judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

Multiply users love Multiplythey've told me so in comments, tips, and emails.Now Multiply has extended their service with the integration of group publishing tools.
 
Social Networking * Collaboration * Messaging Tools * Calendar * Blogs = Multiply.
 
A description of the newly enhanced service from the Multiply press release this week:

"Multiply's groups combine Yahoo Groups-type functionality with group features typical of social networking sites such as Google's Orkut," says Michael Gersh, Multiply's co-founder. "While other social networking sites use groups primarily as a means to link people together, Multiply provides groups with a destination to share photo albums, a calendar and a blog, with messaging tools that truly maximize the benefits of social networking."

Multiply's proprietary messaging application links a group's web page and shared message board with all of the group's members. Groups can publish digital photo albums, events, journals, reviews and classified listings, simultaneously notify group members, and allow ongoing message board discussions of the published content. By combining web-publishing tools with social network-based communication, the site is designed to help groups share information, exchange knowledge and stay in better touch. In addition, each group member may maintain his or her personal social network on Multiply to keep in touch with family and friends.

Are you going to NotCon '04 tomorrow? Low cost with excellent chairs andspeakers. Wish I were going!

What: NotCon '04 - an informal, low-cost, one-day conference on things that technologies were perhaps not intended to do.

When: 11am-7pm, Sunday June 6th, 2004.

Where: Imperial College Union (click for venue directions), Beit Quad, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington SW7 2BB (nearest tubes South Kensington and Gloucester Road - NB: Piccadilly line only at weekend, no service on Circle line, no District line between Whitechapel and Earls Court).

Cost: £4.00 on the door, £3.00 concessions (ie students, under 18s, journalists, OAPs, the unemployed, any webloggers not covered by one or more of the previous categories).

A great roster of speakers includes: Dan O'Brien, Chris Lightfoot, Matt Jones, Tom Steinberg, Brewster Kahle, andWendy Grossmanamong many, many others. If you are in close proximity to South Kensington, by all means go!

In the Taipei Journal there is an article Yu stressesimperative to develop social software.
 
Hmm, perhaps a larger definition of "social software"?
 
Premier Yu Shyi-kun said that Taiwan's administration:

will place top priority on cultural development so as to strengthen consensus on national identity. Second, importance will be placed on developing a better social safety net and reversing the trend toward a widening gap between rich and poor, with the aim of promoting social stability and harmony. The third priority is the establishment of a sounder policy through institutional reform, in order to build public trust in the government and maximize administrative effectiveness.

The premier stressed that success in the aforementioned endeavors are keys to promoting the nation's economic competitiveness as it becomes more tightly linked to the global economy.

On the economic front, the Yu Cabinet's attention will be focused on nurturing strategic alliances with the aim of ensuring success in economic restructuring and maintaining a powerful momentum of economic development for years to come.

In a nutshell, Yu's agenda for the next four years will place emphasis on developing "social software," a sound policy in keeping with popular demand. It is hoped that legislators of all parties will clearly read the public mood and join hands to carry forward this pragmatic agenda.

Well Maggie Overfelt of Fortune Small Business says that she caught up with Mark Pincus recently. Mark and Iattempted to meetup when I was last in San Francisco, but didn't quite make it, and so I will poach a few of Maggie'squestions and answers here today:

Every hot fad you've chased"push technology," incubatorshas not lived up to its hype. Why isn't social networking just this year's flavor?
I don't pursue fads. Social networking isn't just a fad. The value of social networking lies in a person's ability to get to a trusted target audience, which will yield better search results in less time. Tribe fills the gap between e-mailing your friends and placing a commercial ad.

Has being a "me too" entrepreneur ever hurt your ability to get funding?
The people who invested in Tribe did so in spite of, not because of, social networking. I put my own money up first, ready to do it on my own, avoiding a situation where investors can make or break my company. When I do take VC money, I take a discount to get the investor I want. As with my new company, I count on trusted relationships.

Pushing information, incubating ideas, pulling in new contacts, forming tribesMark has been doing it all. MaybeI'll get to 'catch up' with you too on my next trip to the Bay Area at the end of this month Mark… (-:=
 
Meanwhile, Maggie closes with a 'future' statement from Mark Pincusone in which his prose reflects his passion:

What's next for you?
Not all of my ideas are encapsulated in Tribe Networks. I'm very passionate about seeing a more level playing field in our political system, one where many more people have a voice. There could be something beyond this.

HighBeam Research has teamed up with Eliyon, a business networking service, to offer HighBeam Executives.Interesting service. Go to HighBeam Executives and search on your own name to see what this combination of Eliyon andHighBeam has to offer on your "employment, employment history, education, club memberships, board seats and contactinformation."
 
Here are some highlights from the press release:

HighBeam Executives provides access to a database of profiles of business executives created by Eliyon Technologies Corporation. Eliyon's technology continuously crawls millions of Web sites, press releases, electronic news sources, SEC filings and other online sources and uses natural-language processing to create individual profiles.

