There is a great article posted on Seeking Alpha, which talks about what’s hot and what’s not in Web 2.0.  Using data from Alexa, the article charts trends with Web 2.0 – including social media/ social networking.  Check it out – particularly the graphs detailing the current leadership stats and future estimates.

On a different note, I came across a couple of social media/ web 2.0 sites recently, which are interesting:

• Kaboodle.com: Kaboodle allows you to make pages displaying lists of your favorite products online and share/compare those lists with your friends.  Users can insert a button in their browser’s tool bar, which allows them to capture data on any items they like, while they’re on a website. Users can then take votes on who agrees with their favorite products, etc. Why is this useful?  As Kaboodle points out, the service helps users:
  

  “Plan a vacation Create a wishlist and share it with friends Organize holiday or birthday shopping lists Research LCD and plasma TVs Share research for a school or work project Show off your collection of vintage cars	Share your favorite bands with friends Keep an list of movies you want to see Organize your home remodel Share your favorite restaurants with friends Create a baby or wedding registry Plan a wedding, party or other big event”

• Buxfer (short for “bucks” and “transfer”) would have been useful in high school/college and back in the day when I shared a house…  Three Carnegie Mellon University graduate students developed this site, which helps friends keep track of shared debts – think about all of those shared expenses like electricity/gas/water/cable/ISP/etc bills.  They don’t have a facility for online debt settlement (ala Paypal), but its an interesting way of keeping track of debts without nagging and awkward face time or those annoying notes on the fridge!

On the heels of Friday’s blog in which I mentioned Yahoo‘s purchase of Bix.com, this weekend The Wall Street Journal reported a leaked memo from Brad Garlinghouse, a Senior Vice-President at Yahoo.  In the memo, which the WSJ calls the “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” Garlinghouse reportedly wrote:

I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world…The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

Garlinghouse laments that Yahoo’s senior leadership lacks “a focused, cohesive vision” and that Yahoo’s operations are separated “into silos that far too frequently don’t talk to each other”.  He expresses concern over a “massive redundancy that exists throughout the organisation” and a business “that has become overly bureaucratic”.

In a summary of the “Peanut Butter Manifesto”, FT.com reported:

Mr Garlinghouse’s memo, which was directed at senior management at Yahoo, goes on to propose three main steps to reverse Yahoo’s slide. Calling for a clearer vision, he argues that Yahoo should quit non-core businesses and eliminate many of its overlapping products.

He also calls for a greater level of accountability, putting Yahoo’s main services under the control of a new group of more powerful general managers.

…

“Heads must roll,” Mr Garlinghouse concludes, with the sacking of senior executives who have failed to stop the rot and a 15 to 20 per cent cut in the company’s overall headcount. “The direction needs to come decisively from the top.”

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the internal reaction to this memo does to Yahoo’s social media plans.  Besides Bix.com, Yahoo recently purchased two other social media companies: Kenet Works and MyBlogLog.

• Kenet Works, based in Sweden, plans to “take the fixed and mobile Internet from static web pages and post-and-reply communities, to full real-time services” available to users on their mobile phones.
• MyBlogLog is a social networking community for weblog visitors.  The idea of MyBlogLog is that it ties everyone who reads a web site or blog together, allowing readers of blogs to learn about and engage with one another, so that the readers of your blog can become friends with each other – not just the person writing the blog.

If Garlinghouse’s recommendations are acted upon and Yahoo undergoes a massive re-org and leadership change, it will probably be a while before the dust settles and a cohesive, corporate social media strategy emerges.

Companies are only just starting to consider ways to exploit social media to their advantage… Case in point, in the last few months, I’ve been asked to interview for several new “social media” business development manager/evangelist positions at large companies.  Social Media is a growing area and one which has evolved through consumer interest, rather than corporate push.  It will be interesting to see how early adopters of social media react as big business starts wading in the water.  The reaction to Google’s purchase of YouTube was certainly mixed, with plenty of folks asking, “Is Google Killing YouTube?”

