Virtually Here

Instant messaging (IM) is as common as emailing for keeping in touch but it has some obvious features such as real-time messaging and group-chats that emailing can’t compete with. Even the most brick and mortar born company is likely to allow their employees to chat to with eachother either through an internally developed tool or a third-party application integrated into their network (and hopefully safely behind their firewall). Chatting is a free, easy and fast way to keep in contact with friends, family and colleagues regardless of where in the world they happen to be. The one fundamental issue that have plagued the chatters, and continues to do so, is that there are a number of chat tools available - and you can’t chat across them. You have to be on the same tool as the one you want to chat with is using. Between Yahoo, AIM, Gmail and MSN to mention a few, odds are you will often have to jump between applications to catch up with everyone.

Well, have you heard of meebo ?

meebo allows the chataholic to sign in to one place, requires no download (fully web-based) and you are immediately connected to all people that you have on your AIM, Yahoo, Google, Jabber, ICQ (who uses that anymore?)  and MSN chat lists. Signing up is easy and free and once you have estblished your profile you are one web-based sign on away from chatting away on all your platforms from one single place.

It wouldn’t be the internet if there were not ten ways to do the same thing so there are a number of similar offerings available out there. Some other excellent options includes pidgin.im and digsby.com

Pidgin.im does require a download and installation to the computer you are using but does support more IM applications than meebo and integrates the chats in a way that many feel are more intuitive.

Digsby.com goes beyond pure consolidation of IM application as it has a number of social networking features that may well justify a dedicated post about it here.

So if you are still IM-application-jumping stop right now and go consolidate them with one of these services.

You will find ways to ’socialize’ with other people connected to the all-knowing-all-seeing-internet in ways that sometimes may not be readily apparent to you. One of these ways is through sharing your music through iTunes with others connected to the same network as you.

This works particularly well if you often find yourself surfing the internet at your local coffee shop where you are connected to their WiFi. I can’t count the number of times I have browsed other people’s music and found artists/songs that have triggered my own download of them.

How does it work?

Easy. To enable music sharing from your iTunes follow these simple steps;

1. Open iTunes.
2. On the Edit menu, click Preferences.
3. Click the Sharing tab.
4. Select the Share my library on my local network checkbox.

And you’re done.  You can chose to share all your iTunes content or just selected playlists or media types. When you open up iTunes you will see other people’s music libraries displayed on the left hand side of the screen. Simply click on them to connect and browse their music.

Note that you can not download music from other people - just listen.

Many people also put their email address as their userid and I think I’ve received four or five emails by now commenting on my music taste or thanking me for sharing my music. It’s not what you traditionally would label a social network but it’s a great, fun way to share something with others for free.

It also opens up a guessing game that I know many people have enjoyed… Who IS it that is sharing this music? 80’s glamrock…Hmm..is it that hottie over by the counter on her Apple covered in stickers..or the corporate stiff slaving away on his company-issued IBM? I wonder…

With over 40 million registered users Bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often) is a social networking giant. It is in fact the biggest social networking site in several countries including the UK and New Zealand and in the US it’s only surpassed, in number of registered users, by MySpace and FaceBook. A rather impressive achievement for this two year old company.

AOL caught on to the site’s growing popularing and in an unsuspected move they went ahead and purchased it in March 13, 2008 for a staggering 850 million dollars.

With that sort of financial backing BeBo is now positioned to take further steps in closing the gap between themselves and MySpace/FaceBook.

BeBo does have a number of features that makes them attractive to the socializing users of the internet. At the site you have access to photo-/video uploading, game playing, share and listen to music, create and join groups, ‘draw’ on other users whiteboard (which is a rather novel concept for online interactions)  - you can even buy a spot of ‘land’ on the BeBo Nation map to even further your online exposure.

The profile pages are very reminiscent of what you’ll find on other sites of the same nature but the add-ons and features are what have attracted and kept millions of users faithful to the site.

It won’t turn your world upside down but if you’re getting bored with your current site(s) give it a try - it may hold some features that appeal to you and the 15,000 people following you.

If you are following more than ten-fifteen sites you may already be set up to take advantage of RSS feeds. RSS feeds allows you to ’stream’ updates from the sites you follow into one convenient location.  So no more jumping around to all the sites you have bookmarked to find out if anything new has been posted - just sit back and let the updates come to you.

