Phil Balderson recently suggested that social networking may not be the best term for the various functions that connect media, people, or ideas in different ways. When I asked what term might replace it, Phil suggested the idea of “meshing.” Playing off the idea of “mashups,” Phil suggests three reasons for meshing:
1. Individuals without prior relationships can mesh.
2. Society is meshing with technology (via Web 2.0).
3. Something new emerges as technologies, people, and sites mesh together.
Every week I sign up for a new social networking site just to explore their features and see what’s out there. With so many socialnet sites, I lose track of what I’ve joined, and I usually never do much with many of them. I signed up with Flixster on Wednesday and wasn’t sure if I’d use it much or not. Flixster may turn out to be a useful site. It is definitely like Netflix’s Friends feature combined with MySpace. The nice thing is that users can simply rate movies; they don’t have to sign up for a rental plan. This makes it easy to build a larger friends database and connect with a variety of people who like movies. And for someone like me who prefers to hear movie recommendations from other people, I find this very appealing.
If Netflix was smart, they’d follow Flixster lead and offer an expanded version of the Friends feature with no requirement to join. Of course, once people enter into a network and come to visit their movie page, it would be easier to encourage them to sign up for a plan, download a film or buy a film.
Reporting on the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Michael Calore suggests that “the theme of the summit is ‘disruption and opportunity,’ and it could be argued that it’s also the mantra of the entire Web 2.0 movement.”
Totally. Breaking down the walls between the giants and the dwarfs, the air of Web 2.0 seems intoxicating. With open source, startups, the culture of generosity, the innovation explosion, Web 2.0 is about expanding horizons and connecting people on more and more levels in multiple venues. This seems to be springtime of possibility. Will it last? Doubtfully but for now, the surge of creative juices and dripping like a giant coconut rolling around on the beaches virtual beaches bordering the ocean of Eureka.
Some of the cool developments Calore mentions include a music mentoring site called In the Chair, 3B (that allows you to put websites and photos into a personalized 3D space), Turn (a target advertising portal that uses data analysis to create perfect matches – sounds like the business version of EHarmony), and more. All of the developments continue to focus on the growing importance of a social computing model.
Of course, the Web 2.0 Summit wasn’t all about geeking out. Lou Reed showed up to brighten everyone’s day.
I know America bowls alone, but soon we will no longer have to browse alone. Medium lets you watch what your friends are browsing at in real time. Makes me think of how Netflix lets you see what your friends are watching.
On one level this looks pretty cool, but then again, I’m not sure how often I would use it. I like chat for quick notes back and forth, but I am not one who likes talking on the phone for long periods or chatting for long periods. I prefer face-to-face talking when possible. But it still looks cool and more communal than other site sharing concepts.
What does Web 2.0 have to do with church? Well, that’s a question I’ve been pondering some lately, thinking about how the world of social networking has interesting implications for people of faith. Turns out someone else has been thinking about this. Dawn sent me a link for Church Marketing Sucks: a blog look at church, Seth Godin, word of mouth, and more.
If you’re going to post anything to the Yahoo time capsule, you’d better do it in the next 21 days. I just noticed this today, but it’s another cool form of human connecting. While there is no direct sharing going on between participants, it does give a sense of human connectedness.
Google updated its spreadsheets and documents interface this weekend. I like the new spread better than the Writely look before.
via Bits of News
It’s official, Web Pages are dead. Bryan Eisenberg offers a touching eulogy to the that once great paragon of Internet traffic. He writes,
The Web page was pronounced dead on October 9, 2006, after a long bought with chronic irrelevance. A large group of marketers attempted CPR and other heroic resuscitation techniques. Witnesses present at the scene told reporters that despite a few minutes of chaos, the Web page’s last moments were largely serene and peaceful.
There is talk of a MySpace Web Pages Memorial Group forming, and some web pages aficionados are gathering “on a hillside” at Second Life to comfort one another. The rest of us are just blogging it.
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