I chose this morning to start combing through the many magazines that I have let pile up on my desk for the past few weeks. OMMA, B2B, Fortune, Business 2.0 (before it died), Inc., and on and on. I typically use Google Reader to keep up with news and trends but there’s just something about these printed mags that I still enjoy reading. When I have time, that is.

In the course of reading through one of them I came upon a new term: the Innernet. It was an article (and apologies to whichever magazine and author it was that mentioned it, but there’s no way I’m digging through my now overflowing trash can to find it again) that talked about the impact that social networking has had on how we use the Internet.

We’ve kind of gone in this circular phase of initially being bound to a network such as Netscape or AOL, then the web was opened up and we all abandoned any company that tried to control our experience, and now we’re almost back full circle to wanting to form an inner connection of our friends and family and spend most of our time in this new “innernet”. And I say “we” but of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, as I’m sure TS will have a comment about how I’m in love with Facebook and not everyone is a college kid looking to increase his/her friend count status.

Earlier this week I was on a panel at the eMarketing Association event in Atlanta and a decent portion of the discussion revolved around social networking and what it means to marketers. This topic continues to be hot as more and more people flock to MySpace, Facebook or other networks (oh, and Orkut, I have to mention Orkut because I have a sneaking suspicion that Google might index this post a little better the more I mention Orkut), and our experiences day-to-day are confined within these networks.

And now Microsoft just bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. This values Facebook at roughly $15 billion. So I’m no rocket scientist but I have a feeling these social networks are only going to get more popular as time goes on. And the trick will be figuring out where marketing fits within them, if it even does.

Did I mention Orkut?

First it was blogs, and then it was social networks. But that was so yesterday – today you need an open platform if you want to be hip. If you don’t believe me, just check out how Digg, MySpace, LinkedIn (sort of), and Google (yep, their platform is not open enough) have all joining Facebook in making their platforms more accessible for developers. While the idea of openness (or near openness) sounds good in theory, there are two recent cases that have proven the “wisdom of the crowd will make this site more relevant” pill is not so magical.

Alexaholics vs. Alexa

In February 2006, Ron Hornbaker created a tool that used the Alexa engine (owned by Amazon) that compared and ranked the traffic patterns of up to 5 different websites . The site was called Alexaholics.com and it became an overnight sensation among people that practiced Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While the initial relationship was warm, the situation turned sour in March 2007 when Alexa tried to shutdown Ron’s tool by demanding back the domain name through ICANN and blocking the graphs from appearing on his website. At the end of the day, Amazon/Alexa won and Alexaholics (now known as Statsaholics.com) shifted to using the graphing engine of alternate companies.

Photobucket vs. MySpace

In 2003, a photo and video sharing service called Photobucket was founded. The service was used on many sites, including Facebook, eBay and MySpace. On April 10 2007, reports surfaced on Techcrunch that MySpace started to block videos originating from Photobucket. It seems that MySpace decided that the service was so good that they rather own it, and about a month later Photobucket was owned by MySpace for $250M in cash. (Credit goes to Webb Alert for recently bringing this example to our attention).

Conclusion

The fact of the matter is that opening your platform too much can change your business model. One must strike a balance between what information you expose through your interface (aka API) and what information you keep to yourself. Otherwise, you may find that someone else is either doing it better than you or has a superior product is generating significant revenue.

In both cases, this signals time to go back to the “how to monetize this website” drawing board.

WRITER’S NOTE: To the defense of Amazon/Alexa, there is no API call for exposing site traffic graphs.

The recent news that Facebook has hit the 3 million user mark inspired me to sign up for an account. While I have a LinkedIn account, I heard that Facebook was different so I had to check it out. The cool part of this “experiment” was that (unbeknown to me) I was the perfect candidate for Facebook, because according to InformationWeek people over the age of 24 are its fastest-growing demographic on Facebook.

As a newcomer - and because I wanted to get it right - I sought guidance from the folks at Spunlogic who are Facebook veterans. Below are my ten simple things to do/be aware of if you decide to the take the plunge.

