New Tech Post - Social Media

San Jose Declares June 30 Social Media Day

Tom Murphy — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:54:00 +0000

Originally New Tech Post was called socialmedia.net. We changed the title because we discovered that as we were writing about the wider tech scene we felt that the title was no longer a fair reflection of our subject matter.

However, we have always felt, and still do, that the growth of social networks and their effect on us as individuals and as a society has had the single biggest effect on how we socialize and do business since the first electrical power plants were built.

Social media has become so much a part of our culture that a given individual can now become conspicuous by their absence from at least one of the networks. We have reached a point now where there can be negative consequences for not engaging with social media.

For a professional person not to have a Linkedin profile would raise a red flag with any potential future employer, or at the very least raise an eyebrow. Similarly, not having a Facebook profile or a Twitter account, while possibly reflecting a naivety about how social networks work or some sort of perverse rejection of modern mores, would have the same net effect — self-exclusion from a global conversation.

Isolating oneself as an individual is fine. There is no doubt that there are many people who wish to keep themselves to themselves and don’t wish to participate in an ever changing online social environment and that should be respected. However, for a business not to engage in with the phenomenon of social media is to put it bluntly, plain stupid.

Every business needs customers and the social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and so on are where the customers are. Almost 700 million of them are on Facebook alone.

Recognising the deep importance of the role that social media and social networks play in our lives the City of San Jose has just announced that June 30, 2011 is officially Social Media Day.

San Jose is a designated Global City because of the important role it plays in the world economy. It is known as Capital city of Silicon Valley which reflects its proximity to the headquarters and major operation centres of most of technological titans of our era.

The recent billion dollar refurbishment and upgrading of its airport to being one of the most technically advanced in the world is direct reflection of San Jose’s City council determination to be the gateway to Silicon Valley as well.

This purpose is to highlight the incredible importance of social media in our daily lives.

The Irish Technology Leadership Group, a network of over 1500 tech executives who are either Irish or of Irish descent, has in turn agreed to host a special event to mark the day.

Some of the leading figures in Silicon Valley have been gathered together in a special panel to discuss the significance of social media and its ramifications for business and the world around us.

What makes this special is that through the power of social media you will be able to partake in this event, engage with the panelists and ask them questions.

Social media is not a passive broadcasting service. What makes it so phenomenally effective is the extent to which it allows you to interact, share and exchange ideas and access people and resources that would never have been otherwise possible.

The panelists have been chosen to provide as broad a view of the area as possible.

Tom McEnery, ex-Mayor of San Jose and Rich Moran, venture capitalist and author, plus Charles Orlando have years of wisdom and experience to share and are all able commentators and observers of life in Silicon Valley.

Fergus Hurley of Clixtr, Philo Northrup of enVie Interactive and Kevin Spier of Bunchball are there to tell us how it is from the frontlines of innovation and product development.

All these people will have valuable insights to share.

Social media has, in just a few short years, become an indispensable part of the fabric of our lives. One question I would certainly put to this panel would be, “How do we prevent ourselves from becoming complacent about the possibilities that social media has to offer all of us and not take it for granted?”

One answer would be to keep taking the opportunity to engage with the opportunities that the technologies of social media and social networking afford us whenever they arise.

One such opportunity is the event taking place at the Irish Innovation Center on June 30 at 4pm.

San Jose Social Media Day, June 30

Tom Murphy — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:33:11 +0000

June 30 is Social Media Day at the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose, California.

At 4pm there will be a live global linkup across the internet.

Live at the IIC will be a panel discussion involving Tom McEnery, Rich Moran, Charles J. Orlando, Fergus Hurley, Philo Northrup and Kevin Spier.

The subject for discussion will be centred on the importance of Social Media in the modern business and tech world. However, participants will be able to put questions to the panelists from wherever they are in the world by means of the various social networking tools that are available.

There is more information here and don't forget to register.

NFC: Using your Mobile to Make Natural Connections

Conor Harrington — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:57:39 +0000

Near Field Communications (NFC) is a form of wireless technology that allows users to receive or share information at short ranges of typically 4cm or less. NFC devices can also communicate with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. It is a technology that has been developed especially to work with mobile phones.

The development of NFC-enabled mobile phones such as the Google Nexus S, has led to the possibility of using a phone as a digital wallet for contactless payment such as that offered by Visa’s Paywave or the
London transport system’s Oyster Card.

NFC technology allows the sharing of information between two NFC mobile devices once they are in close proximity, in a similar way to the way Bluetooth operates, but in a much faster and more convenient way.

In order for two NFC mobile devices to connect, they need only to be within range of each other. Both users confirm the operation, and information may be transferred between the two units.

This can allow users to transfer items such as store vouchers between two “digital wallets” but could also have a transforming impact on the way we engage in social networking.

Two years ago, researchers from the Chair for Information Systems at Technische Universität München developed a prototype application called NFriendConnector which allowed NFC-enabled phones to interact with Facebook.

The prototype, which was submitted to the NFC Forum’s, Global Competition in 2009, came from a desire to, “Use Near Field Communications to map your social life much more easily to your online social life on Facebook," according to the Munich University’s Philip Koene.

His colleague Felix Köbler notes that, “Just using Facebook or any other social network and sitting in front of a PC device will not be the future."

He continues, “In the past when people came together in virtual communities in precursors to the social networks of today, people connected online and then transferred their social relationships from online to offline. Now it is basically vice-versa. People map their real social relationships into facebook, so we think that any application that is enabling or even supporting this process is of great help to people."

The application allows users to swipe their phones alongside each other and download each other’s Facebook profiles to be browsed at a later time. It also contains a function that will match user’s profiles, and generate automated status updates.

“All you have to do is touch the cell phone of the other person and you can make a new friend connection, or you can make a new status message that tells your community on facebook that you have now met this other person. We thought it would be a kind of neat way to map your real life on to your online social networking," says Philip.

He explains that, “The broad idea was that you kind of have data, for example, that you met this other person in real life, that you’re at a specific location in real life. You can gather this data quite easily because you just have to touch something with your telephone, that’s all that’s basically needed. And then you have an app like NFriendConnector where you can map this data easily on to your social network."

The application is not available at the moment as it was, “Used from a research perspective actually," says Felix. “The prototype is basically two years old now so that’s quite a long time when the markets are being filled with applications.

"NFriendConnector was developed in a University setting so with developing it, doing research with it and then publishing it; a lot of stuff happened in that time."

Philip notes that the speed with which mobile technology is developing also presented a problem, “We developed the NFriendConnector for the Nokia NFC-enabled cell phone of the time which was rather a low key device compared to today’s smart phones."

A version of the app which translates its features to the Google Nexus S phone is in development. “We don’t have a title, just a working title right now. We hope to bring it onto the Android marketplace when it’s finished just to evaluate it when it’s finished, maybe in a few months," says Philip.

“What we saw is that people see payment as the big application for NFC, but through our presentations we met other people who see social networking as another possible driver for NFC," notes Felix.

Philip explains why he his optimistic as to the future of NFC-enable social networking thus, “The whole touch metaphor is extremely simple. If you set the application up right, the user won’t have to do anything else other than touch something and that will then be mapped onto a whole range of social networking sites."

“It kind of had a slow start, but we believe it’s coming. NFC enables, in my opinion, a very natural interaction with your mobile phone. You just have to touch something with it to start an interaction."

“The guys from industry always tell us that it’s coming and that this will be the year of NFC. NFC really has a lot of potential and we’re hoping that it’s coming to a bigger market and that we can do broader research with it."

