To suitably illustrate the popularity of blogging in Iran, according to Alexa.com, 4 of the top 10 sites in Iran are blogging services. The third most popular site in Iran behind Google at number 1 and Yahoo! at number 2 is BLOGFA – a free Persian blog service provider.
Surprisingly, not all the blogs are focused around politics. Topics include human rights, poetry, religion and pop culture. See visualization of the Iranian blogosphere produced by John Kelly and Bruce Etling for their paper, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere.”

Many Iranian youth are using blogging and other technologies to get around the tight restrictions they face in everyday life and are using it as an outlet to express themselves and be heard. With RapidShare.com at number 9 on Iran’s top sites list, Iranian bands are using the internet to share pop and rock music ‘underground’.
Although the Iranian government has taken some steps to control the blogosphere, including blocking content and tracking authors, the internet has created a self-organizing web of communications, making it easy to participate in and hard for government to control.
To get past the restrictions and government blocks, many Iranians are forced to change their domain names regularly or download technologies such as anti-filtering software. Even some journalists who work in the mainstream media use the internet to publish articles they cannot get past their newspaper, program editors, or the official censors.

The Government recognizes the threat blogging poses to undermine their position and authority. According to this BBC article, there have even been reports of bloggers getting arrested. Parliament is also considering a law that could impose the death penalty on bloggers found guilty of using the web to spread corruption, prostitution or apostasy (religious disaffiliation).
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his own blog, although not very active. (His last English post was December 1, 2007; the last French post was November 30, 2007; and from what I can tell his last posts in Farsi and Arabic were also in 2007.) According to Statbrain.com his site receives approximately 4,786 visits per day.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Red vs. Blue, it’s a machinima series (imagine a movie or tv show, but filmed within a video game) based on the popular Xbox 360 game – Halo. I first came across Red vs. Blue when doing some research for work; I watched a few episodes and immediately fell in love with the show. I was also lucky enough to get an interview with Burnie Burns, Co-Founder of the Roosterteeth (RT) community – and producer of the Red vs. Blue episodes.
Burnie Burns and partners, Gustavo Sorola and Geoff Fink chose machinima because it’s an efficient way to produce animation – 3 people can produce around five minutes/ week. They then immediately post the video on the Web – for free.

Some people may not immediately see the value in this business model – but in this case (and many others) it has proven to be very successful. Burnie and his team are able to do something they love full time, and still give it away for free free. The revenues they make just come from other, non-traditional or unconventional sources (so to speak).

This wired magazine article talks about ‘How T-Shirts keep online content free’. According to the article Burnie started selling shirts and caps online (based on the show). “Within months, he was filling hundreds of orders a week, generating enough revenue to pay everyone a salary.” – Pretty impressive. Now if you go on the RT community they’ve expanded their offering to include the aforementioned DVD box sets, calendars, books, music and accessories like mugs and messenger bags. You may think: ‘why would someone buy something they can get online for free?’ Well, I’m a perfect example.

After learning about Red vs. Blue I told my younger sister about the show. She loved it so much that, (no exaggeration) she has literally watched the entire series (all 6 seasons) at least five times over. The addiction to the show, quality of the video, the experience of watching it in your living room on your tv, the fact that you don’t have to click on another link to watch the next episode are all good reasons (to me) to justify the purchase of the DVD box set. To prove that I’m not the only person willing to shell out some $$ to purchase ‘value added’ merchandise this blog post proves that the ‘free’ model is a viable business model and that many others are looking to buy the RvB DVD sets for the holidays.

One final note: T-shirts and DVDs aren’t the only way the RT guys make money. They’ve gotten so good at creating machinima that other video game companies have approached them to create machinima TV commercials or promotional spots for them. So although they don’t make money directly off of the product they spend all their time creating, revenue has come to them in myriad ways.
Here’s the first episode of RvB – The Blood Gulch Chronicles to get you started. But please don’t blame me if you get addicted!

for more please go here or here. I heart RvB!

