LinkedIn Will Launch Their Own Ad Network

According to comScore, LinkedIn has over 27 million registered users, most of these who are in the professional workspace and own smartphones/PDAs. Currently, LinkedIn already already sells ads against this professional audience right on its site that are targeted by industry, seniority, company size, gender, and other specifications. Freddie Laker discusses in this latest post on SocialMediaToday that LinkedIn will expand its reach to targeting partner sites.

Publishers will have to apply to become part of the LinkedIn ad network. Similar to Yahoo’s and Google’s ad-targeting network, when someone visits LinkedIn a cookie will be placed in their browser. When these users visit partner sites, they will be identified as LinkedIn members and they will be grouped into different categories. Users will also be able to opt-out of this network if they so choose.

Facebook has received a lot of heat in the past for releasing Facebook Beacon and similar ad networks. Will LinkedIn users be annoyed with the new ad network?

Making a Difference with SocialVibe

Mashable recently gave a great review of the online network SocialVibe which allows users to build sponsored widgets that give back to various charities. What’s great about this tool is that creating the widget is fairly simple, and SocialVibe does all the work in inserting your widget in existing profiles on Facebook and Myspace.

Since its launch six months ago, it has already generated over $120,000 for charities that they support. SocialVibe users don’t donate the money themselves or spam their friends, they just simply display the widget on the profile pages and click-throughs generate sponsored donations. Companies like Adobe, Apple, the NBA, and the UFC are among the sponsors involved.

Times People a way to share what you're reading

Mashable recently took a second look at the new TimesPeople launched this week on the New York Times' website. It's a way to share with other readers favorite articles and give recommendations to fellow readers, and follow those who are giving their opinions with RSS feed updates. It also includes a function where you can rate restaurants, movies, and Broadway shows. Check out the new addition here.

Have you used this yet? What do you think about the new functionality?

MySpace Music's new ad services

With the new launch of MySpace Music, they've also launched a new way to target the musicians surfing the site. According to this article at Social Times, this new self-service ad targeting service allows advertisers to choose which users see which ads selected by demographics.

After creating an ad that is either 728x90 or 300x250, the advertiser can choose to have it's ad targeted by gender, age, location, specific interest or categories (such as music, movies, fitness and health, etc) . Then, users are broken down target audiences according to the selection of the advertiser. These campaigns run on a cost per click basis rather than impression.

Gospelr

A new micro-blogging service has popped up. Gospelr is the new Twitter-type place where Christians can social network about things such as prayer requests, ideas, word of encouragement and so on. AdWeek has more on this new micro blogging site here. This new service can be integrated with Twitter, and the feeds between the two can be distinguished by differnet colors.

Chuck gets a social network

With the launch of the new fall television season, NBC decided to go full force with promoting its television shows. One of the best examples is the social network for Chuck. Inside Buy More includes games, quizzes and career advice. They've also aired webisodes.

This is not the only television show on NBC that has received special treatment, part of their fall season was to launch extensive interactive sites for the majority of their TV shows. Read about them here. You can also check out all of NBC's efforts at their website.

The science community and Web 2.0

The Economist recently wrote a very interesting article about the slow adoption of the internet by scientists. They're currently lagging behind in adopting the new tools that are taking the internet by storm that allows new information to spread quickly.

A new version of Research Blogging was recently introduced the Seed Media Group. This is a new hub for scientists to review articles written by fellow scientists. This portal provides a place for the scientists to blog on their particular research articles. From there they are aggregated, indexed and made available on line with key words so they're easy to find. The only set back to this is that most scientists publish in order to be recognized by the upper classes of the scientific world. So is there incentive to use this website?

As the article pointed out at the end, the internet was created for and by scientists. Why are they so slow to pick up the new tools that are spreading information throughout the world?

Joe Cothrel on Successful Communities

Scott Dodds recently left a comment on our post about WSJ entering the Community 2.0 space. At the end of his comment Scott directed us to a post from a speaker, Joe Cothrel from Lithium, who was at our 2008 Community 2.0 Conference this past May. Joe had blogged about the “Ten Warning Signs That Your Customer Community Will Fail” that had come from his presentation at the conference. I thought that I would share today, Joe’s very informative slideshare presentation

that he linked to on his blog. Hope you enjoy!

