The capabilities of XML server capabilities from Mark Logic are unleashed oftentimes on large-scale content solutions for enterprises and publishers, but that's not to say that XML servers are only about such major projects. Mark Logic's David Amusin decided see if he could use their technology to make sense of the hundreds of contacts that he had amassed on Facebook, a sidebar project that took only a few weeks of tinkering to get whipped into a good demo.

The problem that David faced with making sense of his Facebook contacts is a common one: too much information about too much people. When he had a couple of extra tickets for a concert recently, that spurred him to create Kick It, which uses Mark Logic technology to power a Facebook application to filter on multiple user profile attributes. So, for example, Kick It could help David find how many of his Facebook contacts in Los Angeles liked the Dave Matthews Band very quickly. Problem solved. The current iteration of Kick It enables you to traverse your Facebook contacts by category - activities, interests, companies and so on - to search by logical combinations of attributes and to get surprised by a "did you know that" random display that shows you interesting combinations of attributes (for example, three of my contacts participate in tennis. Hmm. Maybe I should dust off that racket after all).

Kick It is a simple and yet powerful example of how analysis of social media content can yield a treasure trove of potentially useful associations that can fuel both personal and professional contacts in unexpected ways. Take these associations and layer on additional content from other content sources and you can begin to get a sense of why embedding your own publication's content in social media portals such as Facebook can be so valuable. Mark Logic's technology is not unique in being able to do this, so the fact that it was able to develop Kick It as an interesting demonstration of its integration capabilities with social media using very limited efforts should spur on other content technology providers and publishers to consider just how easy it can be to make a big impression of their own. In the meantime kudos to Mark Logic for seeing an important opportunity to demonstrate how content integration technologies can make it easy for publishers to extend their value beyond their own portals into social media outlets.

Labels: content technology, facebook, kick it, mark logic

The buzz is increasing on a potential acquisition of the Plaxo contacts-oriented social networking service by Facebook, as noted by VentureBeat and others, and there are good reasons to think that this would be a good marriage if one can overlook the personality conflicts in the potential deal. Plaxo's new Pulse social networking service is going strong and helping to extend the value of its core contacts synchronization service, but ultimately Pulse is yet another social media login to maintain with features and functionality not terribly different from Facebook itself. At the same time Facebook is becoming an increasingly popular spot for professionals to congregate for networking of both a personal and professional nature, but it lacks gravitas for people trying to keep abreast of changes in people's professional profiles. Backing in Plaxo data and desktop synchronization capabilities into Facebook's infrastructure may offer an interesting marriage of capabilities that may give Facebook a more competitive posture with professionals as LinkedIn continues to gain mojo as a "social inbox" for the professional set.

Rumor squashers are quick to point out historical conflicts between management in these two companies that might squelch such a deal before it's out of the blocks. But with investors from Sequoia who have fingers in both LinkedIn and Plaxo perhaps there's reason to think that there's a priority being placed on getting Plaxo's potential up to speed as soon as possible in comparison to other assets in their portfolio. With reasonably healthy growth there's not an immediate need for Plaxo to pull the string on a deal just yet, but knowing that venture capital may be harder to come by for subsequent funding rounds in 2008 this might be a good point for Plaxo to exit into the hands of a player such as Facebook as it continues to attract professionals rapidly into its multi-faceted social networking portal. Expect an increasing round of high-profile deals for companies such as Plaxo as social media plays begin to consolidate to grow more effectively in a market that is scrambling for revenue-generating capabilities in a softening economy.

Labels: Business Information, Deals Partnerships and Sales, facebook, plaxo, Social Media

As could be expected there is a lot of strong reaction to Facebook's new SocialAds program, ranging from the interested to the irritated in some instances but also pointing towards legal concerns in other instances. As noted in PC World a law professor at the University of Minnesota pointed out that Facebook might be in violation of privacy statues in several states - including New York and California.
At issue is SocialAd's appropriating the name or likeness of a person for commercial purposes without explicit consent in their terms and conditions for such uses. It's an important and compelling angle to the new system that probably should have been thought through more carefully by Facebook, but also one which points to further refinements that might increase the potential value of the innovative contextual ad program.

