Two companies that produce massive quantities of new content every day, Answers.comand Demand Media, are rapidly moving up the list of top U.S. web properties, as measured by comScore. Answers.com has risen from #26 to #13 in just two months, and Demand Media has risen from #24 to #15 in the same time period. Answers.com has nearly 38 million pages of content on the Web so far; Demand Media produces 2000 new pieces of content a day.Is the fact that these sites produce so much content, and are quickly gaining in popularity as a result, cause for concern about the future of the Web? Will it lead to the same uniformity and lowest common denominator content that afflicts the television industry?SponsorIn this post we take a closer look at how Answers.com is becoming so successful - and what this may mean for the Web. In a follow-up post, we will dive deeper into Demand Media's model, based on an interview I conducted with several Demand Media executives (including founder Richard Rosenblatt) at the Web 2.0 Summit in September.Answers.com Rolling in Page Views, MoneyAnswers.com, which we reviewed in August, garnered 56.4 Million monthly unique visitors in the United States in September (83M worldwide). For context, that puts it on a similar level as CBS Interactive (#12 with 58M uniques in U.S.) and Apple (#11 with 60M). Demand Media, which we also reviewed in August, was close behind with 52.5M uniques in September. Answers.com announced its Q3 2009 financial resultstoday. It made $4.99 million in revenue in that quarter, including $1.9M in September alone. The Q3 09 result was an increase of 40% compared to $3.56 million in Q3 2008. Most of the 09 revenues were from WikiAnswers, which reported $3.42 million in Q3 2009 - an increase of 75% compared to $1.96 million in Q3 2008. WikiAnswers is the main reason for Answers.com's popularity. It is a Q&A site driven by user-generated content. And it's growing fast. Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Answers.com, left a comment on our earlier postsaying that "the growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site."In September, WikiAnswers garnered 46.3 million U.S. unique visitors and ReferenceAnswers 21.4 million U.S. unique visitors (note there is some crossover between the two sites, hence those numbers are greater than the unduplicated total of 56.4M).Low-Cost Content Production On A Massive ScaleThere are two interesting aspects to the success of Answers.com. Firstly, it has a huge number of pages on the Web now: 38 million as of today. Much of that is user-generated content, so very low cost.Secondly, Answers.com's page view and financial success is almost entirely created off the back of Google. Indeed, Answers.com announced recently that it has renewed its Google Services Agreement- extending its access to Google AdSense for two more years. Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com, is quoted as saying that "we earn the vast majority of our ad revenue from Google's sponsored links."Now consider the implications of this for the future of content on the Web. The recent rapid ascensions of Answers.com and Demand Media can only really lead to one conclusion: to succeed in the content business on the Web, you should pump out hundreds of pages of content every day- preferably thousands. Now, this is nothing new. We've known for a long time that blog success is more easily gained (gamed?) by producing far more posts per day than any one person can read. This has led to many professional blogs competing with each other on how many posts they can put up every day - usually accompanied by a slide in quality.As well as producing as much content as possible, Answers.com and Demand Media also have a low cost structure in common with blogs. But they are taking the 'quantity rules' approach to a whole new level.This is low-cost content production done on a huge scale.Just how much content do these two sites have on the Web? There's an easy way to find out: search Google. Here is the amount of content each has, along with some other sites for comparison:wikipedia.org: 56,000,000answers.com: 37,700,000 (of which wiki.answers.com accounts for 34,100,000)nytimes.com: 13,200,000washingtonpost.com: 12,500,000ehow.com: 4,850,000 (this is Demand Media's lead site)huffingtonpost.com: 4,740,000mashable.com: 210,000techcrunch.com: 124,000readwriteweb.com: 37,700Answers.com has nearly 38 million pages of content onthe Web. Much of it is discovered via Google; and monetized via Google. Wikipedia still has more content, but it is a non-profit world encyclopedia. Answers.com is a commercial company, out to make money.Demand Media is well behind Answers.com (and Wikipedia), but there's reason to believe it will ramp up fast. In August the company told usthat it produces 2,000 pieces of content per day, across its network of sites. It also has a slick content production 'studio' system, which we will explore in our next post.Interesting to note that Huffington Post is really the closest the blog world has to a player in this 'mega content' space - but then most of the site's content comes from aggregating it from other sites. Huffington Post has been criticized by the New York Timesin particular for this practice.A note on New York Times and Washington Post. Clearly they both have a lot of content too - but they also have a lot of well-paid staff. Answers.com and Demand Media are producing content at a fraction of the price NYT and WP pay for it.The Age of Mega Content Sites - Where Is This Headed?On the Web, traditionally success has been measured by page views. This isn't always the case - there's certainly a place for quality over quantity, a philosophy which we at ReadWriteWeb firmly believe in! But by and large, big page views usually means big revenue... or at least the promise of it (e.g. in Facebook's case).Both Answers.com and Demand Media are onto a good thing. They have different approaches - Answers.com is largely user-generated content combined with Wikipedia and other sources; Demand Media has created a low-cost content factory, by employing thousands of freelancers.Google is largely keeping both companies in business - it is the source of most of their traffic (because a lot of it is reference or resource content) and certainly in Answers.com's case it provides the bulk of its revenue.I can't help but think that the rapid rise of these two companies may be bad news for the Web. If a small number of companies come to dominate a content market, usually blandness and lowest common denominator fare follows. The network television and radio markets in almost any country in the world is evidence of that. Likewise, if you search Google for a reference article and the first page of results is littered with Answers.com and Demand Media articles, is that crowding out the real topic experts?Are these mega content sites a good or bad thing for the Web? Is quality taking too much of a back seat to quantity? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.Discuss

