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)

November 29, 2006

IT#8: Social-Networking Business for Sale on eBay? -bilandre

This Blog is in response to an article written about an Online dating site that is for sale on Ebay

The holiday season is coming upon us quicker than we think, and if you missed out on the Black Friday sales, then now it is time for you to gear up. As people flock to malls and retail stores, where parking can be an issue and the headaches only continue, there are those who choose to buy gifts from home. While TVC and mail order catalogs provide tons of excitement during the holiday season, eBay can be a strong alternative. Although eBay’s winter auctions include everything from a vintage signed Jimi Hendrix poster, to the highly sought-after Playstation 3, this holiday season provides for much more than just that. Instead of a poster or game consol, why not buy a friend their own business. Huh? Who buys a business through eBay? eBay’s newest auction is for the social networking website, www.hippiePersonals.com

When I first read this, I figured it was nothing more than buying a domain name which could become a social networking sight in the future, but boy was I wrong HippiePersonals is an up and running social network dating site with over 1800 members. The site is surprisingly diverse as well, with members from as far as Australia connecting. This offer, which has an opening bid of just under $10,000, is more than just a business. Winning the auction also bags you 55 other previously registered domain names that are ready to be turned into the next MySpace or Facebook.

Now $10,000 is a rather mild investment for a “working” business, but to me, this is a very risky idea. It requires a lot of research to effectively implement a well-run business idea, and seeing as bidding ends on December 4th, I can’t see this auction getting any takers. However, the description does say the website produces around $300/month in its current state, and by taking one look at the website, it is clear that there is a lot of room to grow. The interface could be made much more user friendly, and a lot more advertising space could be sold.

The offering of this website is an obvious attempt try and cash in on the social networking craze. It is pretty clear from the “item description” on the page that this guy is not making bank with this website, he just said he “doesn’t have time”. In other words, he created a website, it has a small number of users, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. And who could blame him? All of the advertising schemes, pricing structures, and revenue growth can be pretty daunting to someone without experience in the online advertising industry.

For the average Joe Schmoe trying to get rich, I would advise looking elsewhere. However, if someone is a risk taker, and has a background in online advertising, this type of open-ended website may be a perfect (albeit pricy) holiday gift!

Posted by brennels at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2006

IT#7: Still Speculation, but Could the Bubble Soon Burst? -gfodell

There is no doubt that social networking sites are the hot topic of technology right now, at least when the talk is about cashing in on investments. The value of these sites increases with each additional member. Scott Taylor estimates that Myspace.com alone is worth $6 billion and growing. But have they reached their peak? I say this because anyone my age or older can remember the days when AOL instant messenger was the Myspace of its day. Everyone had an AIM account and used it daily to interact with friends much like Myspace and Facebook today.

I was reading the paper today and noticed that Google.com reached an all-time stock price high of over $500. This got me thinking, because they do not currently pay a dividend, yet investors are forking over increasing amounts of cash to own part of the company. They're spending billions on research and acquiring sites such as Myspace.com and youtube.com in hopes of generating advertising dollars. I'm waiting for these recent acquisitions to eventually drive down their parent companies, because I don't see any revenue in the future. But apparently I'm wrong. According to the article The Future of Social Networking Sites, "Social Networking is here to stay" for these reasons:

Although the parent companies of huge social networking sites (news corp. for myspace and google for youtube) were initally mocked for their willingness to put a lot of money on a risky investment...recent ideas such as a Myspace Store or a Myspace Magazine could potentially bring in a lot of profit.

At this stage it is still all speculation, and hopefully within the next few months these new ideas will be tested.

Posted by brennels at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

IT#6: Thoughts on Social Networks for Professional Sports Teams -bilandre

These days, mega social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Friendster are known and used by millions of people every day. While these websites incorporate all forms of entertainment ranging from video clips, to music players, to picture slideshows, they do not lend themselves to probably the most well known form of entertainment: sports. The Portland Trailblazers of the National Basketball Association are trying to capitalize on this huge market. With the help of Affinity Circles, the leading provider of trusted social networks for membership organizations, the Portland Trail Blazers announced plans to launch the first official social network for a professional basketball team. Utilizing Affinity Circles proven social networking platform, the Trail Blazers will create an online community in which fans can share their passion for the team, its players and the game.

