Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, today published a blog postabout what he terms the Graph, which is similar (if not identical) to his Semantic Web vision. Referencing both Brad Fitzpatrick's influential postearlier this year on Social Graph, and our own Alex Iskold's analysis of Social Graph concepts, Berners-Lee went on to position the Graph as the third main "level" of computer networks. First there was the Internet, then the Web, and now the Graph - which Sir Tim labeled (somewhat tongue in cheek) the Giant Global Graph! Note that Berners-Lee wasn't specifically talking about the Social Graph, which is the term Facebook has been heavily promoting, but something more general. In a nutshell, this is how Berners-Lee envisions the 3 levels (a.k.a. layers of abstraction):1. The Internet: links computers2. Web: links documents3. Graph: links relationships between people and documents -- "the things documents are about" as Berners-Lee put it.The Graph is all about connections and re-use of data. Berners-Lee wrote that Semantic Web technologies will enable this:"So, if only we could express these relationships, such as my social graph, in a way that is above the level of documents, then we would get re-use. That's just what the graph does for us. We have the technology -- it is Semantic Web technology, starting with RDF OWL and SPARQL. Not magic bullets, but the tools which allow us to break free of the document layer."Sir Tim also notes that as we go up each level, we lose more control but gain more benefits: "...at each layer --- Net, Web, or Graph --- we have ceded some control for greater benefits." The benefits are what happens when documents and data are connected - for example being able to re-use our personal and friends data across multiple social networks, which is what Google's OpenSocial aims to achieve.What's more, says Berners-Lee, the Graph has major implications for the Mobile Web. He said that longer term "thinking in terms of the graph rather than the web is critical to us making best use of the mobile web, the zoo of wildy differing devices which will give us access to the system." The following scenario sums it up very nicely:"Then, when I book a flight it is the flight that interests me. Not the flight page on the travel site, or the flight page on the airline site, but the URI (issued by the airlines) of the flight itself. That's what I will bookmark. And whichever device I use to look up the bookmark, phone or office wall, it will access a situation-appropriate view of an integration of everything I know about that flight from different sources. The task of booking and taking the flight will involve many interactions. And all throughout them, that task and the flight will be primary things in my awareness, the websites involved will be secondary things, and the network and the devices tertiary."ConclusionI'm very pleased Tim Berners-Lee has appropriated the concept of the Social Graph and married it to his own vision of the Semantic Web. What Berners-Lee wrote today goes way beyond Facebook, OpenSocial, or social networking in general. It is about how we interact with data on the Web (whether it be mobile or PC or a device like the Amazon Kindle) and the connections that we can take advantage of using the network. This is also why Semantic Appsare so interesting right now, as they take data connection to the next level on the Web.Overall, unlike Nick Carr, I'm not concerned whether mainstream people accept the term 'Graph' or 'Social Graph'. It really doesn't matter, so long as the web apps that people use enablethem to participate in this 'next level' of the Web. That's what Google, Facebook, and a lot of other companies are trying to achieve.Incidentally, it's great to see Tim Berners-Lee 're-using' concepts like the Social Graph, or simply taking inspiration from them. He never really took to the Web 2.0 concept, perhaps because it became too hyped and commercialized, but the fact is that the Consumer Web has given us many innovations over the past few years. Everything from Google to YouTube to MySpace to Facebook. So even though Sir Tim has always been about graphs (as he noted in his post, the Graph is essentially the same as the Semantic Web), it's fantastic he is reaching out to the 'web 2.0' community and citing people like Brad Fitzpatrick and Alex Iskold.Related:check out Alex Iskold's Social Graph: Concepts and Issuesfor an overview of the theory behind Social Graph. This is the post Tim Berners-Lee referenced. Also check out Alex's latest post today: R/WW Thanksgiving: Thank You Google for Open Social (Or, Why Open Social Really Matters).

  At the risk of reporting rumors (ahem), I can't resist making a note of this one. For the past couple of weeks we have been analyzing LinkedIn and comparing it to Facebook. When I say 'we', I mean Bernard Lunn. But it's a topic a fewof ushave written about in the past here at RWW. Bernard wrote a post at the end of last week entitled LinkedIn and The Future of Business Networking. In that post he listed ways that LinkedIn could take advantage of the relatively untapped business networking market.Some of the feedback on Bernard's post suggested that it's Facebook which will take advantage of business networking opportunities, moreso than LinkedIn. So at the beginning of this week, we ran a pollasking: In 6 months time, will you have more business contacts in Facebook than LinkedIn? The poll is still running (see bottom of this page), but the current results are in favor of LinkedIn:Yes, Facebook will have more 27% (102 votes)No, LinkedIn will still have more 66% (245 votes)They will be even 6% (24 votes)So about 2/3 of poll respondents think LinkedIn will be where we do our business networking. Which brings us to the rumor: that News Corp may acquire LinkedIn, which will bring it under the same corporate umbrella as MySpace. As if Facebook doesn't have enough competition alreadywith Google OpenSocial, a MySpace/LinkedIn tag team would really put the squeeze on.As Bernard noted in his post this week, Deconstructing the Business Social Network, to compete on its own LinkedIn probably needs to move away from being a destination site and open up its data via API. There is just too much competition out there from start pages, email services and social networks.However if they did get acquired by News Corp, that would give LinkedIn a foundation to hold onto its goal of being the destination site of choice for business networking. It's hard to see MySpace being leveraged by LinkedIn, as their audiences are so different. But as Techcrunch UK pointed out, News Corp has a number of newspapers that professionals read - including The Wall Street Journal and (in the UK) The Times and The Sunday Times - so LinkedIn could definitely leverage those.An acquisition of LinkedIn by News Corp would make sense for both parties. And as LinkedIn is a part of OpenSocial (as is MySpace), that would put even more pressure on Facebook to join OpenSocial. So it'd be a win for Google too, if Rupert buys LinkedIn. What do you think? And if you haven't already, please take part in our poll below:survey- Take Our Poll

