The reason I like Google Alerts, is that when I get behind on my blog reading I still get pushed information via my inbox.

Check out what come into my inbox today.

Social Network Poem.
“There are no social networks. There is only one social network. My social network…But your site is not my social network. It’s just part of the online social ecosystem.” see the full post at The Man in Blue

Also, check out a new IDC document that came out about Social Network Advertising.
Social Networking Services in the United States — Popular, Yes, But How to Monetize Them? Price $3,500.00
“Operators are only beginning to learn how to monetize social networks. Advertising will eventually be big”
Exciting stuff, reminder… keep reading blogs

Building a number of social networks we are acutely aware of how much of a frustration it is to sign up to a new site. Entering user details freshly for each one loses its charm pretty quickly and locating friends just makes it downright frustrating. I’ve been on the lookout for a solution for a while now to reduce this cost of signup.

There are a few key pieces to the puzzle. Personal details are important as the key parts of a user profile. Friend relationships are slightly more difficult to represent between differing networks but none the less, important.

Over the years there have been a few attempts to solve this signup pain. So far, the social net has been content with walled gardens but slowly with the number of social networks growing by the week, this problem is now becoming an important one to solve.

The few alternatives that have appeared are:

FOAF
From the FOAF project site:

“The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.”

FOAF has been around for quite a number of years but so far hasn’t gained much of a following. It has the benefit of describing both a person’s details and their friends, the downside is that its built using RDF making it difficult to use. So far, it hasn’t taken off. Before its time? Perhaps but from the looks of it a few other technologies are creating more of a buzz.

OpenID
The focus of OpenID is primarily authentication, another area closely intertwined to social network portability. It does provide the ability to send a person’s details along during signon. The current implementation is limited in the sort of details it can send and no understanding of friend relationships. It is being actively worked on and future releases are looking promising.

Microformats
hCard and XFN, two microformats, are now being explored as another alternative for portable details. Recently some loose guidelines and patterns have been published utilising and a few sites authors and sites have started exploring. Like most of the microformats, this is a lightweight alternative, using technologies familiar and already established. It also doesn’t tie into any one technology or platform and so the could be work well together with OpenID.

When we launched 3eep, we made sure that our user profiles were hCard enabled and friend relationships used XFN. This essentially allowed the public details to be used by any microformat parsers. From that sort of base we are now exploring ways of importing details from other sites.

Satisfaction has already created a very nice system for importing details from a number of the microformat enabled sites. It looks to be user profile details only, so there is still need to a good system for importing friend relationships but it certainly offers a good vision of what can be done.

Our team with a new product are looking at the issue of importing the friend relationships. There seems to be a few hurdles to overcome, especially in the matching of friends between networks. Without unique identifiers it becomes hard to know who is who from one network to another (email would be the logical choice but how many sites are silly enough to let machines read email addresses). We have come up with partial solution so keep an eye out for invites in the near future.

There are a number of options that are looking like options to reduce the signup pain, although it is still early days. The microformats push, seems to be heading in the right direction but it only time will tell if it will really take hold. At least while we are waiting we can add the hCards to get the ball rolling.

Syndeo::media was mentioned in several local Philippine newspapers, could not find a copy online so I posted it for everyone to enjoy. Thanks Ike…

“BIZBUZZ” Sunday, 17 June 2007

By Ka Iking Señeres

(BIZ-080) “BUILDING GLOBAL FILIPINO COMMUNITIES”
Way back in the late 80’s, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) organized Science & Technology Advisory Councils (STACs) in key diplomatic and consular posts abroad, for the purpose of involving the Filipino communities abroad in the national development programs back here. Originally, the intention was to fill in the vacuum that was created by the abolition by the Department of Science & Technology (DOST) of its network of Science Attaches. Eventually however, the goal of continuing with the function of science diplomacy in particular was expanded to cover the broader function of economic diplomacy in general.

