An interesting development from researchers at the University of Michigan:

To search for information, a user sends a question to his own referral agent, which broadcasts the query to all of the user's buddies' agents. A referral agent in the buddy's messenger searches its information identity profile to see if that person is likely to be able to answer the question; if not it can forward the query to its buddies.

When a likely match is found, that person sees the question and the path the query traveled, and can start chatting with the questioner immediately or make plans to discuss it later.

The researchers call it Small-World Instant Messaging or SWIM.

David Teten has written a piece about JigSaw.com, an online business contact exchange.  Jigsaw's mission is:

...to map every business organization on the planet, contact by contact, and keep them current through a collaborative effort. The resulting database will help business people perform their jobs more strategically and efficiently.

Kind of like an LDAP directory managed by a distributed network.

Update: David Teten wrote the post about JigSaw.com at the blog that he and Scott Allen co-author, Online Business Networks. Scott Allen did not write that post. My bad. I've updated it above.

Evite has relaunched their site with new customization and personalization features and a much bigger database of events. They've included events from all of their sister companies and active.com. They've also added an event rating system. An excerpt from the press release: 

Evite, the leading free online event planning service, announced the final product launch of Evite 2.0 featuring the most comprehensive online directory of local events on the web. In addition to displaying user supplied events, Evite expanded its local event offering by teaming up with Ticketmaster, Ticketweb, Museumtix, Match.com, and Active.com. Through these relationships, the new events directory offers nearly 50,000 local events in cities throughout the United States.

Among the most anticipated features in the directory is the venue event listing, which can be viewed through a 30 day calendar or chronological list. This feature allows users to browse a variety of events that are not specific to a category, but rather a location. Each event listed in the directory features links that allow a user to send an Evite to plan an outing, send an email to a friend letting them know about the event or add the event to the user's My Evite calendar.

Also from the press release, the new functionality includes:

A completely new feature of the directory is the user based rating system, created to allow users to build community while encouraging attendance and generating buzz around an event. Users can view both an aggregate rating of an event based on all submitted ratings and individual user comments and ratings.

• My Event Picks: Provides a list of recommended events (using proprietary recommendation technology) based on user interests, as indicated by a preference form filled out by a user.

• Popular Events: Features a list of local events (either partner or user supplied) that have been viewed the most by Evite users and therefore ranked as the most popular.

Anyone use these yet?

Feedster is Working Some Blog PR Magic. Earlier yesterday, Steve Rubel leaked some more news about the impending feedster changes.

Feedster is introducing a new calendar UI. Each post includes a technorati-like who's linking to this list,  making the connection between social networking and blogging more obvious.

Feedster's CEO, Scott Rafer, supplied me with a screen capture of my blog, which is slightly different than Steve's screen capture.

Also, check out Harold Check's & Steve Rubel's interviews of Scott Rafer.

Chris Stormann, a co-founder of PeopleThatCLick emailed me about his new site. He said:

97% of people want to start a new business and there are more businesses started each year than new marriages! 

I don't know where he got this fact, but it certainly caught my interest.

Here's the rest of his pitch and answers to some of my questions:

My business partner and I started this company to help entrepreneurs with similar interests and complimentary skills find each other.  Our site is currently free while we grow our online community.  We currently have a few thousand members from over 70 countries.  We are different from Ryze and other social networking sites in that we focus solely on the early stage entrepreneur.  We want to find people with an idea, prototype or start up looking for other PEOPLE that can help (we don't promise VC contacts but folks do help each other with business plans and places go).  We are not the place to be if you want to sell to new customers.  Our real aim is to match you up with someone that would like to partner on a new venture.  It could be your venture, their venture, or one you build from scratch together. 

For example, there might be someone in California who is good at making candles and retooling a production line but they know nothing about marketing and sales.  Someone in New York worked as an importer/exporter for Pottery Barn and wants to make the leap and start a business supplying boutique shops with items like scented candles.  He/she knows nothing about product development.  We help those people find each other.

When we reach critical mass, the matching engine will automatically pair you up with folks to contact and kick batch emails out periodically (think dating site but for business instead of romance).   To follow the analogy, we can't guarantee you a business "marriage" but we can increases the odds of finding a good partner.