  Googleand Yahoo!have for a long time customized their logos on numerous holidays throughout the year. This practice has been going on for years, and its hard to tell who was doing it first (Google's first "doodle" logo appeared in 1999, for Yahoo! that information is harder to come by -- if anyone knows when they first started modifying their logo for holidays, please chime in!). More recently, Askgot in on the act.Today, being Thanksgiving (a major US holiday) is no different. All three have spruced up their logos in the celebratory spirit (they are the only members of the "big 5" search engines to do so). Presented below are the Thanksgiving day logos from Google, Yahoo! and Ask. [Correction:AOLalso has a holiday logo, and the post has been updated to include it!] Which is your favorite? Which company consistently provides the best holiday logo modifications? Share your thoughts in the comments.GoogleGoogle's logos have for a long time been drawn by in-house graphic designer Dennis Hwang. Today, Hwang is in charge of all of Google's web masters, but designing logo doodles is still about 20% of his job. This year, Google takes a traditional approach with a couple of turkeys sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (but, I wonder what they're eating?).Yahoo!For the past few years, Yahoo! has taken to using Flash to animate its holiday logos. That makes for some really fun results, and today is no exception. Their Thanksgiving logo includes a cornucopia spilling traditional holiday fare, and some food (corn, potatoes, pumpkin, pie) that is magically transformed into a group of happy dancers by a falling buckle hat. A bit odd? You bet, but it's a lot of fun, too.AskAsk has always been sort of the odd man out, doing things their own way. Not content to modify their logo, they often modify their entire page. Today's page sports a background made of turkey (well, a very close up picture of a turkey). Honestly, it's a bit creepy -- I mean, really, whose turkey is that shiny in real life?AOLThanks to reader Boris who pointed out that AOL does indeed have a holiday logo (I had only checked their search page -- whoops!). Presented below in all its plainness, AOL's holiday alteration is certainly the most "safe" on our list. A buckle hat and some fallen leaves. Cute, but hardly lighting the world on fire (or inspiring acid flashbacks, like one of the logos above -- wait, maybe that's a good thing).Which is your favorite? Do you know of any other sites that decorate for the holidays? Let us know in the comments!

  While it's a holiday arguably celebrating imperialism here in the US, there's a whole world online that's still busy at work. RWW has covered the top Web 2.0 sites in a wide variety of countries, but the continent of Africa has not been covered. The must-read blog Black Looksposted today on a Flickr chart of African Web 2.0 company logos assembled by African entrepreneur Neville Newey(update - my bad, got two people mixed up) Erik Hersman, who goes by the handle White African. Newey was the creator of Muti, a Digg type site for news about Africa, among other things. If you're interested, I interviewed Newey last year here. Check out the chart with links in the iframe below, or if you're viewing in a format that doesn't work well with the iframe, in the static image below the fold. See conversation and pending additions to the list at WhiteAfrican.com.

  digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/tech_news/R_WW_Thanksgiving_Thank_You_Google_for_Open_Social';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';When Google and others ganged upon Facebook a few weeks ago, to many of us, Open Social looked like a marketing move. The news camesuspiciously close to Facebook's ad platform announcement and after a close look, the API looked very raw. Most participants just announced theirsupport without having any concrete implementation.Yet, Open Social is not afluke and neither it is an accident. It is an important step in the evolutionof social and open web, a step that we have seen taken before in other circumstances.It is called commoditization. By creating an exchange of gadgets and social informationGoogle and Co. declared that the era of social silos is over.In this post we look at the details of the open social API, discuss its adoptionand look into the future of the social web.What is Commoditization?Commoditization is a standard point in any technology cycle. First, when we invent something newit is scarce. Think back to the first cell phones. The prices were high and people were standing in line just to get one.As the technology gets refined and phones become cheaper to make, more of them are thrown into themarketplace. More companies get into the act and prices drop. The end result? Seven year olds are running around withcell phones today because they are free.The diagram above is from Doc Searls.Cell phones became a commodity just like TV and transistors and DVD players and even computers.Once something becomes a commodity it turns into a platform on top of which new stuff can be built.Because the majority of the US population has a cell phone, there is a big opportunity forthe wireless platform - calling, accessing the web, playing games, and so on. Commodities alsodrive standards because there is no competitive know-how left. If everyone knows how to make cheap phonesthere is no reason to tie the phone to a particular service. Granted, in our telecom industry things are much more complicated, but you get the point.Historical Look at Java-based Application ServersOne of the most recent examples of commoditization in the software industry is the rise of Java-based application servers.An application server is a container for running enterprise applications. It is, in essence, a sandbox that abstracts awayenterprise services - application deployment and monitoring, database access, web access, queuing, security, etc. Initially several incompatible products wereon the market, most notably from BEA and IBM. The incongruence between vendors meant that companies could not developportable applications - each application had to run on the software from a specific vendor. This created a lock-in and reluctance inthe marketplace.Things changed when, under the leadership of Sun Microsystems, the Java community authored a single standard specification for an application server.Sun, Oracle, BEA, IBM and many others implemented the specification in their product. This meant that each application server now had a standardapplication packaging, deployment and execution. Because everyone complied, the applications became portable. Well, almost - the truthis that vendors still have proprietary things in their systems, but it is much easier to move applications around.What is Open Social?Simply speaking, Open Social is like a specification for Java Application Servers except that it is a spec for hostingapplications and widgets inside social networks. Specifically, Open Social defines the following three broad areas:Widget/Application APIFriends APIActivity APIThe Widget/Application API is similar to the Facebook Application API. It defines a protocol between widgets/applications and the social network (the container).A widget written according to the protocol is guaranteed to work in any social network that supports it. As an example, if you write a widget for iGoogle it will also workon Ning. This is because both of these environments have implemented support for a common widget format. This format itself is very straightforward and is based on theexisting Google modules. Each module is an XML file which describes the properties of the widget and contains JavaScript code for it. The deployment processtypically consists of putting this file on a network and then specifying a URL on the social network's configuration screen.The Friends API allows external applications to query a piece of the social graph inside the social network.Based on explicit permission from the user, applications may get a list of his or her friends. This is important, because it unlocks