Social Media Rap

Chuck at Pop Labs raps about social media:

I surf the web, I used to watch TV
now I'm logged into Joost, it's commercial free
lets see where I want to go
and who I want to know
connecting people with people with web 2.0
I don't use email unless I'm at my job
want the next post, I subscribe to the blog
I'm easy to find
I'm always online
social networking sites, I think I have nine
I use myspace to promote my music
I get friends and album sales that's how I do it
but tell me have you heard
about the new word
something like myspace but they call it virb
always something new, I'm a start creatin
I'll make a brand new facebook application
uploading pictures and mp3's
update my profile and hit ctrl D
can't stop what I started, it's getting ridiculous
social book mark it, add it del.icio.us
some can't take it but I just can't quit
go to Imeem and listen to my playlist
watching videos on my You Tube channel
clickin so much, my mouse smoking like a candle
I'm online for hours, addicted to the power
10 tabs open on a firefox browser
I must be going crazy cause I can't get enough
I guess I'm addicted to social media

March 29 - Mark the date!

March 29 has always been an important date: Cy Young and John Tyler were born. The last US soldiers leave South Vietnam in 1973. And the War of the Roses basically ends in 1461.

But March 29, 2008 will be even more monumental. Actually, it's your job to make it monumental:

Just like Joseph Jaffe a few months ago, The Age of Conversation will bumrush the Amazon charts on March 29.

If you don't know about 'The Age of Conversation', get all the details here and find more about the Bumrush on Drew's blog.

Stay tuned and tell your friends.

Facebook Fatigue

The backlash is growing: Beacon, Superpokes, etc. We have seen this before. My Space, anyone? For the first time, Facebook is facing headwind. Above video illustrates what many people are feeling when they return to Facebook: Not a lot to do, except being annoyed.

Should they have sold a few months ago or will they adjust? Time will tell.

Hat Tip to George Parker.

Technology

I'm an early bird. Mostly get up before the sunrise. Mostly because of my hellish commute (try to drive through downtown LA at 7.30 am) but also because it's in my blood. My parents and sister slept in on weekends, often until noon. By that time, I already had 6 hours of Sunday behind me and 2 breakfasts. I was always ready for the third breakfast.

I like being the first person in the office: read the papers and trades, have something to eat, try to get the day started. It feels like a different place when you're in an office designed for 100+ people and then be by yourself for 2-3 hours. Everything seems to be different with nobody else around. Just like an existence out of the normal office routine.

The same happens when I go on vacation. I love to rise up before everybody and feel the earth waking up: There's nothing better than discovering all the stars in the sky outside of urban life. Or the sunrise on a mountain top. No wonder ancient tribes used to worship earth, the stars, the sun or the moon. We have diminished nature to a background. At the foreground is technology. Now, I don't say praying to Mother Earth makes more sense than worshiping technology. But it implies a disconnect with the real world. And the technology admiration leads us to an Inconvenient Truth. Interestingly, technology might be the only way out. Thereby, perpetuating the idea that technology will save the day.

In the end, only humans can save the day. Technology didn't tear down the wall, didn't fly us to the moon, didn't abolish many diseases. Humans did. Technology is a crutch to improve the human experience. Everything else is just a dreadful addiction.

Only the dead have seen the end of war

Andrew Olmsted, a United States Army major who blogged for The Rocky Mountain News, wrote about his own death in July 2007 and prepared for the possibility of not returning to the US and his loved ones. The 3,000-word piece took on a new meaning when he was killed January 3, 2008 by insurgents in Sadiyah.

Andrew Olmsted wrote:

"I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was."

And the heartbreaking closing words:

"This is the hardest part. While I certainly have no desire to die, at this point I no longer have any worries. That is not true of the woman who made my life something to enjoy rather than something merely to survive. She put up with all of my faults, and they are myriad, she endured separations again and again...I cannot imagine being more fortunate in love than I have been with Amanda. Now she has to go on without me, and while a cynic might observe she's better off, I know that this is a terrible burden I have placed on her, and I would give almost anything if she would not have to bear it. It seems that is not an option. I cannot imagine anything more painful than that, and if there is an afterlife, this is a pain I'll bear forever.

I wasn't the greatest husband. I could have done so much more, a realization that, as it so often does, comes too late to matter. But I cherished every day I was married to Amanda. When everything else in my life seemed dark, she was always there to light the darkness. It is difficult to imagine my life being worth living without her having been in it. I hope and pray that she goes on without me and enjoys her life as much as she deserves. I can think of no one more deserving of happiness than her.

