ouroboros

Radical Transparency

If you had any questions about the transformative power of interactive media, repressive governments no longer do -  when they want to kill or crush their people, they are learning to start by killing the internet and mobile connections.  On the heels of Ukraine's mobile powered Orange revolution, the SMS powered toppling of the government in Manila, and Uganda's recent reinstatement of SMS after contested elections were sealed up, this from the AP, re Myanmar:

...soldiers in Myanmar...Friday...went after the Internet and mobile phones that have proven so vital and powerful in documenting the dramatic confrontations.

Modern technology has become the generals' worst enemy.

Though the government has cut some phone landlines, it has had less success clamping down on mobile phones, [and] the immediacy has been vital in telling the world so it can act quickly as developments unfold

"The world doesn't know where Burma is. Now they see images about the situation and want to know more." Aung Zaw said.

"Students use cell phones to SMS each other to share information," he said, referring to text messages activists use to organize demonstrations or inform one another of the locations of soldiers. "The junta can't control the technology totally, and it's a huge difference (if you can) deliver the information fast."

"Up4" meetup application for Facebook

This gets interesting - a possible app for Starbucks?

"up4 has created a handy little Facebook app that lets you easily create casual events and meet up with friends somewhere offline. With a scheduling calendar, you can pick the day and approximate time for your meet up. Or you can click the “add” button to go directly to the screen for manually entering your information. Say what type of activity you’re “up for” and indicate a time and location. Add any extra information you’d like, type in the names of Facebook friends you’d like to notify, and post it to your up4 application account. All of your events will show on your calendar, though there is the option to see these in a list view as well. See what your friends are up for, and decide if you’d like to join along. You can also leave comments to hold discussions around individual events."

Facebook = Friend Radar?

A co-worker made this observation today:  "Facebook is like my 'friend radar' - if something they are up to pops up in my feed and I think its interesting, I'll hit them - if not, we all know we're there".

All there: an interconnected web of human nodes, generating 'content' ranging from banal to shockingly personal and feeding it up to the community - and the datacloud.

Psychologists say road rage comes from the projection of your id/ego to the boundary of the cars bumpers, and that a perceived slight to your car is therefore a personal insult and dealt with as such...so what happens to your projected interactive presence?

By way of example, this is a by no means exhaustive range of the tools that help makeup my daily interactive 'presence'.  I use these (and many others) daily to connect /communicate/broadcast and participate in my various social networks and communities of interest.

Are you just the sum total of your multiple channels/tools?  Is each a prism refracting a different facet of your personality - shared/obscured/embellished or augmented?  Or do you manage multiple silo-ed personalities?

is one 'realer' than another?  is there a qualitative difference between the 'me' on AIM, 'me' on Facebook, 'me' in Ning?  Are you the same person everywhere?

And from an engagement standpoint, where/when/who are you when you are most receptive to messaging?

Behavioral targeting goes social

The Wall Street Journal popped a nice piece on Facebook today.  Facebook has been trying to figure out how to turn the 30.6 million unique monthly visitors they get into cold hard cash.  Up 'til now, unless you had a labor intensive custom sponsorship, they've had a pretty barebones targeting system for ads - allowing advertisers to hit 'Facebookers' based on age, gender and geographic location ("geotargeting").

The new plan is to convert all the juicy tidbits Facebook users post about themselves on their pages into data they can use to target more 'relevant' ads, and charge (...our clients up the wazoo) higher CPM's for the privilege.  All those little apps you download to your page, the ones that ask you if they can mine all your deepest personal info, and won't work unless you say yes?  Think of them like little digital doubleagents - using your input as flags for advertisers.

"Most users of Facebook treat it as a sort of online scrapbook for their lives -- posting everything from basic information about themselves to photos to calendars of events they plan to attend."

The article quotes a source saying that the ads aren't going to be the standard banners and buttons around the content, but embedded in the 'news feed' function on users home pages.  Not a bad plan.  Because everyone scans the feed - its the place you see what your friends are up to, what posts have been made, new content featured, etc. - sort of a....well..news feed.