My initial thoughts on this were somewhat mixed. I am an avid sports fan, so the idea of a sports related social networking site was very appealing. "Portland fans are passionate about the Trail Blazers, and about technology, so merging the two to create an official online community to support our team makes perfect sense," said team president and general manager, Steve Patterson. After giving this some thought, and realized that the Portland Trailblazers may not be the best team for this. The reason is because, well, they aren’t very good. In addition to this they do not have a huge following outside of the Portland area. Instead of using the site to cheer on the Trailblazers, or to meet new Trailblazers fans, it may give these disgruntled fans a forum to criticize the team. While Portland may not be the best team suited for this, the idea of creating a social network where fans can gather is a great one. Teams that are successful (and have a lot of fans) such as the LA Lakers or the Miami Heat could create thriving sites where people can interact by exchanging information on the teams and themselves.

These kinds of social networking sites are different from the social networking giants because they have a central theme: sports. Myspace and Facebook use general networking as an end to themselves, but these sites use social networking to promote a specific sports team. This is interesting to me, primarily because it might be an answer to the question on everyone’s mind: how can social networking sites turn a profit? The team-related social networking sites could lead to a somewhat viable business model by offering game tickets, team memorabilia (both new and vintage), etc. to these fans.

The Portland Trailblazers are not the only team to have caught onto the idea that this might be a worthwhile endeavor. The Indianapolis Colts as well as the NHL have come up with social networking sites, and in my opinion, this is just the beginning. It won’t be long before other teams see the potential of these sites and jump on the bandwagon.

The only question is, will people use these sites? We have already seen the pitiful reception of sports centered technology advances such as ESPN’s mobile phone; will this be another feeble attempt by marketers to capture the attention of the massive market segment that makes up “sports fans”? Personally, I think if this is well-executed, it could be a raging success. Granted some teams/sports will garner more interest than others, but let’s be honest, how cool would it be for a die-hard Mets fan living in LA to meet 10 other people in LA and get together to watch games? I think the potential for these sites is incredible. As always, considerations must be taken into account: there will be a number of uneducated fans spewing useless information, there may be multiple sites created for each team thereby diluting the number of people in one place, etc; however, there’s no doubt in my mind this can be done. Let the games begin!

Posted by brennels at 01:38 PM | Comments (1)

October 30, 2006

IT#5: The Value of Social-Networking Sites -gfodell

I was searching Youtube.com for some videos a friend put up of himself and I noticed a few advertisements on the side and corner of the website. I thought to myself, "yeah, I know who Cingular is already, I'm not going to buy the product just because the logo is on a few websites that I visit." I had been doing some research and following the topic for a while, and recalled an article about how Google bought Youtube.com for $1.65 billion dollars. That seemed like an astronomical amount of money for a website with totally free usage, and I didn't see any reason for advertisers to pay the website to have logos and things nobody looks at. Well, apparently I found some people that agree with me. In the article Turning Social Network Traffic into Dollars, Stefanie Olsen cites many reasons why many social networking sites attract millions of users, yet can't find advertisers willing to spend money on them. Reasons she cites are:


To combat these fears sites like Myspace are taking creative approaches to advertising on their website. For example, companies that want to advertise a new movie can create sites for new movies that other members can visit, or create certain characters from movies that users can interact with, such as Wolverine from the new X-Men movie or game.
Myspace users will then be able to interact with these movie sites/characters, and developers are working on automated instant message systems, so that users can have "conversations" with these characters. I'm guessing this is targeted at a very young demographic, as I couldn’t imagine older users wanting to talk to a program pretending to be Wolverine. However, even with this slightly esoteric appeal these sites could potentially sell anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million according to Myspace.com estimates.

The lack of inflow of advertising dollars has yet to stop big media companies from buying these large social networking sites for large sums of money. As previously mentioned, Google acquired Youtube.com for $1.65 Billion, while News Corp. bought Myspace.com over a year ago for $580 Million. Mixi, the dominant site in Japan, went public last month with a spectacular debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

I wanted to find out why they were worth that much, because the functionality of the site seems quite simple. The majority of the money paid for these sites was to the rights of the established name/community, which makes sense, as names like Myspace and Facebook are recognizable by almost everyone between the ages of 13-25. Personally, I find it difficult to see why you would pay so much money for a business model that has yet to be proven, but apparently these large corporations know something about them that I don't. Only time will tell!

