Serendipity35 - Social Media

Readings in Social Media 2013

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:27:00 -0400

This will be the fourth summer that I will teach my graduate class in designing social media. Every year, I have asked online for suggestions of book (not usually "textbooks") for the class which is part of the MS in Professional and Technical Communication at NJIT. Students in the PTC program tend to be (or intend to be) designers, technical writers, media & social media managers, but I always get a few students from the management, communications, media, IT and design majors.

The course examines how organizations use social media as communication tools for marketing, education & training and community building and students do social media surveys and create strategy proposals for actual organizations.

Though the bulk of the daily, short readings are current and available online, I also ask each student to select an outside book that focuses on an area of interest to their goals. they share content from that book when appropriate into the discussions online so that the class gets content from a number of other books.

Making the reading selection process itself a social media project seems appropriate. Books and readings in social media go out of date so quickly that it seems foolish to rely on a traditional textbook.

I am also a proponent of Open Educational Resources, especially open textbooks. Having put two sons through college not so long ago, I am also very cognizant of the cost of textbooks. There are lots of open texts (again, textbook may be a misnomer) and I try to use those when possible.

As general texts for the class, I will include three texts that are available free online. These three are not strictly about social media, but each contains ideas that I find provocative to the discussion. I will point students to specific chapters or sections and I feel a lot better about doing that knowing that there will be no cost to them.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler has made the entire book and additional materials available for free download at cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation, by Jono Bacon [free PDF download]

Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet - and how to stop it is also a free pdf download under a Creative Commons license.

Outside Reading Book Suggestions for DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
The first section of the list below includes books I have read and found useful and that students have used. The second section includes titles suggested by readers of this blog, colleagues and titles found, read and recommended by my students in past years. You'll notice that many of the titles are not specifically on social media or are on some area within social media (such as marketing or design).

If you would like to suggest a book related to an aspect of social media, please do so by adding a comment below.

Virtual Communities- Felicia Wu Song "Does contemporary Internet technology strengthen civic engagement and democratic practice? This book seeks to understand the technology on its own terms, focusing on how the technological and organizational configurations of online communities frame our contemporary beliefs and assumptions about community and the individual. It analyzes key structural features of thirty award-winning online community websites."

Designing mLearning: Tapping into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performanceby Clark Quinn is being used this summer in NJIT's PTC 650 - ELEARNING DESIGN FOR MOBILE

What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World by Jeff Jarvis and also his second book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live

Power Friending - Amber MacArthur

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations - Clay Shirky

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Charlene Li

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations - Amy Shuen

Designing for the Social Web - Joshua Porter

The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future - S. Craig Watkins

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone - patterns, principles, and best practices for starting a social website - has more of a design focus rather than current trends (so it might be relevant longer).

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. - Mitch Joel - a business focus on using Net marketing, esp. free tools and services

Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee ~ Web 2.0 for the enterprise

The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein - using twitter in a personal or company context

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle

Virtual Communities (Digital Formations) by Felicia Wu Song

The Social Media Handbook: Rules, Policies, and Best Practices to Successfully Manage Your Organization's Social Media Presence, Posts, and Potential - Nancy Flynn

There is another book similarly titled The Social Media Management Handbook (subbtitled "Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business")

also several other social media handbooks specific to different areas

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation - Tim Brown

The Cluetrain Manifesto - though ten years old, the authors' 95 theses about the networked marketplace probably make more sense today. Observations about business in America and how the Internet will continue to change it.

Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site - by Gavin Bell

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success - Safko

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins. This book puts web 2.0 technologies and trends into a much larger historical context of participatory culture.

The following titles

are ones that I have not read, but that have been recommended by my students and others.

YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green

Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and Other

Social Networks) by Dave Kerpen I am very interested in the art/science of creating content that grabs large audiences. I chose this book because it focuses on creating content as well as how to retain your audience and keep them engaged with your brand. I may also have been taken in by the Facebook thumbs up on the front cover, telling my subconscious that this was the book to buy.

The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out - Christopher Barger

The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More by

Kip Bodnar and Jeffrey Cohen.

The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future by S. Craig

Watkins Unlike the other books that have been posted about so far, the book I chose is not really about marketing with social media. It is more

about the culture of social media and people’s use of it, specifically users in their late teens and early twenties. The author interviewed a number of young people about the ways that they use social media and their feelings and attitudes towards it.

Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel

Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

The Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven Strategies by Dan Zarrella - a scientific approach to the way businesses and brands approach marketing. It uses a combination of marketing, statistical, and psychological research to explain why and, more importantly, how, companies should adapt marketing strategies such as blogging, social media, email marketing, and webinars.