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about Singshot.com… Last night on Yodel Anectotal,  Yahoo, Inc. announced that it acquired Bix.com.  Bix takes things one step further than Singshot – people to judge all sorts of contests – from Karaoke to photos to dance routines to beauty to comedy and more.  It’s an interesting site, but one that parts of the site don’t appear to have much content/ user participation yet. Today, in his personal blog, Bradley Horowitz admitted, “… We need to get some cooler songs into the Bix karaoke system.” Considering the source, I’m sure it won’t be long before that changes.

In other news, this week, Reuters invested $7 million in an Austin, Texas based start-up, Pluck.  According to Pluck.com, “Pluck helps transform how publishers, media sites and major brands engage their audiences and customers to discover, create and distribute information online. Providing the technologies for content generation, syndication, social networking and news personalization, Pluck helps its customers more easily consume and leverage the new open content model that has emerged as the cornerstone of Web 2.0.”

In my opinion, social media is the next wave of revenue generation and marketing opportunity for big business.  The question yet to be answered is – How will consumers react to the commercialization of something that is supposed to be all about the user?

While sites like YouTube and many video search engines allow anyone to view videos, other sides like Grouper.com (based in Sausalito, CA and recently purchased by Sony) enable privacy settings.  I also like Grouper because it allows members to add video to any website or their MySpace, Facebook, Y!360, Friendster, and Blogger pages. Plus, with Grouper, users can control privacy settings on specific videos so that they can’t be seen by just anyone.

Privacy in video is important – not just because it allows users to control who sees them/ their video, but it also has the potential to give social media companies the ability to add revenue enhancing features to their sites and explore revenue based partnerships.  I was thinking about this the other day with singshot.com, which is kind of like American Idol, but available on-line.  Singshot provides karaoke-esque background instrumentals, and users sing along. The resulting tracks are posted on-line, and members of the public can vote on them and provide feedback.  The downside with the site is that there is NO VIDEO!  Depending on their subscriber numbers, if Singshot were to add video, they may have the potential for a whole new revenue model.  They could continue to let any member of the public listen to and vote on audio tracks, but they could also offer a premium (paid for subscription service), enabling only those who pay to see, vote and comment on video. Alternatively, they could charge performers a subscription fee (which could include the cost of a webcam) to post video in order to get feedback on style, dance routines, etc.

In addition, to allowing personal privacy, social media “privacy” features are attractive to Mobile Operators, who want to differentiate themselves from their competition. Web-based Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the social media space who strive for mobile enablement should be thinking carefully about privacy.  In my experience, mobile operators haven’t yet seen the potential of social media to increase revenues and user bases.  Therefore, it hasn’t been a huge push for mobile enabled social media.  This is changing.  As this change happens, one thing is almost certain, the social media ISVs that win the mobile game will have thought about privacy.  Mobile operators want to differentiate their service offerings from their competition, and in the social media world, one of the few ways to do that is by offering unique content.  Social media ISVs don’t want to make custom versions of their software for every OEM and Mobile operator out there because doing so limits the number of users that can interact, which defeats the usefuleness and viral spread of social media – especially social networking AND, it increases the amount of work that goes into software development and maintenance. I think the way to get around this is through privacy.

By having different privacy settings, users on different mobile networks would be able to see different premium content and features than those on other networks – say videos, etc..  This would mean that members of the “public” would still be able to access specific sites, but they may not be able to “see” or “do” certain “premium” things from their mobile phone without being a “subscriber” to a particular mobile operator or have a particular type of mobile phone.  I’m not advocating segmenting the market in this way, but doing so may be one way to grab the mobile market, which is difficult to penetrate without carrier buy-in.  In my experience, the only way to get mobile operator buy-in is by guarenteeing increased revenue (through increased subscribers and paid-for software/subscription opportunities).

I was just looking at the title of my first blog “A blog about blogging and other social media”, when it suddenly struck me that my “great” idea to have “a blog about blogging” isn’t much different than Cosmo Kramer’s (Seinfeld) idea to write a coffee table book about coffee tables.