From the WSJ:

"Facebook's plan, if it works, could be potentially powerful for advertisers. While Google's keyword-targeted ads aim at "demand fulfillment" -- that is, they are triggered by Internet searches conducted by people who are actively looking for something that they want -- Facebook's new ad plan could help advertisers address an area called "demand generation." This involves using available information -- not just from a user but also the activities and interests of his "friends" on the site -- to figure out what people might want before they've specifically mentioned it."

 

 

Social Networking/OpenSourcing

Social Networking is pretty buzzy right now.  Lot of amazing potential - lot of folks doing it to check boxes.  Lots of money getting pissed away. Before you burn a garbage bag of cash, ask one question:


"What CONSUMER need do we meet by engaging our brand in their space?"   

If you can't answer that, RED FLAG.   If the need you meet is your own, consider doing something else.  Didn't work for me dating in high school, doesn't work now.

Brain Morrisey notes in "Why some brands seem antisocial", "those [brand efforts at social networking] that have succeeded either tap into the existing passionate audience of a niche brand or offer some functionality that cannot be found already on popular social media sites."

Today's WSJ article "Building Buzz for Ellis Island - and Shirts", by Suzanne Vranica and Stephanie Kang warns "the last thing the Internet needs is another social network".  Baba Shetty of Hill Holiday says "the same kind of talents in judgement that we apply to other things in marketing applies to this media as well.  You do not say, 'Yep, check, we've got social networking'.  You have to think: 'How are we going to do it?'"

Walmart got justifiably trashed for "The Hub".  Finish Line will most likely end up writing off their social network.  We'll see if Disney can make Club Penguin work, or if MySpace can right itself enough to prevent its pages from making logo-bedecked NASCAR vehicles look like tastefully refined branding exercises.

Net: "social networking" needs to be part of a strategy, not a standalone tactic.  It requires sustained effort, focus and resources.  Know that the number of friends you HAVE on MySpace matters far less than what you DO with those friendships.

Take Nokia.  They created the Nokia Forums to allow you and me and Nokia engineers and developers to interact.  You can pretty much find anything - info, FAQ's, developer SDK's, etc., etc. - real projects, real info, real interaction.  3.2 MM registered members.  Hundreds of projects.  Lot of energy. 

Walmart's 'Hub', thinly disguised product shill platform aimed at tween (gag me) 'Hubsters"?  Punchline.  Click either link below.  Visit a live community.  Laugh at the smoking ruins of a dead one.

Jukka Silvennoinen, Nokia Forum Champion.

Walmart 'Hubsters'

Mobile Social Networking Potpourri/Cornucopia/Smorgasbord/Dim Sum

M:Metrics has released new data on mobile social networking in the US and Western Europe.  This research excludes Chinese efforts such as Wozone, WangYou and QQ, and the entire Japanese market, including Mixi and S!Town.

Yuko Matsunaga (W+K Tokyo), highlighted that in a recent survey of over 9,500 Japanese mobile subscribers, 43.9% "rarely" use their phone for calls.  FOR CALLS, folks.  What else are they doing?  #1 email, followed by blogging, gaming, THEN calls...no wonder Nokia has banned the term phones in favor of the lighter, more memorable "multimedia computing devices".

Some tidbits from the m:metrics report:

• In the month of June, 12.3 million folks in the US and Western Europe accessed a social networking site via mobile
• Those under 25 are the most active users of mobile social networking sites across all geographies. In France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the age demographic with the largest percentage of use is 13-17-year-olds, whereas college-aged consumers (18-24) are the most avid users in the United States and the United Kingdom.
• MySpace and Facebook are the top two social networking sites accessed via mobile in both the U.S. and UK.
  
  • MySpace attracts 3.7 million U.S. and 440,000 UK mobile users
  • Facebook = ~2 million US, and ~307,000 UK.
  • Rounding out the top three is YouTube in the U.S., with 901,000 mobile visitors and Bebo in the UK, with 288,000.
• As far as mobile distribution/access, MySpace appears on the decks of : Amp’d, AT&T, Helio and Nextel. Facebook was accessible on the Sprint, AT&T, Virgin and Amp’d decks and YouTube on the Verizon deck. In the UK, MySpace has distribution on Vodafone, Bebo is on the 3 deck, but number-two MSN Live Spaces is offered nowhere on-portal.