Ken Auletta - Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

Shel Israel- Twitterville

Chris Brogan and Julian Smith Trust Agents

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

David Meerman Scott - New Rules of Marketing & PR

Paul Gillin - The New Influencers

Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge - Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

David Kirkpatrick - The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that's Connecting the World

Bob Garfield - Chaos Scenario

David Meerman Scott - World Wide Rave

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business - "whuffie" is Hunt's word for social capital on the Web

Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together by Felicia Wu Song

On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders - Michael A. Banks

I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy - Lori Andrews

Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices - Christopher Locke

The Social Media Business Equation: Using Online Connections to Grow Your Bottom Line - Eve Mayer Orsburn

Return on Relationship - Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose

Navigating Social Media Legal Risks: Safeguarding your Business - Robert McHale

YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture - Jean Burgess, Joshua Green, Henry Jenkins, and John Hartley

Wide Open Privacy: Strategies for the Digital Life - J.R. Smith and Siobhan MacDermott

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age - Manuel Castells

Microsoft Want You to Get Socl

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:33:00 -0400

Last December, Microsoft opened up registration for its own social network Socl http://www.so.cl to users with Microsoft and Facebook accounts. They had beta tested it with Microsoft employees and college students before that. As social networks go, it's more Pinterest than Facebook or Google+. The landing pages are photo collages.

Will it compete with Facebook? I don't think it was designed to compete. It comes from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs. I read that their research was in social search with students and more related to learning. I don't see how that research led to Socl which seems to a service where people connect/follow others over shared interests via image collages. In other words, it's Pinterest.

I could mock Microsoft for that but on their own Socl "About" page, they say that Socl is not designed to compete with the established social networks. They describe it as an “experimental research project with a minimal set of features.”

One of those features is “parties” which lets groups participate in online "video viewing parties." It's no Google+ Hangouts but I do see a similar strategy with Socl to what Google is doing with Plus. Both companies are trying to create a cross-platform ecosystem where all the parts are connected. Google has had some success with that. Some. Can Microsoft connect their mail, Bing, Socl etc. across hardware (Surface tablets) and software (Windows 8)?

Siri, what is semantic search?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:52:00 -0400

Big Bang Theory's Raj meets his dream voice-activated "personal assistant", Siri

I keep reading bits and pieces about Google using semantic search technology. It's a way that they plan to answer user questions rather than simply hunt down words. For quite awhile I had read about this being the next big thing in search engine functionality. I'm no expert on search technology but it seems that most of the searching we now do is semantic.

We have become used to seeing our search results as list of blue links. That's how it has been since the beginning. But you are probably noticing more things on the top of that results page. The promise of semantic search is to improve search accuracy by understanding our intent and also the contextual meaning of the terms we search.

Although Apple's Siri has both fans and critics, the potential is pretty exciting. It can support natural language now and it will get better at semantic search in the future. Instead of just using a keyword-based search, we can ask a question. Instead of "restaurant, Italian" and a zip code, you ask "Where's a good place to get Italian food nearby?" Is that question really so much easier than the keyword search? Well, Siri or Google or the next big thing in search will will know where you are located already (via GPS or your IP address) and it will also know that we have been to other restaurants in the area. And if we have entered some social data, like reviews of those restaurants, it will be able to suggest somewhere to eat that fits out personal little algorithm.

At least that's is the plan.

It was a year ago that I read an article about Google's semantic search algorithm. and since making it work requires vast amounts of data, Google seems like the one to do it. Now, why don;t I include Bing or other search sites? For one thing, I haven't heard much about their attempts at this, but mostly it's because they don't seem to have the other "personal" data about me that would make it work.

I actually took that Bing versus Google test online at http://www.bingiton.com/ and it consistent comes up Google for me.

I have also read that "true" semantic search uses an "inference engine" which means that - like a good human reader - instead of just recognizing words, it draws on its own "knowledge" to reach a conclusion. Hello, ontology!

Oh yeah, something else needs to happen. We, the users, need to change our searching habits. We will have to move from basic keywords that result in thousands of results, to clear queries that recognize the capabilities of the engine.

Tweetchats

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:00:00 -0500

Tweetchats are live synchronous conversations that happen on Twitter. People gather around a designated hashtag and anyone who wants to participate just searches for the hashtag and then uses it in their tweets.

These thing pop up organically at events. Most conferences create an "official" hashtag and ask people to use it it during the conference. A variation on planned conversations are the chats that emerge around events like elections, the Academy Awards, the President's State of the Union address etc.

