Technology Blog

E-Commerce Times reports that:

In response to advertising industry concerns over security, MySpace.com has removed 200,000 “objectionable” profiles from its social network. The site erased profiles containing risque or hate speech content.

I’m quoted in the article, and I won’t repeat it all here, but let me expand on it…

This action by MySpace is a reaction to comments like this one (from Major Marketers Avoid MySpace):

Of six panelists representing major advertisers and ad agencies, not a single one advertised with MySpace or other social networking sites. Reasons for avoiding MySpace include concern about its potential for criminal use, especially given recent well-publicized reports about sexual predators searching for victims on the site, as well as fears that user-generated content–including pictures and text with sexual overtones–will be offensive.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that kind of environment,” said David Cohen, executive vice president for Universal McCann Interactive, with a client roster including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Wendy’s International, and Sony Electronics. “You only have to look around for five or 10 minutes to find something offensive.”

They make a big deal of the fact that they found six people representing major brands that don’t advertise on MySpace. So what?!? I bet you could easily find six that don’t advertise in Playboy. or even Maxim for that matter. Or Sports Illustrated. Or, or or…

How about all the major brands that DO advertise there? Ironically, some of the companies mentioned above do advertise on MySpace as a result of syndicated ad networks.
- Microsoft (should’ve grabbed a screenshot - can’t seem to get it now, but I did before)
- Sony (Sony/BMG/Columbia artists are all over MySpace)
- Nike
- Panasonic
- Radio Shack
- Sprint
- AT&T
- E-Trade
- Verizon
- Cingular
- Nextel
- Energizer batteries
- Practically every pop/rock music label on the planet

It doesn’t seem that MySpace is having a hard time filling their ad inventory with major brands!

I agree that it’s pretty astounding that all six panelists don’t advertise there. But I think it’s astounding because they actually managed to find six advertising “experts” who feel that way. They’re obviously (see above) not representative of what major brands are actually doing. You want to see what’s really going on, “follow the money”. Just how “wholesome” do you need your cell phone provider to be, anyway?

I have no doubt that there were 200,000+ profiles on MySpace that violated their Terms of Use, which among other things, prohibit any content that:

1. is patently offensive and promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
…
4. contains nudity, violence, or offensive subject matter;

MySpace is well within their rights to delete these profiles. In fact, they should have been deleted a long time ago. It should have been no big deal - part of their ongoing business practices - rather than a reaction to advertiser concerns. Then they could have just quietly told advertisers that they were being more aggressive about enforcing their existing policies. Instead, by making a big deal of it, they have prompted negative reaction from users and even from industry analysts.

I don’t expect to see MySpace users leaving in droves (yet), but it just adds to the us-vs.-them mentality that has been growing ever since MySpace was bought by News Corp. And it was totally unnecessary. This shouldn’t have been a big deal - making it one was a big mistake.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: MyMistake - MySpace Does the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

As usual, Dave Pollard posts a well-thought-out, thorough piece on “Social Networking Tools & Knowledge Management: What You Can Do Now“. This was presented at the KMWorld and Intranets 2005 Conference. It includes an overview what was wrong with the traditional siloed social network model (Friendster, etc.), and what you can do within the context of a large corporation to take advantage of these technologies for better Knowledge Management.

This post was written by David Teten, source: Social Networking Tools and Knowledge Management

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This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: Social Implications of Social Software

Earlier this week Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion detailed some of his best RSS tips and tricks in a post entitled Ten RSS Hacks. Steve’s post shows that RSS offers much more than simply streamlined reading of blogs and breaking news stories.

Although Steve took some of the better tips, I’ll share three of my own

1. Track job searches using RSS - Indeed, SimplyHired, and craigslist provide RSS feeds for keyword and location searches.

2. Create a custom Google News page and subscribe to its feed - Go to Google News and create customized sections via keywords (you can also remove standard sections). Subscribe to the feed.

3. Use Findory to create a personalized RSS feed - Findory learns from your reading habits. You can subscribe to a feed that is personalized for you once it learns what you like.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Leveraging the Power of RSS

After my post about how to get paid to blog, even without your own blog, I started thinking about other companies that are paying people to use social software, and I realized that there are actually quite a few now that will pay you to:
- provide contact information
- refer people for jobs
- refer business deals
- blog

What I find particularly interesting about this is that in the past, making money online generally meant that you had to sell a product, either your own or someone else’s. Now, people are willing to pay you for your knowledge — what you know and who you know — and you don’t have to be a great salesperson or a marketing genius to make some money at it. You might even be able to make a living at it — maybe not with just one of these opportunities, but certainly by combining them.