  Halloween's barely over, but it's already the most wonderful time of the year! Brace yourselves for the onslaught of holiday-themed money-grubbing, folks.The tech sector is subjected to the same indignities, beginning with a new enterprise search product from our friends at Google, who insistthat users will stay on your pathetic website for about eight seconds unless they find exactly what they're looking for. And how ever shall they find it? Google Commerce Search, of course!SponsorGoogle Commerce Search was engineered with the online retail experience in mind. It purports to allow visitors to quickly find the products they seek; to filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes; to increase conversions and sales; to increase sales of specific products within search results; to conduct cross-sale and promotional offers; and to scale without glitches because of holiday-related traffic spikes. And all of these results are to be delivered alongside Google's analytics offerings for optimized performance and conversion.Here's a prematurely festive and depressingly commercial demo video:Sure, it'll make users happier by decreasing the keystrokes between rabid greediness and commercial satiety, but at what cost? That's a factor you'll have to contact Googleto actually learn about; pricing is not available online.It's dirty electronic retailer ROI powered by Google - happy holidays. Webinars are coming to a monitor near you on November 12, November 17, and December 3.Discuss

  Earlier today Novell demoed it's Google Wave-like product to the enterprise world. Pulseis the latest workplace collaboration platform to announce at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference and ReadWriteWeb was lucky enough to catch up with Novell's VP of Engineering Andy Fox for a demo of the new tool. The beta product is expected early next year. SponsorIn late June we offered our first impressions of Google Wave.While Wave's claim to "reinventing email" has met with heavy criticism in the blogosphere, Pulse appears better-equipped to serve work-related users. One of the great selling points for Pulse is the fact that instead of forcing users to add individual teammates for collaboration, the tool provisions groups and workmates from an enterprise identity system. This means that new employees are already set up to start. From here users can follow team and employee feeds, edit and send real-time messages and collaborate on documents in real-time. While users can work on Novell templates within the system, they can also collaborate on 3rd party spreadsheets and documents with real-time syncing to desktop folders. This attention to backup is yet another of Pulse's advantages over Google Wave. When asked about the scenario of an employee going wild and vandalizing Pulse docs, says Fox, "We're not just offering point backup. We've got versioning on every single system keystroke."Pulse also offers a higher degree of privacy for group settings and profiles where IT admin and general users set customized admin settings and privileges. According to Fox you can even customize the privacy on profile form fields to ensure that headhunters are not prospecting your staff from outside of the organization. Meanwhile the social aspect of a Yammer-likeemployee feed is enough reason to keep staff interested and engaged. And for those groups who are still committed to Wave, Pulse will also offer Wave integration via Google Wave's Federated protocol. For more info on Pulse check out the demo site.Discuss