Of course, you can follow a hashtag at any time. Looking at the tag #MOOC will show you the current conversation on Massive Open Online Courses, but a tweetchat is when a designated time is planned to chat. (See an example below) Tweetchats usually have a moderator(s) who will ask questions and guide the conversation.

Some hashtags have been used for several years. For example, if you search in twitter for the hashtag #lrnchat, you will find tweets about instructional design, training, and eLearning.

You don't need to have an account in twitter in order to follow a hashtag, but then you are only an observer witn read but no write privileges. That would be very Web 1.0 :-( One general education hashtag is #edchat and going to https://twitter.com/search?q=%23edchat&src=typd will show you what tweets people are tagging as #edchat currently whether or not you belong to twitter. Two other tags used are #blogchat (about blogging) and #futrchat for futurists.

What inspired me to post this today is that I am participating in an online social media course and we are doing a tweetchat tonight from 8pm-10pm US EST (Need to convert that time?) Again, tweetchats are "open" because anyone can follow a conversation and participate, so if you want to to follow us or join in, go ahead.

There are also web apps to help filter these conversations from the rest of the flood of tweets in your feed. Tweet Chat and Twitter's own native app, TweetDeck, are two popular ones.

Network Visualization

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:00:30 -0500

This RSA Animate video has Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, looking at using network visualization. Hierarchical tree structures are being dropped and researchers are more often using networks to map the complexities of our modern world. Visualization and network topology are new cultural memes.

This was taken from a longer lecture given by Lima. Listen to the full talk: http://www.thersa.org

What Happened to Social Bookmarking?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:10:00 -0400

Social bookmarking is when a community of users compiles an index by collectively submitting ("bookmarking") favorite or relevant sites for the community. To make it work, the sites are tagged with keywords to facilitate searching.

The idea of creating a folksonomy is something I wrote about here in 2008 and earlier. On the surface, it sound rather random and disorganized.

Folksonomy,
the people's taxonomy that is so prevalent on the Web through sites
like delicious, Flickr and Digg, works as long as there is some
agreement on the naming. If I tag something as "satire" but others tag
it as video, or comedy or TV or SNL, does that make it better/broader or
break the system? True taxonomies rely on agreement. Plant taxonomy
classifies one plant as Gerbera jamesonii so that the common name
"African daisy" or the altered versions of the scientific name ("gerber
daisy" or "gerbera daisy") all point to the same thing. It's not
arbitrary at all.

I ask my students to tag useful sites for my visual design course in delicious with the unique tag of "msptc605"
so that their fellow students can share bookmarks and so that the list
can increase in future semesters. We agree on that tag so that all our
bookmarks can be together, but we also need to have additional tags such
as typography, color, usability so that the list is useful. It's not
arbitrary at all.

It has been enough years that there is a history of social bookmarking. But it seems to me that the use of many of the sites that were the most popular social bookmarking sites in 2010 are not being used as much today.

This video from 2007 was introducing a service like delicious to new users.

But I am not using social bookmarks as much as I did before. My own delicious account that I used for classes has fallen into disuse.

Certainly "tagging" is still being used. But adding the hashtag #edtech to your twitter post is not the same thing as what social bookmarking meant five years ago.

Some social bookmarking sites took a different approach to the process. There was more a "voting" (up or down) approach on the site Digg (which has gone through several rebirths and is no longer really a social bookmarking site). Facebook uses a "thumbs up" Like button for people to indicate to friends that they "Like" a site or post. But these choices are not searchable in any satisfying way and they are not tagged into categories. Newsvine called the headlines there "seeds."

Have Net users outgrown social bookmarking or has the practice evolved to simply tagging in social networks? Is "social tagging" the term to replace "social bookmarking?"

Back in 2006, I asked "Is Folksonomy Taxonomy or Fauxonomy? Maybe the question is being answered.

iTunes U Gets Social With Piazza

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:34:00 -0400

Apple's iTunes U has never been social. Apple doesn't really do social. (Well, there was Ping, but that was dead on arrival.) But there is a new feature that is meant to allow users to learn with others, ask questions, and work more collaboratively in the iTunes U environment.

This social layer is already used in various ways on sites like Coursera, Edmodo, Knewton, Rafter, Codecademy and Udacity.

For this new social effort, Apple is partnering with Piazza. An article on the Forbes site, describes Piazza, not very flatteringly, as "a free student question and answer service" that adds the social layer to an otherwise one way "course" experience.

Piazza, as with most ogf the previously mentioned sites, is a newer startup that launched in January 2011. It allows students to
discuss topics in a course and has been free. Professors
or students can set up a page for a class. The only difference in the Piazza with iTunes
connection is that those courses will be public rather than closed to the students in a traditional class.