Crowdgather: The Importance of Forums on the Internet

Tom Murphy — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:41:31 +0000

Sanjay Sabnani is the chairman and CEO of Crowdgather, a network made up of over 65,000 forums generating over 90 million page views per month and 4.5 million visitors a month.

Back around 2005 Sanjay looked at all the press in terms of valuation of user generated content sites and social networks and realized that forums seemed to have very valuable content, very strong ties between the members and really no love from the mainstream community. We asked him why he thought that might be?

“For some reason there seems to be a general reluctance amongst advertisers to advertise on user generated content. You have to message down to the individual and to the small groups. Back in the nineties that was not how it was done. The manufacturers and advertisers wanted to control the message and did not have any dynamic feedback in their approach where they could learn from their users.

“That’s all changed now and we are already started to see traction. We have grown from 12 million page views a month last year to 90 million page views a month.”

But haven’t social media sites subsumed the role of forums?

"There is a substantial difference between forums and social media. At the same time there is a huge amount of ignorance about forums and their place in the eco-system.

"I believe that Twitter and Facebook are the training wheels of the true, deep internet experience.

"On forums most people use imaginary user names. Who you are in the real world, how big your bank balance is, how pretty or handsome you are does not matter on a forum. What matters on a forum is the worth of your intellect, the merit of your thoughts and your ability to communicate them.

"Unfortunately, they are not very pretty. There are legacy issues in how pretty they can be made because of how arcane the software is. But if you look at them for what they are — as vehicles for many to many communication — they are the best applications of many to many interaction.

"Facebook is not many to many. It is me and my friends and at any given time it’s me communicating with my friends or me participating in the communication of my friends. We are never all in it together because I may not have friends that overlap your group of friends.

"Forums are designed for a multiplicity of people to communicate with a multiplicity of people and they are done in an organized fashion with a taxonomy that makes sense.

"If you go to a standard forum you will find an index. There’ll be be a section that has an introduction for new members and a section to put your complaints. You’ll find the subject you are interested in is broken down into various sub-headings. It is very easy to find the information and, specifically, the conversation that you are looking to create or participate in.

"What forums allow you to do is the sum total of everything you can do on the internet.

"On a good forum you can read a review. You can have a member do a tutorial on how to jailbreak a phone or how to hack something. You can have your typical Q&A threads. You can post a question to the community. You can also share. There are very few places that have this aggregate of knowledge.

"Facebook allows you to share social linkages. You see pictures of your friend’s new born child and you get to congratulate them. Linkedin captures your work history; who you have worked with and the chronology of your work experience. Twitter allows you to broadcast to your followers.

"There is nowhere else [besides forums] on the internet where your passions, your hobbies and your knowledge base is sufficiently given credit for."

Apart from being a powerful advocate for forums Sanjay also runs Crowdgather as a business.

"We are focused on what is unique about forums. In the meantime we pursue an acquisition and advertising driven business strategy because in order to get to our dreams we need to have a day job. Get bigger, charge more for ads and give advertisers access to the constituents they are looking for.

"The software that we are developing seeks to expand on this folio and create a system that allows all forums to be interlinked so this history and this collective knowledge base can be better utilized and accessed by the masses that are now cutting their teeth of Twitter and Facebook.

"Forums are highly valued by search engines. You take any other form of social media; you take a blog, you take Facebook, you take Twitter, what is the policing mechanism on the links posted in those types of sites? It’s zero.

"On a forum if you showed up as a new member and in your first several posts there were links to a commercial product you would be ridiculed, insulted, banned and the link would be removed.

"Forums are the only class of site other than Wikipedia type sites that has a built-in peer review mechanism. Search engines have already looked at and identified this process as a very powerful form of curation of good answers. There is a framework of well-understood conduct that you must abide by."

Forums, with their roots in the pre-internet days of networked modems, are the largest repository of high value, user generated content on the internet. Despite their somewhat unfashionable status it is impossible to imagine a worthwhile or particularly useful internet existing without their presence.

Forums might never be cool enough to have movie like "The Social Network" made about them but with people like Sanjay as advocates there is a chance that they might receive a bit more love and respect than they do at present.

Social Media Activism: Scientists Take to the Streets

Tom Murphy — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:10:50 +0000

Courtesy of ShaneMcC

Where Twitter really works is when people are on the ground witnessing events and sending out real-time texts and pictures. On Twitter it requires the physical presence of observers to make the news come alive and have meaning. Twitter coverage which is no more than the retweeting of the already processed news stream lacks immediacy, scope and depth.

The coverage of the #scienceisvital march in London last week was an example of Twitter being used at its very best. Lots of accounts from real people at an ongoing event. It was fascinating to observe how so many people recounted so many different aspects of the same event even though at times they could have well been standing beside each other. There is nothing like that sort of coverage anywhere else in the media and it is something that makes Twitter truly unique.

The campaign and march was conceived and organised by Dr. Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist and editor of the online magazine LabLit.com which concerns itself with “the culture of science in fiction & fact.”

On the 8th of September, 2010, the UK Government Business Secretary Vince Cable gave a speech which revealed that there was a strategy to cut science funding.

Jennifer was not present when the speech was given but she heard about it from the buzz it was causing on Twitter. She says, “I got very angry and I dashed off a blog post in about five minutes, put that live. Then on Twitter I linked to my blog post and said, forget this let’s march on the streets.”

Original tweets - read from bottom up.

“There was loads of retweets and people were really excited about what I said. Within about an hour I had been contacted by Imran Khan who is the director for the Campaign for Science and Engineering. He said, “I’m with you. What can we do to help?” About another hour later I got contacted on Twitter by Evan Harris who is a former MP and science friendly politician. He said, “I’m willing to help.” And from that it completely spiraled out of control."

Five days later the first in-person meeting took place at the Prince Arthur pub in Euston, London. There was just a few weeks to put together a campaign and organise a march to make sure the voices of scientists and interested parties are heard before the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review on the 20th of October. That is when the announcement will be made as to exactly how much funding science in the UK will receive.

Jennifer describes how effective Social Media was in organizing the rally, “If it wasn’t for Twitter we would never have gotten almost 35,000 signatures on our petition. And that’s all down to, basically, famous people tweeting to their thousands of followers to sign the petition.

“People like Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain, We had a bit.ly link so everytime somebody famous retweeted we had a huge boost in people linking to our website and signing our petition. It was vital. I can’t imagine this would have ever happened without Twitter, well certainly not within three weeks or a month."

Roughly 2,000 people turned up on the day of the march to publicly voice their concerns about the Government cutbacks. But thanks to mobile phones and Twitter thousands of others who were unable to attend could follow the proceedings via the use of the #scienceisvital hashtag.

One of the virtues that nearly all the social networks have is the ability transmit information extremely rapidly but there are times when even the most worthy of messages needs a helping hand.

“We actually had to work behind the scenes to get these people to retweet us." Jennifer explains, "So one thing I would advise to those who want to change the world is sometimes you have to ring people up and say, “Listen, I’m going to tweet this at 5 o’clock can you be prepared to retweet it?

“You need a strategy. You can’t inundate your followers with Science is Vital 24/7. We were very careful to mix up the campaign stuff with fun stuff that had nothing to do with the campaign. We spread the load a bit. We had about twenty people who were strategically tweeting and we made sure they weren’t all doing it at once. We focused on events. OK, we’re at almost 10,000 signatures now let’s make a push. So we tried to do sort of news hooks...things that weren’t just over and over please support Science is Vital. You have to keep people’s interest going. So it’s important not to overload people with the same message.”