In other developments,

• Nokia launches Mosh in Beta
• Facebook, the social networking utility of choice for the post-MySpace crowd, even features a completely iPhone customized experience. 

Here some sexy data....

App Networks

Further to the theme of distributed brands ("fishing where the fish are") in the interactive space, PDX's Danny Sheniak dug up a nice piece by AdWeek's Brian Morrisey entitled "Facebook Spawns Ad Networks".

The gist of the piece is that Facebook's opening up their development platform has spawned an industry whose monetization potential, and data mining capabilities, are just not unfolding.  For anyone not on facebook, these applications, or "apps", most often take the form of custom modules that users can add to their page.  Users are effectively ceding their personal page real estate for these applications, and often choose to allow these applications access to their personal info to "customize the experience".  Morrisey got Troy Youngof VideoEgg on the record:

"If you were to break the Web down into phases, the first was a top-down directory approach like Yahoo!, the second was Google's natural language search and the third is organizing the Web around the profile," said Troy Young, chief marketing officer at Videoegg.

Net, companies used to try to find you.  Now you can choose to invite them in.  Like vampires that can't enter your home without you inviting them in. 

Mini-programs (2,800+ at last count) like "Where have I been", "Ninjas vs. Pirates", and "Zombie" are built to be shared, forwarded and discussed.  Most apps allows you to download them with a single click to your own page after seeing it on a friend's.  Applications users groove to can get enormous distribution quickly. 

The trick for brands considering this channel is not developing an app at this point - it's getting it distributed.

Lance Tokuda, RockYou CEO, notes "there are a lot of billion dollar corporations that only have 1,000 users" of their Facebook applications, he said.

Why?  Two reasons - first and foremost, you need a compelling value proposition (ask yourself: why the hell does someone want your app on their page?  if you can't answer beyond "its a chance to connect with my brand", you're screwed).  Second, the directory on Facebook that lists all the available applications force ranks them based on their popularity - as determined by downloads.  Which means big ones get bigger, and new ones have to come up with clever ways to crack the top 10, or come up with novel ways to monetize their presence.

Enter the networks.  Morrisey cites two, in particular:

• Videoegg's Facebook ad network runs video banner ads on the landing pages "for over half of the top 10 most popular applications".  When users launch the application, they get a page with a VideoEgg-served ad.  The ads are getting $10 CPMs, and Videoegg is taking 40 percent of the revenue generated by the ads
• Widget maker RockYou has started an ad network around SuperWall, which lets users put multimedia messages on friends' profiles.  RockYou's network will "offer consumers downloading its programs selections from others that haven't gained momentum", and RockYou intends to charge the developers of those apps a fee per download, and "might at some point even create applications for brands".

Look for many brands to step into cow flops and dog doodie attempting to get into this space.  But look for smart ones to figure out new ways to make real connections - and potentially leverage existing social networks to build their own social platforms!

Bar Camp

Un-conferences are the thing.  Business Week thinks so, anyway.  And we got one here in lovely P-Town.  What are they?  Open source conferences = wave of the future.  No sitting and watching.  creating.  on the fly.  Bar Camp Portland starts tonight.  And W+K is in the house.

Social Networking - big and getting bigger

Social networking, fueled by digital media, is NEVER GOING AWAY.  It is hyperaccelerating (thanks, Twitter) and evolving.  My kids will probably jack into the metaverse via RFID enabled WiFi aware Coke cans... and where it will end up is anyone's guess.  Let it suffice to see that we are seeing human beings' fundamental social wiring being hacked and recompiled.  There will be bugs and glitches, but eventually, Skynet will smooth all the bumps out.

Came across a nice overview on social networking, specifically monetization and integration of extensions, from the folks at Read/Write/Web.  Below are a couple of highlights.  The original article in its entirety is available here, by Alex Iskold for Read/Write/Web.)

Alex breaks down the social network universe into two broad camps: Generic vs. Specialized. 

