“Usage of social networking is also popular among iPhone users: 49.7 percent accessed a social networking site in January, nearly twelve times the market average. Twenty percent of iPhone owners accessed Facebook, one of the first Web properties to customize its content for the iPhone, versus 1.5 percent of the total mobile market.”

These statistics indicate that mobile social networking is quickly becoming popular, and that location-based social networks are the future of social networking. The basic theme of a location-based social network is that users on a network can share their location through GPS, mobile email or text. They can locate a nearby restaurant and invite their friends over for a cup of coffee. Various location-based social networks for iPhone are currently available. Let’s check them out.

Limbo – Amplify Your Social Life

This is a free mobile social network community that helps people locate other users and see what they are doing, locate nearby locations and discover things they have in common. Limbo also offers free games and SMS alerts. Users on the network are categorized by four types: members (people you don’t know), contacts (people from your phone’s address book), friends (people important to you), and faves (the most important people to you). Users are free to share their location with all types of users or with a particular user group. Users are further divided into categories like Socializing and Shopping based on their activities. This application is available at the iPhone App Store for iPhone users.

Zintin – Discover, Share, Engage

Zintin is a new service, still in a development stage. Zintin helps people discover users who are physically near them, share pictures and send messages, and engage with new people. This application is similar to Facebook giving each user a “wall” that their friends can post pictures, scribbles and short messages on. It is not possible to predict the popularity of this application since it is still in development. However, Scribble is a quite strong feature that might give it a breakthrough.

Loopt – Your Social Compass

The most established, popular and prestigious mobile social network, Loopt connects people with their friends and alerts them when their friends are physically near them. In addition to location-sharing, it also has the elements of a social network, such as photo-sharing, and comment posting. Loopt also helps users locate places and events recommended by friends and Yelp.com (Partner). This application is map-based and gives directions to people and locations. Loopt also allows its users to filter people by their age, gender, tags, dating status and community.

Whrrl – The People You Know. The Places They Go

Whrrl is another promising mobile social network for iPhone users. It is a fantastic location-based social network. In addition to helping users find nearby friends, it also gives information on business’ location, prices, hours, phone number, website, ratings and reviews.It also helps find hot events happening in the users’ vicinity.

Moximity – It’s All Around you

This is a location-based social network for people in Austin, Texas. It will help them locate their friends and local establishments. It is a new network and currently available in beta. When a user joins Moximity, it gives them the ability to include all of their contacts from Facebook and categorizes them according to who is also using the Moximity social network. It is the only mobile social network that offers advertising services as well.

uLocate’s Where – The Power of Where

“Where” is a location-based social networking application created by uLocate. Being a location-based service, it includes features such as searching for nearby friends, low-priced gas stations and nearby Starbucks franchises, updating the user on location-based poll results in a specific area, identifying the mountain peaks in the area, and learning about nearby events and their venues.

TechCrunch Blog has made a comparison of different location-based social networks for iPhone. Below are some interesting facts about different popular networks.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/location_based_social_networks.html

Location-based social networks can be handy and fun tools. These applications are quick, convenient and fun to use. The IT industry has been focusing on the development of location-based software applications for mobiles to develop specialized applications. The surprising aspect is that the two social giants - Facebook and MySpace - are not offering these services. However, they are working on adding this feature to their service. Location-based social networks have attracted many users, but if they want to enjoy long-term success, they will need to add features such as a powerful notification system, automatic location update and better stability.

References:

Leggio.J. (2008). Hyperlocal social networking: iPhone 3G may be the trigger. Retrieved Nov. 7th, 2008 from http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=147

Hendrikson.M. (2008). The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone. Retrieved Nov. 7^th, 2008 from http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/28/the-state-of-location-based-social-networking-on-the-iphone/

Related posts:

1. Will Social Networks be the End of Our Privacy?
2. Gaming Social Networks: The Beginning of the End of Video Game Discs?
3. Twine- A New Entry in the World of Social Bookmarking

If you are using pictures in your blog posts, I am sure you have realized that it quickly becomes a necessary element. When you choose your images wisely, you can get maximum results from them. The best approach is to take the time to choose contextually related images, then make sure they are properly formatted and good quality.