The lack of a voluntary opt-in for SocialAds is certainly a potential legal concern but more importantly it does not allow advertisers to take full advantage of the power of personal endorsement. By linking ads to user posts without explicit permission the ad is only loosely associated with a person's personal endorsement of a product or service - one assumes that there's a positive impression of a product or service if someone bothers to mention it in their Facebook posts but the strength of that endorsement is not easily understood by someone viewing the ad. Is it a like, a love, or relative indifference? If I went to that restaurant that I mentioned in the post, was the food really good or was I just name-dropping to impress my friends and colleagues - and did I actually pick up the check?

A potential solution to this dilemma is seen in the other new ad feature on Facebook - pages for products and brands. Individuals can declare themselves "fans" of commercial entities with Facebook pages, a feature that seems to have been used mostly by a company's employees so far but that could expand in time to include real fan bases. This sort of passionate and loyal grass roots backing is what author Kevin Roberts refers to as "lovemarks," endorsements that have legs far longer than even superstars such as Michael Jordan backing the brand of basketball shoes for millions of dollars. Lovemarks get their endorsements for free - and with a little tweaking Facebook's SocialAds could be adjusted to tie "fan" endorsements to SocialAds placement to ensure that their presence in a fan's posts represented true enthusiasm for an advertiser's brand.

What has gone begging in this equation so far, though, is an obvious opportunity: if personal endorsements from sports superstars who aren't necessarily passionate about a product can command millions, why shouldn't the personal endorsements of Facebook members via SocialAds for benefit the person giving that implied or explicit endorsement more directly - and be under their control more directly? For example, if I am a person who's very influential in my online community or in a real-world community shouldn't SocialAds be able to reward me financially for their endorsement - or to enable them to funnel funds paid by an advertiser to place a SocialAds ad to their favorite charity or cause?

While such a mechanism alone would not address the potential legal exposures for the SocialAds program it may provide the incentive for people to participate proactively - and, in doing so, accept the legalisms that would apply to their use of personal endorsement. There are some potential complexities in such a system - would a member set a minimum bid for their endorsement rights or would this be determined algorithmically, or both? - I think that this is the likely direction in which systems such as SocialAds are likely to head. If being rewarded for endorsements works for sports superstars and other notable figures in mass media, why shouldn't it work in more highly focused social media as well? It's an interesting issue that is likely to unfold in a bigger way over the next several months.

Labels: advertising, endorsement, facebook, Social Media, SocialAds

You have to hand it to Yahoo: there is a lot of pressure on them from pundits and analysts to come up with something that would put them in the game with major social networking portals. But while still incubating their Mash social media platform they've come up with a product that says in effect that they know that they have a long ways to go. As such the introduction of Kickstart by Yahoo needs to be looked at through kinder, gentler eyes than might otherwise be the case. Instead of rushing a "we're everything to everyone" portal to market that would be sure to be met with disappointment Yahoo has gone to war with the platform that they've got and has chosen specific battlegrounds as a starting point.

The specific focus of Kickstart is young adults making the transition from college into professional lives. This is a gap that may be more theoretical than real given the strength of services such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Classmates.com in covering alumni relationships, but by focusing specifically on young adults making a transition Yahoo may have an opportunity to catch a toehold of acceptance with these people just at they're considering how to move out of campus mode into corporate mode. Sounds good on the surface, but this may be a case where traditional marketing analysis will leave Yahoo several yards short of their goal. Many of today's college-age generation see a strong blend between personal lives and careers that carries over well into their twenties - the odyssey years, some have termed them. The "prosumer" concept is something very comfortable to this generation, so sharing photos and videos is not necessarily something that conflicts in their minds with professionalism. The division between the Mash project and Kickstart seems like it's aiming at a gap that their audience may not perceive.

At the same time, though, there may be a few young adults who look at their Facebook profiles and say to themselves, oops, I did it again. The danger in mixing consumer and professional outlooks is that it takes a fair amount of maturity to show that you know how to balance these lives effectively. So Kickstart may be named as such to suggest the notion of "fresh start" to those young adults who didn't make the best use of social media to put their most adult foot forward. But at the end of the day it's far more likely that a service like Facebook can help these young adults to maintain meaningful relationships that can include their professional personnae than a service like Kickstart can loosen up and make networking seem to be a little more fun. From this perspective the dead-serious LinkedIn network seems like a more likely target for Kickstart than Facebook, creating a new generation of highly professional networkers that can make the most of people in their networks with great skillsets.

