[nlab social networks conference - andrea saveri]

Andrea Saveri on The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Jobs & Organizations

Institute for the Future - founded in 1968

How to forecast the future, applied to business, government and non-profits

Think about the future though aware of the present

Amplified individual uses twitter to get information out. Thinking of global events and tweets becoming quick and powerful ways to sort, filter and disseminate information.

Amplified individuals are also highly collaborate - work with others to collectively solve problems, tap into an contribute to the intelligence of crowds. Re: businesses this might expand staff without necessarily hiring new staff. Through social media can actually attract people to you to provide people to you without hiring somebody.

Wikis - a great example with wikis on just about everything. Imagine being a small business, putting up a wiki page about a new process, technique or technology you're inviting other people to contribute to that knowledge base. Identify your own need (HR: you get other people to scratch your itch).

Prediction Markets - imagine what it would take for small businesses to do their own market forcasting, accessing intelligence from a broad community about a focused question. See: http://us.newsfutures.com/home/home.html

Another way to use sociology and collective action might be to bring in ludic concepts. Gaming allows different kinds of associations and people get interested in solving puzzles etc...

Amplified Individuals are highly improvisational. Andrea tells us about a group of work-from-home people who band together to work in a real space and share infrastructure and resources.

Amplified Individuals are also highly augmented. They employ systems, tools, and hacks to enhacne cognitive abilities and coordination skills. This is particuarly important for small businesses as they are likely to fill many hats, the kinds of techniques and practises to enhance memory, attention etc...is important.

See chumby - way to control information. Have a look at the chumby website. Totally into social media, they have a section where the audience (are they really called customers?) can upload (via flickr) their own photos or videos (via youtube)
of a chumby: http://www.chumby.com/pages/showoff.

Key Characteristics:

moddable, influency, ping quotient (measure of your responsiveness to other people's requests for engagment, your propensity and ability to participate), protovation (fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles), open authorship (creating content for public consumption and modification), multi-capitalism (fluency in working with different capitals, eg. natural, intellectual, social and financial), longbroading (thinking in terms of higher level systems, cycles, the bigger picture, can you rise above and look at the higher-level system), signal/noise management, cooperation radar (ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task)

Why Important for Small Biz?

This really does amplify scope for info. Individuals have the motivation and know-how to create new strucutres and processes that bypass traditional constraints

Key Ways:

Economies of sociality

Asymmetric power

Responsive resilience

New market niches

***Questions

How to monetize the individual? Go to that multi-capitalisation skill. Understanding of the relationship between building social captial and reputation might be a way to convert that into monetising. What do you give away and what do you charge for? This is a real area of fluidity right now. We shouldn't think about monetisation alone...we should think about other kinds of capital.

If you're talking about micro-businesses and the amount of time that should be spent on this kind of social networking/web. Andrea: it's not just a chunk of time...what is it that they're doing on the web. Are they participating in a discussion related to their job...that would be related to their work. The question is why are you going out there? You need a good reason for using that kind of technology, a way to enhance the staff that actually makes them more productive.

[online marketing don'ts]

An oldie but a goodie: how *not* to market:





video from here.

[JP Rangaswami on web 2.0, social networking + business]

I've just been watching Dan Farber (ZDNet editor-in-chief) interview JP Rangaswami. Rangaswarmi talks about BT and the role of new media and open source. Some interesting quotes:

"In fact if you look at what I’m doing with Facebook, what I’m really achieving, what any of us who wants to use it in an enterprise environment achieves, is to say that you’ve taken what happened at the water cooler or at the coffee shop and made it persistent, made it shareable, made it teachable, made it learnable. That’s a huge win because we’ve spent years talking about the value of the water cooler conversations, of the coffee shops, of the more amorphous softer discussions. Now we have the ability to actually understand what these relationships are, how information and decision making migrates horizontally, laterally through an organization, rather than through the published hierarchies, how people really work, and what people do as part of that work."

and, BT is no longer simply a telecoms company but (here's a mouthful):

"a platform based software driven networked IT services company."

