Roundup: Journalists atwitter about social media

Roundup:

• Alana Taylor at PBS's MediaShift blog: Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media. Excerpt:

Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas. Twitter is hope for the future. It is promise of change. Twitter is journalism's Obama.

• Mark Glaser at the MediaShift blog talks with Rufus Griscom, founder of literate smut site Nerve.com and hipster parenting site Babble.com. In a down economy, Griscom managed to snag $2 million in venture funding for Babble and hopes to create SEO-friendly resource pages for parents to help it become the leading parenting site online.

• Julie Posetti at MediaShift: How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections.

• David Coursey at PC World: Five years of Facebook: A retrospective.

• David Sasaki at the IdeaLab blog: Protests in Madagascar and the Importance of Citizen Journalism Training.

• Dan Gillmor at the IdeaLab blog: Endow Newspapers? Wrong Question.

• I'm just getting grounded again after a quick trip to New York, so if you've tried to contact me in the past week without success, try again. You may have noticed I haven't been posting daily here lately. That's because I'm working on a relaunch of Socialmedia.biz — and it's a lot of work.

February 5, 2009 at 01:22 PM in Citizen media, New media, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Overrelying on Facebook or Twitter could jeopardize your business

Mark Glaser at PBS's MediaShift blog: Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business. Excerpt:

"Depending on a third-party service for your livelihood is folly. If they change one component or policy, you could be out of business (or forced to change your business model, which may prove expensive). You can and should use the services for what they provide, but never invest too much time and attention into one platform or another. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow." -- tech blogger Chris Pirillo

January 29, 2009 at 09:43 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Worldwide Inauguration via Twitter

At noon EST, Barack H. Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In this short video, watch as the (Twitter) world watched.

January 23, 2009 at 12:50 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

A 20something on social media and today's news

Lauren on social media & modern news from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's one of a series of interviews I'm doing on social media and the future of news and journalism. Those in the news business and journalism educators can learn a lot from Lauren of San Francisco, who sat down with me last month to discuss how she uses social networks and how she and her 20something friends are getting their news today. Young people's media habits are rapidly changing and traditional media organizations haven't kept pace. The video is 7 minutes long and was shot on a noisy street in San Francisco.

Watch video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo (embedded above)

January 16, 2009 at 05:24 PM in Media, New media, Social networks, Social-media, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

'20 ways to being a bigger Friendfeed monster'

Robert Scoble: 20 ways to being a bigger Friendfeed monster. He writes:

Just watch this video where I show you the 20 key features of friendfeed and how to use them to be an aggregating social media monster!

Robert's become a terrific advocate for Friendfeed in the past year. Like Guy Kawasaki, I'm a dabbler, but so far still prefer Twitter and Facebook.

January 2, 2009 at 11:05 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (1)

Top Social Media Sites of 2008

TechCrunch reports on the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 from a report by ComScore. Excerpt:

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger ... still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook ... is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.

Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. It is really more of a social media site list, which is what I’m renaming it for this post. It is not definitive, but it gives a good lay of the land. (Here is a similar ranking from 2007). ...

Top Social Media Sites

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)

(ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)

December 31, 2008 at 09:26 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (1)

Twitter poll on my logo

A little while ago I asked my Twitter friends in an instant-tweet poll which new logo they liked best for this site and received 20 votes within a few minutes. (Have a preference? Better vote fast!) And obviously, these designs are copyrighted and can't be republished elsewhere.

Later: Here are the results of my insta-tweet poll:

Logo #3: 17 1/2

Logo #2: 7 1/2

Logo #4: 5

Logo #1: 2

December 31, 2008 at 05:20 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (4) | | (0)

Highlights of the Web in 2008

Orli Yakuel whipped up this coolio 4-minute Animoto video running down highlights of the Web in 2008.

Dan Schawbel at Mashable: Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.

MediaPost: Social Media Wins In Marketers' '09 Plans. Excerpt:

56% of marketing and publishing decision-makers plan to increase their content marketing spending next year, Junta42 found after surveying its community of corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals.

What's more, a full 31% expressed their intention to increase spending on content significantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly. ...

Alex Castro at Mashable: Peering into 2009: 10 Predictions for Online Video.

TechCrunch: YouTube Looks Back At A Year In Video; Hulu Brings in 2009 Live From New York.

Web 2.0 case study on Barack Obama's use of social media.

SearchEngineWatch: Will Social Networks Become the New Inbox? Part 1 and Part 2.

Social Media Today: 7 Social Media & Web Analytics Predictions for 2009.

David Armano: 10 Reasons Obama Should Continue On Twitter.

Todd Defren at PR Squared: Answering the Challenges of Social Media Adoption.

