design, advertising, PR,—take your pick) are actually digital immigrants vs. digital natives.  This means folks like myself (30-somethings) knew what life was like before the digital revolution.  Digital natives, however have grown up with digital technologies from birth—some have never seen a tape cassette.

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August 27, 2007

Lifestreams

by: David Armano

Analog Networks
When I was a boy—I can remember how my Mother would spend a good part of her Sundays.  She would take out her phonebook—a tattered collection of names and numbers written in handwriting you could barely read, and re-connect with her personal network—an intimate collection a family and friends.  She didn't create media other than the pictures she took or the video my father shot on his 8mm video camera. 

Continue reading "Lifestreams" »

August 26, 2007

Chemistry as Architecture

by: Danah Boyd

Jo Guldi and I were musing last night about architecture and I got to thinking about Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He lays out a framework that there are four regulatory forces operating in society: law, market, social norms, and architecture. The core of his argument is that code (the programming matter that makes up all things digital) is architecture.

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August 25, 2007

PR Disasters Lurk in Web 2.0 Chicanery

by: Roger Dooley

The good news is that companies, even big ones, are waking up to the power of online communities, and that they are taking steps like starting their own communities for discussion, ratings, reviews, and social networking as well as participating at other sites. The bad news is that sometimes they get carried away.

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Anonymous Edits To Wikipedia Revealed Through Wikiscanner

by: Karl Long

I read a great article in the SF Bay Guardian written by Annalee Newitz who blogs at techsploitation.com (awesome name). Anyway, the article is called And the real anonymous trolls online are . . . . In this article she skewers the very un-anonymous troll Andrew Keen, who’s been crying about how the internets is undermining his word view of authority and modernity (maybe he should check out Bioshock).

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Blogger Against Ad Blocking

by: Ilya Vedrashko

In this blog's spirit of bridging the gap between geekdom and advertising, witness the plight of a guy who decided he'd had enough of Firefox ad-blocking add-on users ripping ads off his blog and blocked access for anyone using the browser.

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August 24, 2007

Australian Education.AU seminar talks

by: Danah Boyd

Earlier this month, I had the great fortune to go to Australia as a seminar speaker for Education.AU. Everyone warned me that it was winter and would be frigid, but to my delight, the weather in Melbourne and Brisbane was not any colder than a San Francisco summer day. I didn't get to see much of Australia (saving the 'roos for next time), but I did have a fantastic time. The people were wonderful, the food was delicious (go Melbourne), and it was just so great to be around so many folks invested in education who were not afraid of technology.

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August 23, 2007

Social Gestures, Objects, and Equity

by: Karl Long

Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?

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August 22, 2007

Blended Distribution Strategies & New Marketing Opportunities

by: Josh Hawkins

Last week, Phil Leigh, host of the video blog "Digital Media Thought Leaders," posted a two part interview I did on broadband media distribution and marketing. In the interview, I touch on a number of strategies I believe are necessary for content owners to run a successful broadband video business and for marketers to take advantage of the fast-changing and self-selecting consumer media behavior. 

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August 21, 2007

MIT Media Studies Grad Theses

by: Ilya Vedrashko

The newest batch of MIT Comparative Media Studies grad theses is up. Lots of good stuff on transmedia storytelling, engagement, convergence, and mobile MMORPGs. Great job, guys, and good luck.

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/08/mit-media-studies-grad-theses.html

August 20, 2007

The New Futurelab 100: Have the Brand Gods Gone Crazy?

by: Alain Thys

Futurelab 100Not so long ago, David Armano suggested that someone forgot to send me the memo that Social Media weren't what I made them out to be. But when I look at the Futurelab 100 which we're publishing today, I think I've completely lost my in-tray. The first time I looked at it, I thought ... OK, interesting. But when Stefan came up with one extra piece of information, I was simply blown away.

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August 19, 2007

Pig-in-a-blog for Rexona

By: Marina Natanova

rexonaThe Russian blogosphere (ca. 2 million journals) is going crazy about the recent Rexona ad campaign. A new TV ad (click here to see video) together with a promo-site announced that Russian women... er... were less attentive to themselves than Polish or German ladies.