"I will see you again, in the place where no shadows fall."
Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5

I don't know if there is an afterlife; I tend to doubt it, to be perfectly honest. But if there is any way possible, Amanda, then I will live up to Delenn's words, somehow, some way. I love you."

It's amazing how personal and intimate this whole phenomenon of Social/Participatory Media has become. Especially marketers sometimes forget that social networking is more than just an application. We live such a commercialized life and the Web allows us to believe that only specific connections link us together. But we all have the need and desire to connect across differences. That's what makes us human.

And the one thing we need is more humanity.

RIP, Andrew Olmsted.

Please make sure to read his complete, final post.

LinkedIn thinks I'm into Martha

LinkedIn just redesigned their site and it created some buzz in the blogosphere. One of the new features is the news feed, tailored to your company and interests. Interesting idea to create more stickiness on the site but it just doesn't work for me.

A little background: I work at Genex, an interactive marketing company. Genex was bought by Meredith a few months ago. Most of you know that Meredith has a huge footprint in the female marketing space. And that's the only explanation for my feed: Martha news all the time. Now, Genex might be owned by Meredith but my job is to focus on media for clients with mainly male audiences.
I'm sure I'm not only with this poor customization example of LinkedIn: Many digital agencies have various disciplines under one roof: SEM, SEO, Media, Engineering, QA, etc. What kind of feeds do they receive? Sure, there's a customization option on the feed but you need a lot of people within your organization to care about the feed before these changes really show up. And what if these users are mostly engineers?

I think many people will find this feature not useful and LinkedIn just gave them another reason not to come up. I just wish I could customize the feed for my own page or even be allowed to turn it off.
When is LinkedIn 3.0 happening?

I do know how to quit you

Is this your Facebook inbox? Too many friends, too many invitations, too much crapola. Some early adopters are starting to leave Facebook because they don't see the value and ragard the site as a time-suck.

Maybe it's just the pendulum swinging the other way: People are starting to understand that you can't manage hundreds of contacts/friends, especially when you barely know these people. Facebook can have an amazing value if we can start to extend our real-life connections to the internet. Just like your first email address that turned into spam account, Facebook might become just another network that becomes less and less valuable. Just another AOL.

And, in case you're ready to quit - follow these instructions.
I'll stay on for a while. And see where it goes.

And if you invited, poked, gifted me and wait for a response: Stay tuned. There are more important things in my life I have to take care of.

Your self-image

As a kid, whenever there was a lot to carry (supermarket bags, trash, bottles to the recycling bin) I liked to carry all bags at once, instead of running back and forth, and my mother always commented: "Lazy people carry themselves to death, hard workers run themselves to death."

Decades later, whenever I come back from Whole Foods or other stores I still try to carry all bags (even 20) at once. What does this mean? What does it say about my character?

My mother thought I was lazy. (I still don't know if she was serious.) My wife thinks I'm crazy. And for me it's just the most efficient way to deal with certain tasks.
Lazy? No.
Crazy? Sure
Efficient? Oh yeah!

Obviously, image is a double-edged sword: How do you see yourself? And how are you perceived by everybody else? You might think of yourself as a deep thinker while others regard you as a superficial blow-hard. Or in your mind you're team player while others think you are just about individual achievements.

How do social networks change our image? Are you the same person on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, private message boards, etc.? Are you trying to be somebody else or just being the best you can be? Would non-virtual friends perceive you as the same person on social networks? Or would they be astonished about this 'other side' of you?

We've obviously come a long way since the first personals when everybody loved walks on the beach and a perfect evening was a glass of wine and a good book. But how close are we to our self-image and perceived image? Blogs seem to be the closest to reality. You might fool me with a few posts but scanning hundred posts will give me a good idea of the real you. Much, much harder with Facebook.
Facebook still seems to be close to the good old personals. Yes, there's much more detailed information and details about your private life/preferences but it doesn't reflect that much on your image and character. You can still be the guy in the bar flashing fancy business cards and claiming to be the master of the universe, while in reality you're a lonely soul try to connecting with the outside world.

Social Networks are in their infancy. Facebook is bit more grown-up than MySpace but the real you is not showing up at Facebook. Yet. It will take years of social networking for us to grow up on and with these networks. Currently, we build connections. In the future we will build friendships. Will it be on Facebook, niche networks, private networks? Time will tell.