I’d planned to write today’s blog about the use of video in social networking, so when I had the Kramer revelation, I decided that it was only fitting for me to showcase the video clip where Kramer conceives his idea.  I went to youtube.com, blinkx.com, searchvideo.com, furl.com, revver.com – you name a video site, I couldn’t find the clip I was looking for.  The best I was able to come up with was the above link to wikipedia and another site with the script to the episode: number 074.

The script isn’t what I was looking for.  I wanted to show the video – complete with all of Kramer’s mannerisms and dramatic pause.  This brings me to my point – written word is great, but video is often more descriptive.  If you’ve seen the Seinfeld episode that I’m talking about, click on the above link, search for “coffee table” and read the script. You’ll see what I mean.  If you haven’t seen the episode and you read the part of the script that I’m talking about, you’ll probably have one of those moments we’ve all had before where someone tries to tell you a funny story that doesn’t sound all that funny and ends with “guess you had to be there”, and we’ll both feel like we’re “bowling alone”.

The beauty of video integration with social media is that it gives people one more piece of information, allowing multiple people to “see” the exact same thing and encouraging a more common shared experience.  Written word alone doesn’t do that to the same extent.  Take, as an example, one of the most interesting forms of social media / social networking: on-line dating (sites like match.com, eharmony.com, okcupid.com, plentyoffish.com, etc.).  Users complain that it is impossible for users to gauge chemistry without seeing someone in person.  People are more than their picture and written word.  While, no one that I know wants to see a video of someone talking un-naturally into a camera, someday, users may have the ability to upload videos of themselves doing things they enjoy (playing sports, acting, talking to friends at a social occasion, etc.).  Or, you may see the enablement video chat.  Either way, video has the potential to be used in new ways.

Hmmm… All this talk of video is making me think about how I don’t want just anyone accessing videos of me on-line.   More of my ideas on video (and privacy) in social media in my next blog.

It seems like everyone in the Bay Area is talking about web 2.0 and social media these days, and there are a ton of start-ups popping-up in this space.  This blog will focus on the fast evolving world of social media: what’s happening in the space, what’s new/cool, and the ways that social media is evolving/ expanding.

According to Wikipedia, “Social media describes the on-line tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.”  “Social media” includes “on-line social networking” web sites and applications.  Wikipedia calls on-line social networking “a category of Internet applications to help connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools.”

I’m interested in the ways that social media improves interaction between people, making the world a smaller, and more accessible place.  Social media makes it easy for people – regardless of location – to learn from and/or interact with groups of people whose interests are similar to theirs.  The social media revolution has the potential to “fix” the issues that Robert D. Putnam discussed in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

In this book, Putnam argues that Americans have become disengaged from their social networks (friends, family, social groups, etc.) and have taken on a more individualistic mentality.   He says that in the old days, many Americans used to belong to bowling leagues, where they made friends and engaged with others.  However, over time, while the number of bowlers increased, the number of ‘bowling leagues’ decreased, with the majority of players choosing to bowl alone.  Putnam’s theories, while somewhat controversial, are supported by statistics and nearly 500,000 interviews over a 25 year period.  He cautions that Americans are socializing less in groups and are becoming less “connected” with the wider human community.  I believe the emergence of social media is changing this paradigm.

When Bowling Alone was published in 2000, the term “social media” didn’t exist.  Wikipedia credits Chris Shipley (Co-founder and Global Research Director for Guidewire Group) with being the first person to use the term “social media.”  The term was used in the run up to “BlogOn 2004” conference, July 22-23, 2004, to describe a new form of “participatory media,” emerging from the convergence of social networking, blogging, wikis, and other, complimentary technologies.

Today, while the number of bowling leagues has probably remained stagnant, the number of social media sites that facilitate interpersonal interaction between individuals and groups with common interests is growing exponentially.  I predict that social media will continue to evolve quickly, with the leading social media companies finding innovative ways to engage new users by developing compelling feature enhancements.  Video, audio, photo sharing, written word location based services, and mobile enablement will all play a role in the future of social media.  My blog will explore the integration of existing technologies into social media, the mobilization of social media, and what’s new and cool in  this growing space.