M-A-O-L

The social network where we’re all just a number:

What if I was secretly a cat person (the horror) and wanted to talk about my love of cats, or had a really embarrassing disease I wanted to talk about with other people? These might not be things I’d tweet about. But maybe I’d head to the new anonymous social network called Social Number, which is trying to give people a voice online without an associated identity.

Cool idea, not sure it’ll take off once the novelty is over.

What Happened to the Facebook Killer? It’s Complicated:

As the Internet shifts to our pockets and everywhere else, it’s right to be skeptical of those who promise to be the next big thing, no matter how big that thing is. What we do know is that the new new thing is always right around the corner. It probably won’t be Diaspora. And it probably won’t resemble Facebook. But it will probably be better. It will need to be, because it’s our choice after all. These things are nothing without us.

The story of Diaspora, good long read!

Escape From Message Hell:

[…] companies now have an opportunity to provide the ultimate authentic messaging, namely information we choose to send ourselves. By shifting the delivery of the message to the most appropriate time and place, where it is most likely to be acted upon, new technologies will become indispensable solutions we can’t imagine living without..

A glimpse into how the current wave of facebook/twitter/whatever “spam” emails is going to be replaced with more personal messages, to ensure that you’re actually reading them (because only then will you also look at the ads).

Are Enterprise Social Networks the Cure for Information Overload?:

Many organizations are implementing enterprise social networks to improve communication between their employees, customers, and partners.

If only it was as simple as that…

Good piece from Matthew Ingram. I like to compare Facebook and Twitter to AOL and CompuServe of the old internet days… and wonder when the open social network will come around, like “the internet” came around to save us from the other guys’ closed ecosystems?

This week marks the 21st anniversary of the world’s first website, and as new social-web platforms like Twitter and Facebook spend more and more of their energy trying to control and monetize their networks, it’s worth remembering some of the choices that the web’s creator made

via There’s only one truly open platform: the web.

Microsoft posted its first ever loss just when it finally completed the Yammer acquisition. Let’s see if Yammer will have been a success or failure 4-5 years down the line…

Microsoft chose […] to pay that fortune for an existing application with a relatively modest user base and revenues.

This suggests three things about Microsoft:

First, the company didn’t think it could replicate Yammer’s success – even with a virtual mountain of money to spend on it. […]

Second, the move also suggests that Microsoft was desperate to get into the social enterprise game now – not next year or the year after.  […]

And lastly, Microsoft’s acquisition shows they realize SharePoint needs a big-time makeover.

via What the Yammer Acquisition Says About Microsoft – and Enterprise Social Networking.

Paul Carr, who luckily is a much better writer than I’ll ever be, has quit all the social and web 2.0 stuff to focus on his blog (and book, but that doesn’t count for me) again. Read about some first experiences in Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity, and then a 2nd update after also quitting Twitter on Wow. If You Think Quitting Booze Freaks People Out, Wait ‘Til You Quit Twitter.

It’s good to read all of this, and I could relate very much especially to the first article, because that’s exactly what lead to my leaving of Facebook, Twitter etc. on July 1st this year. And I don’t miss it. Although I have to admit that I didn’t go as far as Paul – I didn’t delete my accounts, I’m just ignoring them for now.

Was sagt der Soziologieprofessor Kurt Imhof über die aktuelle Welle der Botellóns?

weristich, oder wo sagen sich Wiki und Friendfeed gute Nacht?

(Via)

Welches Feature ist ein spannendes Beispiel dafür, was bei der Einführung von sofort skalierenden Systemen (von 0 auf 70 Mio Benutzer über Nacht) beachtet werden muss?

(Via)