The first iTunes U course that is being used for this added layer is not a surprise. It is the "Coding Together: Apps for iPhone and iPad" class offered by Stanford. It is already one of the most popular classes on iTunes U, with over 10 million downloads. (The registration is open through July 6, if you want to try it out, but the class runs from June 25 to August 27.) Of course, the new social tools are available for any course in iTunes U.

Reading About Designing Social Media

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:14:00 -0400

For my graduate students in "Designing Social Media" this summer, I created this list of outside reading in various aspects of using social media.

Social media is a topic that is changing so rapidly that using a traditional textbook or even a popular title is almost impossible. Some of these titles are not new and are included because they not only give some historical context to the discussion, but they contain the "theory" of using social networks and media. Having students look at that theory and compare it to the current practices is valuable.

I wish all the readings could be from open textbooks and readings available online for free. I do use many articles available online and I assign some readings from open textbooks such as The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler. Benkler's entire book is available for free download at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/

Students are required to select a book for outside reading.The titles below have been used in previous semesters or were recommended by students and faculty. They cover a wide range of social media and related areas. Hopefully, students choose a book close to their own interest in the field - marketing, visual design, theory etc.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success - Lon Safko

Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter - read a sample online from Safari Books

Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site - Gavin Bell - covers moving from building a web site/application to building a social application that encourages visitor interaction

The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out - Christopher Barger - views social media success within a large company - Barger was the SM director who built successful programs at both GM and IBM - deals with corporate culture, legal barriers, and the kind of bureaucratic resistance that that are unique to large organizations.

Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business - Amber MacArthur - with many business examples, looks at targeting the right networks, seeding & building a community, enngaging with customers/fans and managing online "friendships"on a budget

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone - patterns, principles, and best practices for starting a social website - has more of a software and design focus

Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices - Christopher Locke

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations - Clay Shirky

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected, Connect Your Business to Everyone.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Charlene Li

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations - Amy Shuen

The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future - S. Craig Watkins

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. - Mitch Joel - a business focus on using Net marketing, esp. free tools and services

Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee ~ Web 2.0 for the enterprise

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation - Tim Brown

The Cluetrain Manifesto - though ten years old, the authors' 95 theses about the networked marketplace probably make more sense today. Observations about business in America and how the Internet will continue to change it.

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins. This book puts web 2.0 technologies and trends into a much larger historical context of participatory culture.

YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis is his first book that looked at Google's abilities to harness the power of the Internet Age and how businesses—especially media and entertainment industries—can continue to evolve and profit by using Google's strategies.

Jarvis' newest book is perhaps more relevant - Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live looks at privacy and publicness and how our new sense of publicness changes business, society, and life as profoundly as Gutenberg’s invention, shifting power from old institutions to us all. (He also has a short Kindle Single Gutenberg the Geek about the "original technology entrepreneur and disruptor."

The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More Bodnar & Cohen - SM's specific application to B2B companies and how it can be leveraged to drive leads and revenue.

Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business - by Erik Qualman
Socialnomics—where consumers and the societies they create online have a profound influence on our economy and the businesses that operate within it. Online word of mouth and the powerful influence of peer groups have already made many traditional marketing strategies obsolete. Today's best businesses and marketers are learning to profitably navigate this new landscape.

Do you have a suggestion for titles to be added? Post titles, comments or links in the comments area.

Now, Groups for Schools from Facebook - and down the road?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:07:00 -0400

Facebook has unveiled Groups for Schools https://www.facebook.com/about/groups/schools which hopes to further connect students and faculty at colleges and universities.

Groups for Schools allows online communities in Facebook where users can send messages to other members in groups and sub-groups. It also allows you to share files such as lectures, schedules and assignments (up to 25 MB), and create and post events.

They envision Groups being used for classes, dorms, campus clubs etc. The members of groups do not need to be Facebook friends although it will probably drive some holdouts on campus to make the move.

Schools are already using Facebook in this way via fan and "follow" pages but this gives a more controlled platform with additional features. There are customizable privacy settings, including open, which makes the group available to anyone, closed, which allows anyone to see the group and its members, but requires membership to view or post material, and secret, which only allows members to see the group and who's in it.

As you can see in my screenshot from the NJIT group, it is aimed more at students than at faculty (which makes sense) although faculty could use it. (Beware the creepy treehouse...)

You can see from a menu your friends' groups, all groups, your groups, and suggested groups. To access Groups you must have an active .edu e-mail address. To find out if a group has already been created for a school, you can enter your school name on the Groups for Schools page and search. If your college isn't thee yet, you can be alerted when a group is set up.

