Here we see, in real time, the inevitable and cataclismic shift in marketing. Are you ready?

T-shirts (Threadless & Neighborhoodies)

TV (Youtube & Joost)

Handbags (Elemental Threads)

Journalism (Blogs & podcasting)

Newspapers (RSS)

Job Seeking (Aggregation & feeds)

Book publishing (Lulu)

Tourism (the web in general)

Luxury goods (fractional ownership)

Music (itunes)

Networking (facebook & social apps)

In fact there’s just too many to mention.

But the real question is this: If it hasn’t hit your industry yet, why not and what are you doing about it?

 Yuwie.com is a website that pays you for socializing.  This site pays you for socializing in a similar manner to that of myspace.  I have found that it is easier to make friends, the layouts are much better and it is overall a more fun site.  However this is just my own opinion and I understand this.

Associated Content.com is those who love writing articles that are in good taste and of higher quality than just a myspace blog.  They also pay you for quality writing (between $3-$9.00/per article) as well as a monthly performance payment for up to 200 articles.  Last year I have made over $200 for approximately 40 articles.  It isn't a get rich quick method, but it can be a little extra pocket money each month.

There are other article writing sites such as Helium and Triond and of course there is mylot.com that pays for discussions. 

So if you are looking for ways to make a little extra money try these sites.  Again these sites have more benefits than just money.  You can make many friends with yuwie which can be used as business contacts or potential business contacts and AC (Associated Content.com) can be used to perfect or show potential publishers your writing ability.

My dad always reiterated this growing up. The more you know, the more valuable you are to the community, your employer and your social-network. It is why plumbers get $150 an hour to come and fix leads during times of emergency and 20 somethings are being tapped to develop Web 2.0 strategies for Global 2000 companies.

As an industry, we've been spending a considerable amount of time trying to better understand adoption of business social network tools. Gia Lyons had a great post recently entitled 'Why is it so hard to get smart people to share?"

I'm confident that the reason that smart people find it so hard to share, is that, as commenter, Richard Fahey points out, the traditional belief is that sharing your knowledge with the masses, greatly diminishes the value of that information. Why would I pay a plumber to fix my leaky toilet if I know how to do it myself? But as we've discovered, the opposite is true. When people advertise & share their knowledge, the premium for that knowledge increases. Likewise, not sharing the knowledge depreciates the value of it.

In Gia's post, she specifically calls out retiring Boomers who seem to be the most reluctant to share. Not being a boomer, I can't speak directly for the generation, but from what I have seen, this is has to do the mentality of seeing the value of their knowledge as their personal value. Unfortunately, usually what these people know isn't the Holy Grail of knowledge, it is usually just corporate guidance that should be as open as possible to help people out.

I also don't believe that there is a reluctance to share their knowledge individually, you regularly hear of some old tycoon taking a young whippersnapper under his wings. Most people, as Gia points out, are really great about sharing information one to one with a trusted party. But there needs to be a sense of familiarity with the person before she lets you in on the secrets to success.

The biggest corporate help that my generation can receive from the Boomers over the next few years will be that they recognize that, once they retire, their knowledge is worthless, but that they are not. The companies that they've given their life too for the past 30 or 40 years are now the young gun, not just one person, but everyone.

So to the Boomers, now is the time to open up and share what you know. Don't just guide one young person to success, guide them all.

LinkedIn? You NEED to be. Today.

www.linkedin.com

We are introducing two new ideas to the conference this year which I'm particularly excited about. The first is Stowe Boyd's Launch Pad where four (whittled down from a larger number by votes) audience-chosen startups will have an opportunity to demo their products and compete for a winning spot for the best launch pad product/service. As there is such a torrent of new products coming onto the scene, this is a great attempt to filter out the most useful based on collective crowd selection. We are considering doing something very similar regarding sessions for September's Office 2.0 conference based on the SXSW's panel-picker software.

The second event, or maybe unevent I should say, is called Enterprise2Open. Modeled after "barcamps and unconferences," this will be a half-day's worth of unstructured Q&A and sharing hosted by Ross Mayfield. The unstructured, open-type of event has been popular for some time in the development community, but we thought we'd attempt to try it out this year with a non-technical audience. The format provides a no-hassle, informative forum to ask any and all of your burning questions related to Enterprise 2.0 and get answers from peers and folks in the community who may have experienced the same issues. You may want to consider getting your questions and topics suggested in advance by posting them to the Enterprise2Open wiki. You can actually be a presenter yourself, if you bring your own soap box. Just get yourself on the self-organized agenda. The entire session will run in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 11 from 1-4pm. nGenera is sponsoring the event, so I'll be there with a few of my colleagues and customers.

Speaking of customers, Rob Carter, CIO of Federal Express is giving the opening keynote. A group of us were in Memphis at Fedex's central distribution facility in March where we heard Rob talk on 2.0 adoption. Rob sees himself as an evangelist himself for 2.0 in the enterprise. I'm really pleased he accepted the offer to keynote on Tuesday morning. One of the conference themes this year is accelerating user adoption. Having notable icons from the F500 executive board room will go far to lower the barriers of trial and experimentation with 2.0 alternatives.

I'll be at the conference from Sunday to Wednesday. I hope to see many of you there. Please drop me a note or a comment here to let me know if you're attending. Many thanks to all the folks on the panels I helped arrange.