He defines them as follows:

"a generic network... exists primarily to keep in touch and a specialized network is one where people are brought together based on the specific common interest. According to this definition Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and even LinkedIn are considered generic social networks. del.icio.us, Flickr, LibraryThing and Flixster, on the other hand, represent specialized networks."

Generic Networks need to monetize.  The same freewheeling User Generated Content (UGC) that makes them popular often limits their viability for advertisers.  Leveraging niche channels (by building or buying/integrating them) is a way to generate revenue.  For Specialized Networks, the challenge is building sufficient scale to attract revenue (typically ad or affilate dollars).

While Specialized networks can offer "better user experience[s]", because a specialized User Interface "can be more focused and rich", that focus may hurt them should they try to expand beyond their core offerings - in a way that generalized networks would not be.  One way to think about it: Walmart (the best example I have of generic) can sell organic produce, beer AND guns (= crazy delicious).  A gun store (a specialized offering) would have trouble convincing their clientele that their juices are freshly squeezed.

This space is interesting and getting more interesting - especially with the growing number of immersive 3-D social networking universes.  Fun.

Social Network Search - YoName

Gets tough tracking down friends when they create social network pages across a wide variety of services.  How do you know whether your pal has a page on Friendster, MySpace etc.?  Used to be you'd have to visit the darn sites, every dad-blasted, crappy-interfaced one of them, and search.  But no more.  Now you've got YoName.  While the service still appears to be hammering out the kinks, according to Mashable, 

"YoName is a service that will find any user on the major social networks.

It looks like your typical search engine start page. Simply type in the first or last name, username or email address of the person you’re trying to find, and YoName will scour Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Xanga, Match.com, LinkedIn and Digg. YoName displays all the results for each social network...search results include the user photo, location and age, as well as a link to the public URL of the respective social network. If YoName can’t find an exact match, they will show all the matches possible."

This could be useful on a social network aggregating service, like ProfileFly, 8hands, LinkMyBox and Tabber. It doesn't track updates, but it does allow you to connect/stalk/hunt your displaced pals.
 

All this may go the way of the dinosaur when OpenID catches on, but its interesting to see how this stuff is evolving.

Digital Drive-bys just got easier

In spite of the collective depravity that abounds across the land, the internet is lurching its way toward respectability (and OpenID will help make it happen!!).  Still, there's always a select few who like to hide their identity...and for those folks that help keep the web merry comes GuerrillaMail. 

This nifty tool allows you to create a fully functional temporary email address that expires in 15 minutes. You can post and receive during that window...then you disappear.  Mmmmm.  Now you can flame a blog, drop bombs on peoples' social networking pages and trash peoples reputations ifrom behind a sweet, sweet cloak of blissful anonymity.  Thank you Guerrilla Mail.

The Twitter-ing Continues

Twitter. 

If you haven't done it, somehow, people just know.

It's worthwhile to bone up on Twitter.  And I wouldn't have said this a few weeks back.

Twitter lets you update anyone who gives a toot up-to-the-second updates on your sad little life.  Via your phone primarily, but also by web.  As a tool, it really blew up at the Austin based geekfest "South by Southwest".  Then it was supposed to die.  But it's only gotten bigger.  Mad bigger.  I've got one word for you:  twittervision.   I watched this thing til I was bleary-eyed.

http://www.twittervision.com

Believe me when I tell you its like Mr. Pibb and red strings = crazy delicious.  See a self-involved world updating live.  Please.  Go.  Now.

Twitter's burrowed its way into the general subconscious and stuck - why?  well, first thing is they released their code to the public, so anyone can create their own twitter "mashup" or tools.  This took a pretty basic tool and actually made it intersting.  Two, its an embodiment of "reachability" - the ability for others to know where you are at all times.  Three, it a chance for celebrity - to show up on the general posts at twitter, to appear on a map mashup, etc., has value.  Fourth, It's a great tool for connecting with people on the fly, and that's how it was used at SXSW, where it became a way to leave virtual posts and set up spontaneous gatherings. 