Posted by brennels at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2006

IT#4: Social Networking privacy issues you may not have considered... -brennels

With the rise of social networking sites, the issue of privacy continues to be a hotly debated topic. Oftentimes the news likes to bring to the forefront issues of stalking and I would be willing to bet a majority of UofM students in any classroom could tell you what the term “facebook stalking” means.

While browsing the net I found two interesting articles one on Xanga and one on Myspace describing ways in which to track who looks at your profile. There are some differences between the two, namely the Xanga one is built into the website, while the Myspace tracker is produced by a third-party company called “Trakzor”. The basic idea behind them is the same however; you can see the profile of everyone who is viewing your page, and you can see how often they have frequented your page. The Trakzor version even gives you an option to track via google maps who has been viewing your page.

While I think these features are helpful if you feel you are being stalked and are concerned about your safety, they raise a couple interesting issues worth think about:


I think this is a debate that isn’t going to end anytime soon, as the growth of social networking sites always carries with it the weight of “privacy”.

Posted by brennels at 02:27 PM | Comments (2)

October 17, 2006

Term Project Announcement

We will be focusing our tagging/blogs for the rest of the semester on Online Social Networking.

Posted by brennels at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

IT#3: Windows Vista and Privacy -gfodell

While searching a popular social website, I was surprised at how much information people put about themselves on the internet and wondered how easy it would be to steal someone's identity. So I started searching articles about identity theft and came across an article about the new Widows operating system called "Windows Vista". The article, titled "20 Reasons Why Windows Vista Will Be Your Next OS., stresses the idea that Microsoft took a huge step forward in the race against Mac and Linux systems for the most secure OS.

There are a couple main things that Vista does to protect users:

Vista in the Business World

The major advance Vista has besides the total 3-dimensional GUI is that it incorporates what Microsoft calls "Windows Meeting Space". It allows users to share information, including whole desktops, with other users over a network. This would allow business to standardize their computing and allow their employees to share information very easily. This networking includes video chat, network conferencing, and person-to-person messaging.

Vista also takes graphics and graphical interfaces to the next level. It allows the user, instead of using the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, to have a 3-D view, like this, of all programs for easy, and more fun, organization of running programs. If the desktop is this advanced, I can only imagine what we will be able to do with new multimedia programs like PowerPoint. With the rapid advance of technology, there will likely be many additions to multimedia programs allowing users to produce professional-grade documents, (such as those done by programs like Adobe Acroboat) without having to go outside of Vista. Hopefully it will take things like this to the next level, allowing people to use 3-D graphics in PowerPoint presentations.

There are many other small advances besides improved graphics and security, but overall, it doesn’t seem to me that Vista is going to be a full-fledged new "operating system". It seems more along the lines of updates and modification, much as Windows 98 was to Windows 95 (while Windows 95 was groundbreaking, Windows 98 constituted an update more than a totally new idea). Then again, as the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Only time will tell what impact Vista will have.

Posted by brennels at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2006

IT#2: Competing with Google and Yahoo in Advertising -brennels

This article is about Quigo, a new company that is gaining online advertising business from Google and Yahoo. Quigo’s product is called “AdSonar”, which competes with Google’s AdSense and Yahoo’s Content Match to come up with advertisements based on the text of a page. ESPN recently announced that it would begin using Quigo’s AdSonar instead of Yahoo’s program, and this has made many people wonder how such a small company can compete with the 2 internet giants.

The two main answers to this question are:

  1. Quigo is seen as independent rather than competition for many sites. Whereas Google and Yahoo have email/news/videos that compete with traditional news sites, Quigo benefits from only having AdSonar.
  2. Quigo can focus more intently on specific customers, providing them with more relevant ad placements.

I find this article particularly interesting because I have often been reading a webpage and seen advertiser links that are completely irrelevant and clearly the result of poor algorithms. For example, by looking at the page I mentioned above you can see one of the “advertiser links” is:

Private Label Promotional Lip Balm
Great for promoting your business or event. Use our online label...
logolipbalm.net

Clearly whatever algorithm used to place this ad here used the word “private” from the page’s introduction “Privately held search firm Quigo is….” quite liberally. This is almost laughable and it is unlikely that anyone viewing this article was interested in clicking that link.

It’s good to see that there are more companies trying to break into the online-advertising business, as hopefully through increased competition will become a better overall service. Right now the annoyance of online advertisements is exacerbated when they are completely useless, as in the example above. It would be nice to have a future where the advertisements you see on a page are directly related to your topic and actually of interest.

