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December 08, 2006

Social-Networking Culmination. Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Linkedin and the like -brennels

Social networking sites are ubiquitous in the online world; the latest estimation is that there are 380 of these sites on the internet today. While following this topic throughout the semester, not a day went by where I didn’t read about another new social-networking idea. Among some of the more interesting sites I came across were:

Commercialization

To many people, the future of these sites boils down to one thing: money. The billion dollar question (literally) is, how do we turn a site that has 100 million views a day or has over 100 million different users into cash? Many companies have jumped early on this bandwagon, and this is reflected in the amount of money the most popular social networking sites are being sold for: Myspace sold for 580M, YouTube for 1.65B, and the latest estimate is thatFacebook is looking for 1 billion

Many people are very critical of these prices, citing a lack of any reasonable business model as an indication that there is no way to turn all of these users into profits, and once it is attempted they will ignore it / leave the site. Also people remember the dotcom but of years past and wonder if these prices are warranted or just wild claims.

Others however are on the opposite side of the fence. With the exponential growth of Myspace and these other sites brings possibilities.

Some sites, however, have already shown a viable business model. Unfortunately, these sites are geared solely at sex.


Interesting Trend

Personally, I noticed a trend of the “planned” bombing while the “unplanned” spread like wildfire. Take the introduction of Walmart’s social networking site and company sponsored blog. This was an attempt by Walmart to cash in on this social-networking craze by creating a sponsored site, and to be frank, it was a complete and total failure. Then look at the media sensation caused by Lonleygirl15, due to the fact that people thought they were viewing original, raw content, free from any commercialization (the fact that she was a very attractive girl didn’t hurt either). Once people found out the truth many were outraged because they felt cheated in a way, with a very striking resemblance to way people responded to the “Blair Witch” project once they found out it was not real.

But is it really all about the money?

While many people look at Social-networking purely from a business prospective, my answer to this question is a resounding no. The most useful social-networking sites I found were those built around a purpose.

One of the unique sites I found was Organized Wisdom which is a site based on free healthcare advice from people across the world. Another interesting site I came across was Palore, a free browser plug-in that improves Goggle-Maps’ Restaurant Reviews, by making them much more accessible and relevant. These practical applications of social networks show that many minds can be greater than one. This idea of organized/collective 'wisdom' is an interesting one, as it takes the idea of 'two heads are better than one' to the 6.6 billionth power. Thinking of it this way allows one to believe that there is virtually unlimited possibility to the power of online social networks.

One of the main believers in this idea is a group of people at MIT who created the 'center of collective intelligence' which I recently blogged about. This group is exploring the implications that technology has on information, and in particular, business.

The world is changing, and it’s due to the increased flow of information. For now we are consumed with Myspace comments, Facebook wall posts, and funny YouTube videos, and while most of us are oblivious of the implications these social-networks have for the future of information, others are eagerly awaiting the future. Where will we be in 10 years you ask? I’ll leave that up to the experts at MIT.

Posted by brennels at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

End of Semester: Del.icio.us report -brennels

I’ll separate this post into two parts:
1. Notable aspects of my del.icio.us site
2. Various comments about using del.icio.us

1. Notable aspects of my del.icio.us site

-Sites I frequented and blogs I read

Some of the sites I went to regularly for information:

These sites update social networking articles on a daily basis. The information on these sites are more weighted towards information than they are actual analysis, and are frequented by news about launches, buyouts, mergers, viruses, rumors, failed ideas, etc. In addition to allowing comments on each article, mashable.com allows you to read all of the blogs that used the article as a reference. Using this feature led me to different blogs that were centered on social-networking topics.

Another way I found sites was by searching 'social network' in del.icio.us., which returns over 4000+ pages. Websites I tagged through this method were usually separated into two areas: links to actual social-networks, and links to interesting analyses of social networks.

-Notes Section

On most of my tags I utilized the 'notes' feature, and wrote a description of the website I tagged. I found this useful and helped me remember particularly interesting sites. I also took advantage of a neat feature of del.icio.us that puts any text you highlight on a page directly into the notes section. I would use this by looking through a site, highlighting an important idea, and then tagging the site (the highlighted portion is imported into the notes section without you having to type anything.)

In addition, I utilized the notes section by including '**' before specific sites that I found EXTREMELY interesting and definitely wanted to remember after this project was done. That way if I ever wanted to look at those pages again, I pull up my del.icio.us site, hit 'ctrl-f', type in '*', and it would take me to all the tags I wanted to remember.

2. Various comments about using del.icio.us

-Cool things I found

Daily Blog Posting: A cool aspect of del.icio.us that I would use if I regularly wrote in a blog would be, their 'daily blog posting' which is a feature that will automatically post an entry to your blog each dayshowing showing your latest bookmarks.

Populicious: An interesting site I used is Populicio.us which has a collection of popular sites with more options than the main del.icio.us page: most popular within the last 24hours, 48hours, week, month, all-time.

Rename Tags: I found this extremely useful when changing tagged sites that I originally used commas on. I wasn’t aware at first that you didn’t need to use commas, so I ended up having multiple tags for things I only wanted one of. For example I had group136 and group136, very annoying!