Despite all this effort the future for the UK Government's investment in science looks grim. There is a hope that the work that Science is Vital has done in getting a traditionally reserved community involved in acts of social activism by means of Social Media may alleviate some of the worst of the cuts.

The Science is Vital petition asking Government to recognize that science is vital and to not reduce science funding is due to be handed into Downing Street on Thursday, October 14th. But the campaign will go on and you can find a guideline for writing a letter of protest to your MP on the website.

You can also engage with the campaign by joining the Science is Vital Facebook group which has over 5,000 members at the time of writing.

Dr. Jennifer Rohn is also a novelist. Her next book The Honest Look is due out in November.

She also has a blog called Mind the Gap

Will Social Media Enable Humanity's Next Evolutionary Step?

Jennifer Dublino — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 06:28:00 +0000

The topic of evolution has sparked controversy since Charles Darwin proposed it in 1858. Even in the twenty-first century, some education boards are seeking to replace textbooks describing evolution with those positing Intelligent Design. But regardless of whether you believe in evolution by natural selection or not, most people believe that human beings exist in their final form, and that we are not subject to evolving or changing in a significant way. However, a number of thought leaders are challenging that idea, and social media may have a role in taking humanity to the next level.

The End of Humanity as We Know It

Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, is a noted computer scientist, inventor and futurist. According to Kurzweil, the singularity he predicts is “a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.” In Kurzweil’s vision, this change will take place through a merger between human and machine, exponentially boosting our intelligence through advanced computing power.

To a limited extent, this process has already started, through our widespread and increasing use of the Internet as a resource. Wikis, blogs and the explosion of educational and informational websites put nearly any piece of information within reach. As technology has moved into smaller and more portable devices such as smart phones, we now have the ability to access any fact at any time, from practically any location, and the trend is towards smaller and more powerful devices.

Although our use of the Internet may not seem like a paradigm shift, Kurzweil predicts that the process will start off slowly, almost imperceptibly, and will then accelerate exponentially. Vernor Vinge, a retired mathematician from San Diego State University, suggests that one way we can achieve superhuman intelligence is to “exploit the worldwide Internet as a combination human/machine tool.” He goes on to say, “Computer networks and human-computer interfaces seem more mundane than AI [artificial intelligence], and yet they could lead to the Singularity. I call this contrasting approach Intelligence Amplification (IA). IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is. But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.”

Tapping the Crowd

Another vision of humanity’s next evolutionary step is the emergence of a collective consciousness. More and more, social media is being thought of as enabling global consciousness because it allows us to harness and coordinate the collective intelligence and talent of large groups of people.

Social media enables “ordinary” people to collaborate and engage in commerce and information exchange in ways that were impossible to imagine a few short years ago. By tapping into the latent information, talent and intelligence of the masses, social media brings everyone up to a higher level of productivity and problem solving.

In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki notes that when a group of people works to solve a problem, the group’s answer is almost always significantly more accurate and intelligent than that of even the smartest members of the group. The process works when each individual proposes his or her solution, and then all answers are averaged, like in the stock market or a horse race. Interestingly, it is also the model used by social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon.

Surowiecki points out that this sort of group intelligence is what is emerging in the blogosphere, where thousands of bloggers, mostly amateur and unpaid, are replacing or at least augmenting, traditional media written by professional journalists. Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible, says that soliciting, encouraging and using user-generated content is one of the keys to a successful social media strategy, and this idea is transforming both entertainment and industry.

Writer Jeff Howe has a term for this: crowdsourcing. More and more, companies looking to solve thorny problems are turning not to scientists in their R & D departments, but to the general public. For example, a company called InnoCentive has an online platform where Fortune 100 companies post their problems and pay amateurs between $10,000 and $100,000 per solution. Other social media sites also use this model. Flickr, for example, is not only a network where people share their photos with friends, but also provides a platform for aspiring photographers to distribute their photos to companies for low or no cost. Crowdsourcing, by providing more value for a lower cost, increases overall productivity. Particularly successful individual contributors benefit economically, and companies may also benefit from even the less successful ideas generated by the crowd.

Facebook and Twitter are not collaboration platforms, but they do provide virtual watering holes where people can find and share interesting projects and information. As such, they work to enable viral spreading of memes, which depending on what meme is circulating around, may contribute to or detract from a higher collective consciousness.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, facilitates cooperation in its groups, which are more participatory than Facebook’s group/business pages. In LinkedIn, if a member of a group posts a business question such as “how can I market my website with a very small budget?” numerous members of the group with expertise in the subject will respond with long, well-thought out responses in order to prove that they are experts and possibly secure some business from the asker or other group members who appreciate the depth of the answer. The asker is then presented with a number of possible solutions and strategies and can choose from among them, all without spending a dime.

Master Mind Vs. Groupthink

While it is true that social media facilitates cooperation and collaboration, there are different ways that groups can operate. The most extreme are Master Mind and groupthink, and their outcomes are very different.

Back in 1928, Napoleon Hill coined the term “Master Mind” to describe a synergistic relationship between people where the intelligence of the group was more than the individual intelligence of its members, and thus the group was able to achieve things that the members could not, had they been acting alone. In order to get to this Master Mind level, the members of the group had to share a common goal, and all members had to “willingly subordinate their own personal interests for the attainment of the objective for which the group is aiming.” When the people in the group have unity among them, Hill says, their minds blend and become more creative and intuitive in regard to their purpose. He credits this kind of cooperation with the success of some of the giants of his day, such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison.

The flip side of the Master Mind is a phenomenon called “groupthink.” First named and discussed in 1972 by social psychologist Irving Janis, groupthink is when a group makes bad, and even immoral decisions because of group pressures. In groupthink, a strong leader and a majority of members hold the same preconceived opinion, suppress any dissention from the majority view and refuse to consider facts that support a different decision. Groupthink tends to lead to irrational and ill-conceived decisions and produces outcomes with a low probability of success.

So the next time you are using social media to collaborate or crowdsource, remember to be yourself and participate as an individual, but with a sense of shared purpose with other group members. If you do, you may just be doing your part to bring the human race to its next evolutionary level.

Jennifer Dublino began writing in 1995. She writes two blogs: one on social media marketing (Buzzoomba at http://procreativemarketing.wordpress.com) and one on parenting (I'll Take Five at http://www.illtakefive.blogspot.com). She also runs a marketing firm, Pro Creative Marketing Group (http://www.procreative.com) that provides ghost blogging services to corporate and professional clients.

SMXQ - Susan Cloonan

John Breslin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:33:16 +0000

Susan Cloonan lives in Clonmel, South Tipperary and attends the Tipperary Institute to study for a degree in Creative Multimedia. She does part-time volunteer work with the Civil Defence and is a Reserve Garda. She is interested in animal welfare and has recently started hosting her own show with Tipperary Hospital Radio.

Susan is a long-time active user of various social media tools. We are hoping that she can find space in her hectic schedule to be able to write the occasional article for socialmedia.net.

We recommend you check her account of her visit to the Listowell Writer's Festival. She can be found on twitter, @queenofpots

1. Could you tell us about your background (where you're from, what you've done)?

I spent ten years working as a stock controller for an independent stock accounting company. After a brief stint as a funds administrator, I worked in accounts and shop management for two years, before moving into an administrational role in a Commercial Equipment Test House. (I’ve also worked in insurance sales, in a fast food restaurant, as a travel agent, and as a movie extra.)

