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Great new feature.

List of Social Networking Opportunities

There are so many opportunities to do social networking. Where to start? Check out this chart.

I've been experimenting with a few and here are my short takes on these. Remember, I come from a small business, SOHO, and community volunteer perspective.

Blogging:
I don't think it matters where you start. Just start. The best blogs are those that are consistently updated (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly -- just get a schedule and your readers will follow).

I use blogger. I've got a blog at Wordpress (more add on features per template than blogger, but more restrictive unless you upgrade. Blogger allows HTML customized code and the support is great.


Bookmarking:
I dragged myself into this and now that I am using it, wonder what took me so long. A great, shorthand way to keep your site and yourself out there. Try Delicious or Magnolia.

Back soon with a few more reviews.

Is content king?

Hank Dearden, founder of The Capital Cabal, shares thoughts about "content is king" (remember that from the early Web?) in Social Web 2.0 models from the recent Twin Tech party (next one: http://twintech2.eventbrite.com/ coming up in September).

The general consensus seems to be social sites as business models are not working the way Web 1.0 worked. Hank writes, "talked with a social blogger who has huge traffic to his site (100k+ uniques per day), but would kill for a few thousand old fashioned Web 1.0 opt-in email addresses. Why? Advertisers don'’t value the page views that his site generates. Why? No one clicks. Why? The ads may have relevant content (i.e. they announce soap for sale whist the site visitors are talking soap), but it’s the wrong context.

"Which makes perfect sense, in a 20/20 “duh” kind of way. Say, for example, you’re at some (other) networking event, talking with a pal about soap, and in butts a large onion-breathed guy wearing a polka-dot suit, mismatched socks and mirror-ball hat gushing about a *great* brand of soap that you both should buy buy buy. Is the content relevant? Sure, the topic was soap. Is the context wrong? Oh yeah. Do you buy? Forget it.

"Context is King. QED.

"Which is too bad, but not too too bad. The lack of huge revenue/investment influxes may force the 2.0 business models to evolve slowly and steadily this time, rather than go into hyper-caffeinated VC and credit card debt sugar-shock
like in the ‘90s, and we all know what happened next.

"Or, maybe there will just never be a hugely profitable social network business model, which means these social sites will just have to keep growing and evolving (and they will) in a space where money isn'’t the biggest part of the motivation. Not a terrible thing, actually."

I agree with Hank in his last sentence. I would suggest the social blogger use opt-in anyway. And I see the social web as continuing the natural evolution of the web from the purview of graphic designers and coders to content developers, to public relations departments, and on to making connections, which is how we all do business: we do business with people we know.

Posted by email from millie's posterous

where are all the women in tech (continued)

So, while the sarcasm of my original post on this topic did not get much (as in not any) reaction (most of us scanned is my guess, but if you want the sarcasm, go back and read the last paragraph slowly), I will keep the topic on the serious thread it wound to based on the snippet below and so I suggest scanning this: The Semantic Web and Gender


Unfortunately, many of us grew up in an era where we didn't pursue careers in certain areas because they were "men's jobs." Fortunately for our daughters that barrier is coming down, ...girls will see less barriers to entry in traditionally male dominated roles and no one giving her the third degree because she is a woman. So, to all you IT Diva's out there, you may feel like the token woman in a sea of men, but it won't always be this way and our daughters and granddaughters will be able to prove it and thank us for what may seem like an insurmountable task.