Question of the Day: Do social networks exploit their user-content generators?
I don’t know if you saw Billy Bragg’s Op-Ed yesterday, The Royalty Scam, but it’s worth reading as a criticism of social media business models that leverage the intellectual and artistic capital of users to build a traffic base that can be monetized — and then don’t share the wealth. Continue »
I don’t know if you saw Billy Bragg’s Op-Ed yesterday, The Royalty Scam, but it’s worth reading as a criticism of social media business models that leverage the intellectual and artistic capital of users to build a traffic base that can be monetized — and then don’t share the wealth. Continue »
I don’t know if you saw Billy Bragg’s Op-Ed yesterday, The Royalty Scam, but it’s worth reading as a criticism of social media business models that leverage the intellectual and artistic capital of users to build a traffic base that can be monetized — and then don’t share the wealth. Continue »
Christos Cotsakos, former CEO of E*TRADE, the online brokerage firm that revolutionized stock trading in Web 1.0, will unveil his Web 2.0 company called MOLI tomorrow at DEMO. And surprise, surprise — it’s a social network! Yet Cotsakos is undetered by what is an arguably overcrowded space: In a briefing with GigaOM last week, he explained what distinguishes MOLI (the name stands for “money and living”) from others with market-leader advantages (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) — and why he believes users will gravitate to MOLI anyway.
“People say the market has already formed,” he said, “but the market never forms. It only forms and reforms. There is still room for a handful of unique brands in this space.” Cotsakos, who founded MOLI in 2003, has had plenty of time to refine the company’s business model to ensure it might be one of them. And although odds are usually stacked against late entrants, MOLI does offer some compelling features. Continue »
Social networks are hot. No doubt. VCs love them. But from the user-perspective they deserve plenty of criticism, too. 
Why do you think the lately-controversial founder of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, showed up on 60 Minutes Sunday night? Continue »
Microsoft at its Mix’n‘Match conference in Redmond, Wash. earlier this month gave the developer faithful an early look at a new technology called Feedsync, which combines subscription models like RSS with data synchronization. The result of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s in-house think tank, Feedsync works by combining the subscription model of web feeds with data that can be used to update things like calendars or contact information.
As the name suggests, the problem Feedsync solves is a simple but vexing one: keeping things synchronized. Instead of emailing my friends to tell them my new address, for example, with Feedsync I simply update my feed and everyone that subscribes to it instantly gets my contact information updated. Continue »
Google’s (GOOG) much awaited answer to Facebook ecosystem is finally coming to light. The existence of this Google platform was first reported by TechCrunch and is going to become official tomorrow.
Google will announce its new social networking initiative, Open Social on Thursday. Joining Google and its Orkut social network are other partners such as XING, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Newsgator and Ning.
OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building social applications on the web. These common APIs mean that developers only have to learn once in order to start building social applications for multiple websites, and any website will be able to implement OpenSocial and host social applications.Continue »
Somewhere in San Jose, Calif., devotees of all things Facebook have gathered to celebrate the cult of Mark Zuckerberg and the little company he started. Dave McClure might call it his Graphing Social Patterns conference, but we all know it’s all about Facebook, Silicon Valley’s Furby. And while the fanboys gather and rejoice, they should also pay heed to some of the red flags fluttering in the hot air.
The company apparently sent out an email earlier this month informing all those who applied for grants via the fbFund to start over. We emailed Facebook to check the authenticity of the email, but had not heard back from them at the time of posting. (Given that there is a Facebook app for the application process, we take that as a confirmation.)
Weekends… what are they good for? Two things – catching up on RSS reading and answering emails – which just seem to pile up during the week, especially in weeks when we are all busy with conferences. And it is also the time to take stock of all bits and pieces of news and information one has been able to gather.
And nothing helps with clearing your inbox like a nice fresh cup of tea. This week’s tea is Assam Golden Tips I picked up earlier this weekend from Lupica Tea in San Francisco. If you are a tea-nerd, this is the where you go to buy loose leaf tea, which by the way is the only civilized way to drink tea.
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