Three social media giants, three giant media announcements: Ning, Twitter, Facebook. In only seven days, these three companies have announced major changes to their products and/or business models. Is it a sign of things to come? How will each of these companies answer the question of how to turn its growth into revenue?

A quick synopsis of each situation:

Twitter. According to comScore, Twitter.com had 22.3 million unique visitors in March, up from 524,000 a year ago (excluding those who use third party apps), but it has been criticized for its inability to monetize those users, until now. Twitter is finally launching an ad system called “Promoted Tweets” that will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts (a controversial move), based on how relevant they might be to a particular user. You can watch a video about it here.

Fred Wilson, a Twitter board member, dropped a bomb on Twitter’s third-party developers, telling them to stop “filling holes in the Twitter product,” and start creating “something entirely new on top of Twitter.” Twitter has since purchased Atebits, the company responsible for the Tweetie iPhone app, and is renaming it Twitter for iPhone. They will also releasing an official app for the Android Phone OS. It looks like Twitter is prepared to compete with, and potentially replace the companies who have built applications around its ecosystem. So much for playing nice.

Facebook. On the surface, Facebook’s move doesn’t seem like much, but the Facebookipedia concept of creating ‘community pages’ could be an incredibly stealthy move to target advertising to users without them even realizing it.  Community pages take the concept of a Facebook “fan page” and apply them to concepts, places, and ideas, rather than brands. When prompted by a dialog box that pops up on their profiles, to “like” community pages that tie into what’s already entered into their profiles, users can connect to the community pages for their hometowns and schools, and convert the “interests” entered in their profiles to link to pages. This increases the amount of metadata for each user and makes search much easier for everyone. It seems like a win/win proposition though. Users of Facebook can contribute to, and potentially benefit from the increased access to shared knowledge via wiki-like pages, and Facebook can gain from the amount of data on each of its users in order to have better targeted ads. Note the implementation of this change also coincides with Facebook’s decision to step up its privacy policy/settings.

Ning. Ning (“peace” in Chinese) is a platform that allows anyone to set up their own social network. After over five years as CEO, Gina Bianchini resigns, and is replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. One month later, the company decides to phase out its free product, and lays off 40% of its workforce (from 167 to 98).  In an interview, Bianchini mentions that about 13% of Ning’s revenue stream is from paid, premium services, an amount that contributes to what some are estimating to be roughly $10 million in total annual revenue. This appears, however, to be an optimistic ball park figure, and is likely to be lower since not all users are necessarily be paying the maximum of $55/month for pro services.  As stated by Rosenthal in his staff memo, “we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity” – the big opportunity being the premium service, not the model supported by advertising.

Ning’s approach sounds completely different from Bianchini’s interview, which occurred not too long before her departure, and the model diverges from both Facebook and Twitter.

Although I do love the Ning platform, the recent changes to Facebook that enables users to be more ‘community minded’ will cause the orphaned communities of the once ‘free’ Ning to jump ship to Facebook, where they will continue to ‘deal’ with the ads, and Facebook will benefit from Ning’s lost revenue. Other providers, such as Posterous and Tumblr, are welcoming new users with open arms. Posterous is committing to building a Ning blog importer, and BuddyPress has politely offered helpful resources to those looking to make the transition, including a user importer as well. Even with a 40% cut in staff, a revenue stream that accounts for 13% of Ning’s overall income doesn’t appear to be enough to support the company. It’s a risky move. Here’s hoping the next generation of their product will be astounding. As for Twitter and Facebook, the focus on metadata and data mining for advertising purposes could provide them with a large number of earnings. The only difference is that Twitter is being much more direct in its approach.

We’re at a crux for social networks. These platforms have enabled communication in new ways, increased transparency and knowledge sharing, facilitated new business and educational models, and have shifted the landscape of marketing and advertising. However, without the necessary revenues to support themselves, these platforms could disappear. Do we want another bubble? What do you think about the decisions made by these three companies? Do you agree with Rosenthal’s decision in changing Ning’s business model, and is this the reason for Bianchini’s departure from the company?

OKCupid gathers personal information based on community-submitted questions that users answer. This allows the company to better match couples based on the unique values of each person. Their slogan is: “We do math to get you dates,” which includes going so far as to create decision charts that visualize the formulas leading to love (or at least a date) for various individuals. With their data, OKCupid reveals information about the effectiveness of various romantic approaches, male and female attitudes and biases, insights on what behaviors result in conversations, behavioral changes based on age, and a variety of other findings.

From a research perspective, OKCupid is a fascinating subject. I’ve references them before in a post about labor incentives. Today’s post is about the potential for data-enabled business models and new markets for user data. Even more insightful than some of the racier findings from OKCupid (such as the sexual appetite of the average 40-year-old Floridian woman), user activity on this site generates a tremendous amount of data that extends beyond the realm of dating and could be useful to other groups and industries.

For example, OKCupid is able to generate detailed demographic and geographic data about political views, social issues, and public opinion on issues ranging from contraception to First Amendment rights to acceptable means of protest.

What OKCupid is doing not unique—often the collection of data can yield new insights and provide additional contexts beyond its intended purpose. As more and more customer and user processes become digitized, what we’re going to see over the next few years will be the growth of data-driven strategies that gather, interpret, and present data for new uses and new audiences. The abundance of data and relative scarcity of reliable sense-making information will create a flourishing market for data and analytics. In a recent nGenera survey we found that already over 40% of respondents say that data from external sources leads to competitive advantage.

Two years ago I wrote about how the idea that online social networks will make money selling eyeballs (advertising) or products is missing the entire value proposition of a social network. The real opportunity is in harnessing the rich data that is created by those participating in conversations and interacting with each other. Companies that have social platforms are increasingly seeing a business model around providing free services and aggregating anonymized customer and user data for sale.

OKCupid has a very open approach to data, but it’s easy to imagine a variety of groups—lobbyists, politicians, economists, sociologists, and so on—that might be interested enough in this type of information to pay for it, especially if presented in interactive charts that let the user filter based on factors such as age, race, gender, employment, and so on. If you think about the possibilities available when data extends beyond the realm of online dating, you see that companies in a variety of industries could use customer-generated interaction and polling data to gain a deep understanding of what drives purchasing behavior, brand loyalty, and even the desire for new products.

“Or tell that girl in the car next to you that you think she’s hot?” Sure, but I was 20.