2. What was your route into social media?

I’ve always been amazed by the fact that I can link to real people by switching on my computer. I went from IRC many moons ago to online forums, then blogging, before setting up a Facebook page. It was Berniard Goldbach who put me onto many of the social networking sites I use today.

3. Tell us a little bit (if you can) about what you're interested in or working on right now.

I’m about to enter into my second year of a four year degree course in Creative Multimedia with Tipperary Institute. My interests lie in audio/video and writing. I’m also currently working on a website aimed at getting people to recycle more, itsinmyway.com.

4. What social media services do you use regularly and why?

I use Twitter a lot! It’s not only a great tool for meeting people with similar interests, but also a way of getting news without having to search through the internet for it.

5. If you could only keep one service or tool, what would it be, and why have you chosen it?

At the risk of sounding like a complete addict – Twitter! The hashtags facility makes it so easy to find content and to ‘chat’ to people on a topic of interest.

6. Including your own area of expertise, what developments in social media do you think are particularly important?

I’ve a keen interest in travel so I’m currently looking at Layar, an augmented reality browser and how it’s being developed. It works by using your phone’s inbuilt camera and GPS. You point your camera at the street you’re in, for example, and, depending on the layers you have selected, you can display restaurants, camping sites, other Twitter users, etc. I’m also a Foursquare convert and have found it very helpful when I’m in a strange city.

7. What can you do now that you couldn't do before the arrival of social media?

I’ve been able to reconnect with friends from the past and stay in touch with them. I’ve also met up with some new people simply by Tweeting where I’m going to be. If I post on Facebook or Twitter looking for advice on something, I’ll usually receive a few replies fairly quickly.

8. What issues, either technical or social, do you see with social media?

On a social level there’s always the danger of putting too much information out there and having someone take great exception to something. On a technical level, I think we need to be aware where the content we’re posting is going to.

One example would be the Getglue application. I was unaware that by installing this application, everything I surfed on Wikipedia would display in my stream on the Getglue website.

Also, Tweets don’t just get shown on the Twitter website. As well as showing up in search engines, tweets are aggregated by sites like Tweetree, Twitoaster, Twaitter, Amplicate etc., to name just a small few. It can be a little alarming to see one tweet show up ten times on different sites.

9. What one piece of advice would you give to someone entering the social media world?

Be careful what you put online. It could come back to haunt you.

10. How do you see social media helping and improving things for us in the future?

There’s a much greater access to information and to personal experiences/opinions which make for increased awareness and better decision making.

Twitter Grows Up: The Start of a New, More Mature Era

John Conroy — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:56:03 +0000

Number of Twitter posts per day, and projected growth.

It seems that Twitter has grown up. From work undertaken to determine the growth rate of Twitter at the Discipline of Information of Technology which is part of the National University of Ireland, Galway, it appears that Twitter is now growing at a constant rate. It’s growth is no longer dramatically and somewhat erratically determined by early adopters and the subsequent wave of trend followers.

This constant rate of growth reflects Twitter's now established role as a social tool and people are joining this online social network when and as they find it useful.

From December 2009 until June 2010 myself and Josephine Griffith ran an experiment to track the growth of Twitter. To measure the rate of growth of this online social network we used two key metrics: The number of Twitter users and the number of tweets posted.

To track the users we ran a script written in python that accessed the Twitter API. We ran this script once a week over the duration of the experiment to collect the highest user ID (this is the number twitter uses to identify your account as an alternate to the name you chose for it.) count on the public timeline over the course of an hour. To track the growth posts (tweets) we created a script to find the highest post ID (each tweet also has its own numerical identity) count on the public timeline over approximately fifteen minutes. We ran this script at the same time each day.

We found, through watching the stream of post IDs on the public timeline, that new post IDs tend to increment by one. Before April 2010, the public timeline showed 20 of the most recent tweets published on Twitter, with post IDs incremented by 1. Allowing for account deletions and other known factors we could use these number counts to guage both the size of the traffic flow and the absolute size of twitter itself.

From the graph at the top of the page it can be seen that we can reasonably predict that Twitter is likely to start regularly exceeding a hundred million tweets a day sometime in the autumn.

Post numbers grew over the period at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 510%. The number of daily posts more than doubled, from 33,898,378 on December 3rd to 67,981,000 by 16th June. Our findings are largely consistent with reports from February 2010, which claimed Twitter was processing 50 million tweets per day.

In April 2010, Twitter announced that the service had 105,779,710 registered users, and was signing up 300,000 new users per day (2.1 million per week).

The week before this announcement, our data showed a highest user ID of 127,701,101 and a weekly increase in user ID of 2,183,211. Our data on user growth over the period seems to accurately reflect the truth; user ID does correspond closely to the number of users. We can use it with confidence to discern the growth in new users signing up to the service.

Comparing our figure for that time of 127 million user IDs and Twitter’s figure of 105 million users, we suspect that the disparity between the two figures is down to accounts suspended for spamming, and users who have deleted their account.

Total Twitter users by date.

The chart above shows the highest Twitter User ID counted for each week over the period. The line of data in the graph suggests that Twitter assigns new users with IDs in a sequential fashion. CAGR for Twitter user ID growth was found to be 155.36% over the period. On December 2nd, 2009, the highest encountered user ID was 94,130,941, rising to 153,268,741 by June 7th, 2010.

Tracking the post ID of new Twitter posts, and the user ID of users, is an effective way to track Twitter growth. The service enjoyed significant growth over the period both in new users and in the amount of activity in the community. The number of Twitter users is growing at a CAGR of 153 % to June, 2009. User involvement is growing much more quickly at a CAGR of 510%.

The correlation between the growth in new users and the far larger growth in growth in user activity suggests ongoing challenges for the scaling of the service. This has enormous financial implications for the engineering and architectural aspects of Twitter. But with a steady growth rate it will be much easier for them to make realistic plans for the future.

How very grown up of them.

Soundscape of Ireland - Audioboo, a Social Media Tool

Bernard Goldbach — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:25:58 +0000

Audioboo is a web and mobile application that enables you to record and publish audio segments directly to the web and straight into other social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook if you have enabled the connections.

In this debrief one our correspondents, Bernard Goldbach, shares his enthusiasm and his experiences with the application as an educational and Social Media tool.

You may want to listen to this compilation that he and Peter Donegan put together to get an idea of the breadth and depth of what is possible with the audiboo format. It is also a rather lovely soundscape of Ireland in 2010.

click image for "Irish Boosters"
(background via Google Earth)

So how did you get started?

I followed the lead of Neville Hobson, a presenter of For Immediate Release, a weekly podcast for social media in a public relations context. He was doing a few of these. I could subscribe to them and they would just drop into my ipod. In my day job teaching third level students at the Tipperary Institute it’s important to challenge student’s observational skills. While it’s very difficult to get the newer students to write five to eight hundred words about a particular subject it is not difficult at all to get them to sit down and talk about it. Particularly if they described what they saw as if they were telling a friend. We knew right away audioboos could have a direct application to our work and they do.

I expect to see some really enthusiastic students leading the charge about six months from now with boos of their cooking group and friends of the Medieval Society and things like that.

The ability to tap and talk is the way it is. You launch the app, you touch the screen, you are recording, start talking, tap the screen to stop, tap again to put a title or add a picture and tap again to send it up. It’s so simple. A conversation with podcasters just a year ago would have revolved around mixer boards, cables, bit rates. production values, hosting requirements, monetizing - all that. Now the conversation is about the creative process, what to say, how to script, how to theme a series of audio boos.