Photo credits: Jeckman on flickr and Alex Dunne on flickr.

A few days ago, I found myself thinking about a friend in Boston that I haven’t called or emailed in a few months. I’m not sure why I haven’t – I miss her a lot, and think about her – but one day after another has passed, and my NYC life keeps me in a whirlwind, and next thing I know, I’ve neglected half of the people I love. Once I started thinking about forgetting to call her, I made a list of all the people I want to call or email, and that list was loooong. There is an unanswered email in my inbox from 2/22/07 – and Val, I haven’t forgotten about you. How did I let it go this long?

So I started sorting people into categories by how often I generally talk to them: weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc. Then I started putting people into my calendar, with the option to either email or call, blah, blah.

I stopped after about three people.

It was a pain, and tiring, and ridiculous that I was doing this. What I really want is something to remind me to be a better friend. Several of these entries have mentioned different ways to manage the information surrounding my friends – phone numbers, events, email addresses, birthdays, locations – but that is just static information. What can be done to manage the living, dynamic information surrounding friendships? How can I remember that it’s been X days since I’ve called which friend, or that friend Y is having a hard time and it’s been Z days since I checked in?

So I’m bringing this back to the tier system. I need a friend management system, a “smart” address book that connects your information to how much I contact you and to how often we connect.

I’d like to import everyone into the same system as in my tiered phone contacts, then sync up their information to my email and phone – and when I called/emailed, it was registered. Then, if I miss an “appointment” of the pre-set amount of time (i.e. set to call you every three weeks), I’d get a reminder, something like “Hey, you haven’t called Holli in a while. She probably had the baby. It’s probably in college.” If someone was in crisis, I could set them to “Call every other day” or “Send a thoughtful txt today.”

Maybe if you don’t live in NYC, this sounds pretentious, or maybe I have so many long distance friends because I’ve lived in three big cities. Or maybe I am just lucky to have some many people that I love. But I need some electronic help to stay emotionally connected.

What is it? Well, its a browser that makes your online life a little easier by bring a few things to you. Like what? Well like it will show me when new pictures of my friends are put on facebook, it will let me know when new feeds are available from my news feed reader (not sure if that is a good thing really!!)

it let's me update my facebook "what I'm doing" without actually going to facebook. Anything else... yeah it makes blog posting a lot easier. By putting the tools to do the blog post right into the browser. So... Now that it is supposedly easier to blog I should be more than a once-every-two-weeks poster.

The browsert is built on Firefox so it will still let me use the AdBlock Plus plugin that I can no longer live without.

Is it time to give in to social networking and actually be a part of what's going on. The problem has always been what an incredible time sink it is. So maybe, just maybe this makes it fun AND not too time consuming.

We shall see.

Club Penguin is launching new tools to help parents manage their children's online play experience. With the update, parents will be able to view account histories, change the password for the account and chat freedom levels, and, in the future, set time limits for play. More virtual worlds, like BarbieGirls.com, are beginning to promote parents' areas as a unique feature of the game, and some are even charging for the safety tools. With the near-glut of youth-oriented worlds out there, it looks like developers are marketing as much to parents (the ones with the wallets) as kids (the ones with the demands).

“While Club Penguin offers children a world of opportunity to play and use their imaginations online, as parents ourselves we understand the value of making sure kids also spend time away from the computer playing sports and being with their friends,” Lane Merrifield, general manager and co-founder of Club Penguin, said in a statement.

Virtual Worlds News: Club Penguin Launches Parenting Tools

HAHAHA. I laugh simply because - no GREAT IDEA is thought of once, by one person. Great ideas seriously POP into the heads of at LEAST 7 (that's my estimate) people. The first one to act on that idea gets the glory. I shake my fist at the gods for timing.

Of course, webkinz and Pirates of the Caribbean Online both already have "parent account" areas, but as progression... well... progresses, as do tools, tech, and ease of use. (Besides, Webkinz parent area sucks. Sorry, but it does).

Oh, le sigh. Soon, soon parental controls of tween and younger sites will be customary. Virtual World 101. Expected, typical, demanded. And ya know what? Good. Put some of the control & responsibility back into the hands of the parents. Nice.

I highlighted Lane Merrifield's statement because I wanted to share something else with ya. Club Penguin & their imagination offerings. I'm telling you, these people have got the magic. Seriously. I used to be freaked (back in the pre-VW youth boom) that the interweb was going to steal the soul of free imaginative play from youth. I was worried that storylines and structured play patterns were going to hinder any freedom. And then I drank the punch and became a VW advocate. And lately, Club Penguin's population has calmed any spec o fears lying in the back of my brain from those old days of worry. Why? Because I found TWO events going on of free imaginative play:

The top image is a backyard barbecue with family-styled badminton. Badminton? Yes. Badminton. Notice the fence line (net), tennis rackets (badminton rackets), two separate teams broken into two colors. There isn't a "badminton" animation for the penguins (let alone a tennis animation), but no worries. The kids mind modeled it. How? They throw snowballs, and it looks like they're serving. One throws it to a kid, the kid then throws a snowball to another, and the game goes on. No winning or losing it seems. Just playing.

