2004 Social Media - Best and Worst

I thought it might be interesting if people posted their thoughts on the best and worst of social media (online communities, social software, social networking, etc.) for 2004.  Kind of like the best and worst movie lists.

 

Feel free to push your own site/stuff but just be explicit when you are doing so.

 

Here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head list (but remember, my nickname is “Cynthia the Social Networking Luddite”).

 

BEST:

 

Dogster

Amazon.com’s Listmania: the best way to find what you really want even when you don’t know what it is

www.paidcontent.org by great newsletter/blog about the content industry

The Social Software Weblog by Judith Meskill

All of Robin Good’s stuff (MasterNewMedia)

Dogs that Blog and the dog blogroll there are now 6 dogs in the dog blogroll (which I maintain), 3 of which are written from the dog’s point of you.  Yes, laugh all you like, but a major newspaper will soon be publishing a story on blogging pets.  This could be the hot social networking topic of 2005

 

WORST:

 

Social Networking website business models (are there any?)

BzzAgent (NYTimes article)

Too many social networking sites

 

Dilbert develops a social networking site

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20041223.html

 

Great concept but I think it has already been done J

Tribe.net ?

 

Cynthia “the social networking Luddite”

Dog Blogs

more on buzz marketing...

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1105.cfm

What's the Buzz About Buzz Marketing?

“There's a new marketing catchphrase that's getting rave word-of-mouth reviews. From articles in the popular press to conversations in the classroom, huge companies to boutique marketing firms, suddenly it seems you can't talk about new products without addressing 'buzz marketing.' "People are buzzing about buzzing," says Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn. "People think it's cool. There is something almost empowering about the idea of being able to 'buzz' your way into the products people buy." “

 

Happy Holidays from Dogster

This is still my favorite social networking site.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dogster! Woof Woof! [mailto:dogsters@dogster.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:38 PM
To: Cynthia Typaldos
Subject: Happy Holidays from Dogster


Dear Dogster members,

Woof Woof Bark!

Have you seen the Holiday Picture Party yet? Over 1,550 pets have already
posted a seasonal pix. Is your fluffy part of the fun? Join and you could
win one of fifty free dog or cat books from HCI Publishing. To join the
party or take a stroll, just go to:

http://www.dogster.com/hpp/

By the way, did you know Dogster now has over 51,000 dogs and Catster more
than 15,500 cats! When Dogster launched in January I could barely imagine
10,000 doggies. Now we have two sites; 65,000 pets; 50,000 users from 130
countries; 900,000 friend-to-friend connections; 662,000 pet votes cast;
450,000 treats shared; 352,000 corralled favorites; 40,000 messages sent;
5,000 dairy writers and one really busy web server. I may have put my heart
and soul into this, but without your beautiful photos, colorful entries and
profound love for your furry family members it would be nothing but a bunch
of lonely web code! So, I sincerely thank you and offer virtual belly rubs
and head pats for a job well done.

Also we added more new features. If you want you can control who sends you
friend invites and you can optionally receive an email when you have new
Dogster private messages. We even added a holiday Gift Giving Guide to help
find something for even the pickiest pooches. What other new features would
you like to see in the site? Tell us:
http://www.dogster.com/contact.php

Thanks for loving the sites and know as the years roll by, you'll be able to
say, "I joined Dogster in the very first year!"

Safe holidays and a barktastic new year,

Ted Rheingold
Founder and local Top Dog
http://www.dogster.com

Ben Franklin on professional recommendations

This is an amazing document. It should be the warning label on the home
page of every social networking website. Franklin's so-called
"recommendation letter" is hysterically funny and reminds me of requests I
used to get thru Spoke, where I didn't know either person.

I am posting this to my blog at
http://typaldos.blogspot.com

Thanks to Victor S. Grishchenko for the link.
http://pages.plotinka.ru/~gritzko/recommendation-cite.png

The 'Blog' Revolution Sweeps Across China

The 'Blog' Revolution Sweeps Across China

December 2, 2004
By Xiao Qiang, New Scientist

Meet the bloggers who are keeping one step ahead of the censors

By Xiao Qiang, New Scientist
The "blog revolution" has a particularly revolutionary character in China,
where weblog technology is circumventing government censors by
decentralizing and popularizing the flow of information. By inviting the
Internet behind its "Great Firewall," the Chinese government has unwittingly
opened a Pandora's Box of free discourse that threatens its totalitarian
stranglehold on the media.