December 31, 2008 at 01:32 AM in Social networks, Social-media, Video, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social media influencers' predictions for 2009

Social media roundup:

• Social Media Influencers Predictions 2009 By Trendsspotting on SlideShare (view small or full screen).

• Influencers On Mobile 2009 & 2020 Predictions By Trendsspotting

• Tracyphaup.com: Top 20 Social Networking Sites.

• Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb lists the Top 100 Products of 2008.

• You can now create video cards with Skype to send your own video greetings on Facebook.

• ReadWriteWeb: Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008. Excerpt:

ChaCha, as a search tool, is human-powered, general, and mobile. There is no website, no search box, and no page witih a list of ten links. To use ChaCha, simply call 1-800-2ChaCha (1-800-224-2242) in the US, or send a text to 242242. When you call, leave your query just as you would any other voice-mail message, and hang up. Within 2 to 5 minutes, a human guide will have researched and texted you the answer. I used ChaCha with only my cheap cell phone when I was lost in New York City at midnight. And that's an important point: you can call ChaCha at any time with any question for any reason on any phone -- as long as that phone can receive text messages. And, aside from your carrier's incoming text fees, ChaCha is free.

I get that ChaCha is making a play for mobile search, but I don't get why I can't send them a much more precise and accurate email or instant message instead of having to leave a voicemail.

• Peter Kim's PDF roundup of social media influencers' predictions for 2009 is also available on SlideShare.

December 30, 2008 at 08:21 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Building an online presence - and occasional fame

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

In Shannon Paul's post about how to build an online presence, I just caught this 2-year-old video on Vimeo that's at once funny and smart — a rare combination. If you haven't seen it before, check it out. Here's the context. I also just subscribed to Amanda's videos; she's done much more than I have on Vimeo so far.

December 28, 2008 at 03:19 AM in Amusing, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

The art of dumping online friends

Wall Street Journal: OMG, We're Not BFFs Anymore? Getting 'Unfriended' Online Stings. Users of Social-Networking Sites Delete Friends Who Don't Keep in Touch, Misbehave. Excerpt:

Unfriending online "friends" is emerging as the latest offense in the world of social networking. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow people to build personal profiles with photos, videos and up-to-the-minute updates about their lives, then to share them with select users, or "friends." The process has even turned the word "friend" into a verb, as in, "so-and-so just friended me on Facebook." Users agonize over whom to friend (your mom? your ex-boyfriend? your boss?), and worry about whether their friend requests will be accepted or ignored, lingering in cyberspace in what some dub "friend purgatory."

Now, people who have accumulated hundreds, or in some cases more than a thousand, friends are cutting loose some of the ones they have lost touch with or who were little more than acquaintances from the start. It's a shift from the days when users, eager to boast about their online popularity, added new friends with abandon, whether or not they really knew them.

December 26, 2008 at 12:27 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Twitter launches people search

John Battelle's Searchblog: Twitter Launches People Search.

This is huge for Twitter. As search becomes totally incorporated into the Twitter interface, the service will hit a critical inflection point. Search as its interface is the problem and the solution, and it's great to see the progress being made (yes, finally). Twitter people search.

That's great news. Like many diehard Twitterers I've long been hoping for this feature and, as John points out, there are commercial opportunities for the company that search brings.

December 24, 2008 at 05:14 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (3) | | (0)

The problem with Twitter

Steve Matthews at the Stem Legal blog: The Problem with Twitter. Is all that attention you're paying other social networks worth your mindshare?

Related: Mike Arrington at TechCrunch: I’m Sorry Robert [Scoble], But It’s Time For A Friendfeed Intervention. Scoble responds on his blog.

I wrote 12 days ago about Twitter Addiction.

December 24, 2008 at 02:30 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Twitter addiction

I've known Twitter founder Evan Williams for a few years now — you can't help but run into Ev at events like Web 2.0, TechCrunch50 (here are some photos of him) and Creative Commons gatherings — so it's been interesting to watch Twitter grow from an interesting Web 2.0 tool to the cusp of a cultural phenomenon. (It's the second time Ev has caught lightning in a bottle, after Blogger.)

Above is a conversation between Ev and John Battelle at the recent Conversational Marketing Summit in San Francisco that explores Twitter in some detail.

I was initially skeptical about Twitter, but after a couple of weeks it just clicked, and I've been using it — even more than Facebook — as my favorite micro-blogging tool. Feel free to "follow" me here.

A number of services have grown up around Twitter that have helped propel it into prime time, such as Summize (which Twitter purchased and rebranded as Twitter Search), Twhirl, Tweetdeck, hashtags and now Mr. Tweet, which switched on earlier this month.

Twitter now has more than 2.2 million regular users (Williams suggests that the Quantcast estimate is low), it has become the way a lot of us are hearing about breaking news, and it's clear, as Ev says, that it has grown far beyond its original geek boy constituency.