Interestingly Dan Farber asks:

"Now as part of that environment that you’re talking about, the software as a service and exposing the assets to the customer and letting them build upon it, obviously that might deal to some extent with the web 2.0 type technologies, how are you investing in those types of approaches?"

and Rangaswami responds:

"Well as you would expect, I don’t think I could have joined a firm that didn’t believe in collaborative tools and techniques and at BT it’s pretty much part of our DNA. Collaboration is right at the heart of what we do, we have very very large internal use of blogs and wikis, we have considerable use of IM techniques. We also have a growing ability for ourselves to be able use various forms of, I mean if you look at facebook, I think we’re probably up to 6000 people just on the visible BT."

But does social media always work for business? No, not in any generic way, businesses need to use aspects of social media that work for them, their brand and their ethos. The moral of the story:

"I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that do not work."

The video of the talk is here. The transcript here and Dan Faber's blog post here.

[business + social media = search engine optimization]]

Reading Blogstorm and I see Patrick Altoft talking about the possibility of SEO resistant searches. In other words, searches can be powered by what Altoft calls the "social graph" but that doesn't mean the death of SEO, just a different kind of instantiation:

"Imagine how hard it would be for a commercial site to get high rankings on a search engine powered by the social graph. The marketing department probably wouldn’t have a clue where to start and are likely to be labelled a spammer at the first social network they target. The only way for a commercial site to see good results would be to hire a social media consultant / SEO to create a long term social media strategy for them.

Search can’t ever be SEO resistant because any signal can be manipulated - a good SEO consultant will figure out what the search engine needs to rank a site highly and give it to them. No tricks just give the search engines what they want whether it’s links, keywords, bookmarks, RSS subscribers or anything else."

Tyler Banfield, one of Altoft's readers draws our attention to a post by Vanessa Fox where she sums up her view of SEO rather well:

"The bottom line is this. Yes, if you want your customers to find you using search, then you have to understand search engine optimization. And you should want your customers to find you using search because search is the entry point on the web. But if you are operating an online business, you absolutely should understand online marketing. I don’t understand people who say it should all just work and they should be able to concentrate on their core business. (Looking at this from a search engine’s perspective, however, I think they should and certainly they are working on ways to make sure it all just works, because it’s in their best interest to provide searchers the best content on the web, whether the owners of that content understand SEO or not, but that doesn’t negate the point.)

If you have an offline business, you have to understand offline marketing and customer engagement. If you are opening new stores and your core skill set is painting, you will likely hire others for other aspects of your business: determining the best location for the store, branding and advertising, merchandising. You will probably ensure your store is attractive, both inside and outside. You’ll arrange merchandise on your shelves so that people know where to find stuff and can easily reach it. You’ll make your aisles wide enough for carts.

You wouldn’t open your paint store with no sign and a broken door in a back alley that had a brick wall blocking the road. Why would you do the same on the internet and then blame Google?"

The cool image is from RagePank.

["don't be efficient"]

David Eaves has a great post on gen y-ers using (or attempting to use) social networking tools to be "more productive" but ending up shot down...

"Take for example my friend who wanted to use survey monkey to send out a questionnaire asking 10 public servants across their department about potential dates and times when they would be free to meet. The survey took 5 seconds to complete and would quickly identify the optimal date for such a meeting. However, her manager let her know very quickly that this was unacceptable. It was more important that each person be emailed - or better, called - individually, a process that gobbled up hours if not days. Time after time I hear stories of young people who, after doing what they do at home, quickly feel the full weight of the department descending on their cubicle. I won’t even mention an acquaintance who related a story of trying to set up a wiki (not even on accessible to the public!)."

I've read quite a bit about bringing these kinds of technologies into educational environments or at least educating people about their possibilities and there are certainly a lot of people out there working on it...I just assumed that businesses etc... would have already sunk their teeth (mostly) into these kinds of tools that allow sharing of information so easily and quickly. I guess not...

A point I'd like to make explicit though...as one of David's commenters explained "A vast majority of young people are entirely clueless about the technology they’re using - they see it as magic as much as the older generation does." Too true! But, I don't think it's just a case of Gen Y-ers being able to do it better than others...I strongly feel it isn't a generational thing and certainly not a "digital native vs immigrant" thing either...(maybe it does have a lot to do with access though)

[business+social networking]

Thinking about our current plan for NLab (tracking social networking in business) this video seems to give a good background on what businesses need and how social networking can help:

(of course there's ecademy linked in - with 11 million members and the more recent jump up etc...)

[ad clicks]

An interesting post on the logistics of ad-clicking from Zeila Rich Enterprises.