The majority of businesses are started by two or more people on less than $8,000.  If we can help you make the leap by finding someone to do it with you and they can pitch in a little money with you…that might be all it takes to get the ball rolling.  97% of people want to start a new business and there are more businesses started each year than new marriages!  We are out there for the little guy that buys Inc magazine and has a dream and is waiting for the right opportunity.  It works for a lot of people because they can get started without quitting their job.

The matching engine is what I find the most interesting. I am a bit past the idea or finding initial partner stages of starting my business, but it was definitely a long process to find the right people. I plan on getting my partners to sign up to see if we are compatible. Hope so!  ;-)

Here's a screen capture of the test that entrepreneurs take so that PeopleThatClick can match you up.

and one of how people get classified…

Which One are You?

Take the test and then go make a meeting!

MSN, AOL & Yahoo have formed a partnership to combine their IM networks. But only if you are a business user and you buy some MS software.

To use the new system, companies will have to license new Microsoft network software that will serve as the hub connecting messaging systems operated separately by AOL, Microsoft's MSN division and Yahoo.

This also brings new functionality to IM. (well, new for these guys)

The new service being touted by Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo would have features, including the electronic recording and saving of instant messages, and the guarantee of secure communications, that the free instant messaging services do not include. The ability to store and retrieve instant messages is critical for businesses placing orders with suppliers, brokerage firms confirming stock purchases to investors and in numerous other commercial transactions and communications.

This news follows the recent news that yahoo and aol are no longer offering IM software to businesses.  Is this the first step in the netscape-itization of YIM & AIM?

"This lays the groundwork for instant messaging to become as widespread and useful as e-mail is today," said Taylor Collyer, senior director of real-time collaboration marketing at Microsoft. "If you can connect to everybody, it becomes more valuable. I believe this announcement will lead to that happening with instant messaging."

Is Taylor Collyer a pseudonym for Stowe Boyd?

Michael Sippey has figured out a clever way to use feedburner to intersperse his flickr photos into his rss feed:

If you subscribe to my feed, you may have noticed the today's appearance of a few photos. These are the result of a very interesting partnership between Flickr and Feedburner. Feedburner now supports Flickr photo feed splicing: all I had to do was give Feedburner my Flickr username, and since Flickr outputs my public photos in Atom and several flavors of RSS, Feedburner grabs it, and merges it into my blog feed based on pubdate. Chocolate, meet peanut butter.

Why is this huge? Sippey says:

As I ranted about in a post on the Supernova conference blog, if you're out to use RSS to replace email, you've got a long road ahead of you. But if you can use it to start to change the way that "publishers" and "subscribers" produce, distribute and consume information, then you're on to something.

Is the future of social networking in syndication? 

Marc Canter's soapbox says so. 

Update: Oops! Looks like Harold Check beat me to this one.
Update II: Oops II! Looks like this is a formal-ish partnership between flickr and feedburner.

Rafat Ali has some more about the sale of WebShots to CNET, following the sale of Picasa to Google. It seems that everyone wants to store your photos. 

The craziest part of the sale of WebShots, as Rafat Ali points out, is….

Webshots co-founders Andrew Laakmann, Narendra Rocherolle, and Nicholas Wilder sold the company to ExciteAtHome for $82.5 million in late 1999. Then, when the doomed broadband portal and access company went bankrupt, the founders back it bought from the bankruptcy court for $2.4 million in 2002. And now, they've flipped it again, for $70 million, to CNET, out of which $60 million is in cash. These young guys (all of them in early and mid-30s) are brilliant, and crazily rich now…

Timing is Everything!

What about moblogging?

Dave Chappell asks some good questions ( via marketingvox) about  social networking sites in regards to site authentication &  user control of data:

Which top networking sites do — or don't — protect user privacy? 
Control — What level of control do I have over who sees my data?

He covers a few of the social networking sites in a bit of detail. I think we could add to his answers, though.

Anyone have any opinions? 