the social graph.For example, Flixster holds a piece of your social graph that defines people who like similar movies, basically your movie friends.If Flixster implements Open Social then you could send this information over to Netflix. This is powerful and important, because it empowersconsumers to control their data and saves people time by helping information from one service bootstrap another.The Activity API is designed to both import and export the user activity from the social network. It is similar to Facebook's news feed and Beacon ads,except that those are not exportable. Examples of this include things like: Alex posted a photo to Flickr or Alex twittered thathe is on a plane. And also for the activities inside the network: Alex and Richard just became friends or Alex is attending the NYC Tech Meetup.The first API is really about portability of widgets and applications, while the second and third are about portability of the social graphand attention information. All of these still have a long way to evolve but they bring powerful concepts of openness and interoperabilityinto the social network marketplace.What is the Impact on Developers?The slogan: write once, run anywhere, is music to the ears of any developer. Having to support a piece of codethat is targeted towards many incompatible platforms is a nightmare. With Open Social, widget and application developers willbe able to have a single, hopefully simple, code base. The direct benefit is that developers can focus on the essence of their offeringinstead of having to deal with infrastructure and portability issues.The fact that the same piece of code can run on many social networks is also likely to encourage more companies to enter the widget marketplace. Prior to their announcement of Open Social some companies may have been reluctant becausethe cost of creating specific widgets for each network might have been prohibitive. With Open Social, there are no longer any excuses.Investing in a widget or a widget set that can be deployed across a wide range of social networks is a no-brainer.So What About Facebook?Commoditization of social networks is not good for Facebook. It has been positioning itself as a leader, a unique placethat connects people in the just the right way. The Facebook platform is what made Facebook into "the company" of 2007. If everyone hasthe platform and not a proprietary, but standard platform, then Facebook's value shrinks back to the size of its current audience.Despite the fact that Open Social is a big stone thrown at Facebook, it is still doing fine. With close to 60 Million users and the dealwith Microsoft under its belt Facebook is likely to continue its march forward. It is also likely to join Open Social. Being an odd duck in thissituation is not going to fly well with customers. There is a chance that it is going to play the Apple "we are the best and closed" card, butit is a rather small one. Facebook is not going to loose much from joining Open Social. In fact, like IBM some years ago embraced the open source,Facebook can do the same with Open Social. If it does, it might actually own it and cancel out the impact that Google and Co. is trying to make.Where Do We Go From Here?Open Social is a major step towards opening up web silos. As we have previously discussed here, most companies on the web have been silos.From Amazon to Netflix the companies have held on to the user information that they gathered, turning it into a business advantage.Open Social paves a way to a potentially new kind of web culture. In that culture, companies would recognize that users are entitled totheir information. It should be importable and exportable. It should not be locked in.If Open Social is implemented on the broader scale, there is likely to be a cultural shift. Consumers are going to recognize thatif their social graph is portable and if their attention information is portable in social networks, then it should be portable at large.People are going to demand that their Amazon purchasing history and Netflix rental history is accessible via open API.If that happens, we will effectively enter the age of the attention economy.Now tell us what you think of Open Social and its implications. What companies would you like to see join this initiative?What do you think about Facebook's play, will it join the initiative or remain closed?

  Political action and consumer advocacy organization MoveOnthis week launched a public campaign against Facebook's new Project Beacon advertising system (our coverage). MoveOn characterizes the ad system as "a huge invasion of privacy" and has launched a petitionto get Facebook to make the system completely opt-in (rather than opt-out as it is currently). MoveOn even blames Facebook for ruining Christmas, including in a press release sent out to the media today quotes from users like this one: "I saw my gf [girlfriend] bought an item I had been saying I wanted...so now part of my Christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining Christmas!" - Matthew from New YorkAccording to MoveOn's Civic Communications Director Adam Green, "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission--and it's time for Facebook to reverse this massive privacy breach." (CNET) There are a few problems with that statement, though.First, MoveOn may be overstating the level of outrage among Facebook users. In the past, when Facebook has done something that users don't like (i.e., create the news feed, open up to non-college users, etc.), many groups have been created almost overnight to protest the issue. Those groups have grown virally, quickly and often top hundreds of thousands of users in a matter of days. Just recently, hundreds of groups popped up around Facebook to protest the mandatory use of the word "is" in status updates -- one group had over 160,000 users. I could not find any group, barring MoveOn's own, protesting Beacon (or SocialAds) with over 100.MoveOn's group, which launched Tuesday, has just over 8,000 members at press time. That's not phenomenal growth, especially considering the amount of press it has had in publications like the LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. Adam Green guaranteed me that the group was growing quickly and would "soon be in the tens of thousands" -- to be fair, it has grown by about 2,000 users in the past 7 hours, and it seems likely that it will top 10,000 soon. (Green would not share with me the number of people who had signed their petition.Update: Green sent me a follow on email to tell me that the petition numbers are approximately in line with the Facebook group, though he does not have the exact figure at this time.)But if something as benign as a constrictive verb in status updates can inspire hundreds of protest groups -- some with over 100,000 users -- but something like this can only get the support of a few thousands people, even this early on, it makes you wonder whether Facebook users are really all that bothered by Project Beacon.The other thing wrong with Green's statement to CNET, is that Facebook's Beacon ads aren't displayed publicly (unless you count your network of friends and their computer screens as the public), nor are they displayed without permission. Anyone who has run into Beacon ads in the wild knows that Facebook asks before publishing information to your news feed (see image above). Further, you can opt-out for good from having retailers send information to Facebook. MoveOn argues that the opt-out tools aren't good enough, and this is where they finally make some very good points.Beacon Needs A Blanket Opt-Out FeatureThe