Although images are good, it is possible to have too many. Do not clutter up your post with pictures. Adding anywhere from one to a few images, depending on the size of the blog, will be just right. If you choose only one photo, I recommend positioning it at the top of your post. Most bloggers use image sharing sites to find good quality images. There are many different sites out there that offer free images and photos.

We have compiled a list of our favorite image sharing sites. Browse around to find free pictures and give your posts a touch of liveliness.

Flickr – Photo Sharing

Flickr is a famous image and video hosting network, which has been operational since 2004. It is currently the preferred photo repository of bloggers.In November 2007, it claimed to host more than 2 billion images. It is a great photo sharing site featuring photo organizing through tagging, privacy and security, interaction, compatibility and licensing of photos. Tagging the images helps users arrange them categorically and makes searching convenient and efficient.

iStockPhoto – Search Royalty Free Images and Photos

iStockPhoto is a popular, royalty free image stock site.You can pay a small amount to use most of the images, or do a search for free pictures. iStockPhoto is one of the fastest growing photo sharing sites. It currently contains over 3 million images contributed by over 50,000 photographers at the rate of 27,000+ images per week.This site is basically an international community of designers and artists, where they share their art work and get credit (a percentage of money) when users download their work.

Stock.Xchng – The Leading Free Stock Photography Site

Stock.Xchng is another popular photo sharing site that offers good quality images for no cost. It includes a large database containing over 350,000 photographs. It is a community of designers – a sharing site where they can share their work and get inspiration from others. It is a good choice for bloggers looking for free, decent images to spice up a post.

FreePhoto.com – Free Pictures

FreePhoto is the largest collection of free photos on the internet. This image sharing site has a database of about 115,000 photos organized in 3000 categories. Although images are free to use, they require a back link and attribution. It is a good source for non-commercial users. However, if you want to get a high quality image then you have to pay for it.

>PicApp – Because a Picture’s Worth

PicApp is another good resource of images on internet, especially for bloggers. PicApp has a fairly large collection of pictures with 1,480,905 images organized in various categories. This site offers many great features, such as RSS feeds for images, bookmarking of images and alerts for new images. PicApp is a site especially developed for bloggers. If you have a blog, I highly recommend checking it out next time you are looking for quality images.

If you use any one of these services, please share your comments with us. Which is your favorite service? Why do you prefer it over the rest? How did you come across the image sharing site that you use? Is the quality of images impressive?

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1. Technorati: Special Blog Search Engine
2. 5 Ways to Get Your Blog Noticed
3. How to Choose an Eye-Catching Blog Title

A Twine user creates a ‘twine’ based on a particular subject or topic and then add things like bookmarks, documents, notes, products, photos and videos to it using the web interface, e-mail or bookmarklet.A Twine plugin in the browser is the best way to populate a twine.Twine semantically sorts the submitted data, tags it and categorizes it on the basis of people, places and organizations. The twines, created by different users, can be public or private. (Yadav, 2008) Twine users can also use RSS feeds to keep themselves up-to-date with all of the latest information and events. Another exciting feature of Twine is that users will also be able to import and export their own data. Richard MacManus on the ReadWrite blog explains the Twine in the word of its creator, Nova Spivack.

“Spivack described it to me as “knowledge networking”- i.e. it aims to connect people with each other “for a purpose”. It’s not based around socializing, but to share and organize information you’re interested in. Using Twine, you can add content via wiki functionality (there are many post types), you can email content into the system, and “collect” something (as an object, e.g. a book object).”

Twine claims itself to be a “semantic graph” due to its ability to map relationships to both people and topics. Twine is unique among other social media applications in the sense that it is entirely based on semantic web technologies like RDF, OWL, SPARQL and XSL.

