Zephoria offers a working definition of a social network site.  A “social network site” is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile Source: apophenia: social network sites: my definition Some additional detail around the three attributes.  Strategic attributes usually come in threes, and more or less usually suggests the granularity is too deep or too high.  In this case, the three resonate well, and cover the broad requirements of a social site. Profile. A profile includes an identifiable handle (either the person’s … Continue reading apophenia: social network sites: my definition

Zephoria brilliantly highlights the conundrum we face from generational change, and use of technologies.  I’m part of the generation caught between email and IM where IM feels more natural but most of the folks just a little older than me refuse to use IM so I’m stuck dealing with email. Today’s teens are stuck between IM, MySpace/Facebook, and SMS. There’s another transition going on which is why there’s no clean one place. IM replaced email for quite a few years but now things are in flux again. Still, no matter what, email is not regaining beloved ground. Source: apophenia: what i mean … Continue reading apophenia: what I mean when I say "email is dead" in reference to teens

I must congratulate Royal Bank of Canada on going live with the first Canadian Bank blog. This is on schedule as noted in my earlier post on their nextgreatinnovator.com site.  It even has a persons name .. Nelson T.  As a career banker, I get the concept that that is a big deal to have one person speaking to the world.  ABOUT The Innovator Blog is your inside source for advice and guidance on the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge. Visit frequently for tips on teen trends, innovation principles, and general challenge announcements. Source: The RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge With … Continue reading The RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge blog

 Interesting posts here and follow up here from Confused of Calcutta.  I’ve always believed in a simple rule-of-thumb about opensource communities: For every 1000 people who join a community: 920 are lurkers, passive observers 60 are watchers, active observers capable and willing to kibitz 15 are activists, actually doing something …..  and 5 are hyperactive, passionate about what they’re doing, almost to a point of obsession Source: Confused Of Calcutta » Blog Archive » None of Us is As Smart as All of Us His context is an online test at wearesmarter.org which is run by these folks, mainly academics. … Continue reading Confused Of Calcutta | None of Us is As Smart as All of Us

 This paper is light, but has some key points that are important in considering build out of a social network. Claudia Keser: Reputation management, or a reputation system, is a way to maintain trust in online communities, where we anonymously interact with people that we might have never met, not even heard of, and that we might never meet again. This is achieved by the provision of information about past performance. To be somewhat more precise, [with] a definition given by Paul Resnick et al., it is a system that collects, distributes and aggregates feedback about past behavior. A famous … Continue reading IBM | Reputation management: Building trust among virtual strangers

 Travel purchases had moved from high relationship (travel agencies) to highly transactional (online travel, Expedia.com etc) and now has swung into another state, centred on social networks. In the past year, US online leisure travelers’ use of Social Computing technologies such as blogs, RSS, and user reviews for researching travel has skyrocketed. Attention travel eBusiness and marketing executives and managers: Social Computing must play some role in your online strategy, even if all you do is monitor what travelers say about your brands on third-party forums. Those implementing Social Computing technologies on their own Web sites need to view it … Continue reading Forrester Research: Travelers Embrace Social Computing Technologies

 Summary of some interesting research confirming blogs are pretty mainstream now.  Despite the survey I would estimate there is another 10 – 20 % reading blogs but don’t realise it. Half of those between age 18 and 24 had read a blog in the past three months and one-quarter had also authored their own blog, the study found. Older adults were also active in the online social networking sphere. Among baby boomers over age 55, one-quarter had recently read a blog, the study found. Geographically, blogging was most popular in British Columbia, where 42 per cent of those surveyed had … Continue reading TheStar.com – One in three read blogs: Environics