most glaring omission from the opt-out feature is that you can't opt-out from the entire program. You have to do it on a site-by-site basis, and are only given the opportunity AFTER you've visited that site and it has collected data from you. When TechCrunch first broke the Beacon story, they included a screenshot (below) showing that users could opt-out from the program entirely by checking a single radio button. However, when Beacon went live, that feature was conspicuously missing.What happened to the blanket opt-out feature? Image from TechCrunch.While I'm not convinced that the program necessarily needs to be opt-in, Facebook certainly needs to provide a blanket opt-out option. Forcing users to continuously update their privacy settings every time they come in contact with a new Beacon partner is obnoxious and a good way to turn users against the system.One thing that MoveOn fails to address, and which may be a more serious potential privacy violation, is that even after opting out of the program, there is nothing to guarantee that Facebook isn't still collecting data on where you shop and what you buy, and using it to deliver ads on the site. I'm not a legal expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I could find nothing in the Facebook privacy policy that guaranteed that opting out of Beacon meant that Facebook would no longer receive data from those partners. In cases like this, whose privacy policy supercedes the other, Facebook's or the third-party web site's?Anyone who want to completely opt-out of Beacon now, can follow these instructionsfor how to block the ads in Firefox.A Separate Privacy Issue At FacebookSo while MoveOn may be overstating the level of user anger over Beacon, their campaign makes at least one good point: Facebook needs to provide better opt-out tools and do a better job of publicizing privacy options to users. That said, there is, in my opinion, a more pressing privacy violation occurring on Facebook right now. Yesterday, VentureBeat reportedthat Facebook applications now have access to user email. This, like everything else on Facebook, is opt-out, but unfortunately, for any application you've already installed you're opted in by default. Sorry, makers of Scrabulous and Bloggific, I like your applications, but I don't want you bothering me via email.It's bothersome that Facebook automatically gave third-party application developers (you know, the ones who made the apps that they expressly warn you were notdeveloped by Facebook) access to my email without my permission -- and without notifying me of the change. Worse, when installing new applications, the "Allow this application to..." settings, do not include the email option. Which means that after installation, you have to take an extra step to disable the ability for that app's developers to send you email. Thanks for making me jump through hoops to keep my privacy, Facebook.ConclusionSo is Beacon evil? I don't think so. Is it ruining Facebook? Not yet, at least, not for me. I haven't seen a ton of Beacon ads appear on my news feed, and Facebook in the past day or two introduced "thumbs up" and "X" icons next to items on the news feed that train it to give you more of what you like. I haven't seen a Beacon ad in a couple of days, but I do see the voting options next to "Name is a fan of company" items (which I believe are part of SocialAds), so I would imagine they are on Beacon feed posts as well. If that's the case, you should theoretically be able to train your feed not to show you as much Beacon material -- or, one can hope that's the case.But are there legitimate privacy concerns with Beacon? That seems likely. Hopefully Zuckerberg and Co. listen to MoveOn, at least insofar as to add a blanket opt-out feature to the system -- one which they apparently once planned to include. And even more pressing in my mind, I hope they stop updating my privacy permissions on installed applications without my knowledge (i.e., giving apps developers permission to email me), and rather make changes like that opt-in instead of opt-out.What do you think about Beacon? Is MoveOn blowing a lot of hot air or has Facebook crossed the line? What about the email options on Facebook applications, are you okay with them or upset? Let us know in the comments below.

  There was a time before Facebook when social networking on the Internet was about making anonymous connections with people you'd never met before rather than a way to keep an eye on the people you already know. Some of my closest friends today began as anonymous online acquaintances ten years ago -- people who I shared a common experience with and didn't exchange personal information with until I was good and ready. With some of the newer breed of social networks, such as Facebook, which requires that you use your real name, that sort of anonymity is impossible.The Experience Project(EP), which launched a public beta about a year ago, is built specifically around the concept of remaining anonymous while socializing. The site has grown to 250,000 members, almost 60% of those added in the past three months, and is backed by an impressive line up of angel investors including Ron Conway, Kathryn Gould, and Steve Blank.According to EP, by emphasizing and encouraging anonymous interaction, the site allows people to open up more than they do on other social networking sites. One member gushes, "this is the most real representation of myself anywhere -- friends, family or online. I've never felt so accepted nor had more fun anywhere online."Users create profiles on EP based around experiences, which are immediately transformed into groups where other members experiencing the same thing can share stories and feelings about that issue. These can range from the serious, such as medical conditions, battles with addiction, or marital problems, to the whimsical, such as being in love, or having seen the latest episode of Dancing With the Stars. You can also form groups around goals, such as the desire to lose weight.EP supports all the other basic social networking features we've come to expect from this type of site: friending, private messaging, blogs, moods (status), activity streams, virtual gifts, message walls, and a few that are less common like a dream journal and confessions page. But all of this is surrounded by a site that has taken great pains to keep everything anonymous (should the user desire). EP can even blur pictures you upload to the site to make sure no one deciphers you secret identity, and unlike many social networks, deleting your account from the Experience Project is a painless process that can be done from the account settings page.Where EP really shows potential, though, is not in the whimsical stuff, like talking about Halloween costumes(though that sort of thing has a place and helps keep users entertained), but rather in the site's ability to set up virtual, anonymous support groups for a range of serious issues. The I Experienced Racismgroup, for example, has 136 people talking about racism, sharing stories, and discussing how to deal with it. This is powerful stuff and I suspect that the promise of anonymity makes a lot of people feel more comfortable about opening up regarding these serious and potentially sensitive issues.ConclusionIn the end, EP won't replace the socializing you do on sites like MySpace or Facebook, but it might be a good alternative for people who want or need to discuss issues that they don't want broadcast to all their friends. Or it might be a fun way to meet people who genuinely share the same interests as you in a safe and anonymous environment.