SixApart, the makers of Movable Type and proprietors of TypePad, have acquired their European Exclusive Distributor, Ublog. Here is the nice "real" story by Mena, about how it all began.  (via Marc Canter)

Also, while we are talking about blogging….

Clay Shirky picks apart my semantics in my post: Blogging is the Ultimate Social Software and makes the very important point:

Blogs are a fantastic social networking tool, and they are a fantastic publishing tool, but those are different and incommensurable patterns.

Just For the record, I don't disagree with him. And thanks for the clarification, Clay.  

(I Love it when the first 5 results of a google search for a word are dictionary results.)

Let the orkut backlash begin. Why send all the SNS bashing to friendster only? Let's share a litte of that anti-love with Orkut. (the site, not the guy) 

I'll start it off… 

I received an email from one of my "haven't met" friends. (Keep in mind that most of my "haven't met" friends asked me for an invitation as a result of this post, where I said I would invite anyone to orkut, as a rebellion against their invite only policy. Don't believe me, look at this screenshot. ) Anyways, here's the email:

yeah…i'm doing that…i need more 'REAL' FRIENDS in my list. I've always accepted almost all friendship requests…but this account is totally out of my control…furthermore i reached the max friends limit so IF you think you are one of my friends…pls add this new account (I removed the url). If you are one of those people i've never talked to …pls disregard my msg :) C ya K~

I say Good Luck, Dear. Creating a new account isn't gonna solve the problem. Not sure what she means by: "this account is totally out of my control", but I assume it has something to do with the amazing amount of unsolicited email/messages in orkut inboxes, some are calling social network spam or SNAM. Here's an example:

from: Ric to: friends of friends subject: Festa Open Bar da Anhembi na Spirit 19/06 message: E ai pessoal vamu nessa baladinha? tava dando uma conferida no ObaOba! ( http://urlremoved) e Acho que é a melhor opção da Vila Olímpia para esse sábado. Open Bar a noite toda com Skolbeats, Smirnoff, Jurupinga, água e refri e no Camarote rola até um Red Label. O Flyer ta na net: http://urlremoved A Spirit fica (removed)! []'s Ricardo

Here's a screenshot of my orkut inbox:

Notice the 268 messages I've received (many in Brazilian) since 6/25/2004. That was the last time I deleted them without reading any of them. Not only is my orkut inbox full of useless messages from somewhere between 1 and 733491 people that I barely know, (I am connected to 733491 people through 96 friends) orkut also allows people to send email to people's email inboxes. Here is one I received at my hotmail address:

Class starts.. at 0800 am.. dont be late.. or you're knuckles will feel very..very..painful. Nicole has invited you to join 'Dutch 101'. To view 'Dutch 101', click on the link below:: http://urlremoved

In my not so humble opinion, the orkut message system is useless. In fact, it is nothing short of a SNAM/SPAM facilitator. I do believe SNSs are the ideal systems (besides blogging) to meet and record new relationships (of the professional, dating, or whatever kind).  But, they are still far off in attempting to manage communication and collaboration between people.  

Evite and linkedin being the only exceptions that I use. Are there any other YASN systems that help you communicate and collaborate?  I hope so.  And please explain why.

There is quite an amazing amount of feedback at Judith's "Google would be perfect if…" post.  I was a bit surprised to see that question on the social software weblog since google (the site) isn't a social network in itself.  But, I guess if we can call blogging software: social software... why not? Plus, google was the first to use implicit connections between webmaster's words/links to identify authority.   That has to count for something.

Last year Seth Godin compiled suggestions for "What Should Google Do Next?" into an ebook.  I was a contributor and this is actually one of my favorite topics: pretending to be strategic advisor to big companies.

In comments on this post, Harold Check (of the rss weblog fame) suggested that yahoo should buy flickr ASAP, as a competitive response to Google's purchase of Picasa.  ( Yahoo's oddpost acquisition is being interpreted as a defensive response to gmail's interface excellence, so this might not be too far from the way yahoo plans to compete.)

So, I am mixing Judith's original question up a bit: Answer the following….. 

Who should Google buy next? 

And more appropriately for this weblog:

What Social Network Site Should Yahoo Buy?

Explain why you think so too!