Twine and social networking

Social networking is a strong aspect of Twine that is wisely merged with knowledge sharing. “If you share a Twine with others, each piece of content that someone brings into that online space is associated with that person.” So when you do a search, the results that come back are influenced not just by the tags, but also by who put the information into the Twine in the first place. “It’s the wisdom of crowds plus the wisdom of computers working together,” says Spivack. The more closely related that person is to you, the higher the relevance”, says Erick Schonfeld in his post, Twine Launches A Smarter Way To Organize Your Online Life, on the TechCrunch blog. If Twine gets acceptance from the internet community, then we can expect a change in the traditional social networking.

Will Twine be able to create an impact

Twine, in its beta version, is currently available to users. Is it really a great application? Is it delivering on its promises? Unfortunately, the service is unable to establish a solid reputation in the market. There are different technical, interface and performance issues. Although it claims to be a social bookmark service, this feature is not functioning properly. Maybe they will improve it before its final release. Similarly, its user interface is not organized and is unattractive. Marshal Kirkpatrick in his post, Twine Disappoints After Semantic Web Hype, gives similar feedback for Twine.

Problem: It Doesn’t Work Very Well

“The biggest problem with Twine right now may be that it doesn’t work as well as it should. It doesn’t consistently grab summary text or tags for pages you save in Twine, it doesn’t recognize article authors as relevant people and it often captures summary information about the domain you’re on instead of a particular page’s content.”

“Serious researchers will also be frustrated with the lack of support for authenticated (password protected) pages and the absence of RSS feeds -though feeds may come as soon as the app is public.”

Problem: It’s Poorly Organized

“Twine has bitten off a whole lot to chew on. It’s an impressive service for the most part. Unfortunately, full-featured social bookmarking is information-dense enough that adding all the semantic features and recommendations from Twine turns information architecture and User Experience into huge challenges.”

“Twine’s user experience is confusing. It’s hard to keep track of all the levels and types of information available, site navigation is dizzying and my use of the service happened in spite of the interface”.

The service is not as good as it should be, but it is unfair to declare it a failure. It‘s a new service and is in the beta stage, so we can assume that many of these issues will be fixed. I am sure the service providers will take these problems seriously and will improve its performance while enhancing its features.

To all my readers, try this service and share your feedback with me.

References:

Yadav.S. (2008). Twine: Social Bookmarking Meets the Semantic Web.Retrieved Oct. 30^th, 2008 from http://www.rev2.org/2008/04/18/twine-social-bookmarking-meets-semantic/

MacManus.R. (2007). Twine: The First Mainstream Semantic Web App.Retrieved Oct. 30^th, 2008 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twine_first_mainstream_semantic_web_app.php

Related posts:

1. Sphinn: Creating Waves in the World of Social Bookmarking
2. Flock – The Social Web Browser
3. Social Bookmarking Roundup: Delicious, Stumbleupon, digg, mixx, reddit

The huge number of online videos available online has made it quite complicated to find the best videos related to a particular topic or subject. Video sites try to offer as many videos as possible, which makes it hard for them to stay simple. There are not many popular subject-oriented online video sharing websites. Keeping these points in mind, IMBroadcast.com has hit the market to facilitate internet marketers and common users who want to watch and upload videos related to internet marketing. IMBroadcast.com is not just a video sharing site, it is a complete social networking site with GROUPS and COMMUNITY features.

Vision of IMBroadcast.com

IM Broadcast is a great, handy service for internet marketers and SEO professionals. It is like YouTube for internet marketers. It is a free service and anyone with a login can upload a video related to SEO and internet marketing. The vision of IM Broadcast is to establish a repository of SEM/internet marketing video content to facilitate professionals and common users.

IMBroadcast.com describes its vision on its website as:

The vision of IMBroadcast seems quite promising. SEO gurus and internet marketers are quite happy that they now have an ideal way to find good internet marketing resources and to communicate with IM professionals.IMBroadcast.com is an attractive service and can soon become one of the most visited sites if it can continue providing quality video content and introducing exciting new features. The launch of IMBroadcast.com has introduced a new trend and I am sure we’ll soon see some other great video sharing websites focusing on different industries and topics.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips
2. How YouTube Can Be an Effective Social Marketing Tool
3. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING VS SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

There are many techniques for monitoring social media marketing campaigns. Larger companies have the ability to invest much more in monitoring than small companies do. A company that spent most of its budget on the actual marketing, might want to look for a free monitoring service when they are first starting out. Some monitoring tools that are provided online are listed below with a brief description.