But there is something deeper here to this phenomenon - I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

Twitter's like digital kudzu.  Here's just a partial list of Twitter related stuff from franticindustries:

Mashups

Flussgeist - an unorthodox but interesting mashup between Twitter, Flickr, and several other services. It combines tweets with images, videos and an ambient soundtrack.
Swotter A contestant for the weirdest Twitter mashup out there, Swotter is “reading” books to Twitter. It’s essentially just sending lines of text from a book to a Twitter account. You can see it in action here: twitter.com/booktwo
Twapper - a mashup between the online calendar 30boxes and Twitter, created by the folks from 30boxes themselves. It works on both mobile and standard web browsers, and it’s useful even without a 30boxes account
TwitterEarth - similar to TwitterVision (which came first), but based on Live Maps, and works in 3D, too - at least it should, but at the time of this writing clicking on the 3D icon does nothing.
Twitterer - a Twitter/Second Life mashups, which shows updates from a certain Twitter accounts over Second Life spheres.
TwitterMaps another Twitter/Google Maps mashup, with a simple function: find out where a Twitter user is located. You can also update your current location with a special command sent to Twitter.

Mobile

 Autotwit lets you automate Twitter updates. Quite useless, unless you want to keep up an image of a man that never sleeps.
EmailTwitter - allows you to post Twitter updates and retrieve your Twitter timeline via your cellular phone or other e-mail enabled mobile device, without incurring SMS fees.
Mail2Twitter allows you to post tweets through e-mail, as well as any email-enabled mobile device.
RSS2Twitter - converts an RSS feed into Twitter tweets.
Twitter Badges: This comes straight from the developers of Twitter: Flash badges intended to be displayed on your website, showing your latest Twitter posts
TwitterBuzz is an interesting tool that turns Twitter into some sort of simple Digg. It displays a list of most popular links on Twitter. You can see all the Twitter messages mentioning the link.
TwitterFeed - a service that combines OpenID and Twitter to let you feed the entries on your blog to Twitter
Twitterholic keeps a top list of users based on how often the post, how many friends they have, and other factors.
Twitteromatic - a tool that posts all sorts of information (weather, Firefox updates) to Twitter automatically.

Widgets

Twadget - A Windows Vista widget (Microsoft calls them gadgets for no understandable reason), which shows you the latest Twitter updates and gives you the ability to post to Twitter right from your desktop.
Yourminis Twitter widget that shows tweets, and enables you to post updates to Twitter.

China Virtual - HiPiHi

This entry comes to us wholesale from ReadWriteWeb writer Gang Lu, 4/1/2007

HiPiHi - A Virtual World Born in China

Even though SecondLife has attracted a lot of attention in China and the first millionaire from SecondLife is Chinese, this western virtual world has still not been officially launched in China. But the rapidly growing Chinese Internet apparently could not wait for it. Last week a Chinese virtual world was launched, named HiPiHi. It's a SecondLife-like 3D virtual world and it started a limited beta test last week. We had a very nice talk with HiPiHi’s founders, Hui Xu (CEO) and Xinhua Liu, to find out more about this new Chinese virtual world.

HiPiHi was founded in Beijing in October 2005 as a privately held company funded by GCIG. HiPiHi is the only Chinese virtual world and probably only the second company worldwide after SecondLife to offer a truly collaborative, immersive and open-ended experience for users to create, inhabit and govern a new world of their own design.

HiPiHi Team

HiPiHi is very young, only 1.5 years old, and its private beta test just started a few days ago. People might feel it is just a business strategy to copy SecondLife, just as there are over 200 hundred video-sharing sites declaring themselves as Chinese YouTubes. However, unlike most of these startups, the HiPiHi management team is very experienced in this market.

Hui Xu, the founder and CEO of HiPiHi, was the General Manager of MyWeb China and was nominated as one of the “Top Ten China Internet Heros” in 1999. Hui was also the chairman and CEO of JingQi XiShu Co. Ltd, which became one of the most successful e-commerce site in 2000. Xuewei Rao, the Director & COO of HiPiHi, founded Iscreate Communications Co. Ltd in 2000 and was also the vice-president of the Guangdong High-Tech Chamber of Commerce. Its vice-president, Tracy Ji, was the PR director of ZhaoPin.com - the leading provider of online career and recruitment resource in China. Another founder, Xinhua Liu, was the vice-president of 3721.com (a leading software development company acquired by Yahoo in 2003) and also the co-founder of “EMBA Club International”.

