Cocktail Match
Okay, confess. You work hard for hours on end, never budging from the keyboard, and then, you digress. You get distracted. You find a blog or a site or a Web app that is nonsense, that is fun or funny, that has absolutely nothing to do with your work.
Well, I’m here to say that you are not alone and to prove it, every month or so, I’ll post a new blog, site or app that will truly waste your time. I should know. Because I’ve been there and gotten sucked into the vortex of distraction and lost precious time. But I truly believe we need those occasional distractions or we will go absolutely mad.
Presenting…Cocktail Match
Adhering to the theory that “You are what you drink,” Cocktail Match allows you to create your own virtual bar (VBar) based around your cocktail preferences and invite friends to socialize. Talk about niche social networking. And I thought social networks for cats, dogs and hamsters was really niche.
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When it comes to truly professional “social” networks, there are far less than general interest and entertainment-oriented networks. Ryze is virtually dead. Xing is more global. The old standby is LinkedIn although it still struggles with its Web 2.0 features. Facebook is still trying to overcome it’s school focus in some professionals’ minds. Plaxo has tried to capitalize on their previous incarnation as a contact management system. And hybrid online/offline communities such as BizNik tend to be more niche or regionally focused.
Enter Konnects. Konnects wants to fill in the gap between LinkedIn and Facebook, providing social tools for a younger professional who may not quite have enough contacts to make LinkedIn really work for them but want to focus on business more than Facebook promotes. Konnects wants to be not only the place where business professionals can find one another but also the place where they can transact business on the site, exchanging all of the information and documentation needed to solidify a working relationship.
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TripSay, a Finland-based social network that boasts of offering travelers more value and activity-specific information than other travel communities, is expanding its private beta with a series of new features and invitation to WWD readers.
Here’s a rundown of the new features:
• Groups for sharing trip plans and destinations
• Activity Hub to show recent activities
• Recommendations for travel tips
• Leaderboard for content contributors and earned points
• Sharing favorite and dream destinations
TripSay, however, is not about getting the best price for your vacation but a community to get recommendations, reviews, budget estimates, and document your travel discoveries.
Because web workers need to travel and take a break also, TripSay is providing WWD with 500 invitations. Just send an email to info@tripsay.com with the subject GigaOM.
I recently reviewed the drag-and-drop Web-based site building tool Webon and marveled at its ease of use and add-on features. I’m equally as impressed with MOLI, a social networking management tool and so much more. According to their site, MOLI is
…a next-generation social networking site where members can manage multiple profiles in one account. Members can separate their social, business and family relationships and keep control over their privacy.
I don’t think the company’s own description of MOLI does the service justice. The site targets both the individual user as well as small business owners and provides the tools to create multimedia, interactive, collaborative and commerce-driven sites.
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One of the challenges of a constantly changing technology landscape is that nearly everything one recommended to clients a few years ago is not always desirable today. A few years back I was asked to help companies build web sites. Today, people want blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.
One of the benefits of a constantly changing technology landscape is that as a consultant, I can continuously grow my diversified list of services that I offer to clients adding new and interesting tactics. In the last year, I’ve been exploring virtual worlds and lately it has really been paying off as I’ve taken on new Second Life marketing projects.
More recently, I’ve been exploring custom social networks for my own projects and for my clients. With moves by major Internet sites toward a more open, “social Web” including Google’s new FriendConnect service that is currently in beta, I think social networks and virtual worlds will become more and more relevant to how companies and organizations communicate their messages and do business online.
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When people ask what I do, I usually say “I’m a writer.” But I do so much more than writing articles and posting content on blogs. Since I first got online in 1987, I’ve been using the Internet (or at that time, Bulletin Board Systems) for not only communications but for community building - for my own projects and for clients. Today, there are so many ways I’m building online communities and although the tools have changed over the years, the rules haven’t.
Here are some of my thoughts on rules of online communities:
1. You can’t own a community. A lot of people who start and build communities immediately assume ownership. They get lawyers to craft a Terms of Service that says that they own everything posted within a community. They set the rules in stone and police the community. While I understand why companies want to “protect their assets,” ultimately, online communities can be fickle and rebellious. They do not want to be owned. Trying to turn a community into a commodity is ultimately a recipe for failure. Read the rest of this entry »
Inspired by Mike G.’s spring cleaning post, I’ve been thinking about all the social networks I have joined both as part of my work and for my work. As an Internet strategist, I try to test out all the sites and Web apps that I can so I can make educated recommendations to my clients based on hands-on experience as well as research and anecdotal information. As a Web worker, I use my social networks to source stories and make contacts and connections that could lead to more work.
I decided to put three of the professional networks that I belong to through a completely non-scientific analysis to see how they are working for me. Of course, once I got this idea in my head, the answers were obvious to me, but it is a good exercise to write it all down.
So without any further ado, the networks I will look at are Ryze, SoFlow, and Xing. Read the rest of this entry »
Last December, our own Anne Zelenka posted about the social possibilities WordPress presented. Apparently Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic (the company behind WordPress) agreed with Anne.
In a blog post, Mullenweg announced that Automattic is acquiring BuddyPress and the designer and developer behind it, Andy Peating. BuddyPress is a series of WordPress plug-ins that can take a WordPress MU (multiple WordPress weblogs on one single server) website and turn it into a social network platform.
What can BuddyPress practically be used for? Say you have a group of co-workers or team mates and you want to have a social environment to exchange ideas and information with. You don’t want to have to force everyone to sign up for FaceBook or MySpace, you simply want to collaborate. WordPress, combined with BuddyPress will give you a space to connect with your cohorts outside of the ‘walled-garden‘ of these other social networking sites.
It will be great to see what comes out of the acquisition. WordPress holds a high degree of promise as a content management system, and with the load of venture funding Automattic attracted recently, more great developments are sure to manifest.
