Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Sept 26, 2007 (yes, we’re continuing on!)

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary.

I’ve created a new tag called Digest where you can start to track and access these going forward. The hope? To make it easy for a web strategist to quickly scan the activity in the last week. I strive to make headlines on items categorized and succinct.

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Thank you for the feedback and comments last week, (I asked if I should continue this series) In addition to comments, I received emails, and messages in Facebook telling me to continue the digest, which I will do. Here’s my attempt at listening to you, my customers!

Web Strategy Summary
The big story? Microsoft (experienced with online advertising) is aiming to invest in Facebook, valuation may vary. This week, we’re continuing to see much buzz about the Social Graph, and continued segmentation from deployments. While I suggest that segmentation is natural for the web (and a good thing) excessive niche plays may be an indicator of the saturation of the market.

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Money: Facebook and Microsoft in bed
The big story this week is that Microsoft is hunting to invest 5-10% into Facebook, the total valuation of Facebook is now being debated. There are those that are questioning the impact that Facebook has on the widget economy, it’s clear that FB is the Gorilla in the room, although some suggest we should be very worried.

Social Graph: Six Apart to launch Social Graph
This is exciting news, the much buzz-demanded feature called social graph (where users can transport their network relationships from one SoNet to another) will be released from the very open Six Apart. I must applaud them for their excellent reach and connection to getting open ID, and now social graph.

Legal: Teen sues Virgin for mis-use of Flickr image
Every company must be cautious and careful in the images it selects from the open web and social networking sites like Flickr. This youth is suing telecom company for damages as her photo was used in an embarrassing (and should get double fees for using a cliche) manner. By the way, we ran into similar issues at my last company…gotta learn what creative commons is!

Productivity: Ban Facebook? Intel’s public debate
Josh Bancroft, Intel’s top blogger, is challenging the forces at Intel Security to keep Facebook an application for business and personal use. I can think of so many arguments to keep it open, and in fairness a few why they may want to close it, but the opportunities simply outweigh the threats. If they do ban Facebook, they might as well ban the rest of the web, but intel.com

Social Graph: Google to Release on Nov 5th
In a private meeting, Google has told a few that it will release a social graph feature, much like how Six Apart is also going to. Google will leverage it’s popular (well in Brazil) SoNet Orkut, and offer APIs that can connect to it and iGoogle. This will be an interesting battle, many speculate Google will sweep up all the other networks for global domination.

Feature: Facebook to launch IM
Yet another tool to capture our attention inside of Facebook, an IM tool will be released. If you were paying attention, the homepage feed has been asking for AIM login info, so I’m somewhat surprised this has not already happened. For me, I won’t use it, IM sucks too much time.

Segmentation: A SoNet for when you’re dead
Nick Carr reports on the Social Network youdeparted.com where it aggregates your life, and you can leave messages for friends and family after your demise. Cheerful! Now, we just need a SoNet before we’re born (perhaps, you’reborn.com) …someone kick me when we’ve jumped the shark.

Segmentation: A SoNet for Google Earth
A group of Arizona students are in cahoots with a “Major internet company” to release a social networking feature set for the Google Earth product. Why stop there? build a system that can work with all Google products.

Mobile: MySpace to offer mobile version –with ads
MySpace is going mobile, users can now access popular SoNet, although it’s not quite as sophisticated as many marketers may want, true geo-contextual advertising is not here yet. I’d give it a few short years.

Usage: Ning surpasses 100,000 Social Networks
Although not a measurement of quality or activity, Ning announces that over 100k ‘groups’ within it’s product suite have been created.

Legal and Security: Facebook ignores predators?
An open letter to Facebook to pay attention to online predators, hopefully, we’ll hear a response.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 8:03 am and is filed under Digest, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.