The entire story may be viewed at
http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2004_176/news/11478-1.html

Ohmynews - citizen journalism in South Korea

From paidcontent.org

 

--  Ohmynews Profits from Citizen Journalism :Ohmynews, the South Korean citizen's media site, is bringing in almost $500,000 a month in advertising and makes a monthly profit of about $27,000, Asia Times Online reports. (Via EditorsWeblog )The site, which broke even last year, has a full-time staff of 53, including 38 professional reporters and editors, and more than 43,000 citizen journalists paid for their contribitions. Roughly 80 percent of the content is citizen produced.

Against a backdrop on media reform in South Korea, the lengthy article explores the site's reasons for success, including the country's overwhelming adoption of the Internet as a primary source for news and its emphasis on interaction. [Nov.29: Link] | Broadband | [by staci]

 

 

article about Wikipedia in NYTimes re: Bush/Kerry

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/arts/10wiki.html?oref=login’

(registration required)

 

Very funny article about the Bush/Kerry areas of Wikipedia.

November 10, 2004

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History

By SARAH BOXER

20 reasons why you shouldn't post your picture on the internet

Thanks to SiliconValley.com for this link.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rhee/

article: online feuds a big headache

Online Feuds a Big Headache
Put a bunch of people in one place, give them some items and you're sure to start a fight. Online game companies are figuring out how to deal with it. Daniel Terdiman reports from New York.

 

 

Presidential Guidester - Choose wisely on Election Day!

Just in case you are still undecided re: voting for president.

 

What’s next? 

• “What to Eat for Breakfaster”?
• “Where to Go to Buy Groceriester?”
• “Whose Turn is it to Take out the Trashster?”
• “Should I Orderster a Ventester or Grandester or Tallster Lattester at Starbuckster?”

 

Pretty soon we will be able to use the collective opinions of our friends and colleagues, via the internetster, to make all of our decisions for us J

 

Cynthia

p.s. This is all a take-off on Friendster, which was a take-off on Napster.

---

To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: Presidential Guidester - Choose wisely on Election Day!

 

Hi, I want to recommend that you try out Presidential Guidester, which can help you decide how to vote in the upcoming election. Give it a try.

*** Presidential Guidester
http://www.PresidentialGuidester.com/?org=Decidia

 

good article on open access

Open for Business: Why Open Access is Good for Business and Science Publications

By Janice McCallum

From Shorelines newsletter

http://www.shore.com/commentary/newsanal/items/2004/20041025openaccess.html

 

25 October 2004

 

“Many B2B and STM publishers have been struggling to find the right model for distributing their content as they confront pressures that are pushing them towards opening their databases to Web and enterprise search engines. These publishers are seeking the right balance between maximizing the reach and influence of their publications while maintaining the ability to provide - and to be compensated for - premium features for their core readers. If anyone doubts if there are successful business models in an open access environment, they need only look at Google, whose share price has more than doubled since it went public. B2B and STM publishers cannot be Googles, but they can leverage the openness that user-empowering technologies provide to create richer revenue models.”

Read the full news analysis

http://www.shore.com/commentary/newsanal/items/2004/20041025openaccess.html

 

 

 

 

WSJ giving up on subscriptions?

Thanks to alert from www.paidcontent.org

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/cat_wsj.shtml

 

http://news.com.com/Extra!+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

Extra! Wall Street Journal gives away Web content

By Stefanie Olsen
http://news.com.com/Extra+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

Story last modified October 22, 2004, 1:31 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal Online, a bastion of subscription-only news on the Web, has begun giving away some content.

In recent months, the business news outfit has been sending nightly e-mail to bloggers, or online diarists, to offer up several daily stories free so that they can point to or link to them from their Web pages. And on Nov. 8, the company plans to remove its paid wall altogether for five days, for the first time in 7 years, according to the company.