It's not the technology, stupid

Great presentation by Henry Jenkins. Especially fascinating since he's the only self-described egghead at the forum.

His main proposition: This is not a technology revolution, it's a cultural revolution.

The majority haven't understood this. They are still hoping for another dot-com bust and that everything will be back to normal again at one point. They understand that it's going to be harder and harder to break through the clutter but they still don't believe that the participatory culture is here to stay.

Web 2.0 might be a real misnomer since we put the focus on digital marketing. This lets 'traditional marketing' off the hook and let them continue what doesn't work anymore and push the new cultural movement to the fringes.

I had to leave early to catch my plane and ordered his book 'Convergence Culture' in the cab. Can't wait for more insights from Henry Jenkins.

My favorite line: “Any network that can be used to share cat pictures can be used to bring down a government.”

More quotes below:

- Web 2.0 is fandom without the stigma.
- What is 2.0? You make all the content, they keep all the revenue
- Cellphone is the new Swiss Army Knife
- Convergence is not about technology, it's about culture.
- The culture is shaped top-down by brands and bottom up by teenagers in their bedroom. And that's what he calls convergence culture.
- And the sweet spot where both cultures meet is participatory culture:

1. Low barriers for engagement
2. Strong support for sharing creations with others
3. Informal membership
4. Members believe their contributions matter
5. Care about others' opinions of self and work

- New consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media.
- Social Media is appreciative: People appreciate brands/products and spread the word. In addition, and maybe more important, the additional media you earn with social media appreciates the value of your product/brand.

- It's no longer about impressions, it's about expressions.
- If the work of old consumers was once silent and invisible, the New Consumers are now noisy and public.
- If old consumers were seen as compliant, the new Consumers are resistant , taking media in their own hands.

Off to LA.

Time is now

The first morning keynote at the Forrester Consumer Forum featured Josh Bernoff, VP at Forrester Research, gave brands an accessible road map to break into the Social Networking space and he reminded them that the time is now to make practical use these social technologies.
Instead of focusing on technologies, brands need to focus on objectives to be successful and get the buy-in from senior executives.

He introduced 5 key objectives:

Listening

Learning from what customers are saying by developing sounding boards for researching decisions (Communispace/Think Passenger, Market Tools)

Monitor buzz to measure ongoing trends and perceptions (Brand monitoring – Nielsen Buzz Metrics, etc.)

Talking:

Two-way conversation, not just shouting
Let fans spread message more easily (Social Networks)
Communicate continually and monitor responses (Blogs)


Helping your customers to recruit others

Energizing with ratings and reviews
Use customer opinions to boost sales - Ratings and reviews (Bazaarvoice, etc.)
Designate lead customers to energize others - Brand ambassador programs


Supporting

Enabling your customers to support each other
Enable customers to solve each others’ problems (Support Forum)
Enable customers to build solutions together (Wikis)


Embracing

Involving customers in your product development
Harvest customer ideas in a public setting - Idea community (Salesforce.com)
Cultivate dedicated idea generating community - Private community

He also recommended to calculate the ROI of Conversational Marketing. This would change the perception of SN initiatives within organizations and allows for bigger budgets

He emphasized that diving into social media initiatives will change your company:

Customer feedback in all your processes
Much faster development cycles
Frequent trial balloons
Faster, smaller failures
Internal boundaries break down

And, as a last carrot for the brand managers in the audience:
If you tap into the power of SN, you will get more powerful within your organization.

Can you see brand managers developing SN initiatives this weekend?
I do.

Trends in Consumer Usage of Social Networking Sites

comScore's Chairman and Co-founder, Gian Fulgoni, presented findings (just focused on Social Networking sites, not blogs or sites with social networking capabilities:

- 1996 two-thirds of the world's online population was in the US. Now, the US accounts for 23% of Worldwide users.
- Social Networking Sites are exploding but multimedia sites are growing faster
- In the Asia Pacific region, SN sites are growing at a rate that is almost three times the category's growth in North America:
- Latin America is the most engaged region, followed by North America
- Globally, Windows Live Spaces is the most visited SN site (only 7% Us)
- Orkut is the most engaged site(550 million hours monthly)
- Total Time Spent on SN sites from US visitors: 223 million hours, Facebook 173 million hours
- Growth of SN sites (US) in the last 12 months: Facebook 128%, MySpace 23%
- The # of exclusive MySpace users has dropped, the number of exclusive Facebook users has increased and users visiting both sites have increased as well. There's a migration from MySpace to Facebook.
- 31% of all MySpace visitors are heavy users, Facebook 38%
- The heavy users account for 85% of minutes spent on these sites: If you deliver ads on SN sites, you will get a high delivery rate of your ads to the heavy users. Marketers have to look closely at frequency caps.
- 6 times more ads are being delivered by MySpace. Per visit you'll see 2.3 times more ads on MySpace.
- Apparently, CPM's on Facebook are much higher than MySpace rates.
- Users receptive to advertising from certain verticals: Music/Movie/Entertainment 68%, Consumer Electronics 54%, Automotive 42%, OTC Medication 26%.

It's pretty clear that certain verticals should stay away from advertising on SN sites unless they stay away from advertising on the site and offer valuable experiences to potential customers.
SN sites and mobile marketing face the same issue: If you just advertise, you will fail. You have to engage in a conversation. That's the only reason why people go to the sites, isn't it?

The future of PR

Richard Edelman at the Forrester's Consumer Forum 2007:

"Move away from master of impression to master of reality."

He quoted Thomas Friedman: "Companies that get their how's wrong won't be able to clean up their mess. ...how to keep your promises, build turst, collaborate, lead."

"Media has to move away from walled garden to sole source to convene and aggregate."

"We have to move away from influence to conversation. From Pyramid of Inlfuence to Sphere of Cross-Information."

-The new role of PR:

1) Convergence around big ideas
- Moving from corporate philantrophy to 'Green is Green'.
- Partnering with Civil Societies
- Addressing social cocerns

2) Listening to new voices
- Consumer Feedback
- Convening Stakeholders
- Empowering employees (Very interesting to see surveys showing that employees of companies are very trusted by people, not the CEO - a discrepancy of more than 30%)
- Engaging local customers

3) Pubic Advocacy
- Creating credible sources of information
- Evolving role of the CEO
- Issues Management

He sees PR as the engine of interactivity: PR should be aspire to be a conversational collaborator.

Edelman had its share of mistakes and mishaps in the social networking area but his perspective was more forward-thinking and innovative than the majority of agency executives.

He ended with the quote: "Know who you are." And you can only know who you are if you listen to people and understand how they see you.

POST

Charlene Li just presented at the Forrester's Consumer Forum 2007. Titled 'Your customers are revolting', Charlene discussed how to better strategize in the social networking environment and ways to better connect with social netwroking participants.

She discussed her upcoming book Groundswell and her definition of the title:

"Groundswell – a spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other."

If you want to be successful in the era of Groundswell, she and her co-author Josh Bernoff created an actionable framework called POST:

P = profile (what are your customers doing in the groundswell?)
O = objectives (what are you trying to accomplish?)
S = strategy (how are you trying to change your relationship with customers?)
T = technology (what social technologies will you use?)

Most brands skip the first three steps and immediately focus on Technology.

Point well taken. It takes a lot of restraint not to focus on the coolness and newness of innovative communication platforms, instead focusing on the people and how they currently interact with and discuss your brand on social platforms.

To give a better framework for more relevant interactions with people, Charlene introduced the Ladder of Participation - People on social platforms display different degrees of participation:

- Creators (They have something important to share - Bloggers)
- Critics (The Tripadvisors and Amazon reviewers of the world)
- Collectors (People that organize information - The Wikipedia editors)
- Joiners (The people that join MySpace and Facebook because their friends are there)
- Spectators (They don't join the conversation - just come by and visit once in a while)
- Inactives - They might have broadband and are tech optimists but they have no interest. Yet. They can join at any moment.

Warning: This is not a segementation technique because these degrees of participation change from brand to brand, from interest to interest. You might be a critic on Amazon reviewing marketing books but a spectator on Facebook while being a creator on your own blog.

According to Charlene, by understanding how your customers utilize social platforms and embracing their needs and desires, you will turn the current customer revolt into reformation.

The newest contender

Whenever you come too late to a party, it can go two ways: The party is at its peak, it takes for you too long to get into it and join the festivities. You can leave disappointed and swear never to be late again.
Or the party is going great but your arrival adds value to the party and makes it an even more memorable event.