It's reached a tipping point. Dare I say, Twitter is becoming mainstream.

Mr. Tweet's influence

The latest phenomenon that has kicked Twitter subscriptions into overdrive is Mr. Tweet. I've had more then 400 new subscribers in the past 7 days (welcome, folks!), chiefly thanks to this service, which lists for you the Twitter influencers beyond your network and the Twitter followers you may want to follow back. (Read the Mr. Tweet blog here.)

I've probably also doubled the number of people I follow over the past couple of months, not just people I thought I was following (and wasn't), but new voices, new ideas. I won't do Twitter SMS on my mobile (who wants to pay the phone company?), but on my laptop and at the desktop, I now tweet several times a day.

I will even cop to this: I now routinely answer my Twitter direct-messages and replies far more frequently than my email. So, if you really want to get in touch with me, DM me through Twitter.

Soon, I'll be looking into a 10-step program, no doubt.

Louis Gray gives this all a thorough rundown here: Twitter Followers Spiking As Service Increases Momentum.

December 12, 2008 at 02:13 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (3) | | (0)

40 million Americans contribute to social networks

Read Write Web: Forty Million Americans Now Contribute to Social Networking Sites: Who Are They?

According to a new report from Netpop Research, 76% of all U.S. broadband users actively contribute to social media sites in one form or another, and 29% contribute regularly to social networking sites. Among these social networkers, Facebook is quickly catching up to MySpace, though iMeem, LastFM, Digg, and LiveJournal are also very popular with college students. The report also compares the online habits of these social networkers with those broadband subscribers who choose not to contribute to social media sites and finds a number of very interesting differences. ...

December 11, 2008 at 07:24 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Facebook goes HD and enables open embeds

Facebook is turning into a legitimate video hosting and sharing platform with two important developments that are captured in this Robert Scoble video interview:

• It now supports hi-definition videos. I believe they are supported only at modest sizes (in the 400 pixels wide range), while regular videos can go up to 720 pixels wide.

• Facebook is now enabling video embeds on regular websites and blogs. This is a huge step toward Facebook "opening up," as Robert points out. And, yes, it means that you can upload a video to Facebook, embed the video on your outside blog, and your readers will be able to see and play the video without having to sign into Facebook.

Facebook is now getting 100,000 uploads a day, and these moves should make it a much more formidable player in the video hosting space. I know I haven't bothered uploading videos to Facebook because I hate closed ecosystems.

Chris Putnam, software engineer at Facebook who runs the video team, points out the technical limitations:

• Your HD video must be no larger than 1 gigabyte (remember when 20 megabyte videos were considered huge?).

• Your video must be no longer than 20 minutes (for verified members) and 2 minutes (for unverified members).

Congratulations, Facebook, on this important step toward an open Web.

December 6, 2008 at 01:10 AM in Social networks, Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Are social network-crazed young people hazardous to business?

The San Jose Mercury News on employees under 30 in the workplace: 'Hiring Gen Y may be hazardous to your business.'

The article is based on a survey of IT managers, who are often the most conservative, change-resistant stakeholders in any corporation. So I don't put much stock in its conclusions, though I do agree that workers need to be educated about the dangers associated with social networks.

I talked about this at Digital Hollywood in October; excerpt from my blog post:

We've seen a shift from closed, proprietary networks like AOL toward open and semi-open networks and platforms. Traditional norms of privacy are falling away as the digital generation, and the young in particular, embrace the ethos of transparency, media sharing and, to some extent, GPS location awareness. And mass media continue to give way to fragmented niche media at an accelerating pace.

Chris Tolles and I were not concerned, as another panelist was, about the media consumption habits of young people coming up in the workforce. As Chris said, when that 24-year-old office worker is stumped by a problem, he'll have a much larger support network to draw upon, including old friends he went to high school or college with.

December 5, 2008 at 05:18 PM in Business use, Social networks, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

'Koobface' virus spreading fast on Facebook

LA Times blogs:  'Koobface' virus spreading fast on Facebook. Excerpt on how to prevent getting it:

Because of its walled-off internal e-mail system, Facebook has long been a tough target for spammers and other fraudsters, but the "Koobface" virus is a sign that the relative viral calm on the site -- which just today announced an ambitious program to extend its services outside its own tight perimeter -- may have been a luxury. 

The virus' most insidious property is that users receive the offending message from a friend: On Facebook, only people whom users have explicitly approved as friends can send them e-mails. 

The Koobface e-mails have a subject like "You look so amazing funny on our new video," and contain a link to a YouTube-like video site that appears to contain a movie clip (see image).  The video, however, doesn't play, and the website then asks the user to update his or her video software by downloading a file. It's that file that contains the malicious code. ...

Masshightech.com: Boston media members hit by Facebook virus.