The second image is a SPA. Yes. A spa, complete with tanning beds, mani-pedi chairs, A BATHROOM, a pool/hot tub, a healthy kitchen, and a yoga studio. Crazy, right? Okay, okay - I'll admin. The spa seems a bit complex and there COULD have been adult interaction (parent, staff, etc). I don't care. Why? Because while I was in the spa, nearly 30 kids went through. That's thirty sets of eyes and brains that see the possibility and take it as a role model experience. More spas have been popping up too. Imagination, my friends, is addictive to those willing to let go of rules and accept the possibility. Too freakin' cool. ;)

Sport Factory Outlet sells bicycle helmets in Switzerland and promises to prevent and injury to your head, so you can avoid saying silly things.

Happy Friday all... and don't forget. Wear your helmet.

Credits:
Advertising Agency: Ruf Lanz, Zurich, Switzerland
Creative Directors: Markus Ruf, Danielle Lanz
Art Director: Grit Wolany
Copywriters: George W. Bush, Markus Ruf

There were more interesting things than I can begin to recount here, but one that resonated a lot with me was an argument in the presentation Henry Jenkins, Ana Domb, and Xiaochang Li gave where they (among other things) critiqued the concepts of viral and sticky, pitching spreadable as a better alternative.

They said, and I agree, that the goal of creating “sticky” internet sites — sites that hold people’s attention, provide a unified customer experience, provide only top-down information and so on — needs to be (or is being) replaced with the goal of “spreadable content” which circulates among diverse, dispersed people as they participate in social networks and engage in grassroots activity. I’ve talked about this in the context of providing fans with widgets they can export to sites of their choosing in order to spread word of (keyboard?) about whatever it is they’re into.

They also went after the notion of “viral” with its biological language of infection. When something spreads virally — take, for example, the flu — people receive the virus without realizing (and sometimes never even manifesting) it. They pass it on to others without any effort — indeed, if they realize they have it, they have to put effort into NOT spreading it. From a marketers perspective, if you can engineer the perfect “viral” campaign, the people will be powerless to resist. They’ll be diffusing your ideas before they know what hit them.

This creates an illusion of control — a viral campaign will work if we design it right — and therefore feeds into what I see as a dying model of media control in which the big content providers get to manage everything from the top down (see “stickiness” above).

Online Fandom » War of the Concepts: Virus vs Spread

Okay. So, this was a great read first of all. Gets the brain crankin' and the thoughts a'churnin'. And as I was thinking about this concept of spreadable content... as well as viral content, I went through some of the past campaigns I've seen for the mass public - elves with cut out faces of co-workers dancing and singing in shareable videos, Britney Spears UGC poetry whispered creepily through a phone call, printable McLovin fake IDs, widgets, etc...etc...etc (Thank you, King of Siam).

We've been talking briefly here at the good ole SDG offices about viral content - and the luck-o-the-dice rolling of making successful viral content (of course, it's not really always a luck-o-the-dice situation, strategy + "duh" play patterns exposed + ease = a great starting point, it's also good to sometimes engage what I like to call the "snarky" factor).

Most viral content is made for the 14+ market (you can blend 10+ in there as well, if you believe it just). So... what happens for anyone under that age bracket? Does the same content and application apply? That's the great question of the day, ain't it?

I've seen TWO great viral campaigns (at least in creation and quality) of a tween market (but not necessarily FOR the tween market).

The Golden Compass had a really smart widget come out about a year ago. If you know the His Dark Materials series (or by now have seen the movie), you know about Daemons - and how they're a reflection of your soul.  The widget allowed you to discover your own Daemon (animal), share it on your social network page, get friends to interact with the widget, and then entice them to get their own.  Investment. Sharing. Interaction.

Basically, what the The Golden Compass widget did that I hadn't seen = make FRIENDS get just as invested in the widget on someone else's page by encouraging friend-supported interaction... and then use that as an opportunity to peddle & temp for more viral widget spreading. I'm not sure how well it worked - considering the movie came off as demographic confusing (who is it for? kids, tweens, teens, adults? with its graphic nature and young/fantasy cast, cutsey animals and anti-christen subtext, etc), and the folks on myspace using that app were probably more YA readers of the older variety (myself, for example). Alas, it was a really clever ploy in my opinion.

The other great app I've seen is for Moshi Monsters - a tween virtual world. Currently mine is on my facebook page. Visitors to my facebook page can listen to my wee lil moshi monster speak sassy to them (and he is sassy - and personalized). It's aesthetically pleasing, snarky-good-natured-goofy, and bright/colorful (bubbly happy colors that aren't acidic like Hello Kitty, but still carry the right, bright energy of amusement). I know this has worked on at least TWO other people (who spotted mine and jumped into Moshi for their own), which is great. But again, those peeps were YA-appreciators (and fellow community folks) like me. I don't have tater tot friends in facebook, nor will I, aaaaaaaaathankyaverymuch. And for the 12+ set, this could be highly successful (again, I don't know, but I do know that Moshi has several demographics targeted, and that's cool as its safe & appropriate for youth but accessible and fun for all).

But what about the 10-? The kinds who aren't quite established in the social networking widgetopia? The ones who aren't receiving marketing phone calls from Britney Spear's fragrance (and if they are... hmm, that's kinda creepy)?

