Wednesday 30 April 2008

Social Networking In Plain English

Found a simple and funny video that explains the basics of social networking and how it effects you.



yay!

Tuesday 29 April 2008

Social Networking sites grow to accomodate wider taste

So, when someone says 'social networking' the first website that pops to mind is Myspace.
If you were at a gig full of young people chatting to each other, i am certain you will hear the sentence "what's your myspace?" uttered more than once. Phone numbers seem to be the 'old' thing to give out nowadays.

But now even the social networking community is growing, as if Myspace isn't enough for one person; Bebo, accomodating to the younger teen generation, Facebook, being the website for all university students and adults to be signed up to and Youtube, being the difference in social networking due to videos being posted instead.

It seems that there are enough social networking websites out there to satisfy the tastes of the people all over the world. But what about 'man's best friend' having it's own online website to socialise. That is where Dogstar comes in. In 2007, this website was created as a 'photo, video, shring community for dogs.' And that isn't where it stops, there are now more social networking sites adapting to a wider audience such as the car owner community Boompa and even a website taking a leaf out of Facebook's book and creating a mock website called Pensionbook

the social network continues to grow and who knows, we may soon have websites dedicated just to our Action men later in life

oh my

Web 2.0 debates Internet's future

San Francisco's Web 2.0 Expo conference brought together thousands of people responsible for crafting the future direction of the internet, and the world of applications - or apps - was front and centre.
Everyone from Microsoft to Yahoo to MySpace was on a mission to woo developers to create exciting applications for their devices.
Jennifer Pahlka of Techweb, one of the conference's co-chairs, said the carrot these big Silicon Valley companies were dangling to entice developers to get involved was that of openness and allowing people to devise programmes without constraints.
"Yahoo was talking about opening up advertising platforms, Mozilla was talking about opening up the mobile web and John Zittrain from Oxford University was talking about openness to drive innovation and creativity so we don't go into this closed system where every application has to be approved by someone else," said Ms Pahlka.
"So I think open versus closed and who gets to define what is open and what isn't is a big theme that dominated the week at Web 2.0."
Throwing down the gauntlet
For Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester Research, this over-arching principle of openness was at the heart of two of the week's major announcements.


I think that Web 2.0 is at an intersection
Mitchell Baker
"I think the combination of Microsoft's Live Mesh and the Yahoo! Open Strategy are throwing down the gauntlet to everybody else to open up as well," he said.
Live Mesh aims to synchronise and unite a multiplicity of devices and applications online.
Yahoo! Open Strategy is about stitching together its online services under the social profile concept for ultimate access.
Ms Li told BBC News: "All this then says that whoever has the best experience, if I can make your connection to the web better than anyone else, you will be loyal to me."
Web 2.0 intersection
The point of delivery was a hot topic throughout the Web 2.0 conference and the focus was undoubtedly on the mobile web.


They are all start ups digging the earth right now and their pay-off will maybe come later
Dean Takahashi
Mozilla's chairwoman Mitchell Baker is banking on the Firefox browser as being one of the more important platforms for developers who are working on mobile devices.
"I think that Web 2.0 is at an intersection and the software on which it is based and the involvement of Mozilla demonstrates that by being open and allowing interoperability you get more innovative and better efforts," she said.
For the last six months, Firefox has been working on a browser that operates on mobiles and the organisation is already testing its prototype, she said.
To some degree, that takes care of the here and right now, but turning to the next stage in the world of the internet, at Web 2.0 chatter about Web 3.0 was bubbling under the surface.
While largely thought of as the semantic web - where machines understand what is being written - not everyone at this conference was ready to embrace Web 3.0.
Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff described it as "a load of baloney".
"It just shows people can count and it's some piece of marketing flim-flam dreamed up by companies pushing their products," he said.
Opening up
Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat said if you want to find out what the next big thing is, follow the big money.