“Tell that guy his brake lights are out or the owner of the parked car that he sucks for taking up two spots?” Yup.

Now I can do all these things in public, with CarPong, “a social network that lets you send messages to other drivers.” Members post messages about other drivers on the Carpong site, using the other driver’s license plate to identify whom they are talking about. If the other driver is following their license plate on Carpong, he or she will receive an email alerting him of comments. Members and non-members can also see what other people are saying about them by typing in their license plate number on the site. It’s anonymous to the extent no one can see what you are writing about anyone else and, per most sites that enable conversation, only your user name and profile are visible. And, of course, it’s free.

So now I can “say” all those things I always said in the car, with the windows closed or perhaps open, at speed or stopped dead in traffic, when I’ve had a bad day, only other people can actually “hear” them now, just not necessarily in real time. (You can see messages in real time if you are using a smartphone while driving, but that is unsafe and illegal in many US states, some Canadian provinces, and many countries.)

Lots of the posts (go here) are exactly what you’d expect: criticism of other people’s driving skills. There is no shortage of bad drivers or people who are inattentive or just make mistakes. If someone saw a crime being committed – such as hit and run – and got the license plate, this might be useful, but I’d imagine they’d call the police first.

Advertisers I saw included an insurance company, Kaplan University (for criminal justice degrees), a local (to me) car dealer, local personal injury lawyers, the Nexus One, and a local law firm specializing in DWI and motor vehicle defense, which indicates that someone is seeing value in being visible on a site that is populated by drivers. If millions of people sign up and use this site, it may become a good place to site your online ad if you provide services or products to this huge population. Note: There were “250,844,644 registered passenger vehicles in the US in 2006,” according to Wikipedia, which cites the US Bureau of Traffic Statistics.

One of the founders, Tony Mastrorio, says he is trying to get towing companies to use Carpong to tell drivers when their cars have been towed and how to find them. (Might work, but why not try Twitter first?)

This looks like fun, but not much more than fun at this point. Let’s hope no one gets angry enough about what’s written about them to try to connect profile with posting. Let’s also hope no one you are writing about has a friend that’s on Carpong and can find you behind them or next to them.

Anyway, I was angry when I left: no one has posted about me.

I had a beer with my 25-year-old daughter Jen and Laura, her friend from high school, before seeing a performance of The Nutcracker in mid-December. I mentioned something about Facebook, and was surprised by their animosity toward the site. They both agree that they did not like what it is (too serious, a soapbox for self-promotion, populated by arrogant and self-absorbed Gen Ys) and missed what it was (fun and a safe way to meet people in college, a closed community). They both also did not like that it was now a place for parents – yes, me – to go. (Note: My daughter has friended me but 21-year-old son says he won’t.)

Their perspective is, of course, is easily dismissed as useless information because it is entirely anecdotal. I personally know other people in their 20s and 30s who do use it and share enormous amounts of information and photos.

And Facebook Statistics clearly don’t support the notion that it is fading in importance, even among younger people: 350 million members, each with an average of 130 friends, 8 friend requests per month, and 3 event invitations per month. Facebook crossed the 200 million member mark in April 2009, so membership has increased by 75% in some nine months or by more than 16 million members per month. Facebook has more than 101 million members in the US as of December 31, 2009, and according to CheckFacebook.com, of the 95 million US members it had as of November 3, 2009, slightly more than 50% are between the ages of 18 and 34. Facebook is growing overseas as well but numbers in any country are dwarfed by US membership, with the UK coming in a distant second with some 22.6 million members. The largest growth rates over the last 12 months are in the Philippines (2046.8% growth), Indonesia (1536.7% growth), and Thailand (1063.8% growth).

Nevertheless, there seems to be some increasing disillusionment with Facebook, though I know of no definitive trend in any age group that has been reported, other than among members 55 and older, whose ranks diminished by some 600,000 in April and May 2009. Type “Facebook sucks” into the Google rectangle and “about 19,600,000″ results show up. (This is so unscientific I won’t even make a claim about validity.) But there are also some thoughtful, reasoned articles about quitting Facebook that intrigued me:

• Carmen Joy King at Adbusters: “The amount of time I spent on Facebook had pushed me into an existential crisis. It wasn’t the time-wasting, per se, that bothered me. It was the nature of the obsession – namely self-obsession. Enough was enough. I left Facebook.”
• Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times writes about friends quitting: “If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.”
• Singer Lily Allen, quoted by Anita Singh at showbusiness.com: “I just had this revelation that Facebook, blogging, all those things were becoming a total addiction. I’d be with my boyfriend or my mum and they’d have just got half of me. So I put my BlackBerry, my laptop, my iPod in a box and that’s the end . . . We’ve ended up in this world of unreal communications and I don’t want that. I want real life back.”
• Hannah VanderPoel at North by Northwestern, a Northwestern University online publication: “Ultimately, my own self-prescribed hiatus from Facebook was fueled by three factors. One was to rid my life of unnecessary distraction, mostly in an attempt to finish my homework. The second was the hope of re-learning how to socialize in ways that don’t involve typing public messages to profile avatars that serve as pixeled representations of real people. Thirdly, it was the desire to regain the sense of personal privacy that I surrendered three years ago when I first created my account –- a move that I am retrospectively thankful for, given the controversy surrounding the site’s privacy policies (or lack thereof).”
• Boston University sophomore Brendan Gauthier: “I couldn’t justify the amount of time I was spending — no, wasting — on it. Why was I looking through my friend’s roommate’s girlfriend’s sorority sister’s photo albums? I didn’t even know this person, yet I could tell you what she did last weekend. . . . At what point are we willing to sacrifice real friendships for convenience? Since giving up Facebook, I’ve called my high school friends, and our conversations are much more gratifying than three words on our wall-to-wall.”

So, my questions are: Do you know people who have quit Facebook? Are you thinking about quitting yourself?

However, the Machine in the story also has limitations, “the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people – an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes.” The Machine is also standardized and all it domains are identical across the globe, “What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.” As expected, the story eventually ends with the stopping of the Machine, and by extension the fall of mankind. The decay of the Machine is brought on by hyper-specialization of those responsible for its maintenance, and a complacent and decedent lifestyle:  

“Year by year [the Machine] was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.”

In Forster’s future, the Machine is a physical construct that acts as a replacement for reality and inhibits the movement of people and thoughts. However, the virtual layer of machinery that we are creating now has striking similarities.

