tagged w/ Online Communities
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Facebook just introduced several improvements to Facebook Pages that will ultimately allow brands to determine and maintain better relationships with their fans while making Pages more highly relevant to the audiences they serve. Listed here are the changes and what they mean for you personally and YOUR fans.Facebook just introduced several improvements to Facebook Pages that will ultimately... more
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The Parageography of Cyberspace
---Randall Munroe from XKCD, who created a very popular, just-for-fun, pseudo-scientific ‘Map of Online Communities’ in 2007, has revamped his previous infographic. The new 2010 edition, called the ‘Updated Map of Online Communities,’ reflects (among other information) data from spring and summer 2010.
“Communities rise and fall,” writes Munroe, “and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.”
The 2010 estimates “are based on the bet numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sample, a 20,000 cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leaf reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up),” Munroe explains.
Indeed, seismic shifts have occurred among social networks since 2007. Facebook’s presence has grown to become the dominant feature on the updated social map. MySpace, on the other hand, is quite tiny and difficult to locate. [via XKCD (2007) and XKCD (2010)]
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http://www.theblogismine.com/2010/10/08/map-of-online-communities-2010-vs-2007-in-pictures/The Parageography of Cyberspace
---Randall Munroe from XKCD, who created a very... more
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Randall Munroe from XKCD.com, who created a very popular, just-for-fun, pseudo-scientific ‘Map of Online Communities’ in 2007, has revamped his previous infographic. The new 2010 edition, called the ‘Updated Map of Online Communities,’ reflects (among other information) data from spring and summer 2010.
“Communities rise and fall,” writes Munroe, “and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.”
The 2010 estimates “are based on the bet numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sample, a 20,000 cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leaf reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up),” Munroe explains.
Indeed, seismic shifts have occurred among social networks since 2007. Facebook’s presence has grown to become the dominant feature on the updated social map. MySpace, on the other hand, is quite tiny and difficult to locate
http://www.theblogismine.com/2010/10/08/map-of-online-communities-2010-vs-2007-in-pictures/Randall Munroe from XKCD.com, who created a very popular, just-for-fun,... more
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Looks like Yahoo has figured out how to curb trollish behavior on the internet.
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Lecti
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Last week we launched Facebook Connect integration on Current.com, and since the launch we've had a number of community members ask for more details around this feature. So, here is a deep dive into how Facebook integration works on Current.com.
One Facebook related question frequently sent our way asks, "Why would I want to connect my Facebook account to my Current account?" There are very good reasons, which I'll get to in a moment, but first let me share a seemingly-unrelated-yet-equally-frequently-asked-question with you, "How do I get my group featured [in fastest growing groups]?"
Believe it or not, these two questions are interconnected. Fastest growing groups are determined by growth of membership. You grow your group in two significant steps: 1) curate creative content, and 2) get your group and it's content in front of more people.
Facebook Connect gives you the means to accomplish the second step relatively easy. When you link your Facebook account to your Current account, you're given an easy way to share your Current submissions and comments with your Facebook connections. Truth be told, Current.com is much smaller than Facebook. So chances are, a good number of your Facebook friends may have never even heard of Current, but might share common interests with you which could result in more members joining your group.
"But isn't that just spamming your Facebook account with Current content?"
Like anything in life, moderation is key. You won't likely want to share every single comment you make on one Current.com thread, so we've put the option to "post to Facebook" in place when submitting or commenting on Current.com. This way you can easily check, or uncheck, if you feel like you've sent too much (or too little) to your Facebook account.
If you take a close look at how items get posted to your Facebook feed, you'll see that items in groups that you own/moderate will actually promote your group as well (take a look at the way my post from an item in the LOST group appears in my Facebook feed).
"OK, but I don't care about groups. Don't own one, don't want one."
No worries. We find that many of our community members use Current.com to try and create awareness around a cause, or to tell a story that is otherwise being ignored via other informational outlets. If you find yourself in this category, then Facebook Connect still has something to offer. Connecting your accounts will still give you the opportunity to share stories with a larger group of people connected to you on Facebook.