  Second Lifeis introducing a behind the firewall service for enterprise customers, another sign that the very definition of collaboration is changing as more companies seek ways to do their work in virtual environments.In addition, Second Life will unveil a marketplacein the first quarter of 2010 where people may purchase templates and other 3D environments for their Second Life Enterprise world.SponsorWe hear so much about how "people," are at the center of a world where social technologies have an increasingly important role. The reality is that the very definitions of time and place are changing in the enterprise and what it means to be present as a person is becoming increasingly abstract. We see this with the advent of augmented reality,which provides ways to layer our physical world with digital markers. In a 3D world, the applications for business allow for an "always on," world where people may have meetings, go sailing in a virtual sea and use 3D objects for training and other purposes.The Second Life Enterprise environment provides users an added layer of security and the ability to scale an avatar community. Servers are installed in a company's data center, providing the 3D experience. The service can support up to 800 concurrent avatars. Second Life is made up of regions. Second Life Enterprise has the capacity for eight regions that also run concurrently.The security component is a must for most large enterprises. Second Life Enterprise provides LDAPintegration for creating and authenticating accounts. According to Second Life, the marketplace will include collaboration tools and features that fit in a 3D world. This may include environments for meetings, events and training. Users may purchase business avatars and business oriented environments. Second Life Enterprise will eventually provide the capability to integrate collaborative applications, meaning if a company wanted to integrate Sharepoint they could do so. The Second Life platform compares to a service like Proton Media. Proton Mediahas a number of integrations already in place, including its fit with Sharepoint.Discuss

  Like some of our favorite news dashboard services, such as Lazyfeedand Guzzle.it, Google News has decidedto allow users to create and save customizable news searches and consume that news in their own "sections."Part dashboard, part feed reader, and all user-friendly, this service promises to be both popular and useful. Users can create sections based on keywords and then publish their sections to directories for sharing with others.SponsorMultiple sections can be added to a user's Google News homepage, creating a customized, keyword-based digest. this feature is turning Google News into the infinitely segmented, infinitely remixable modern newspaper; and with all the sources Google indexes, it's just what users need. Unfortunately, it also deals yet another blow to suffering old media publications, many of whom aren't too happy about the distribution of their content in the first place.According to a blog post today by Google News engineers Sharad Jain and Nilesh Agrawal, "One of the great things about online news is the ability to filter by topics. Google News has long recognized this, so we've allowed users to track articles based on keywords of their choice. But it has been a little tricky at times. For example, to follow news about topics related to outer space, you would have to create a pretty complex filter."Now, if you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just create your own! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others can benefit."Currently, the directory includes such sections as Space, NFL, Day in Photos, and about 270 other sections and counting. And just for you, we've created a section all about the real-time web, one of our favorite topics at RWW:What do our readers think? Is this new feature nifty, or what?Discuss

  The Inside Sourceis eBay's latest announcement. The searching, buying, and selling habits of its 88 million active users have added up to an enormous dataset, one that could have easily been hoarded and sold to marketers, brands, and others with a vested interest in online retail and trends.Although eBay isn't releasing raw stats into the wild, it is publishing editorial content and news on trends as well as a tag cloud of most popular searches right now. Coming soon are multimedia galleries and real-time visualizations of current eBay searches. Can we get an open API? Read on to find out.SponsorThe consumer-focused site is broken up into several sections of articles by topic as well as a general blog. In addition to getting information on fashion and pop culture, users can also browse articles on "green" products and tech gadgets. Users can login through Facebook Connect, although this feature appeared to be unusable at press time.Here's a rather scripted video from editorial director Meredith Barnett:According to emails we've exchanged with an Inside Source representative, the site's staff is working closely with eBay's analytics team to cull information on trends. The trends examined are as broad as correlation between events and increased searches for a term (e.g., celebrity wears knee-high boots at red carpet shindig; users start looking for knee-high boots on eBay) and as narrow as data such as were used for a recent post on a Rock &Roll Hall of Fame concert:For kicks, we decided to do a comparison of all the Hall of Famers participating in the concert series (there's a second show at MSG tonight that includes U2, Metallica, Aretha Franklin, Lenny Kravitz, Ozzy Osbourne, Lou Reed, and more) to see which names popped up most frequently on eBay over the past week.The results were pretty fascinating: in terms of keyword searches, Metallica was far and away the most sought after band among the bunch (more than 86,000 searches!)... Second to Metallica in frequency of keyword searches was U2 (75,190), followed by Bruce Springsteen (32,690). The number of search per artist dropped off significantly from there, with but Ozzy Osbourne coming in fourth (5,290) and Sting rounded out the top five at 4,570... The supply of concert tees correlates pretty well with the demand, with the top five live listings for the concert performers and the term "shirt" as follows as of this afternoon: Metallica (1,759), Ozzy Osbourne (327), Bruce Springsteen (376), U2 (680), BB King (61).The editorial nature of the site also puts eBay in a unique position as both a retail outlet and a recommendation source. For example, The Inside Source features a widget on the left side of the page, a thumbnail gallery of most watched items featuring auctions from around the site. Clicking the thumbnail directs the user straight to the auction page for purchase decision making. And the post we linked to above ends in a series of recommended auctions.While it's nice to know about trending topics, the site is also definitely geared toward encouraging positive user actions - by which we mean that eBay is still directing attention in ways that will increase sales. It would be really interesting to see more of the data released in a raw, less glossy-consumer-mag-style format. Currently, eBay offers one research-focused API, powered by AERS, for retrieving pricing information for a given search term. AERS offers a suite of tools for retrieving and parsing eBay user data, as well. Their APIincludes calls for popular items, trends, keywords, and more.Discuss