Feed monitoring

Tools that are used in tracking websites are sometimes difficult for companies to handle. Feed monitoring provides you with the ability to monitor according to your industry or competitors with RSS readers. This keeps you up to date on the information regarding your business.

News buzz

This is another way of keeping you in touch with your industry. News buzz can help you find out more about the industry news that is circulating online. Now you can keep an eye on news stories and blogs that mention your company or competitors. Sites like Digg specialize in this.

Comments

Blog comments are one of the tools that help you monitor the actions related to your brand, your products and the services your company offers. Through these comments you can monitor the positive and negative things that are being said about your business or brand.

Trend tracking

You can keep an eye on the trends that are shaping your industry through social media. These trends will inform you of new products that are being launched and other important things. This will give you an edge in your market.

Feed Subscriptions

RSS feeds can help you keep track of your brand and your competitors’ brands. If someone is spreading positive or negative information about your company, you will find out about it quickly. If someone leaks the release of a product, you will probably hear about it through the RSS feeds. Keep your name and your employees’ names plugged into the feed subscriptions.

Conference Calls Feeds

Sometimes in public companies, vital information can be attained by listening to conference calls. This process is very time consuming, so save your time and energy by subscribing to RSS feeds of the conference call transcripts and you can still get the same precise and useful information.

The process of monitoring holds great importance when it comes to the stability of any company in the market. Monitoring helps companies find out what needs to go into the brand, what their competitors are thinking and how are they marketing themselves against your brand.

These monitoring methods, along with many others, can work effectively and efficiently by giving you plenty of information about your company and your brand as well as your competitors’. When you are staying current on the industry news, it gives you a leg up on the competition.

Andy Beal. (2007).Online media monitoring: 26 Free Social Media Tracking Tools. Retrieved Oct 15^th, 2008, from http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html

Max Starkov, Jason Price. (2008). Best Practices for Monitoring Social Media Sites. Retrieved Oct 15^th, 2008, from http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/best_practices_for_monitoring_social_media_sites/

Related posts:

1. An Idiot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing
2. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING VS SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
3. Ten Social Media Marketing Deadly Sins

Mobile social networking has grown and made its place in the market. Mobile networking has proven beneficial for providers as well as users. Mobile networking provides its users with different facilities and easy access which helps them communicate. Mobile networking is new in the market but it has already attracted a lot of traffic. According to research, mobile networking will generate $410 million by 2013.

Mobile networks have allowed their users to access free browsers which have given them the ability to use social networking sites anytime and anywhere to connect to their friends and family without making calls. Mobile internet is still cheaper than mobile calls, so, in a way, this has made it more difficult for the mobile companies because their revenue has now been limited due to people moving away from calls and towards mobile social networking.

The use of mobile networking will grow with time – it will be not only for youngsters, but also for older people using mobile phones. Everyone will be using mobile networking because it is an easy way to keep in touch with your friends and family while on the go.

Mobile networking has become a hot topic everywhere as more and more people find out that it brings users more convenience by trying out new methods of client communication. For example, mobile phone companies can stay on the cutting edge with their customers by sending them video clips in order to keep them informed of the latest information.

Advantages like this are provided by the mobile networking companies to distinguish themselves from other networks. However, user privacy is the main point that needs to be kept in mind, and the safety of the users needs to be protected in order to keep customers happy and loyal.

Mobile social networking has the potential to provide its users with different features like sharing music, pictures and videos. People want to be in touch with each other constantly, which is something that accessing the internet on a desktop computer can’t provide. This desire will keep mobile networking going.

Mobile networking websites:

There are several mobile networking sites. Some are very popular, but most are only utilized by a limited number of users.

Dodgeball:

Dodgeball is currently being used in 22 US cities. This website helps people connect with friends. The messages that a user sends to their friends on Dodgeball can be easily sent to their friends’ friends and so on.