At the end of the day it's not Yahoo that's broken in designing products such as Kickstart but an information industry as a whole that focuses on databases more than the audiences that they serve. Social media is far less about what is stored on a server and far more about what happens in the browsers and mobile phones that connect peers to one another. Social media can yield highly valuable data and demographics for licensing and advertising support but as demonstrated in Facebook's new socially contextual ad and marketing program the premium value in social media is in the contexts that databases can generate on the fly based on interests and activities. Facebook may yet be trumped by a maturing brand out of a Yahoo that can manage some of the details of one's life with more professional panache but by separating the content experience from the networking experience Yahoo seems to have missed out on developing a platform that will create the most rich environment for both advertisers and content licensors.

Hopefully Kickstart can get some quick yardage for Yahoo to consider its next move in social media but in the meantime the rest of the teams are moving to a more sophisticated playing field altogether. Whatever way you slice it Kickstart is trying to define a niche product, in effect ceding the ground already seized by other social networks. With the introduction of Google's OpenSocial the Yahoo crew is becoming that much more isolated from the greater social media environment, becoming increasingly an island for copyrighted content and traditional brands that are powerful in their own right but missing out on many of the contexts in which they can find their greatest value. There's money in that model, but not necessarily money that has a future.

Labels: facebook, kickstart, Social Media, Yahoo

(NOTE: See the ShoreViews Video on this topic below in this post.)

At the recent Future of Business Media conference one of the key trends outlined by the speakers was that B2B media knows that social media is an important trend but that they are very reluctant to engage with social media tools. Most mainstream consumer publishers are about as far along, if truth be told, but it's of crucial importance that they wake up and see the opportunities in social media before others begin to skim off the best revenue opportunities.

One of the best examples of that can be seen in the recent launch of Facebook's advertising features, which are unlike most other tools used for marketers trying to reach audiences. Instead of just throwing up banner ads or typical CPM-oriented ad networks, Facebook is leveraging the power of their own social network to make companies, products and brands a real part of the Facebook community on a peer basis. The new Facebook marketing capabilities consist of two key components: SocialAds, which enables advertisers to get messages into the feed of Facebook activity appearing on member home pages, and Facebook pages for companies and products.

The SocialAds implementation on one level is not too different from any other ad feed that might appear in a weblog's RSS feed but with much more powerful capabilities based on member profiles and activity. An advertiser can target members on Facebook based on their personal profiles, including interests that match up with keywords, targeting both very small communities and very large communities based on those parameters. While keyword selections are fixed, as opposed to being able to define one's own, this still allows a fairly fine degree of targteting.

But the kicker in SocialAds is in the ability to link an ad to a member's reported activities on Facebook. So, for example, if a member visited a particular restaurant a graphic with a sponsored link to that restaurant could appear as a part of that member's post. Since there was probably a positive reason that the member mentioned this restaurant this then provides a very powerful personal endorsement to the advertiser, linking word-of-mouth directly to advertising. This is something very new and extremely powerful in advertising, a development that is potentially as revolutionary as Google's AdWords sponsored links were several years ago.

The introduction of Facebook pages for companies, products and brands is a more subtle features but equally important in its ability to support social media marketing. There are already more than 100,000 commercially-oriented Facebook pages for companies (our company page here) and their power is that they are so much like any other member's page. You can post company or product profiles, videos, links or any other type of content that you think is relevant, but the real value is that members can declare themselves "fans" of your commercial page - a high level of endorsement that enables a brand or product to become in effect a peer member of one's social network.

This is a positioning for marketing and messaging that for the first time really enables marketers to act in conversations within a social community as true peers. Certainly Second Life has shown the way on these types of capaiblities with its ability to allow brands to show of their stuff in virtual reality, but in Facebook's community it's less about glitz and more about rubbing shoulders with bona fide human beings rather than users wrapped in fanciful avatars with who knows what real persona behind them strolling into an online shopping mall. In Facebook pages a brand is less about exhibitionism than it is about engaging customers on a very personal basis.