Another thing that struck me about these business models is that they’re paying for the value of your knowledge, not your time. All too money online business opportunies (getting paid to read e-mails, take surveys, etc.) will never work out to much more than a menial hourly wage. But these have the potential to do more than that — in fact, some of them actually have an increasing return on your time investment.

Last of all, they don’t cost you anything to get started earning money. There’s no investment other than your time.

No investment, high earnings potential, no selling, no marketing — sounds good to me!

I’ve compiled a list of these on my About.com site (how to really make money online is the single most common question my readers there ask me):

Make Money Online (Without Spending a Dime)

I’m also working on a follow-up story. If you know of any other social software companies that are paying people for referrals, contacts, or other information (not just points or credit towrds a paid subscription), please let me know.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Making Money with Social Software

Blogs and wikis are two specific types of content management systems (CMS). While these two buzz words share many commonalities, there are also a number of very important distinctions between the two. I’ve created a visual to quickly summarize some of the differences.

I encourage you to compare the MSNBC blogs to Wikipedia to see these technologies in action. Please note that what I provide above is simply a framework to think about how blogs and wikis are used.

Questions or thoughts are most welcome.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Introductory Post: Blogs vs. Wikis

I recently wrote about how the online conversation is real. The basics of that post is that blogging fosters interaction. No surprise, to be a successful blogger, reading, writing, and responding to others within the larger community is an absolute must.

There are a growing number of ways that users can keep track of online conversations. David Teten spoke to one of them in the previous post- PubSub. PubSub is a prospective (forward looking) matching service that provides new information to users as it becomes available. So, for example, if you want news or information on social software, you would create a PubSub subscription with keywords “social software”. You can view a subscription like social software on PubSub or simply by copying the feed they provide into your favorite news aggregator.

Other ways to monitor the conversation include keeping track of “tags” that interest you. Tagging is a growing trend in the social software world and is closely related to “social bookmarking”. I’ll first speak to social bookmarking because it is similar to a word most people are familiar with - bookmarks.

Social bookmarking builds upon collaborative efforts, in that an individual’s bookmarks (or “favorites”) are no longer just their own. Rather, they are shared with the larger community. Unlike storing a bookmark under a particular folder in your browser, social bookmarks are saved online and are not categorized by folders, but are instead “tagged” by keywords. Users (and not computers) select appropriate tags for articles or sites of interest, as they come across them through their surfing of the web.

This post, for example, might be tagged with the word “socialsoftware” on any number of social bookmark sites. The most popular social bookmarking tool to this point is del.icio.us. Take a look at the socialsoftware tag or at my social bookmarks. Each tag also has an RSS feed, so that you can keep track of them in your favorite news aggregator (I’ll provide some more info on how to actually do that in my next post).

Tags can help you stay informed and introduce to information you might not have found otherwise. For a more advanced use of tags, take a look at what I am doing with my first blogoposium.

update: a good reference on social bookmarking basics (via Jyri Engeström) by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott; and a very academic piece by Clay Shirky entitled Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (via David Teten’s suggestion)

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Monitoring the Conversation

I recently wrote about how the online conversation is real. The basics of that post is that blogging fosters interaction. No surprise, to be a successful blogger, reading, writing, and responding to others within the larger community is an absolute must.

There are a growing number of ways that users can keep track of online conversations. David Teten spoke to one of them in the previous post- PubSub. PubSub is a prospective (forward looking) matching service that provides new information to users as it becomes available. So, for example, if you want news or information on social software, you would create a PubSub subscription with keywords “social software”. You can view a subscription like social software on PubSub or simply by copying the feed they provide into your favorite news aggregator.

Other ways to monitor the conversation include keeping track of “tags” that interest you. Tagging is a growing trend in the social software world and is closely related to “social bookmarking”. I’ll first speak to social bookmarking because it is similar to a word most people are familiar with - bookmarks.

Social bookmarking builds upon collaborative efforts, in that an individual’s bookmarks (or “favorites”) are no longer just their own. Rather, they are shared with the larger community. Unlike storing a bookmark under a particular folder in your browser, social bookmarks are saved online and are not categorized by folders, but are instead “tagged” by keywords. Users (and not computers) select appropriate tags for articles or sites of interest, as they come across them through their surfing of the web.

This post, for example, might be tagged with the word “socialsoftware” on any number of social bookmark sites. The most popular social bookmarking tool to this point is del.icio.us. Take a look at the socialsoftware tag or at my social bookmarks. Each tag also has an RSS feed, so that you can keep track of them in your favorite news aggregator (I’ll provide some more info on how to actually do that in my next post).

