Web 2.0 News & Articles

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

This Week:

• How Obama Won the Online War
• Web 2.0 Summit Updates: Zuckerburg and Yang
• Happy 5th Birthday Delicious!
• Health 2.0 You Say?
• How Will Twitter Make Money #1,000,123
• Following the Election on Twitter Sucked

How Barack Obama Won the Online War

We all know that the President-elect has changed the game in terms of how elections are run, embracing the youth vote through the social tools which they use to communicate and raising millions in campaign funds through omnipresent widgets. No serious electoral candidate in future will go to war without having a serious social media strategy, and without thinking seriously about how to coin it from online contributions.

If you need more evidence that social media and SaaS are thriving despite these tough economic times, Reality Digital can provide it.

The SaaS social media platform provider has announced that due to the growth of the web video and social media market, they have had to make big changes to their company — sales, marketing, distribution, product development, and a brand spanking new office in the U.K.

Microsoft, for nearly two decades, has been dominant with two products: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. But Microsoft made a bold addition with the recent announcement of their new Office Web applications — Web-based versions of several desktop Microsoft Office applications — during the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC). This news comes just as Microsoft announces its various cloud services that will unquestionably play a pivotal role in the company’s future.

Remember when Facebook released its applications platform? It was unquestionably the smartest move in social networking history and the company has been a dominant force in social networking ever since then. But watch out Facebook — LinkedIn is joining the party with its OpenSocial-based application platform called Intelligent Applications.

These are not your typical applications.

Businesses interested in sprucing up their video solutions might want to take a look at FeedRoom. The video solutions provider recently released its fourth iteration of their enterprise video platform that comes with new features allowing users to more easily and efficiently manage, upload and distribute video.

The company considers FeedRoom 4.0 as the most exciting release yet. The system has been heavily modified to stand up to the competition in the video marketplace. In the process, the company has also managed to provide a robust solution that also features a modular design.

OpenID has gotten a big lift this week with two big announcements coming from two very different camps. First, Microsoft has announced that Windows Live will officially support OpenID for login and that users will be able to log into any OpenID site with their LiveID account. Second, Google has announced that it will also be a provider of OpenIDs.

New Apatar Connector was recently released to aid those struggling with integration of open source suite SugarCRM with third-party applications, databases, flat files, other CRM/ERP applications and Web 2.0 destinations.

Apatar claims to be able to do it all “without coding.”

Open Text has announced today the release of “next generation” Web Solutions. The fancy name is, in essence, a new release of the company’s Web CMS child — RedDot. It’s a name change and a total rebranding makeover. With all the underlying RedDot WCM technology still in the backbone, it is now called Web Solutions.

The focus of this new release is on intranets, extranets, Enterprise 2.0 solutions and Web 2.0 tools that come armed with greater security and control over social media initiatives.

We had an opportunity to chat with Stefanie Lightman, VP of Marketing at Open Text, to get the scoop on the new offering.

Alfresco has just announced the third incarnation of its Enterprise Content Management System. Alfresco Enterprise 3 is what Alfresco CTO John Newton refers to as the completion of the Product Suite that had been envisioned since the company began.

MediaWiki is one of the most powerful open source wiki systems available today. MediaWiki, a book released by O’Reilly about the popular wiki CMS, is prepared to explain how users can take full advantage of it.

It took way too long, but after Forrester Research conducted a 2008 poll, the group has come to the conclusion that social media activity is now mainstream. Okay, so this news is not as shocking as one would expect, but look at sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed for crying out loud. It is obvious that this stuff has gone mainstream. Regardless, the statistics are interesting to review, and that is exactly what we are going to do.

Need a new perspective on Web browsing? Cooliris (formerly PicLens) has a solution with an impressive three-dimensional browsing experience that will hit the spot for those who appreciate images and videos. If that doesn’t sound cool enough, how about browsing in 3D on an iPhone? Thanks to Cooliris, this is now possible and it sure is pretty.

What happens when you take Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, chat rooms, video conferencing and forums; mix them with a popular open-source CMS and apply this solution to the education environment?

This is exactly what Social Media Classroom (SMC) is doing in hopes of bringing two-way dialogue and interaction to the education field.

If you’re looking for an excuse to travel to either Chicago or Amsterdam this November, a seminar at User Experience 2008 is a good excuse to do so.

On November 2 in Chicago and November 16 in Amsterdam, Raluca Budiu, a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group, presents Research Update 2008 with a focus on user experience for Web 2.0.

Mobile video fanatics rejoice! Qik, a video streaming platform that allows users to broadcast from mobile devices, has announced support for more mobile devices that will allow users to be visually connected to the world.

Users of Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices will be pleased with the latest news — we can only hope that those users will avoid being charged an arm and a leg for bandwidth usage.