"The pie chart shown above gives you all the different types of clicks there are to Adsense Advertisements, be it on the Search or Content Networks. We cannot disclose our methods of collection of such data, as it is our proprietary technology, and we might plan to do something about it some day. There are several categories of clicks.

We have the Fact-Finding Clicks (FFC). These clicks are just for visitors to find out more about a particular offer or just receive information, perhaps comparing offers from one advertiser to another. It is not surprising that it makes up over 60% of all clicks in our research.

What is shocking most is that out of 4 clicks, at least one of them is what we term the Curious Click (CUC). Over 25% of all clicks are as a result of curiosity. People are clicking just to find out “what’s going on”, without the intention to buy anything. That has serious implication to pay per click advertisers, but that is beyond the scope of this book.

There are also the Competitive Clicks (COC). Luckily, it is only 1% of total clicks. These are ads which are clicked by competitors of the advertisers. These competitors have no intention whatsoever to do business with the advertisers, other than to inflate the advertising costs of their competitors. Sad, but true about the existence of such clicks!


The 3% Converted Clicks (CNC) are in line with data collected by major advertising firms. These conversions only include direct sales (and exclude leads such as subscription to a mailing list, request for information, etc). What this means is that 3 out of 100 people actually buy something the first time they click on an ad. Remember we talked about Click Flipping in Chapter 4? Can you imagine making money from referral commissions from just 3% of your ad clicks (not to mention an even infinitesimal portion of your total web visitors)?"

For more see here.

[folksonomy and thomas vander wal]

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of listening to Thomas Vander Wal share with us his charting of folksonomy, from its beginnings to future possibilities. He began with his definition of folksonomy (which funnily enough, Vander Wal noted, Wikipedia gets wrong):

When Vander Wal spoke about the important aspect of folksonomy, that it is a "social" activity, he reminded us that in a pre-networked world, networking was walking your floppy across the office!

The "f-word" (as Vander Wal puts it) allows "regular" folks to categorise or structure information in a way that is pertinent to them (i.e. personalised).

This aspect of personalisation has important impacts for the business sector in that it allows businesses a view of their product from the customers' point of view. Again, Vander Wal gave us a funny example of how tagging can affect your product by showing us cd available on amazon.com (see here) and how it was tagged:



You wouldn't want your product labelled as "talentless" would you...?

So, with the help of folksonomy, businesses can move from their "top down" approach to a more open and realistic understanding of their product (or at least how it is perceived).

Vander Wal concluded his talk with an excellent visual representation of what he sees happening in certain social networking arenas:




People/users/taggers are moving from employing tags as descriptors for solely personal use to, the other end of the spectrum, where tags seem to be jumping off points for dialogues and stories (that's the bit I'm personally interested in. Especially after noticing on flickr how some photos start so many stories).

As Vander Wal says:

"The people using the tools, including enterprise need to grasp what is possible beyond that is offered and start asking for it. We are back to where we were in 2003 when del.icio.us arrived on the scene, we need new and improved tools that understand what we need and provide usable tools for those solutions. We are developing tag islands and silos that desperately need interoperability and portability to get real value out of these stranded tag silos around or digital life."

NB apologies for the not so great photos! Annoyingly I forgot my camera (such was the excitement to attend the presentation) and to hand was only my blackberry...

[be socially networked or die]

Ok...not that exactly but for businesses to succeed they need to be socially networked: "Get interactive or get out, says analyst"

"Traditional marketing campaigns are proving unsuccessful on social networking sites, according to a recently published report.

The Forrester Research study suggests that most marketers still use traditional tactics like run-of-site advertising and static microsites to push messages into these networks.

However, the return on investment in these campaigns is very low, and marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value.

Promotions are good in this context, according to Forrester, but information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends are even better.

"It is clear that successful social networking site campaigns do not follow traditional marketing rules," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester and co-author of the report.

"Social networking sites cannot be treated as channels because their members are not passive web pages."

The report suggests that marketers should mimic how music acts promote themselves on sites like MySpace by engaging their fans with frequent backstage gossip and answering their questions.

"During the past 10 years, the evolution of the internet has dramatically changed how organisations interact with customers," said Gurval Caer, president and chief executive at marketing agency Blast Radius.

"Companies are recognising that traditional marketing approaches like advertising are less effective today, and marketers are struggling to deliver value.