  We're half way through the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and ReadWriteWeb has been fortunate enough to witness some of the enterprise community's brightest new stars. Enterprise 2.0 Launchpadoffers early-stage companies a chance to shine. In a gong-show like presentation series, the four finalists took to the stage to battle it out for the title of best newcomer. SponsorThe Garland Group: The Garland Group offers financial institutions and banks the chance to assess their risk via a web-based management software. RiskKey offers monitoring, tracking and support to boards and advisors. As of today, the company has launched a new stats program where users can compare similar companies in order to mitigate risk across industries. Twiki: Twiki allows users to aggregate their sales pipeline, wikis, contacts, employee status updates, documents and feeds into one easy-to-use dashboard. It's a combination Facebook and iGoogle for the enterprise. The company recently announced a partnership with ChinaSource to bring collaborative 2.0 technologies to Chinese government agencies, enterprises and academic institutions. XWiki: XWiki is a web-based wiki platform where users access a basic WYSIWYG editor for team collaboration. The service allows users to manage multiple team wikis, install customized applications, build work-related feed readers and carve out collaborative workflow environments. And the Winner Is...CubeTree: CubeTree offers users a chance to create enterprise social networks with work-related feeds, org charts, status updates, wikis and collaborative documents. Earlier today ReadWriteWeb covered the company's launch of a social documents tool where users can comment on documents, spreadsheets and slides. Discuss

  We've just been introduced to an interesting company: Doctations. This relatively new site aims to open communication channels and online services to turn any doctor's practice into a web-based community.The software, an Internet-based healthcare transaction interface, allows doctors to upload and save medical data, to share test results with patients, and to analyze information with their colleagues. tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/doctations_health_20.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Patients in this system can manage their healthcare, schedule appointments, request prescription refills, research medications, access articles, and communicate with doctors - all securely, quickly, and cost-effectively. Our question: Why aren't systems like these in place everywhere right now?SponsorUnfortunately, a combination of data security concerns and industry regulations such as HIPAAhave made doctor-patient online communication - even via email - nearly impossible. Doctations' data transactions are made secure through an encrypted database and a secure login and password. Voice identification processes are available, as well. These data security measures are compliant with all relevant industry regulations.More than just a task manager, the interface allows physicians to access a messaging system that includes audio and video chats, kind of like Skype. Using this part of the service, physicians could conduct online consultations with their patients via webcam. It's unclear whether the system would also allow homebound patients to send vital statistics such as weight and blood pressure to physicians automatically through the use of monitored devices, another trending topic in "telehealth". Online consultations - and getting insurance companies to pay for them - have also been a subject of great concern to the American Medial Association, which has been lobbyingfor more modern billing practices for online consults since 2004.Doctations has also expressed the goal of making physicians' offices entirely paperless by moving source data (such as reports, faxes, and mail) and business processes online. The company has partnered with Sure Scripts and Quest Diagnostics to send prescription requests and order lab results. The company has also partnered with science and health publisher Elsevierto give patients access to important research materials and decision support alerts. These are just a few noteworthy features we found while browsing around the Doctations website. The service appears to be full-featured for all aspects of a medical practice, from staffing and billing to patient-focused task management. The service is available on a subscription basis for healthcare providers.Check out this CNBC interview with Doctations founder and neurosurgeon Dr. Louis Cornacchia:Although many users would love the opportunity to have quicker, simpler, less expensive healthcare as well as greater access to their physicians, others still probably have concerns about the security of putting their most personal information online. On which side of the fence do you find yourself? And for our readers who are also medical doctors, would it make sense to implement such software in your own practice? What are the objections?Let us know your thoughts in the comments. We're going to switch on the webcam and see if we can get a doctor to look at this troubling mole.Discuss

