Changes Is Good

Back in 2006 I was working on a venture I called SocialNet (MySocialMap), based largely on research by dinah boyd and the Vister application she and Jeffery Heer put together. The idea was to build a icon based visual map of relationships across multiple social networks and layer this with a Taste Fabric styled [...]

Back in April, the much maligned, Forrester Research put out a report entitled Social Technographics, which took a stab at segmenting the social media audience. Mirroring the thinking of the good folks at Church of the Customer blog, Forrester offers 6 steps instead of the 4F’s suggested by CotC. The report helpfully points out that [...]

Sold out! How do you sell out a digital product? Why would you sell out of a digital product that can be infinitely reproduced, distributed at no cost and sold at pennies per transaction?
A few weeks ago the queen of social networks, Chazbot, pointed out a new feature introduced on Facebook called “Gifts”. These are [...]

Here are some interesting stats put out last month by the good folks at the University of Oxford. The survey is based on 1,369 respondents who where interested in the University of Oxford’s online and distance learning courses, but got sucked into taking a survey instead. The results may skew a bit techy and there [...]

While I was preparing another post I ran this chart in Alexa and was surprised to discover that Twitter is already par with Reddit in traffic and is clearly on track to overtake them. I compared it to Virb, Reddit, Vox and Multiply. Only Multiply had more traffic according to Alexa’s ranking. I [...]

GooTube isnt just the domain of scantily clad women, moronic teenage antics and copyright infringement. There’s gold in them thar servers and one nugget was sent to me by the amazing Phasing on Monday. It has captured the mood/feeling of the “whats happening?” crowd and offers some insights into thinking of the “whats next!” crowd.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE]

In ancient India, along the scenic Indus Valley, someone came up with a system of social control so good it survives to this day. It was called the Caste system and basically it codified the privileges reserved for the in-crowd and the drudgery dished out to everybody else. While the Caste system is no longer [...]

Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today that they were buying Grouper.com, one of the 30 plus UGC video sites attempting to unseat YouTube as the King of crap collection. The deal puts $65 million in the coffers at Grouper and CEO, Josh Felser, gets to keep his job. They say they may move the company [...]

(image from GapinVoid by hugh macleod)
Why is everyone is rushing to create the best walled garden for other peoples stuff? From their random musings, to their pictures and videos, it seems that everyone has bought into the idea that if you collect enough UGC (Unlikely to Generate Cash) a business will magically appear. The alchemist [...]

There is a great game, time-sink, “work-day accelerator” that I’ve been using for the past few months to help while away the time between meetings. Its called “Just Letters” and the point is… well their really is no point. You move letters on a page and spell words or make short phrases, when you can [...]