Is there such thing has VIRAL/SPREADABLE CONTENT for the tater tots? I see peeps like Disney & the folks behind Doko (the pog-like toy whose name reminds me of Star Wars' Count Doku) trying new viral ("sharing" because "sharing means caring") outside-the-box techniques. You could also just have product tie-ins (redeemable cards that sit next to cash register that just scream "Hey, auntie, buy this and stick it in my birthday card so you don't have to UPS a pressie"; stuffed plushies that lure with their dull black plastic eyes, etc). But that's less of a viral campaign and more of a product strategy, isn't it? Hmmmmm...

Does viral marketing for youth really only exist in advertising and word of mouth? We already know about the advertising issue (as there's a collective hiss from the more protective sorts, no insult intended - but we all know its there).

The word of mouth points DIRECTLY at the thin balancing blade of a subtle knife (oooo, another His Dark Materials reference). On one hand, you need to make a product that's trustworthy, safety stamped, and parent hugged; while on the other hand, you need to make a product whose parent hug is not visible to young eyes (nothing curbs a kids freedom like a n excited parent in the room), seems exciting and edgy and fun, as well as recognizable (play patterns, brand awareness, etc). A product that makes parents talk at play dates, and kids share at the lunch table. Then you gotta just CROSS THE FINGERS and hope that good ole "If you Build it, He will come" mentality works for people other than Kevin Costner.

What am I missing? Is it true that there isn't a great way to create viral content for youth? OR is there a REASON there isn't viral/spreadable content for the under 10's?

Now of course, all of this has been rambling around in my mind, and in no way am I saying I'm right about any of it, nor am I taking sides. This whole idea of "spreadable" marketing is still struggling to swim in the grown up world, so maybe its not fair to ask to expect any swim time for the tater tot world.

What do you think? Viral/Spreadable marketing... does it exist for kids & tweens? Should it? And if it's a speeding train cruising the downhill track-of-life, how can we man-handle it to do as we wish instead of fighting an up hill battle? I'd love to hear your thoughts - whether you want to add to my insanity, or point out something I missed.

Why does having at least 500 connections on LinkedIn matter?

1. Your profile shows that you have "500+ Connections."  It doesn't matter if you have 32,000 connections or 500 connections, you still get labelled as a "500+" person.  This means that you're a dork.
2. You get the satisfaction that knowing yet another goal has been attained, and you realize that you must scramble to come up with another goal before "Work out 3 times a week" moves up into the #1 slot.

I'm thinking, "learn how to tatoo a cat" just took top billing for me.

Debating Google's data portability move (Friend Connect) is like debating the Netvibes universal widget platform. It is not data portability in the sense that the DataPortability project has defined it. It is a platform that translates existing proprietary implementations into it's own unified proprietary implementation to enable socal widgets to run in more places.

MySpace's data portability move (Data Availability) is actually the closest play to data portability as defined by the DataPortability project. It proposes to allow 3rd party sites to access the users personal data using open standards extracted from the page (using microformats and a collection of full XML standards). The terms and conditions about caching, however, also bring it in conflict with the philosophies of the DataPortability project.

So as stated before, none of these plays are true 'DataPortability' implementations. But they are important first steps. They are the first shots across the bow to the industry that a data portability battle is coming. In fact it has started. Are we going to let it shake out like the IM wars? Or are startups, second tier players, standards groups, bloggers and users going to rally around and standardize to a totally open, grass-roots alternative?

Are the big players going to evolve their offerings to come in line with the rest of the world, or are they going to try to dominate (read: lose).

Further, data portability, and DataPortability is not just about social networking data or social networking scenarios. Certainly not social networking as defined by the social contract of Facebook. It might even be true that Facebook is a culturally bad fit for the DataPortability ecosystem. DataPortability is about a different social contract - a contract more closely resembling the one found in the email address book.

My address book is my own. When you email me, or when you communicate with me, you are revealing something about yourself. You define a social contract with me that means that I can use your information to contact you whenever and however I like - I could even re-purpose my address book for all manor of other things.

If, however, you violate that trust, either directly or indirectly, you break the social contract and I will tend to not deal with you again. We can not perfectly engineer these sorts of contracts into systems - we can try, but in the end social behavior will be the last mile in enforcing user rights.

Also, the dichotomy between who 'owns' the data is false. In my mind there is shared ownership. While you use a service, it has a shared custodianship of the data. By giving the service your data you're getting something else in return - utility. In many cases free utility.

You personally, however, have shared (and overriding) ownership over your data. This has been declared as universally true by all the vendors I've spoken to.

The question is not one of ownership though, it's one of control. If you own your data but can't control it as you choose then ownership is a mute point. Further, the question is not one of if you own it, but rather how much of it you own.

For example, do you own your friends profile data since you have access to it via the social tool you are using? Or have they only granted you access within that social context and under that social contract. These considerations blur the analogy of the purely personal address book.

In this case, there is no correct, default answer. The answer must come from an old saying - "Your rights end where my rights begin". That is, your friends need an additional options when 'friending' you. A checkbox will probably be required that states 'Allow this contact to use my data elsewhere'.

The act of 'friending' will also need to take on more meaning and 'grouping' friends will become important. It will evolve, for most of us, and in most applications, from a popularity contest to a carefully curated address book of people we actually care about.