1. The registration process is open to all users. All you need is an email address. NOTE: Your date of birth is a required field. Since I found this a bit too personal, I got slightly creative with the date.
2. Easily connect to those you already know by granting Facebook temporary access to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! or Gmail email accounts. Facebook can easily add existing friends to your profile from these accounts during the setup process.
3. Search for friends from work, school, or social groups; but be selective. Unlike MySpace, Facebook is not about how many friends you know – it is about connecting to those that you want to keep in touch with, so don’t add every person that you find.
4. Let the crowd guide you in application selection. Similar to MySpace, you can add applications, or widgets, to your Facebook page based on your interests. Facebook posts alerts to your page whenever a friend adds an application, and I found this to be the perfect way to discover new widgets that I hadn’t considered.
5. Be careful who you poke! Yep, you are reading this correctly – you can poke another person. “Poking” grants to the person that you poked temporary access to your profile, so “don’t poke the bear!”
6. Send an email notification to your friend without copying all of their addresses. A big frustration with email is that people have multiple accounts so you have to copy each account to make sure that they get it. One of the hallmarks of social networking sites is that you can send a message to a friend (without even knowing their email address) and they will get notified. It’s just that simple.
7. Put a name with a face - on a picture. One of the coolest features in Facebook is the ability to identify who’s who in a picture by tagging them.
8. Update your Facebook “status” without a computer. Once you add your cell phone, you can send use SMS messages to update both your Facebook profile and send messages to your friends. In fact, by entering ‘@ changing his status using his phone.’ and sending it to FBOOK (32665) I discovered that my new status displayed “Tomer is changing his status using his phone.”
9. You can limit what you share with others. The availability of personal information has raised some privacy concerns on Facebook. To combat this, you simply can tweak your privacy settings, where you can block users or limit what personal information a specific user has access to. To learn more, you should check out the Privacy page on the Facebook blog.
10. Write on someone’s “wall.” As you would in the real world, you’re expected to check in with friends … in the case of Facebook, it’s posting messages on other friend’s “walls” (their Facebook page).

After a couple of weeks on Facebook, I’m finding that I really enjoy the experience. I’ve actually started to reconnect with high school friends that I lost touch with or wasn’t able to connect with through other social networking sites (ie: Linked-in). Since I’ve still got a ways to go, I would love to get your thoughts on “newcomer “ tips for getting more out of Facebook.

Additional Resources

Facebook Etiquette

Being Productive with Facebook

Upcoming Facebook Conference

Facebook course to be offered in Sanford

Keeping up on the pace of the ever-evolving Internet is no small task, so I wanted to do my part by sharing a few new tagging sites that I’ve recently learned about. I’m sure most of you know about del.icio.us (bookmark URLs; write tags; other people can browse through your bookmarks) and Digg (bookmark URLs; other other people can browse through your bookmarks and ‘digg’ it too; bookmarks are sorted by topic). Here’s some others that are starting to get popular:
= Furl.net (not .com)- described as ‘An easier way to save and share your online discoveries’. It’s like another Digg or del.icio.us but the homepage is very bland, which puts me off some but the site is a part of Looksmart.com, so it’s understandable.

= Simpy.com – yet another site tagging/bookmarking app but looking through their customer reviews. It seems that they could be serious competition for del.icio.us because of the other features being offering.

= reddit.com – similar to Furl.net and others where you get to post what’s new and popular, but different in the way that, based on user votes, items get dropped or raised on the list of ‘cool’.

= MyWeb.Yahoo.com – Yahoo!’s beta version of site tagging. For me, not very interesting and isn’t at all different than what the other sites are doing. As a Yahoo! fan, I’m disappointed.

= Blogmemes.com – offering the Hispanic community a way to promote and share links, stories, videos and other ways to share culture. In other words, a Spanish version of site tagging which I think is an interesting spin on things.

= ma.gnolia.com – tries to differentiate itself but is really just another site tagging app – although it is prettier than some I’ve seen.

= Stumbleupon.com – keeps track of your preferences as you search the internet, recommending similar sites to the one that you’re on. In other words, they use the search display advertising algorithm for web browsing.

= Technorati.com – Scours the web for blog posts and entries about social media items. It’s like getting your water cooler gossip fix without leaving your desk.

= Newsvine.com – An instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment. It is people actively submitting articles from online news sites about the things that they are reading/interested in/ talking about/etc. Like Technorati, but with real articles instead of blogs.