"People no longer want 'interruptive' brand communications; they want interactions with their peers and true value from companies through Facebook applications or communities for sharing ideas and experiences."

Caer added that marketing needs to "turn itself on its head" with a much greater focus on building relationships that will make people's lives "easier, better and richer".

The report concluded that companies that want to advertise on social networks should embrace the interactive aspect of the sites in order to gain the full benefit of these campaigns."

Forrester Report: Marketing on Social Networking Sites
By Ian Willams at VnuNet.

[putting the "I" in business models]

AmieStreet.com Announces Series A Financing Led By Amazon.com

NEW YORK, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- AmieStreet.com, a fast-growing digital music store with a unique demand-based pricing system, announced today the completion of its Series A financing led by Amazon.com, Inc. . The amount of Amazon's investment and the terms are not disclosed.

"Amie Street has a very smart and innovative team," said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President for Business Development, Amazon.com. "The idea of having customers directly influence the price of songs is an interesting and novel approach to selling digital music."

AmieStreet.com is the first digital music store propelled by social networking, where members of the community drive the discovery, promotion and pricing of music. All songs on AmieStreet.com start at a price of zero cents. As more people download a song the price rises, capping at $0.98.

For recommending their favorite songs to their friends, members are rewarded by receiving credit for the purchase of additional music on AmieStreet.com. The more popular a song becomes after a member has recommended it, the more credit he or she receives to spend on music.

The recommendation system brings the music discovery process and the dynamic of social networking full circle, giving members the incentive and the means to continually discover and share new music. AmieStreet.com is a music network where people's passion for music, and their desire to share it with one another, generates commerce that benefits the entire community.

"AmieStreet.com grew from the idea that we needed to make buying music social and fun," said AmieStreet.com's co-founder and CEO Elliott Breece. "The Amie Street community took over from there, driving a shift toward a music marketplace where consumers decide what is popular and what music is worth. We're thrilled to have Amazon.com's support in empowering music consumers."

Anyone can upload their music to AmieStreet.com, and all songs are downloadable in DRM-free mp3 format.

In conjunction with the announcement of its Series A, AmieStreet.com is debuting releases from Audio Bee, Daptone Records, Nettwerk Music Group, United For Opportunity (UFO), Dualtone Music Group, RoyaltyShare and INgrooves. As always, all songs start free!

About AmieStreet.com

AmieStreet.com is an online music destination that is changing the way people discover and buy music. Founded in the Spring of 2006 by then Brown University seniors -- Josh Boltuch, Elliott Breece and Elias Roman -- AmieStreet.com is a site where the members of the community determine the price of songs, which start out free and rise in price the more they are purchased. The site also rewards its members with downloads when they recognize and recommend tracks that rise in price, giving users an incentive to find and recommend good music first, while giving artists the platform to promote and sell their music.

Amazon.com Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, and all subsequent filings.


Contact:
press@amiestreet.com

http://amiestreet.com/page/for-press

[8 ways to grow your blog]

According to Mack Collier at the Marketing Profs site, following these eight easy steps should pretty much ensure you a bigger blog. Although he has in mind corporate blogs, many of his steps apply to personal blogs.

1. Post regularly
2. Develop a comment policy
3. Reply to comments
4. Showcase readers who make special contributions
5. Build your blogroll with your readers' interests in mind
6. Offer unique content aimed at your blog's target audience
7. Make your blog's feed available for RSS subscribers (this is sooo important as many blog readers catch up on their favourite reads only using a feed reader)
8. Offer email subscriptions to your blog's content

"The best way to grow your blog's readership is to shift your focus to satisfying your readers' wants and needs. If you create an environment on your blog that welcomes readers to participate and encourages their feedback, your blog will blossom.
Instead of viewing your blog as a promotional and marketing tool for your company, consider how you can create a community on your blog. Once you shift your blog's focus toward the wants and needs of the readers, you will begin to see your readership grow, as will interaction via comments and links to your blog."

For further details on each step and actionable points see the original blog post here.

[women, business & blogging conference]

I can't believe it's over...already! Yesterday was an amazing day and we were very lucky to have stimulating speakers: Meg Pickard (I am so copying her ppt style!), Eileen Brown (good use of cartoons! and she's already blogged about it), and Jory des Jardins (lots of hints and tips and helped a few of us win that buzzword bingo!) - they were all excellent!

