Huge LinkedIn Revamp Puts It Into Direct Competition With Facebook And Twitter. Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: The Fundamental Limits of Privacy For Social Networks. Recommendation engines are among the hottest properties on the web. These sites make make recommendations by mining the pattern of links that crop up in social networks. Facebook recommends new contacts based on the pattern of connections between existing users, Amazon recommends books and other products based on purchase histories and Netflix recommends movies based historical ratings.
To be sure, these sites produce useful results for users which can dramatically increase sales for a merchant. But they can also compromise privacy. For example, a social network recommendation might reveal that one person has been in email contact with another or that an individual has bought a certain product or watched a specific film. In fact there’s a long history of privacy controversies associated with social networks. That’s quite a task given that there are various different approaches to making recommendations. That’s a potentially explosive result. Brett Steenbarger (steenbab) Backchannelbook.com. Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) The Future of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free | Magazine. Cash in the clouds—neither paper nor plastic.Illustration: Aegir Hallmundur; Benjamin Franklin: Corbis A simple typo gave Michael Ivey the idea for his company. One day in the fall of 2008, Ivey’s wife, using her pink RAZR phone, sent him a note via Twitter.
But instead of typing the letter d at the beginning of the tweet — which would have sent the note as a direct message, a private note just for Ivey — she hit p. It could have been an embarrassing snafu, but instead it sparked a brainstorm. That’s how you should pay people, Ivey publicly replied. Money Over Time A brief history of currency technology. —Bryan Gardiner 9000 BC: Cows The rise of agriculture made commodities like cattle and grain ideal proto-currencies: Since everyone knew what a heifer or a bushel was worth, the system was more efficient than barter. Just a decade ago, the idea of moving money that quickly and cheaply would have been ridiculous. Ivey got around that problem by using PayPal. Some ditch social networks to reclaim time, privacy. By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999.
Laura LeNoir is done. "I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back," says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. "People say, 'You'll be back.' As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off. Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online "friends" who aren't really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. "When I first closed my Facebook account, I felt disconnected from the world and missed the constant updates," says Leanna Fry, 32, of Provo, Utah, who is teaching English in Erzurum, Turkey. Even super-connected celebrities are bolting. Lucca, Italy-based Seppukoo helped 20,000 people erase themselves from Facebook after the site launched last fall.
Facebook is not amused. Ah, that word again. 10 things you need to stop tweeting about. The Oscars of Twitter: Shorty Awards to Honor Creators of Short-Form, Real-Time Content. Last year, SawHorse Media, a Twitter aggregator that pioneered the concept of lists, put together the Shorty Awards. This contest and ceremony was intended to "honor the best producers of short, real-time content. " The first show was such a success that SawHorse is currently producing a second event. Like the Webbies, the Streamys and other award shows for online content, this event will recognize the geeky heroes we probably follow more than we do real-world celebrities - the ones who make us laugh, think and act. Voting is now open in 27 categories; read on to see who's making the grade. Categories range in scope from serious topics such as government, health and politics and to lighter fare such as music, culture, celebrities and humor.
The awards are given based on each content creator's whole Twitter oeuvre, not just a single tweet. Last year's special guests included MC Hammer and Gary Vaynerchuk. How To Incorporate Your Audience's Twitter Use Into Your Next Presentation. During your next presentation, odds are that some members of your audience are going to be broadcasting their commentary via Twitter. Don't just ignore this trend -- use it to your benefit. In an article for BusinessWeek, communications skills coach Carmine Gallo outlines some ways to incorporate Twitter into your presentations, taken from consultant Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Backchannel.
These innovative strategies can help you engage your audience better, as well as give you a unique opportunity to tailor your presentation to their needs. Some suggestions: For details, read the article at BusinessWeek > As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter. Facebook is getting old. No, people aren't getting tired of it, it's actually getting old, as in its population is aging.
In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it's 33, a good seven years older. That's an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. So where are today's college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they're still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses.
As it turns out, Gen Y likes Twitter...Well, maybe not, but they are using it Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantial than others - but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. Apparently, that's beginning to change. When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year.
Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter? So what gives? Will this ever change? Facebook U.S. Visits Increase 194% Over Past Year; Tagged is Beating Twitter? New data released from Experian Hitwise reconfirms what we've known for some time: Facebook is killing the other social networks. Nowhere is that more true than here in the U.S. where they found that the visits to the site have increased 194% from September of last year to September 2009. However, it's Twitter that's seen the largest year-over-year increase in visits - during that same time period, they're up 1170%. But one of the oddest findings being reported is how the social network known as Tagged is beating out Twitter for the number three spot in terms of visits.
MySpace Declines, Facebook and Twitter Grow According to Experian, nearly 59% of all the social networking visits were visits to Facebook while only 30% were to MySpace - a 55% decrease in market share over the past year in terms of visits for the one-time king of social networks. Looking at just the year-over-year percent change may give you the impression that Twitter's popularity is through the roof.
What? TweetMixx Launches Branded Twitter Channels. TweetMixx, the newly launched service from social voting site Mixx that allows you to find relevant links on Twitter, is venturing into new territory today with the launch of TweetMixx Channels. The service basically lets brands, celebs and companies consolidate their Twitter traffic and mentions on one page. TweetMixx Channels features branded, customizable pages, with the brand’s current Twitter feed, tweets and updates from fans, and links relevant to content about the brand, company or topic posted automatically.
The tool also serves as a tracking and monitoring tool for mentions and conversations about a brand taking place on Twitter. Companies can create a customizable branded page with a vanity URL and can designate an “Insiders” tab within the channel which has a list of Twittering employees or users associated with a company. As we’ve said in the past, TweetMixx faces competition from TweetMeme, a popular engine for Twitter link discovery.
Sean Parker: Twitter/Facebook Will Soon Dominate The Web — Not Google. Sean Parker, a managing partner at Founder’s Fund, gave an interesting talk today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The key to it is simple: Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and eBay will dominate the web going forward. One company of note that won’t? Google. Why? To be clear, he thinks Google will stay huge and relevant, but it’s dominance will go down because collecting data is less valuable than connecting people, he said. He went on to talk a bit about the social networking space, which is significant because he helped found Facebook. Parker noted that data portability is a red herring. He went on to say that Friendster was not a fad, it failed because of the failure to scale, not because of poor product execution.
Parker also talked a bit about why it’s not always the best products that win. Also of note was that one of Parker’s slides talked about the few networks Google does own, like Orkut. Update 2: Here’s the full slide deck of Parker’s presentation. How to: Follow Hundreds of Tech Analysts on Twitter With 3 Clicks. I may be a scruffy, untrained blogger but I can still appreciate the work of traditional professional technology analysts. SageCircle is an analyst analyst firm, they track the analyst industry. Their emails and podcasts are an inspiration - dense with information and loads of fun. (If you like that kind of thing.) SageCircle has been maintaining a list of tech analysts with Twitter accounts and the list is now up to 724 active users. Visit this link and you'll find the first 500 analysts on the list.
Then at the top of the page you'll see a bit.ly link to part 2. Think this sounds like a bad idea? Thanks a bunch to Carter Lusher of SageCircle, @carterlusher, for building and maintaining this list. Want to do something to help, yourself? ⌘+1 (How I Blog with Keyboard Maestro and TextMate) About 72 hours ago I decided that I was going to start publishing blog posts directly from TextMate instead of writing in TextMate and posting with MarsEdit (more on this in a bit).
This did present a problem for me though, it would be nearly impossible to post linked list items (which are far more frequent and fast paced). Justin Blanton posted a new plug-in yesterday that completely changed how I blog. He created a way to post linked list items by enabling custom field support using his ‘[cf]‘ syntax in the body of your post. This changes things in a big way — you see now you can actually use the WordPress iOS app to create a blog post with a custom slug and a linked list url embedded. I can do this all inside the iOS app for the first time ever. Before I invoked a custom ‘Press This’ plugin, then saved that as a draft, then opened up the post in the WordPress backend in Safari — then I could finally edit and so on. End Result Why The Macro Here’s the entire macro: >%PastClipboard%2% Understanding Users of Social Networks. If the ongoing social networking revolution has you scratching your head and asking, "Why do people spend time on this?