In the digital world, man is no longer the measure by which progress is measured and the growth of the Web is not limited by our individual ability to create or even mental capacity to comprehend. This allows us to do tremendous things such as create simulations and models that would be impossible in the real world. However, in doing so, do we also lose a little bit of what it means to be human? For example, in the digital realm, there is no physical limit to how many “friends” we can maintain, no practical boundaries defining the amount of information we can acquire or transmit, no emotional context to our transactions and interactions, no appreciation for resources being consumed, and often a limited and sanitized semblance of our real world identities. Social networks are a perfect example.  In a recent project of ours on the topic of Pervasive Personal Identity, the original draft included the following passage:

“Humans, augmented with a rich digital self and related social graphs, experience a richer social reality and a hence a distinct advantage over humans without a rich digital self. As a consequence, organizations that embrace the rich digital self accrue significant advantages over organizations that do not.”

The language has since changed in recent versions, but it brings up many interesting questions: Would we benefit universally if all activity was mediated through social media? Do we have a choice anymore? Moreover, are we at risk of losing sight of the limitations of the machine? How are we measuring “advantage”; is it the progress of the individual, or the progress of the system? In an enterprise context, we no longer need to know everything related to our jobs, but rather simply have access to those who do know. At the same time, the big picture – strategy – is becoming increasingly complex and difficult for any one single individual to comprehend. As we suggest in a recent study on Continuous Business Strategy, technology platforms and machine-driven analytics are now an essential component of strategic decision-making.

We accept the use of technology-mediated interactions as gospel and depend on them for many routine tasks. When we interviewed members of the Net Generation and asked them to describe how they would feel if the Internet stopped. Responses ranged from annoyed to completely lost; without technology, the new generation would feel depressed, disconnected, and in all likelihood incapable of performing many day-to-day functions. Forster’s story provides an extreme example of technology-dependence to the point where the body becomes a detriment and infants born with the promise of undue strength were destroyed: “Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might measure his body.”

In story, a character is reminded that man is the measure; after having to walk, he rediscovered notions of what it means to be near and far. I was reminded of this myself recently as I’ve been tackling home renovations. All things are originally measured in the context of the individual – the transportability of building materials are limited by my ability to carry them, the amount of work done on my house is measured in the time it takes for me to do it, or (usually) the amount of time for which I have to pay someone to do it. These limitations have of course been reduced thanks to the augmentation of machines and tools, and on a global scale, these limitations are harder to perceive because we have industrialized the production of most everything. But at a local level – i.e. home renovations – they are still very much real.

For me, the overall lesson is this: Technology must be used as a way to augment real world interactions, not replace them. As the antagonist in the story states, “The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.”

Last month I learned about a hierarchical marketing model that sits inside of a social network. The company doing this work is called 6dgr. The basic premise is that you get paid for getting your friends to join a social network. The structure is similar to Facebook: individuals can create profiles, post pictures, blogs, use an inbox, connect with others, everything you’d expect plus you are automatically connected into a hierarchy when you pick your sponsor (the person who recommended you to join). What further differentiates this model is that you attach a bank or credit card account to your profile when you join. That account is used for direct deposit of your funds when your friends join, sign up for a bank or credit card account, and name you as their sponsor.

While there are some ads on the site, the revenue is insignificant and not something 6dgr anticipates pushing for. So, how can they afford to pay you when your friends join? The company partners with banks that offer the accounts and credit cards for direct deposit and share the revenue with the company every time a new person joins. That money is split among sponsors up to six levels down (6dgr for six degrees, as in six degrees of separation). Credit card companies pay $60 and up for approved customers, so even with the split sponsors would still make a few bucks.

By having you name a sponsor when you register, the site is aiming to develop a very large hierarchical group. As more and more individuals join, the site should be able to offer more and better deals to members. Right now the site offers products like person-to-person loans, debit cards, savings accounts and even a tie into mobile wallet technology in the European market. So, while the site offers the same experience as a traditional social network, it also ties in product and service offerings.

The vision is for 6dgr to become a brand, a lifestyle site offering a bunch of different products and services to people. The company negotiates with retailers so that their members are treated like one big buying club and are offered deep discounts on merchandise purchased through the site. The company could private-label products like credit cards and once they hit 100,000+ people they could negotiate decent offers for things like health insurance. Though the company never intends to get into any one specific business, it could become a substantial channel master.

So the obvious question is: If it’s such a great idea wouldn’t Twitter or Facebook want to jump on board? 6dgr has already planned for that and has patented the entire idea of a network marketing hierarchy inside social networks. They have also protected the idea of financial products for social networks. But the biggest protection has to be the barrier to entry – the complexity required to pull this off, including the upfront structure required to develop the hierarchy in the first place as well as all of the behind-the-scenes processes that need to work to make sure the hierarchy remains intact and accurate, members get paid, the vendors are tied in correctly, etc.

It remains to be seen if the concept will take off and what adoption will look like. There are already over 50,000 members, all based on word of mouth; to date no money has been spent on advertising. But as with other online social networks, the member experience will be the key factor in the success or failure of this model. If members feel like they are being constantly sold to, activity will dwindle very fast. However, if the company remains on top of its member experiences, and smart about how members interact, this could become a powerful new way to conduct business and take advantage of the economies of scale that social networking offers.

Radio: Teenagers do not listen to traditional radio because they are able to listen to online streaming music that is advertisement free and enables them to choose which songs they want to hear.

TV: Most teenagers still watch television but the consumption varies seasonally with popular programs (i.e. Teenage boys watch more TV when it’s football (soccer) season). Advertisements are a turnoff so many turn to internet channels to watch ad free programming. It’s getting harder for youth to find the time in their busy schedules to watch TV.

Newspapers: “No teenager I know of regularly reads a paper.” Most are reluctant to pay for a newspaper and when they do, prefer those that are compact for easy reading on the go.

Gaming: Girl gamers are becoming more numerous. Consoles that enable chat via internet are popular and negatively impact phone usage. PC gaming has no place in the market as it can be downloaded for free.

Internet: Most teenagers engage heavily in social networking. “Teenagers do not use Twitter”

Music: Teenagers listen to a lot of music but are very reluctant to pay for it. Most do not listen exclusively to music but rather do so while multitasking

Mobile phone: 99% of teenagers have a cell phone, and upgrade it every 2 years.