"OK, sounds good. How do I do it?"
Connecting your accounts is easy, and there are several ways to do it. You can click login and select "Connect with Facebook." If you choose this route, you'll be asked to log into Facebook, and then you'll be given the opportunity to connect to an existing Current.com account.
If you're already logged in, just edit your profile and click on the "external accounts" tab, then click on "Connect with Facebook."
You'll be asked to login to your Facebook account, and afterwards you'll be taken back to "external accounts" and the tab will now offer some customizable settings.
If you check the box to "Publish my activity on Current.com to my Facebook Stream" the "Publish to Facebook" button (found in the comment and item submission workflows) will be checked by default. When you post comments or items on Current you can always uncheck this box to prevent over-posting to Facebook.
If you check the box next to "Current can send me email through Facebook" you will be able to receive Current activity notifications in your Facebook inbox.
Both of these options will prompt an additional Facebook verifications box.
Once you've connected your accounts, you will be free to login to Current via your Facebook login, and you'll be able to publish your Current.com activity on Facebook.
Try it out, and as always send us feedback!
Last week we launched Facebook Connect integration on Current.com, and since the... more
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House on Fire by dvs on flickr.com
Here's the situation. You come home from a nice night out only to find that your next door neighbor's home, and everything in it, is on fire. This isn't just a tiny fire, this is a full blown blaze. So, what do you do?
You could:
1. Rush inside in an attempt to put out the fire, or save anyone who might happen to be trapped inside.
2. Take the "who cares as long as it's not me" approach, ignore the flames, and settle into bed for the evening.
3. Call 911 and report the fire to the fire department.
Let's consider these options.
Choice #1: While altruistic and noble, puts you at great risk. You're not equipped with fire retardant gear, and you could easily find yourself sucked into the blaze, injured, or even blamed for having something to do with the incident.
Choice #2: This is obviously the selfish route. No one would blame you for wanting to avoid risk, but option #3 is really not that difficult to do, so why not lend a helping hand?
Choice #3: Let's face it, you share a community space with your neighbors. A burned up house will only drive down the value of your own home, so you're somewhat invested in taking some action. The fire fighters are only human, so they can't patrol every cul du sac looking for imminent fire hazards. Reporting a fire is a really easy way to help others out without putting yourself at risk.
Obviously this is a hypothetical situation, but it definitely relates to some of the issues that arise in online communities such as our own here at Current.com. Our site is designed to facilitate discussions. We welcome all points of view, and we encourage debate.
Wherever debate exists, differences of opinions are sure to crop up, and when those rear their heads, things can easily spiral from debate into attacks in a very timely fashion.
As a member of our community, we ask that you avoid taking option #1 wherever possible -- no matter how heated an attack on you or your connections may be. If you step in and attempt to put out the fire yourself, there is a good chance that you might find yourself surrounded by flames, or resorting to actions that are in violation of our community guidelines.
We also ask that you refrain from taking choice #2 as well. We're all in this together, so please contribute to making Current a better place for everyone to debate and discuss.
As a community member, please take a look at our newly refined community guidelines, and help out by reporting any potential fires you happen upon while participating on Current.com.
Sending a flag to the online community team is not a negative thing, it's a good thing. It helps us keep abreast of some of the things going on within the community. We do our best to be everywhere at once, but even with our internal tools this isn't always possible. So we enlist your help. If you're not sure, flag it. You may find that what you report is not actually a violation of our community guidelines, but it is still helpful and we appreciate it.
Also, reporting a flag doesn't give you the right to attack someone on the site. Just report it and let us take a look. We have a 24 hour response window, so you should get feedback on your flag in a relatively short amount of time.
Similarly, electing not to flag comments doesn’t give you license to respond in suit. You may not be responsible for the fire down the block, but that doesn’t mean you get to set fire to your next door neighbor’s house because the one down the block is on fire.
Thanks!