Not all is sweetness and light in this new marketing environment - why is a sponsored link to ESPN's Pontiac-sponsored online site appearing in my news feed? A little TOO broad targeting, perhaps - but with futher refinements by Facebook and further refinements by Facebook members to indicate the kind of commercial messages they feel comfortable receiving the more powerful this kind of environment will become. It's perhaps a sneak preview of the kind of marketing environment that Google's OpenSocial may be able to make available to companies wanting to extend their message into a wide variety of media platforms that want to take advantage of the power of social media applications.

In the midst of a very busy week of product announcements bookmark Facebook's new marketing capabilities as one that you're going to the talking about - and thinking about - for a long, long time. This is just the beginning of a new era in conversational marketing that will change forever how goods and services enter the conversation of the marketplace.

For a visual run-through of how this all works take a peek at the following ShoreViews Video:

Labels: advertising, facebook, Google, marketing, openSocial, Social Media, SocialAds

UPDATE: Google's launch of the codenamed "Maka-Maka" project will take place Thursday, details at TechCrunch.] With Silicon Valley sprouting more Hawaiian-esque words for social media products than a Trader Vic's menu it's only appropriate that Google should be betting large on a social media with a new project code-named Maka-Maka. As detailed by TechCrunch Maka-Maka is an effort to bring social media capabilities and other Google content applications to any Web platform and application rather than trying to create just another standalone portal. To some degree this may seem like sloppy seconds after having lost a bidding war for Facebook to Microsoft, especially as Google's own Orkut social media portal has barely dented U.S. markets. But there may be some strengths to Google's methods if they can get them rolled out in a timely fashion.

The general Maka-Maka concept is to use social media as the principle platform from which one accesses other Google applications and which in turn can be embedded on other media platforms, in essence turning any Google application or other application into a social media-enabled application, complete with Google's own library of widgets already enabled through the iGoogle personalized interface. Add in Google's contextual ad capabilities and there's the potential for a new type of universal distribted platform for consuming content that puts social contexts at its focal point. Instead of locking people into a particular portal Google provides a trusted login, core functionality and the ability to embed a common framework for conversational content anywhere.

Then again, it could turn out to be what it seems to be at first glance: an after-the-fact attempt to pull together on a patchwork basis a very disparate group of Google applications that were never constructed with social media in mind. Facebook has its own ideas for a social media operating system as well, mind you, but at least it would start with a viable community built around bona-fide relationships at the center of its capabilities rather than having to wish that network into being.

But there's one key aspect to Google's gambit that may help it to propel its plans for Maka-Maka forward more quickly than may be envisioned at first: mobile markets. With a strong mobile platform about to be launched and powerful content and applications built off of Google Maps that are naturals for social networking there's every reason to think that Maka-Maka may be first and foremost the gateway into mobile social media that can bridge together voice conversations, messaging, email ecommerce and user-generated content far more rapidly than any other mobile provider. With Facebook under Microsoft's wing there's going to be an already established mobile platform on which Facebook's network of users could be deployed rapidly, so this is going to be a race with many dimensions - many of which could just as easily favor Microsoft's increasingly savvy online strategy.

Much of this will become more clear over the next few weeks as Google reveals more about both its mobile capabilities as well as its social media plans, but expect the initial announcements about Maka-Maka to be underwhelming until Google's mobile plans become more explicit. Once those kick in Maka-Maka may just turn out to be a very interesting way for the world to carry on its conversations in more online and mobile venues than any other provider - if it can finally manage to draw a critical mass of audience share for its social media efforts. Google's efforts to date don't augur well for that likelihood, but as Google seeks to open up mobile markets to more universal and cross-network access it may yet get the upper hand on truly universal social media.

Labels: facebook, Google, maka-maka, mobile, Social Media

Let's face it, for an enormous company Microsoft is not lining up many hits today. Its Vista operating system has had tepid reception at best, the EU has brought it to its knees on monopolistic practices, its Zune portable is praying for a second life this holiday season and the Xbox's shaky quality record makes a win for the new Halo 3 game a must to be kept in contention with competitive platforms. Ouch. But with oodles of cash and a well-focused online advertising strategy Microsoft is gearing up to exploit the gaps in Google's game plan that will give it a leg up in online content markets.