Messages your plant will send you include:

• “Water me, please.” when the soil gets too dry
• “URGENT! Water me!” if you choose to ignore the previous message
• “Thank you for watering me.” after you perform your duties as a responsible plant owner
• “You overwatered me.” when you go a little overboard

The device comes with a built-in internet jack and prongs you stick in the soil to monitor moisture levels. You then subscribe to your plant’s twitter feed (the username and login info. comes on the package) and it will update you when it needs some TLC. The kit comes unassembled, so you’ll get to break out your trusty soldering iron and build your own translation circuit.

This wonderful gizmo can be yours for only $99.99! A bit pricey if you ask me, but perhaps I’m not a dedicated plant-lover (although dedicated horticulturists probably wouldn’t need this gadget).

Although these findings are concerning, there are a few things that don’t quite make sense to me. The study was conducted over a period of ten years. If someone is at a job with a ‘bad boss’ and it’s affecting them to a point where their health is declining (with a possibility of death) – could they not choose one of the following three options?

1. look for a new job
2. ask to switch departments
3. try talking to their boss about their concerns

These suggestions are in lieu of letting it escalate to a point where you would have a heart attack. Secondly, work is just work. Is it possible that some people just take things too seriously and are ‘bringing work home’ with them? Home should be your sanctuary, somewhere you can relax and unwind. I guess it’s easier said than done, but perhaps if those men (I refer to men specifically since the study was male based) kept their work at work they could have improved their health. Are these generational differences in the workplace? I’m assuming that the study candidates were from an older generation since the study was conducted over ten years. Would someone in, say the Net Generation or even Generation X stick it out like the individuals in the study did? Or would they go look for other opportunities.

Culbert asserts that performance reviews “destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line.” He goes on to outline seven points explaining why performance reviews aren’t the answer. Although the goal of performance reviews is to give employees feedback on how they’re doing and look at how they can improve, I find that many people I talk to (colleagues and friends from school) all find performance review time a bit nerve-racking. But why is that? I know performance reviews aren’t meant to make employees uncomfortable, affecting morale and communications. 360-degree feedback has since been introduced but Culbert also has a few criticisms regarding this method. I know that it’s important to give feedback to employees, but maybe the format needs to be improved…
(Please keep in mind these are my interpretations of his seven points. I strongly suggest you read the full article to get your own sense of his arguments.)

1. Two parties with misaligned goals. When walking into a performance review the boss’ goal of discussing areas of improvement don’t match up with the employee’s goal of promotion and compensation.
2. The false belief that performance affects pay. Culbert argues that pay is primarily determined by market forces (which makes sense – just look at our current economic situation – are many people expecting big raises/bonuses this year?) and most jobs are placed in a pay range even before the employee is hired.
3. As objective as we try to be – there are always personal biases. This is a fundamental conflict. Depending on one’s position, their opinion and view will differ. This is where Culbert also brings up the “360-degree feedback”. When feedback is anonymized that creates more opportunity for various parties to further their personal agenda since there is no accountability associated with their review.
4. Everyone is different – “once size does not fit all”. Performance reviews often revolve around a predetermined checklist. This is why people may focus more on pleasing their boss than doing a good job. Since a happy boss will (theoretically) leave you with a higher score.
5. Employees are reluctant to go to their bosses for help (for fear that it will reflect badly on their performance review). It makes sense that employees would go to their bosses for help, guidance and improvement. But, “thanks to the performance review, the boss is often the last person an employee would turn to”.
6. Disrupts teamwork. The most important type of teamwork is the one-on-one relationship between a boss and their subordinates. But in performance reviews, as opposed to taking the stance “how will we work together as a team”, it’s “how are you performing for me”.
7. At the end of the day… performance reviews don’t improve corporate performance.

After proposing all of these flaws, there must be an alternative. The one that Culber offers up isn’t that bad. As opposed to doing performance reviews, managers should start doing performance previews. This way the focus is not on the past, and things that cannot be changed. Instead the manager and employee can work together to figure out what needs to be done in the future and how goals may be met. This performance preview wouldn’t be done yearly, it would be done whenever either the boss or the employee has a feeling things aren’t working well. Past performance may be used for illustrative purposes and this is an ideal way to evaluate your boss as well and get a two-way conversation going. It then becomes the boss’s responsibility to develop the employee based on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

I guess performance review isn’t something that people talk about too openly, but do other people feel funny (if not nervous) about performance reviews? Is Culbert’s solution a viable one?

