Latest Social Media News & Articles

There are a number of really great services that allow you to search images and videos hosted on specific sites like YouTube and Flickr. Some examples are Wibe7.tv, PicClick and Compfight and though all of them are useful in their own right, none hold a candle to the visually stimulating Cooliris. We’re talking of course about Cooliris’ infamous 3D wall and browserless environment. (Think gigantic interactive media viewer in 2002's "Minority Report")

Imagine then, our delightful surprise at learning about CoolFlick, a Cooliris-powered image search engine with similar eye-pleasing aesthetics. What’s even better? With CoolFlick there’s no downloading necessary.

There are just too many conferences for one person to attend. We are overcome with options on our favorite subjects. What to do, what to do…

Here are a few more coming up to make your decision that much harder.

According to the report Nothing But Net: Outlook for Global Internet Stocks in 2009, released on Monday (Jan. 5, 2009) by J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., performance-based advertising has gained a larger and larger share of the total online advertising market over the past five years. In particular, the report isolates online video, social networking and Brand Ads for growth analysis.

And why not PBA? Who wins when some convoluted methodology is put in place whereby every site becomes an affilliate marketer? No up front conventional brand ad placement costs, the onus of generating leads is shifted to the ad host, no remuneration for the creativity behind a site that generates millions of CPM’s—the advertiser wins! Another lurch toward institutionalized chiseling and no-risk corporate shenanigans. 

IBM has announced a new suite of collaboration services straight from the cloud. LotusLive is their new portal offering a number of collaboration and social networking services. With integration from some solution providers like Skype, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com, IBM customers will be happy to go cloud-jumping.

User-generated content is a rapidly developing revolution in media. News media have been implementing user generated content in an effort to supplement content and community perspectives.

Citizen journalists now wield power over online content and new business models are emerging in response to this shift. To help bring together content-trendsetters and business leaders in a variety of fields, Mediabistro presents User-Generated Content Conference and Expo.

Many folks have claimed that 2009 will see the rise of Enterprise 2.0. That is, through the application of social media technologies (a.k.a web 2.0), we will see a drastic change in the way enterprises conduct business. Take micro-blogging, for example; the Twitter-style messages that inform your friends what you're up to or working on.

To this end, the micro-messaging service Yammer recently announced they've raised US$ 5 million in series A financing. The popular workplace micro-messaging service has been adopted by companies and groups that need a hosted, simple-to-use micro-messaging platform.

Fasten your common sense seatbelt and bolt on your FUD helmet. According to a report just released by Websense, a web, data and email security firm based in San Diego, CA, in the second half of 2008 70 of the top 100 websites either hosted malware or linked to sites hosting malware. To set some context, these numbers represent a 16% increase over the previous six-month period.

The top 100 sites — many of which are social networking, Web 2.0 and search sites — represent the majority of all webpages viewed on the Internet and were identified via the Alexa web service.

Are customers fed up with poorly trained, outsourced service personnel? Are they tired of spending endless hours on the phone listening to someone read screens? Maybe. We know that many have been turning to things like Google, forums and other online sites for the answers they seek. So how does a business regain the faith of their customers through support?

They join in conversations in the cloud. Salesforce.com has released a SaaS based application called The Service Cloud which can get business back on track with true customer service.

A funny thing that’s developed in the last few years is a shared interest in the latest trends by teens and adults. At least, we’re made to think it’s a tad odd, and surely greasy-faced adolescents are horrified at the thought of getting an add request from their parents on MySpace.

But at the same time, when it comes to things as explosive and powerful as social networking, is a shared interest really all that strange? After all, adults are people too, and as Pew Internet & American Life Project reports, their motives for joining a network are a little more colorful than one might think.

They are flying through our inboxes as fast as hamburgers get flipped at MacDonald's. So we thought we better bring a few to your attention so we can read the rest of our email. The list of webinars that follows run the gamut of application development with Alfresco and IDV Solutions to content management with SharePoint and SaaS to Social Media Marketing - there's even a Twitter one for all your Twitter junkies.

When it comes to enterprise collaboration and social software, LinkedIn rules the roost, according to a CMS Watch report. LinkedIn is apparently more effective at meeting the requirements of social computing the enterprise environment demands.