JuiceCaster:
Another mobile social networking website is JuiceCaster, which is a product of Juice Wireless. JuiceCaster lets you meet new people, connect with friends and share your photos and videos directly from your mobile phone. Instantly update your status on Twitter and Facebook.

Mig33:

This is a mobile social networking site that helps you connect to your friends all over the world. You can chat, exchange instant messages and emails and make international calls in an inexpensive way. International calling rates are listed on the website.

BrightKite:

Brightkite helps users connect with friends in a real way. It gives you the ability to see where your friends are at any given moment and whether or not they are available on the network.

Mobile networking has not yet reached the popularity that it deserves. Of course, as more mobile phones have the capability to play videos, display pictures and connect to social networking sites, more people will take advantage of what they have to offer. As the usage and popularity increases, so will the number of sites and the quality of the social networking that is offered. More social networking features are likely to be available on mobile phones through these networking websites as they are further developed.

Mobile social networking will grow extensively, which will allow people to share their photos and videos through mobile phones. Mobile networking is helping people keep in touch with their friends and loved ones at lower prices. Surely the use of mobile networking will grow with the passage of time.

Mike Sachoff (2008).Mobile social networking set to take off. Retrieved. Sept 22^nd, 2008, from.. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/09/02/mobile-social-networking-set-to-take-off

http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?newsid=22773

http://socialmediatrader.com/38-social-networking-sites-for-your-mobile/

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The new marketing medium – social media – has attracted many companies who want a new method to improve their branding and marketing. Social networks, blogs and micro blogs have won entrepreneurs’ trust and they now regard Facebook, Twitter and TechCrunch as the best marketing tools. The growing use of social media marketing strategies has brought about the need to measure their efficacy as well. Companies want to know whether or not SMM is effective for their business. Does it help them achieve their goals of effective brand awareness?

Social media is a relatively new media and its different tools and technologies have either recently come into the market or they are in the development stages. Because of this, different social media marketing strategies are new and not properly organized, which makes it difficult to measure their impact. The theme of a SMM campaign is “socialization” and it focuses on finding and connecting with the targeted audience, updating customers about the latest company products and services and, above all, increasing brand awareness and word-of-mouth buzz. It is difficult to measure the performance of a SMM strategy in a quantitative manner. However, different social media experts are working hard to define some parameters to measure the performance of a SMM campaign and develop an effective social media measurement.

Social media measurement is basically the tracking of various social media contents such as social networks, blogs, wikis and video sharing sites used by a company for marketing and advertisement. Measuring the results of social media is difficult and somehow ambiguous. Below is a list of parameters of an effective social media measurement. Businesses can develop an effective social media measurement on the basis of the following factors.

Visibility

It is the first checkpoint of a social media measurement. Social media is all about connecting to new people and letting them know about you. It aims to increase online presence and search visibility. To measure your visibility over the internet, collect statistics about the following factors and measure your online visibility.

• Number of hits to the site/blog
• Number of unique visitors coming to site/company’s Facebook page
• Search engine rank
• Message inclusion
• Share of online discussion
• · Net positive comments on blog/site/social networks

Engagement

Engagement is the main theme of a SMM campaign. Different social media tools like social networks and blogs focus on socialization and sharing. Therefore, the success of a social media marketing campaign depends on a high engagement ratio. To measure the engagement ratio, measure the following parameters.

• Click thru rate (CTR)
• Number of repeating visitors and repeating commenter(s)
• Number of subscribers to RSS feed
• Article/post readership
• Comments/post ratio

Influence

You have increased online presence. People frequently come and visit your site/blog/social network profile page. How much influence do you actually have? Do visitors talk about your products with their friends, colleagues and neighbors? The influence factor is measured on the basis of following parameters.

• Purchase consideration
• Change in awareness
• Association with brand
• Likelihood to recommend to friend

Action

The ultimate goal of every marketing campaign is increased sale and ROI. Therefore, action is the most important factor of an effective social media measurement. The “Action” factor is measured on the following points.