“Look you were filmed all naked!” read the subject header on one iteration of the virus-spreading message, which is being sent automatically from infected accounts to the “friend” list for that account. Clicking the link usually takes users to a page that looks like YouTube, and a pop-up message advises the user to download a Flash plug-in. The download contains the virus, which replicates by contacting everyone on the victim’s Facebook friend list and advancing the hoax.

December 4, 2008 at 11:43 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Facebook aims to connect the social media cloud

Sunday NY Times: Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web.

Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.

Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

A lot of us have been pushing for this kind of cross-site interoperability for years, so it's great that we finally have the ear of some of the major social networking sites.

November 30, 2008 at 09:37 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Tapping into the power of LinkedIn

Shel Holz blog: Chuck Hester of iContact and author of the forthcoming book, “Linking In to Pay it Forward: Changing the Value Proposition of Social Media” on tapping into the power of LinkedIn, the business social network that has surged to 30 million profiles.

Go listen to Shel's interview with Hester here.

November 26, 2008 at 07:02 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Feed and care of the reluctant social media client

Some social media pointers:

Aliza Sherman at Web Worker Daily on the feed and care of the reluctant social media client. Excerpt:

If you have a great client you’ve been working with who is resistant to social media but willing to trust you, make sure you factor in the educational process you will have to go through to bring them to a more comfortable place. I’ve had to create special PowerPoint presentations and hold one-on-one sessions to help empower some of my clients so they can embrace a social media strategy instead of looking like a deer caught in headlights. From a business standpoint, you have to account for this additional time and effort and fold it into your consulting fees.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing: Automating Social Media Activity. Excerpt of shortcuts and resources:

1)  TweetLater or EasyTweets
2)  Twitter Tools
3)  Twitter application in Facebook
4)  Feedheads application in Facebook
5)  TweetDeck
6)  Facebook Toolbar for Firefox

From the deeply knowledgeable Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer: How To Be The Social Media Champion At Your Office. Excerpt:

Nothing convinces naysayers like solid, solutions-driven proof. Have a client in another city? Expand your weekly conference call to a video conference featuring text chat and large file sharing by showing everyone ooVoo.com. The first time I recommended that to a client, I thought he was going to kiss me. Seriously. I was kinda frightened.

Having internal communications and work flow problems? Show the project manager BaseCamp. Frustrated with the 14-person approval chain, and accompanying 30-day turnaround, for press releases or company communications pieces? Put the document on Google Docs and make everyone go there to offer suggestions on the same day. Some manager says, “I wonder if this would be a good idea?” Twitter it and ask you followers in as specific or generic terms as need be, then show the manager the responses....

Jason on how to manage social media overload.

Amber Naslund at Altitude: The social media hat rack.

November 23, 2008 at 07:42 PM in Business use, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Gather.com: the hot social network on the block

This in-depth look at Americans' media habits, courtesy of AdWeek, includes this passage:

Gather.com. With a median age of 42, the 2-year-old site has attracted advertisers including Kraft, Nestle, American Express, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Schwab, Amtrak and Starbucks. Gather's 500,000 members cascade reviews and recommendations through their ranks.

I'm finally going to check them out, as well as Mixx.com. Bigger (ie, more crowded) isn't always better, in my book.

November 19, 2008 at 08:32 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

A new social network for veterans

Happy Veterans Day! Just heard about a new social networking site, Communityofveterans.org. "Join our veterans-only online community to connect with people who know where you're coming from. Share your experiences and help others make the transition to civilian life. Stronger Together."

November 11, 2008 at 07:55 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

How Obama tapped into social networks’ power

Just got to his piece by David Carr in the Sunday NY Times: How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power. Excerpt:

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

As a result, when he arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama will have not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly. And there’s every reason to believe that he will use the network not just to campaign, but to govern. ...

Related:

Tuesday's vote: A victory for social media, too

Change.org: help change America

November 10, 2008 at 09:36 PM in Politics, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Change.gov: help change America

During Tuesday evening's election returns, Prof. Henry Jenkins of the MIT Media Lab and i had a brief exchange during a live chat on pbs.org's MediaShift site about how the Obama team and its supporters will channel all the energy and passion from the presidential campaign -- really, a political movement as much as a campaign -- into executing real political reform.

Now we see the beginning contours of a first move in this direction: Change.gov. Yesterday the site received so many visitors that the servers couldn't handle the load.

AssociatedContent.com: Obama Plan Starts at Change.gov

President-elect Barack Obama has already gotten started with putting his plan for change into effect with use of the new website change.gov. He is asking that Americans do their part in changing America.

zdnet: WhiteHouse.gov will never be the same.

100mortgages.org: Change.gov Obama website is live: Can he change the housing market?

November 7, 2008 at 02:54 PM in Current Affairs, Politics, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Will Obama use the Internet to change government?