Posted by brennels at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

IT(Search Tips #2): What kind of information can I find about a website? -brennels

While browsing del.icio.us I found a page entitled “A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available” and was immediately interested. This website has…well…just what it says: a comprehensive list of website statistics. The statistics are broken down into different categories:

Within each category is specific information. For example, under statistics/popularity data they give: This site is a great way to find all sorts of information about any page you may be interested in. Let’s say, for example, that I find an interesting page about Firefox’s new program Adaptive Blue. Using these website statistics I can do a number of things. Among them I can As you can see, there are a TON of resources at your fingertips, and they all give you more information about a specific page. This can help if you find a page of high interest to you, and want to know everything you possibly can about it. With the continued growth of internet users and websites, there is an unbelievable amount of raw data out there and this page shows ways to get at that information.

Posted by brennels at 06:38 PM | Comments (1)

October 09, 2006

IT (Search Tips #1): The Power of a Single Page -brennels

One of the most useful ways that I found to retrieve relevant/interesting information has not involved a search engine of any type, but instead takes advantage of the wealth of exterior information contained on a single page. (By exterior information I am referring to text/links that are NOT contained within the article)

Some pages are not very conducive to this process while others provide amazing amounts of information, as shown in the following examples:

If you were to come upon this New York Times article you would read about how Myspace has had an emerging trend of older users. Dissecting this page for related info doesn’t prove too fruitful. There are:

It seems as if the related articles/searches are just pages in which ‘technology’ or ‘Myspace’ is a keyword (very broad). Thus, delving deeper into the “emerging trend of older users on Myspace” is difficult to do by looking at just the exterior information on this page. Web-pages similar to this are reasons why people use search engines and other tools to find information. This kind of article is often an end-product, and to find additional information a user must go ‘back’ and keep searching.

However, all pages are not like this. Some pages allow you to explore a wealth of information, and a great one I found is this article about differences between social networking sites. Dissecting this page for related info yields a massive amount of information. Among it are the following:

As you can see, if you were interested in learning more about the differences between social networking sites, this page wouldn’t serve as an end-product, but rather a springboard to new/relevant information. I personally find that the best way to do this is to use a browser such as Firefox, which allows you to do multiple-tabbed browsing. That way you can click on as many links as you want and navigate through them easily.

Posted by brennels at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2006

IT#1 ESPN cancels Mobile ESPN -bilandre

This blog is in reaction to ESPN pulling the plug on their mobile phone line.

Wow! It seems as if it was only yesterday that I saw the first of many Mobile ESPN commercials, and now, it is getting the boot? The first time I saw an advertisement for Mobile ESPN, I have to admit I was intrigued. The idea was that if you subscribed to the service (for a monthly fee) you would get full access to ESPN.com, video highlights, and real-time scores sent straight to your phone. While I was intrigued the first time I saw this, I quickly realized that one could do essentially the same thing with a Blackberry, Treo, Motorola Q, or a T-Mobile Sidekick by logging into their web browser and accessing ESPN.com. One could do this on their PDA that they already used, on their internet that they already paid for, without being constrained to using Sprint or Nextel (which both seem to be going downhill in recent months). My sense of surprise at the beginning of this blog should not be mistaken for unhappiness regarding the situation, but more for the amount of time, or lack there of, that the “product” was on the market.

To be honest, this failure by ESPN does not really affect me or anybody I know, as I never deliberated in my head whether I would be signing up for this service. I am about as big a fan of the ESPN brand name as can be, but I just found this service, at an additional cost of $40/month, to be unnecessary. You can't blame ESPN, and if I worked there it might be a project I would have been interested in producting, but I feel that they put too much money into this project too quickly, without testing the market enough. Also, the marketing strategies were not necessarily the best way to go, as I got tired of watching the same commercials over and over again on ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN News, and ESPN classic. In the article, it says there is a chance that ESPN will reintroduce this concept once 3G services are the norm, but I don't think they should. It was a gamble that unfortunately failed, but ESPN is so strong in other aspects of media that they should consider this a sunk cost and move on. There are too many cheaper more accessible alternatives to get the same information you’d receive as a customer of ESPN Mobile, and I don’t see this project working (at least at its current price) at any point in the future. ESPN, my advice to you, just keep doing what you have been doing for years, SPORTSCENTER!

Posted by brennels at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)