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August 18, 2007

Luxury Brands Should Jump on the Social Network Parties

by: Idris Mootee

 Luxury brands are finally joining the social network parties. Remy Martin, a cognac that sells for over $1,500 a bottle, Remy Martin's Louis XIII's customers are looking beyond traditional media for marketing. They are planning a big marketing push with a by-invitation-only social network aSmallWorld for an experiential campaign that extend into offline events targeting clients with a fifth over $1 mm annual income.

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August 16, 2007

Welcome to Home, Sharehopper

by: C. Sven Johnson (via Business & Games)

A few days back additional details were revealed about Sony’s new “Home” virtual world. Since then I’ve been trading comments over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link); some of which might be of interest.

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August 13, 2007

The Neuroscience of Second Life

by: Roger Dooley

These days, people are spending a lot of time online, much of it in Web communities and social networks. Second Life is a virtual world in which users create avatars to represent themselves and interact with others.

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August 12, 2007

The Techy 50-plus

by: Dick Stroud

This Reuter’s article is an interesting reflection on the 50-plus and their tech literacy.

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National School Boards Association pushes for SNS adoption in schools

by: Danah Boyd

While the Attorneys General are off demonizing social network sites, the National Schools Board Association has been collecting data on all of the good things that teenagers are doing with the sites, including learning about colleges, talking about homework, engaging in collaborative projects, and otherwise operating as active learners.

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August 11, 2007

loss of context for me on Facebook

by: Danah Boyd

Le sigh. I lost control over my Facebook tonight. Or rather, the context got destroyed. For months, I've been ignoring most friend requests. Tonight, I gave up and accepted most of them. I have been facing the precise dilemma that I write about in my articles: what constitutes a "friend"? Where's the line?

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Yet another missive about age neutral social networking

by: Dick Stroud

Thanks to Brian Scholz for highlighting an item, posted to his blog thesavvyboomer, that is dedicated to the space where Boomers meet all things Internet and consumer electronics.

Brian like me is amazed at the explosion of social networking web sites targeted at Boomers/50-plus. This is part of what he had to say.

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August 10, 2007

Brilliant Video On Social Bookmarking Even Your Mother Will Understand

by: Karl Long

Also check out their introduction to wikis. Reminds me of the wonderful series of posts on Lifehacker called UltraNewb that are basic lifehacks for the non-nerds.

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August 7, 2007

Social Networks = the AOL's of Web2.0

by: Karl Long

roachmotelReading the Wired “Slap in the Facebook: It’s Time for Social Networks to Open Up” combined with my experience on various social networks makes me wonder if any of them can really be sustainable in the long run.

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August 4, 2007

Mobile Social Networks - Random Thoughts

by Idris Mootee

The idea of mobile social networking first came to my mind three years ago when I was traveling with my colleague Keith Liu from Dulles after meeting with AOL. I was preparing a speech for an upcoming conference on "social computing". We talked about the business idea of launching a dating service based on some social network ideas and location-based services. We were so excited and thought that it'd be a killer idea to use a cell phone as a device for matching that's linked to a social network database. Imagine you walking into a Dean and De Luca and your cell phones scan the database and prompt you how many people there are your type. You can instantly check their profile and decide whether you want to send them a short message.

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More about mushrooms and fertilizer

by: Dick Stroud

Future Lab is one of the blogs that republishes some posting from this blog. It published my musings about the way that social networking sites for the 50-plus are mushrooming and one cause is the surge in traffic volumes of sites like MySpace and FaceBook.

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August 3, 2007

Ageing Web video

by: Dick Stroud

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August 2, 2007

50-plus social networking companies are growing like mushrooms – this is the fertiliser.

by: Dick Stroud

Anybody who reads this blog will know that I am always going on about the way that social networking web sites for the 50-plus are growing like mushrooms on a fine fresh damp morning. This research from Comscore is the metaphorical fertiliser that is stimulating this growth.

