MySpace News

MySpace is trying to stay alive as the popular social networking website. It launched a new section called "news". It's a news portal that works in the same way as a news aggregation site Google News and a news rating site Digg. With its new feature of allowing its users to rate the news and decide what should make front page news, MySpace is trying to boost its advertising sales. It's also trying to get its users to read news, rate news and send news to their friends. It's no longer going to be a shallow site about songs and photos. It's trying to get its users reading.

It makes me wonder if MySpace is reacting to threats of Facebook's popularity and reacting by trying to expand its users Internet usage.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't need to come up with something better. It's already much better and if MySpace wants to compete and raise its advertising revenue, try changing the interface.

Web 2.0 Goes to School

Web 2.0 has transformed the way we communicate and interact on the web. It's not surprising that colleges in the U.S. are offering courses and programs solely devoted to this new technology.

Along with your standard computer science, information technology, engineering and communication degrees, more Web 2.0 classes are emerging. Class such as Online Communities and Web 2.0 and Global Engineering are showing up.

Such skills are going to come in handy when the global economy is changing. Big firms like IBM are recognizing that technical skills of computer science degrees are lacking the global understanding of the web and Web 2.0.

So what do you do in these situations? Send your employers back to school to upgrade. Carnegie Mellon West has launched a program for a Master of Science degree in software management. Hewlett-Packard and Cisco with other big firms have encouraged their employees to take night classes at the satellite school to study software development along with business management.

It's the small Web 2.0 companies that are going to, if they aren't doing so already, create a competitive market for software development and new networking capabilities.

And while at school, maybe these new students can come up with Web 2.0 lingo to add to Addictionary.org, which is looking for new words as part of a challenge (unfortunately the contest is closed for this year, but there is always next year.) Or just check to see what other web lingo contests are being run. Maybe you can have your name beside a word? Wouldn't that be fun!

Mobile Internet

Have you always wanted the world wide web in the palm of your hand?

Have you always wished it would actually work on your mobile phone?

If you tried to access the Internet through your mobile phone or mobile-ready device, chances are you encountered slow, pixely or unpredictable service. Chances are you gave up before a page loaded. Chances are you never tried again.

.mobi - a new top level domain name is dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices. Massive Magazine examines how .mobi is proving popular with businesses and preparing web companies for the future.

Although mobile browsing has a way to go, manufacturers are estimating more than three billion mobile phone users by 2009, meaning mobile Internet will be the dominant platform. It's already proven that four mobile phones are sold for every personal computer so it makes sense to make mobile Internet work.

There are a couple of bugs that need to be worked out. Security for one. Companies and organizations are protecting their intellectual property by registering trademarks and names in the .mobi extension. There is still a growing number of abusive registration of trademarks and unless a company registers under the .mobi extension, it is running the risk of having its intellectual property abused.

There's a strong backing for this domain with service providers as being the earliest adopters. But now media organizations are following suit and of course, computing giants like Google are invested in bringing the Internet to the masses.

Blogging CEOs

It seems like a blog gets created every couple of seconds and now CEOs are encouraged to take advantage of Web 2.0 technology and get in touch with their clients and share holders.

But what if a CEO doesn't have anything interesting to say? Will that harm the company?

Ian Harvey, in Backbone article CEOs should blog, writes "We tend to expect miracles from CEOs...They must be part accountant, part pit boss, part Dr. Phil and part visionary... And now, we expect them to be communicators."

I wonder when CEOs can fit blogging into their busy schedules. It's true, they are expected to keep a company afloat and now we want to hear from the person behind the scenes.

Many high-level executives have started a blog, but there are still others who are resistant. There's even the CEO Bloggers' Club, which offers tips on how to blog, starting a blog and who are the new members.

They even outline how a CEO should tag their blog to be successful at giving the organization and its readers an insight into his/her vision and personality.

Basically, this is another strategy to try to make a company seem more personable. Quarterly meetings and presentations are not enough in this tech-age. As an audience who wants to know about everyone's doings, it is only fitting that we expect regular
communication from the "boss."

More reading: CEOs told 'blog and embrace web 2.0'
Debbie Well on BlogWrite for CEOs
Example of a CEO blogging: Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun Microsystems

New Kid on the Block

Technically, this "kid" has been around for a little while, but only recently has been open to the public. Move over MySpace, everyone is moving to Facebook.