It’s called FiveThirtyEight.com – the Five Thiry Eight stands for the number of electors in the Electoral College.

I’m a big believer in numbers and the use of statistical analyses and simulations to achieve the most objective view possible – and the writers of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver and Sean Quinn do just that.

This blog is a perfect illustration of the benefits of Web 2.0. Now, citizens have access to data and for those who are intersted and capable in doing so, they can use the data to develop and objective assessment. They know exactly where the information is coming from, how it’s being used and the best part – they can share it with the world.

In the spirit of transparency and to prove that their blog provides a well-informed, trust-worthy view the authors offer full disclosure; providing their names, explaining their day jobs, even going as far as stating who they support. However, the key is that they also disclose, as clearly as possible, their methodology for the results on their page.

Here is the process overview on their FAQ page:

Process Overview

The basic process for computing our Presidential projections consists of six steps:

1. Polling Average: Aggregate polling data, and weight it according to our reliability scores.

2. Trend Adjustment: Adjust the polling data for current trends.

3. Regression: Analyze demographic data in each state by means of regression analysis.

4. Snapshot: Combine the polling data with the regression analysis to produce an electoral snapshot. This is our estimate of what would happen if the election were held today.

5. Projection: Translate the snapshot into a projection of what will happen in November, by allocating out undecided voters and applying a discount to current polling leads based on historical trends.

6. Simulation: Simulate our results 10,000 times based on the results of the projection to account for the uncertainty in our estimates. The end result is a robust probabilistic assessment of what will happen in each state as well as in the nation as a whole.

I encourage you all to go take a look and determine for yourselves how accurate these predictions are. I know this is a blog I’ll be visiting daily.

EA games’ director of corporate communications, Holly Rockwood told GigaOm by e-mail: “I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout.”

This story has also appeared in The New York Times (written by Wagner Jame Au of GigaOm) and Advertising Age and has taken a life of its own and developed a viral quality – with good reason, it’s a pretty good story.

With 20 days left until the Presidential election this is a great way for politicians to reach the 18-34 demographic (although, of course, ther are many people outside of that demographic who game). According to NPD group there are 174 million gamers (in the US) who personally play games on PC/Mac or video game systems, 17 percent (or 29.58 million) of those are Console Gamers. XBox 360 alone has reached 10 million console sales in the US. When you take the time to look, those are some pretty compelling numbers.

So, is advertising in video games a good idea? Well, if companies like Coca Cola, Harveys, Nike and Burger King can advertise through these mediums, why can’t a political campaign? Clearly the placement in games is important since a political campaign may not want to be associated with, say… GTA IV. But I’d say that this ad has generated a good buzz, at least within the blogosphere and gaming community. (On a slightly separate but related note, GigaOm points to a Brandweek study conducted by Neilson Games that showed of those surved a full 11% said they’d purchased a brand advertised in a game.)

Some blogs like GamePolitics have pointed out that Obama refers to gaming in a negative light, but, to be fair (at least for kids) there’s a time to play video games (which has its set of associated benefits) and there’s a time to do homework (which, I would argue, also has its set of associated benefits).

The UCLA  research team found that while activities like reading books produced significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities… web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain controlling decision-making and complex reasoning (only in experienced web users).

Left: Brain activity while reading a book (experienced web surfer)

Right:Brain activity while surfing the web (experienced web surfer)

Lead researcher and study author Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center of Aging notes, “Just a simple, everyday computer task seems to be activating neural circuits… It’s possible that this is something that strengthens our brains as we do it.”

Now this research is focused around surfing the Web, but I wonder if activities using Web 2.0 tools such as social networking or even tagging and signing up for RSS feeds would have similar benefits while, at the same time, offering a more interactive medium.

I know sitting in front of a computer all day surfing the web or playing video games isn’t ‘good for you’,  but at least for middle aged and older individuals, sitting in front of a computer has its benefits.

For further information on this study please see these related BBC and Yahoo! articles.

