Archive for July, 2008

NY No Longer Stands for New York. Instead? No. You Can’t.

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

New York State appears determined to change its name from the Empire State to the Nanny State. Not content to rest on its press-grabbing headlines for convincing ISPs to ban USENET and forcing online companies to collect sales tax by claiming affiliate advertisers constitute "doing business" in the state, law-makers are back at it with [...]

Putting the Social Back In Social Media, How to Communicate Online

Leslie Poston

My session at PodCamp3 Boston was called Breaking Into the Conversation, Busting the Clique. It was about how to use social media to its fullest potential for you. Basically, how to be heard online and what social media tools are your best option. So many people assume that to be a success when using social [...]

Digg Acquisition by Google: It’s Not Social, It’s Money

Svetlana Gladkova

So Google is in negotiations with Digg to buy the social voting site for “around $200 million”. Now what? Of course, a valid question here would be why Google is still acquiring companies offering all kinds of services when it could have been much simpler to build a similar service of their own in a [...]

Q&A Solution Fluther Adds Social Filtering

Svetlana Gladkova

I have just received an update from Fluther about the new functionality that they have launched that is intended to make the service more social and reduce the noise level. For those uninitiated, Fluther basically is a Q&A service that allows anyone to ask questions and get answers from other users familiar with the subject. [...]

Grassroots Fundraising with Social Media: The Downside

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Yesterday, I talked about the successes of grassroots fundraising with social media, and while it's true that there are inspiring stories of Web 2.0 denizens coming to the aid of others in one form or another, the successes aren't always the case, unfortunately. There are plenty of times when fundraising online isn't fundraising at all, [...]

Why Are So Many Companies Screwing Up the Ad Revenue Model?

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Allen Stern at Center Networks caused a bit of a stir with his post "Do You Compensate Content Creators?" last night and into today. Allen's take on the ad-supported revenue model is that those who read/enjoy/learn from content should demonstrate their appreciation by clicking an ad, since that's how people get paid. I don't agree, [...]

MySpace Makes Big Announcement the Day Before Facebook Developer Conference – OpenID Support

Svetlana Gladkova

Mere hours after Michael Arrington reported that his sources suggested that MySpace would roll out support of OpenID some time later this week, the rumors have been confirmed officially in a press release. And it would have been strange not to expect a big announcement from MySpace the day before Facebook’s developer conference, right? So [...]

Calgoo Switches to Free Model: Freemium Spoiled Even Software Developers

Svetlana Gladkova

It is rather disturbing to see everything free online and users revolting even because of web services making them watch some ads to earn at least something to sustain their businesses. Today we are going to see another example of a product switched to a free model – this time by Vancouver-based Calgoo Software. Basically, [...]

Choosing The Right Social Media

Leslie Poston

There was one thing that surprised me at PodCamp3 Boston, and that was how overwhelmed by choices even the best and brightest in the new media, old media and social fields are right now. With a new social media platform, application or site popping up near daily, the constant question was how to choose what [...]

The Ad Devolution

Leslie Poston

Throughout my weekend at PodCamp3 Boston, woven in amongst the learning, the collaboration and the intensely communal environment, were the marketers and monetizers. I have nothing against marketers, public relations people, and people who are all about making money by monetizing the social media arena, but in the context of the weekend, I watched the [...]