One of Google's key gaps to date has been social networking. While its Orkut platform has been successful in Brazil and certain other countries and rumblings of a greater social networking plan for Google grow larger, it's Facebook that's attracting both college-age folks and seasoned professionals who are willing to hang their hats up online on Facebook's increasingly robust social media platform. As noted by The New York Times and others, then, Microsoft's USD 240 million investment for a mere 1.6 percent of Facebook ownership is a significant win for Facebook and an opportunity for Microsoft to regain some sorely needed lost ground. The transaction scales Facebook's ultimate market value to a breathtaking but highly speculative USD 15 billion, making Rupert Murdoch's USD 583 million investment in MySpace seem like a bargain basement transaction in retrospect.

The New York Times article notes that the initial investment will secure Microsoft a platform for its ad network's growth, which is certainly a key component of making sure that it can leverage the highly valuable contexts available in social media. With the high level of personal endorsement and interaction available in Facebook Microsoft advertisers will be very pleased to find an alternative to search engine results and typical media outlets through which to build relationships with their markets. But the real underlying move by Microsoft is to have a dibs on Facebook's evolving social media-oriented computer operating system environment, a must-have for Microsoft in light of Google's evolving plans to have a Web-oriented OS of its own that will help drive its social media plans.

With more people than ever using the Web as their primary repository for both personal content and their own publishing endeavors Microsoft is at a dangerous juncture in its evolution, perhaps even more dangerous than when Netscape's browser began to threaten the supremacy of Microsoft's PC platform as a staging ground for content applications. Facebook has demonstrated with its rapidly growing array of embeddable applications that whole classes of content infrastructre that are at the heart of Microsoft's long-term cash flow may be rendered moot by social media environments such as Facebook's that enable people to build and share highly personalized portals with no or limited technical expertise. Applications such as its Business 3.0 module enable B2B communication that may provide a new way for businesses to develop 1-to-1 relationships via Facebook in ways that will make today's B2B advertising and supply chain management seem very ill targeted over time. All in all, Microsoft needs to get a revenue stream from social media badly - far moreso than either Google or Yahoo.

Will Facebook wind up being the dominant social media platform for both personal and business personal publishing? Once people set up shop in a social media environment there's a certain entropy that sets in which is likely to discourage any radical shifts: you want to keep your "peeps" around you as much as possible, and Facebook offers an increasingly compelling environment to enable open publishing and content integration. Most importantly unlike some other social media environments Facebook is designed for people's true identity as opposed to any number of avatars or pseudonyms that they may use in other social media environments. The emphaisis in Facebook is on knowing who you know, not gaming them for PR or other ulterior motives. This makes environments such as Facebook and LinkedIn that enable people to present their real selves the hottest marketing environments available in social media. By contrast, what's the value of selling to someone wearing green wings and fishnet stockings in Second Life? Good for a quick buck, but not relationship selling by any degree.

Realistically Facebook is by far the greater winner in this deal, having established an awesome figure for its market value and strong leverage for any other subsequent deals to help it gain market momentum. It's perhaps not as one-sided as the deal that Bill Gates cut with IBM to get rights to sell Mircosoft's PC operating systems on other platforms, but it's about equally clear who's behind the curve and who is able to help them get back in the game. And like that earlier deal this may be a sign that Microsoft is waning in its ability to influence electronic publishing effectively. But with an advertising strategy that is well-adapted to playing on multiple platforms to service multiple ad networks the Facebook deal is as good a shot a any that Microsoft is likely to have to use social media as a leverage point for future revenues. Don't expect miracles from either partner as a result of this alliance, but to expect their competitors to sweat it a little harder to get a foot in the door of compelling online communities.

Labels: Deals Partnerships and Sales, facebook, media, Microsoft, Social Media, Technology

Given that LinkedIn's professional social network content has been available through SalesForce.com's AppExchange service for nearly six months is it really a big deal that there's now a Facebook interface as well? As seen in Programmable Web's flash demo it's a fairly rudimentary integration: if you add a contact you can select their Facebook profile for inclusion in your SFDC desktop and use many of Facebook's functions and applications to communicate with people in their social networks. That's hardly rocket science but it's an excellent indication of the strengths that can be gained from using a social networking content service as a drop-in module in a software-as-a-service desktop environment.