These revelations are not groundbreaking and if you are familiar with our research or Don’s books (Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital), you would find uncanny similarities between Matthew’s anecdotal findings and our 8 Norms of the Net Generation.

However, what IS surprising are the reactions that this paper is getting from the business community. Edward Hill-Wood, Matthew’s supervisor, claims that dozens and dozens of fund managers and CEOs have been e-mailing and calling all day. Others cite that this report has generated 5 to 6 times more feedback than the average Morgan Stanley research report. This goes on to show really how large the generation gap is between baby boomers and today’s digital natives. It seems that the impact of an internet savvy generation can no longer be ignored as executives turn their undivided attention towards understanding the Net Gen.

But before taking Matthew’s views for granted, I’d like to point out a few areas of caution. First, the findings are not supported statistically but rather represent solely the views of Matthew and his friends. Secondly, it’s important to take into account the context in which this research was conducted. Matthew is from London, England and being a 15 year old intern at a bank, must come from a solid educational background. In other words, his views may not be indicative of other teenagers… Net Geners in Japan certainly update their phones more frequently than once every two years and I for one do use Twitter as well as read newspapers on a regular basis…

SONAR technology from Trampoline systems visually maps out the informal network within an organization and helps people connect to experts and resources on-demand. Personally, I think any company serious about collaboration should have something like this installed. Check out the video for a guided tour from Charles himself:

UnHub is a social network aggregator (inspired by the Skittles social network marketing campaign). The UnHub Personal Profile Bar is a quick easy way for individuals or small businesses to consolidate existing facets of their digital selves or establish a brand online using free social networking tools. The newer edition to UnHub is the Personal Link Shortener – a neat way to stamp your brand on a link and track the social network buzz around links that you share. Given the Twitter-generated surge in link shortening, I think this is an awesome way to add value to traditional link shortening services that typically mask provenance. Check out the preview below:

While browsing the CoSN website (which, by the way, is loaded with resources for educators looking to bring technology into their schools), I came across a really great video called “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn“.

The video itself is simple, interviewing a handful of young people about the impact of technology on their lives. What’s amazing is some of the insight in their answers.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“If I didn’t have computers, I would say a lot of my hobbies that make up most of my time, I wouldn’t have. Because, well, I learned Japanese, and I learned a lot of that through the Internet.”

“That’s the cool thing about technology. You can change things whenever you want.”

“When you have access to everything, you learn how to know yourself better because you are forced to decide what to use and what not to use.”

“What we’re doing in gaming – coordination and communication – is very similar to what we’re doing at school. In the game, we have to talk to each other, we have to coordinate what we’re going to do in order to make sure that we do it well.”

And my personal favourite:

“I would say that being able to experiment with technology, is really what makes it technology. If people didn’t sit there and experiment with test tubes back in the days of Newton, nothing would have happened. It’s paving the way for us to move forward as a species and a civilization.”

The video can be seen here.

From ancient philosophers to modern day journalists, the rules of engagement for discourse and collaboration have always been hot topics. In ancient times mass collaboration was limited to communities building churches, discussion in public squares, or monks taking turns to painstakingly write text. Today, in addition to facilitating public debate online, mass collaboration has the ability to build robust and super efficient software. Collaboration is central to Day Software’s ethos. Not only is Day Software born through mass collaboration but its software has social collaboration central to its user experience. We also embrace collaboration with our competitors. The last area is one I want to focus on for this post.

Last month we collaborated with one of our key competitors, Nuxeo, in order to advance an industry standard, which will benefit the content management industry as a whole. We used the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) as our neutral “workspace”. The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of Open Source software projects.

That word “community” is key.We teamed up with Nuxeo to advance the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard via Apache. CMIS is designed to benefit the growing number companies that need to securely manage a wide variety of online and offline content from different applications in a central hub. This is just one of many projects that Day collaborates with their peers via Apache. On the Jackrabbit project, numerous vendors leverage the community-driven efforts of building a standardized Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repository based on open standards

Despite our competitive differences, both Nuxeo and Day share the same collaborative Open Source mindset that is central and unique to the ASF. In contrast to the more onerous General Public Licence (GPL) model, The ASF model lowers the legal and creative barriers for commercial collaboration and innovation. When you sign up to Apache your day job (excuse the pun) is irrelevant. It’s an environment ancient philosophers would be proud of; the Apache community is working together, openly, equally, without bias and everyone’s contribution is valid.

Open Source is beneficial specifically because it is not proprietary. That means that the user is not locked in to any one vendor. In community Open Source, if a given vendor were to stop innovating, the community can take the product forward. Apache enforces a simple rule: new concepts under incubation do not graduate until there is a proper community that is not beholden to any one vendor. Apache also enforces the principle benefit of Open Source: no one vendor is responsible for driving or inhibiting innovation. Innovation happens.

Commercial Open Source firms – the ones driving much press these days – do not always follow this model. For many commercial Open Source firms, community and collaboration with their peers does not happen. This limits the benefits of the Open Source model, because while the software is accessible, true participation and joint collaboration does not happen.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, collaboration actually helps us to win marketshare and revenue. By serving up the basic product interoperability that developers and customers demand, collaboration frees up our time to focus on unique customer and market driven product innovations and invest more time in services and support. We are not afraid to say we are reaping the rewards of being a collaborative company. Open Source can provide the basis for a robust and profitable business model.

For us Open Source is proving to be a very strong, yet flexible backbone for our business. This should serve as an example to other technology companies that being Open Source is of benefit both to your customers, product development and profitability. The more competitors that join the Open Source community, the better all our products and services will be.

I first learned of Zappos when I watched a speech CEO Tony Hsieh delivered at the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) about their “customer-centric approach to killing the competition”. Since then, Zappos has received the praise of media, customers and employees alike, even after laying off 8% of their staff. (At the time of the speech Tony had *only* 10,000 followers on Twitter. He is now at 600,000+). One of my favourite parts of the presentation is Tony’s statement that the brand is simply an extension of the company culture, and providing a compelling customer experience completely depends on hiring employees who fit that culture.