Building on the idea of reality mining, Wakoopa is a social network attached to a small software tracker. The tracker updates every 15 minutes with the programs you’ve used. It’s a great way to visualize what programs you’re using, the ones that your friends are using, and (what I think is the most ingenious part about this site) the most used applications overall. What better way is there to decide what program you should use for say, managing your operating processes or to edit images, than by seeing what applications others are using, and which ones are used most. It must mean something if a lot of people are using it, right?

Wakoopa aggregates the data into pretty charts and top 10 lists that are easily navigated.

The beauty of reality mining is that the user doesn’t have to do any work at all (other than, in this case, the initial download of the tracker). Otherwise, the user can go about their daily lives, business as usual while the site is gathering useful and interesting information.

However, as Ian Da Silva pointed out about reality mining in a previous post, how far is too far? There is inherent value in opening up and sharing information, but we’re nearing a fine line. Don’t get me wrong, I think Wakoopa is a great site and innovative application, but as we continue to push the boundaries, we will eventually reach a point where we give away too much?

It was created by a young, talented kid who lives in Japan called Adrian, aka kidguru. With a straightforward, easy to understand video, kidguru very articulately explained how someone looking to connect their laptop to a tv would go about doing it. Going to his YouTube channel I discovered that he’s been doing this for almost a year now and has turned his site Tech-World into a blogging, vlogging, podcasting, twitter site/community. He’s managed to turn a hobby into a paying job, with sponsors and understands the value of creating community around his videos. He does product and app reviews, and tutorials among other educational things.
KidGuru’s YouTube channel now has over 1,500 subscribers and over 47,000 channel views, and he is now an official YouTube partner. The YouTube partner program is an ad revenue sharing program to reward users that frequently post original content and who have a steady following of thousands of viewers.

If you have any tech related questions I suggest checking out Kidguru’s channel or sending him an e-mail!

If you go to the YouTube partner sites you’ll see all the different YouTube partner channels, the vast majority of which are Net Gen (Net Generation – The children of the baby boom; the generation that has grown up with the Internet) using YouTube to express their creativity and build a community around something they love. Some great examples are KevJumba (#6 most subscribed of all time with over 285,000 subscribers and close to 9 million channel views); HappySlip ( #11 most subscribed of all time with over 205,000 subscribers and close to 7million channel views); and VenetianPrincess (# 17 most subscribed of all time with 153,000 subscribers and almost 2.5 million channel views).

These aren’t small numbers, they are reaching a huge number of people and are influential in their own way. The best part is that from what I can tell, they’re not doing it for any particular reason other than to have fun doing something they love and sharing it with the world. Literally. If they can make money at the same time, that’s even better.

Web 2.0 and the tools made available have changed the face of American politics. Not only are campaigns finding new ways to reach out to citizens, they’re also finding ways to engage them to become active participants and volunteers. Some people may argue that the ‘old people’ (so to speak), are the ones that vote; but for this election, Obama has mobilized the largest demographic – the children of the baby boom. And coincidentally, many of them are now coming of age and have the power to make a difference. The numbers speak for themselves. As Don Tapscott wrote in a previous post – During the Iowa preliminary, Obama had won by a landslide in millennial votes. His 28,000 vs. Clinton’s 5,400 and Edwards’ 6,900.

Web operations can no longer be in the corner of political campaigns, rather it now plays an important role at the center. However, where there is opportunity there is also danger. Sites like stop-him-now.com are everywhere, feeding into the misconceptions surrounding a candidate like Obama. According to a Pew Internet survey, 12% of Americans believe that Obama is Muslim – while he is, in fact – Christian . Obama’s website has a full page dedicated to “fight the smears” – calling on his supporters to help spread the word behind the misconceptions.

With political commentaries and videos (on air and on YouTube) it’s amazing the rate at which these stories can spread and make an impact – either positive or negative. There are certain organizations that are dedicated to making YouTube documentaries and political videos such as Brave New Films that produced clips like McCain’s Mansion Story that spread like wildfire over the blogosphere. Within a week of being posted on the net, it already has over 350,000 views. 35% of Americans have watched online political videos while 39% of Americans have used the internet to access “unfiltered campaign materials”.  If a campaign fails to recognize these changes, they’ll very likely be left in the dust…

There are currently 63 languages open for translation on Facebook and they will be adding translation capability for languages that read from right-to-left such as Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew.
Now that’s pretty impressive, how much money and how much time do you think it would have taken if Facebook had hired a person, or even a team of people to translate their site into French or Spanish (let’s not even start thinking about 63 languages).

