Since Facebook opened up its platform for third party applications, there has been a lot of activity. The latest major provider to launch a Facebook app is business-oriented social network LinkedIn. The new app is a “My Company’s Hiring” function. A profile link leads to a list of positions for which one’s firm is recruiting. A “more info” link can lead to a full job description, an application form, etc.
Jun 282007
Jun 112007
One question online community operators wrestle with is how many communities (social networks, blogs, forums, wikis, etc.) one individual can participate in. Sure, people are spending more time online these days, but there’s a limit. If a person is spending an hour or two a day posting in one forum, is he likely to do the same in two or three others? If an active member in a community decides to launch a blog on the same topic, will she still devote an hour to creating a detailed, thoughtful post or will that content end up on her blog? While until now, the rising tide of total time spent online (number of users and hours per users) has lifted a lot of boats, but inevitably online activity will become a zero sum game. People who spend more time on one activity will cut back other online participation by the same amount. A couple of blog posts highlight this issue.
Jun 062007
I’ve probably discussed Netflix more than any other online business here, primarily because they have been a leader in using the power of online community and Web 2.0 in general to directly impact their customer experience. (See Netflix – A Different Approach, Netflix Using Community Intelligence, and many more Netflix posts.) Their savvy exploitation of crowd wisdom has helped Netflix earn top honors in Web customer satisfaction. One of the more interesting ways Netflix is tapping community savvy is with their effort to improve their recommendation algorithm. Katie Hafner of the New York Times details Netflix’s crowdsourcing effort is in Netflix Prize Still Awaits a Movie Seer.:
Jun 042007
There’s little doubt that Web users find ratings helpful, even when they know that tastes differ and some ratings may be self-serving or entirely bogus. Would you rent a movie you never heard of from Netflix without glancing at its star rating? If it weighed in at 2 stars out of 5 after being rated by a thousand Netflix customers, would you still rent it? We recently covered RateItAll‘s novel interactive widget that lets site owners install a simple widget that both displays rating information for that site and allows visitors to add their own rating and review. (Beta signup here.) Now, social news site heavyweight Digg.com appears to be planning on expanding into a broader range of ratings and recommendations.
Jun 012007
Google didn’t invent the long tail, but it certainly enabled it. With its original algorithm, Google enabled searchers to find information on the most obscure search terms with surprising accuracy. Adwords enabled advertisers to target obscure keywords, and Adsense enabled publishers to attract advertisers automatically for highly specialized content. Now, a new search engine, Mahalo, is aiming at short tail searches by attempting to human-edit the top 10,000 searches to produce the best possible results [Wall Street Journal]. According to founder Jason Calacanis, this modest number of search terms account for about a quarter of all searches. Searches for which no human-edited results are available will be filled by Google.