Now that you’ve been brought up to speed on tags, try out the services and tell us what you think!

Over the Labor Day weekend I caught up on the TivoCast items I downloaded from Rocketboom, and saw this clip that featured an interview with Susan Crawford about OneWebDay (OWD). OWD is a yearly celebration of the Internet that takes place on September 22^nd. What a great idea! As I listened to Crawford’s passionate statements about the yearly global event, I decided to go ahead and check out OWD’s website.

As I perused the blog, I came across one post (“Have you thanked the web lately?”) that noted “OneWebDay gives us a chance to reflect about the ways in which the internet has changed the world, and to shed light on information-flow blockades around the globe.” and provided a list of suggested activities one could take part in to participate in the global celebration. Since there’s not an event in Atlanta this year, I thought I’d share the online activities for OneWebDay to help spread the word and maybe gain interest in a local event for next year.

Their main goal this year is to encourage people to make their own short videos and post them on blip.tv or YouTube tagged “onewebday2007″. Some of the suggested topics for user generated videos include:

• how the web has changed your life
• how you’d like the web to change the world in the future
• highlights of what you’ve seen online the day you make the video
• your favorite online event ever
• something you’ve done online with other people in other countries

I think these are great topics, and if I didn’t have this thing about posting video of myself on YouTube – I’d definitely submit one. I don’t mind writing though, so I thought I’d take a minute to talk about how the web has changed my life.

Through the years I’ve had access to the Internet, I have used it as a tool to meet other people and connect in a fashion that wouldn’t be possible without the use of the web. Growing up, many of my friends were people that I met online in IRC chat rooms. I wasn’t the coolest kid in school (which I know is hard for many of you to imagine now), so I didn’t have many friends and I had a hard time confiding in others. With the anonymity of the internet, I was able to discuss issues and obtain viewpoints from others. Along the way, I found ways to express myself and build confidence in the person I was. Since those awkward years, I’ve managed to make real life friends, but I’m still in contact with a few of my IRC buddies, which makes me very happy; they were a key part in my formative years and I won’t ever forget them.

Since then, the Internet has played an even bigger role in my life. Without the Internet I:

• Wouldn’t have my awesome job
• Wouldn’t have found my awesome apartment (yay for Craigslist!)
• Wouldn’t have an efficient way to communicate with a large group of people all at once (where would we be without email or social networking sites?)
• Wouldn’t have met one of my very best friends

But enough about me…I want to hear how the Internet has changed the lives of our blog readers. For those of you without a YouTube-phobia, I encourage you to submit video for OneWebDay and share the link on this blog post. If you’d rather not create a video, at least share your thoughts and feelings on the Internet in the comments below. I’m fascinated by the different stories I’ve heard so far, I’d really like to hear yours!

Are you too good for Facebook? With your multi-million dollar homes, your Bugatti Veyron, and your fully-booked schedule of social gatherings … you can’t be expected to stay in touch with friends on Facebook, or - gasp - MySpace. That’s for “commoners.”

FINALLY, a social networking site for the rich and fabulous … aSmallWorld.com is a “private online community, which is designed for those who already have strong connections with one another.”

Before you get too excited, this is invitation-only from a “trusted member.” I mean, they can’t let just anyone in.

I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I try to give new technology a chance, I really do. And I usually credit companies for trying things, for sticking their necks out there, for attempting to innovate. But when I saw that Playboy was launching their own social networking site…well lets just say I can’t hold my tongue on this one.

On the Playboy U website, they describe the site as “an exclusive college-only non-nude social network. Here is where you can show your school pride, connect with other students and celebrate the social side of college.”

Finally, its here! A website where college kids can network with each other. It’s going to be a Golden Age! Why didn’t I think of that? Oh wait, I did think of that, a few minutes ago when I updated my Facebook status. You know Facebook, one of the most visited sites on the web. The one that was started in early 2004, and according to Wikipedia, has “the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 34 million active members worldwide”.