He set up the website NYGirlOfMyDreams.com with a detailed illustration of himself and the girl along with other specifics of the subway (non) encounter, he even had his number and e-mail openly available.

And through the power of people and the Internet… Patrick found his dream girl – within 48 hours! A friend of hers happened to be on the site and sent him an e-mail saying he thinks he knows the girl he’s looking for. A texted photo later confirmed that he had found his girl.

After he found her he put up an announcement saying that he had found her and thanked everyone who helped pass along his message. The two had started dating, but have since broken up. Not the fairy tale ending I was looking for, but still an extremely romantic story with an amazing modern twist.

It’s understandable that lawyers would be leery of these services. Because these technologies are new, they are often not well understood and have negative perceptions attached. When professionals hear the term social networking they automatically think of Facebook and university students posting pictures from wild parties. But if you look a little deeper, the enterprise benefits to these types of technology are obvious. Not only are they more efficient in many ways (see Anthony William’s previous post of Wiki collaboration leads to happiness) they also help reduce costs.

Lawyers need to take the time to understand these technologies and look for constructive ways to incorporate these tools into organizations as opposed to automatically shutting out the idea.

There are now new services for lawyers such as Legal OnRamp that act as a space for lawyers to discuss issues and are a great way for lawyers and law firms to get their name out and show their expertise… As CEO of Legal OnRamp Paul Lippe says “Law is naturally a very social activity… long before Facebook lawyers developed Martindale-Hubbell and Chambers to connect.” (Full disclosure: nGenera Insight is currently working in collaboration with Legal OnRamp on a Law 2.0 white paper)

In the past few weeks I’ve been invited to several legal sessions with different law firms and in-house counsel discussing the potential of Web 2.0 technologies. Many of the concerns addressed are similar: IP, privacy, copyright, trade secrets etc. For the most part, many of these issues are easily addressed. Many organizations already have policies in place to address many of these issues such as simple terms of service, disclaimers and employee blogging, social computing guidelines. The BBC’s Guidelines are a great example.

These technologies aren’t a magic bullet. It takes time and a carefully thought out plan for these tools to be effective. But there’s a reason behind the buzz and why these technologies are starting to pop up in organizations. Similar to what happened with e-mail (when it was first introduced lawyers presented a plethora of issues with that technology) lawyers are now some of the most prolific users of e-mail. And as Paul Lippe puts it – there is a great opportunity for lawyers to go from worst to first when it comes to using social tools.

Although comedic in nature, these diagrams give you something to think about. How much of the criticsms of Enterprise 2.0 out there are well-founded? Argued by people who have actually tried to use the technology, and how much of it is just ‘hot air‘ based on peoples’ perceptions.

Three of my favourites:

I encourage you to go to the original post and view all 10 charts.

Clearspace’s social networking function offers detailed profiles of your co-workers as well as a ‘mini-feed’ to keep users updated on what their colleagues are working on. Its wiki platform helps deal with long chain e-mail responses, speaking to the ‘wiki happiness’ diagram that Anthony Williams pointed us to in one of his previous posts. Clearspace’s blogging capability lets employees express their interests, opinions and talk about areas within their expertise. Most importantly – all of this is searchable.

A Forbes article featuring Jive points to a blind-test of several collaboration options, including Clearspace and SharePoint (the dominant enterprise collaboration suite, created by Microsoft). “People voted unanimously for Clearspace and were so won over they made bumper stickers that said ‘Friends don’t let friends use SharePoint.’”

Jive understands its competitive environment and sees the need to adapt its strategy to the demands and restrictions of the market since it is up against heavyweights like Microsoft (Sharepoint has over 100 million licenses sold since 2001). In an interview with CIO magazine, Jive’s CEO Dave Hersh points out that around 80% of their customers have SharePoint.