AUSTIN, TX -- Job seekers should tap into online networking sites to help hunt down potential employers, new surveys suggest. The polls, conducted in Canada and the United States on behalf of California-based recruitment firm Robert Half International, showed that most executives believe that professional networking sites will prove useful over the next three years for job seekers.

Networking sites can be used to identify new career opportunities, create online profiles that highlight one's skills and experience and build a roster of business contacts over time. Of 100 senior executives interviewed, 67 percent said they thought professional networking sites -- such as LinkedIn -- were useful for recruiting new employees, and 25 percent said they thought social networking sites like Facebook would be useful.

Although online networking can play a role in helping people to find work, job seekers should continue to use traditional job-hunting methods. In today's competitive job market, you can't afford to leave any stone unturned. "Tried and true methods, such as networking at industry events, submitting well-written resumes and cover letters, and diligently following up with hiring managers are still essential to landing the ideal job.

-----------

Want to crank up your online presence the right way - and learn how to use social networking sites like LinkedIn to get hired faster? Check out: http://www.knocks.com/Social_Networking_Course.html.

It didn't take long, however for today's news to arise: Facebook rejecting Google's Friend Connect. Already, concerns about privacy are arising. As great as it is from a business perspective, the idea of Open I.D. raises a lot of concerns about how my data, as a user will be used. Yeah, I love the fact that I can register and create my profile only once and allow my data to flow with me as I surf from one site to another but it begs the question of control. The reason that fragmentation exists is that the user has the option to maintain mutliple identities/personas across multiple sites. Friend lists will differ depending on the purpose of my presence on certain sites. Maybe my profile on scribd as a "health guru" does not necessarily want to integrate with my political profile on jibjab. My professional linkedin friends should have access to my blogspot and my twitter but not my facebook. The point is: only I should have control on who sees my stuff and which friends I want interacting with me wherever I go. Giving this control to Facebook, Google or MySpace, for that matter, gives up my right and my control over my data.

Facebook is already noticing the impacts of cross-pollinating users/friends from one platform to another. Privacy concerns must weigh in especially since each platform has its own policies for its users. It will be interesting how this will be architectured cross-platformed to give users full disclosure and opt-out control if they so choose.

I just logged into social networking site Faceparty to find I was redirected to the page illustrated by THIS link.

I should hasten to add that my account (which I've had for eons) is still active and whatnot, probably due to me being a 20-something and occasional logger-inner.

Although the text and policies seem really rather harsh, I do think they they're kinda justified (see my quote at the base of the post), though may not have been handled as sensitively as they could have been.

Choice quotes from the new management at Faceparty Towers includes;

Over 36 years old?New government legislation means we need to check older users on the sex offenders list. This legislation is based upon checking email addresses against a government provided list. Faceparty has never insisted on validated email addresses and can therefore not participate in this new scheme. Having discussed the use of our website with the home office and the police, and further some pretty serious crimes caused by older users, we were left with no option but to terminate a huge amount of accounts, and without notice, immediately. We understand that only a minority of older users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which - we can only delete all to make the site safe and we apologise for that. However, we are following the law and you cannot think we are wrong for doing that.

 

 

Negativity / Bitching / Moaning about Faceparty:If all you are gonna do is type "Faceparty is shit" then you shouldn't be using the site. You will be deleted for this reason. Faceparty is not a public service and you would probably be kicked out of Tescos for writing "Tescos is shit" on their walls too. You would also, quite rightly, be deleted for aggressive behaviour towards our "staff" and volunteers (calling them c*nts, threatening to kill them etc has been a problem that has risen to above 1,000 instances per week and we're no longer prepared to put up with that behaviour - we also need to point out that threatening to kill staff = prison).

 

 

Anarchy Towers did not opt to buy your account:The original crew behind Faceparty and the inventors of the online community (Anarchy Towers) is taking control of the website again. That means this is gonna be the best site on the web, just as it was for every year they were in control in the past. Anarchy Towers is NOT legally obliged to purchase all of the member accounts from CIS Internet Ltd, and nor does it intend to. Your contract with CIS Internet Ltd ends with the closure of CIS Internet Ltd. Anarchy Towers can only afford to buy a certain number of accounts - there is most likely nothing personal in it, we can only buy what we can afford.

 

 

You joined within the last 2 months:Unfortunately some of the creators of accounts who were deleted, of an older age group, have been creating new accounts with a younger age (which means that government legislation classifies them as a sex offender by lying about their age on the Internet, even though most who have done this may have done so with good intent and purely to be a part of a site they love and without any intent to manipulate younger users). However, this is still illegal and it is too hard to seek out and destroy non-genuine accounts, therefore Anarchy Towers has not opted to buy any accounts created in the last 2 months. Anarchy Towers is not obliged to purchase your account.

 

 

I think that this small paragraph towards the base of the page sums up and justifies why such drastic action has also been taken and so I do feel that they should have at least formatted this bit in bold text or something similar by way of their defence!

Why was no Notice Given of my Termination?Notice is not required for violations of terms of service. We apologise that we were legally unable to give you notice for accounts deleted due to the fact we could not check your details on the sex offenders register. This was because a gang of paedophiles had arrived on the website and had carried out a series of attacks on younger users. We had to make sure that these people could not swap contact details with their potential victims. We know it must have been painful for you to lose your account, but the safety of the users this site is aimed at is more important and we acted based upon consultation with the police. We apologise to the genuine users who had their fun ruined by the minority of sex offenders preying on this site. Police evidence showed that people were about to get killed. Think hard about whether Faceparty did the right thing morally, or not. Lives were saved. Lives are more important than accounts.