I have loads to say (I'm sure conference delegates do too!) but I'm off to catch a flight now. I'll upload some photos to flickr of course and I hope all the delegates, (yes you! I know you're reading!) and anyone else interested, join our google group called "nlabwomen." MEN can join too!!

[the business of new media]

With less than two weeks to go until the Women, Business & Blogging conference I found this article timely:From Postcards, to Podcasts.

"According to the American Advertising Federation's Media Investment Survey 2007, 73% of nearly 1,000 organizations polled said they are allotting up to 20% of their budgets for 'experimentation and new media options.' Further, 78% of respondents said they are 'always open to new ways of using traditional media.'"

Blogging is important for business:

Have a look at what Lori Reed, Director of Marketing at InsureMe.com has to say about search engine optimization:

Some key points from the article, well worth bearing in mind:

[blogging is good]

Less than two weeks until the Women, Business & Blogging conference! There are a few bursaries left so go ahead and apply.

The aim of the conference, as the title suggests, is to talk about the role blogging can play in business and yup, the focus is on women. As I'm thinking about this I've come across Penelope Trunk's popular post "Blogging Essential for a Good Company." A few interesting bits:

"Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google’s system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches."

"And coming up high is good: “People who are more visible and have a reputation and stand for something do better than people who are invisible,” branding consultant Catherine Kaputa" says.

Here are Penelope's eight reasons on why exactly blogging is good:

1. Blogging creates a network.
A blogger puts himself out in the world as someone who is interesting and engaging — just the type of person everyone wants to meet. “A blog increases your network because a blog is about introducing yourself and sharing information,” says Kaputa.

2. Blogging can get you a job.
Dervala Hanley writes a quirky literary blog that got her a job is at Stone Yamashita Partners, a consulting firm that “tries to bring humanity to business.” Hanley told me that the firm was attracted to her ability to put her business experience into personal terms on the blog.

3. Blogging is great training.
To really get attention for your blog, you’re going to have to have daily entries for a while. At least a few months to get rolling, and then three or four times a week after that. So you will really get to know your topic well.

4. Blogging helps you move up quickly.
To escape the entry-level grind, you can either pay your dues, working up a ladder forever, or you can establish yourself as an expert in the world by launching a blog. High-level jobs are for people who specialize, and hiring managers look for specialists online. “Decision-makers respect Google-karma,” writes Tim Bray, director of Web technologies for Sun Microsystems — on his own blog, of course.

5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.
You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.

Curt Rosengren, a career coach, periodically Googles “career passion” — words he thinks are most important to his business — just to make sure his blog, Occupational Adventure, comes up high on the list. He estimates that his blog generates at least half of his coaching business.

6. Blogging provides more opportunities.
Building brands, changing careers, launching a business — these endeavors are much easier once you’ve established yourself online. Rosengren told me, “My blog is a foundation. I’m building an awareness that I can leverage to do other fun things with my future, such as product development, or public speaking.”

A blog gives you a leg up when you meet someone new. Dylan Tweney, a freelance writer, told me his blog, the Tweney Review, gives him instant legitimacy with clients.

7. Blogging could be your big break.
Visually creative types can blog beyond just text. Mark Fearing has a cartoon blog. “Cartooning and illustration are very crowded fields,” he says. “My blog has gotten me more notice than any other publicity tool I’ve used. Plus, the blog gives me a way to have a new conversation with potential clients about other work.”

8. Blogging makes the world a better place.
“Blogging is about giving stuff away to a community,” says Day. “For years, as a junior developer, I would go to the Internet for solutions and I would always take, take, take. Now I am happy to be a contributor and give something back.”

[google says "no" to essay mills]

Google Bans Essay Writing Adverts
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter



Google is to ban adverts for essay writing services - following claims that plagiarism is threatening the integrity of university degrees.
There have been complaints from universities about students being sold customised essays on the internet.

The advert ban from the Google search engine has been "warmly welcomed" by university authorities.



But it has angered essay writing firms which say this will unfairly punish legitimate businesses.

From next month, Google will no longer take adverts from companies which sell essays and dissertations - and the internet company has written to advertisers to tell them about the policy.

Plagiarism software

Google's forthcoming ban on adverts for "academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations" means that essay websites join a blacklist of "unacceptable content" including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and "miracle cures".