  Blog search engine Feedsterhas had the following notice on its frontpage for at least a few weeks now:There is no sign of life on the site and the Feedster bloghas already been killed off (the big 404 in the sky).In terms of the blog search market in general, Feedster has been struggling for 3+ years now - this RWW post in July 2005shows how Feedster was falling behind Technorati even then. Now Feedster seems to be, if not in the DeadPool, then at least in the PurgatoryPool. PubSub was another victimin this market.Nowadays, the blog search market seems to be made up of 3 main players - Google Blog Search, Technorati and Bloglines/Ask.com - and a lot of smaller players such as Zuulaand Blogdigger. Personally I still use Technorati a few times a week, and the search function of Google Reader. I also am a heavy user of Google's main search, which I find brings up good blog results (i.e. often I don't see the need for a specialist blog search engine). I did a quick poll of the other RWW writers. Josh said he still uses Technorati sometimes, but also Google Blog search. Marshall said that he uses Ask.com for minimizing spam, relies heavily on feeds with subscribers in Bloglines, and uses Technorati too. He finds that GoogleBlog Search is good for speed.What blog search engine do you use - and why?

  digg_url = 'http://digg.com/software/Visualizing_Social_Software_Best_Practices_Three_Approaches';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Here in the US it's the busiest travel day of the year and while media events and new product launches lay low, entrepreneurs and geeks are hard at work building the software that will launch in coming weeks. There's no better time to kick back and let yourself get philosophical.Social software is a whole new world in many ways and people everywhere are trying to figure out how to design effective and compelling applications. I offer for your consideration today three recent attempts to articulate social software design best practices. Let's discuss.Social Software Elements by Thomas Vander WalThomas Vander Walis the man who coined the term folksonomy, meaning classification through collaborative, social tagging. (His tagging tool of choice, you might note, appears to be Ma.gnolia.)Yesterday Vander Wal posted the following slide from a presentation he gave this month in Stuttgart, Germany. Like any good venn diagram, there's just a little to look at here but lots to think about. I'd gather, for example, that Vander Wal suggests here that conversation is one place where identity and objects come into contact, involving both relationships between individuals and group membership. If you and I are discussing a photo online, let's say, then I'd like to know who you are, what groups you belong to and what our relationship is; if not explicitly then implicitly when that knowledge offers clear value to me. I think of it as a thought exercise, an opportunity to consider which factors in design to highlight for the sake of user experience. I'm sure there are other ways to read any single point of such a diagram, though. There's some smart discussion underway already on Vanderwal's Flickr page. Thanks to nonprofit tech consultant and North Carolina smart-guy Ian Wilkerfor posting Vander Wal's slide.OpenSocial's Recommended PracticesThough I like to make fun of OpenSocial by calling it OpenWidget and saying it's overhyped, there's probably more meat there than I've given participants credit for.One of the most interesting things to come out of it so far has been the OpenSocial "Social Design Best Practices." The recommendations include things like "focus on the 30-second experience; before distracting the user with expert features or sending invites, slow down and give the user a simpler taste of what your application is about." That's good advice that a lot of startups could benefit from considering.Massachusetts design expert Josh Porter wrote about the Google recommendations on his excellent blog, pointing out that only a few are specific to social networking sites. It's a good, simple articulation of social design principals. It may not be literally visual like the title of this post implies, but you can certainly use it for some visualization exercises.Factory Joe's Flickr Stash of Cool Design ExamplesFactory Joe, also know as Chris Messina of San Francisco consultancy CitizenAgencywhen he takes his cape off, maintains an excellent collection of screenshots on Flickr. He saves all kinds of good examples of contemporary interface design in the social software world. I point people to it all the time, now you can too.See also this collection of shotsof websites implementing the Carousel design (like iTunes coverflow) from the Yahoo! Pattern Library.I'm sure readers here can suggest other good screenshot collections for design consideration. These collections are a lot of fun to look at.There's So Much More to Explore!It's an exciting time in social media and design is a big part of that. There's an infinite horizon in design alone but also factors like Adobe's AIR and Thermo, not to mention the thrillingly tiny mobile world. The new web is supposed to be all about democratized participation (you can not only Read, you can Write to it too!) and usability will be an important part of making it not just sustainable but helping the web really live up to its potential.

  If you walk into any suburban Starbucks these days, you won't see people's faces, instead you'll see laptops.Moms and dads increasingly work from home; broadband took over the US and wireless isabout to do the same. Digital cameras and cell phones have become the eye witnesses of local events.More and more people are connected to the grid from places previously untouched by technology.And as they plug into the Internet, they bring with them something that did not exist before - hyperlocaldigital information.Information processing and information creation are what defines us as a species. When sitting in a localStarbucks, a blogger might write about what it feels like to be in Opelika, Alabama today, for example. On the way to work inLewistown, Montana an amateur photographer might take a picture of the local grocery store. And all over the US, teenaged clones of Justin.TV will record countless hours of their surroundings.The net effect of all of this is the increasingavailability of fine-grained information about locales. This information is both interesting and valuable. It issought after by people living in these places and by advertisers who are trying to reach these people. A handful of startupsare recognizing the big potential of local information - relevance. In this post we look at different aspects ofthe hyperlocality, from satellites to local blogs, and ponder how this information will be organized and monetized.User Generated Hyperlocal ContentThe picture at the top of this post is the view of my house produced by Google Maps.Even a few years back such picture would be unthinkable, but today we take it for granted and don't make much of it.Satellite imagery is an example of top-down hyperlocal content, but most hyperlocal content is bottom-up becauseit is user-generated. Photos and video are most familiar. Millions of users all over the world are taking snapshotsand streaming videos of their surroundings.At the start of the social media movement people got excited about tagging their content. While this is an effectiveapproach, it