While social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are tailored to keeping you in touch with your friends and family, LinkedIn is perceived as being "more professional" for business users.

Social Media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here's the week's top stories, in scan-friendly format.

This week:

• Searchmonkey and the Future of Wikipedia
• Unwrapp— Follow Web App Updates
• Retweetist = Digg for Twitter
• Networks Get Social Media-Savvy for Obama's Big Day
• Twitter Updates, Adds Suggestions

Searchmonkey and the Future of Wikipedia

Wikipedia celebrated its 8th birthday last week, and ReadWriteWeb took the opportunity to look at what new technologies are being brought to bear to keep the online encyclopedia top of the pile.

Perhaps the biggest deal of the lot is one which comes not from Wikipedia itself, but from Yahoo!. It's SearchMonkey Wikipedia application went live last week, and integrates Wikipedia articles with Yahoo! search results. SearchMonkey is a development platform built by Yahoo! which allows open access to search data, and enables developers to roll their own search applications (check out our previous coverage). You should see the results of this monster mashup in action right away in your Yahoo! SERPs : it's turned on as default for users of Yahoo! search.

Apart from the new Yahoo! integration, Wikipedia plans to vastly increase media storage space, and to build in-site integration with 3rd party media sites like Flickr. This new focus on multimedia archiving makes eminent sense for the organization. If it succeeds in becoming the, er, Wikipedia for video and other media apart from plain text, there's no telling what kind of traffic volume it can expect in the medium term. Expect the next donations drive to be aiming for a multiple of those of the past to pay for all the new servers needed.

 

Google, one of the Internet's darling companies, is finally starting to feel the economic downtown. Changes are headed for a few Google services including Google Notebook, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Mashup Editor and messaging service Jaiku.

While these services have a strong following, they don't fit in with Google's long term strategy and are, therefore, being jettisoned to save on personnel time and upkeep.

In these days nearly every tech company is seeking the holy grail of new services, software, SaaS options or enterprise 2.0 solutions. The organizations want to get that edge they may need to hold their ground.

However, it seems a little odd that anyone would think that another webmail client is really what we need. MySpace seems to think this is the case, and has a stealth webmail client in the works as their newest 1-2 punch.

Jay Rosen, the founder of Assignment Zero, a project where journalism is run by the public rather than the media, seems to be re-affirming his beliefs about citizen journalism and new media.

Rosen has long believed that citizen journalism promotes social democracy. Recently, he published an essay on how the Internet is weakening the authority of the press that further expands on his idea.

In rough economic times such as these, it is important to recognize the more optimistic efforts being made to inspire change by way of new media and technology.

Thanks to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, an organization dedicated to awarding grants to help transform journalism and communities, twenty-one innovative ideas that will help residents lead informed lives have received US$ 5 million. The projects are the first winners of the Knight Community Information Challenge, a five-year, US$ 24 million initiative to help community foundations support creative ways to use new media and technology to keep communities engaged.

Shortly after making a huge announcement alongside Google at Adobe Max North America 2008, Sprout, Inc. drops another bomb. And this time, it’s going to cost their customers money. End a bad economic year on a good note and start a bad economic year with bad news. It doesn’t seem like the best course of action for the creators of Sprout Builder and Sprout Mixer.

Last December, TypePad Connect was announced as a way to bring a new level of visibility into blog posts, comments and other action taking place on weblogs. The commenting system offered by TypePad allowed your blog to have threaded comments, commenter profile pictures and allowed blog owners to block spam comments and read/reply to comments within email.

The blogging platform provider has now announced that you can easily sign into TypePad Connect with less fuss by using an existing account you probably already have including Yahoo, Google, Blogger, AIM, Vox and many more.

Forrester kicks of 2009 with their review of the latest community platforms. The Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 2009 is based on lab evaluations and interviews of nine community platform vendors. The top contenders are not really surprising, considering the market the review was based on.

For every mob of journalists shrieking about the demise of print, there is this guy: Joshua Karp. He's the founder and funder of The Printed Blog, the "world's first" daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated material.

Sure, the concept of producing output based solely on the work of citizen journalists has been done before, but this times it's different. Karp is taking things off of the web and putting them in print.