At that time, I volunteered to join the New York STAC Chapter, and that was how I got involved in national development work again, after I left the University of Life and the Ministry of Human Settlements. Along with other STAC Chapters worldwide, we were able to bring back projects and technologies to the Philippines which were needed by national development programs back here. From my vantage point as a volunteer in New York, I saw the basic weakness of the global organization, and that was the lack of an enthusiastic receiving end back here. It appeared then that the career diplomats at that time had some difficulties in adjusting to the new genre of economic diplomacy, after working so long in the environment of traditional political diplomacy.

To cut a long story short, the network of STAC chapters has practically died already, and along with it died the private sector component of science diplomacy in particular, and economic diplomacy in general. I am happy to say however that out of that organization, outstanding STAC members such as Dado Banatao, Paco Sandejas and Dennis Mendiola eventually found their own ways to bring back their talents and technologies back to the Philippines, thus infusing new life into our ailing economy. Dado has gone into joint ventures with the Ayala Group, Paco has established high tech companies here, and Dennis is the prime mover behind Chikka.

I have no doubt that there are thousands of Filipinos abroad who are willing to help and support national development programs here, if only there is an organized receiving end back here. The success of Gawad Kalinga (GK) in gathering support from Filipino communities is an example of this, and it is very easy to explain that the attraction of GK is its strong receiving end here. Other than that, GK has the added advantage of having well organized communities abroad.

On the practical side, it would be reasonable to say that Filipinos abroad would need a receiving end here to get help for their own needs and for the needs of their relatives. Very few would need help in linking with national development programs back here, and that is why we should leave the door open for this possibility. Hopefully, we could popularize development involvement to a point where everyone abroad could just join the bandwagon.

Considering the fact that there appears to be no system or procedure that could be used by Filipinos abroad to bring home national economic development inputs to the Philippines, is there a need to put up one? My answer is yes, with a caveat that this time around, it should make use of advanced communications technologies in order to make the system work better.

Syndeo Media is a software company that specializes in building online “social communities” composed of members from all over the world. To start with, these communities should be real in the sense that there should be actual people who belong to it already, and the only remaining challenge is to build “virtual” communities online, on top of the “real” communities that are already in place.

Next Mobile is a communications company that is licensed to provide inbound and outbound international direct dialing (IDD) services using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, an innovation that has drastically cut the costs of global communications. They now offer their services to 22 countries where Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are concentrated.

Marinduque is the first province that has agreed to join our Integrated Farming Systems (IFS) program. As a result of our training and financing services, we could expect many farms in this province to join the agricultural productivity bandwagon and before we know it, OFWs from Marinduque would also want to jump in. With the help of Syndeo Media, we could now build online social communities for the province, so that Marinduquenos from here and abroad could keep in touch with each other and help each other in business and in development.

With Syndeo serving as their online “meeting place”, Marinduquenos who live in the 22 countries serviced by Next Mobile could also have the added advantage of calling their relatives, friends and business partners back home, for a fraction of what IDD calls would normally cost them. Looking at it in another way, IFS is actually a form of organic farming but is perhaps better, because not all organic inputs are clean and environment friendly. With IFS as an alternative, OFWs could avoid the already crowded businesses such as taxis, jeeps and tricycles.

With the advantage of having IFS, it is now actually possible to plan the economy of Marinduque in such a way that it would set targets to increase access to public services and utilities in line with the Philippine Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). What is best for the province to do now is to already measure its benchmarks, so that it could compare its prospective improvements as higher productivity from IFS would increase the personal incomes of its residents.

Just like the proverbial field of dreams, I am sure that Marinduquenos from all over the world would visit the virtual online community of the province if we build it. Just build it, and they will come, as the saying goes. When that happens, no one could ever guess how these loyal compatriots would act and move to bring home economic development inputs to their provincial homeland. For sure, none of them would want to be left behind as their province would move forward, thanks to the fact that their newly reelected Governor, Bong Carrion had accepted IFS early on. Same goes for Eastern Samar, as their reelected Governor Ben Evardone has also accepted.