is not always precise. Lately we have seen more and more tools that allow users to specifythe location of the content more precisely. One of the more popular techniques is geotaggingor geocoding,in which users typically specify location using latitude and longitude coordinates. The corresponding microformat, called Geo microformat,allows people to geocode photos which are embedded into web pages.Admittedly some of the user generated hyperlocal content is of questionable utility. The video above shows a train leaving the Opelika, Alabama station.Besides serving as proof that the place exists and that there is at least one person with a video camera there, there is not much to it. But we would feeldifferently if the video had instead captured a local crime. This example points to a big challenge with user generated hyperlocal information - filteringand organizing it on a massive scale.Because there is so much of this kind of information out there, distilling the truly interesting content is a big challenge. Because this information is created by people all over the world using different tools and technologies it requires a combination ofmining techniques. User generated tags, titles, descriptions, geo information as well as sophisticated image and video processing tools have to be used together to make sense out of all this content.Self-Organizing Hyperlocal InformationPerhaps one of the most innovative and interesting usages of hyperlocal informationhas been developed by a startup called Dash. Launched at DEMOfall 2006, this company is creating one ofthe first distributed traffic systems for drivers. At the heart of Dash is a simple idea of havinga car computer connected to the grid in real time.Instead of relying of local news to report traffic jams, Dash drivers get traffic updates from each other.Each Dash system is linked into the local network with other Dash drivers, acting as a single node.The traffic information is automatically inferred by centralized software based on the location and speedof individual cars. Clearly, in order for this system to work, there needs to be a sufficient number of driverswith the Dash system installed on the road in your neighborhood. Yet, this example shows a potential power of automatichyperlocal information.Hyperlocal ClassifiedsLocal photos and videos may still be new to many of us, but not classifieds. Hometown newspapers have beenin the business of connecting people to local real estate, cars and jobs for quite some time. When Craigslist came online it changedthe rules of the classifieds game. And recently Craigslist went mainstream. We looked at job and real estate listings in Montana and found them quite vibrant.In all cities and areas where the site is available local newspapers are losing their business,because in most places you can post to Craigslist for free.Yet, Craigslist just scratches the surface of what is possible with local classifieds because it only offers rawinformation. It doesn't provide research. As we wrote in our overview of the classifieds marketseveral startups are creating vertical applications that not only show listings but augment them with research. For example, Truliais a vertical search and research tool for real estate.Another example of enhancing classifieds is adding salary information. The job search engine Indeedshows not only available jobs, but local and nationwide salaries for the exact job you are searching. Recognizing that classifieds are tightly coupledto research is important because most decisions, like getting a new job or buying a new house, are not made on a whim.Hyperlocal Social Networking?One of the big pet peeves of American culture is privacy. Arguing with your neighbors about who would pay for the fencebetween your houses was the thing to do in the 1950s, 60s and maybe even in the 80s. Are people ready to warm up to their neighbors?StreetAdvisorand FatDoorthink that the answer is yes.Both startups offer social networking based around your local neighborhood. While FatDoor is still in the stealth mode, StreetAdvisor is up and running.The angle that StreetAdvisor uses is asking people to rate their street as a segue into local social networking.The rating and information approach is certainly interesting, but it is still questionable whether peoplewho can't bring themselves to say hello to each other in person, will want to first connect online. The Alexa traffic chart for StreetAdvisor hintsthat the answer is no, but perhaps there is a spin on this that might just work.Aggeregating Hyperlocal InformationEven though people might not want to network with their neighbors, there is little doubt that people want to know what is going onin their neighborhood. The challenge of re-aggregating web information from the geographical perspective is big. Given that very littleof the content is probably geotagged, sites like Outside.inand PlaceBloggerare re-crawling the web to make this information available.The picture above shows a typical way in which local information is presented. In this case, it is from an Outside.inentry about the increasing fares of New Jersey transit. The information is aggregated from various sourcesand automatically tagged. The chart shows the amount of buzz on this topic in the past few days. The related links allow readersto explore more on the topic from local blogs and newspapers.Monetizing Hyperlocal InformationThe race to build businesses around hyperlocal information is not accidental.There is a belief that there's a big monetization play here. In our recent conversation,Outside.in CEO Steve Johnsontold me thatknowledge of the geography of the audience is very important to advertisers. He cited two examples.The first, was the current presidential election. Parties could send direct advertising to zip codes that are knownto be tipping points in swing states. Since the stakes are huge in each election, each party wouldpay big premiums to reach undecided voters on web pages with hyperlocal content.The second example he gave was local advertising. For a while, white pages made a business by selling ads.Hyperlocal web sites, however, promise to take the concept to a whole new level by enabling local businesses to deliver highly targeted and relevant advertising. But this isn't a simple problem.To make it work, one needs to build an advertising platform where local entities can bid on ads.The platform would need to make money on the volume the ads, since doing door to door sales in such a business isnot scalable.ConclusionThe global grid is becoming ubiquitous. It is growing at a mind boggling speed and absorbing enormousamounts of information. With the spread of the grid we are observing the rise of hyperlocal information.User generated media, classifieds, and other local content is increasingly more tied to specific geography.Despite globalization, hyperlocal information is very valuable both to people and advertisers.In the coming years, we will be seeing the rise of a new way to look at information - geography.Inspired by utility and the promise of hyperlocal advertising, startups are racing to build businesses that deliver highly relevant, local information to users.Hyperlocal information and aggregation is just in its infancy with much more to come. In themean time, please tell what hyperlocal information you find most interesting? What information services would you like to see around hyperlocality in the future?