 

 

And my favourite quote from this page...

With no offence intended, it is not the legal right of a 70 year old to claim right to a young person's service. Furthermore, it is not your right as a 50 year old to steal the bandwidth of our youth portal because you don’t want to pay for match.com. There are dating agencies for the over 50s, such as match.com, but Faceparty is not and never has been one. We apologise if you didn't realise.

The Missouri woman is allegedly responsible for creating a phony MySpace account under the name "Josh Evans" to lure sixteen-year-old Megan Meier, a former friend of Drew's daughter, into a flirtatious relationship. At the peak of the online relationship, Drew (aka "Josh") allegedly began sending hateful messages aimed at bringing Megan completely beside herself with feelings of rejection. And it worked. Megan's mother, Tina Meier, found her daughter hanging in her closet soon after the messages from "Josh" stopped.

MySpace is claiming that, in creating a false account, Drew violated the social networking mogul's user agreement.

This sticky part of this case is that the statutes being applied in this indictment are the first of its kind, causing a lot of speculation over whether or not it even applies to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is traditionally thought of as something that occurs between peers. In this case, it's a woman versus a minor.

NMW has been following this story since it first broke, and to be honest, it's a great feeling knowing that the Meier family may end up the winner in this tragic story. Frankly, I'll be happy if this holds up, especially if it sends a message to cyberbullies that social media is intended to be constructive, not destructive.

What are your thoughts on the legal aspects of this case? Can it hold up in court?

There's some contention over where exactly Gen Y starts and stops - some say those born 1983-1997, others think 1982-1997. In this week's Entertainment Weekly, Gen Y is defined as "current 13 to 31 year-olds" and BusinessWeek says they can be as young as five. Regardless, we know who they are - they're the young kids of today, the most digitally active generation yet, having been born plugged in.

How They're Different

They're Plugged In: The term "digital native" applies to most Gen Y'ers. Those in Gen Y grew up around computers, the Internet, mobile phones, video games, and mp3 players. They are web savvy multitaskers, able watch TV, surf the web, listen to music, and talk or text on their phones, often performing several of these things at the same time.

TV Isn't King: Although you'll find Gen Y'ers obsessing over the latest episode of "The Hills," and other shows, they aren't watching TV as much as other generations do. Instead, Gen Y'ers spend more time surfing the net and using other devices, like iPods and Xboxes, even when it cuts into TV viewing. For them, TV is often just "background noise."

They Don't Care About Your Ad, They Care What Their Friends Think: Because they are immersed in media, both online and off, Gen Y'ers are marketed to left and right. But when it comes to making decisions, Gen Y tends to rely on their network of friends and their recommendations, not traditional ads. "Ads that push a slogan, an image, and a feeling, the younger consumer is not going to go for,'' says James R. Palczynski, retail analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Instead, they respond to "humor, irony, and the unvarnished truth." They're also somewhat distrusting of ads, which is why grassroots efforts can also work. However, don't get to comfortable, Gen Y doesn't have brand loyalty - they're quick to move the next big thing.

Work Isn't Their Whole World: Sure, they're going to go to work, but it had better be fun. For Gen Y, work isn't their identity. It's just a place. Gen Y sees no reason why a company can't be more accommodating, offering benefits like the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a "fun" work environment. They're also not going to blindly follow orders just because you're the boss. Sometimes dubbed "Generation Why?" they need to "buy in" as to why something is being done. Old school bosses may find their questioning insubordinate behavior, but they would be best to just change their management techniques and adapt. Gen Y hasn't known much unemployment and they're not going to put up with being treated poorly just for sake of a paycheck. (Bosses, your survival guide is here).

They're Socially Conscious: Gen Y cares about the world. They pay attention to politics, the economy, social causes, and environmental issues. They think they're a force to be reckoned with in electionsnot in newspaper format, which is is going to hurt that industry even more as time goes by. and follow the candidates online on social networks. They read the news, but

Gen Y & Technology

Since Gen Y grew up on the web, they're going to be the driving force behind the way the web of the future is shaped. What Gen Y wants from the web will be the web.

Internet TV: Although watching TV online is something that few Boomers do, Gen Y is perfectly comfortable with this. They time-shift content all the time, not only on the web but via portable devices and mp3 players, too. When it comes to TV on the web, a recent study showed Gen Y leading the way when it comes to internet TV viewing:

• Generation Y (33%) and Generation X (27%) led early Baby Boomers (19%) in use of official TV program web sites.
• Gen Y (62%) users are much more likely to have watched a full episode on the program site than Gen X (41%) or younger Boomers (32%).

Socializing Rules...But They Want to Control It: Gen Y thinks a truly "private" life is a crock. 54% have used MySpace, Facebook, or some other social network. Most of Gen Y had to learn the hard way about the perils of posting everything online. As they've aged, they realized blogging their every thought and posting those embarrassing pictures might have hurt their jobs prospects at times, so now some of them are interested in more privacy on their social networks. They're happy to continue over-sharing with friends, but also learning how to protect their updates and set their profiles to private. They're also wary of old folks, like their boss, trying to "friend" them in their social space, especially if they're tragically un-hip wannabes.