On HighBeam Executives, visitors can search the Eliyon database by an individual's name or a combination of an individual's name and company name. HighBeam Basic Members (who register for free) can view profiles, which may include current place of employment, employment history, education, club memberships, board seats and contact information.

Each profile on the new HighBeam Executives includes results from HighBeam eLibrary, so customers can find mentions of the business executive they are researching in an archive of 28 million documents from 2,700 sources including newspapers; leading business, consumer and industry magazines and journals; transcripts; images; and reference sources.

In addition, HighBeam Research Members can use many of the popular research tools available on HighBeam Research while researching business executives, such as saving searches and profiles and exporting profiles and articles to Microsoft Word. HighBeam Research also offers the ability to search the Internet for individuals using HighBeam Web a customizable meta-search tool of the open Web.

This morning I received an email from a very dear friend of mine who told me that she was considering joining eHarmony.com since the prospect of meeting promising partnership potential pals in her area is desperate, difficult, and dire at best. Which got me pondering, and asking why she chose eHarmony out of the hundreds, if not thousands of dating services available.
 
Well, it would appear thateHarmony has a most pervasive and persuasive ad campaign. It did not take me long to find Lisa Baertlein's Reuterspiece on Forbes from June 1, 2004 oneHarmony FEATURE-Dating site eHarmonyhas 436 questions for you.
 
Lisa points out that eHarmony stands apart in its aggressive ad campaign "in an industry where its competition triesto keep things casual, inexpensive and in participants' control."
 
The cost of membership is steep, $100/three months, and in a somewhat unique moveaccording to eHarmony CEO GregForgatch, you must answer 436 questions BEFORE you get a chance to pay for his service.
 
According to Lisa Baertlein's article eHarmony is 4 years old, has 4M members, and boasts 3,000 confirmed weddings asa result of connections made through their service. Wow, do you really get what you pay for with eHarmony? I'll have tomonitor this service more closely.
 
I'll keep you posted on my friend's adventures with eHarmony, and please feel free to chime in with your ownexperiences with this service… (-:=

I did not forget to blog the change in leadership at Friendster. I probably could not have ignored it if Itriedbased on the number of news reader items, emails, and my excellent cadre of reliable tipsters here at TheSocialSoftware Weblog.
 
There is just something so eerily familiar about this shift to a big gun leader like former NBC EntertainmentPresident Scott Sassa (who has been sharing ideas about bringing new advertising-backed interactive programming toFriendster) that keeps triggering old memoriesfiring off ghost-like images of PointCast bringing in Dave Dorman totake over that hot product, sensational darling of the news and information "push" technology of the 90's.
 
No comparison though, right? Hmm, I thought notjust a wandering tribe of delirious dendrites in my brain… (-:=

Have you joined more than one Social Networking Service? More than five?
 
Please take this quick survey so that I can get an idea of how many of The SocialSoftware Weblogreaders have signed up for one, or more, Social Networking Services.

Click here if you don't see the SurveyBox below, and thanks in advance for weighing in!

Hat tip to SebPaquet for this blogpoll idea! (-:=

Knowledge@Wharton lists links to its current publication on Business Wire. One that caught my eye wasWhy GlobalBusiness Needs Kinder, Gentler Entrepreneurs and Leaders.
 
Quote from the Business Wire description of this article:

Images of entrepreneurs and leaders tend to focus on the vision and guts needed to get ventures off the ground or on the solitary hero leading the crowds. At the recent Lauder Institute Alumni Association Global Business Forum in New York, however, two panels on entrepreneurship and leadership debunked these notions. Speakers at the conference said entrepreneurs need social networking skills as much as business savvy to succeed. As for leaders who want to be effective in global business, they need to learn that arrogance is out, humility is in.

Thefacebook.com recently included UCLA in its collection ofuniversitiesgenerating 3,500 new UCLA users in just one month. It appears that UCLA's bruinwalk.com will also be adding social networking functionality to its menu ofservices, according to Phillip Lin for the Daily Bruin.

Bruinwalk.com plans to offer services both 'comparable' and additive to Thefacebook.com.
 
What social networking services are currently lacking on Thefacebook.com? Do any readers utilize this universityservice?

For The New York Times, Jennifer 8. Leewrites ABlackBerry Throbs, and a Wonk Has a Datewherein she discusses the popularity of the BlackBerry paging devices on"The Hill".

Jennifer also shares some examples of the language of text flirting ala BlackBerry messaging, and I have pluckedthese berries and listed them below.
 