Although Sharepoint is good at work flows and files, it’s not as good with working with web content and online collaboration. To compete with companies like Microsoft, Jive has developed Clearspace to be extensible (understanding that it would be near impossible to convert all of Sharepoint’s established customers): it has the ability to integrate with Sharepoint while Jives’ discussion forum software is bundled into Oracle and SAP’s portal applications.

For more articles highlighting jive and clearspace go to their news section.

The particular case I’m thinking about (and many of you may already be familiar with) is the initial altercation between a Baltimore police officer – Officer Rivieri and a 14 year old boy – Eric Bush. This video initially surfaced on YouTube in February 2008 and has since caused quite a stir.
You can watch the original video here: … but there’s more to this story.

The video garnered a lot of attention on YouTube and soon news agencies were starting to report the story:

This police officer was a 17 year veteran of the force – and it will be difficult to ever find out how many others he’s treated this way. But while people wouldn’t naturally associate the advent of Web 2.0 to increased transparency in the police force now regular citizens, in this case teenagers, have the tools to record the incidence (probably on a cell phone) and upload it to YouTube for the world to see – literally.

Since the video has surfaced Officer Rivieri has been suspended with pay and is under investigation.
After viewing the video online (and seeing the clip in the news) a second individual came forward with a new video of Officer Rivieri, showing that it wasn’t the first time he had lost his cool.

In officer Rivieri’s case – he even mentioned at the very end of the first video what I think was supposed to be “I better not see this video on YouTube”… while being aware of that possibility Rivieri still had no idea of the ramifications this video would bring about.

The iphone is just one example of the many devices that users are looking to customize. Another interesting gadget that has been a target to hackers is the Wiimote (remote control for the Wii); and there are some pretty cool applications that have been developed for it. One of the more popular hackers is Johnny Lee who has posted a series of how-to videos on YouTube for his various hacks. Lee has figured out ways to mod the Wiimote to do some amazing things such as ‘tracking your fingers with the Wiimote’, and creating ‘low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboards using the Wiimote’. These different hacks are possible because the Wiimote’s expansion port protocols are “very open”.

What’s surprising (or maybe not so surprising – more disappointing) to me, as I learnt in a Globe and Mail article is despite Lee’s popularity Nintendo has never contacted him about his innovations and refused to comment on the [Globe and Mail] story. Companies have a huge opportunity to leverage the wisdom of crowds – these developer / hacker communities.

I’m sure companies like Nintendo and Apple have amazing talent inside their company, but this is only a fraction of the smart people in the world who can continuously improve and innovate on your products “the world as your oyster” so to speak as opposed to “your company as your oyster” (similar to Don’s frequently referred to GoldCorp story). These hackers look at products a company releases and thinks of different ways to make it better; why not take advantage of them and help support these initiatives? In certain cases companies may view hackers’ activities as detrimental but it’s all a matter of perspective and how a company chooses to approach these situations. There is a huge opportunity here to find interesting and functional uses to products that regular people (or even respective company employees) would never have dreamed of doing.

For a taste of what you can do with your very own Wiimote here’s Johnny Lee’s video for Head tracking for Desktop virtual reality displays using Wiimote:

A story like that, in the past may have merited an article in the local newspaper but never would have the traction to appear in primary Canadian news sources. But in this case, the Canadian press, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and the National Post all ran stories on the incident. Nicole Lilliman’s story was also appearing on TV and radio. The wide news coverage garnered a lot of interest in the story and increasing numbers of people were talking and blogging about it. Certain individuals even suggested organizing boycotts to the popular Canadian coffee and doughnut chain in article comment sections and blog posts.

This firing at a local London ON Tim Horton’s became a PR disaster for Timmy’s and had the potential to escalate even further. Luckily in this particular case Tim Horton’s management dealt with the situation appropriately. As opposed to staying on the defensive and siding with the franchise managers’ decision, head office acknowledged that Lilliman’s single timbit giveaway “wasn’t a ground for dismissal” and sent a personal apology to Lilliman in addition to rehiring her at a different location to avoid any awkwardness.