Audioboos have removed the entire technical challenge of posting audio remotely.

It’s simple to do, you publish right to the server and you share right away. An entire community is starting to unfold organically.

Who is it for?

Audioboo is for people who like to converse. Twitter is for people who like to confine themselves to a short-form of communication where things are frequently superficial.

The key thing is that it is self organizing which is always the best thing. You have professionals who use it, hobbyists, people who speak Irish as a native language, school leavers, college students, about 20 or 30 people in all who regularly provide one snippet a week from Ireland.

There’s a real Irish conversation involved. You can actually map it out; there’s Peter feeding his hens at 7am, his mum talking about the washing at nine o’clock and someone from the bus at ten and someone else is working in their office and talking about their conference call that happened at noon.

Some people are just doing pure audio. One guy went to a supermarket and just stood by the cash till and recorded the ambient noise

People want to know that they are listening to a real person. When you say something you are bringing someone into your circle. It feels like you personally talking to them as opposed to writing it on a piece of paper and you know that ten thousand people have read that same column.

There’s a more personal twist to it. You have to take an active step as well to give time to listen to conversation. People have shoveled out parts of their life to listen to what you’re saying. This investment leads to more engagement than just words on a paper.

What happens next?

In September Audioboo.fm will have it’s own digital radio channel. That means you will be able to listen to an assemblage of boos in your home or care wherever you have a DAB, radio. The internet is going mainstream.

Facebook - Why Your Business Should Have a Presence

Ina O Murchu — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:57:19 +0000

Facebook is the largest personal social network in the world. So why should any company bother doing any business networking elsewhere?

1. The Stats speak for themselves.

It is always a good thing to go do business where people are. Facebook has now passed the 500 million user milestone. If this growth keeps continuing soon Facebook will become the world’s first truly global social network. As a business you need to be there. Facebook is essentially becoming the new Web.

2. Establishing your brand on Facebook helps to humanize your brand – where is the Love?

Using Facebook people get to see what sits behind the brand. You need to be a part of the Facebook community. If you are considering developing your presence on Facebook it is where plenty of your future prospective customers are to be found. There is plenty of need for corporate and professional sites but with Facebook Pages this is changing fast but this will no doubt shift in the coming years as web traffic and individuals spend more and more of their time on Facebook. So it pays to build your community on Facebook. This in turn can drive your fans towards your company’s website.

Ignore this at your peril. There is a shift online and as a business you need to pay attention.

3. Trust and the “Social Glue”

Online community is a term you keep hearing over and over again. Facebook is a social connectivity tool and this is how people really like to interact and connect with one another. Many people use Facebook email to send mails to their friends now without bothering to even log in to their own personal email account. You can share, share, share with Facebook and this is what human beings enjoy doing. Online community is the best place to engage with people in an online space and it therefore makes complete sense to build a presence in Facebook to tap into your community online.

Research over and over again points to the importance of word-of-mouth and peer-generated content which comes from a community of practice or interest online. In creating your brand on Facebook you are giving your online fans the chance to Like your brand. Messages and special offers to the people who Like you on Facebook can be targeted specifically to those people who are interested in your product or brand. This is a great way to build up loyalty with your customers and offering special offers.We are also living in an attention economy and all the attention is currently being focused on Facebook.

Your brand needs to make decisions to shift time, money, effort and resources into creating an online presence and figure out the right way that builds relationships and drives traffic back to your website. It is not a wise tactic to dismiss the notion of online community for your business. According a recent Fast company article Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains. And that should be a wake-up call for every company.

4. Social networks like Facebook are driving traffic online.

We are at the cusp of a major shift in the direction of diverted Web traffic this change in direction of Web traffic has only come about with social networks being created in the last few years – Facebook in particular. BF (before Facebook) it was MySpace and orkut. Social Networks like Facebook are beginning to challenge Google in the traffic stakes. Facebook is becoming the web’s top source of traffic. The speed at which this change is happening is lightening fast and this may explain why many corporate brands are slow to adapt to the change and the pace of change as it happens.

5. Customer Service

You can use Facebook to manage your online reputation, engage customer awareness by engaging with your customers in Facebook and targeting customers with specific messages and Facebook promotions. It can be used to advertise with targeted advertising.

6. Social networks like Facebook are disruptive.

Facebook is currently disrupting advertising, media, one-to-one and one-to-many communications, and online search. Search is changing and becoming much more social. People buy things online based on their friends recommendations. Search Vs Recommendation is sure to be a battle ground between the the two main Web players of Google and Facebook. Recommendation is a smarter type of search. Facebook has a lot of data on people and is steadily building up a rich picture of who people are, what their interests are and what they like. People trust their friends just ask Dr Love.

Ina O'Murchu is a Consultant at Social Bits

SMXQ - Joe Garde

John Breslin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:50:41 +0000

Since the mid-nineties, alongside his corporate career, Joe has been engaged in various entrepreneurial activities. He is a founder of onlinemeetingrooms.com. A leading web conferencing platform in Ireland. More recently he started Irish Debate. A site where ideas and opinions are discussed exchanged via the latest video conferencing technology. He can be reached on twitter, @joegarde.

1. Could you tell us about your background (where you're from, what you've done)?

I started my first business at the age of 26 with a Windows 3.1 box and a mobile phone back in 1994. I realised then how the internet, email and mobile technologies could empower an individual or SME. I was able to take on much larger firms in Ireland and source product without the need to travel. It was while supplying all the blue chip companies in Ireland at the time that I became aware that Ireland's manufacturing base was dwindling.

In 1998 I decided to delve into Corporate America by joining the Dell team in Bray. After Dell, I joined Storage Online and trained in remote and corporate storage and backup solutions. I then moved into the software development area for mobile devices.

While at Jeecom, which was chaired by Dr. Ed Sun (Caltech), I soon learned with the early development of XML how mobile devices would connect with the web. After the bust in 2000 / 2001 I was involved in a startup for payment systems through mobile devices with Anam through SMS based payment gateways.

During this stage I met with my partner Niels Garde based out of Copenhagen. Niels and I had been trying to buy the Garde.com domain name. We decided to start collaborating together and hence the start of onlinemeetingrooms.com in 2003.

2. What was your route into social media?

Credit is due to Bernard Goldbach of the Tipperary Institute. Through onlinemeetingrooms.com I was now meeting people from all over the world without the need to travel. I could see then, that the future in terms of reduced business cost's and increased bandwidth was upon us. The need for instant multipoint meetings through video would be a business model that should survive boom and bust economics and also prove to be a valuable method of communication for any and all businesses.

3. Tell us a little bit (if you can) about what you're interested in or working on right now.

I have always been interested in meeting people and sharing knowledge. Right now I am working on Irish Debate where we gather those with an opinion or experience in their own field to share, discuss and debate what it is Ireland needs to do to rebuild and change. I am also working on a number of other development ideas for the mobile space. I also run www.freefi.ie rolling out wifi hotspots for businesses in the retail sector.

4. What social media services do you use regularly and why?

I use Twitter throughout the day and Facebook for those that don't understand Twitter or don't have time to use Twitter.

5. If you could only keep one service or tool, what would it be, and why have you chosen it?

Twitter, as a tool for community building and a service for learning about new technologies from the collective intelligence that is, Twitter.