Text messaging via pager, cell phone, or any other text messaging enabled device, is screamingly popular as a'flirting' mechanism. Terminology that has grown up around the BlackBerry in the Bush Administration on Capitol Hill(Hmm, is this then the "Blackberry Bush" Administration?):
 
•Berryingthumb action associated with typing messages
• Berry Overtureshort, innocuous inquiry
• BlackBerry Withdrawalsome claim it is really difficult to live without
• BlirtingBlackBerry flirting
• CrackBerriesfor their addictive quality
• Digital Couragewho needs Beer & Booze when you have a BlackBerry?
• Drunken Berryingsimilar to drunken dialing, dangerous
• Sending a Berrytoo late or too ackward to call? Send a text message

Flirting or Blirting is hot on the hill this spring. Jennifer Lee describes the daily transmogrification of Berryusers from "earnest policy wonks" by day, to "mini-keyboard Lotharios" by night. She closes with ruminations on thosefor whom BlackBerry privileges have been withdrawn and must now flirt "the old-school wayin person." (-:=

Molly Wright Steenson wishes she could see Social Capital: Forms of Interaction. The link Molly postsis to Fernanda Viégas' website, I have also included a link to theWhitney belowin related links.

Fernanda is one of the artists participating in this show at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent StudyProgram Exhibition in New York City on view until June 26, 2004 (The Art Gallery of The Graduate Center The CityUniversity of New York 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, Tuesday–Saturday 12–6 pm):

This group exhibition brings together contemporary artists who make the complexities of social relations the subject, material, or form of their work. Responding to contemporary societal conditions, some artists consider the influence of new technologies on human connections, while some explore the effects of cultural difference and geo-politics. Others orchestrate situations in which viewers interact directly with the artwork or with one another, forging a community within the space of the gallery. Considered together, the artists in Social Capital present various models of human interaction, encouraging viewers to reflect critically on their own positions within different social networks.

Participating Artists Include:

caraballo-farman | Andy Deck | Renée Green | Ingo Günter | Jens Haaning | Emil Hrvatin & Peter Senk | Mark Lombardi | Mongrel | New No York | Lyn Rice, Ben Rubin & Lisa Strausfeld | Santiago Sierra | 16 Beaver Group | Sociable Media Group MIT | Luc Steels | Elaine Tin Nyo | Rirkrit Tiravanija | Fernanda Viégas & Marc Smith

This exhibition was organized by the 2003-04 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program: Howie Chen, Leta Ming, Allison Moore, and Nadia Perucic.

If you are in NYC, go see the showand let Molly and I know what you thought about it. (-:=

The 'Blogging' Gospel that is, according to an AP Business WriterYuri Kageyama in: Japanese Web Star Spreads Blogging Gospel.
 
Kudos Mr. Ito!
 
Joi Ito is a bright star, or planet perhaps, in the blogging constellation and beyond. And, the #joiito IRCchannel on freenode.net is a 24/7 embodiment of the endless, breathless patter of Joi's global family of friends.
 
Joi is passionate about democracy, and the AP article concludes with this quote:
 
"Blogging will fundamentally change the (way) people interact with media and politics and provide us with anopportunity to overhaul our outdated democracies," he said.
 
It's brilliant to see Joi get some well-deserved coverage on the AP newswire. (-:=

Craigslist news items pop up daily in my newsreader.

I am continually amazed by the widespread and exceedingly creative utilization of this community based networkingand classified sharing system.
 
Some make me laugh, some make me almost cry but, I just had to share today's best craigslist post.

Heather Gilmore writes for The New York Post How I LuredSix Cheating Hubbies Into My Web Trap.
 
How did Heather do it? Via Craigslist, of course… (-:0
 
The first reply to Heather's 'come hither all of you cheating hubbies' post on Craigslist arrived within 22 seconds!Heather says that she had 80 responses within a half-hour.

Heather Gilmore goes on to relate a number of details about the hubbies who responded to her post. Many sent photosof various parts of their anatomy and some sent photos of themselves with their wives on their wedding day. Heatheralso met with a number of the men who responded to her post. Check out her article for the deets.

Happy Sunday everyone…

Crowd surfing the UCLA campus, hmmm now there's a thought. Well that's just what SmallPlanet is doing with 'CrowdSurfer' on Nokia 6600 and 6230 phonesutilizing Bluetooth radio signals and GPRS connections to SmallPlanet.net.
 
According to the Business Wire pressrelease Social Networking Graduates to Wireless at SmallPlanet.net:

"This is true location-based, mobile social networking," says SmallPlanet's Ken Torimaru, who led the development of CrowdSurfer. "We are giving users the option to know when friends are nearby and to meet new people with whom they share some common, previously invisible connection, and we're doing it in the real world; in real time, in real place."
... Like most advances in consumer information technology, such as the Internet itself, the location-based mobile services that will figure prominently in the coming " mBoom" come with risks as well as rewards, such as potential misuse and loss of privacy. "We are very focused on privacy issues with this application," says Heaney. "We are rolling it out slowly and methodically, and with the maximum amount of filters and controls that allow users to determine exactly who, if anyone, gets to 'see' or 'find' them at any given time."

So let's seeSomeone turn on the socialight, then let's get a CrowdSurfer to go out and Find Friends, so we can playsome Dodgeball, over at the WINKsite. Hey, it is a SmallPlanet after all, and getting smaller and smaller all the time. mBoomhere we come… (-:=