valleylist(sm)v156 r.1 thursday 04.27.2011
high tech products companies consumers
INTERNET SOCIAL GROUPS AND BLOGS are no longer the same creature. facebook is a social utility. twitter calls itself a “micro-blogging” service. myspace is for entertainment. wordpress is a “blog yourself” content community. others like linkedin strive for facebook’s popularity.
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twitter is huge. youtube a content community. mashable is a blog about blogging. typepad is the other leading content management system.
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“valleylist” background articles are internet social groups internet avatars and high tech personnas ning the special edition
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facebook finally succeeds at multi-media. yet lots of bizarre problems. friends are out. “like” my page is in. restrictive rules make for a great looking “stream” and a very uncomfortable customer experience. don’t blog too much. hair trigger warnings. too many vacant accounts. worst of all. members who pursue then stalk terrorize and attack other members. there is a focus on safety however it only goes as far as reporting people who cause problems. harassment and obvious criminal attacks continue. “valleylist” suggests facebook lighten up. banned in yemen and many parts of the middle east facebook is an international success. for the u.s.a. it’s a little too restrictive and lacks in real privacy controls.
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fun to criticize facebook. real internet success story. started out as a year book. later the worlds biggest internet social group. #2 top 10 internet service after google. more popular than yahoo. a billion dollars revenue 2010.
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marc zuckerberg is the “valleylist” avatar this week. credited with inventing the internet social group concept zuckerberg is ceo and founder and runs facebook’s day to day operations. facebook looks good. zuckerberg is so successful at his new company that time magazine named him man of the year 2010. additional coverage from time celebrating a new high – - facebook’s 500m members - – explains facebook’s growth. then they did the movie the social network to further propagate the social group species.
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top 10 internet social groups and blogs
[ranked by number of members and importance to the industry]
#.company – - – - members - – - – description
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source: top 10 reviews technocrati guide to blogs techmeme blog rating service time magazine article facebook hits 500 million members
social internet is the objective. facebook’s zuckerberg and andreessen microsoft’s gates and the twitter founding fathers have successfully taken the internet from “search” to “relate”. it’s a successful strategy that has dramatically changed the internet to the point of having the big social groups linked from almost every website. instead of private webpages it’s my facebook page or twitter account.
social search is the end result of the blogging phenomenon. blogging is so huge that search companies were pursuaded to include social group and blog accounts in the search results. a search for “valleylist” pulls up the “valleylist” twitter facebook linkedin wordpress and myspace accounts [looks like this]. odd yet that’s the evolution of the internet juggernaut. “valleylist” sees this flawed approach as yet another reason to just do a total redesign.
researchers have gone on to claim that 80% of internet users belong to a social group of some kind.
analysis. private companies like facebook and twitter are not obligated to publish their membership and revenue information. what goes on instead is indepth articles from zdnet or cnet.
“valleylist” still likes myspace the most.
from a technology point of view there’s a lot going on. the facebook multi-media “stream” looks good with the latest pictures and videos. however it’s a limiting experience. facebook doesn’t want a lot of postings from the same end user. the result is the “stream” looks almost like a live multi-media newsletter. facebook may always look good but it lacks a compelling reason to stay involved every day. myspace multi-media features from music to video are to entertain members and end users. become janet’s friend and play the latest mp3 number one song and watch an old music video of “control“. add lots of musicians and videos to your collection. myspace leaves me wishing i could spend more time. twitter messaging and list functionality are mega-impressive. yet the new twitter multi-media project doesn’t really do much for anybody. still struggling. high profile members with lots of “followers” and celebrity messaging make for a bizarre experience. even worse is twitter doesn’t even want to be the new facebook. they want to grow the member list and keep people involved. wordpress is just a bunch of crazy publishers using templates and their own content to maintain a presence on the internet. wordpress should do a lot more for their members and end users. the multi-media features are not that great. in fact simple text fonts options would be a big improvement. alexa ranks wordpress.com in the top 20 internet destinations.
more features to encourage interactivity would be a good idea.
“valleylist” planned new titles – - people who lined it up
pub date - – - # title – - – - – - – - – - - [avatar] – - – - – - version
thursdays
04/7/2011 – - 5_internet / browsers [search?] v153 [done]
4/14/2011 – - 6_electronic banking [h ross perot] v154 [done]
4/28/2011 – - 8_internet social groups [mark zuckerberg] v156 <- – current edition
05/5/2011 – - 9_other electronic publishing [richard adler] v157
5/12/2011 – - 10_email [arpanet] v158
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planned titles and sponsorship is online come buy some influence with important people. cash only. any starbucks after 5pm.
the “valleylist” publishing schedule puts a date on each edition of “valleylist” through the end of the year. stick around for lots free art events and community causes.
latest micro-hood event thursday at valencia bottoms launched a weekend of live social groups. most worthy rosenthal gallery and farnsworth. saturday earth day sf found everybody wondering yet again why fight for peace. just buy great stuff from cascadian farm klean kanteen santa cruz organic and rainbow grocery. easter sunday quiet. hungry crowds too unpleasant. dyed eggs even worse.
conclusion. facebook plans to try to devour the entire internet. a new front end to the internet experience. everything at once. social group. internet search. messaging. email. facebook friends. facebook is not yet a mandatory first stop on the internet. with a little help facebook could become indispensable. isn’t that a scary thought.
blogging is old internet technology. facebook and twitter have turned simple blogging into an internet phenomenon.
content management systems like wordpress fill the need for people to exchange messages and self-publish on the internet. all the major newspapers like nyt digital include blogs to allow readers to interact. specialized blogs like mashable and techcrunch have members that add news items and scoops and shamelessly promote themselves. google blog search is an indispensable tool for blogs and social groups.
the blog originated from the “web log” or threaded email or newsgroup discussion. somebody concatenated the phrase to read “we blog”.
therefore the “blog was born”.
“valleylist” would like to see exciting n-e-w internet products that go beyond groups and blogs. to many of us cable newspaper television and magazine people the “blog” looks just like a grown up bulletin board system. [bbs] service first invented in the 1970s.
bbs services were among the most popular information services. inspite of warnings that these services often attracted dangerous people with criminal intentions the “bbs” continued to flourish even after the aol phenomenon. the most successful verson so far is the internet blog and social group. what’s irritating is the little text window – - 180 characters – - is exactly the same as the bbs text window.
“valleylist” remains infatuated with the “total redesign” concept. social internet and social search came close to a total redesign of internet search. the need for a total makeover is still hanging out there with the rest of the internet’s features and services.
the numbers however are irrefutable. social groups and blogs are here to stay. the new “social” companies have taken over leadership from traditional media and search companies in a vain glorious effort to guide the future design of the internet.
the wincing humour comes from the fact that the bbs is old technology.
what to do on the internet today. read the news. check email. reply to messages. find out what facebook friends are up to.
greg mckenna
publisher
valleylist
all rights reserved
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