Yahoo! just arrived late to the party with their social networking product called Mash. Fairly surprising that it took them so long to join the party since they have all capabilities and properties (Answers, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Answers, just to name a few) to enhance a social network and turn it into a monster party.

After signing up for Mash (it's still in beta) and exploring it for a while, I have the nagging suspicion that Yahoo! might have missed the peak and the party might be going on somewhere. A lot of features are missing (consistent RSS feeds, sparse outside development), it lacks interactivity and personalization options offered by the two big guns. It feels very sparse but not in a positive Craigslist kind of way.

Even though they might not be able to compete with Facebook and MySpace, Yahoo! has an enormous user base and Mash could possibly allow users to consolidate the profiles on MyYahoo, Flickr, etc.

The jury is still out on Mash. Yahoo has a long way to go to make it a remarkable experience. But they might have found a way to get Yahooligans return more frequently to Yahoo properties. With two big parties going on at the same time, Mash might be the ultimate block party.

Good to be in New York

Arriving really late in New York due to JetBlue problems (ATC didn't allow planes to land in JFK. Not Jet Blue's problem but how they communicated that problem to us showed their disregard for customer service. JetBlue: Customer Service is part of your marketing effort.) we settled in at 1.30am in SoHo. Next door is an Italian Festival with Calzone, cannelloni and 'Drown the Clown'. Coney Island in SoHo, including sleeping drunks on sidewalks. Nice change from Maine.

Checked my vacation emails in the afternoon and discovered big news from Google that might turn out being the first battle between the search giant and Facebook:

Techcrunch writes:

"The short version: Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time."

25hoursaday.com goes a bit more into detail and criticizes:

"From my perspective, I'm skeptical of a lot of the talk about social network portability because the conversation rarely seems to be user centric. Usually it's creators of competing services who are angry about "lock-in" because they can't get a new user's contacts from another service and spam them to gain "viral growth" for their service. As for the various claims of social network overload only the power users and geeks who join a new social network service a month (WTF is Dopplr?) have this problem."

In my opinion, it's too late to fight Facebook. The Internet has become a huge swap meet. It's harder and harder to get the attention of people and sustain it. We have numerous identities, avatars, passwords to access sites and communicate with other people. I'm Uwe Gemini on Second Life, have 5 different emails, 7 passwords - you know the drill.
What everyone still seems to not understand is that Facebook is becoming the new Internet. Consider the general trends:

Facebook is the new Internet. It's a closed community but every user can let the outside in. It's up to them. I have no idea how Google can change/improve/transform the Facebook experience. But I know that Google doesn't have a fighting chance to overtake Facebook in social media. Announcements are a dime a dozen. Just ask Sony and their embarassing delay of Home.
Now, if Google or Yahoo would acquire Facebook that would be a different story. But why would Facebook even bother?

Jump on it before it's too late

Many moons ago, while working for one of the most innovative agencies in Germany, one of our main competitors came up with a brilliant idea for a car rental company: While customers were waiting for their luggage in the arrival hall, the conveyor belt carried two suitcases with clever lines (Lost Orientation? Try our cars with Navigation System). People were hypnotized by the suitcases and airport rentals went through the roof. It worked so well because nobody ever thought of advertising in arrival halls, except for the typical hotel ads. When you walk today thorugh German airports, you can still see the suitcases but the value of this marketing technique has dramatically increased.

Innovation and outstanding ideas don't stay innovative and outstanding. Competitors caught on to their ideas, came up with different ideas to market to bored passengers and cluttered arrival halls with billboards and monitors.

Social and Emerging Media are beginning to gain traction in the marketing world. What's new today will be an integral part of the marketing mix in the next years. Many brands ask: When is the right time to utilize social and emerging media in their marketing mix?

Frankly, the time was yesterday. Or, at least, today.

Emerging and Social Media will always be effective. But the value of both will decline in the future when everybody begins jumping on that bandwagon. Now is the time to experiment with social/emergine media. Remember BMW Films, Subserviant Chicken and the Doritos Superbowl Ads. The first movers claimed the benefits, the second movers looked like cheap plagiarists and produced sub-par results.

Jump on it already.

Social Networks and Business

Paul Pedrazzi, writing on the Oracle AppsLab Site, questions the value of Social Networks for business.

So what about Digg and Social Networks make them unworkable for business? Or stated differently, what do they need to become relevant to the business world.

