Archive for Social
New Delicious: now with more flavour
July 31st, 2008 • Internet, Social
Quiet day, settled in for the evening, and then… up pops a new Delicious.
It shouldn’t be a big deal (the Delicious refresh has been circling over the runways for what seems like years now), and in some ways isn’t. There no wild and wacky shift in functionality; you save your bookmarks to the site, and see what other people are bookmarking. Simple recipe, but none the worse for it.
But in an understated way, it is a big deal - largely thanks for the design team at Yahoo. Read more »
What’s so wrong with context, love and understanding?
March 21st, 2008 • Journalism, Social
There’s now a well-established universe of A-List bloggers. Among the millions of us sharing our mundane adventures, these people are the elite, the pivot around which the blogosphere rotates.
But far from evolving from enthusiastic semi-amateurs into a formidable new journalistic force, this elite may be turning inward. Cyndy Aleo-Carreirra over at Profy.com argues that they the more they argue among themselves, the more traffic it drives:
It’s making me miss the old days of a longer news cycle and a wider focus in what’s considered news, because I’d much rather read about the 89-year-old in Malaysia using the web for her political campaign than the latest blogger slapfest.
I’ll confess to reading many of those A-List posts every day through Google Reader. Much of it is inward, in-the-know debate among a Chosen Few on the west coast of America. If you work in the internet business (or have a web obsession that has gone way too far), it’s fascinating stuff.
But it’s a mile removed from the dream of a new form of open publishing challenging the mainstream establishment. ‘Slapfest’ says it all: at times, the debate among the few turns into the clown interval at the Big Top, complete with buckets of water and half-sawn chair legs. That’s a massive generalisation, of course - the likes of Irving Wladawsky-Berger couldn’t be further removed from Comedy Hour if they tried, and provide fascinating insights into the world around them. But too much of the new journalism is more akin to family feuding.
‘Completely open social networks do not work’
January 24th, 2008 • Internet, Social
Tags: Social, web
Human beings collaborate. They also deviate, plan and plot. On a good day, they’ll create intricate towers. On average days, they’ll saw half way through your chair leg while you’re out at lunch. This seems to be the basis of a piece over at Publishing 2.0, which argues that Digg - the original open social voting system - has all but forgotten its open origins as it attempts to prevent ‘gaming’ of its voting system. Read more »
Like Google, only hand-crafted
January 13th, 2008 • Search, Social
Tags: Google, Search, Social, Untitled
Just stumbled upon a Firefox extension from the people at Mahalo.
Not Earth-shaking, I know, but quietly cool. Mahalo, in case you’ve been holidaying on Mars for the last six months, in the new search engine from Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur who brought you such legendary web properties as WeblogsInc (the power behind Engadget and Autoblog).
Baby Boomers Storm Internet
January 13th, 2008 • Internet, Social
Tags: Life, Social, trends, Web
Everyone knows the UK has an aging population - by 2012, the average Briton will be 132 years old, and all of them will rely on the handful of under-20s to help them cross the road.
Doubt this as fact? Try a new report from Neilsen, which points to a fundamental shift in the age profile of the UK net population. Says the company:
“When looking at how a particular audience is composed by age, a change in share - even by just a few percentage points - actually represents quite a fundamental shift. Age compositions tend to evolve subtly over a number of years so to see such large changes in the course of just a year shows that the Internet population is undergoing a significant ageing process.”
The largest threat to Google yet?
January 7th, 2008 • Google, Search, Social
Tags: Google, Search, Social, web3.0, wiki
Wikia Search went live today.
So what? So it’s the brainchild of one Jimmy Whales, the clever chap who brought you Wikipedia. So there’s just a remote chance that it may fly.
The search results are, so far, pretty damn poor, and many of the preferences do not work. But as the world gets stuck in and begins to rate those returns, so they’ll improve (tricky right now, as the star ratings that accompany each entry in a return are disabled), and doubtless the various features will get switched on in the coming weeks. Read more »
Twitter, Facebook bring world economies to their knees
January 5th, 2008 • Internet, Social
Tags: facebook, Social, twitter
Nope, it’s not Islamists, the Russians or short-sighted Americans taking unaffordable loans. No, the globe’s financial wiring is being pulled apart by… instant messaging and your online buddies.
OK, so it’s the late noughties version of IM and buddies, but it’s IM all the same. I’ve been monitoring various stories this week concerning the public use and abuse of Facebook and Twitter, mostly prompted by analysts and hacks wondering at the growth and value of the two social web giants.
Pat Phelan over at Roam4Free pulls together a few stats behind Twitter’s usage.
According to @missrogue and @fredericguarino there over 450.000 active users and 750.000 registered users on Twitter and with Twittown suggesting 340,000 accounts in July and a growth figure of 60,000 users per month you can settle on a rough 1 million users.
Never mind what are Twitter costs, whats the cost of Twitter? at Roam4free
Phelan does the maths, and suggests that Twitter use will cost the economy $13.5bn in 2008.
And as I opened The Daily Mail today (excuse: only newspaper in the coffee shop, and I was bored), I was greeted by a two-page scare piece by Radio 4’s John Humphries investigating the new fixation with virtual identities.
Which is my cue to sound like Meldrew: we’ve had this for as long as I can recall, with culprits ranging from Rubik’s Cubes to Elvis. It’s an age-old page-filler on quiet days.
Google to launch Facebook rival
October 16th, 2007 • Google, Search, Social
Tags: facebook, Google, Social
So the search giant is going to unveil its Facebook rival on November 5 (no source here… just a hail of blogosphere noise).I’m wondering what tricks Google has up its sleeve to bring down the social giant. In case they’re still wondering, and happen to be reading this, here are a few ideas:
- Bring every social profile together in one place: YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, the lot.
- Include an IM client in the Friends interface.
- Include a way of seeing what other people are reading.
- Ensure that you can export everything if you tire of the service
- And running through that list again, you realise just how close Google is to delivering the killer blow.
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