But that's not to say their over-sharing is going to stop - Gen Y is getting into lifestreaming too, streaming live video via services like Yahoo! Live. In their own world, they're celebrities. Says Jason Barg, a 2004 graduate of Penn State University and founder of an online real estate company, notoriety is more about standing out from the crowd. "A primary goal of people my age is not necessarily to become famous but to become distinctive," he says.

Marketing Has To Change: Because Gen Y is media savvy and conscious of being marketed to, brands that succeed in the future will be those that open a dialog with their customers, admit their mistakes, and essentially become more transparent (save one notable exception, apparently). Companies' web sites that want to attract GenY'ers will become more like today's Web 2.0 sites. Social networking will be just a feature. Blogs will be standard ways for companies to reach their customers. Customer service won't just be a phone call away, it will be available via non-traditional means, too. Today, savvy companies might be using Twitter, but that could change at any time if Gen Y moves on. Companies will have to keep up with Gen Y and not get too comfortable using any one format. (Oh, and you can stop calling everything "viral" - that's lame.)

Work Tools Need to Mirror Web Tools: Gen Y will drive adoption of "Enterprise 2.0" products and services. Gen Y in the workplace will not just want, but expect their company to provide them with tools that mirror those they use in their personal lives. If socializing on Facebook helps them get a sale, then they're not going to understand why they can't use it at work. For more buckled down companies, if workers aren't provided with the tools they want, they're going to be savvy enough to go around I.T.'s back and get their own.

Web Sites Will Need to Cater to Shorter Attention Spans: No more long boring text! Thanks to constant media input, Gen Y has shorter attention spans and their "grasshopper minds" leap quickly from topic to topic. (They also didn't read this whole article...too long!)

Mobile Web? Yes Please!: Gen Y will be happy to adopt the mobile web - they are practically glued to their phones. Currently, Gen Y is using the mobile web to socialize, not search. Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, in a company whitepaper, Making search social: Unleashing search for the mobile generation, concludes that "...Generation Y, who sees the mobile as a social device first and an information device second, is not using today's mobile search as much as expected. But Generation Y is using mobile phones to access social networks."

Conclusion

Ignoring the voices of Gen Y is something you should do at your own peril, especially if you're a business looking to hire, a company selling a product, or an advertising firm trying to reach them.

Facebook wants to control their users data and made a statement about privacy as an issue. Guess they missed that point when Beacon was launched. It just seems that Facebook doesn't want to play well with others and is heading down a slippery slope. Just imagine if Facebook is the only large network not to allow updates through a service like Friend Connect.

Seems like a fight that I wouldn't want to fight as new entrants pop up everyday.

If the Internet were your high school, social networks would be thatclique. You know the one I’m talking about. The one filled with the kids that everyone knows, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr,  and Ning. The list goes on. It’s a social networking world, and they’re the ones that everyone is talking about, the ones that everyone wants to be friends with. Which begs the question, can the Editor from the school newspaper snag a date with one of the chosen few? Could a relationship ever really work between the two of them?

High school metaphors aside, that was the topic up for debate at the 2008 Interactive Media Conference’s panel discussion about Social Networking. Panel members included Beth Murphy, Director of Marketing at Digg, and Jim Sexton, Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of SPC Digital. The session was moderated by Kim P. Kabza, President and CEO of Neighborhood America.

As popular as Social Networking may be in today’s society, is there a way for news sites to incorporate it into their editorial mission? Or is it even appropriate? Many would say no, but the general conceit of the panel’s discussion seemed to fall in a more positive light. Murphy seemed optimistic about the integration of news sites with social networks, noting that Digg has become the fourth largest source of on-line traffic to the NYTimes.com. Sexton was more reserved in his views, stating that social media and engagement could be impractical in a broad sense. He seemed partial to creating smaller, more specific networks that he referred to as “niches.”

Speaking earlier in the conference’s keynote address, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, mentioned that the site had created “a community of commenters.” The panel seemed to come to the same conclusion. If you can find the right niche for your network, and dedicate the time to cultivate the community within it, then there is no reason why news sites and social networking can’t work well together.

Do you think they'll go the the prom together?

I started using Twitter about a month ago. For those who are already lost, twitter is blogging on a very small scale (140 characters per post) and you can follow other twitterers of your choice in a single stream of posts like this. The 7 things you need to know about twitter (PDF) from Educause will tell you more.

Now there is a lot of irreverent stuff as you'd expect but I have found it very useful. I'll give more examples later but for now, a simple one of resource discovery. When I joined Twitter I started following Martin Weller as I read his blog. While browsing those he follows I came across Grainne Conole who I've met but don't really know... we are both ex-Uni of North London. A tweet from Grainne took me to her blog where I then came across this post which I then blogged about. Now of course I might have gotten to the ENTICE guide through another route but it was twitter that brought me there in this case.

As I said more to follow but Martin Weller is already ahead of my game with his Twitter Tales and also thanks to Sonja for this post on filtering the news.

Coincidently, though the medium of actually talking to someone, I came across the following new video from Mike Wesch yesterday. For me it's not as slick and engaging as his earlier ones but it shows how he has used Twitter in a 'world simulation' with his students at Kansas State university.

