While flipping channels, I ran across an episode of City Confidential, a show that takes viewers on a trip to an American city while recounting a murder there. This particular episode involved two business partners - one was convicted of killing the other. The murder victim was apparently ...
Today, I was driving in San Francisco with a couple of other SEO-types and we spotted a prominent billboard for Google’s 411 service. The sign wasn’t too specific, but it conveyed that it was a free directory information service of some type. So, being intrepid explorers, we gave ...
Every community operator knows that it takes different kinds of participants to be successful. Some people come looking for answers, others come to help. Some like to expound at length, while others say little. Some are lurkers, others are prolific contributors. Researchers from Cornell and Microsoft ...
A key aspect of Web 2.0 is letting users create or enhance a site’s content. This sounds great, but in practice can be hard to achieve. The Web is littered with dead forums, unreviewed products, spammed-out wikis, and other failed attempts to build user-created sites. Consulting giant ...
The good news is that companies, even big ones, are waking up to the power of online communities, and that they are taking steps like starting their own communities for discussion, ratings, reviews, and social networking as well as participating at other sites. The bad news is that sometimes ...
Since the early days of Internet-based communities and chat rooms, individuals found that they could invent new online personas for themselves. Unencumbered by real-world details like physical appearance, social status, and their back balance, they could “be” themselves and interact with others doing the same thing. In most ...
As a blogger, have you ever wished that you had journalistic immunity? So that when the feds knocked on your door to find out where you got the unreleased product photos or the tip about your congressman’s freezer full of cash you could just say “no”? Well, the ...
Conventional wisdom is that web-based applications are the Next Big Thing. Current apps like Salesforce.com’s CRM show that critical business data and processes can be outsourced to third parties and be accessed via a Web browser. Email providers like Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, and Yahoo Mail have proven to ...
A survey of technical professionals shows a startling level of reliance on Web communities by IT professionals. The report from King Research includes these key findings: (more…)
A few months ago, we began testing the interactive blog rating widget from RateItAll (see Beyond Web 2.0 - Interactive Rating Widget). At the time, this widget was in closed beta. Now, RateItAll is opening things up with a more flexible widget design (more sizes and colors). ...