Google acquired Picasa, a photo management software company. Picasa has had a relationship with google's blogger.

But, maybe google has bigger plans for Picasa?

Could they be adding flickr-like social sharing of images to blogger?

It looks like Clay Shirky beat me to this, but I swear I started composing this one the other day.

Sharing information via the web is enabled by more than just blogging tools. There are a whole host of tools that are making publishing, searching, bookmarking, archiving content and annotating the web a social pastime.

Clay mentions that the social bookmarking idea isn't new, but is definitely worth revisiting:  

I'm fascinated with the way that a bunch of old ideas floating around from the dot com era are back, and now succeeding. Many of these apps are explicitly social, and are benefitting from the larger user population and increased comfort…

Amen!

Like Clay, the only tool from this group that I heartily recommend is del.icio.us.  It is also the only one that I use regularly. 

Clay mentions BackFlip as the predecessor of all of these tools.  But, I'd go as far as saying that directories (e.g. yahoo, dmoz, zeal) are the earliest predecessors. Now that storage costs are lower, there is no reason to limit the number of editors, though. Thus, anyone can be an editor and annotator of the web.

Group Publishing
Wikis are very popular. Unlike blogging, though, multiple authors can edit each other's words, unrestrained. Since wikis allow multiple authors and group editing, they make collective- centralized-knowledge creation happen. Because of its centralized location and common goal of creating an authoritative source, wikis make information from multiple authors  much more digestable than navigating weblogs.

The best known example of a wiki is wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. And the best known vendor of this software is Ross Mayfield's company, socialtext.

Via Joi Ito, Stephanie Booth writes about how wikis can be used for real time conference note taking…

Still in the "team theme", different roles can be taken by the note-takers: sometimes there is a main note-taker (I noticed this had a tendancy to happen when people wrote long sentences, but there might be other factors – any theories on this welcome), sometimes a few people "share" the main note-taking. Some people will correct typos, and rearrange formatting, adding titles, indenting, adding outside links. Some people add personal comments, notes, questions. Others try to round up more participants or spend half a talk fighting with wiki pages.

Social Bookmarking
Del.icio.us rocks.  It is my main bookmarking tool. Users can share their bookmarks publicly on the web; use a javascript bookmarklet tool to bookmark a page in one click, categorize bookmarks under multiple categories and type their own short description for the bookmark. All these features make backflip look like DOS.

Archiving tools
Spurl vs Furl.  Not sure what came first, but there aren't a lot of differences between these two. There are some differences in implementation: Furl has a toolbar and spurl uses a browser button for MS IE users.  After a quick trial, I'd say furl gets a better rating on usability. But, I've talked with the founder of Spurl, and he is definitely on the right track. And both of these tools allow people to archive single pages of content. So, instead of just storing the link to it, you can store the page. Like I said, I don't use these tools.  Does anyone?  For what purpose?

Annotation Tools
Gibeo is the only example of web-annotation tools that I know exists. Gibeo brings the wiki to the world-wide-web. The screen-capture on the left shows how users can hightlight text, and leave a comment for the next Gibeo user to view. Gibeo allows anyone to annotate and share their thoughts, simply by highlighting text and typing away. When another person visits the page, they can view what the other 3rd parties have said. I imagine this'd be ideal for teams of web designers or web developers working on a project. Instead of using a fancy bug tracking tool. Just annotate the page. And the person responsible can simply go to the page and address the issue.  (The annotated page was found here.)

What other uses could this tool have?

Social Searching
Eurekster brings us social searching. It enables us to share our searches with different groups of people.  It combines realcontact's contact management system with technology that remembers our searches and what we found interesting. And then, when one of our contacts searches about a certain topic, the previously clicked-on results are presented at the top. For more info on eurekster, read a blog I started when eurekster launched, or join the social software group I started on Eurekster.

Eurekster's site is certainly not as popular as "We Three Kings Search Engine Providers", but with partnerships with major social networking sites, like their partnership with friendster, they are certainly a search provider to watch.

In partnership with ListenLab, Blogger has launched AudioBlogger.

Blog to your blogger blog from your phone. (via BizStone)

Here's how-to-do-it.