Successful Communities Start Here - Lithium Technologies

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cothrelcommunity2.0)

Potential Students Beware

Approximately 10% of admissions colleges at the top 500 schools in the nation, have admitted that they have looked at sites such as Facebook when evaluating potential students. The survey was conducted by Kaplan, and they further found that 38% of those surveyed attested that by looking at social networking sites, their view of the students was “negatively affected” as reported in this article. Whether or not you think this is fair, it is immaterial currently. As Jeff Olsen, from Kaplan, mentioned:

"We're in the early stage of a new technology. It's the Wild, Wild West. There are no clear boundaries or limits."

What are your thoughts? Do you think there should be regulation in terms of what admissions officers can judge? Or, do you think that what you post on social networking sites is an invitation for this kind of review?

WSJ enters the Community 2.0 Fray

Wall Street Journal has decided to enter the fray with their own social network with one major difference being that to participate, you need to be a paid online subscriber. Already there are mixed reviews as this article from ComputerWorld comments. Some positive comments have been that it is “a ‘nifty’ way for business owners to connect in a Web 2.0 world”. Others have been not so nice and stated that they have “missed the boat”.


What are your thoughts on this on this new venture for WSJ?

LiveBar: A Web 2.0 Bedazzler

Web 2.0, and Community 2.0 are commonplace in business conversations, but implementing and utilizing these tools can be difficult. VentureBeat announced here, that LiveWorld is releasing a new application, LiveBar, that will instantly “bedazzle” any website with a bar that businesses can add of Web 2.0 features. This would allow organizations to have an area for immediate customer interaction, where they chose on their website. The features would include “soap boxes” and “shorts” which are similar to blogs and Twitter messages respectively. The benefits to businesses, as this article states is:

“LiveBar features are standardized, they’re easy to add to any site. It takes minutes to do. By comparison, getting companies to add customized Web 2.0 features to web sites can often take months. As such, LiveBar is a tool for retrofitting pages that were created in the days before Web 2.0. It’s a way for companies to play catch-up in the Web 2.0 game, where engaging consumers in a conversation is just as important as presenting information to them”

With all of the technology, new and old, available to businesses, is there any reason for businesses not to utilize web 2.0 strategies?

Russia and Social Media

Social Media Today author John Bell posted the following video Interview of Andrew Paulson, regarding the topic of Russian Social Media. Paulson shares his views and answers the question: "What does social media look like in Russia today", "What’s next for Social Media in Russia", and is there "More going on than advertising".

Paulson is currently the Chairman of SUP, and was instrumental in the SUP’s purchase of LiveJournal from SixApart.



Do you agree or disagree with Andrew Paulson’s point of view?

Facebook’s New Facelift: Revolutionary or Revolting

As an open social networking community matures and ages, it will always come across certain updates and facelifts that not everyone will find appealing and useful. Facebook first experienced this when they launched Facebook Beacon, a tracking device that shared information about users’ shopping habits and other activities at other web sites. Now that Facebook has launched a new look for its community, what reactions will users have about this latest change? How will this affect Facebook apps created by vendors and companies trying to reach consumers?

These are several ideas that came to mind when reading this post on Wired. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook mentions:

"Any change can be a big deal to our users because this is how they connect with their family and friends. So when you move things around, it can be perceived as being not a positive thing even when it's a positive change."

The question is will this change positively affect users now that they have no option to turn back to the old Facebook template. There are several groups being formed already on Facebook to protest these changes. It will be interesting to see how advertisers and companies will adapt to these changes to reach consumers.