One of the keys to that culture is Zappos Core Value #6, Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication. By Zappos opening up and sharing what goes on in a regular day at the company, customers and potential employees are invited to experience the corporate culture without ever making an appearance on the payroll. If a prospective employee likes what they see, they might make a great Zapponian, especially if they share similar values with CVF (‘Core Values Frog‘). Giving prospective employees a sneak peak into the culture of the company might explain why only 3% of new hires take Zappos up on their famous $2000 incentive to quit after training.

I was interested in how Zappos identified and hired people in the first place. I got in touch with Zappos Recruiting Manager, Christa Foley (currently twitter rank #4 at twitter.zappos.com ) to learn how Zappos uses social media to identify and hire quality people, and further encourages new hires to use those tools once part of the Zappos team (430+ employees are listed on the Zappos twitter page). I’ve included some highlights of our conversation after the jump.

How is Zappos using social networks for recruiting purposes?

We’re using Twitter very heavily and to some extent, Facebook and LinkedIn. We’re not using Facebook and LinkedIn as much as I’d like us to be so we’re working on some strategies to use these networks more effectively in the future. For Twitter specifically, we’re in a really lucky position because we have such a big group of employees on Twitter, over 400, and then, of course, Tony has an ungodly amount of followers on Twitter, something like over 500,000 at this point. So you definitely could say we’re pretty active in the Twitter world.

It wouldn’t fit within our culture to be salesy/pushy so we’re not using Twitter to promote Zappos just for the sake of promoting Zappos. We’re using it for what I think it was intended, which is a social network that we all enjoy. I’ve got a team of four people in recruiting and we’re not blasting on Twitter every job opening or constantly directing people to our jobs page. To me, that feels like spamming, which I think goes against what Twitter was meant to be used for. I know spam happens online in general and you definitely can see that on Twitter too.

For us, we use much more of a passive approach to recruit on Twitter. Whether, through the following that various employees have or certainly through Tony’s followers, there seems to be a buzz about Zappos which helps us identify possible candidates.

How are you finding potential hires on Twitter?

We use the search function on Twitter and search Zappos mentions on a daily basis. Anybody who mentions ‘wow I’d love to work at Zappos’ or ‘just read this article about Zappos and it seems like it’s a cool place to work’ or ‘I wish you guys were in New York’ , basically any loose references to maybe wanting to work at Zappos, we reach out to those folks.

I usually follow them and if they don’t follow me back in a couple of days, then I’ll @reply to them so I can let them know how to find our openings and apply. But more often than not, if you follow someone, they’ll follow you back especially if they’ve just mentioned Zappos, and I have “Zappos Recruiting ” in my profile. In that scenario, I’ll direct message them about our jobs.zappos.com site. So a lot of my Twitter activities are via direct messages versus public replies.

What’s different about hiring in social networks versus traditional job boards?

I would say the quality of people, at least from an industry and skill-set standpoint, tends to be higher. When we post on a major job board, we may get 500 applicants but a large percentage of them won’t be qualified or they are outside of the salary ranges posted for the jobs, or they don’t want to move or those kinds of things. Whereas I think when you’re using something like Twitter or Facebook or Linked In, someone connecting with you via these avenues has probably done their research or knows about your company more than just ‘I want to be an AP clerk and there’s 20 positions open in my city on Monster so I’m going to apply to all of them. ’

How have social networks benefited employees once they are working in the company?

Twitter for us is also a really good way for employees to connect. We have a Zappos Twitter page, twitter.zappos.com , so employees can see just the Zappos employee feed . It’s a great way to connect with people you share common interests with where you may not have otherwise. We have a very friendly, open environment but with over 700 employees in our Vegas office, while you would always say ‘hi!’ in the hallway to everyone, before Twitter you may not realize that person also loves to hike, has children the same age as your children, loves the same restaurant you do, etc.. I think as a company from a culture standpoint, Twitter has helped us tremendously with being another avenue for people to connect. This is important to us because one of our core values is to Create a Positive Team and Family Spirit where you don’t view your co-workers as simply coworkers but where you connect with them on a personal level. .

Why has Zappos been so open about employees using social media, where other companies have been fairly resistant?

I think because we were fortunate enough to embrace it early on and see the many values it offers and how it helps enhance our culture. We believe that if you get the culture right, most other things fall into place. I think that maybe with other companies, their fears with social media are about what employees might say or how their activity might negatively impact their company’s brand. We have embraced social media and encourage our employees to do so too. And as far as our direction to employees about what they can or cannot say, we don’t really have a policy on this. If we did a good job with hiring for culture fit and training new hires about our culture, it’s a non-issue. So maybe you have reason to worry about what people are saying, or how they’re representing your company if everyone isn’t aligned to the company vision and culture.

By no means do we have it all figured out. Everything that we do is a work in progress. It’s almost more of an art in some regards than a science but I think our culture, openness and transparency aligns itself well with the basic premiss of social media.

Want to know what the most effective corporations of tomorrow will look like? Look at those that are most successful at attracting young workers today.

If you persuade them to work for your company, these young people will bring with them a natural affinity for technology that seems uncanny. They instinctively turn first to the Net to communicate, understand, learn and find. If you’re older than 30, you probably think you are as cyber-sophisticated as the next person – shopping online, using Wikipedia, sending 100 e-mails a day and doing the BlackBerry prayer every 10 minutes. But compared to the kids, most of us are Luddites.

Read the full article and view the video here.

Directed by Ivo Gormley, the film explores how the web is changing the many ways in which we can organize ourselves. From a democratic football club where the fans pick the team to a lending service where everyone can be a bank manager, Us Now brings together the leading thinkers in the field of participation and web culture to describe how mass collaboration could change society. As the co-author of Wikinomics:  How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, I was asked by Ivo Gormley to participate.

The UK documentary had its North American premiere 2½ months ago in Toronto.  One of many attending the premiere was Ruby Ku, a self-described 20-something SciBus student at the University of Waterloo.  Ruby was good enough to track down the URLs for many groups featured in the film:

1. School of Everything – a website that helps people who want to learn meet up with people who want to teach.
2. Zopa – a market place where people lend and borrow money to and from each other, sidestepping the banks.
3. Couchsurfing – a worldwide network making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit; participate in a better world, one couch at a time.
4. The People Speak – a campaign to engage young people on the global issues that will shape their future – an initiative from the United Nations Foundation.
5. Slice The Pie – a music financing company that aggregates thousands of people’s opinions about upcoming bands and allows fans to invest in producing albums.
6. MyFootballClub – join members from over 80 countries who own Ebbsfleet United and vote on all key decisions from team selection to financial budgets.
7. Mumsnet – a social enterprise + community of parents sharing their know-hows on the net and meeting up in real-life.
8. Open Everything – global conversation about the art, science, and the spirit of “open.”