Chris O'Brien at the San Jose Mercury News: Will Obama use the Internet to change government?

Chris briefly discusses what a bottom-up, open source approach means when applied to public policy. It'll be interesting to see where the Obama administration takes this and how it taps into the social networking phenomenon.

November 6, 2008 at 10:32 AM in Current Affairs, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Facebook, Salesforce.com collaborate

San Jose Mercury News: Facebook, Salesforce.com collaborate. Excerpt:

Facebook and Salesforce.com unveiled a new collaboration Monday that seeks to harmonize two business aspects of the so-called "Web 2.0" phenomenon: the proliferation of online social networking and the growth of on-demand business software via the Internet.

The program, dubbed "Force.com for Facebook," was announced at the opening of Salesforce's sixth annual "Dreamforce" conference for users and developers in San Francisco's Moscone Center. The attendance was reported at more than 9,000, the largest ever, and three times the number in 2005. ...

November 4, 2008 at 03:46 PM in Business use, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Twitter Vote Report

In addition to the Video Your Vote and Video the Vote projects cited yesterday, describing two of the better-known efforts to monitor examples of voter disenfranchisement on Tuesday, here's another option that requires just a cell phone and Twitter account.

Twittervotereport, which was built by volunteers in partnership with techPresident, turns your phone into an on-the-spot volunteer election reporting mechanism. The aggregate effect will be to visualize reporting problems around the nation in real time. Election monitoring orgs have been striving for this for years.

Part of the project is an application for the new G1/Android phone that uses your GPS location
to accurately track where you are reporting from. Very cool.

November 2, 2008 at 12:51 AM in Current Affairs, Politics, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

How 'follower spam' infiltrated Twitter -- and how to stop it

Recently on PBS's MediaShift blog:

Mark Glaser: How 'Follower Spam' Infiltrated Twitter -- and How to Stop It. (Photo of Biz Stone.)

Mark Glaser: Current TV's 'SuperNews' Comedy Gauges Success on Web Views. A Q&A with the animator behind SuperNews. (I blogged the parody of social networking sites back in July.)

Mike Rosen-Molina: 6 Ways Authors Can Succeed by Self-Publishing Books.

Once dismissed as "vanity publishing," self-publishing is today getting a second look from many aspiring authors as new technology makes it a more viable alternative to traditional publishing. ...

Several things have changed in recent years to make self-publishing a more attractive option for some writers. First, a new breed of publisher, the "print-on-demand" service has come about with the rise of the Internet. These services only print copies of a book as they're ordered, saving self-published authors from the potential nightmare of a garage full of unsold books. For a fee, services like BookSurge, Packt, Lulu, AuthorHouse, and iUniverse offer a range of options, including proof-reading or customizable covers. Another difference is that some of these services even offer packages to help authors with promotion and distribution instead of leaving them to figure it out on their own.

Besides simplifying the printing process, new communications technology has made it much easier for self-published writers to spread the word about their books. And while it might still be difficult to get a self-published book sold in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, many self-published writers now can sell their work on their own website or arrange deals with online booksellers. ...

Simon Owens: How Political Diarists Power RedState, Daily Kos.

October 31, 2008 at 12:50 AM in Books, New media, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

A social network for those researching journalism

UK educator Paul Bradshaw writes:

I’ve created a social network for anyone researching news and journalism. It’s at http://onlinejournalismresearch.ning.com/ It’s an attempt to provide a way for journalism students and academics to get in touch with others researching the same area, exchange ideas and tips, and ask for help on everything from finding relevant literature to sourcing contacts and the best research methods. There are forums, you can use it to blog your progress, organise events, upload video and photos, form groups, and more. Research is traditionally a solitary, frustrating endeavour. It doesn’t need to be. If you work with journalism students, please encourage them to join the network and contribute a question or an answer. Let’s get news research networked.

October 30, 2008 at 12:38 AM in Media, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

At Digital Hollywood: the evolving media ecosystem

Spoke Monday at Digital Hollywood at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, then returned late last night, so missing the next three days of panels and speeches. (Try typing Loews into your iPhone, and it keeps miscorrecting it to Loess. Weird bug.)

The topic of our 80-minute panel was  "Personalized Media Platforms – Widgets, User Generated Media, News, Music, and Blogs." Panelists were:

• Michael Spiegelmann, Senior Director, Yahoo! Music
• JD Lasica, Co-founder, OurMedia.org
  
• Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
  
• Marc Goodman, Director, North America Marketing Group, Alcatel-Lucent
  
• Patrick Moorhead, Director of Emerging Media, Avenue A | Razorfish
  
• James Hirsen, Entertainment Editor, Newsmax

(One quibble about the conference, which I typically attend twice a year: In 2008, is it really acceptable for a major conference not to have wi-fi? I wasn't about to pony up to the Loews to pay for it individually.)