The HiPiHi World

The Chinese Internet is still not mature and web 2.0 is just heating up here. We asked Hui and Xinhua why they started an online virtual reality. Hui Xu said that while most users will treat HiPiHi as another 3D game, he said they are aiming to build a complete 3D visual background which reflects different environments in the real world. It also provides users with a powerful creation engine and tools, which helps users to create their own world step by step. Hui explained that before the full public beta, they are going to invite around 100,000 users to be the original residents of the HiPiHi world.

There are four phases involved in the current private test. Note that these four phases reflect Chinese mythical events, but for better understanding here we are translating it into the corresponding Biblical story of God’s creation of the world in 7 days. They are:

Phase 1 - In the beginning God created heaven and the earth = the tools for rendering the terrain, hills, fields, terraces, water, flora etc are introduced.

Phase 2 - God created Adam and Eve and the human race using the image of Himself = the tools for creating more detailed avatars are introduced.

Phase 3 - God created all earthly things = the tools for creating all sorts of objects are introduced.

Phase 4 - The Mirage = the economic system and social system are established.

Hui commented: “Every phase is given a distinctive theme, in the hope of guiding users in the creation of the virtual world. This arrangement mirrors the real evolution of human society, from barbarians to civilized society. We want to let the users experience the course of civilization, instead of forcing most of our arbitrary creations down their throat from the get-go, which will surely confuse them.”

HiPiHi and SecondLife

HiPiHi has obtained lots of media coverage, most of which inevitably link it to Linden Labs' SecondLife - a few of them even call it a clone of SecondLife. We asked Hui for his thoughts on that:

“When we started discussing the HiPiHi back to 2005, actually we had no idea about SecondLife. SecondLife came to international attention in late 2006, then we studied it and found out we are both working towards a similar direction. It is absolutely a misunderstanding of virtual worlds if people think HiPiHi is a copycat of SecondLife. The virtual world is not just a 3D environment, but a complicated social system including the property policy, financial policy etc. HiPiHi is born in China, [so] we really hope it can embrace our own culture”.

Xinhua also added that “according to the CNNIC’s report (Jan,2007), over 70% of Chinese netizens are under 30 years old, but the average age of SecondLife is reported to be 32. Chinese users have different interests and views on the Internet market. HiPiHi and SecondLife can learn from each other, but neither of us can simply copy the culture from the other”.

The Future of HiPiHi

Discussing the future of HiPiHi, Hui Xu told us: “We have invited many sociologists and economists to sit down with our technicians to discuss the future of HiPiHi. We are working hard to improve our 3D environment, and we do hope we can create a perfect society - a shared and fair world which will finally embrace the various cultures of the real world”.

On the economics, while SecondLife created its Linden Dollar, it may've been the Chinese Internet giant Tencent QQ which first introduced a virtual currency - Q Coin. It has been reported that the China government may restrict the usage of virtual currencies, because of concerns about undermining the nation’s financial system. So we asked Hui Xu if HiPiHi is going to introduce its own currency - and if so how it would work. Hui said that “[certainly] we have considered this, but it is still too early to finalize this topic. We have to take all sorts of factors - inside and outside of HiPiHi - into account and we will introduce it when the virtual world is ready for trading”.

What's Happe - NING?

Ning, ning, ning, ning.

If you haven't yet been hit by the PR bus accompanying it's launch, Ning 2.0 has gone live.  Originally founded in '04 by Marc Andreessen (inventor of Netscape - you may remember them - started the revolution, lost the war) and Gina Bianchini, Ning is in the process of changing the game of social networking.  Try it.  They are live at http://www.ning.com.

You can create your own social networking site - name it, make it public or private, link it to others.   For $5/month, they'll do domain name aliasing for you (meaning you can put it on your own URL, not theirs) and for $20/month, they'll let you sell ads on your network through Google AdSense.