It would be great to see the documentary go viral.  If you haven’t seen the film, please give it a try.  And if you like it (which you will) tell as many friends as you can.

A revolution is happening in government as the result of a new generation of government employees, the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, and the Obama administration’s focus on transparency, participation, and collaboration. This revolution is often called “Government 2.0” and GovLoop is at the center of this movement.

Since its launch, GovLoop members have written over 1,500 blogs, started 1,200 discussions, posted over 450 events, shared 4,000+ photos and created over 200 videos.

GovLoop members have already:
• Developed a burgeoning “Acquisition 2.0” movement to employ innovative acquisition methods
• Been the leading source of government input into the Obama Administration’s Open Government Memo
• Established a repository of best practices on items including Social Media Policies, Government Hiring and Government Twitter Use
• Launched a top-rated podcast “Gov 2.0 Radio” (http://gov20radio.com) with guests like Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly media, http://oreilly.com) and Craig Newmark (founder of Craig’s List, http://craigslist.com)
• Helped GovLoop.com win the prestigious Federal 100 award and stand as a finalist for the 2009 ACT Intergovernmental Solutions Award

If what you’ve heard about Twitter is characterized by headlines like, “Ashton Kutcher challenges CNN to Twitter popularity contest,” I can understand why you’re either tired of hearing about Twitter or simply don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

This article from Ad Age is completely refreshing and intringuing. It reminds us that Twitter is useful for more than simply learning about what Paris Hilton has been doing while on vacation. From reading the article, I am reminded that few people, let alone companies, have been able to see Twitter for its full business potential.

The article describes how Organic Inc. (a leading digital communications agency) has harnessed Twitter as a powerful business tool. At Organic Inc., social networks like Twitter are a critical peice of the company’s recruitment strategy. Around 75% of their online recruitment relies on social networks. More importantly, they are already seeing positive results after about 9 months of increased social network recruitment.

Given that mainstream media has pelted its subscribers with stories that don’t do justice to Twitter’s potential to be more than just a (insert generic, insulting characterization of Twitter here), stories like Ad Age’s look into Organic Inc.’s use of Twitter deserve more of our attention.

In an unusual twist to these traditional stories, Yahoo Sports posted one last week about how NFL teams apply similar practices to scout out new prospects. Their trick? Befriend the players using fake profiles with pictures of attractive women who are … like, total fans!!! The catch is that these women are a baited lure, and once they accept, the unsuspecting NFL prospect has opened the gates, trojan horse style, to a detailed review of an individual’s comments, profile pages, and pictures.

Typically, when organizations review social networking profiles, they use them as a filter, where any ‘inappropriate’ information or media will get players or employees screened out of the application pool, or even a job.  In 2008, a CareerBuilder study indicates that 1/5 employers use social networking sites to screen applicants, and of those using the tool, 1/3 of managers indicated that they had found information about a candidate that caused them to remove them from consideration. According to Computerworld, of particular note was:

• Information about alcohol or drug use (41% of managers said this was a top concern)
• Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page (40%)
• Poor communication skills (29%)
• Bad-mouthing of former employers or fellow employees (28%)
• Inaccurate qualifications (27%)
• Unprofessional screen names (22%)
• Notes showing links to criminal behavior (21%)
• Confidential information about past employers (19%)

Back to this story… NFL teams say they benefit from the review of these social networking sites because they allow teams to conduct research on players much faster than before, and with access to a much greater wealth of information. According to Yahoo Sports, Rick Spielman, VP of Player Personnel for the Minnesota Vikings, the Vikings are not unlike most other NFL teams in having someone specifically tasked with reviewing the profiles of player prospects. Their job is to gather as much information as possible that can be used to filter out undesirable candidates, assist in the interview process, and help conduct background checks on players. These are understandable goals, but my concern remains with the process to get to that goal.

How ethical is this practice of using “ghost profiles” – fake profiles that are created to entrap players, and then disappear after the draft – to discover information about potential draft candidates? The issue I have with this practice is that it totally misrepresents the intentions of one party, in what is effectively a lie, in order to place the other party at a disadvantage. Sure the football prospect ought to know better than to have any discriminating information posted on such a loosely private medium, but that does not negate the wrong-doing of the team scout, in using shady practices to unearth that data. And yet, that information was there, in a space that continues to be viewed as gray territory when establishing either a public or private label? Who is right? Who is wrong? Is there even a right or a wrong?

And so I turn to you, what do you think?  What are the issues here and what’s your take? Acceptable? Not?

Contra-Happiness: Feeling Pizzled

You may not know the word, but you probably have felt pizzled before. Actually, you probably have felt pizzled at some point today. Stolze explains that feeling pizzled is an adverse effect of our Web 2.0 world: “People sometimes forget the hierarchy of communication. An example of disregard for the hierarchy is ignoring a face-to-face conversation to communicate digitally. For example, you are having a conversation with someone, but all of a sudden they are looking at their Blackberry, or answering ‘very important’ phonecalls. When the person we are talking to does this we feel pizzled – both pissed off and puzzled.”

Pro-Happiness: The Web as the World Wide Window and a Global Campfire

“In my research nearly all respondents answer that the Web has enriched their lives in two ways,” said Stolze. “The first one being that they consider it their window to the world. There’s no doubt that the democratizing of knowledge has had a positive impact on the way people go through life. From deep thoughts on philosophy to things like finding a restaurant’s phone number or looking up a user review on IMDB. The second reason is that the Web is a perfect place to find people who are like you – to set up a discussion without the risk of being judged by your looks, skincolor or clothes. We are a social species and we have this deep need to be part of a group. The Internet has become the perfect place to gather around this new global campfire.”

 Debateable: We have fewer deep, face-to-face realtionships because of the Web

The other side of the “ease of interaction” coin is concern over the extent to which we carry out relationships online, as opposed to face-to-face. Stolze doesn’t discount this concern: “There is a disconnect between our number of ‘friends’ and the number of deep connections we have. This is called friendship inflation. Simple economic law says that when there is more of something, the individual value decreases.” Stolze does agree, however, that while an abundance of Web 2.0 friendships will cause some of us to disregard the importance of deep, traditional friendships, an equal, if not greater, number of us will use the Web to strenghten existing strong ties and develop new ones. In referring to online communication with close friends, Stolze says, “The best emails are the ones that say: ‘Hey Jim, let’s have lunch this Friday. Same place?’”