Most importantly, though, it's an indication of how quickly two content services can benefit from one another's mutual presence in SaaS very rapidly with virtually no integration requirements. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with social networking SalesForce.com enables its clients to tap into the networks that matter most to their sales efforts. With Facebook's more multi-dimensional view of people's personal and professional lives it's possible that sales professionals will get a different kind of introduction than one might get from a LinkedIn referral. LinkedIn provides excellent professionally-oriented networking tools but there's something about telling someone, "Hey, I saw your profile on Facebook, I see that you're into sailing" that's a little more personal and conversational. Moreover it's a window through Facebook's programming interface into functionality that they have on their own platform that in essence gives one embedded applications within an application that's embedded in a SaaS platform. That's powerful content integration that can work to extend the value of both the hosting platform and the embedded platform as valuable contexts for content very rapidly.

While Facebook is having its ups and downs in terms of traffic, personal content exposure issues and integration complaints the growth of its use in professional circles over the past several months has been extraordinary. Although it's mostly a few brave people that venture beyond the basics of Facebooking, professionals are becoming much more used to the idea that their professional lives count increasingly on their ability to project their value and depth as a multi-dimensional person, rather than just a set of skills that can be marketed as useful but disposable labor. The old adage "it's not what you know but who you know" is taking on a new twist as online networking creates a new hook into effective business relationships.

At the same time most business information companies are standing still in comparison to companies like Salesforce.com and Facebook when it comes to encouraging on-the-fly content integration with their products. With a strong focus on traditional integration of content into structured databases the opportunity to provide a looser level of integration into a workflow-centric platform. There are strong opportunities for such integration in major market verticals, so expect this to happen over time. But with Salesforce.com pushing its Force.com initiative to provide "platforms as a service" for various corporate functions the time to move on such initiatives is now, not later. We may not be seeing Facebook as a networking tool on Bloombergs any time soon but there are plenty of markets where such rapid content integrations will benefit companies trying to put content in the most valuable context possible.

Labels: Business Information, facebook, integration, mashups, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Social Media

CNET interviews Jaideep Singh, the CEO and Co-Founder of the newly launched personal profile search engine Spock, and reveals insights into what is perhaps the hottest online content product launch this year. The Spock team has already assembled about 100 million tagged personal profiles of both living and historical people, including high profile people from the past like Diana, Princess of Wales and somewhat more mundane people from today like, well, me. Spock has carved out a very clever niche for itself, providing bone-simple search and navigation features like Google, personal profiling and networking as found in social media services such as LinkedIn and Facebook, content tagging, bookmarking and voting features like Digg and del.icio.us and content embedding features like PhotoBucket that enable a Spock profile to appear on Web pages beyond Spock.

There are all too many instances of features checklists like the above that could result in tragically bad content services but that's not the case with Spock. Through its system of content tagging and linking Spock winds up being a very powerful tool to research people who might have something to say on a given topic or to find out people who may have a connection to someone who you need to research. For example if you try a Spock search on "global warming" you get to no one's surprise a Spock profile of Al Gore as your first entry, but it's followed closely by Bill Clinton's profile (listed as "global warming advocate" [sic] as well as having a relationship link to Al Gore) and then by profiles of numerous global warming skeptics, including Rush Limbaugh. These are interesting and highly relevant search results that Google, as good as it may be from its own perspective, simply cannot duplicate.

Anyone can tag a person's profile returned on Spock with additional keywords that may be relevant to the person or add a vote for an existing tag. This is an exciting combination of content categorization and user feedback that provides the ability to create more relevance for a given person's relationship to a tagged topic without having to rely on evaluating external content sources. However Spock does quite a bit of external content evaluation as well, using patented algorithms to determine relevance, personal links and profile information. This information may be verified and edited by a person logging in to the Spock service and claiming their profile, much as in the Zoominfo online directory of professionals. In building a profile one can add links to existing personal profiles on social media services or links to relevant Web pages. Others may add links to your profile as well and vote on them, so there is a social media aspect to profile building also.

