The Social Media Minute 10/03/2008

By James Mowery | Published Oct 3, 2008

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

This week:

Credit Crises Harming Web Startups?
Microsoft Prepares for the Cloud
A New Look to StumbleUpon
Citizen Journalism's Epic Failure
Apple Tosses NDAs to Developers' Delight

Credit Crises Harming Web Startups?

Everyone throughout the world has felt the affects of the U.S. credit crunch. So, why would Web startups be any different? Well, they are not different, and they are feeling the affects. As we all know, we have been greeted with many new Web 2.0 technologies these past few years. But things are likely to slow down, as the credit crunch prevents Web startups from getting the money they need to expand. Right now, it is all about survival of the fittest, as things like advertising revenue dry up. Venture capitalists are also feeling the crunch.

The timing is quite unfortunate considering how Web startups have begun expanding towards mobile devices like the iPhone. The economy will drain these advancements, and that means that tech geeks like the CMSWire crew might not be seeing all the wonderful new advancements that we have been spoiled recently. We all hope that the economy bounces back.

Microsoft Prepares for the Cloud

The buzz around Microsoft is intense. The Professional Developers Conference, which takes place October 27 - 30, is going to unveil huge news from Microsoft. Windows 7, as many would imagine, would be thought to be the big news of the conference, but it is the cloud computing platform — code-named Red Dog — that is going to be getting all the headlines.

The general idea is that Google's App Engine and Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud concepts are being mashed together and will result in an unrivaled cloud-based development platform. Three weeks time will reveal what is to come of this platform, but people and developers are excited.

A New Look to StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon, a social bookmark sharing site, has been in the news lately. There were rumors that eBay had plans on selling the company, but that doesn't seem likely considering the makeover it has recently received.

The company also realized that many of their users did not want to use a toolbar to interact with StumbleUpon, so the company has gone away with that requirement, much to the delight of existing and new users. You can Stumble the Web while being on the Web… interesting.

Citizen Journalism's Epic Failure

Citizen journalism has had its ups and downs, and as new sites are developed to promote citizen journalism, there are still a few people out there, who want to make citizen journalism look bad. Unfortunately, the “real journalists” love to pounce on the mistakes of citizen journalism to make their credibility seem better, but everyone makes mistakes.

However, when a user on CNN's iReport site posted a video saying that his sources believed that Steve Jobs had been taken to the hospital after experiencing a heart attack. This news caused the stock price to drop. Apple immediately denied the iReport's coverage. Maybe this was planned to manipulate the stock price? Who knows?

Apple Tosses NDAs to Developers' Delight

Apple, a company that is known for having a tight grip on its software and hardware, decided to release developers from their non-disclosure agreements that prevented them from talking to other developers about the iPhone SDK. This was quite a relief to developers, and it was a necessary decision in the light of the nearing Android release. Oh, these are very exciting times for the mobile industry.