Contra-Happiness: Information Overload

The Web provides us with more, and cheaper, information than ever before. Stolze is finding that perhaps we have access to too much information, and that it might have serious negative effects. He says, “We mistake information for inspiration and think more is better. The result is that we spend hours of surfing, lurking for information. If you search Google for the word ‘information’ you get over 3 billion results. Constantly being presented with more information than we have the ability to look through can cause stress, which contributes to depression.”

The Conclusion…

Stolze’s book, How to Survive Your Inbox, will be released, in Dutch, this coming June, but he gave me a preview of the conclusion: “In my research, I found that I was not able to prove, scientifically, that the Web makes us happy. I would say that the answer is no, given my results. What the data does allow me to say is that not being connected to the Internet makes you unhappy. It’s kind of the new hygiene.” 

While too little Web action makes us unhappy, there certainly is a point where, well, too much is too much. Fortunately, Stolze provides guidelines for keeping our Web consumption at a healthy level. Check out his TED presentation on 5 Ways the Internet can make us happier and his answers to my questions on responsible use below.

On Responsible Use

Perron: Does a Blackberry belong in the bedroom?

Stolze: Surely not…Don’t take your Blackberry or your iPhone into the bedroom.

Perron: How do you know when you have reached an unhealthy level of online activity?

Stolze: When you’re Twittering [aka Tweeting] from the bathroom.

-Many thanks to Jim Stolze for his time and insight.

Wordles can be a great way to visualize political discourse, especially when you use them in comparative form.  After Inauguration Day in January, Naumi wrote an excellent post , using IBM’s ManyEyes analysis to compare Obama’s inaugural speech to those of his predecessors.

These three tag clouds were all pulled from the Capitol Words Application, another development from the Sunlight Foundation (who we’ve written about previously – here, here and here).  Capitol Words is a program that takes every word entered into the congressional record and archives it online in a mashable and searchable form.  With different search metrics and visual aids, it allows you to see who’s saying what – broken down by individual, state or date.  One application lists the “10 most vocal” and “10 quietest” lawmakers of the last 60 days (over this most recent period, Michael Michaud has only uttered 8 words in Congress, while Richard Durbin has said almost 70 000).

Above, I’ve copied 3 tag clouds.  One of them represents all the words that John McCain has entered into Congressional Records over the past year.  Another one is from Nancy Pelosi, and the third is from all the representatives from the state of Massachusetts.  Can you guess which is which?

Too easy?

If you got the first three, here’s a more challenging one:

Representing all the words that he/she entered into record over the past 12 months, which well-known member of Congress does this cloud belong to?  (note:  I had to blur out the name of the state to avoid giving away the answer)

Our feedback system is based on transactions, as opposed to determining whether I can trust this person through some other relationship other than a transaction. We need to stay on top of this trend.

I haven’t heard as much about “social commerce” since then as I once expected (and a Google News search for “eBay social commerce” still has stories from 2007 at the top), but I was reminded of it today when I read the rather surprising TechCrunch story that Sears was acquiring Delver – A site in alpha mode that goes under the tag line “Your friends know you best. Search your world and find stuff that matters to you!”

It seems like a rather weird acquisition for Sears (I probably wouldn’t have blinked it it was eBay/ Google / Facebook/ Twitter) – with the fact that TechCrunch felt placing “(Really)” at the end of the title for the story as a great indicator of that. And if you do a Google News Search for “Sears Delver”, you only get a couple of hits, and the overall message right now seems to be that Delver was about to go belly up (couldn’t get another $6 M in financing), and Sears decided to jump in… for some unknown reason.

Of note, I can’t get the actual Delver site to work for me, and the company hasn’t updated its blog since 2008, so there’s not a ton of recent stuff to go on here – but there were quite a few interesting stories about the company back in mid 2008 (like these two), and the concept seems pretty cool – particularly the objective of integrating into existing social network structures rather than trying to create a new one.

So I guess there are a few questions here – is Delver a good idea (I say yes), can Delver pull off their idea (I have no clue), and whether having Sears acquire them can work or not (I guess it’s better than bankruptcy, but…). Any thoughts?

“When we get to 2010, I want my campaigns here,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said as he held up his cell phone at the party’s Tech Summit on Friday. “I want whatever we’re doing to be within my thumb’s reach. We don’t want to just do what Obama did in ’08–that’s the floor.”

Republicans have some catching up to do, and atleast a few party members may need convincing of this.  One was quoted as saying that “Despite what the press says, we actually had an e-campaign in 2004 that did many of the things the Obama campaign did.  They just did it with many more people.”  I’m not sure I can agree with this.  As this article points out, 2004 was when facebook was still limited to universities, and YouTube didn’t even exist, making this a very difficult comparison.  A more telling anecdote is the 2008 election, John McCain had only four people working on his new media campaign.  Barack Obama had over 90.

So far, the party has started engaging on Facebook and Ning to collect input into some key areas.  For example, here’s their Grassroots facebook page, and here is their mobile suggestions page.  This may look like a good start, but it hasn’t exactly taken off yet – the mobile page only has 56 members, and a whopping total of 7 wall posts.

That’s not to say there weren’t some innovative suggestions to come out of the Tech Summit.  This article lists some of the best, notably: 

1) An iPhone app that shows you how your local congressman is voting, with his contact info.  2) A video game like Nintendo’s classic Paperboy.  Except in this version, the paperboy would be Barack Obama, and instead of tossing newspapers, he’d be biking up the street tossing wads of money away at houses.

Some suggestions, however, were less innovative.  One proposal was to use mobile ads to connect with hard to reach minority groups.  I’m not sure this would do much to create party support, as untargeted mobile ads would probably do little to boost engagement.  Rather, apps like the ones listed above might actually provide services or entertainment to users in a way that would improve their perception of the party. 

How much of this talking and brainstorming will actually translate into improved citizen relations for the GOP?  One bright spot might be their new National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele, the RNC’s first black chairman.  Having been denied this job previously by former President Bush and Karl Rove, Steele now has big plans for updating the Republican image.  He says he wants an “off the hook” PR campaign that can apply the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip hop settings”.  According to Steele, this new strategy will be based on a campaign that is “avant garde, technically”.  This is a big change for the party that, in recent years, has targeted much of their campaigning towards a conservative base.