MySpace is done, well almost done. It's still out there and millions of people are using it, but the moment that Facebook accepted anyone, the crowd decided to move onto something better.

Facebook isn't new. It started in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore who wanted to keep in touch with his classmates. Until recently, membership was reserved to university students only (anyone with a university email). Now, the doors are wide open and Facebook is direct competition to MySpace.

With it's standard template, Facebook is easier on the eyes than some of the awful designed pages of MySpace. Otherwise, the idea isn't new. Once signed up, you search for your friends, people you actually know by first and last name. Facebook doesn't do pseudonyms, which makes it a more respectable site and source for finding old classmates or co-workers or friends you haven't seen or spoken to in ages.

Once signed up, you can update your profile, fill out some details, post photos, upload your blog, invite people to events and have them directly RSVP and all sorts of other things.

In concept, it's similar to MySpace and many other networking websites. But in design and functionality, it's completely different. No more annoying songs, ugly designs, photos that distort pages, instead you get one design that works.

Another thing about Facebook is that it continues to cross boundaries with Internet's lack of anonymity. First, full names are used and secondly, every action you make on Facebook is broadcast to all your friends. You comment on a photo, everyone knows. You break up with your significant other, everyone knows. You decide to change your political views, everyone knows. Facebook reiterates the idea that there are no secrets on the Internet and we are not afraid to publicize our daily activities.

We publicly allow others to know our every step and in return we want to know theirs.

It makes me wonder what other sites are going to come out there (or already exist) that will become direct competitions.

Could Zooomr become a threat to Flickr?

Could Google Video be the next YouTube?

The competition will always be there. It's the trends and word of mouth that make sites popular. If enough people hear about something new, the crowd just follows the leader. Who knows what Web 2.0 website could be making waves.

Wikipedia Evolves

Wikipedia - the online free encyclopedia - has grown into one of the web's web 2.0 successes. It has over 1.7 million visitors on the English version alone. The downside to this free service is that sometimes you'll find erroneous information, outdated articles or not factually accurate articles used as sources.

But, to faithful Wikipedia users, this is a small price to pay for the wealth of information that is available to them instantly in an open "anyone can edit these pages" concept.

In an article, Founder defends evolving Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, founder, defends his vision and says the new version will try to eliminate some of the problems.

He says new features will make it easier to detect errors coming in from the community. But, Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia doesn't think this will change anything. In an article, Wikipedia co-founder seeks to start over, Sanger wants to create a better free encyclopedia. His project called, Citizendium will still enjoy the same benefits of Wikipedia, but aims to eliminate factual errors. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium will want its contributors to provide real names and experts in various fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

Will this be better than Wikipedia? Would Wikipedia be better if it had experts verifying facts? Would this be a better alternative to a free encyclopedia? Obviously, it isn't the only one out there, but is it going to try to address the issues and criticisms that face Wikipedia?

The fact that both encyclopedia's still have the "anyone can edit" motto, this draws in a lot of people. But, the issue still lies with identity and verification. How many people (experts) would Citizendium need to hire in order to make itself a credible source on the website that teachers would accept as a source of reference for student papers?

The future will tell if Sanger has the right idea.

Award Junkies

I knew we were a generation of award junkies, but has this gone a bit too far?

The first YouTube Video Awards of 2006 allow you to vote for your favourite videos. You've watched them. You've made them famous. Now, vote for the ones that you remember. Simple enough.

Seven categories: Most creative, most inspirational, best series, best comedy video, best music video, best commentary and most adorable video.

Among those categories you will find lonelygirl15 nominated for best series, Blunty2000 for best commentary and the VancouverFilmSchool for most creative.

You have until March 23 to vote.

Since we're making award shows out of everything, how about we have Web 2.0 awards? Let's award the peer networking websites. There's a number of them that can fit under each category like: Worst design (I nominate MySpace), easiest to navigate, will likely not see the next year, best hobby site and so on.

Or how about the best blog?

Or awards for a media site that's trying their best to integrate multimedia to their product?

Some of these already exist, but let's allow the public to vote. Post the categories online and like we've been doing with broadcasting ourselves, let's broadcast our vote.