  It's almost a rite of passage for North Americans to go abroad in search of themselves. I believe the rest of you call us "ugly Americans." We are the smelly people on your crowded subways, the drunk people in your religious festivals and often, the slack-jawed map readers blocking you during morning rush hour. Duffeloffers us a chance to change that. In July, ReadWriteWeb covered a list of travel trends including group planning, mapping tools and recommendation engines.Duffel combines all three in one easy-to-use dashboard. SponsorThe point of Duffel is to clip ideas from anywhere on the web and create a travel dossier for your planning purchases. Naturally, your collection is called your duffel. While the name conjures images of post-College backpacking, this is not necessarily only for budget travelers. Upon creating your first duffel you are automatically offered activity and hotel recommendations in both the high and low price range. From here you can add the events, hotels, restaurants and notes of your choosing. Travel dates are kept in a neat column on the right and recommended activities, restaurants, hotels, modes of transportation and notes are kept on the left to be dragged and dropped into the corresponding travel dates. For faster brainstorming and deal clipping, users can also install a browser bookmark. One of the great features of this site is that as soon as you create your first duffel, you are automatically offered a "remember to bring" section. For a trip to Paris in December, I received a reminder to bring my camera charger, phone charger and passport. While any trip to another continent should also probably remind us to bring universal chargers, this isn't a bad start. Once your duffel is established and named, you can invite friends to add recommendations. This is particularly useful for transportation options as subway and train navigation is a must in getting around Europe and Asia. A handy map view also gives you a detailed look at your lodgings in relation to your activities and points of interest. Once you're happy with your duffel, you can print out the entire package including the maps for offline perusal. While this service certainly offers some overlap to sites like Triporama, the fact that it removes the noise of group polls and tasks means that you're free to concentrate on the fun stuff. To check out Duffel visit duffelup.com.Discuss

  A great community for crowd sourced news and content, Diggis taking a page from the Twitter playbook and testing its mettle in the real-time stream. Similar to Twitter's Trending Topics, Digg is set to launch Digg Trends. According to a company blog post , the bookmarking community is offering users a chance to view trending stories before they make it to the home page. True to Digg fashion, this public view of the trend firehose comes with a catch. Voters have 10 minutes to digg or bury a story in order to determine whether it occupies valuable homepage real estate. SponsorDigg Trends are identified when stories receive a high volume of comments, favorites and shares. From here a trending story will appear in a box above the site's "most recent" page content for ten minutes. Within that time frame users decide which stories are worthy for the homepage. In order to ensure that Digg members stay connected to these trends the company is also introducing a new Twitter accountwith a real-time feed of rising stories. These notifications are likely to increase user engagement and encourage higher traffic to the site during peak hours. What makes this an ingenious member engagement tool for Digg, is that sub-par articles with a high number of comments are likely to incite action. In the past, many of us simply ignored the sensationalist stories that plagued the lower echelons of Diggdom. Nevertheless, with trolls being a driving force in the determination of trends, users will find themselves clicking through simply to right the wrongs in the Digg universe. While real-time shopping notifications like Woot's Twitter accountincentivize users with deals, Digg knows that its members will keep coming back to maintain a sense of justice. The company will be rolling out the trends feature in the near future. Discuss