We covered a lot of ground, including social media experiences, virtual worlds, citizen journalism, how the economic downturn is affecting the new media and Internet TV industries — and, surprisingly, a whole lot of time focusing on changing social mores around technology.

I repeated my mantra that the "filter" (gatekeeper role) of the traditional media can serve a beneficial purpose but more often than not turns into a conventional wisdom echo chamter where self-appointed gasbags declare winners and losers and play up or ignore news stories on their own whims, with little rhyme or reason. To get a gauge of a segment of the public's thinking on the election, don't turn on CNN, MSNBC or Fox, but turn to election.twitter.com.

I also repeated my admonition for users not to take items at face value because they read it on the Internet. The responsibility has been passed on to us to vet and fact-check blog posts and email rumors — you know about Snopes.com, right? — before passing them along to friends or co-workers.

And I talked about the cultural impact of the new social media technologies over the past several years: Five to 10 years ago, if you shot video in public places you might get hassled by the police (and still might in some places). Today, media sharing is the norm.  We've seen a shift from closed, proprietary networks like AOL toward open and semi-open networks and platforms. Traditional norms of privacy are falling away as the digital generation, and the young in particular, embrace the ethos of transparency, media sharing and, to some extent, GPS location awareness. And mass media continue to give way to fragmented niche media at an accelerating pace.

Chris Tolles and I were not concerned, as another panelist was, about the media consumption habits of young people coming up in the workforce. As Chris said, when that 24-year-old office worker is stumped by a problem, he'll have a much larger support network to draw upon, including old friends he went to high school or college with.

Related to this: Larry Magid's Digital Crossroads column today: Technology as a uniter, not a divider. Excerpt:

A survey last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that married couples with minor children "have higher rates of Internet and cell phone usage, computer ownership and broadband adoption than other household configurations."

The numbers are quite impressive. Fifty-eight percent of "married-with-children" households own two or more computers while nearly two-thirds of those multi-computer households have them linked in to a home network. Nearly nine out of 10 such households own multiple cell phones and 57 percent of their children (ages 7 to 17) have their own cell phone. ...

I have no studies to back this up, but my kids — ages 22 and 24 — are in contact with many of their middle school, high school and college friends thanks to AOL Instant Messenger, Facebook, cell phones and e-mail. ...

October 28, 2008 at 10:44 PM in Social networks, Web/Tech, Youth culture | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

'Twitter terrorists'

Federation of American Scientists: Army Intelligence on the Twitter Threat.

Could terrorists use Twitter, the instant messaging and micro-blogging service? Presumably so, just as they could use credit cards and can openers.

The potential use of Twitter and other communications technologies by terrorists is considered in a new draft Army intelligence paper, based on a review of jihadist web sites and other public sources.

The Army paper on “al Qaida-Like Mobile Discussions & Potential Creative Uses” was dissected by Noah Shachtman in “Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists,” Danger Room, October 24.  A copy of the paper itself, which is more like a student exercise than a finished intelligence assessment, is available here (large pdf, for official use only).

Uh, huh. Let's ban the Internet while we're at it.

October 28, 2008 at 01:16 AM in Amusing, Current Affairs, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social Actions meets Twitter

Elliot Harmon at Techsoup: Social Actions meets Twitter.

I blogged a few weeks ago about Social Actions, a new project to aggregate data from social sector directories about the wide variety of ways people can get involved with causes they care about. Like a lot of new ideas in social media, you can't quite grasp how cool Social Actions is until you see how people are using it.

Joe at Social Actions just told me about their new Twitter application. To sign up, simply type in a cause you care about and your Twitter info. Every 24 hours, Twitterfeed will check for new postings in your cause and, if there is a new one, post it to your Twitter account. ...

October 8, 2008 at 01:33 AM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Old people Facebook disasters

Michael Martin in Salon: Old people Facebook disasters. Professionals over 30 have joined the networking site in droves, but with great convenience can come great embarrassment.

Although the site exploded into public consciousness as a college network, now it's for everyone. (Literally everyone: From cheese enthusiasts to fans of the '80s robot-girl sitcom "Small Wonder.") More people over 30 are adopting Facebook as a networking tool, and this was the year the old people swarmed the pool party. (By the way, when we talk about "old people," we don't mean old people. We mean "old people in Facebook years" -- so anyone on the northern side of 30 is a winner.) There are seven interest groups for people in their 40s, and one for people born in the 40s. The spunkily titled group "Over 30 -- Not Over the Hill!" began in May and already has 823 members. There is, inevitably, a Cougar Club. "Since this summer, Facebook use has exploded among my age group and older," says Linda Keenan, a 37-year-old mother who wrote a Huffington Post blog entry in July describing herself as an "aging Facebook whore." ...