House on Fire by dvs on flickr.com
Here's the situation. You come home from... more
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Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.
At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.
But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.
And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details... more
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Open ID is now being used by Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace, IBM, LiveJournal and VeriSign, among many others.
OpenID is a distributed single sign on solution that allows people to sign into different services with the same login credentials.
Simply put, one cracked OpenID site (by hackers, the government, parents, etc) could result in total profile information access and/or one's identity being abused over several other OpenID sites.
The creator of OpenID currently works at Google.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID#Security_and_phishingOpen ID is now being used by Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, AOL,... more
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More invasion of privacy on the online social network front...
"Twitter is handing out the personal details of people who register brand names on the micro-blogging service to big companies, without alerting the original registrant or performing any kind of standard due diligence."
"Stephanie Robesky of Atomico registered @Skype... a Twitter employee had handed out her name, email address and contact details to someone at Skype who then contacted her."More invasion of privacy on the online social network front...
"Twitter is... more
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Clearly Facebook is not the greenest company out there given this. Seems like a big price to pay for being able to tell people you're cooking dinner right now. This article raises the question; Is it environmentally conscious to have Facebook storing your numerous photos and videos?
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Facebook Completes Rollout Of Haystack To Stem Losses From Massive Photo Uploads
38 Comments
by Michael Arrington on April 6, 2009
One nugget of information Facebook leaked out to press last week during the Gideon Yu fiasco: the company has been EBITDA profitable for five quarters, but doesn’t expect to generate positive cash flow until 2010. Why the discrepancy? There’s only one answer to that - Facebook is paying out big dollars for something that must be depreciated over time. If they could just write off the expense in full as they paid it they’d be having much bigger losses now that matched cash flow, and they’d hit profitability sooner. But accounting rules let them pay cash now and recognize the expense later on. In early leaked projected financials, there was a $200 million difference in 2008 cash flow and EBITDA profitability (or lack thereof).
What have they been buying? Stuff to serve up all these massive page views, and photos in particular. In our post last October, when Facebook was fishing for dollars in Dubai, we noted some of their expenses, including a massive ongoing outlay for NetApp storage systems that cost $2 million each:
The company is likely spending well over a $1 million per month on electricity alone, say experts we’ve spoken with. Bandwidth is likely another $500,000 or more per month on top of that. The company has earmarked $100 million to buy 50,000 servers this year and next. And sources say they’ve been buying one NetApp 3070 storage system per week just to keep up with all this user generated content. At up to $2 million each, that adds up quickly - we’ve heard estimates that they may have spent as much as $30 million this year alone with the company. And the icing on the cake - earmark another $15 million per year in office and datacenter rent payments.
As we noted in February, Facebook is the largest photo application on the web (forgetting everything else they do). More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month, and these things chew up bandwidth and storage like crazy. And it’s even more expensive to serve photos in poorer countries where Facebook is getting all its growth (and little revenue).
Enter Haystack
Haystack is Facebook’s way of substantially lowering the cost of storing and serving photos, and the rollout of the new internal infrastructure was recently completed. See Niall Kennedy for a technical overview of what Haystack is and why it’s so much more efficient than third party solutions they’ve used to date, as well as this 2008 presentation by Jason Sobel.
What isn’t clear is if Haystack will really help Facebook control costs outside of the U.S., particularly in Asia. But it’s a step in the right direction for cost control, and is certainly being factored in Facebook’s estimates of cash flow profitability by next year.
CrunchBase Information
Facebook
Website: facebook.com
Location: Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded: February 1, 2004
Funding: $516MClearly Facebook is not the greenest company out there given this. Seems like a big... more
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The Internet makes it easier than ever to connect with others who are in the same boat as you and allows you to communicate quickly and easily with people from all over the world. Check out this list of 100.The Internet makes it easier than ever to connect with others who are in the same boat... more
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Tomorrow is the big day, and we want you to be a part of it. Here's what you need to know to participate in our inauguration coverage, so take notes and maybe we'll see you on TV.