  IBM has launched a new product called Returnable Container Management, which uses the Internet of Thingsto track and measure the usage of shipping containers. These containers are a large, dull but essential part of the supply chain for manufacturers - they are used to hold automobile parts, meat, pharmaceuticals and anything else that needs to be shipped from one place to another. Often the containers are not returned or returned late, which can cost a lot of money for manufacturers. SponsorThis new technology from IBM uses sensors to analyze the inventory and cycle times of containers (and other reusable assets) as they move through the supply chain. The software becomes available with the new version of IBM InfoSphere Traceability Server, a front-end reporting and analytical tool for sensor data.The automotive industry has been an early user of this track and trace technology in shipping containers. According to IBM, many automotive manufacturers carry container inventories in excess of 100 million dollars. One use case is suppliers of car parts, who fill the containers with components and sub-assemblies. These are then sent to the manufacturer. A sensor with a unique serial number is attached to each container, so that manufacturers and their trading partners can track them as they move along the supply chain. Networks of Sensors Gaining MomentumNetworks of sensors are becoming increasingly used to monitor and track things. The term Internet of Thingsrefers to when real-world objects are connected to the Internet, for example goods in a shipping container. It's early in the evolution of sensors, but they're already being used for a variety of tasks - such as management of water infrastructure, levee oversight management and flood control, monitoring highway traffic conditions, sensing changes in seismic activity and air quality, and more. As IBM noted in its press release today, RFID tags(Radio Frequency Identification sensors) are becoming particularly popular for the purpose of item tracking and authentication. By 2010, IBM estimates that approximately six billion of these tags will be in circulation. Who's Using Sensors?Other than automobile manufacturers, IBM told us that about 7-8 other industries are using this kind of sensor technology to track and trace goods. An example is the medical industry, where InfoSphere Traceability Server is used by hospitals and doctors to keep track of the medical devices implanted in individual patients. A specific example cited by IBM is a company called Implanet, which sells medical implants such as hips and knees. It attaches RFID tags to the device packaging, allowing hospitals to scan a tag and store information about an implant with the patient's records.As well as tracking and trace use cases, IBM's software is used by pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers to combat counterfeiting. Image credits: runner310; jdnxDiscuss

  Is Enterprise 2.0 a crock? Where are the use cases? Seven enterprise managers spoke about five principles that are emerging around this topic at the Enterprise 2.0conference today in San Francisco.SponsorModerated by David Berlind, the group, all members of the 2.0 Adoption Council, looked at five issues to answer the question.Topics addressed:Workforce TransformationBusiness Process OptimizationIntellectual Property/Privacy/ComplianceReligious Wars (technology/generational bias)Bottom Line Business BenefitsPanelists:Greg Lowe, social media architect and program manager at Alcatel-LucentBruce Galinsky, director of IT, MetLifeBryce Williams, social media consultant, Eli LillyJamie Pappas, manager, social media, EMCMary Maida, information solutions manager, Medtronics, Inc.Claire Flanagan, senior manager KM and Enterprise Social Collaboration, CSCThis conversation is not anew onebut perhaps the difference now is that there are more examples of how Enterprise 2.0 is changing corporate practicesWorkforce TransformationThe group's general consensus: The goal is to break down the data silos and the walled gardens that permeate the enterprise. Some of the highlights:Murray, BoozAllen: Technologies are changing the business - period. "These technologies are helping us move smarter, faster. The inroads are coming.Jami Pappas, EMC: "We have started a bottom up strategy. " The company has a few hundred champions who are champions for Enterprise 2.0 technologiesGalinsky, MetLife: "You need drivers." For example, the ability to collaborate quickly on products to market.Business Process OptimizationMore people do not come into the office for work. The virtual office is such a reality that collaboration tools become increasingly important. This is evident with the announcements such as the one from Second Lifetoday about their enterprise offering and similar products from companies like Proton Media.But still, for Murray of Booze Hamilton, said It comes down to baby steps. The reality, though, is it would never have seemed likely in 2006 that there would be applications plugging into Sharepoint.Intellectual Property/PrivacyData security always elicits fear. It's no different than how security is viewed in any context. Trust is always the big issue but it is also about keeping some form of control. At Eli Lilly, employees, a lot of them who are scientists, are chomping to use more collaborative tools. Williams, Eli Lilly: The challenge is mitigating risk. "We have to find a way to herd the cats without putting data at risk."Religious Wars (technology/generational bias)With any movement, revolutionaries have the tendency to make those in power feel a bit uncomfortable. It is no different with enterprise technologies.Galinsky of MetLife said that the issue is often about provincial differences. One group may prefer Microsoft while another group is into IBM, while a third may do whatever pleases them. The reality is it just takes time.Bottom Line Business BenefitsThe reality: Enterprise 2.0 technologies are early in the adoption phase but the soft cost savings are mounting. Microblogging is helping people find information faster and people are questioning the viability of email.For example, Murray said they did a study of the costs to "reply all," to email. The end savings added up. "It is a toe in the door, an indicator. If I can save that much, what about the big stuff?"What's striking about asking questions about all of this is the absence of discussions about the monumental waste in IT spending over the years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost to IT projects that have gone hay wire. The new world of enterprise 2.0 technologies are lightweight in comparison and a fraction of the cost. But the answer is readily apparent. The culture takes time to shift. That shift will occur but it's not going to happen overnight.Discuss