6. Including your own area of expertise, what developments in social media do you think are particularly important?

Finding like-minded people. In many cases early adopters and tech savvy people.

7. What can you do now that you couldn't do before the arrival of social media?

Connect with hundreds of people in seconds.

8. What issues, either technical or social, do you see with social media?

Social media has a nasty habit of mirroring the "school yard" I have witnessed bullying on twitter and this I find very distasteful.

9. What one piece of advice would you give to someone entering the social media world?

Find like-minded people. Observe and then join the conversation.

10. How do you see social media helping and improving things for us in the future?

Collective intelligence and opinion is without a doubt becoming the most important factor for me. I am now able to connect with people I would never find in my own social circles. We can all help each other through social media and therefore the greater good should benefit.

SMXQ: Mark Cahill

Tom Murphy — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:43:19 +0000

Over the last 13 years, Mark has worked with major corporations such as Dell, Airtricity, Trinity Biotech and Johnson & Johnson. Mark is one of the founding organisers and speakers at Bizcamp Limerick. He is also a member of Engineers Ireland (IEI), the Irish Internet Association (IIA) and the MBA Association of Ireland (MBAAI). Mark is also a guest lecturer in the University of Limerick, Ireland, in entrepreneurship and marketing, with a focus on social networks and social media. Mark is also a co-founder of Social Bits, an Ireland-based consultancy firm specialising in the application of social media and Semantic Web technologies. You can follow him on Twitter at @markcahill.

1. Could you tell us about your background (where you're from, what you've done)?

My background is in engineering and information technology. I have a BEng in Computer Engineering, and I have always had an interest in anything computer related. I worked with Dell for over 11 years before leaving to work for myself. Before leaving Dell, I commenced my Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) which I completed in 2008.

2. What was your route into social media?

As part of my MBA, my thesis was titled “To what extent have online social networks changed business to consumer marketing”, so it looked at how the marketing landscape has been disrupted by online social networks. I had already started to use Twitter in January 2008 and I was fascinated with how you could communicate with so many “like-minded” people.

3. Tell us a little bit (if you can) about what you're interested in or working on right now.

Late last year we started Social Bits, which is going from strength to strength, and I also lecture to university undergraduate and postgraduate marketing students, as well as MBA students in the field of marketing via online social networks.

4. What social media services do you use regularly and why?

Twitter is probably my top one. The reason I use it is to stay informed. The real-time nature of Twitter is incredible, when something happens you usually hear about it on Twitter first. If there is an event worth going to you hear about it on Twitter. If there is an event you can’t make it to you can usually “listen” to the live tweets to get an idea of what is important.

5. If you could only keep one service or tool, what would it be, and why have you chosen it?

Twitter again, but this is cheating, because Twitter is linked to so many other services such as Plancast. It is hard to separate Twitter (or most other social media tools for that matter) as they are all interrelated to some extent.

6. Including your own area of expertise, what developments in social media do you think are particularly important?

I think the development of location-based social networks are very important. Location-based social networks enable brick and mortar businesses to build customer loyalty in a new and exciting way. It is also a good way for someone who is a stranger to a town or city to locate what they need to find, whether it is just a coffee or some type of service. I can also see the relevance of layering the Semantic Web on top of, or integrating it with online social networks, as context gives more accurate information: this is good news for marketers and good news for customers.

7. What can you do now that you couldn't do before the arrival of social media?

Talk to lots of like-minded people.

8. What issues, either technical or social, do you see with social media?

Privacy it the big one. Because you are not paying for the use of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter to name a few, you don't have real control over what is put out there. The best rule is, if you don’t want anyone to know, then don’t put it out there.

9. What one piece of advice would you give to someone entering the social media world?

Learn about the social media tools, and start to listen, observe and lurk, once you feel comfortable with the conversations, then jump in and participate. Like learning a new language, the best way is to immerse yourself in the language and the culture, therefore you need to immerse yourself in the language and culture of “social media”.

10. How do you see social media helping and improving things for us in the future?

More transparency.
More accurate advertising.
Better internal communication within businesses, and better communication between businesses and their customers.
Better communication between people.

Thought Leaders From Facebook, Google, Automattic, Diaspora* Gather In Portland For Federated Social Web Summit

John Breslin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 09:08:28 +0000

Thought leaders from a variety of social web companies and organisations will converge on Portland, Oregon this Sunday to discuss the "federated social web": an extension to the current social web, built upon various open web protocols, that will allow social websites to interoperate and better communicate with each other in a decentralised, distributed manner. (More details at the Federated Social Web Summit page.)

People attending the Federated Social Web Summit.

This is the first time that so many of the big players in this area will be in the same room together - Facebook, studiVZ, Google, Automattic, Diaspora*, Vodafone - to name but a few. I'll also be there representing the SIOC project initiated at DERI, NUI Galway. The event is being organised by status.net Inc., the company whose software powers Identica and many other microblogging services.

Organisations represented at the Federated Social Web Summit.

I thought it would be interesting to detail some of the organisations (orange), projects (yellow) and people (green) involved that will be attending the summit, so as to get an insight into stakeholders in this federated social web. When drafting this list, I was amazed at how closely related some of these projects are and how very similar ideas are evolving in parallel, and realised how great it will be to have all these people in the same room together.

Projects represented at the Federated Social Web Summit.

StatusNet

StatusNet are the creators of an open-source microblogging platform that powers Identica amongst other microblogging websites.

OStatus

OStatus is an open standard for distributed status updates that allows different messaging hubs to route status updates between users in near real time.

Evan Prodromou is the founder and CEO of StatusNet Inc., and has been developing open-source software for over 10 years.

Jon Phillips is a developer for StatusNet, creator of Fabricatorz, and long-time open-source and free-culture advocate.

Brion Vibber is senior architect at StatusNet, and was previously lead developer for MediaWiki, the software that powers the Wikipedia.

Zach Copley is a senior software developer at StatusNet, and is also manages developer relations for the company.

James Walker works at StatusNet as a software services architect, and is a long-time Drupal developer.

Automattic

Automattic is the blog software company behind WordPress.com, BuddyPress, Gravatar, PollDaddy and more.

Beau Lebens works with Automattic Inc., and previously created FeedBlendr feed remixer and the MyBabyOurBaby online scrapbook.

FooCorp

FooCorp is the company behind Libre.fm, a music sharing service for freely-licensed material, and daisychain, a spatial social network.

GNU Social

GNU Social is a decentralised free software social networking system, written in PHP.

Matt Lee is the founder of FooCorp, creators of the Libre.fm music sharing service, and developer of GNU Social.

Rob Myers is communications officer with FooCorp, a member of the GNU Social team, and chief voluntary webmaster for the gnu.org.

Google

Google is a multinational Internet search and advertising technologies corporation.

Chris Messina works as open web advocate with Google, and is known for co-creating BarCamp and the Spread Firefox campaign.

Joseph Smarr is a social web engineer with Google, former CTO of Plaxo, and co-author of the "Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web".

Brett Slatkin is a software engineer on the Google App Engine team and is co-creator of the PubSubHubbub protocol.

Diaspora*

Diaspora* is a forthcoming open-source personal web system intended to be part of a distributed, decentralised social networking architecture.

Daniel Grippi is a computer science student at New York University and a member of the Diaspora* project team.

Maxwell Salzberg is a student at New York University and a member of the Diaspora* project team.

Raphael Sofaer is a student at New York University and a member of the Diaspora* project team.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy is a maths student at New York University and a member of the Diaspora* project team.