Groups for Schools was tested at Brown and Vanderbilt universities in December 2011. The Vanderbilt and Brown groups that are the largest are all graduating class groups (Class of 2014 etc.).

Although this is not new ground for Facebook or for colleges, it does show that Facebook is thinking more about getting into education - particularly higher education, which was their original user base.

As Brandon Croke says on the Inigral blog: "While this may be Facebook’s attempt to tame the wild west of runaway university Pages and Groups, it doesn’t look like schools will have any control or authority of their branded communities." Inigral is a company that works with schools on using social networks to increase student engagement and use community building as a path to improved student success.

I think that at some point post-IPO, we will see Facebook move into creating a platform that is much like our current LMSs which will allow courses to be taught using Facebook software. The courses won't be in the Facebook that we know, but will have strong technology ties to that community. If something like that was offered as "free" (probably not as open source) to schools (with advertising, publishers and other ties as the business model) it would be very tempting for schools. I actually expected Google to move into this area a year ago, but it hasn't happened. Then again, Google has been running behind Facebook when it comes to social for awhile now, so...

Social Search

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:23:00 -0500

When someone says "social search", I think of two things. One is the ability to search social sites and media. Two would be search that is coupled with a social aspect.

Greplin deals with the former and allows you to search for things in your online social life. When you put in a search term, it searches your personal accounts including Gmail, Google Apps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Evernote, Dropbox, and Yammer.(It requires registration so that it can get to those accounts.) You can add indexes of your favorite websites and search all your data in one place.

You need to set up an account which is free for 200MB of storage. They offers a premium account with 500MB of storage for $4.99/month and Premium Plus is $14.99/month for even more storage and services. They have an extensive privacy policy page which is a good idea because users are entrusting their account information.

But I think that our traditional search engines like Google and Bing will be adding social search capabilities. Google Plus connected to your email and other Google apps would make that possible to a degree already. Facebook will probably open its search capabilities in the other direction - out from their social world to other places (social or not) that you allow them to connect to.

And I suspect that those big players will add those tools for free in order to get a deeper bite of the data in your social graph for their own marketing purposes.

So, is Greplin a good idea? Yes? Will people be willing to pay for it? Probably not. Unless the competition doesn't offer it - or they convince us that they are a safer keeper of our privacy than the others. Will people be willing to pay for privacy? Maybe.

Will Edmodo be the social learning network for K12 education?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:33:00 -0400

If you still think social networks have nothing to do with learning, Edmodo hopes to change your mind.

Edmodo has more than 2 million users and will try to use social network tools for K-12 classrooms. Part of their pitch is that students already know how to use this interface, so it's a natural for students to communicate with teachers and each other around assignments and class topics.

The teachers can post about assignments, add related materials or further discussion beyond class. The updates are shown in Facebook-looking stream. Add in the ability to turn in digital assignments and a gradebook and it starts to sound like many other course management systems already out there.

Yes, Edmodo has document libraries on Social Studies, Biology and other topics. It has social aspects like sharing with teachers from other schools and even those game-like badges that sites like Foursquare offer.

So what would make you venture into their platform? The business model is free. Edmodo is not charging for teachers or students to use the service, but will add revenue from publisher promotions of classroom textbooks or materials.

Edmodo is going after individual teachers rather than schools or districts which might backfire if the school/district uses another service or doesn't allow teachers to use these types of tools.

Updates via http://blog.edmodo.com

Trying To Understand Google+

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:25:09 -0400

If you're trying to understand what the new Google+ social networking service operated by Google Inc., one way to do that is via the videos Google has posted online demonstrating some of the aspects of the service. Below are three Google+ features.

The service launched on June 28, 2011 and is still in an invite-only testing phase.

Many reviews and articles have said that this is Google's biggest attempt to compete in the social network world with Facebook. Facebook has a tremendous lead with over three quarters of a billion users currently.

Google+ will be built as a layer that not only integrates different previous Google social service attempts, such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, but also introduces many new features including Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles.

Google+ will also be available as a desktop application and as an application on Android and iOS operating systems.

Google has not been very successful in doing social and one reason is that they have not been good at explaining in a simple, clear way what a service (like Wave or Buzz) offered. Do these videos help you understand Google+? Did you need videos to understand how to use Facebook?

In this video, Jed introduces Circles with a few thoughts on the nature of friendship.

Amee introduces Hangouts with a few thoughts on the spontaneous get-together.

Miranda introduces Huddle with a few thoughts on getting everyone together

For more on Google's rethinking of real-life sharing for the web, see plus.google.com