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Plugging your company into the Blogosphere!

by: Christian Smagg

Blog_this One of the key benefits every organisation should consider when planning a corporate blogging initiative is how this could participate in its efforts to develop strong website awareness as well as build and sustain traffic.

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July 30, 2007

Crowdsourcing Harry Potter?

by: Alain Thys

rowling_400Spoiler alert: This post gives away a key plot point of the final Harry Potter book. So if you've haven't finished the book, do not read on.

Last week Monday (at 1:30 AM) I finished part 7 of the Harry Potter series and after sat through the young man's wizardry adventures for thousands and thousands of pages, the end of the series felt like losing a friend.

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July 27, 2007

Decisive Factor Is Not how We Create but How We Consume

by: Lynette Webb

I've come close to buying the book "Cult of the Amateur" a few times now, but have shied away as I sensed it was going to be one of those books I threw at the wall every few pages in frustration.

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Online Communities Plus Google Equal Value

by: Roger Dooley

A survey of technical professionals shows a startling level of reliance on Web communities by IT professionals. The report from King Research includes these key findings:

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July 26, 2007

responding to critiques of my essay on class

by: Danah Boyd

One month ago, I put out a blog essay that took on a life of its own. This essay addressed one of America's most taboo topics: class. Due to personal circumstances, I wasn't online as things spun further and further out of control and I had neither the time nor the emotional energy to address all of the astounding misinterpretations that I saw as a game of digital telephone took hold. I've browsed the hundreds of emails, thousands of blog posts, and thousands of comments across the web.

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its a constant surprise to anyone over 30 that large parts of life can end up online

by: Lynette Webb

There was a great article a few months back in New York magazine which I’ve only just stumbled across. It was called “Kids, the Internet and the End of Privacy - the greatest generation gap since rock and roll” and included this great quote from Clay Shirky. It’s long but well worth a read if you haven’t already seen it:
www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&titl.../121589504/ 

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July 20, 2007

If 2 Minds Are Better than One Then How about 2 Thousand?

by: Lynette Webb

This was the title of an article I stumbled across, a review of a book about AI and the way minds work. www.emcp.com/intro_pc/reading12.htm. I can't vouch for the book yet, although I've just ordered it... (I have SO many books piled up now, it's getting ridiculous!)... But something about this phrase just really grabbed me.

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July 19, 2007

open source vs open APIs

by: Lynette Webb

714285747_bde9db18e2_400_01Often the terms “open source” and “open API” get lumped together, as part of an overall web 2.0 type philosophy of “open-ness” and decentralisation. Although spiritually they seem to sit well together, in practice they refer to distinctly different things.

Click image to enlarge.

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July 18, 2007

Facebook Eats MySpace’s Cafeteria Lunch

by: Roger Dooley

My fellow FutureLab blogger, danah boyd, wrote an interesting and controversial essay about the social network migration of high school students: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

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July 17, 2007

list of non-english social network sites

by: Danah Boyd

I'm trying to track down a list of all major non-English social network sites (definitions below). My interest in collecting this information is for an academic article on social network sites, but i suspect this information would be useful to others as well.

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July 16, 2007

"Social Networks" and "Social Identities"

by: Idris Mootee

Everyone is talking about Facebook during the last two weeks. Social networks are becoming commodities just like web-based email accounts such as Hotmail or Gmail. This game isn't about the next upcoming killer features or cool widgets. The value of any social networks are based on:

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Personal Entry: Pre-Alpha

by: C. Sven Johnson

While reading something yesterday concerning marketing in virtual worlds I resisted the urge to comment. Last night and again early this morning, I further resisted the temptation to post something here regarding what I’d read. And I’m now resisting the urge to slip something in. I won’t.

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"Film and the Audience of Tomorrow"

by: Danah Boyd

As promised, i've uploaded the crib from my talk at Cannes for your enjoyment (and critique). It's about film, DRM, remix, MySpace, youth, fandom, film consumption, and other good things.

"Film and the Audience of Tomorrow"

Enjoy!