  I am the wrong age for Facebook or MySpace. But I happen to have a relative who is in the LA music scene, who gave me a tour from his perspective - and now I totally get it. A few decades ago that is where I would have hung out. I am not looking for a social network. I cannot imagine choosing one single place as my only online hangout and I certainly don’t want the hassle of managing my identity and my relationships on multiple sites. However I am interested in how different tools give different pieces of the social networking puzzle; and what ties them together.When I wrote about LinkedIn compared to Facebook, some Facebook enthusiasts pointed out that messaging within Facebook is better. I think that is true, but I don’t want to use messaging that is controlled by a site - and I think that is true for most people who grew up with the Internet before social networks evolved. It may be nothing more than habit, but habit matters a lot for adoption.The reason that LinkedIn is so interesting is that it is the missing piece of the puzzle. We already have two good basic pieces:1. Blogging tool - Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger.2. Start page - Pageflakes, Netvibes or MyYahoo. My online social/business network happens to be WordPress + PageFlakes. PageFlakes is where I consume content and Wordpress is where I create it. If you are interested in what I write you RSS it into your start page. It's not hard.Sure, that could be MyYahoo, Netvibes or iGoogle instead of PageFlakes; and Typepad or Blogger instead of Wordpress. To update an old phrase: "you loan your attention you takes your choice." Choice really is the point. Unlike the all-in-one stereo system of Facebook, I get to mix and match my speakers and woofers as I want (yes I know, that analogy dates me). Switch PageFlakes for Netvibes? Sure, if it is different enough.What’s interesting is the ecosystem of vendors that work in the background to make my PageFlakes and Wordpress experiences better. Actually PageFlakes is really just a glorified layout tool and the clever stuff is in the apps that feed into my panes. There is still a lot of room for innovation in this area, around intelligent filtering. I think of RSS like SQL. It is a standard and that enables innovation and value creation. It is not ideal, but no standard is ideal.I am still a Wordpress newbie, so my use of widgets is limited. But I vow to catch up with Fred Wilsonone day and have all those widgets on my Blog (although load time is getting to a bit of an issue!) This is an area with lots of innovation that has the potential to a) make my Blog more interesting and b) make some money from my Blog (maybe just paying for my Starbucks habit). In that sense, PageFlakes and Wordpress genuinely are platforms, with RSS as the enabling standard.What’s interesting about LinkedIn in this context is:1. I don’t have a choice. It is the only site that has my business network. That makes me think I would much prefer to be an investor in LinkedIn than an investor in PageFlakes or WordPress. They have a network effect and that means big bucks.2. Most of my network does not have a Blog. So I cannot just link to their Blog via RSS. My guess is less than 10% of my contacts have a Blog. More are creating Blogs all the time, but the % is way below the threshold where getting an RSS feed from my network is worthwhile. Go into the business mainstream and that sub 10% with a Blog is still true. As Alex Iskold has pointed out, Blogging is in a digestion phase- so we cannot just assume that everybody will get a Blog. However if LinkedIn tries to become/remain a destination site, I think they will fail. I don’t want to check LinkedIn regularly, I've got too many other things to do. So they won’t get the busy biz guy that’s too old for Facebook. Nor will they get the Facebook/MySpace crowd who will see it is rather bland and uninteresting as a social hangout. The only people who will hangout regularly are people trying to sell you something; which will rapidly become self defeating.However a feed of what is happening in my business network, feeding into one pane on PageFlakes? Now that is interesting. Particularly because although nearly 80% of my business network is on LinkedIn, most of them are not active Bloggers. However if LinkedIn gave everybody a simple interface that was more MicroBlog like, and that worked well with Blackberry and other wireless devices, people could easily send out “personal press releases” about a new job, deal, project or whatever.As long as I had good filtering tools so I can tune how much I get by person, by periodicity and by type of news; that is a very useful service in the business world. None of this requires any single new thing that we all have to buy into - and no complicated new identity standard. It will just build on APIs and RSS and existing services.If LinkedIn becomes a feed and not a destination, the monetization question is the issue. It certainly cannot be CPM, but that's a weak model anyway. It could be subscription fees. If they really have all my network, would it be worth $10 per month to get that feed? From an ROI point of view that's pretty easy. If I had no alternative, I would pay.Alternatively they could move into success-based transaction fees. That would be harder to pull off, but could be a multi-billion dollar revenue play.If LinkedIn misses this, tries too hard to be a destination site and does not open up the API in a smart way, some start-up will find a way to beat them by leveraging email systems. We are still in the early stages of this game.

  The latest figures on the state of the US newspaper advertising industry indicate that print advertising sales have continued to plummet. Online ad sales, however, have risen significantly, though not enough to offset the sharp decline in print ad revenue.The Newspaper Association of America said that print ad spending fell 9% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year to $10.1 billion. Online ad spending, which rose to $770 million, makes up just 7.1% of the industry's ad revenue, and though up sharply from 5.4% a year ago, it was still not enough to offset the declines in spending elsewhere. On the whole, newspaper ad spending fell 7.4% in the third quarter.The biggest declines occurred in classified ads, retail ads, and national ads. The NAA blames the decline on "broader economic issues," such as fallout from the trouble in the US home mortgage industry.Even so, this marks the 14th consecutive quarter that online newspaper ad sales have seen double-digit percentage gains, reports Reuters. While the industry as a whole continues to suffer, the Internet may be the light at the end of the tunnel.The winners here may end up being online advertising networks, and especially Yahoo!, whose newspaper alliance continues to grow. Two weeks ago they added the New York Daily News- the fifth largest paper in the US with a circulation of over 700,000, and last week the consortium added 17 regional papersowned by the New York Times Co. (though not the Times itself).Yahoo!'s alliance now reaches nearly 400 papers, and though right now it only covers online job classified ad sales (via Yahoo! HotJobs branded sites for newspaper partners), it it likely that it will expand to display ads in the future, at least for some papers. Further, newspapers in the Yahoo! alliance use Yahoo! for their web site search engine, which means added search revenue for Yahoo!.