-Things they could improve on

Poor organization of bookmarks: Why can’t you put bookmarks in certain folders? I understand tagging is used as a way to sort entries but I think there are better ways to organize information than a 'tag cloud'. Especially if you noticed a trend over a period of time and wanted to group pages together, you’d have to go in and change each individual pages’ tag.

Option to leave comments on others’ bookmark: While browsing other social bookmark sites I came across 'Furl' which allows you to leave a comment on others’ bookmarks. This could be very useful if you wanted to share your thoughts with another user and let them know 'hey if you found this article interesting you would probably really like www.whatever.com/article1234' del.icio.us has the 'for: user123' option, but this option would be a vast improvement over the current interface because you wouldn’t have to have this user in your network and you would have the ability leave to comment on their tags, not just create a tag for them.

Ability to rate pages: If you find a certain page EXTREMELY engaging there is no way to document this besides adding a description that has 'read this!.' Using a rating system could assure that very interesting/innovative pages make it to the top of the hotlist

Posted by brennels at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

IT#9: The power of social-networking and the rise of Collective Intelligence -brennels

After spending numerous weeks researching social networking sites, I have come to one conclusion: The web, as we once knew it, is crumbling. Long gone are the days where a few fairly intelligent (if we were lucky) people posted up their thoughts/insights and everyone else read and met around the water cooler on Monday morning to engage in discussions. And do you know why? It dawned upon some people that there were thousands of places around the country where these conversations were taking place, and there must be to not only a way to aggregate it, but to make it much more efficient. The internet has allowed for communication barriers to be shattered in such a way that once someone posts information there is almost immediate feedback, whether in the form of comments, blogs, trackback, or popularity-sites like del.icio.us.

Social networking sites are the pioneers of this movement, allowing users to create profiles on the web, and then explore…building their page with pictures, videos, music, blogs, news links, etc. They can also post their thoughts on others’ pages, in the form of comments: (written, audio, and now video). This is akin to millions of people sitting in a room exchanging information; sometimes it is useless information, other times it may be insightful. This is powerful. There must be some way for society to benefit from everyone’s interaction, for as the saying goes 'two heads are better than one.' Well at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the saying goes 'we>me.'

MIT has created a Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) which aims at understanding how new communication technologies on the internet (social-networks, Google, Wikipedia, etc.) are influencing the idea of a collective intelligence, and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage. The basic research question is How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before? This undertaking is admittedly not a light one, but MIT is up to the challenge. One of the first ways they will tackle this issue is by creating a book unlike any that has ever been made before, called We are smarter than me.

Who will be the author of this book? You will. And I’ll help as well. Add 675,000 invitees from Wharton, 400,000 from Sloan, and this thing will get huge. What will this book be about? We will figure out ways in which to adapt traditional business functions to the rapid changes in technology and communication.

Are there critics of the 'collective intelligence' idea? Sure there are. People say it will result in chaos, there will be no clear direction, disagreements will create discrepancies, the knowledge will be useless, etc. In response I would offer one word 'Wikipedia'. Wikipedia has revolutionized the way information is shared, and the CCI has recognized this and decided to run with it. Will 'We are smarter than me' revolutionize traditional business as we know it? Maybe yes, maybe no. But will we all benefit from embarking on a mission to see how revolutionary the internet’s communication tools can be in enhancing our knowledge? You better believe it.

Posted by brennels at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2006

PAPA's relevancy to Amazon/eBay's tracking information

Note: I am interpreting “information” as the data amazon/ebay/etc. collects about you such as purchase patterns, recently viewed items, customized display based on google searches, etc.

I believe the PAPA framework is a very thorough analysis and can be applicable in many situations, but while reflecting on it’s relevancy to the WSJ article and the amazon.com data, I don’t think its analysis was meant for this type of information.

When you think of this information in terms of Accuracy, Property, and Accessibility, in my mind they just don’t apply. The PAPA framework used examples of poor accuracy and the theft of intellectual property to show detrimental damage to the injured parties, but in an amazon.com/ebay context, poor accuracy of information might result in bad 'recommendations', while I don’t know if anyone would violate your 'property' by claiming your clicking habits as their own. The amount of 'damage' these two offenses might cause is not substantial enough to warrant even the slightest concern. In terms of accessibility, the PAPA framework describes accessibility in that 'information poor' people may be at a disadvantage in this new age, but this does not apply to our situation. Privacy may be an issue if the information is shared and used for other purposes. For example, if someone bought multiple books/did searches for homemade bombs, and then amazon.com gave this information to the government, that would be an invasion of privacy. However, the online merchants are insisting this data is only used internally, and if this is true, there is no reason for concern.

Honestly, I feel doing things such as generating free shipping if a user in on the fence about a purchase, changing featured items on a webpage based on google searches, attracting first-time buyers with a discount…these are all good business practices! I understand some people feel cheated because they didn’t know this was going on, but let’s be honest, if a car salesman thinks you’re on the fence about something and decides to throw in an upgraded sound system, would people call that unfair? Absolutely not. I think people are failing to understand that they are decision makers; if they don’t want to buy a product on amazon/ebay/etc, they don’t have to! In my opinion, this data collection, if it is used only for the purposes it is intended for, is a great thing. When I log onto 'My Amazon' I am presented with books that are interesting to me, and if I don’t want to buy them, I won't.

Posted by brennels at 10:39 PM | Comments (1)