The social spin on RSS readers is that many of them also support the ability to share/recommend your favorite sites to other people. I know bloggers that consider RSS feed sharing to be the most powerful tool they have to drive more traffic to their site.

There are, as always, a number of RSS readers out there that have that social aspect to them. The two that I like the most are Google Reader and Toluu. Much of the decision comes down to how you want your feeds presented and how easy it is to import your contacts from other social networks like Twitter, MySpace, etc.

I personally really like Toluu for getting feed recommendations from people in your contact-list and how you add new sites to your feeds. Most all of these sites are free to use so try a few of them out and pick the one that fits you the best.

If you are completely new to the concept of feeds there is a pretty good one minute introduction at Google’s site:

So if you are starting to feel overwhelmed by having to manually check out all of your favorite blogs and sites - do yourself a huge favor and check out one of these feed readers. Then come back and thank me

It’s often easy focus on the social networks that originated - and thrive - in the US, but it’s a big world out there and in some posts here we will take a closer look at some of the bigger names.

South Korea is the most wired country in the world and many of the best gamers in the world comes out of there (yes, everyone knows how to play Starcraft) so it’s not that surprising that one of the most popular and largest social networks in the world also has its roots there. Cyworld is veritable powerhouse within the world of social networking. In 2006 it already had 100,000 videos uploaded to its site each day (this can be compared to youtube.com that at the same time was getting approximately 65,000 videos/day). In addition to sheer media sharing Cyworld also sold virtual currency for about 300,000 US dollars/day. Cyworld is a social site whose target females from their pre-teens up to their early 20’s.

The virtual currency you can purchase (called acorns in-game) can be used to buy digital accessories and even furniture for your virtual home. By furnishing your own on-line room (called ‘MiniRooms’) you are making a statement about who you are, what your taste is - and in some way how much money you have to squander. People can comment on the room you’ve made and make comments and suggestions about how to change it.

Cyworld attempts to differentiate themselves from other, similar social sites in saying that the site is much more about extending existing real-life relionships and friendships into the virtul world instead of trying to amass as many followers that you can - and that you don’t really know.

At it’s peak in 2006 cyworld also entered the US market with a very agressive marketing focus targeting their already identified target. It has not reached the popularity in the US that the site enjoyed back in South Korea - mostly due to the fact that the competition was already well established here with sites like MySpace and FaceBook to mention two.

But if you happen to be a 13 year old girl with interior design dreams it may just be the place for you. The rest of us may have to give this one a pass.

In 2003 Cory Doctorow published the much discussed book “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. Maybe the most important contribution to post-industrial concepts was the idea of reputation-based currency. Five years ago an unexplored concept in a sci-fi book - today you can get your reputation currency paid straight into your paypal account.

Social Currency is indeed one of the most creative ways to capitalize on the tremendous growth of social networks that we’ve seen lately. Sites such as dNeero.com is, if not leading the development of this types of services, one of the earlier adopters of the idea. How does it work? Well, you only really need to meet two criterias to start converting your reputation-/social currency into hard cash: a) being a member of some social network (blog, social profile site, etc, etc) and b) have the desire to share your views on a number of topics with other ‘Social People’ [term from dNeero.com] out there.

You sign up at their site, find a sponsored topic that interests you, answer a few questions and finally post your replies to these questions on your site in a widget. Done.

What happens next?

If visitors to your site/blog find the topic interesting and/or disagree with your own answers - they may decide to take the survey themselves. Since this decision was based on the fact that they read about this survey at your site where they could read your answer the concept of reputation (do they trust/respect you?) comes into play and is in essence of what you are getting paid for. How much can you stimulate a conversation? Make it as controversial as possible? Stir up the fire? Pick topics that are in the news? You decide - but be aware that your answers will be there for other to see.

Another offering within the same space can be found over at Yuwie.com where you in essence gets paid by how ‘on-line popular you are’. Every time you someone visits your site (blog, profile site, etc) you get credits for it that you eventually can convert to cash in your paypal account.