The move has been applauded by universities which have struggled with the problem of students dishonestly submitting material copied from the internet.


"Making life harder for these cynical web 'essay mills' is a step in the right direction," says Professor Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK.

"We welcome this move. Essay writing sites claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers - but do not then submit these as their own work. We all know this claim is absurd."

The universities organisation says that in particular there have been difficulties with essays bought by students from companies which sell tailor-made answers, where fees can be up to £5,000 for a single piece of extended work.

There have been reports of up to 12,000 essays being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.

These essays and assignments can be written by freelance academics or other students - and it is less easy for plagiarism software used by universities to detect such work.

Google, commenting on the change, says its advertising policies are "developed and evaluated based on multiple factors, including legal and cultural considerations plus user and customer experience".

And a spokesperson said that the advert ban was expected to be applied across Google's global network.

Unfair ban?

But one of the UK companies fearing that it will be prevented from advertising, Essaywriter.co.uk, is angry at the threat to its business - with 80% of its customers coming through Google.

Managing director Matthew Wilson says this will punish the legitimate, transparent companies, which sell essays, but which warn students that they must not be used dishonestly.

Mr Wilson says that such a bespoke service, selling tailor-made essays at short notice, with prices around £70 and upwards, can be used as a guide for students wanting extra assistance.

Overseas students are frequently customers, he says - but the firm makes clear that essays should not be passed off as being written by the student.

And he says that such a blanket ban will not stop the search engine from generating links to rogue essay selling companies, which have been accused of scamming customers by providing poor quality material.

From BBC News

[american universities and Truth]

Stanley Kurtz writes:

Last week I attended the premiere of Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary about campus political correctness. It’s a fun and powerful piece of work that deserves a wide audience. The film features plenty of encounters between Maloney and college officials who, after being embarrassed by Maloney’s questions, invariably summon police to have him evicted. These confrontations are entertaining, but the real force of this film flows from Maloney’s recounting of a series of incidents of campus political correctness. I had never heard of any of these cases. Yet each of them is remarkable.

from Evan Coyne Maloney's (the producer of Indoctrinate U) site.

[Google's $3.1 billion deal for the online advertising firm DoubleClick could put the company at odds with itself]

Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.

The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and IBM and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google's search managers.

But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick's Performics division.

Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own 'unbiased' organic search results."

The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.

[...]

"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own ‘unbiased' organic search results."

The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.


To continue reading the CNet article click here.

[women, business & blogging - reminder for bursary applicants]

***APPLY BY 27th APRIL FOR A BURSARY (if you live in the East Midlands)!!!***

*****************************************************

Women Business
and Blogging Conference




Free bursary places are still available for conference delegates living in the East Midlands but the deadline for applications is FRIDAY 27 APRIL




Just tell us in 100 words why you want to come. Full details at http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/nlabwomen/2007/02/bursaries.html




Come to the Women, Business and Blogging Conference on Friday 8 June 2007 at De Montfort University to find out how blogging by women and for women builds networks, improves customer reach, monetizes creativity and infuses your business with Web 2.0 goodness! Speakers include:

Eileen Brown, Microsoft Technology Evangelist
Jory Des Jardins, Media Consultant & Co-founder of BlogHer
Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience for Guardian Unlimited

Business is becoming increasingly interested in social media and especially in blogs. In Europe
over the last year several conferences have explored the potential of Web 2.0 networks to increase business opportunities - see LIFT07 (Geneva) and Le Web (Paris) for just two examples. But there have been no European events focusing specifically on women and social media - until now.

Women, Business and Blogging is organised by NLab at De Montfort University, Leicester. NLab was developed in the Faculty of Humanities by Professor Sue Thomas to connect creative businesses with writers
and generate pioneering partnerships. In 2006 NLab ran a series of professional workshops and seminars on blogs, wikis, games and new media writing. In 2007 NLab is proud to present this first-ever European conference for and about women who read and write blogs.




Who should come?
This event is for small businesses, individuals, researchers, nonprofits, artistic and educational organisations interested in:
- women bloggers
- women in business
- women customers
- social media and networking
- creative communications
- innovation and cooperation
- customer relationships
- opportunities of Web 2.0 and the Long Tail
- usability

And, just to be clear, men are definitely invited. All the speakers are women, and we'll be talking about women users, readers and bloggers. But everyone is welcome to attend the conference and participate in the sessions.

