Conversate: Online Discussion Spaces The Social Networking Weblog

Conversate is a new web 2.0 service which creates "online discussion spaces". It claims to be an alternative to group email and less difficult to break into than blogging. So it really falls somewhere between forums, IM and email. It's an interesting idea and it looks like the site is very well put together. But it remains to be seen if this will become yet another "feature as a service" [...] Read More


Join the Discussion: How Many Sites and Friends Do You Have? The Social Networking Weblog

This week I want to find out how many social networking sites you belong to? and how many friends you have? Read my answer to this question and post your own answers. Join the Social Networking About Social Networking site. Here's where you can list all the social networking sites that you belong to all in one profile page and tell us what you think about the different social networking sites. See [...] Read More


Join the Discussion! What Don't You Like About Facebook? The Social Networking Weblog

Last week in the forum we discussed what you like best about Facebook. This week, we're going to discuss what you don't like about Facebook. I know some people don't like Facebook. Or, they like MySpace, or another social networking site better. Tell us what you think Facebook is doing wrong, or what they could do better. Join my social networking site and tell us what you think about Facebook, or [...] Read More


Applying for an Online Job and Bringing Up Money Issues Home Based Business

Like it or not, money matters. This principle should not rule you as you look for what jobs you are good at: making money a priority could make you blind to aggression or anyone taking advantage of your gullibility online. However, when you have found your chosen field, know your worth and do not ask for less. For instance, if a potential client offers you anything far below your asking [...] Read More


Tips to Avoid Business Miscommunication Situations Home Based Business

Aside from the recently mentioned customer service tips, here are other ways to prevent any problem that may arise from miscommunication using online tools and other technological devices: POOR GRAMMAR AND SPELLING CAN HINDER - Some people are especially conscious of their grammar and spelling skills and can therefore take an inordinate amount of time in wording their responses. If you are having similar trouble but unwilling to admit it to [...] Read More

Amazon Mechanical Turk: Human Processing For Web 2.0 The Social Networking Weblog

I've often said that humans are better than algorithms, but it looks like Amazon has taken that idea literally - they've created a web service that lets you solve problems using human minds. The Mechanical Turk has an API and pays human beings for completing tasks. From the Amazon description: "Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "Artificial, artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making [...] Read More


Amazon Ignites Distributed Search Innovation The Social Networking Weblog

I was a bit bullish on the Amazon move to open up their Alexa search API. It appears that people are just starting to use the Amazon Search API to create interesting indexes. I can't imagine any of these examples being greenlighted at the big search companies, because they are such small problems. But, they are certainly small problems that are nice to have solved: From the Alexa - Web Discovery [...] Read More


Paying for Web Services as a Utility The Social Networking Weblog

I've written on this subject previously. The problem with web services is that most are designed by geeks for geeks. Very few are designed by business people for business use. Amazon changed that when they introduced web services that businesses can access and pay-for as they use. Not only have they introduced pay-as-you-go web services. They've made it real easy to get started and real easy to access your usage [...] Read More


Amazon Mechanical Turk Java Entrepreneur

Amazon surprised me recently with their Amazon Mechanical Turk service. To summarize my understanding of the service, it is a marketplace for developers to request human interaction to accomplish tasks that computers cannot easily perform. An example they provide is a human being identifying specific objects inside an image. Amazon provides the Web Services API, pricing structure and the ability to track transactions. Developers pay no up front fees to [...] Read More


AT&T to enter ranks of cloud providers The CIO Weblog

It looks as though Sun isn't the only big player with spare network capacity anxious to get in on the cloud computing hype. AT&T has announced, by way of a deal with the US Olympic Committee that it will be offering storage and network services to corporate customers. The service, called Synaptic Hosting, is described only the the most general terms on the company's site. It appears to be a combination [...] Read More

David Naylor had a piece recently on optimizing your photos for search engines. The piece got me thinking, so I Googled myself at Google images. I had to laugh...

Twenty pictures. Eleven are headshots of me from blogs and webpages. Four are pictures of friends on taken from my different social network profiles. And five are randon graphics off pages where I created content - including one of a serial killer named Charles Sobhraj.

We all know that pictures have been an important part of the Internet for a decade or more. But the art of searching pictures is becoming more and more sophisticated. Pictures have slowly moved from being entertaining to being information.

David's short piece looks at image optimization in Google. It's an interesting piece that may get your images a better ranking in Google. It's got me thinking a little more seriously about it, at least.

I'm sitting here looking at Facebook because, well, isn't everyone?

Reuters had a piece recently on how Facebook is on the way to becoming a "technological lock-in" on a par with the QWERTY keyboard.

"I think Facebook is the most valuable Internet commodity in existence, more so than Google, because they are positioning themselves to be our online identity via Facebook connect," Ravasio said. "It's your real name, it's your real friends..."

Of course, we had a different word for that a few years ago: MySpace.

The brief history of the Internet is littered with the ghosts of Websites that people have abandoned in their relentless pursuit of something newer, faster, better and cooler.

That's not quite MySpace yet. According to Reuters, MySpace still gets 57 million visitors a month - almost three times what Twitter gets. And Twitter's big, right? But Facebook is getting about 112 million visitors a month. And on average, Facebook visitors spend twice as much time on the Facebook site as MySpace visitor spend there.

TechCrunch recently interviewed Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Watch the interview, below...

Twitter is starting to go local - and that could make it much more useful.

I like Twitter. But finding people who live in my general area has always been difficult. Local trends on Twitter will hopefully be a step toward resolving that.

Small Business Trends is excited about the business implicatins of a local push for Twitter.

There was a lot of buzz going into the weekend about a new Twitter addition called Twitter Local Trends and how this could help business owners find out what's hot in their local area. We touched on the importance of location-based apps last week while mentioning Yelp's new check-in service and this is just another example of things taking a more 'local' turn in 2010. And if Twitter builds this out the way I hope they will, Local Trends could open may very impressive doors.

Finding a way to tie Twitter more closely to geography can only make it more popular.