And I’ve been thinking about all the reasons this won’t work but the biggest reason is very simple: females largely detest Playboy. At least the females I know. Heck, most females can’t stand Hooters, let alone Playboy. So getting females to sign up for this will probably be impossible. So then there are just the guys. Why do guys use social networks? Especially college guys? It’s not to chit-chat with their buddies. It’s to meet girls. College guys pretty much have three things on their minds, and they’re all called, “meet girls”.

What’s funny is, when I read this I assumed the the Playboy headquarters must be in some place like Big Piney, Wyoming (no offense to all of our Big Pineyian readership - we’re huge there). But no, Playboy HQ is in Chicago. So they should know better.

Yeah, this is going to be a big winner.

We all know MySpace and Facebook … LinkedIn. We’re now learning about sites like Twitter, Dandelife and many more.

Well, I was reading the Adfreak blog and it seems the folks from Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, and Marketing y Medios recently launched a social networking site of their own, At The Roundtable. And, it’s pretty good. It’ll be interesting to watch this grow - and I’ll definitely be signing up. (ok, I already did.)

Certainly this was going to happen - social sites geared toward a specific industry. We already knew sites like Facebook that catered to the school set (even though the site is now for everyone), so industry social sites were only a matter of time.

So, I did a little “googling” and discovered there’s actually quite a few community-specific sites brewing right now:

• Shelfari - an online community for book lovers.
• Sermo - for physicians.
• Travbuddy - to find people traveling where you are, see reviews of places you want to go, and read experiences of users.
• MyChurch - a site for, well, Christian church-goers.
• Respectance - a social site for mourning the loss of loved ones.
• Flirtomatic - A dating site. Ok, I’ll be honest … the name just tickled me, so I had to include it.

Does anyone else know of social networking sites that are specific to an industry?

Nalini sent me this email the other day and rather than encouraging her to create a blog post about it (which is probably my first response to just about anything people at Spun tell me these days…Hey Jeff, check out this new Facebook app…Great, blog about it!…Hey Jeff, where are you going for lunch today?…Great, blog about it!), I figured I’d just throw up a quick post so people could hear about this pretty unique campaign and if you have any thoughts about it…Great, blog about it!

Enjoy:
I saw Katie checking out the site: http://www.1-18-08.com/ and thought it was really cool so I asked her to send me the link.

She also sent me the blog that had the article related to the site, which I think is even more interesting: “How do you advertise a movie with no name” because it talks about how you can generate user interest by leaving clues on websites; using emails; even phone calls.

Seen Ice Rocket yet? Yeah, its yet another search engine. It’s hard to turn around these days without running into a new search engine. I posted a while back about the newly designed Ask.com which I think is actually a great spin on search. Interestingly, I haven’t used it much since then. For some reason Google has some kind of hold on me that I can’t shake. It’s like that old group of friends from back in the day that you just can’t get away from, even though you know they’re no good and you should move on with your life but instead you set them up in your pad in Virginia so they can run illegal dog-fighting rings and then you’re not allowed to show up at training camp because you’re being indicted and…

Focus, Jeff, focus…ok, back on track. I’m not advocating that Ice Rocket is the new place you need to start your search (I haven’t really used it more than a few times so far), but they have started to make me realize how easy it is to take almost anything online and tie it into social networking/Web 2.0/etc. Check this out, when I search for “spunlogic” in their blog category, I get the following:

Notice the tabs they have which I’ve shown in their drop-down state. The first one I show is the “Subscribe” tab which allows you to create an RSS feed based on that search. Amazingly simple but who else is doing that? I quickly added this search to my Google homepage which looks like this:

Now I’ll be able to see the latest mentions of Spunlogic in blogs without having to go and run a new search. The second tab I highlighted is the “Share” tab, which allows me to share this search with other people. I added it to my Facebook page (which by the way, feel free to add me as a friend in Facebook), and it looks like this:

Now people that visit my Facebook page can see the same search results.
There are two points here that I think are important. First, the Web 2.0 phenomenon can seem very confusing to marketers but if you really think about it, there are very simple ways to take advantage of these things. Don’t over complicate it, just give people the ability to consume/share your content in the ways they are comfortable.

Which leads me to my second point - please stop trying to create your own social networks! People don’t want or need yet another place to create a profile and invest in another place to keep up with their friends and contacts. Instead, go where the user is. Allow them to add your content to the places they are already familiar with.