  Wedding dances, dancing babies, Kanye West, broken guitars and a crowdsourced music video. These are the top 5 most embedded and linked to videos of this summer. Social media analytics and tracking firm Sysomosjust postedan extensive reportabout how bloggers use videos on their sites. One part of this report looked at the most popular videos that were embedded or linked to from blogs between July and September 2009.SponsorWe should note that these are the top 5 most embedded videos. While there is a clear correlation between how often a video was embedded and how many views it got over the last few months, it's important to remember that this list isn't organized by total views over the last three months but by blog embeds and links.5. United Break GuitarsUploaded on July 6, 20095,914,000 views 4. MTV VMA's Remix: Kanye West Interrupts Obama's SpeechUploaded on September 13, 20094,200,000 views3. SOUR '日々ã�®éŸ³è‰² (Hibi no neiro)Uploaded July 1, 20091,600,000 views 2. Evian Roller Babies International VersionUploaded: July 1, 200912,436,000 views 1. JK Wedding Entrance DanceUploaded: July 19, 200931,000,000 viewsDiscuss

  We know that online video continues to grow, but until now we had very little data about how bloggers engage with online video. Thanks to a new reportfrom social media analytics firm Sysomos, we now havevery detailed data about the videos being embedded in blogs and which bloggers are using these videos. For this report, Sysomos analyzed over 100 million blog posts and looked at the video-sharing sites being used and compiled a very detailed demographic profile of the bloggers who are embedding videos. Sysomos also released a list of the top 5 most embedded videos of this summer.SponsorWho Embeds Videos?Wedding Dances, Dancing Babies and Broken GuitarsClick here to see the top 5 most embedded videos of the summer of 2009.Bloggers who embed YouTube links tend to be male and young. The most active group of YouTube users is between 25 and 35 years old. Bloggers who embed YouTube videos are mostly male (58%), and Break.com is the most male-dominated video site (885), while MTV attracts more female bloggers (68%).The most active video embed users live in the US, followed by Brazil, Spain, the UK and Canada. In the US, most of these YouTube users live in California, followed by New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. The size of these states account for a large chunk of these differences. Connecticut, Alabama and South Carolina come in last.Taking all video-sharing networks into account, the most active bloggers can be found in New York City, followed by Sao Paulo, London, Madrid and Paris.In Asia, more than 90% of bloggers are younger than 35. In North America, 28% of all bloggers who embed videos are older than 35.Focus on YouTubeUnsurprisingly, YouTube is the most popular video service in the blogosphere. The site attracts 82% of all embeds and direct links from blogs, followed by Vimeo (8.8%), DailyMotion (4%) and MySpace (1.1%). YouTube's dominance in this market becomes even more apparent when compared to other popular sites like Huluand MTV. Hulu accounts for only 0.5% of all blog embeds, and MTV is dead last on Sysomos' list with 0.1%. In Asia, YouTube is even more dominant, accounting for 88.5% of all embeds; and in South America, YouTube leads with an 87.4% market share. Some of these differences can be explained by the fact that some of the services that Sysomos looked at are simply not available in these markets. More DataSysomos' reportoffers a lot more demographic information than we could highlight in detail, but here are a few more nuggets of interesting information:The most popular day for embedding videos is Tuesday.The most popular time is between 11:00 am and noon EST.YouTube's most active demographic group (20-35) is three times larger than the second-most active group (35-65).20% of bloggers who embed YouTube videos are teenagers; 2.4% are over 60.Discuss