" and "How can my company benefit from the social network revolution? " you've got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski. Only difference: Piskorski has spent years studying users of online social networks (SN) and has developed surprising findings about the needs that they fulfill, how men and women use these services differently, and how Twitter—the newest kid on the block—is sharply different from forerunners such as Facebook and MySpace. He has also applied many of the insights to help companies develop strategies for leveraging these various online entities for profit. Addressing network failures "Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks," says Piskorski. Online social networks also can improve people's ability to use offline social networks as "covers. " Facebook Unveils Twitter-Like '@' Tagging by PC World: Yahoo! Tech.
Alexandra Samuel (awsamuel) Save a Bookmark on Delicious. Jon Bennett (jonjbenn) Social networking for business: plan less for less pain. Computerworld Australia - Productivity loss, information leakage, and defamation of fellow employees are all enough to get us fired from our jobs, unless, of course, it is done under the guise of a social network for the enterprise 2.0. Slideshow: Where IT pros do their social networkingSlideshow: 12 tips for safe social networking Businesses are beginning to grapple with the emergence of a culture of IT self-service among employees and the savvy leaders will harness, rather than hinder, the use of external hosted applications, including social networking, according to a group of IT professionals.
Speaking on a panel about social networking for business at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in Sydney, representatives from insurance company AMP, consulting firm Deloitte and IT analyst firm Forrester Research, agreed that rapid adoption of external applications by employees is here to stay so the challenge is how to leverage this culture shift. "The business case proved itself. Soren Gordhamer: The Art of Mindful Tweeting . . . I recently wrote on a piece on 5 Steps to Using Twitter and Facebook Consciously, and decided as a follow-up to explore mindful tweeting. Considering more of us are spending an increasing amount of time on sites like Twitter, it seems prudent to ask how we can make that time, particularly when we are posting (or tweeting), a mindful rather than a mindless act. In other words, how can we bring our full attention to this process such that it adds to rather than diminishes the quality of our life? Below is my take.
Some of this, of course, is likely just as relevant to posting on Facebook and other social networks. 1) Bring Awareness to Your Body Posture "Mr. One can certainly be mindful in any posture, but I notice that when I am tweeting and my body is hunched over, jaw tight, and eyes peeled to the screen, I am generally not very mindful. Awareness of body posture is different than judging or even correcting, but instead involves bringing awareness to our body when we are tweeting. Twitter Enhancement Software | Katherine Boehret | The Mossberg Solution | AllThingsD. Most people who aren’t familiar with Twitter are eager to list the reasons why they don’t use this social-networking service. It’s for narcissists. It’s for teenagers.
It’s for people who have nothing better to do. It’s a forum for oversharing. I use Twitter as my personalized news feed by following people who “tweet” (write updates) about things that interest me. But Twitter works best with a little help from its friends, namely those programs that are designed to make it more customized and useful with minimal work on the user’s behalf.
To get a Twitter account in the first place, you will need to sign up with a user name and password at Twitter.com and start following people—or subscribing to read someone’s updates. That said, you can always choose to block someone from following you or stop following someone’s Twitter feed. All-Purpose Programs TweetDeck and Seesmic are two programs that do a good job of filtering others’ tweets and aiding the process of writing tweets. Twitter and More Twitter! « pm blog. Blog: SmallLaw: The Recommendation Economy Part 2: How to Transform Twitter Into a Client Magnet for Your Law Firm. New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - Conversation Starter - HarvardBusiness.org. » How Twitter Has Helped My Business at Halo Secretarial Blog - The LinkedIn Lawyer. Twitter during Lectures part 2 | Dr Shock MD PhD#comment-3804. Ing from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm. The Web in Numbers: Twitter's Phenomenal Growth Suddenly Stops.