  We've discussedbefore on Read/WriteWeb about how we've entered The Digestion Phaseof the Web, a term that Alex Iskold coined. He defined it as "a period of time for us to reflect, to integrate, and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together." Tim O'Reilly has also been reflectingon how innovation has slowed down and consolidation is occurring.But something doesn't sit right with me when we start talking about reflection and consolidation. Both of those things are happening, for sure -- and much of today's tech news and blog coverage is about M&A and how big Internet companies are integrating web 2.0 features. Which is precisely the problem! It's not nearly as interesting as Web innovation. I can't be the only person bored with the tech blogosphere these days. How can we - as bloggers, entreprenuers, businesspeople - get back to thinking about actual innovation?A lot of the Web technology that has inspired me in recent months is Mobile Webapps and the Semantic Appswe're beginning to see blossomon the Web. Also, like Tim O'Reilly, I find myself increasingly interested in what is bubbling up from China and other international markets. It's not to say Silicon Valley isn't still fascinating (Google's OpenSocial and Android initiatives were both fine developments), but there are new innovations and markets that are in many ways far more interesting than what is happening in Silicon Valley.So in an attempt to break through to the other side, I've set myself the task of investigating 'the next wave' of Web innovation. It's something all our writers look for - e.g. Marshall Kirkpatrick's superb analysis of the Twitter ecosystem(and Twitter is certainly innovative and something to watch), and Josh Catone's analysis of facial recognition platforms. So what else is out there in terms of Web innovation?Where Web Innovation is Happening - All Over the World, in Certain SegmentsTangos Chan of China Web2.0 Review posteda very interesting set of slidesthat he presented at an event organized by Orange Lab, called "Web 2.0 in China: What’s Next?". He first makes the point that China's Web scene is not just made up of copycat sites - he says that phenomonem is happening all over the world. Then Tangos reveals some areas of innovation in China:Image via Tangos ChanWhen you think about it, the above list of current Web innovations could easily belong to any other country - including the US. Real or near time communications technologies (online forum, IM, etc) are a hot area of innovation currently; and again I point you to Marshall's Twitter post. In Rebecca MacKinnon's excellent summaryof recent China Web 2.0 events, she points to Tangos' comments on a couple of Chinese IM services of interest: Anothrand Jiwai. Anothr delivers RSS feeds to your IM client (it started out in Skype, but now supports others), while Jiwai is a similar serviceto Twitter.Jiwai homepageMobile Web has been on everyones list of 'The Next Big Thing' for a long time. The (potential) market is undeniably huge. Noted Mobile author Tomi T Ahonen blogged earlier this yearthat there are 2.7 billion mobile phones in the world. To put that in perspective: there are 800 million cars, 850 million personal computers, 1.3 B fixed landline phones, 1.4 billion credit cards, 1.5 billion TV sets. Tomi's post is from January, so the figures will have changed since then - but the point remains that Mobile Web is where a lot of innovation will happen, simply because that's where the users are. It's also well known that China, Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia are very heavy Mobile users - often at the expense of the PC.There will of course be amalgams of current trends with near future ones - e.g. Tomi Ahonen notedin an October post that the mobile social networkingmarket is worth $5 billion now. This is apparently bigger than the current revenue derived from browser-based social networks. Or as Jason Grigsby put it, "today’s big thing–social networks–is already bigger on mobile devices than on PCs." [incidentally I got the last few links from Marshall Kirkpatrick's Twitter stream!]A couple of innovative and well-liked Mobile Web appsI posted about recently are Fringand Shozu. Fring is a free mobile VoIP software, that lets you connect to all your IM services and talk for free when connected to 3G or Wi-Fi. Shozu enables you to send your videos and photos from your phone to the Web - e.g. your Flickr account, YouTube, Facebook. Plus the big Internet companies of the West are ramping up in mobile - particularly Google.In his slides, Tangos mentioned mInfo- a natural language mobile search service that works through WAP and SMS.This is all to say: there's a lot of innovation happening in the Mobile Web right now. They're not digesting or consolidating, they're inventing!ConclusionI'll discuss more about Mobile, Semantic Apps and other areas of innovation in future posts, but the one main point I want to make here: there is a ton of Web innovation happening out there. Beyond The Digestion Phase, beyond Consolidation, beyond Silicon Valley. Those things are all necessary and interesting, but beyond all that there is exciting innovation happening in the Mobile space, in places like China and Korea, in real-time communications platforms like Twitter, etc.When I was at the Mobile 2.0 conference in October, one of the presenters made a joke about how their small 1-day event compared to the much bigger Web 2.0 Summit being held later that week. The presenter said something like: "in 10 years time it'll be the reverse: Mobile 2.0 will get the big crowds and Web 2.0 Summit will be the niche conference." [it was said much more wittily at the time!]. That to me sums up the enthusiasm I see in Mobile Web and other segments. That enthusiasm is missing from other segments of Web technology, or at least in the coverage they receive in tech blogs (RWW included sometimes) -- where X startup gets a new social networking feature (yawn!), or X gets $X funding (who cares), or X is acquired by Y, or worse, X is rumoredto be acquired by Y! BORING!!!I'm not in a position to call a stop to The Digestion Phase. But I do want to emphasize that for Web technologists, entrepreneurs, bloggers - now is the time to focus on the next stage of Web innovation. Some of you will be busy consolidating your businesses, looking for M&A opportunities, integrating, reflecting. But don't forget that right under your nose is a lot of opportunity in the tech segments mentioned in this post.

  "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clintoncan rest easy knowing that he will soon have more verb options when updating his status on Facebook. Facebook announced to developers last night that it will soon be dropping the word "is" from status message updates.The developer platform has already been updated so that external applications that update user status can avoid prepending the word "is." For now, status updates on Facebook still include the "is," but Facebook platform engineers promise that the change will be pushed to Facebook at large soon and make the lack of verb a default behavior rather than something you have to specify. "In a few, we will delete that parameter and change the default behavior to be that you must include your own verb," they wrote.Though the update is aimed specifically at developers, and it is still rather hazy whether this change will only apply to external applications that update status via the API or to Facebook as a whole, it seems likely that the latter is true.Status is a fairly importantpart of any social application, and I have noticed more and more of my friends utilizing Facebook's status feature on a regular basis recently (though, that could be because I have started using it more often in the past few weeks and thus have been paying more attention to it). It is, however, clear that a large number of people were annoyed by the lack of verb choice when updating status.A group to petition Facebookto drop the "is" gained over 163,000 members -- much more than the majority of Facebook groups -- and today is proclaiming victory based on the platform update. It was one of many groups crusading against the verb. Though it would be silly to say that 163,000 members speak for the rest of Facebook's 50 million or so members, it is hard to believe anyone would object to this change. I often see my friends already ignoring the is in status updates and ending up with clunky, incorrect sentences like, "Jim is just left the symposium early." I can't count how many times I've made the mistake of including the "is" when typing my status out and ending up with "Josh is is" -- it's just natural to want to use your own verbs. My guess is that Facebook initially included the "is" to help people understand what status was and how it was intended to be used, but now that people know what it is, dropping the verb is a great idea.