Original post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/05/30/film_and_the_au.html

July 14, 2007

Is Web 2.0 a manifesto for anarchism?

by: David Jennings

Here are some chapter headings from a book I read on holiday:

The Theory of Spontaneous Order
The Dissolution of Leadership
Harmony Through Complexity
Topless Federations

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July 11, 2007

Some Players Call WoW the New Golf (v2)

by: Lynette Webb

I used this quote in one of the earliest Flickr slides, paired with a screenshot but I was never happy with it. A while back I resurrected it with this much nicer photo and just realised I hadn't posted it to the set - so here it is.

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"The consumer is being consumed"

by: Dominic Basulto

This video clip from 1973 is an oldie but goodie. New York Magazine recently profiled sculptor Richard Serra, who is currently the subject of a new 40-year retrospective exhibit at MoMA.

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July 10, 2007

Book: The Cult of The Amateur

by: Ilya Vedrashko

When the word about Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur" first got out last winter, I was hopeful. Finally, I thought, we'd have an informed and comprehensive antidote to the poisonous hype around all things two point oh: all those conversationalist wise crowds of long-tailed lonelygirls-15 blogging their ride on the participatory cluetrain.

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July 5, 2007

SAP Global Survey on Social Media/Web 2.0

by: Karl Long

It seems that SAP, one of the biggest suppliers of software that help run big businesses is working on a research report to help understand what’s really happening in the world around social media. They have got Shel Israel (co-author with Robert Scoble of Naked Conversations) to help in this and Shel is taking a similar research approach as well, talking to people. one of the great things about Shel’s research is he’s publishing interviews as he goes on his blog, here’s his conversation with Doc Searls, and again with Robert Scoble.

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June 30, 2007

The 7 Basic Rules of Social Network Design for Marketers

by: Idris Mootee

With the rising popularity of social networks and user-driven online services McKinsey conducted a survey on how businesses are using web 2.0. Respondents show widespread but careful interest. Expressing satisfaction with their Internet investments so far, they say that Web 2.0 technologies are strategic and that they plan to increase these investments. However this is not going to be an easy one for these large corporations.

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June 29, 2007

Nokia and Vodafone: Mobile Knowledge for Social Change

by: Dominic Basulto

One result of the popularity of Wikinomics has been the number of collaborative wikis that have been launched by organizations and corporations in order to share ideas around the world.

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Coca-Cola 2.0

by: C. Sven Johnson

I just got off the phone with Coca-Cola’s David Vanderpoel. You might recall his earlier comment regarding the Coca-Cola VirtualThirst campaign in Second Life that came as a result of my critique of the competition rules.

Continue reading "Coca-Cola 2.0" »

June 27, 2007

How to write an innovation cover story for a major business weekly

by: Dominic Basulto

Ok, so I admit it -- I picked up the latest issue of Business Week at the newsstand because I was seduced by the Children of the Web ("How Business is Cashing In on the Global Youth Culture") cover story.

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Call Them Web Page Bling

by: Lynette Webb 

I love this quote… not only does it so perfectly capture what they do, it also has the lovely juxtaposition of the term “widget” (which makes me think of very unsexy sprockets & spanners) and “bling”! It’s from a May 2007 Business Week article. www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2007/tc2007052...

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June 24, 2007

viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

by: Danah Boyd

Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

Continue reading "viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" »

June 23, 2007

Social Networks Next Game

by: Idris Mootee

Continuing on looking at the development of social networks along its lifecycle, search is definitely the next thing that changes its very idea. Whether it's just a manual search (with automated grouping or member-recommended groupings) will depend on the concept models of how each of those social network sites. It's no question search will be the killer feature for social networking sites.

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June 20, 2007

ROI for Communities

By: Idris Mootee
Socntwroi_copy

One big challenge marketers face all the time is the ROI of developing online communities or social networks. The question is what's in it for them as a brand/company and this is always a little tricky. The second question is how close/distant this community needs to be from the company site.