September 29, 2008 at 01:10 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Study: Americans want to see companies on social sites

Boston Globe: Study: Most Americans want to see companies on social sites. Excerpt:

According to the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment. ...

September 28, 2008 at 10:27 PM in Business use, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social media helps users to be smart shoppers

CMS Wire: Social Media Helps Users to Be Smart Shoppers.

A new report shows that American adults are using social media not only to stay connected, but also to make informed buying decisions.

The 2008 Insight Report from MarketTools indicates that 68% of American adults visit online blogs, communities or social networks, and 33% of those surveyed say they visit these sites to read up on product reviews to help them make a purchasing decision.

Six months ago, only 42% of adults were flocking online to visit blogs, online communities or social networks. ...

September 28, 2008 at 08:19 PM in Consumer, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Mixx: personalized social media

Mixx: personalized social media from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I've been hearing about Mixx.com for some time and a few days ago had the chance to chat with Chris McGill, founder and CEO of the site. Mixx is a platform that enables any organization or person to launch a social media site at no cost and with no technological savvy.

The site has had 8.1 million unique visitors over the past five months — not bad for a young startup. At the TechCrunch50 conference earlier this month Chris spoke with me about the site, how it differs from other social networks and where it goes from here.

Watch the video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Watch the video in Flash on Vimeo

If you prefer audio only, here's a 16-minute podcast that Nick O'Neill of SocialTimes did with Chris last month.

September 28, 2008 at 03:36 PM in Podcasts & interviews, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Reviewing MySpace's new music platform

Associated Press: Reviewing MySpace's new music platform. Excerpt:

MySpace is making a case to be the No. 1 online destination for music.    

On Thursday, the social networking site unveiled its highly anticipated new "MySpace Music" service, a joint venture with the four big labels: EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Inc. ...

In the new MySpace Music, the artist pages can stream not just a handful of songs, but as much as their entire catalog. With this kind of broad industry support (a handful of indie labels have also joined, though many haven't) it looks increasingly like most music will soon be available free for streaming.

Almost the entire catalog of Prince, for example, can be listened to with just a few clicks.    

How is money made? By advertising, which surrounds the service. ...

MySpace tries to strike new chord in digital music. Excerpt:

The catch: the music can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet and listeners have to tolerate advertising splashed across the screen. Anyone who wants to transfer a song to a portable device like Apple Inc.'s iPod will have to buy the music through Amazon.com Inc.'s year-old downloading service, which sells songs for as little as 79 cents apiece.

Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied.

MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece—a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm.

If MySpace's plan pans out, people will regularly post different playlists on their profiles and expose their friends to new music. ...

September 25, 2008 at 09:51 PM in Music, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

MeetingWave: a social network for business professionals

Matthew passes along word of MeetingWave, a new social networking network for professionals that helps businesspeople set up public meetings in cities where they work or in cities to which they're traveling in order to make new business connections offline.

Catherine Helzerman's Odd Bits just reviewed it: MeetingWave Brings Social Networking into the Real World.

September 22, 2008 at 01:00 PM in Business use, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Amazee launches network for 'collective action'

Dania Gerhardt, co-founder and COO of Amazee — whom I spotted at TechCrunch50 last week — passes along word of the collaboration site's US launch: Amazee launches network for 'collective action.'

Amazee, the first social collaboration network, today formally launched its free platform designed to make it easier for any individual or group anywhere to initiate and collaborate on public and private projects. Amazee is the first online platform to combine standard social networking tools, online collaboration management tools, and the ability for project initiators to promote their projects, offer sponsorships and sell advertising.

"Amazee is a more evolved social networking site devoted to the joy of collective action and designed to empower individuals and small groups to launch global initiatives," said Gregory Gerhardt, CEO of Amazee, which is headquartered in Zurich and has an office in San Francisco. "Activism is part of the culture of the Internet and is fueling the rapid growth of social networking. Amazee was built to channel this activism and provides powerful tools to help project initiators organize, collaborate on, track, promote, and fund projects of any size with participants from anywhere around the world."

Key Features of Amazee

Social networking tools include member profiles, invitations, messaging and newsfeeds.

Collaboration Management features include to-do list, calendar, discussion forum, write-board, voting, member right management and file sharing.

Site Promotion is enabled by a shareable project home page accessible by anyone on the Internet without an Amazee membership, making it easy for project teams to drive new members to a site via all the tools available on the Internet, including other social networking sites, email campaigns, media outreach, and advertising. 

Project Funding is an important and unique part of Amazee, providing several built-in mechanisms for projects to raise money.

September 19, 2008 at 01:54 AM in Causes, Social actions, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social networks overtake adult sites

Reuters: Social networks overtake adult sites.

Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.

Bill Tancer, a self-described "data geek", has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that we are, in fact, what we click, with Internet searches giving an up-to-date view of how society and people are changing. ...