I am just more interested in applications that connect me with other people than with a computer that says it can understand what I just wrote
Jennifer Pahlka
For the moment that is not happening in the so-called world of Web 3.0.
"The semantic web is a longer term play and so far I don't see highly valued companies popping up there," said Mr Takahashi.
"They are all start ups digging the earth right now and their pay-off will maybe come later."
For the moment, Mr Takahashi said the venture capital landscape is being dominated by the mobile world, social networks and applications.
With a plethora of companies embracing open social networks and the demand for applications increasing, this, he said, is where there real growth will be.
"Starting a plain old application company for something like Facebook, that's like a one or two person company," said Mr Takahashi.
"What you are going to see is other businesses acquiring those small app companies so that they can have a big collection of Facebook apps that will eventually be worth something.
"That's potentially where the money will be."
Get connected
For the moment, Jennifer Pahlka advised users to enjoy the ride that is Web 2.0.
"There is still a really long way to go with Web 2.0," she said.
People were still trying to find ways of "exploiting all those principles of collective intelligence", she added.
"The fundamental aspect of what is gong on just now is more personal and that resonates more with me than the semantic web," said Ms Pahlka.
"I am just more interested in applications that connect me with other people than with a computer that says it can understand what I just wrote."

Friday 25 April 2008

The evolution of social networking

I found quite a nifty video that is quite recent of how social networking has evolved over the years since it was first introduced to the world and how popular it is now.

Click this link to see this video that helps meggggaaaaa

see you on the other side maggie

Web 2.0 set for spending boom

Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses prepare to spend nearly $5 billion by 2013 on social networking tools.
Over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for next year, a report says.
The news comes as San Francisco plays host to the Web 2.0 conference on next generation of the web.
"This is where we see the future of the web," said conference co-chair Jennifer Pahlka.
"The companies making announcements here are building that future."
Forrester, the research company which carried out the Web 2.0 survey, believes the technologies being developed and unveiled over the coming days represent "a fundamentally new way" for businesses to communicate with employees and customers.
Priority
The report found that consumer giants such as General Motors, McDonald's, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo Bank will drive much of this growth and have already embraced tools like blogs, RSS feeds, podcasting and social networking.
Analyst Oliver Young estimates that another 56% of North American and European companies regard Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008.

All Web 2.0 eyes are on San Francisco this week
"If I wanted to be anywhere in the Web 2.0 economy, I'd want to be on the enterprise side," says Mr Young.
Forrester analysed seven Web 2.0 categories: blogs, mashups, podcasting, RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis. Of these, social networks will attract the greatest levels of investment but even then that will be dwarfed by the multi million dollar revenues the software industry commands.
Mr Young says "Advertising revenue has been hard to come by with even sites such as Facebook finding it hard to monetise their high volumes of traffic.
"Companies are now looking over their shoulder to the business market where even revenues of $50 (£25) per user per month are looking increasingly appealing"
He also points out that there will come a saturation point and investment will start to slow down as Web 2.0 applications become increasingly prevalent and absorbed into collaborative software packages.
'Disneyland for web nerds'
In the meantime, the world of business will get to see what is on offer in the Web 2.0 world as vendors take the wraps off a raft of products, services and applications during this week's conference in San Francisco.
Everything from the latest in cloud computing to blogging software and from mobile technology to rich media applications will be on show.
With around 7,000 people expected to attend, some bloggers have already nicknamed the conference a "five-day retreat to the Disneyland for grown-up web nerds".
Also taking part is a Web Mission from the UK which consists of more than 20 entrepreneurs looking to forge useful business connections and showcase British internet companies.
The businesses, which were selected from over 100 applicants, were chosen because they have the potential to expand into the US.

Article here

Saturday 5 April 2008

Social Networking - The stalker's website?

Social Networking has grown to be massive in the past few years, especially amongst the younger generation.
With websites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace appealing different age groups and growing larger and larger every day, it's not wonder that more than a quarter of 8-11 year olds have a profile themselves.

It was created as a free and easy way to contact people, friends, family or maybe to talk to strangers who share your interests. However, now it has gotten out of control with the amount of information it can give away about a certain person. Your age, location, email address and avatar can be the starting point for a stalker, or a pedophile.

It is now getting a lot more dangerous with anyone who looks at your profile knowing a bit too much about you.
There are privacy settings, but most teenagers either don't know how to use them or want strangers to know what they are interested in.
Parents grow more and more worried as the figures of children meeting strangers, who turned out to be a 50 year old man and not '10 year old Billy who enjoys watching Pokemon too', grow and how did they meet them? Through a social networking website.
Stalkers and pedophiles have all the information to lure your children to them through their own profile - is social networking really for socialising or is it for tracking down a new victim?

What the parents say.