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June 18, 2007

Social Networks for Business

by: Idris Mootee

I was planning to compile a comprehensive list of social networking sites (complete with taxonomies) and it's quite the challenging task. I started with "business" related sites (see the list below) and soon I realized it would be hard to differentiate between a business social networking site and a business "who's who" search engine.

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June 16, 2007

What Would Charlie Do?

by: David Armano

I'm a sucker for successful communication whether it be visual, written, or oral. So take a look at this presentation from Scott Gavin titled "What is Enterprise 2.0"?  It uses a persona based approach to tell a story.

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June 12, 2007

Social software is a movement not just a technology

by: Lynette Webb

lynette1206a_400Danah Boyd gave an interesting talk recently at Blog Reloaded about the significance of social software. I really like her writing style and she’s great at picking out key aspects and expressing them in down-to-earth terms. You can read the full transcript of her talk here: www.danah.org/papers/BlogTalkReloaded.pdf

Click image to enlarge 

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June 7, 2007

What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing

by: Jon Miller

I believe social media has an inherent bias against the realities of B2B marketing. This is the topic of my new article "What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing", now available as part of Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column.

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June 5, 2007

Consumer-Generated Content: An Underleveraged Opportunity for Green Retailers

by: David Wigder

Online retailers find that consumer-generated content such as product reviews and ratings have a significant influence on consumer purchasing behavior. 

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June 4, 2007

By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09

by: Guy Kawasaki

Because of Truemors, I’ve learned a lot about launching a company in these “Web 2.0” times. Here’s quick overview “by the numbers.”

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May 31, 2007

web 2.0 is messy way the semantic web is happening

by: Lynette Webb

518396170_8525533d43_400I really like this quote because, to me, it explains in a nutshell how “tagging” - which has emerged as one of the Web 2.0 standard functionalities - is connected to the broader long-term direction of web development.

Click image to enlarge.

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May 22, 2007

Ten (Nine) Questions with Anastasia Goodstein

by: Guy Kawasaki

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Anastasia Goodstein covers Generation Y in her blog YPulse. She has worked for Current TV, AOL, and Oxygen TV. She recently published a book that will help you understand the online activities of young people called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online.

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May 20, 2007

"Significance of Social Software" in BlogTalks Reloaded

by: Danah Boyd

Last fall, i spoke at BlogTalk Reloaded. They've turned a bunch of our talks into full papers packaged and published as a book titled: BlogTalks Reloaded. My piece is The Significance of Social Software. I look at the culture surrounding, technology of, and practices embedded in social software. It was a fun keynote and it's a fun piece in print so i hope you enjoy!    The Significance of Social Software

Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/05/19/significance_of.html

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May 19, 2007

Strategic marketing leverages content, connection, community

by: John Caddell

John Jantsch's blog "Duct Tape Marketing," focused on the small businessperson, pops up with a killer post on occasion (the rest of the time, it's a bit too commercial, with lots of plugs for his book and others' products). One of the really good posts was yesterday: "Are You Investing in Long Term Marketing?"

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May 18, 2007

Web2.0 Business Readiness Self Assessment & IABC Presentation

by: Alexander Osterwalder

This week I was invited to do a presentation on social media for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). While preparing the slides I thought I'd through in a little extra and added a quickly done tool (I see it as a prototype):  A Web2.0 Business Readiness Self Assessment Canvas.

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May 14, 2007

Playboy Soon in Second Life

by: Ilya Vedrashko

playboy_islandPlayboy Island in Second Life is opening soon. Look for Playboy in group search, join, and you too can be a playmate (that's the title group members get automatically). I bumped today into someone who said the island was actually open, but when I tried, the teleport failed.

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Blogs Are Free Samples of Your Brand

by: David Armano

The headline of this post is borrowed from my good friend Mike Wagner who I felt captured the significance of the business blogging event also known as SOBCon 07.  Here's the presentation I gave which can be downloaded from Slideshare.

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May 10, 2007

Fan sites RIP?

by: David Jennings

Andy Aldridge, who created one of my favourite fan sites, and whom I interviewed for the book (notes to appear here when I get round to it), is asking whether such sites are on the way out.

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