+ Live streaming on Current: since the ceremony will be taking place 11:30am EST on Tuesday morning (with repeats at 5:30pm EST and 10:30pm EST), this means the live broadcast will be taking place in the middle of the day (and at 8:30am in PST). So, we are going to be streaming the whole thing on Current.com. We've already heard others with plans to pick up bagels and have a viewing party in their PJs, so why not do the same? Head to http://current.com/44 to check out the whole event.
+ Twitter: We've once again teamed up with Twitter to give everyone a chance to weigh in on the event from the comfort of their laptop or mobile phone. If you're not yet familiar with Twitter, I'll post a quick explainer video from our own Brett Erlich (@bretterlich) below in the comments. If you haven't signed up, jump in now, or just plan to text message your thoughts to 40404 tomorrow during the event. Here is a short list of hashtags to use to get your tweets better positioned to air on TV:
-- #current: This is like the "Hey Current, look at me" hashtag du jour. If you have something interesting to report, or you just want to chime in, use #current in your tweet to get it on our radar.
-- #inaug09: NPR started this one up, and Andy Carvin (@acarvin) got us hooked. Simply put, this one is too good to ignore. We'll be monitoring the stream of tweets coming in with #inaug09, and pulling some of these to air as well. So, it couldn't hurt to pop this one into your tweet as well if you have some extra characters to spare.
-- #dcalerts: The good folks over at The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) have put this little gem of a hashtag together with a twist. They are asking anyone in the Washington D.C. area tomorrow to use #dcalert to send updates regarding traffic conditions and the overall vibe of the crowd as the ceremony progresses. If you happen to be in the mall, headed to the mall, or trying to escape from the mall, tag your adventures with #dcalerts for others to follow along. We'll be pulling updates from here as well, so keep it handy.
And that's it! Everything you need to know for a very social media enhanced Inauguration Day. We hope you'll join us, and as always send us feedback about the whole thing.
Best,
Mario
Online Community Team
Subscribe to our blog: http://feeds.current.com/topic/77589461.rss
Connect on Current.com: http://current.com/users/mario_a/all/0.htm
Follow the Current.com team on Twitter: http://twitter.com/current
Follow me on Twitter? http://twitter.com/manimaTomorrow is the big day, and we want you to be a part of it. Here's what you need... more
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A "social media" company based out of Denver, CO is pressuring a teacher to give up his Twitter account with the same name. The account name is room214, and the company is Room 214. They have allegedly sent him a direct message via the Twitter site which mentioned legal action against him in order to acquire the name. Colin, the teacher, does not use his account for commercial purposes. His account has no relation the company, room214, nor the type of online marketing that they partake in. He started updating on Twitter in April 2007. The name stems from the number of his former classroom.
According to the room214 company's website, they started as a company in 2004, but their current Twitter username, room_214, started updating on Twitter on December 20th, 2008. Their most current post says they are "working things out" with user room214. It appears that there is no trademark on the name by this company, although this has not been confirmed by room214.
On December 28th, the company room214's co-founder explained that an employee independently sent the communication mentioning legal action and this move was not endorsed by the company. He also said that issue has been resolved and both parties will keep their existing usernames.
Nevertheless, what do you think about this? In this case, there was no actual legal action - does a company have the right to take a noncommercial, non-related username from an individual regardless of the date of creation? If not, should they? Do users on internet communities have the right to protect their online identities?A "social media" company based out of Denver, CO is pressuring a teacher to... more
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Obama's embracing the collaborative side of the web as his site now has a tool that allows visitors to ask questions and vote for other people's questions. Like Current, Digg and other collaborative websites he's using the "wisdom of the crowds" approach so that questions most important to people get wider publication and will be answered by his team.
By Wednesday evening, the day of the launch, 159,890 people had voted on 1,986 questions from 3,255 people.
Maybe one day we'll see this approach in the UK as well and hopefully awkward issues that we want to hear answers to won't get covered up.Obama's embracing the collaborative side of the web as his site now has a tool... more
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