Say it ain’t so, Joe! Over the past few weeks, it’s begun to look like Social Networking, the current darling of the conference and consultant set, might have jumped the shark. I personally would peg the exact point where it went careening off track as the day that Waste Management (the guys that probably run your local honey truck) opened their own social networking site. But it goes far beyond that. Earlier this week Om Malik wrote a very interesting…
(The link to the article is lower in this post, to ensure the proper text appears in the Techcrunch trackback…) Techcrunch yesterday featured an article by Nik Cubrilovic with the salacious title “WordPress Security Issues Lead To Mass Hacking. Is Your Blog Next?” – from that article: Due to its popularity as a blogging platform, WordPress has become a prime target for hackers looking to take over blogs for search-engine optimization (SEO) of other sites they control, traffic-redirection and other…
One of the outcomes of my testing of Twitter lately is that I’ve come to question whether or not Social Media has jumped the shark (props t David Churbuck who tweeted on social media jumping the shark this morning – I initially left the attribution out to save the fall out, but since he linked, no need to save him…) What I am finding is that most of the people I am finding in my general circle on Twitter are…
Having used Twitter for a few weeks now I’ve come to the realization that it’s a viable communications means. It’s just that I’d never realized the appropriate messages to fit in that medium, which are short comments or conversations. I think of it as yelling over the cubicle wall at the folks around me. It’s good for a short blast, but any substantial conversation needs to move to a more appropriate communication means, be that a blog, an email, IM,…
As readers know, I’ve been testing Twitter. It’s fun, but for me the jury is still out. One of the things I’m noticing is the preponderance of New Media Gurus inhabiting Twitter. And inevitably, many feel the need to constantly evangelize on the issues of Web 2.0. News flash: if you have to talk in broad terms about Web 2.0, Social Networking or Social Media, you’ve probably already missed the boat. This is not some abstract concept that is coming…
Okay, we all know that social networks are out there and that we should be making use of them. But how do you monitor what’s going on in the vast ecosystem of Twitterverses, MySpaceDoms and FacebookVilles? David Churbuck has been doing just that for Lenovo for the past two years and he’s sharing the lessons learned in this post: “Try to Detect It” which I consider a must read for any web marketing pro or business owner/senior manager. Free: yup….
After slapping Twitter around for the past year, I thought it was about time for me to shut my mouth and actually try it. So after a week, here are my initial impressions. First off, communications through Twitter are by their nature somewhat superfluous. I’ve really only had one discussion that’s actually meant anything. My impression is that it’s basically the Internet equivalent of the CB Radio. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. The means of communication is totally…
David Churbuck posts this morning on Blog Aggregation. We both did a blog aggregation project over at Reel-Time.com in 2003 which, as he notes, was well ahead of the curve (and probably the need). He’s got some excellent points, but I have a few things to add. The idea of a blog is something that many of us don’t fully understand. It’s basically an online journal that was designed to allow users without server level access to maintain their own…
Mukund Mohan had a great post hitting on the comment by Jason Calacanis: “An absolute idiot with 10-20M users can make a ton of money. So, get to tens of millions of users and forget about money.” Mukund points out that while Linked In has the 10 million users Jason mentions, but it provides very little value to most of the members. I’d even go one further in saying that many of us see it as a total drag. I…
Tom Willmot of EdgeDesigns, one of our team lead developers posts on the launches of www.hotcars.com and www.dreamwheels.com last week. He succinctly sums up the niche social networks for those not familiar: A niche social network is simply a social network aimed squarely at a niche interest, be it wine or geeks. You take the classic social network components: user profiles, friends lists, user messaging, forums and groups; and then you tailor the experience towards your intended niche. Throw in…