Noserub

Noserub is a decentralised social network that allows users to own their own data and that can act as a profile aggregation service.

No representative available.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! is a computer software and web search engine company founded in 1995.

No representative available.

DiSo

DiSo is a initiative to build a distributed social network architecture using microformats, OpenID, OAuth and other building blocks.

Steve Ivy, Chris Messina and Tantek Çelik are also members of this project.

Elgg

Elgg is an open-source social networking engine that was initially aimed at educational and learning groups, but has now entered general use.

No representative available.

Appleseed

Appleseed is an effort to create open-source social networking software that is based on a distributed model.

Michael Chisari is an open-source developer and has been lead developer for the Appleseed project since 2004.

Crabgrass

Crabgrass is a free web application designed for social networking, group collaboration and network organising.

Elijah Saxon is a member of the Riseup Collective and is co-manager of the Crabgrass project.

AROUNDme

AROUNDme from Barnraiser is an open-source collaboration server system for creating collaborative social spaces on the Web.

No representative available.

Webfinger

Webfinger is a protocol for sharing information about people and discovering things about friends, without having to remember various URLs.

Blaine Cook is a member of Osmosoft, co-creator of Webfinger, and former lead developer with Twitter.

Vodafone

Vodafone is a multinational telecommunications operator that provides both landline and mobile services.

OneSocialWeb

OneSocialWeb is a free and open decentralised social networking platform, based on XMPP, and developed by the Vodafone R&D group.

Daniel Appelquist works with Vodafone R&D, is co-chair of the W3C Social Web Incubator Group, and is a member of the W3C TAG.

Dreamwidth Studios

Dreamwidth Studios is an open-source social networking, content management and personal publishing platform that was forked from LiveJournal.

Mark Smith is co-founder and chief technologist with Dreamwidth Studios, and previously worked as a developer with LiveJournal and Six Apart.

Facebook

Facebook is the world's largest social networking site with over 400 million active users.

Open Graph Protocol

Open Graph Protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in the Facebook social graph.

Dave Recordon works at Facebook, where he developed the Open Graph Protocol, and he previously co-developed OpenID and worked with Six Apart.

FOAF

FOAF, or Friend of a Friend, is a Semantic Web vocabulary for describing people's profiles and their social connections.

No representative available.

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets.

No representative available.

OpenMicroBlogger

OpenMicroBlogger is an implementation of the OpenMicroBlogging.org specification for site-to-site microblogging.

Brian Hendrickson is the creator of OpenMicroBlogger, the Structal PHP framework, and runs the Megapump consultancy company.

XMPP

XMPP is a standards foundation that supports the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol for presence, messaging, and real-time collaboration and communications.

No representative available.

Six Apart

Six Apart is the creator of the Movable Type blog system, the TypePad blog hosting service, Vox, and is the former owner of LiveJournal.

Martin Atkins is a software engineer at Six Apart, and is co-author of the ActivityStrea.ms specification.

Steve Ivy is a web developer and standards advocate with Six Apart, and co-founded the DiSo project.

ActivityStrea.ms

ActivityStrea.ms is a format for syndicating social activities around the Web.

Martin Atkins, Dave Recordon and Chris Messina are also members of this project.

Cliqset

Cliqset is a stream-reading tool that amalgamates content from multiple social websites.

Darren Bounds is CEO and co-founder of Cliqset, and is an open web advocate.

BuddyCloud

BuddyCloud is a social location service with a variety of open-source clients for bookmarking places automatically once they've been visited previously.

Tuomas Koski is a developer with the BuddyCloud project and is a member of the XMPP standards foundation.

Simon Tennant is founder and CEO of BuddyCloud, and has interests in mobile location sharing and reputation systems in social applications.

Social Jargon

Social Jargon is an initiative that will enable people to be casually precise in a world where we want to write less but mean more.

Ward Cunningham is CTO with AboutUs, devised the first wiki, and is a pioneer in design patterns and extreme programming.

Superfeedr

Superfeedr provides real-time feed parsing in the cloud for web developers.

No representative available.

Mozilla

Mozilla is an open-source project providing web browsers, e-mail clients, chat systems and more.

Dan Mills is a member of the Mozilla project and was lead engineer of Weave, now Firefox Sync.

Paul Osman is a senior web developer with the Mozilla foundation and is an open web advocate.

Austin King is a web developer with Mozilla, and has worked with Amazon.com and RealNetworks.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a publishing platform that allows sharing of posts, multimedia, etc., and enables the reblogging of interesting items.

No representative available.

Posterous

Posterous is a blogging platform that allows sites to be created by simply e-mailing content items to a single address.

No representative available.

Falcon

Falcon is a personal publishing, syndicating, tweeting and updating web application, with an algorithmically reversible personal URL shortener called Whistle.

Tantek Çelik is a key advocate of microformats, was chief technologist with Technorati, and has edited many CSS specifications.

Personal Data Store

Personal Data Store is a set of software components which provides a personal data store and modular personal applications.

Joseph Boyle works on the Personal Data Store project and co-organised the recent Big Data Workshop.

Kaliya Hamlin works on open standards for user-centric identity, and co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop series.

SMOB

SMOB is a Semantic Web application for semantic microblogging, that combines a distributed hub-based architecture with a tag-to-concept mapping assistant.

John Breslin is a member of this project.

NUI Galway

NUI Galway is a university in Ireland that is home to DERI, the world's largest Semantic Web research institute.

SIOC

SIOC is a framework for interlinking online community sites using Semantic Web technologies, by defining structures common to most social websites.

John Breslin is a lecturer at NUI Galway, researching SIOC and the Social Semantic Web, and is co-founder of the boards.ie forum community site.

Chi.mp

Chi.mp is a free domain and website service for storing your content and managing your personal identity.

No representative available.

Geoloqi

Geoloqi is an open-source website and mobile application for securely sharing location data with GPS and SMS.

Aaron Parecki is the co-founder of Geoloqi, and is also CIO at quicksilverleads.com, a real-estate solutions website.

Don Park is a developer with Geoloqi, and has written a variety of social networking utilities for FOAF and XFN.

Naver

Naver is Korea's main search portal, operated by NHN Corporation.

Soon-Son Kwon is a general manager at NHN, and founder of KDLP, Korea's main open source community.

Echo

Echo allows publishers to quickly embed real-time streams of Digg bookmarks, Facebook updates, tweets, comments and more.

No representative available.

versionvega

versionvega is a peer-to-peer general purpose network for applications far beyond file sharing.

Markus Sabadello is the creator of @versionvega, and has interests in identity, privacy and peer-to-peer networks.

Lorea

Lorea is a project to create secure social cybernetic systems, in which human networks will be simultaneously represented in a virtual shared world.

No representative available.

Microsoft

Microsoft is a multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a variety of computing products and services.

Rob Dolin is a program manager for Windows Live at Microsoft, and owner of Wuxx Events, a calendar of local Seattle events.

studiVZ

studiVZ is a German social networking platform for students, in particular for college and university students in Europe.

Sebastian Galonska is a senior platform developer with studiVZ, and developer advocate with VZnet Netzwerke.

Rapportive

Rapportive is a browser extension that replaces ads in Gmail with photos, biographic data and social media links, for whoever you're corresponding with.

No representative available.

Social Hive

Social Hives are the creators of the Hivemaps and Community ID projects for supporting NGOs and green initiatives.