These actions, for the most part, have appeased many angry and appalled Tim Horton’s customers. The decision to fire Lilliman was made by three individual managers (something any reasonable customer can see) and Tim Horton’s was quick to admit wrong-doing as well as immediately rectify the situation.

Although I understand that point and agree with it to a certain extent, I do not believe that it’s impossible for companies who don’t have the best reputation offline to do well in an online environment such as social networking. Through my research I’ve come across a surprising example of one company that has done incredibly well online; a company whose success is quite unexpected.

The company I’m referring to is Microsoft. I would argue that, comparable to Wal-Mart, there are many different interest groups that like to rally against it, but for some reason, Microsoft has managed to develop strong and healthy communities.
The difference: Microsoft has focused on its strengths and has managed to deliver tangible results. The best example, Microsoft’s “i’m making a difference” campaign on Facebook has 67,800 members in its group and has raised $1,409,788 for different charities since March 2007.

I’m is an initiative that donates to a social cause every time a user sends an instant message (IM). Windows Messenger has partnered with ten charitable organizations: The American Red Cross, Boys & Girls clubs of America, National AIDS Fund, The Humane Society of the United states, ninmillion.org, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Sierra Club, UNICEF, StopGlobalWarming.org and Susan G. Komen for the cure. “Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organizations dedicated to social causes.”

Windows has taken a non-aggressive approach to advertise its brand, leading people to associate it with a charitable cause and framing Microsoft’s MSN messenger service in a positive light. This initiative is mutually beneficial since it allows Microsoft to build goodwill among consumers while at the same time gain more MSN Messenger users since it has always lagged behind AOL’s AIM service in the United States. With social networks, companies have an opportunity to develop applications or groups that may not be directly related to selling products but can create goodwill and brand equity in other ways.

Not directly related to social networking, but another creative way Microsoft has gotten people to use its IM service (this time catered to Canadians) by holding a contest giving Canadian msn users a daily chance to win $1,000. Users simply have to log in and register once, and they are automatically entered into the daily draw. Users may then increase their chance of winning the money by sharing news of the contest to friends on facebook or on their Windows Live “Space”.

While this definitely isn’t the case in a communist regime, many democratic countries are looking at using Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate collaboration and engagement with its citizens:

1. Citizens as consumers of government services
2. Citizens as employees of the public service
3. Citizens as stakeholders in the policy making process.

While this isn’t a practice that is endorsed in Cuba, it hasn’t stopped its citizens from using different Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs to make a difference and reach out not only within their own country – but around the world.

The web has become an outlet for Cubans to voice opinions on their government and provide outsiders a glimpse inside their country.

However, starting something like a blog isn’t an easy task. One Cuban blog that has gained quite a bit of popularity over the past year is Generacion Y written by Yoani Sanchez. It hasn’t been easy for Sanchez to keep up her blog. She needs to dress like a tourist and sneak into hotels that have Web access at $6/hour – while average salaries in Cuba are around $20/month.

The black market in Cuba for digital electronics and dial-up internet is quite extensive, with thousands of Cubans paying around $40/ month for access bought through third parties overseas or stolen by foreign providers. And blogs like Sanchez’s have amassed a decent following inside and outside of Cuba.
As Sanchez writes on her blog these changes are irreversible and the Cuban government will find that it will be increasingly difficult to control its citizens’ actions now that they’ve gotten a real ‘legal’ taste of the Web.

for more on the Generacion Y blog and others, see the Globe and Mail articel here.

Facebook’s engineers have developed the Facebook ‘Translations’ application. The application provides a list of words and phrases that require translation, the user submitted translations are then voted on and lastly the translations are tested and verified. Users with the most accepted translations are featured on their language’s ‘Translations Leaderboard’. This is an ingenious way for Facebook harness its loyal user base to help it expand and grow since there will always be users willing to help translate (for free). This point is further reinforced since over 100,000 users have installed the Translations application. A key piece to the translations is ensuring the culture relevance with a tone that is consistent with local cultures. So what better group of people to translate your site than the people who are actually using it?