Based on all this, do you think the Republicans can take the “old” out of the Grand Old Party?  Can this “off the hook” campaign shake off the crusty image, and use new media to reach new voters?

My five-week-old son has had over 1,400 individual visitors to his website. Within two hours of his birth, he was Twittered because a friend got a text message announcing his birth. In a matter of days his name was indexed in Google. A friend’s five-month-old already has a Facebook page. Anecdotally, I find that a favourite pastime of many new dads in my peer group is electronic communication involving their newborns. Maybe it’s a way to connect both to the newborn and to the outside world during what is a cocooning and potentially isolating time. Maybe it helps dads become involved. Whatever the reason, most new babies these days are “born digital,” to borrow a phrase. What it will mean when they grow up, I’m not sure, but it changes something fundamental about who your little one is in the world. He has a public persona often before he can hold up his own head.

The author notes that when friends and families live far apart, the immediacy of online communication is a powerful way to share in the birth. But will these “born digital” children grow up to regret their parents enthusiasm to chronicle the early stages of their lives online? Or, will this level of personal transparency be seen as completely natural by the time they are old enough to voice an opinion? Perhaps it already is.

The Telegraph is reporting that Facebook has announced a strategy to monetize the site that has thus far defied monetizing. Generally the standard web start-up business model is, build something unique that people like, and then once it’s got a large enough fan base and web traffic, sell advertisements or subscriptions. After all, somebody’s got to pay for it. The problem Facebook encountered is… it turns out people don’t really like to click on tacky ads when they can rather use the site for its intended purpose and talk to their friends.

There was Facebook’s Beacon of course. But that didn’t last long, with everyone from Facebook users to privacy groups crying foul. This made Facebook rethink it’s ad strategy and the new kid on the block is called Engagements Ads, and is a Facebook initiative to bring targeted polling to Facebooks’ 150 million members. Marketing companies the world over have been salivating and thinking about all that personal, relevant, and valuable information about you that can be used to learn about how best to connect with you and your dollars. Well, rather than just give it to them, which would probably face Beacon-like ethics issues, Facebook has come up with a clever strategy that will allow companies to ask you questions through the use of polls for market research purposes. Should you be within the specific demographic that concerns the poll, as indicated by the information you enter into the system (otherwise known as your profile) … say, male, 25, and you just happen to like movies and electronics … then maybe you’ll be of interest in a Best Buy poll. The poll will automatically show up in your feed and you can choose to engage it or ignore it, your call. It’s a smart move, given how much intimate information exists on Facebook, and which can accurately serve as a screening process to serve polls to more willing candidates. If Facebook is successful in leveraging their members as a mass focus group, then marketers will be eager to exchange that information for dollars.

Where Beacon largely failed by forcing members to be part of an activity they didn’t want to be, and which invaded their privacy, Engagement Ads will be opt-in, presumably with some kind of incentive to participate.  And it’s the incentives themselves that will make or break this new Facebook initiative. There’s several conceivable scenarios. Enough bored Facebook addicts may be interested enough in a certain brand, that should it come knocking, them would be interested enough to spend a few minutes filling out a form. But then, what if (enough) people aren’t that bored. Those polls better be fun, really fun. Maybe even disguised as a game, or a fan club, through smart integration of Facebook applications and tapping into expressed brand-fan goodwill. And last but not least, is the incentive of micropayments in exchange for a few minutes of your time.

Perhaps a combination of the above would work, but one thing is for sure, members will need something in exchange for giving up their time, the question is what. Not just that, but Facebook has clearly found that it is a real challenge to get its members to care about the artificial interruptions in their friend-scape (e.g. advertisements). I think the marketing application is smart but ’m not entirely sure that forcing annoying polls to show up on your screen, in addition to annoying ads, will work. Time will tell.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever clicked a Facebook ad? Here’s a poll. Would you answer a poll?

As pictured above, the tool is extremely low-tech and low-cost and can be used when working with rural community members with low formal education as well as with policy makers, or international development actors. To better appreciate the simplicity of the tool, check out the list of required equipment:

• Large sheets of paper for the network map (one per interview)
• Felt pens for drawing links (different colors according to different links)
• Adhesive paper as actor cards,
• Flat round stackable discs for building influence-towers (e.g. checkers pieces, bicycle spare parts), a
• Actor figurines (different board game figures, optional but especially useful when working with illiterate interviewees)

Net-Map may not offer much to stir the blood of the average Facebooker, but Schiffer’s tools and site provide an excellent resource for people seeking to bring the benefits of social network analysis to communities that are currently underserved. You can view more images of the project in action (in Ghana and Chile) on Schiffer’s flickr stream.

Three minutes earlier than that, @manolantern sent out what appears to be the first tweet on the plane crash:

I just watched a plane crash into the hudson rive in manhattan

I love how our earliest news is most certainly going to contain typos from now on. Same case with Mike Wilson (@2drinksbehind) who in December twittered about being in a plane crash. Understandably he put it quite strongly:

Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!

I enjoyed his followup tweet just as much though:

You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can’t even get a vodka-tonic. Boo

Twitter truly connects us to the experiences of others – and terrific first hand news is just part of the fun. While I hope there are no plane crashes in my future, you can follow my own twitter updates at @crasheral (gee, hope I’m not tempting fate with that twittername).

Click on the YouTube video above to hear President-elect Barack Obama invite the nation to participate in the Inauguration festivities surrounding his swearing-in as President on January 20. True to form, Obama’s opening words include “But this inauguration is not about me. It’s about all of us.”

It’s this kind of inclusive thinking that clinched him the nomination and then the election.

Can’t make it to Washington to participate in the official ceremonies? Then host a Neighborhood Ball Party of your own. Invite your friends. Want to roll up your sleeves and participate in the spirit of renewal that he promises will be the hallmark of his administration? Begin by going to www.USAservice.org and volunteer in your community the day before the inauguration to help mark Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Watch the online video by Michelle Obama encouraging everyone to participate. Enter the YouTube video contest and find out about local events through Facebook.

The Obama administration promises to employ the digital tools of Web 2.0 as much as possible in the campaign to introduce to the country a newer and much more participatory democracy.