There's very little redundant information in Spock, it's mostly links to relevant information found elsewhere, as with other search engines. But the social media features, profile links, user tagging, bookmarking and personal profile validation features combine with straight search capabilities to create a truly unique experience with very useful information. Given that people have been "Googling" people for a long time you'd think that a major search engine like Google would have come up with Spock-like features to add value to personal searching, but Spock found that need and has filled it very nicely. While it may lack some of the strong business oriented capabilities of finding professionals via services such as LinkedIn, Jigsaw or Zoominfo the Spock method seems to try to be a Switzerland of sorts for social media profiles: have as many as you want wherever you want them and Spock will use them as useful input for building yourself an all-encompassing profile and content directory on their own service.

The mixture of both solid results and fun exploration is sure to make Spock a very popular and useful service for people in both personal and professional roles, a factor that is likely to encourage people to build and maintain a high profile via Spock's search services. Spock helps to fill in the area between purely automated searches that fail to incorporate personal wisdom on both people an topics and does so in novel ways that challenge both conventional search engines and more traditional directory services to consider how people can be exposed most effectively to audiences searching for both information about people and both personal and professional relationships with people. It's still early days for Spock, of course - performance is so-so at times and there are still some bugs to be found in basic features such as profile claiming - but as a tool to probe into people within the framework of key topics expect Spock to become a trend-setter for some time to come.

Labels: facebook, LinkedIn, search, Social Media, Spock, Trends

Bloomberg News covers Stanford Group analyst Clayton Moran's claims that the seeming listlessness of Yahoo's management since Terry Semel's departure and sinking share prices are laying the groundwork for an inevitable and likely sale of Yahoo. Moran cites Microsoft as the likely bidder and beneficiary of online synergies that would boost both properties into a newly competitive position against rival Google. There are a lot of things that still argue for this combination - invigorated search technology and online office components from Microsoft, advertising know-how and effective destination content development from Yahoo - and a such sale is certainly not improbable. Yet I can't help thinking that this may be one of those "perfect" marriages that would go south far more quickly than people may imagine.

The main rub that I see is that both companies suffer from two similar maladies: weakening market mindshare for their brands and dysfunctional product development cultures. Microsoft has had a remarkable string of product introductions that have been flops, duds or near-misses, in spite of having a near lock on many key technologies. Its Internet Explorer browser, once the unchallenged ruler of online Web content consumption, now boasts only about 70 percent of the European marketplace, a problem only exacerbated by mobile content markets moving further away from Microsoft technologies. Yahoo has many comparatively healthy and innovative initiatives, but some of its most innovative properties such as Flickr, del.icio.us and Yahoo! Pipes are either standalone brands or initiatives that are relatively orphaned from the mainstream Yahoo offerings. The Semel legacy of traditional media development stalled the effective development and integration of social media, a strategic error that Yahoo is working hard to correct but nevertheless a legacy of poor market timing that Microsoft will do little to bolster.

Moreover a Yahoo acquisition will do little to help Microsoft penetrate the enterprise/prosumer space very effectively. Yahoo's withdrawal from enterprise services a few years back left the playing field open for Google, which is still at the foothills of enterprise content but building a steadily growing array of products and integration resources to build that base over time. On the consumer side the addition of Microsoft properties to Yahoo's ad base would be a strong plus, but not one that could not be offered by other parters as well with greater online growth potential.

Which brings us to the question: who would want to buy Yahoo? I think that it's far more likely that News Corp will see a Yahoo acquistion as a perfect complement to its holdings.Its online management team is both upbeat and highly experienced with social media via Fox Interactive Media's MySpace platform and would offer Yahoo a better chance to develop as a dominant media brand with a strengthened advertising base. Yahoo's strong online finance portal would complement potential content fed in from Dow Jones holdings should that deal close, a deal that would have already provided News Corp with good enterprise revenues and technology platforms. Yahoo entertainment offerings would complement MySpace nicely and its enormous base of user accounts would offer MySpace a shot in the arm as Facebook builds a stronger market share.