Tags can help you stay informed and introduce to information you might not have found otherwise. For a more advanced use of tags, take a look at what I am doing with my first blogoposium.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Monitoring the Conversation

Historically, the content and design of a website have been inseparable. In more technical terms, that means that the data (’content’) and the presentation (’design’) elements have typically been mixed together in one document, that document usually being a web page (such as “index.html” or “about.html”). In order to create and format the content of a page (i.e., use different positioning, font styles, colors, etc.), it was necessary to know HTML mark-up, thus limiting the ability to create a web site to a select few. The role of the webmaster was born.

Software expanded the ability to manage and design websites to a larger number of users yet still demanded a level of technical expertise. Creating and managing content on the web boiled down to two major problems - the ‘architecture’ of a web page and technical aptitude.

The ‘architecture’ of not separating content and design elements was both costly and inefficient. For example, let’s say a company wanted to re-brand itself or received some funds to update its web presence. The traditional approach to this process would require someone to manually take all of the content - the information on every page of a site - and copy, edit, and massage it into each and every new page of the newly designed site.

Similar inefficiencies existed with having one or more webmasters who essentially were the gatekeepers of the web. Content creators had to email updated web content to their webmasters. Webmasters spent hours hand-coding new pages, making changes, or archiving outdated information. The process for publishing and editing content on the web was slow. Good for webmasters, bad for Website owners.

These problems are what spurred the creation of “CMS” or content management systems. The end game with CMS is that web publishing is literally a click away. CMS, or rather the technology behind them, are tools that allow a non-technical user to quickly and easily post information to the web.

This goal is accomplished by addressing the architecture issue of a web page. With CMS, the content of a site is stored outside of design elements - the content is actually stored in a database. The first benefit with this model is that implementing a new design becomes just about as simple as copying new template files - graphics, formatting, font styles, etc. - to a server. The second is that the content of the site - the data in the database - can be easily backed up and stored for safe keeping.

To better understand this model, imagine that the content (’data’) of your site is like a window in your home. To spruce up a window, you can put up some blinds or use a variety of different curtains. These decorative elements are similar to the design (’presentation’) of your site. Curtains can be easily switched at any point, to change the appearance of the window but the window is still a window. The same holds true for the design of content managed sites; new design templates can change the entire appearance or specific styles and formatting of your site but the content remains constant.

From a technical perspective, CMS are a winning solution but that is not what makes them so powerful. It is the “push button publishing” (as Google’s Blogger calls it) that has led to the tremendous success of these technologies (and yes, blogs and wikis are two types of CMS).

CMS in many ways give the final credence to the “Information Age”. Now the power to create new information on the web no longer rests solely within the hands of the technical community. To read more on CMS, check out some additional information at Wikipedia, including a list of different content management systems.

As Jason Coward previously discussed, TheVirtualHandshake.com is built on the ModX CMS.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: What is ‘CMS’ (a Content Management System)?

For a great overview of why I’m so excited about social software, a.ka. social machines, see Wade Roush’s article, Social Machines from the MIT Technology Review. The conversation is continued at continuousblog.net.

As advanced as our PCs and our other information gadgets have grown, we never really learned to love them. We’ve used them all these years only because they have made us more productive. But now that’s changing. When computing devices are always with us, helping us to be the social beings we are, time spent “on the computer” no longer feels like time taken away from real life. And it isn’t: cell phones, laptops, and the Web are rapidly becoming the best tools we have for staying connected to the people and ideas and activities that are important to us. The underlying hardware and software will never become invisible, but they will become less obtrusive, allowing us to focus our attention on the actual information being conveyed. Eventually, living in a world of continuous computing will be like wearing eyeglasses: the rims are always visible, but the wearer forgets she has them on–even though they’re the only things making the world clear.

This post was written by David Teten (admin), source: Social Machines

As I recently wrote in an earlier first technology brief, one of the key benefits to blogging is to “join the conversation”. Blogs are providing a new forum for people to communicate that consists of a much larger base of opinions and ideas. Popular bloggers are engaging and learning from their readers. They are participating in the larger conversation that is the blogosphere and weighing in on the subjects that the public and their readers want to know about.

A conversation is a two way street - at least a good conversation is. In blogging terms, that means that a successful blogger will need to do more than just write, they also need to read. Blogs that consist of someone yelling from a mountain top about how good a product or service is or about how smart they are, remove the quintessential element to blogging - interaction.

