StraightUpSocial News Links for 2/29/2008
Posted by keirsun on February 29, 2008 at 10:17 AM
Steve Chen: YouTube to Add Live Video
YouTube founder Steve Chen says the video sharing site will support live video sometime this year.
When Did Computers Become the Life of the Party?
In addition to social sites, such as YouTube, being popular online, the author notes how they (and computers in general) are becoming a shared experience at real social gatherings.
Bonsai Blogging: How to Fail with Social Media
A tongue-in-cheek account of how not to engage in the practice of social media marketing. A good Friday read!
StraightUpSocial News Links for 2/28/2008
Posted by keirsun on February 28, 2008 at 2:49 PM
LinkedIn launches redesign, makes itself easier to use
The social networking site for professionals launches a redesign that aims to clear some of the contact info clutter.
Magnify.net Raises $1M for Video Discovery, Broadcasting
Video aggregation network, Magnify.net, raises $1 million in initial round of funding.
NBC To Use P2P To Distribute Internet TV
NBC moves forward with Pando partnership to distribute TV shows via P2P technology, but the article points out how NBC's walled garden approach to distribution could likely hinder the possibility of the technology going mainstream.
Buzz Up or Buzz Off?
Posted by keirsun on February 27, 2008 at 2:39 PM
The Yahoo! hive is abuzz this week with the launch of its social news service, Yahoo! Buzz.
While Yahoo! touts the site as a "brand new social experience that unites people with the most remarkable and timely content from websites across the Internet," the experience itself feels similar to Digg, Propeller and the entire ecosystem of online news sharing sites. Buzz users can vote for or against (buzz up or buzz down) a specific news article, video, photo, etc. to express their like or dislike of the content.
Yahoo! says what makes the service unique is a ranking system called the Buzz Score. The factors that affect an item's Buzz Score include:
- Number of votes received on Yahoo! Buzz
- Popularity of related searches on Yahoo! Search
- How many times content is shared via email
The big selling point for publishers is that content with a top Buzz Score may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage. But it's unclear whether this content gets a honeycomb of its own on Yahoo.com or just gets thrown into the sticky mix of content on the Yahoo! homepage.
Another benefit to Buzz publishers: it's easy to post an item found on Yahoo! Buzz to another social site such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc. via the Post drop-down menu under each item. While Buzz beta testing continues, a limited number of publishers are currently allowed to contribute Buzz content. But you can sign up to be considered as a future Buzz publisher.
It may have something to do with my editor's eye spotting grammatical errors in the Buzz Help section, but it almost feels as though Yahoo! Buzz was a rush job. But since Yahoo! Buzz is currently in beta, I can understand there being a few holes in the hive here and there. I guess it's time to take advantage of Yahoo's requests for Buzz feedback.
StraightUpSocial News Links for 2/27/2008
Posted by keirsun on February 27, 2008 at 12:12 PM
Facebook Gets More Orderly: Multi-Tab For Profiles
Overview of layout changes that are in the works on Facebook profile pages, essentially they're getting cleaned up via separate info tabs.
WIRED Sees a Future in "The ROI of Free"
Notes on Chris Anderson's, editor-in-chief of Wired, recent cover story, "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business."
Microsoft Quietly Launches Private Internet Explorer 8 Beta
Microsoft claims that IE 8 will pass the ACID 2 compatibility test and allow web developers to force the browser into "super-standards" mode - enabling the browser to correctly render web pages that adhere to the W3C's standards.