So does it pay to be popular and have a good reputation? Maybe. All I can say is that if it sounds too good to be true - it often is but do your own research and who knows you may soon be rolling in reputation-social-popularity dollars.

In order to prove that I sometimes do eat the dog food I serve I decided to sign up at dNeero.

The sign-up experience

Not too bad, I was registered within 3-4 minutes (no confirming email required)

Finding a topic/conversation I wanted to respond to

This is where it got interesting. I was presented with three topics;

- Citizenship for sale,

- Offshore Drilling, and

- Get it going with dNeero.

Since I was feeling greedy I picked the ‘Citizenship for sale’ option. It stated that I could earn ‘up to $1.47′ by chosing it. Not being quite sure what that meant it still beat the others that were offered at $1.29 and $0.75.

Topics like these also have an expiration date. The topic I chose had three days left on it.

Upon selecting it I got notified that by simply taking the survey I would make $0.45 - BUT if I posted it to my blog I could make up to $1.47.

I answered the rather inane survey and I made my $0.45.

Posting the survey - and my answers to the blog

Posting the survey to the blog was easy as a number of widget-text options are available and ready to be copied-and-pasted. If you are lucky (un-lucky?) you’ll find the survey mentioned embedded here:

Conclusion: Pro’s: Easy to get started and to publish to your site. Con’s: Takes up some space, requires flash and slows down the load time of your blog. Will I continue to use it? Ask me again in a few days…

Virtual Social Networks still have somewhat of a stigma if you are above the age of 35 and ‘grew up’ with Old Media.

That becomes even more clear when you see how Old Media treats the popularity of Social Networks on-line and how they are used.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways Social Networking - and some of the activity that goes on there - are portrayed in the media.

 Young Teachers Going Wild on Social Networking Sites

This story is about questioning the behavior of teachers - which is a fair and reasonable thing to do. But if this had not included the, in many people’s minds, almost mythical ‘online networks’ it may not have made its way to prime time.

Panel discussion at Zeitgeist

As can be expected from a Zeitgeist discussion session the topic - in this case Social Networking in marketing - is covered at a level of details and rather un-biased. It’s interesting to hear the thoughts of people that created services like LinkedIn and BeBo.

CNN on online stalking - Dark Side of Blogging

[Warning: This collection of clips contains some scenes of a violent nature. Adult supervision recommended when viewing]

This shows CNN covering the story name ‘The dark side of Blogging’ - and how internet stalkers are taking advantage of the anonymity of the internet.

BBC on ‘Social Networking…Dangerous?’

A BBC feature on the dangers of Social Networking for younger users (that is also the majority of the users of these services).

So are Social Networks getting an unfair treatment when featured in Old Media? I don’t think it’s as much ‘unfair’ as it is a result of a generation gap where many people (producers as well as viewers) still have a hard time grasping what social networks are all about. Having said that it’s also not uncommon for news to focus on shocking, tragic and destructive news - when was the last time the Headline news was that it’s a Beautiful Life?

As Social Networking matures and becomes even more an integral part of many people’s lives we are bound to see both good and bad stories come out of it. Just remember that it’s not the tool that is in question - it’s what you decide to do with it.

I can’t exactly remember when New Media got separated from Old Media and allowed their own umbrella name and status. My best recollection is that it was sometimes in the mid-90’s. Film, newspapers, television, etc were filed away in the ‘relics’ section and podcasts, multimedia presentations, netcasts, social- interactive sites and pull vs push technology - elbowed their way to the front and were hailed and branded as New Media.

Well, as it turns out, some of these Old Media institutions are not going to go quitly into the sunset but have instead launched their own initiates to attempt to level the playing field a bit.

The New York Times recently announced their offering named TimesPeople. This, still in Beta, product is an attempt to establish an online social network for - you guessed it - readers of New York Times. To quote NYT themselves;

“But it’s not a social network like Facebook or MySpace — you won’t have Times friends, and it won’t get you Times dates. Instead, you’ll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you’ll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network.”

You mark articles you find interesting, find arcticles tagged by others, share supplemental information/feeds/videos/blogposts, etc. It’s an interesting concept and I am personally all for this kind of convergence culture (that will be five dollars for those words please) as long as it’s not a forced fit. In this case it seems as it may allow a very well established news institution to get their readers excited about the ability to interactively and collaboratively share their thoughts on articles and information.