RentersQ celebrated its one year anniversary on May 1st with an unexpected high growth without advertising.

Its proprietary web-based rental history report is changing the residential rental community's experience, around the world.

Keep watching, some cool stuff are happening here real soon.

Happy Birthday RentersQ!

Once launched, how much might a niche social networking site earn from advertisers? The purpose of this post is to give those developing financial forecasts and business plans for niche social networks some basis for projecting revenues.

Since it takes lots of eyeballs to sell ads for flat fees, the prevalent advertising model for new social networking sites (aka "publishers") is CPM, or cost-per-thousand impressions (page views.)

In essence, the formula is click-through rate times the cost per click per 1000 impressions. (If you'd like a detailed explanation and example of CPM calculations, see Wikipedia's definitions.)

The graph above is the PubMatic AdPrice Index, which I reference for the big picture. Although too small to read, the data suggest that for small websites generally, the average CPM price was $1.18 in March 2008 and $1.29 in April. This is "based on anonymous data from over 3,000 publishers who work with PubMatic for ad network." "Small websites" are defined as those with less than a million page views a month. This also includes all types of sites, not just social networking sites.

In this post, I round up comments from experts on typical CPM ad revenues for social networking sites in early 2008. My format is to display headings that are blog post titles, then quotes giving dollars and cents CPM numbers, and finally the blog name with date of quote. Follow the heading links for details.

The Future of Social Networks

"Industry insiders at the conference [ReMIX Silicon Valley, April 2008] said they see CPM rates of between 10 cents and 50 cents per thousand for social networks, but it can go much higher ($2.00 to $5.00) for highly targeted demographics.

"Is Web 2.0 financially viable? A small moderately successful software company can generate $12M in annual revenues by focusing on a narrow niche market. What would it take for an advertising based Web 2.0 company to generate the same revenues? Lets assume a $2.50 CPM rate. To generate $1M in monthly ad revenue you would need 400,000,000 monthly page views. Hmmm...how many web sites or services generate that kind of traffic?"

Don Dodge on the Next Big Thing. April, 2008

LinkedIn's CPM rates lower than reported $75, but still impressive

"Seems comments made by Kevin Eyres, managing director of European operations for LinkedIn, were optimistic in pegging ad rates at a $75 CPM. To a degree. A customer who's bought advertising on LinkedIn wrote in to let us know that last fall they negotiated a campaign to run ads against the social network's "premium content" for a $12 CPM, $3 less than the listed $15 rate. The company is now charging $45 for that same inventory, they report. A quick look at the rate card shows that the $45 price point is for vertical banner ads targetted to IT and small business professionals. Custom targeting goes as high as $76.50 per thousand impressions. Good thing to know that you can bargain down those rates 20 percent. And it's still an order of magnitude more than any other social network has been able to charge."

Jackson West, Valleywag blog, Silicon Valley's Tech Gossip Rag April 30, 2008

5 factors that determine your advertising CPM rates

Andrew Chen gives this rough rule of thumb:

" * Social sites (forums/chat/etc) without direct ad sales teams: <$0.25 CPM

* Largely international sites: <$0.50 CPM

* Medium-sized sites that use banner ad networks: <$1 CPM

* Reference sites in a specific category: >$5 CPM or sometimes much higher, depending on category - we ran into home improvement reference sites that did $20 CPMs

"Because we were mostly dealing with so-called "remnant" advertising, these numbers are likely to be at the bottom of the range for these sites. That is, social networks might quote a CPM of $20 CPM, but what they really mean is that 1% of their inventory is sold at that, and the rest of the 99% is sold at <$0.25 prices."

Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: Thoughts on viral marketing, user experience, game design, and online advertising

5 things that make your social network monetize like crap

Andrew Chen makes the point that ad inventory isn't homogeneous, it's a pyramid:

"Sometimes you might hear the CPMs for one of these social networks is X dollars. And that's true, it's exactly the price that SOME people are paying for the inventory. But in general, that's not how publishers end up managing their inventory. Instead, if you take the impressions for a user across their session, you'll instead get something like this:

* The first US impression in a session has the most value ($10)

* Then impressions 2-5 have some level of brand value or high CTR value ($3-5)

* Then after that, you're hitting ad networks selling on category ($1)

* Then eventually, you hit remnant ad networks ($0.50)

* Finally, you hit pure CPA remnant networks ($0.10)"

Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: Thoughts on viral marketing, user experience, game design, and online advertising

To those who really know what they are doing in online advertising and those checking what I've said about their blog posts, it should be obvious that I'm at the bottom of the learning curve in this area. But I'm gathering and posting information for entrepreneurs who are just stepping on the curve. Are there better indexes? Where can a niche website owner go to develop better estimates, maybe by topic area? Please add something to enlighten us all with a post.

Other articles in my beginner series "How to Start A Social Networking Website" are:

Part 1: Background, Manuals, and Lists

Part 2: Business Models and Revenue Streams

Part 3: Networking Software and Developer Contracts

Part 4: The Value Proposition (for my trial site)

And more coming. You are invited to check back or subscribe. Or post a related question and maybe I'll research it for a post. I'm here on behalf of all those building and growing niche social networking sites.