• Visit the stores
• Attend the events
• Tell a friend
• Buy the product

References:

Metricsman. (2008).A New Model for Social (and Traditional) Media Measurement. Retrieved Oct. 17^th, 2008 from http://metricsman.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/a-new-model-for-social-and-traditional-media-measurement/

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1. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING VS SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
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3. SMM- ROI Metrics and Analysis

A look at Flock Social Web Browser

Flock web browser is a social web browser, built on the open source codebase of Mozilla Firefox. This browser features tabbed browsing, social networking and a Web 2.0 featured interface. This free social browser supports all the major platforms including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Currently, Flock 2 is available in the market based on Firefox 3. The CEO of Flock, Shawn Hardin, describes their venture:

“Flock is thrilled to announce the Flock 2.0 beta. Thousands of global developers and contributors have made Mozilla’s open source technology the best in the world. Now our users can experience the best of both worlds with all of the performance and security improvements of Firefox 3, combined with Flock’s unique social browsing experience.”

Flock is attracting people due to its unique and efficient features and services. Secure browsing and integrated social networking and media services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogger, Gmail and Yahoo Mail makes it a one of a kind browser. Let’s have a look at the great features of Flock.

Improved and enhanced browsing

Flock, due to its Mozilla Firefox base offers an efficient browsing experience. It is fast, secure and has a user-friendly interface. It uses Gecko 1.9 web rendering engine and employs reduced memory footprint for fast page rendering. Flock offers great security services by validating site security within the address bar and through malware detection and blocking functionality. Its user interface employs Web 2.0 features like Favorites Manager and Download Manager to give users a rich browsing experience.

Powerful social networking

Social networking is the most promising feature of Flock. While browsing through Flock, you can open your webmail accounts, connect to your friends on different social networks and access the news feed of your choice. It supports all the major social networks - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pownce, MySpace, Digg and Flickr. All social networking services are managed through the “People Sidebar,” “Webmail” and “Feeds Sidebar” buttons, which open their relevant service options in a vertical sidebar on the left side of browser without interrupting the main browser window.

Web 2.0 Rich Media Feature

With the “Open Media Bar” feature, Flock gives its users a rich and interactive media experience. It is the first browser that supports media RSS, which allows users to use photos and videos like regular RSS blog posts. When a user clicks the “Open Media Bar” button, it opens a horizontal bar on the top of the browser to preview and view different online photos and videos from popular photo/video sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr.

Social bookmarking & blogging

Social bookmarking and blogging is another handy feature of Flock. It offers a separate blog writing and editing tool where one can write and publish posts to all major blogs like WordPress, Blogger, Blogsome and Typepad. For bookmarking, it offers different services called breadcrumbs (pages and tags bookmarked by users), Watchlist (users are able to monitor other users’ bookmarks) and Groups (defined groups of Flockers linking to this category).

The downside of the Flock social web browser

Flock is no doubt a great web browser. Critics and common users alike are highly appreciative of its great features and excellent performance. However, it has also been criticized for its complex interface and slow speed. In his post, Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks, Walter S. Mossberg highlights the areas where Flock people should focus.

“But Flock isn’t for everyone, and it has some significant drawbacks. For one thing, you’d need a fairly large or high-resolution monitor to accommodate the Flock sidebar and media bar without reducing the size of the main browser window so much as to require too much scrolling.

“And, Flock has a busy, even frenetic, look that can be distracting and annoying. So many things are going on at once that it can be hard to concentrate on the main attraction: the Web page you are reading in the main window.

“Also, while Flock does indeed spare you from clicking back and forth as often among tabs in your browser, it doesn’t entirely eliminate clicking around. Its sidebar can display only one type of information at a time — social networks and photo-sharing sites in one view, news feeds in a second, the clipboard in a third, and Web bookmarks in a fourth. So you’ll have to click the sidebar’s own controls fairly often to check all of these, or keep going to the special My World page in the main window.

“Finally, Flock works with only certain social networking, photo-sharing and blogging services. While it does support most of the main ones, there are some glaring omissions. Hotmail, Windows Live Spaces and SmugMug, among others, are missing. And it doesn’t support any instant-messaging services at all.”