As usual, in the world of 2.0 it all comes down to people. Social sites cannot be all that useful for business until everyone is on them. It’s the law of network effects all over again (remember the fax machine example). The nuance today, is that the people on these sites have to be the ones I care about.

There are lots of people using Digg, MySpace, and more, but from a work perspective, that has very little use to me. I want my trusted group. In simple terms that can be thought of as ALL the employees of Oracle. Sure it would be nice to have people I trust outside Oracle in there, but all my co-workers would be a grand start.

Once you have the people you trust, all you need is content.

Only listening to coworkers and exploring their interests is a good start. But it builds another silo, just like narrowcasting and the demise of newspapers. This might end in a dull and lifeless community. Social networks are meant to build strong connections and explore new ones.

If you want to keep information and connections inside the firewall, social networks don't seem very beneficial. This might be reserved for Wikis. Maybe blogs.
But, as one of the commenters to the original post mentions, wikis/blogs provide content but not context. That's an important distinction. Wikis are important tools to democratize various development processes. Social networks add context to it. Context is a basic human desire. And a fact of corporate life.

Corporate social networks would increase the likelihood of discovering hidden gems since they don't have to work through the hierarchy in order to be heard. That alone should be enough to consider them.

Another buzzword: MoSoSos

MySpace, Friendster, Club Penguin, Facebook - social networks are everywhere.
And as if this is not enough, mobile social networks are starting to take off
(Or as some call them MoSoSos - for mobile social software).
Everybody is talking about Twitter but there are others out there that serve different needs, such as Rave Guardian, Jaiku, Loopt and Sociallight.

These platform-agnostic mobile social networks have become the favorite of the Web 2.0 community and give users the opportunity to quickly communicate with friends and family about their immediate reactions and what they're doing/feeling at this moment. And one can access these platforms through any device and, if your PDA/laptop is GPS-enabled, you can be informed when friends are close by (Loopt) or share comments about businesses/locations through Sociallight.
MoSoSos will really take off when people don't have to type their messages anymore and can just convert them from voice to text. And allow for even quicker interaction.

The need to stay connected is everywhere: at work, with friends and family. I see a major shift from personal connectivity to business connectivity. When IM's enjoyed their time in the sun, they were mostly used for personal reasons. This has shifted in the last few years to a much more business-driven approach. We'll see the same shift in MoSoSos in the next few years and this will change the business of mobile social networks as well: Opportunities for real-time, geo-located marketing opportunities will allow for new ways to connect with consumers in a very valuable way.

It's hard to say if Twitter, Loopt or others will be the major players in this field. It depends on how they continue innovating their sites (see Friendster) and where the masses will ultimately end up and spend their MoSoSo time. In the mid-term future, only geographically mobile solutions that help us connect with our affinity groups or friends will be the winner because they allow for stickiness and valuable content.

Social Bookmarking for Dummies

The guys from Common Craft Show have developed another good tutorial, focusing on social bookmarking.

A great video that clearly communicates the practical use of new web technologies. I'm sure most of my readers are very familiar with this concept but this might be something to share with friends and families who don't live and breathe Web 2.0.

Social Networks might cure cancer

Gina Kolata wrote an interesting piece in Sunday's New York Times, reflecting upon the on the power of social networks.
My favorite quote:

"Now, scientists believe that social networks not only can spread diseases, like the common cold, but also may influence many types of behavior — negative and positive — which then affect an individual’s health, as well as a community’s.

“In the past few years we have been seeing a network revolution,” says Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physics professor at the University of Notre Dame. “People sensed that networks were out there, but they never had large enough data sets to start understanding them in a quantitative fashion.”

We've known this all along haven't we? That's why our parents tried to keep us away from the 'bad kids'. That's why we had the first cigarette, the first drink.

Human beings are social creatures and everybody influences everybody. And these social networks not only exist between people but also on a cellular level:

"The challenge in medicine now is to map out complex dynamic networks, Dr. Barabasi said, and he does not just mean networks of people. The proteins and enzymes in a cell also form a closely connected network, Dr. Barabasi says. And when you tweak one protein, the whole web is affected. “That is why drugs have side effects,” Dr. Barabasi said.

And, he adds, “we will not have cures for obesity or cancer until we understand those networks.”

But he’s an optimist, believing that these cellular networks will be mapped sooner or later. “Right now, this is a work in progress,” Dr. Barabasi says, “but I believe we will get there in 10 years.”

Social Networks as the cure-all? Why not?