How to Efficiently Blog and Tweet

For many with the advent of community 2.0, there came an onslaught of tasks designed to take up our time. Just the simple tasks of reading and managing all of the blogs, and Twitter streams we subscibe to can take hours out of our day. The author of this post, that I just came across today from sagecircle, provides tips and tricks oh how to manage social networking time better. In the authors own words, by using the tips listed in the post, he has:

"reduced my social media traffic monitoring time from several hours a day to 30 to 45 minutes. The process now feels much less burdensome and much more efficient. I now look forward to the times when I check the blogs and Twitter because it's a fun break from my other tasks."

Is Your Corporation Scared of Social Media

Most businesses are still skeptical of adopting social media into their practices to increase sales and better customer relations according to this post in WebProNews. More than half of the respondents of a survey taken by Avanade said that adoption of social media would reduce employee productivity.

Analysts from Avanade state that companies must quickly move into and take advantage of social media, because if not, they will lose customers. Companies that have already integrated social media into their practices are experiencing significant improvements in customer satisfaction.

When is your company stepping up to the plate?

Ways companies are using social media

In a recent blog post at Social Media Today, Michael Gass shared with us some of the companies out there using social media. After looking through the list, it’s great to see that each company is molding their social media plan to the audience they have. Here are some of the examples I liked: Xerox uses blogs, the NBA made a widget for it’s All Star Game, Delta is utilizing Flickr and a blog, and Bon Appetit has a very interactive Facebook page.

Has the list left out any corporations you’ve seen using social media?

Platforms for Creation of Online Communities

This article from ZDNet is an analysis of Dion Hinchcliffe’s point of view on regarding the “Ten leading platforms for creating online communities”. As he mentions, online communities no longer are thought of as simple tools for fun, they are now being viewed more as opportunities, and ways of “getting things done”. Without much further ado here are the top ten platforms that Hinchcliffe recommends:

1.Joomla
2. Drupal
3. PHP-Nuke
4. zikula
5. Share-Point Community Portal
6. Lithium
7. dotnetnuke
8. Community Server
9. Kickapps
10. ClearSpace Community

Let me know if there are any others that you feel have been left off the list!

What is True Networking?

I came across this great guest post on Mashable written by Marion Freijsen and Adrie Reinders, authors of “The N Factor: How Efficient Networking Can Change the Dynamics of Your Business” Both authors go on to discuss how networking is imperative to the success of career minded people and entrepreneurs of the future.

People are meeting each other in person less frequently and are instead meeting each other online. True networking is not simply handing out business cards at events or adding hundreds of people to your network on Facebook or LinkedIn, the real advantage comes when your connections help you further your advancement and knowledge. The author offers some great advice here. Select about 10 people that you’d like to meet with at the Community 2.0 Event, and then find out as much as you can about these people. This will aid in starting the conversation as well as impress them.

How sociable are you?

In a recent post at Beth’s Blog, she shared a new application she came across. How Sociable? takes a look at how you’re branding is faring in the social world. Inuda Innovations are the engineers behind the project. You can keep up with their blog here.

According to How Sociable’s blog post, here’s how the scores are measured:

We took a set of benchmark results using one globally recognised traditional brand and gave it a score of 1000. To ensure that even small, local brands would register we made it a sliding scale. For example, Coca-Cola has around 8,000 times more photos mentioning them on Flickr compared to our company Inuda, but we still get a score of 10 for having some photos rather than getting 0.

I took some time to check Facebook’s brand visibility, and it received a score of 3187. A much larger brand, for example, the NFL has a score of 1483, while the US Open has a score of 773. What’s your brand’s score? Do you think this tool will help you improve your use of the social web?

YouTube India

YouTube now has a localized version for India, as mentioned here in SocialMediaToday. The addresses for the site are youtube.in, or youtube.co.in. Partners for the launch include: Zoom channel from the Bennet Coleman & Co, UTV and Rajshri Group. Steve Chen, CTO, and co-founder of YouTube had this to say:

“We are very excited to bring a local version of YouTube to India considering the passion of users here for music and entertainment. For a culture that is steeped both in video and in storytelling, and where everyone has a voice — YouTube India will not only offer Indian users more relevant content but also provide a platform to share India’s unique and diverse culture and lifestyle with the largest online video community in the world.”