Any tool that enhances our ability and increases our interest in reading and keeping up with what happens in the world around us is, per this writer’s definition, a step in the right direction.  Welcome to New Media NYT. What took you so long?

So, you’ve allowed yourself to get sucked into the online world and you got profiles set up on Blogger, Friendster, MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr…the list goes on…and on…. Managing these profiles are now almost a full-time job as you have to log in to them all and make your updates, add photos (can never have too many of those cat and cleavage photos) and oops..you just forgot your DeviantArt password. Rats.

Sounds familiar?

First of all, rest assured that you are far from the only one facing these same issues. Studies (truth: I think I remember reading this somewhere, sometime) have shown that if you are a fan of social networks you will have, on average, ten active online profiles. Sounds like a lot? Add them up and you may be surprised.

One site that tries to address this existential issue is SocialURL.com. It’s a rather new offering (are there any old offerings on the internet apart from eBay?) and for the social networking butterfly it may actually be a significant time saver.

In simple terms, SocialURL allows you to manage all your online profiles from one single location. It supports a wide number of the more popular networking sites and odds are that you’ll be able to add the ones you participate on unless you are on some early Beta-version of some obscure foot fetish site. It also allows you to continue the search for people that share the same interests as you (or just look hot in their photos) and to get reports showing who is visiting your profile sites.

So if social networks is your drug this may be the medicine cabinet you’ve been looking for. If you decide to check be sure to leave a comment here telling us what you thought about it.

Remember the days when diaries were kept in actual books (For Generation Y: The term ‘books’ refers to a set of paper pages bound together for the purpose of being written on using a pen or pencil. You can not use a keyboard and/or mouse with a book) hidden away at the bottom of sock drawers, underneath the bed or in secret compartments in your desk drawer? The reason for this was so that no one else would find about your inner thoughts about yourself and your life. Well those days are gone. Today these diaries have migrated onto online sites like Facebook , MySpace and Orkut and it seems like every day there is a new opportunity for you to spill your inner most thoughts - as inane as they sometimes (read: often) are.

So, why? I personally believe it comes down to that we have a need to share and vent. As more and more of our lives are spent on-line we want to establish a profile there as well so that others can more easily find out who we are, what we like and heck even what music we are listening to right now.

On-line profile/social sites like mySpace have millions of subscribed users and one thing that these sites have in common is the ability to add other users as your ‘friends’ to your network. It often becomes a goal of people to have as many friends as possible on-line and if this is a way to make up for a lacking social life in the real world is a question I will happily leave to someone with a few more degrees in that area than what I have to ponder.

So you have your mySpace/FaceBook/Orkut/[Flavor of the Week] profile set up. You’ve written a short profile about yourself and added twelve photos of yourself showing either limited cleavage and/or your cat, dog, rabbit or sunset - what now?

Well, you share your page with friends and families. Once they subscribe to it they are automatically notified about updates to your site so that they can follow your life and see any new ‘limited cleavage and/or your cat, dog, rabbit or sunset’-photos you’ve added. After your immediate, derived-from-real-life set of friends have been added you will find that others are ‘discovering’ you. People you have no idea who are but for one reason or the other find you to be interesting enough to start following your life. Odds are you will add them - and they will add you. Soon you may have hundreds or even thousands of people following you. You suddenly have an audience. This is where some of the potential of these sites are discovered. If you are interested in any form of creative work that can easily be represented on-line (photography, poetry, drawing, etc) you now have an audience to display your work to and odds are that this audience will be significantly larger than what you would had been able to conjure up in real life. You can post your new work and receive feedback, comments - and in some cases even job offers.

Social ‘profile sites’ have somewhat of a poor reputation and much of it is well deserved due to the content they tend to hold - but it can also become a vehicle for you to reach people with your writing and work and establish a network that is both positive and productive. It’s what you choose to do with the tool.

Different sites also have different ‘target audiences’. In very rough terms you can say that; MySpace: Age 13-20, FaceBook: Age 15-30, Orkut: Age 20-40. Obviously very rough ranges but these are groups that tend to dominate the sites mentioned in this post.