Thanks to the research work of Engineer Bong Yambao, we have found a good use for the lowly “kuhol” that is now considered as a pest in farmlands. Yambao discovered that by drying its meat and pulverizing its shell, we could have a good source of protein and calcium that would now be used as feed ingredients by farmers who would be mixing their own animal feeds.

Tune in to “Gulong ng Kabuhayan” on DZXL (558 KHZ) Mon to Fri 6 to 6:45 PM. Join the InterCharity Network. We assist you in starting a small business, in financing and in marketing. Email ike [@] kaiking.net or text us at 09196466323.
Unit 324, Guadalupe Commercial Complex, EDSA, Makati.

Now I’m not talking about Social Search but social networks.

The Cyworld’s, MySpace’s, and other hundreds of niche networks are turning into the “new search”.
“Ad Spending in Social Networks will reach $865 million in 2007.”

MySpace getting at least $525 million leaving the rest to the niche networks.

Will Social Networks be dominated by the big gorillas, or will smaller players have a stronger play?

What will happen in 2010 when Ad Spending in Social Networks reach $2.15 billion.
Internet consumers are embracing social networks the way the present and past consumers have embraced search.

We’re inching ever closer to a real live beta with the mobiuslive music social network project and I’m personally having a lot of fun with the final set of modules, i.e., the playlist manager and Flash jukebox. As you can probably tell from their names, the playlist manager allows users to “star” their favorite tracks around the site similar to the way you would represent a given email’s importance in GMail.

(The icons on the right side mean “Has Video”, “Has Lyrics”, “Is a Favorite”, “Buy This Track” and “Preview This Track,” respectively.) Marking a track in this manner appends it to your personal playlist, which you can then manage via a funky little drag-and-drop interface built using the scriptaculous javascript library, shown below:

You can add tracks manually using a simple form below the list (although obviously these will not necessarily be playable by the jukebox). In either case, any item you add to this list can be dragged and dropped for sorting, regardless of whether it exists within the mobiuslive library or not.

The jukebox application itself is based on the very excellent XSPF playlist specification and web music player.

To get everything to work together, we created a dynamic XML file that pulls the relevant user tracks from the database, formats it according to the XSPF specification and feeds it back into the Flash player. I had to spend a little time tweaking the player itself to be a bit more in-line wiith the mobiuslive look, but other than that, it was a fairly straightforward process.

I’m a little late in posting this but I thought I would follow up from my post about the Canon competition. Earlier this month, Nikon for the launch of their new D80 decided to try something a little more visionary. While not a competition, they gave camera to a select number members of flickr and told them to shoot with the new camera. The results were then posted as a demonstration of the capabilities of the camera at the Stunning Nikon site.

A smart move. Nikon got a great example of the use of the camera. The photographers got a new camera. The community on flickr got the benefit of the visibility and the blogs got to spread the viral message.

The use of flickr was certainly a good move. It was very easy to identify the photographers who would be suitable both from the images they produce, the friends they have and the micro communities that they belong to on the site. While the Nikon campaign site uses flash (simply and effectively), it does manage to embrace flickr by providing links back to the photographers profiles. The whole current web 2.0 meme of remixing sites, although not used to its full extent is integrated.

Back to the Canon competition, the opportunity to use a mature site such as flickr that is open would have been better in so many ways. The users, the community, the CGM, the mature photo tools (tags, comments, notes, etc) and even a relationship with Yahoo/Flickr (cross promotion anyone?). As it is all API based, it could be pulled out into a site that is branded like the competition but has all the rich functionality provided by flickr. If done right it could have avoided some of the issues that I mentioned previously

To the credit of Nikon, they were ahead of the curve for the competition. As far as I am aware they are the first to do something like this. Smart, fresh thinking. I’m looking forward to seeing more ideas like this (and even more, building these sort of things at here)

Note: If you are feeling a strange sense of deja vue, this is an updated post from my personal blog