Joe Johnston is the founder of Social Hive and has interests in the democratisation of information and the greater movement of social evolution through technology.

Janrain

Janrain provides a user management platform for the social web, allowing users to navigate through multiple web properties using their signon mechanism of choice.

Ivan Pulleyn is a software engineer with Janrain, and previously worked at a variety of companies including Alexa and Desktop.com.

Cordance

Cordance is a developer and provider of digital addressing technology, enabling a layer of trusted identity and data sharing services.

Drummond Reed is co-founder and director of Cordance, a founding board member of OpenID, and co-chairs the XRI and XDI technical committees for OASIS.

Clearspring

Clearspring is a provider of social distribution services connecting online publishers and advertisers to audiences on the social web.

No representative available.

AddThis

AddThis is a popular bookmarking and sharing widget used on over a million websites.

No representative available.

Corporations Must Embrace The Principles Of The Social Media Revolution To Evolve And Survive

Tom Murphy — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:24:15 +0000

Image via Best Design Options by Vector Portal.

We don’t build the tools first. We build with what we have, and out of that which is constructed, new tools become possible. The technologies enabled by the industrial revolution led to the creation of the technological age, which in turn led on to the information revolution, which segued into the digital age. We now have the social media revolution. Like the preceding ages and revolutions, social media is going to affect every aspect, if it is not already, of our lives - including the way we do business.

Corporations are instruments of commerce. For the times when they came to the fore, they were necessary entities which were needed to source, manufacture and distribute goods and commodities, and they did it very effectively. I say "for the times" because as the times will change, so will corporations. The will have to - if they want to survive.

Although existing as legal entities from the late 19th century, they came to the fore in the post-WW2 boom. This was because of the immense cadre of (pretty much all) men who came back from the war. Before the war, the US had a standing army of less than 140,000 personnel which expanded dramatically at the outbreak of hostilities. The educated new recruits were given the task as officers and NCOs to manage this huge expansion which took place in the framework of the ultimate command-and-control environment - the military.

Peace came and suddenly American big business was blessed with tens and tens of thousands of highly trained men extremely well versed in the system of top-down management. Their talents and skills were immediately put to work, and because of who they were, the circumstances of their learning and the lessons they derived, the modern corporation came into being. It worked well in contrast to what was before and it worked well for fifty or sixty odd years.

Since most of us have grown up in a world of corporations, we tend to think of the corporate entity as a permanent fixture in our lives. In fact, it is a very recent addition to the field of human activity and there is no reason at all to assume that it will last another fifty years. And it won't, because with the advent of social media, everything is going to change and is in fact already doing so. Consider the following principles - transparency, trust and engagement - these are the three foundations of the social media world.

Transparency: Companies can no longer close their glass doors on the world. Even without access to privileged information, one can have a very good sense of what a company is about just from its online presence - but just as importantly, from the online presence of its customers and those with a passing interest.
Trust: One of the major features of a command-and-control mentality is that communication flows in only one constricted way - downwards through channels. Any variance from this narrow path brings up permission issues: who can talk to who about what. It may have worked from a structural point of view, but the cost in alienation, isolation and disempowerment of the individuals in the ‘chain’ doesn’t compensate for the gains anymore. The ensuing culture of micro-management is the exact opposite of trust creation.
Engagement: The great joy of social media is the immense ability it gives you to engage with people and groups as you please to whatever level you please. Again a corporation with one monolithic image or brand with which it portrays itself to the world is automatically demanding that a person should subsume their own ideas and thoughts to the company message. With such an inauthentic starting point it is going to be impossible for people to make genuine connections with other people.

A young person growing up now in a social media environment and who knows nothing else is going to take one look at the corporate world and genuinely wonder: “Is this for me?” A very accurate observation they will be entitled to make is: “I can’t be open, because I am not trusted to engage with people as I see fit.” Corporations are not going to get the best talent from the next generation because - as they stand at the moment with an opaque, paranoid, control freak style of human transaction - they are clearly a very unappealing proposition.

If corporations want to survive they will have to change nearly everything about the way they deal with the people who work for them and because it will be a social media world that we are coming into - everybody else too. They will have to trust their employees more to make all sorts of decisions. If a person on one team is needed on another team and he or she okays it with the folks in their present team, then what is to stop them from walking down the corridor to be where they are most needed. This doesn’t happen now, but imagine the savings in energy and time by foregoing all the meetings and paperwork and politicking just to make this one decision which goes on now. We all know it does. That’s just one example.

The irony is that if corporations do choose survival, they will survive as something entirely different from what they are today.

Stuff We Use That Isn't Designed For Social Media: The Peri-Personal Space

Tom Murphy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:33:00 +0000

Research by Marco Iacoboni, Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in UCLA (and written up in his book Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others) suggests that the tools we use such as forks and knives are not just implements that we merely just manipulate in some objectified manner. His research suggests that tools are mapped by our brains in such a way that they become extensions of ourselves.

Not only do we use knives and forks to move and cut our food, we also use them to assess the quality and texture of our food as well. Every tool or implement that we learn to use with some degree of mastery eventually becomes an extension of ourselves. This happens because the brain does not stop mapping our body at the outer layer of the skin. It also maps the immediate environment beyond. This idea has some amazing implications for the way that we interact with the world.

Through enculturation we have the habit of thinking of ourselves as in here and everything else as out there. Professor Iacoboni's research is showing that this concept may be wrong. It seems our brains handle the world in a 'hereness' (my term) space that is proximal to our bodies. He refers to this relationship between us and the world as a "being-amidst" space. All of our interactions with the world, although processed in the brain, are represented to us in this space. It is a space where our feelings live alongside our thoughts and emotions. All of them are moving around and interacting with each taking precedence in our attention from time to time.

It is kind of wild but it's really not that long ago that we all believed the Sun orbited the Earth. This area of awareness and influence is called the peri-personal space, and this research could have some very definite implications for our daily lives, particularly in the design of the tools that we use.

The social part of social media is very human and natural to us, but the media in the form of the tools it uses, primarily the computer terminal and mobile phone, is pre-existing technology that we have adapted to our needs. The materials and processes may have advanced geometrically, and the processing and storage has progressed exponentially, but the tools we use to interact with them, the qwerty keyboards, mice and touchscreens are refinements and variations on a theme.

If what Dr. Iacoboni's findings show are true, and there is no reason to doubt or reject them, then we may have to look at the design of terminals and smartphones in a whole new way. That means that terminals and smartphones are no longer thought of as items out there outside ourselves but become, through the means of the mirror neurons inside our brains and the subsequent engineering inspired by these new ideas, avenues through which our brains can connect to other brains more efficiently.

In this context design is every bit as important as engineering. The ultimate goal is complete transparency, e.g. to be able to communicate at a distance with the same fullness of experience that we can communicate with someone sitting or standing in front of us. We know that talking to someone on the phone is far more tiring then having the same conversation while present with that person. Talking to someone on the phone while driving is more dangerous than drinking and driving, but paradoxically there is no real danger in talking with the same person about the same thing in the same car. Somehow in some way the mobile phone requires us to communicate in a highly effortful and non-natural way.

With this new knowledge coming from the cutting edge of neuroscience, we can look again at the fundamental design criteria of phones and computers, and perhaps come up with something new and wonderful that will work with us the way we want to work. We can ask how we can make new communications tools that work more naturally with our brains, making it easier for our brains to turn new interfaces into an extension of ourselves that will in turn determine the level of transparency between individuals.

Brace yourselves, it's going to be a bumpy ride.