The main points of criticism addressed in the Globe and Mail article are (1) Why doesn’t Facebook pay for translators and why would individuals want to help Facebook make more money?… and (2) Concern over the quality of posts. Although I recognize these as legitimate concerns, they are separate from the points I’m addressing in my post. Facebook wants to grow and expand as quickly as possible, hiring translators is a slow process and it’s harder to guarantee that the translation will be written in the tone you want (this is opposed to the user submitted, voting and rating system). What’s more, there are users who are excited to be a part of the expansion process of a platform they use daily – helping to bring it to ‘their’ language. The voting system and reporting feature are designed to ensure a certain level of quality and there are other complimentary solutions Facebook can employ to deal with this issue such as hiring professional translators to look at the end product as a final copy edit etc.

Overall, I think using the wisdom of crowds to translate its website is a great idea and shows Facebook’s faith in the Web 2.0. Currently it’s building Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch sites. Spanish, French and German versions were launched this year. The Spanish versions took four weeks to complete while the German version took two weeks.

It’s amazing the difference a few years makes in the daily lives of young people. When I was young (and I’d like to think I’m still relatively young), at elementary school, the only way to keep in touch with classmates was through snail mail (at that age I wasn’t allowed to, nor was I interested in, using the phone) – and snail mail definitely isn’t the best way to communicate with anyone. But even as I got older, I never got to use technologies such as IM to keep in touch with my friends at school during the summer time or to discuss questions about homework. (I remember when I first started using IM at the end of high school, probably around OAC, my friends thought I was really geeky and nerdy – my IM use really took off when I got to university though). I look at how my sisters study and do work now in high school and it seems like light-years have passed from the archaic idea of dictionaries, encyclopedias and even libraries – who uses books these days anyways? When you have Wikipedia! Why do you need to consult any of those ‘old-school’ resources when everything can be found online?

Now, social networks add an entirely new dimension of communication and keeping in touch; but along with these opportunities, there are risks. Although most social networking sites have a minimum age policy of 13 or 14, none of these are actively enforced and when young kids, say 13 or 14 (let’s not even talk about any younger than that) come online, realistically speaking, they’re probably not aware of the implications associated with having a profile online with pictures and personal information. What’s more, many of them may not entirely understand the idea of privacy and controlling those privacy settings. Even greater cause for concern however, as discovered from this survey, 16% of parents polled don’t know if their child’s profile is visible to all and 53% of children say their parents don’t set rules for them when using social networking sites. These numbers may be a bit scary, but if you think about it, there are also huge implications for this generation – the “Net Generation” – in the workforce. If people think that the kids graduating today are ‘bad’ and grew up differently, then what about the kids that will be graduating 10-15 years from now?

Here’re some interesting stats pulled out from the OfCom research (pulled from an article on the BBC):

• 49% of children 8-17 have an online profile
• 22% of 16+ have an online profile
• 59% of 8 to 17-year-olds use social networks to make new friends
• 16% of parents do not know if their child’s profile is visible to all
• 33% of parents say they set no rules for their children’s use of social networks
• 43% of children say their parents set no rules for use of social networks

A social graph is a set of relationships, appropriate to a given purpose – for example, my social graph for work colleagues is different than my social graph for friends (or a party). I wouldn’t necessarily want to show these two groups the same things.

Now, whether or not Facebook is great is yet to be determined, but what I do know is that Facebook has made the smart move of improving their platform to offer users what they’re calling: ‘more privacy controls’. Facebook has introduced these additional ‘privacy’ settings to allow users to control who may see what and users can get pretty specific.

First of all, Facebook now lets users group their friends into different ‘lists’. Second, for each function on Facebook (online status, photos, personal info, profile…) a user can choose if they want ‘Everyone on Facebook’, ‘Friends of Friends’, ‘All Friends’, ‘Some Friends’, or ‘Only Me’ to see it. OR they may choose any of those options, for example ‘All Friends’ – EXCEPT for ‘this list’ of people or particular individuals.

After playing around with the new settings a bit (ok, I admit that I was pretty excited about this new functionality and was testing out how it worked with co-workers yesterday) these additional tools are slightly complicated to use. But then again, relationships are complicated and it takes time and thought to manage them offline… so why would it be any different online?