The only real question for a Yahoo sale is timing - and it's likely that Yahoo's nascent social media replacement for its less-than-booming 360 portal may be the timing telltale. If the introduction of this effort is not stunning or if management becomes discouraged in its early testing phases then it's highly likely that a deal will be executed fairly quickly one way or another. But don't be surprised if quiet talks are already in the works - no doubt awaiting News Corp's finalization of Dow Jones details before focusing on Yahoo. Other potential suitors such as TimeWarner could enter the picture (AOL round two? Probably not.) but few offer clear synergies. We'll see whether Microsoft has the gumption to pull the string on a Yahoo deal, but my guess is that they have their hands full with many core competitiveness issues already - and that News Corp will be able to define more profitable synergies and longer-term brand strength before Microsoft gets to pop the question.

Labels: Deals Partnerships and Sales, facebook, Microsoft, MySpace, News Corp, TimeWarner, Yahoo

Though its reach is relatively small in comparison to the leaders in social bookmarking, the Newsvine portal remains one of the more successful news-oriented social media sites on the Web. Unlike Digg and del.icio.us, which focus largely on social bookmarking for technology and entertainment, Newsviners provide both bookmarks to online content that draws discussion from members as well as original content authored by Newsvine members and smatterings of mainstream news sources such as AP and The New York Times. The mix of user-generated content and mainstream media makes for a lively mix of discussions on politics, religion and other hot-button issues that drive users to vie for top community rankings and their own modest ad revenues. But though the Newsvine community remains vibrant, it has not had a serious growth spurt in over a year. How does a social media property grow beyond a relatively small group of rowdy enthusiasts?

Newsvine is hoping that the answer may lie in nailing some hot scoops dug out by its citizen journalists. In the wake of so-called "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey's release of telephone records leading Newsvine denizens are hoping to score a big news story of their own by combing through the phone records to see if they can identify well-known political figures who may have been caught up in affairs via Palfrey's escort service. To facilitate this effort Newsvine and some of its most active members have set up some software to enable Newsvine members to do their own sleuthing through Palfrey's phone records in cooperation with their peers. While there are no tangible results yet from this crowdsourced research, the energy level is running high amongst these budding investigative journalists.

Although turning up some high-profile names may gain Newsvine some temporary traction, it's far from clear that this is the type of exercise that will put citizen journalism on the map in any significant way. Leading webloggers have been uncovering major stories for years - stories which are ignored oftentimes by mainstream media outlets or co-opted later on as their own "scoops." The focus of this effort - a Washington sex scandal - tends to play into this trend, as it's the type of work already being done no doubt at a feverish rate by every major news organization in the world in search of a hyped and hot story. Crowdsourcing and some quick coding have enabled some "boots on the ground" via Newsvine and a very interesting precedent for future user-keyed research efforts, but those hoping to gain fame and fortune from uncovering the next "Deep Throat" are likely to find asterisks next to their scoops rather than Pulitzer Prizes on their bookshelves.

The key rub in this push towards citizen journalism is that in trying to go after mass media-scaled stories with a mass media journalism techniques Newsvine is in large part just echoing the existing strengths and weaknesses of today's journalism. While there may be some hypocrisy exposed through these efforts that people should know about it's ultimately the same sort of focus on least-common-denominator interests - who's having sex with whom - that drive many of today's journalists obsessed more with fame, fortune and elbow-rubbing than with reporting on the truth regardless of its sensational value. Where citizen journalism seems to shine most brightly is when self-motivated content producers remain true to their values as individuals and to the important relationships that they want to maintain outside of the context of journalism. Quality citizen journalism seems to grow out of the quality of relationships that generate interesting content as much as out of any inherent journalistic skills used by a content producer.

I think that this is one reason why social media portals such as Facebook are growing steadily - they provide first and foremost a place where people can be themselves in all their personal dimensions. This tends to build relationships based on real-world trust more than the ginned-up popularity of of online relationships with people who hide behind pseudonyms. In turn this is likely to assist in developing more in-depth content close to individuals' interests and expertise that will reinforce relationships in their online community more effectively. Portals that focus more on media before relationships do not seem to have as much growth these days. No surprise there, really - there are already far too many mainstream media outlets chasing the tall end of the interest curve.

Relationships are the truly unique experiences around which content gains its greatest value, content which may look dull in its "long tail" focus but which in sum is far more valuable than the fleeting bits of fluff that pass themselves off as serious journalism these days far too often. This is the real direction towards which citizen journalism is most likely to head - people with substantial "real world" relationships sharing important information with one another which becomes contextua