Tancer, in his new book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters", said analyzing web searches did not just reflect what was happening online but gave a wider picture of society and people's behavior. ...

Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, said one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites.

He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites. ...

"As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased," said Tancer, indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn.

"My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites." ...

September 17, 2008 at 10:36 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Wall Street Journal to unveil social news network

New York Times Bits blog: New WSJ.com Builds on Its Community of Subscribers.

The venerable Wall Street Journal will activate a revamped version of its Web site, WSJ.com, early Tuesday morning.

The new site isn’t a lot different from the old one, based on screenshots and other details Journal executives shared with me last week. It has a cleaner, more inviting look, thanks to fewer ads and the elimination of the navigation buttons on the left side of the home page. Unchanged is the most important aspect of the current site: the wall that blocks non-subscribers from reading most of The Journal’s business news articles.

However, one aspect of the redesign is radical, and if it’s successful, it could provide lessons for other news organizations trying to build deeper connections with their readers: New community features will allow WSJ.com’s million or so paid online subscribers to comment on every story, pose their own discussion questions, e-mail each other and set up profiles that will allow others to see what they’re doing on the site.

In other words, WSJ.com will offer a social network for business professionals, built around the content of the newspaper and Web site but not limited to it....

The dream of building a vibrant online community of business readers isn’t unique. Fast Company magazine overhauled its Web site in February to focus on reader conversation, only to find that the readers weren’t all that interested in talking. BusinessWeek is trying something similar built around topic pages. And LinkedIn, a social network focused on the workplace, is attempting to build communities around people within specific companies or industries.

September 15, 2008 at 12:30 AM in Media, New media, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Denver editor explains why boy's funeral was Twittered

Romenesko: Rocky editor explains why boy's funeral was Twittered. Thanks to Xeni Jardin for the pointer.

September 13, 2008 at 09:56 PM in New media, Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Don't freak: Facebook gets a facelift

San Jose Mercury News:  Don't freak, but Facebook gets a facelift. Some users are upset by clean design.

Associated Press: Facebook unveils new look with a new approach.

Two Facebook groups — Petition Against the "New Facebook" and I Hate the New Facebook —  have 1,011,000 and 859,000 members, respectively.

I've always been a fan of clean design and have hated the cluttered Facebook interface for a long time, so this is a welcome improvement in my book (and most members seem to agree, since more than 30 million switched over on their own).

I may start a petition against clunky Facebook urls, though. I have a hard time figuring out what my Facebook profile page url is (I guess it's this), and groups get awful urls like this:

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?sid=c34504b3d69640b7d9f709a136527668&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.new.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fref%3Dsearch%26init%3Dq%26q%3DI%2BHate%2Bthe%2BNew%2BFacebook%26sid%3Dc34504b3d69640b7d9f709a136527668&gid=21225988060

September 11, 2008 at 04:22 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Social networking for tots

New York Times: Twittering From the Cradle.

A host of new sites, including Totspot, Odadeo,  Lil’Grams and Kidmondo, now offer parents a chance to forgo the e-mail blasts of, say, their newborn’s first trip home and instead invite friends and family to join and contribute to a network geared to connecting them to the baby in their lives.

September 11, 2008 at 01:09 AM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Facebook, Twitter and 'digital intimacy'

New York Times Magazine: Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.

[Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg ... developed something he called News Feed, a built-in service that would actively broadcast changes in a user’s page to every one of his or her friends. Students would no longer need to spend their time zipping around to examine each friend’s page, checking to see if there was any new information. Instead, they would just log into Facebook, and News Feed would appear: a single page that — like a social gazette from the 18th century — delivered a long list of up-to-the-minute gossip about their friends, around the clock, all in one place. “A stream of everything that’s going on in their lives,” as Zuckerberg put it. ...

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

September 6, 2008 at 10:41 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (1) | | (0)

Top 10 tips for social networking success

Guest writer Megan O’Neill at Blonde 2.0: Top 10 Tips for Social Networking Success.

August 30, 2008 at 05:02 PM in Social networks, Social-media | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Facebook hits 100 million users

Marshall Kirkpatrick at Red Write Web: Facebook hits 100 million users.   

August 25, 2008 at 10:58 PM in Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Facebook is changing how faculty and students interact

Online Social Networks: Facebook: Changing The Way Faculty And Students Interact.

August 25, 2008 at 02:06 AM in Education, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)

Michael Phelps overtakes Obama on Facebook

OK, a frivolous but fun post:

CNN.com: Michael Phelps overtakes Obama on Facebook, 1,399,000 "fans" to Obama's 1,383,000 "supporters."

John McCain trails with 215,000 supporters.

August 25, 2008 at 01:58 AM in Amusing, Social networks | Permalink | Comments (0) | | (0)