The conversation is real. It is not just a selling point to get you blogging. I’ll provide two really neat examples I recently came across in my daily scouring of the web:

1. TechCrunch is becoming the source for Web 2.0 product updates. They are “dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service.”

   Just over a month ago, they profiled a new social bookmarking tool called BlinkList. BlinkList joins a number of other similar services including del.icio.us (the leading social bookmarking tool to this point), Furl, and Simpy, amongst others.

   After reading through the profile, I noticed that there were a total of three comments. One was from a Simpy representative, the next was Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, and the final was by Ozzy of Blinklist. The conversation is real.

2. As TechCrunch is the Web 2.0 product source, Richard MacManus of Read / Write Web is the de-facto Web 2.0 knowledge source. Richard is in many ways the pioneer in setting up a framework to describe and understand Web 2.0.

   In his latest Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, Richard examines Web 2.0 in “the real world”, a new feature to his informative weekly summary. There he details a Web Ministry that is focusing on using the web to make “an eternal impact on the lives of individuals.”

   Of course, not long after that post went up, Rob, the author of that same Web Miinistry, commented on the Read / Write Web blog.

   David Teten commented to me: “Technologies like Pubsub make it easy for you to monitor in the blogosphere who’s talking about the subjects that most interest you (particularly your name!). One of the great advantages of online conversation is that you can have a conversation that transcends time and space limitations, while at the same time creating an instant community of people who share similiar interests, e.g., Blinklist and like technologies. That’s one of the advantages of blogs, as opposed to traditional walled vertical communities. Out of the enormous number of blogs, I can converse specifically with those people with whom I share interests, and I do not need to predefine with which people I share interests. If I only participate in a mailing list for graduates of my college, instead of using a blog, I’m much more restricted in the number of people I can build relationships with.”

These are just a couple of quick examples of showing that “the conversation is real”. There are many, many more. Feel free to share some of the examples you have seen by commenting below.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: The Conversation is Real

One accepted definition of RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”. While not necessarily used in everyday language, the last word of RSS - “syndication” - should not be a foreign concept to people. What exactly is RSS?

Radio talk show hosts are often syndicated. Their shows are picked up by local radio stations, so that a host based in Los Angeles has airtime on a station in Orlando. Similarly, popular newspaper columnists are often syndicated - their columns are reprinted by a variety of local newspapers, making their writing often available to readers nationwide. From these examples, follows the first important element of syndication -

Each week, a syndicated newspaper columnist writes new columns. These new columns are subsequently syndicated. Newspapers will then carry the most recent writings of their syndicated columnists throughout the week. The second important element of syndication -

In order for readers to keep up with their favorite nationally syndicated columnists, they must have access to some medium that will let them to read their latest columns. One of the easiest and most traditional ways to do that is to subscribe to a local newspaper. By subscribing, a reader will get the newspaper daily, having the option to read any available newest columns. The newspapers that are delivered may not be read by the subscribers. The subscriber may also find no new columns by a particular syndicated columnist. The third and final important element of syndication -

RSS works no differently than this example. When a blogger creates a new post, any good blogging platform automatically puts the new content into their RSS feed. Those that subscribe to the feed will see the updated content of the blog when viewing it in their preferred news reader. RSS though, is not just a technology for blogs. Mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal also offer RSS feeds to breaking news and other new headlines.

With Google’s index of over 8 billion web page and Technorati’s claim that approximately 12,000 new blogs are created everyday, amongst other things, RSS is going to be a key tool in reading information on the web efficiently. As Seth Godin recently wrote in his free new ebook Who’s There?, “If there are twenty million blogs in the world and only 32 blogs in my RSS Readers, guess which ones get read first?”

We are happy to report that Ken Yarmosh, the founder of Washington D.C. based TECHNOSIGHT, will be guest-blogging for the coming month on social software technology. Ken is passionate about helping less technically savvy users realize the power of social software. At TECHNOSIGHT, he assists businesses and organizations understand and utilize technology like blogs, RSS, and wikis.

During the next month, Ken will be covering some of the technical fundamentals of social software. He will attempt to clear up the confusion surrounding the web’s most commonly used buzz words - blogs, RSS, wikis, and content management systems. We hope you enjoy his contributions to The Virtual Handshake.

One of the themes of our book is that the success of online dating is a model for the ongoing success of online business matchmaking. Online dating is not only a more efficient way to find a partner, but it has significant ancillary benefits. First, more people getting married/partnered up certainly contributes to a more stable society. Second, and to my surprise, some are crediting online dating specialty sites just for HIV-positive people with combating the spread of AIDS.

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