judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

There are soooo many different ways to track news, memes, conversations, chatter, and just plain old noisethroughout the blogosphere, the webosphere, and beyond. However,a number of my most successful tracking mechanisms usually lead back to… Google.

According to a Reuters newsitem Google Leads Web Search ButChallenges Loom -S&P: "Forty-eight percent of search engine users … use Google most overall, compared with 20percent for Yahoo Inc. ... , 14 percent for Microsoft Corp.'s … MSN and 7 percent for AOL" (survey results courtesy ofStandard & Poor's and InsightExpress).

One of the many tools that I utilize is Google Web Alertswhichnotifies me whenever new pages, related to my searching interests, float to the surface of the Googlesphere.
 
This morningwhile peeking atthe shavings from the Internet iceberg tip that Google continuously mines and deposits into my Gmail accountup poppedan old bit on Socialtext.
 
Back on December 30, 2003, Neil J. Rubenking for PCMagazine rated Socialtext four out of a possible five bulletsmaking it a PC Magazine "Editors' Choice" product. (Don'tthink I blogged this one.)
 

PS: Hey Marc Canterthere are 16 entries in "My Workspaces" on Socialtext. Could one possibly be ahead of you in justthis one area?:-)

This is the second in a series of social networking services polls that I will be conducting here on The SocialSoftware Weblog. Thanks for your participation in the first survey last week!
 

Once again, click here if you are utilizinga news reader and you don't see the Survey Box above, and thanks in advance for participating!

Sue Bushell writes for CIO, Australia on--Blogging for Fun and Profit. Sue interviews a number of consultants and follows up with Caslon Analytics on the results of a survey they performed of their top 500 corporate contacts regarding potential adoption of the Weblog form.
What follows is an excerpt from Sue Bushell's article:
 
..."Our sense is that uptake of enterprise blogging by major Australian organizations is not going to increase significantly in the near future," says Caslon director Bruce Arnold.
"'Enterprise blogging' is a fuzzy concept," Arnold says. "Definitions vary according to whether you are a true believer - as in, blogging will cure all corporate/social ills - or have encountered one of the blogging gurus," Arnold says.
 
He characterizes two types of enterprise blogs. One, potentially the most important, is blogging within organizations. In-house blogs may attempt to capture an organization's tacit and explicit knowledge by harnessing 'organization memory' (OM) or knowledge blogs (k-logs, klogs or wikis). They can also facilitate project management (p-logs), serve as a mechanism for collection, assessment and dissemination of competitor intelligence (CI), or otherwise enhance communication across the organization.
 
Then there is blogging directed at readers outside the organization: an attempt to build a bridge between the enterprise and customers/stakeholders by reporting on developments or engaging their interest in a specific brand or product.
 
"We differentiate enterprise blogging from other blogging on the basis that it takes place under corporate auspices," Arnold says. "It is thus different from personal blogging, even though many personal blogs are written on company time using company facilities and may centre on life in the office - what one enthusiast called 'online water-cooler conversations'. CIO management of non-official or quasi-official blogging is a challenge similar to management of Web surfing or private e-mail using the organization's network."

A short and incomplete survey indeed, but the results are:
 

 
This is just the first in a series of simple polls I will be performing of readers who are experimenting with varioussocial networking services.

The next poll will be: "How many social networking services do you actively utilize?" And this time I will include"0" as an option. (:
 
Hope you had a great weekend…

Katie Mantell reports on the eighth international conference on the Public Communication of Science and Technology, Barcelona for SciDev.Net--Science communicators 'must respect cultural context'.
I found the following passage from her report of interest:
 
...Yuwanuch Tinnaluck of the ASEAN Handicrafts Promotion and Development Association in Bangkok, Thailand, argued that scientists should work together with local people to 'co-create' knowledge.
"Science and local knowledge are not that far away from one another," she said. "We need to share space and time between scientists and indigenous people."
 
As an example, she pointed to the way that scientists from the Thai National Research Foundation are working with local people to codify tacit 'local wisdom' into explicit knowledge.
 
Patrick Luganda, chairman of the Network of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa, said that many agricultural techniques touted as "magical" new interventions, such as sustainable agriculture and integrated pest management, have in fact been practised in Africa for centuries.
 
Luganda also argued that an appreciation of traditional knowledge is essential for science to be communicated successfully. "The message will be better understood and better appreciated if you have an understanding of local knowledge," he said...