What does this mean and why could it be earthshaking? You won't need to go to one of the one-size-fits-all social networks anymore (MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, etc., etc.), looking for like-minded folks.  Now you can create your own in a few minutes, invite others, and yer live.  Hosted.  With your own URL.  FOR FREE.

Here's co-CEO Gina Bianchini's video demo of how it works.

This may represent a tidal shift - the ability for ANYONE, with ANY level of skill, to create their own fully functional online social network.  It takes the whole coding/infrastrucuture process, makes it butt simple, then lets the network creators recruit their friends.  You were here when it happened - when personalized social networks went free, easy and global.

Ning has seen 30,000 networks created since they went live in '04.  The video below shows you a visual representation of the formation of networks through Ning in the past week when nearly 10,000 independent social networks have been formed.  ONE WEEK, people.

If you feel like you are watching a viral contagion, you are.

Things to consider -

• From a media standpoint, we'll have to be smarter about how we reach people who "drop out" of the current media supported social networking landscape to go deeper into personally created networks of interest/passion
• From a creative standpoint, how can we best leverage these communities?
• Brands that want to create their own "social networks" of consumers will have to offer a clear and differentiated value proposition - because the ones they create on their own are going to be pretty kick ass.
• Branded social networks on closed proprietary systems (where most are now - and you know they are closed when you have to go through a full registration process, and create another password to forget) may go the way of the dodo.  Interoperability with existing/external networks will drop the barriers to entry.  You want me to join your network?  Then MAKE IT EASY.  Expect to here a lot more about OpenID...
  

Social Networking Evolution - 3 New trends

The "Social Networking" phenomenon, dominated recently by MySpace and Facebook, is rapidly mutating.  This past week alone has seen some major maturation/advances, and the emergence of three trends detailed below.  I've personally felt that brand based social networks had the potential to be enormous sucking wastes of time and effort, but I am now a convert - a brand (or many of them) will get it right in '07 - but I believe their success will be based on how willing they are to creating a brand-based social network that's open, flexible and interoperable with existing network (and new ones coming online).

Three new trends seem likely:

1. Companies and Media Take Control of Their Social Networks

• Last week, Cisco acquired Tribe, so it now has the capability to help its corporate clients develop their own social networks.  Tribe.net hasn't had a lot of success, but got some notoriety by being the social network for "Burning Man" festival attendees.  Cisco may now be able to offer its corporate clients the ability to build social/collaborative internal networks.
• USA Today re-designs its site and adds a social network

2. Vertical Business-to-Business Opportunities Emerge

• Reuters announced the launch a financially focused social network for analysts and traders.

3. Social Networks Splinter into The Long Tail

• Finally, the latest incarnation of Ning emerged.The site allows people to create their own social networks based around any topic they desire.  1198 complete networks were made in the last week, and I launched one for my family in about 10 minutes last night to test this thing out...
  

as influx put it,

"The social network has just graduated; its just been uncoupled from its ties with the brands that developed the idea, so we should now expect to see it form a component of many of our experiences on the internet."

This gets real interesting with Ning, and I'll pop them in another entry. 

jyte.com

Jyte provides a good look into the cutting edge of online conversation."  (via)

Starting from the reasonable premise that people make preposterous claims and argue about them, Jyte.com lets you create your own "claim", vote on others and award "cred".  Sound lame?  Well try it.  It's like a Lay's potato chips or sweet, sweet cigarettes.  Once you've had one, you need the next.

Check out the claims made around Coke:

"Pepsi is better than Coke" (38 in favor, 105 opposed at last count)

"You haven't lived until you've snorted coke off a dead hooker" (4 pro, 11 con)

Jyte leverages OpenID to allow users to start a discussion on any “claim” they care to make.  The best thing about OpenID is that it allows a single sign-in across all sites the support the protocol. If you have an AOL/AIM user name, you can now use it to log in at all kinds of different sites, including Jyte.

The site is a product of Portland, Oregon’s JanRain; Yep, right here in town.  You'll get to meet these folks soon!