Flock is a great service and a unique browser. Its growing use indicates that it’s quickly becoming the default browser for every PC. There are some performance issues, especially related to speed and interface, but I believe that with a strong Mozilla Firefox base, Flock will soon overcome these problems. The future is centered in social media, and social media’s future is the Flock social web browser.

References:

Walter S. Mossberg. (2008). Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks. Retrieved Oct. 20th, 2008 from http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080806/flock-web-browser-eases-multitasking-but-has-drawbacks/

Flock. Com. Retrieved Oct. 20th, 2008 from http://flock.com/node/62535

Related posts:

1. Digsby – Another Promising Social Networking Tool
2. Twine- A New Entry in the World of Social Bookmarking
3. Socialtext 3.0 – The Enterprise Social Software

Socialtext 3.0 is an Enterprise social software suite that includes three Enterprise 2.0 applications - Socialtext People, Socialtext Workspace and Socialtext Dashboard – along with hot Enterprise Workspace Wiki. These applications are built on a connected and integrated platform to deliver connected collaboration with context to individuals, workgroups, organizations and extranet communities. Another feature application of Socialtext social software suite is Socialtext Signals, a Twitter like micro-blogging application to support communication within and outside of enterprise.

Ross Mayfield, the co-founder of Socialtext Incorporated, has given an overview of the newly launched Socialtext 3.0 in his post, Socialtext Delivers Socialtext 3.0, Trio of Enterprise 2.0 Applications, Built on a Connected Collaboration Platform. He has written about the features and functionality of different applications included in this suit.

• Socialtext People (optional module available to platform customers) — social networking adapted for the enterprise. Profiles and a user directory make it easy for colleagues to describe themselves and discover implicit and explicit expertise. People can subscribe to the activity of colleagues. Tagging enables users to declare interest and expertise on their profile and others’ profiles, making group forming simple and powerful. Throughout the Socialtext wiki, profiles are made visible so at any time you can pivot to the people behind the content. Integration with LDAP and Active Directory means companies will be able to make their corporate directories
  social.
• Socialtext Dashboard — personalized and customized dashboards to manage attention across internal and external social network updates, conversations, data and applications. The alert feed of your colleagues’ activity provides attention management with work context and relevance. Since Socialtext Dashboard supports the OpenSocial gadget standard, users can select widgets from a large library provided by Socialtext as well as from third parties, and arrange them with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
• Socialtext Workspace — This significant upgrade, based on deep engagement with, and feedback from, Socialtext’s large customer base, delivers dramatic usability enhancements, improved navigation, tight integration with Socialtext Dashboard as well as Socialtext People and continued advances for IT administrative efficiency and directory integration.
• Socialtext Signals — provides safe and secure social messaging with context. Unlike standalone “Twitter-like” tools, Socialtext Signals delivers unique value based on its integration with the rest of the Socialtext platform. Integration with Socialtext People provides context around who is signaling, while integration with Socialtext Workspace provides context around what and why they are signaling. Integration with Socialtext Dashboard provides context around activity updates and the rest of a user’s conversations. Finally, planned integration with email in and out of Socialtext Signals (as Socialtext has supported in its wiki offering for years) enables on- and off-ramps to the tools people already use. Socialtext Signals is currently available in controlled pre-release to a select number of customers.

Whether or not social networking is effective for businesses is no longer a question. Enterprises are using different Web 2.0 tools and techniques like social networks, blogs and wikis mainly for advertising, but Socialtext 3.0 social software focuses on using these applications in a specialized way to improve the performance of employees and increase overall productivity of companies. This software seems quite promising and critics are hoping that it will greatly help enterprises to adopt the new Enterprise culture – Enterprise 2.0.

In his post on the launch of Socialtext 3.0 on TechCrunchIT blog, Steve Gillmor foresees this social software as the platform of choice.

“SocialText 3.0 has the feel of a technology that emerged in the open source, community-driven culture, yet is now well-positioned for adoption by small and medium-sized businesses that more and more are linking together across corporate domains and between workers, partners, and customers. The strategy enhances SocialText’s positioning as a loosely coupled platform significantly m