Valerie Darroch writes for the Sunday Herald--Software with a bit of spit and polish.
Valerie is writing about former Army communications officer, Andrew Fraser, who is now the chief executive of a Glasgow-based information management company -- i-documentsystems (Idox).
 
...Fraser, a reluctant ex-pat who now lives in the southeast, won plaudits in his native land last year for his decision to establish the headquarters of the company (which was originally based in central London) in Glasgow, bringing highly-skilled jobs in IT, finance and marketing to the city.
...Fraser and his team are on a roll, celebrating their latest acquisition and the first full quarter of profitability since Idox boldly floated on the Alternative Investment market (AIM) in 2000 in the thick of a technology sector meltdown .
 
...Idox, which was spun out of Lombard Risk, specialises in web-based software packages with a range of applications from document and records management to online planning solutions.
 
Last month Fraser sealed Idox's third acquisition, the purchase of TFPL, a knowledge management consulting firm with a string of blue-chip corporate clients including Goldman Sachs and Shell as well as a series of contracts with central government...

Time Online has an article todaytitled Start-Up YourEngines!wherein five veteran venture capitalists share their views of what's ahead for new companies seekinginvestments.
 
According to Eric Roston, author of this article, the five participants in this Q&A article are: Mark Heesen,president of the National Venture Capital Association; Brenda Gavin, managing partner of Quaker BioVentures; JohnPreston, associate director of the M.I.T. Entrepreneurship Center; Gary Rieschel, managing partner of Mobius VentureCapital; and Susan Woodward, founder of Sand Hill Econometrics.
 
I wanted to extract a comment made by Gary Rieschel, managing partner of Mobius Venture Capital, regarding socialnetworking services (emphasis is mine):

RIESCHEL: One example from last year is social networking. That was ridiculous from a moneymaking perspective.

TIME: Like Friendster?

RIESCHEL: We looked at five sites and passed on everything. In '99 everyone got in trouble when maybe 17 companies were all trying to sell pet food online. At Mobius, now if we identify more than four venture-backed start-ups in a sector, we won't bite. There are at least 14 social-networking sites.

Yep, at least 14 social networkingsites...

MySpace.com's membership is two million strong, and growing.
 
In a press release today MySpace features their growing appeal as: "an information destination for bands, fans,filmmakers, writers, artists, record industry professionals, and more. " MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson says:"MySpace Music is what MP3.com should have been, but never was".
 
Here's an excerpt from the eMediaWire pressrelease highlighting the music sharing potential of MySpace:

MySpace: The Future is Now:
With two million members (and growing), MySpace offers a multi-level entertainment opportunity involving blogs, instant messaging, classifieds, peer voting, special interest groups, user forums and user-created content. Is it popular? You bet: they have statistics that show the site receiving 35 million impressions per day at an average of one hour online per visit. So far, all MySpace services are free, with the site supported entirely by advertisers who are eager to reach exactly the young, Web-savvy and Web-social music fan that MySpace attracts.

Created by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace is already successful on a level that caught many industry onlookers by surprise. While the main MySpace site leads to pure social networking, the section of the site called MySpace Music is a revolutionary way to reach their built-in Web audience of two million networked users and has the potential to rapidly expand beyond that already impressive figure. As a means of launching unsigned and emerging recording artists, MySpace Music is a formidable tool.

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.

Kate Golden writes a review of "Foundations for Success: Emerging Trends in Grantmakers' Use of the Internet" for onPhilanthropy - Success Stories from the Sector.
"Foundations for Success" is written by the Washington-based Internet consulting firm Interactive Applications Group (iapps). Kate Golden lists four trends that this book highlights in detail: transparency, network building, knowledge management, and e-grantmaking.
 
The following quote is regarding the km trend:
 
...The third trend is knowledge management. The book states that "knowledge management is not simply about finding better ways to process data. It's about managing intellectual capital..." Foundations who have implemented web-based systems to capture, synthesize, manage, and disseminate knowledge gathered from funders and grantees include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, whose senior associates use web-based templates to capture what was learned at grantee site visits. And the Grants Manager Network (GMN) a group of approximately 600 grant administrators from over 400 foundations, has created a knowledge-sharing tool known as GIGI, or Group Intelligence on Grantmaking Information...

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… (-:=