Join the conversation
We'll be blogging right up to the day and beyond it too. Join the conversation at Tracy Harwood's
Biz Benefits and Jess Laccetti's Blog This

How much does it cost?
The conference fee includes refreshments, lunch and a delegate pack

Full Rate: £60 GBP including VAT
Concessionary Rate: £40 GBP including VAT
Bursaries: A limited number of Full Rate bursaries are available for delegates living in the UK East Midlands.

Where is it?
Bede Graduate School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. A 5-minute cab ride from Leicester Train
Station. Leicester is in the heart of the UK, less than 90 mins from London by train and 30 mins from East Midlands Airport. We hope to see you there!

See the website for more information and how to register http://www.nlabwomen.com


For all enquiries, including press and sponsorship, please contact:
Margaret Barton
Short Course
and Conference Co-ordinator
De Montfort Expertise Ltd
De Montfort
University
Innovation Centre
49 Oxford Street
Leicester
LE1
5XY
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 116 250 6213
Fax: +44 (0) 116 257
7982
mbarton AT dmu DOT ac DOT uk

[more on myspace being their space]

Hosting people's lives online has become big business: services like Flickr and Photobucket serve as a virtual shoe box for millions of photographs, while YouTube and MySpace Video regularly serve up a daily dose of video blogs, home videos, and crazy stunts. But what happens when some of those services depend on the others in order to grow, and the others don't like being used to help the competition?
That's a thorny issue that MySpace has found itself in the middle of, and they're not backing down. The latest: the Powers That Be™ behind MySpace made another move to block content hosted by competitors from being embedded on user profile pages within the site—this time, the popular photo and video hosting site Photobucket.
Photobucket now joins the list of several companies understandably displeased with such developments at MySpace, as they all stand to lose traffic and mindshare as a result. A post on the Photobucket blog points out MySpace's action and asks its 40+ million users to e-mail MySpace to tell them what they think. "We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media," writes Photobucket. "MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit."
MySpace's pattern of blocking video and music widgets from competing sites over the last few months has worried Internet users that MySpace was moving toward a closed-content system. The move to block Photobucket videos comes about two months after MySpace's decision to block embedded widgets from Imeem, a music and video sharing site, and a month previous to that, video sharing site Revver.
MySpace maintains, however, that the company is not blocking content from competitors—they are merely blocking content that contains advertising. "Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slideshow and encouraged users to post these ads in bulletins and profiles throughout the community," a MySpace spokesperson said in a statement to Ars Technica. "We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community's terms and we had no choice but to disable their service."
Photobucket, on the other hand, disagrees. "Photobucket was not contacted by MySpace about this issue," a Photobucket spokesperson told Ars in response to MySpace's statement. He went on to explain that Photobucket allows users to combine their own content with that of "brands" in order to create personalized slideshows and videos, which is what MySpace appears to take issue with. "Some of our users choose to share their slideshows with friends on blogs and social networks, of which MySpace is obviously one,." Photobucket said. This content is not clickable and does not generate revenue for Photobucket—only the branded content and environments on Photobucket do that."
Putting aside technicalities about what constitutes an advertisement, MySpace's claim might explain why content from the most popular video sharing site, YouTube, can still be embedded on MySpace pages. That, or MySpace could still simply be trying to figure out how much of a backlash there would be if they stopped allowing content from the only video sharing site bigger than their own. MySpace isn't stupid; they're aware that these other media hosting sites are gaining viewership because of MySpace, and even said so during September's Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference. There, News Corp. CEO Peter Chernin specifically named YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, "or any of the next-generation Web applications" as being "driven off the back of MySpace."
This sends a major message out to services that are dependent upon larger sites to carry their numbers: don't push it, because MySpace is still in charge. Even if the company wants to hide behind the claim that they're only blocking content that contain advertisements, it's not hard to understand that MySpace prefer its users make use of its own a hosting services over the competition's. Whatever MySpace's true motivation is, it's clear that the company is doing its best to ensure that no one is making an actual profit off of MySpace's popularity except for MySpace.

MySpace to content providers: it's OurSpace, we're in charge
By Jacqui Cheng Published: April 12, 2007 - 01:25AM CT