For complete story go here:
http://news.com.com/Extra!+Wall+Street+Journal+gives+away+Web+content/2100-1025_3-5423054.html

 

Amazon adding community features - shared photos

Amazon is becoming a destination site.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-images/customer-image-guidelines.html/104-6017248-6987956?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B0001MBJHK&store=generic

 

Found out about this thru www.paidcontent.org

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_22.shtml#010874

Which referenced this blog entry by Steve Rubel:

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2004/10/amazon_jumps_in.html

 

Amazing list of weblog tools

Thanks to John Maloney of the Knowledge Management Cluster (KMCluster) for pointing me to this list.

 

WebLogs Compendium

http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html

 

Take a look at Xoops.  Appears to be open source.

 

 

PoliticalFriendster

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21diar.html?oref=login

Political Friendster

The site is a total clone of Friendster which in itself is pretty funny.

 

New York Times

Political Dot-to-Dot

By LISA NAPOLI

Published: October 21, 2004

 

Here's a Web site born not out of suffering from broken bones or passion for watches, but of homework. For an art class last semester at Stanford University, Doug McCune was challenged to "do something that involved the election," he said. "It was as open-ended as that."

 

The social networking site Friendster was popular on campus at the time, and it inspired Mr. McCune. "I just had the idea that since it was such a familiar concept for kids my age that using that concept to apply to politics would strike a chord," he said.

 

For the rest of the article go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21diar.html?oref=login

 

 

 

article: Evite takes on Zagat, RedHerring, 10/13/04

More social networking…

 

Evite takes on Zagat’s

The party-planning web site launches a bar and restaurant guide.

October 13, 2004

 

Evite.com, the free social-planning site, plans to announce Thursday the launch of an additional service which will feature bar and restaurant reviews powered by social networking.

 

This new feature will allow Evite users to make decisions based on personal recommendations from friends and colleagues about where to go and what to do, said Evite President John Foley. The service also will be stocked with 1 million reviews of bars and restaurants provided by Evite’s sister site Citysearch - both sites are owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp in Los Angeles.

 

As Evite touted its refurbished site as a unique entry into the already crowded social networking space, industry insiders said it was no different from such sites as Zagat Survey, Yahoo!, Friendster, Tribe, and Meetup. Analysts also questioned the new site’s advertising-only business model, which has not yet proven to be a moneymaker for similar sites.

“In general, people are not going to use a web site for a typical dinner,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp.com, a social networking web site based in San Francisco. Mr. Stoppelman pointed to Yahoo! as a potential challenger for Evite because it has separate features for party planning and restaurant reviews. The only thing missing at Yahoo! is a connection between the two, he said.

 

That is Evite’s unique selling point, said Mr. Foley - there are no other web sites that offer similar services.

 

“It’s a totally new value proposition,” said Mr. Foley. “I follow the social networking players closely and I don’t know anyone who is going directly after what we are doing.”

 

For the rest of the article go here

 

Wikipedia users are defining politics - Bigger than Jesus

Complete article here: Wiki wars

Red Herring

Wikipedia users are defining politics   When it comes to political trash-talking, there’s no finer place than the Internet. Leave it to the net-heads to duke out their differences in an online encyclopedia. Wikipedia.com allows users to easily edit encyclopedia entries on its interactive web site. Needless to say, “Bush” and “Kerry” are the two most edited entries on the entire site. The presidential hopefuls beat out both Jesus and Hitler as the most defined and redefined personages on the page. You too can change your definitional destiny in the world of wiki, but before you dive into definition editing, check out Red Herring’s Wiki wars.   Bigger than Jesus Indeed, entries for Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have become the most contentious in the history of Wikipedia, said Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikipedia Foundation, which is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have created even more debate than entries for sex and religion. As of October 8, Wikipedia’s President Bush entry had been tweaked 3,953 times. Its entry for Senator Kerry had been modified 3,230 times. By contrast, Wikipedia’s article on Jesus has only been edited 1,855 times since the site’s inception in 2001.      Complete article here: Wiki wars