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Interview With Jim Benedetto of MySpace Posted: 27 Jun 2008 03:10 PM CDT This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Jim Benedetto, the Senior Vice President of Technology over at MySpace. We discussed the new MySpace Data Availability which launched yesterday. Jim and I discussed MySpace’s position in relation to competing platforms as well as some of the underlying technical issues pertaining to the new service. The podcast was probably one of the shortest one ever since Jim was very concise in responding to my questions. Earlier I asked people on Twitter, Plurk and Facebook what questions they would like to have answered and most of them were responded to. One reader asked if the iPhone works with the new MySpace Data Availability service. While I assumed that the service works with pretty much any web-based technology, Jim confirmed that the new service does indeed work with iPhones. Does this mean we’ll soon see a number of mobile implementations? Probably but I’m not so sure how soon we’ll see this being implemented. I’ve already spoken with a number of mobile services who said that they plan to build software around the new services being offered by Facebook and MySpace. Check out my interview to with Jim to learn more about the new Data Availability service. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

iGoogle Getting Social, Adding FriendFeed Feature Posted: 27 Jun 2008 01:03 PM CDT Today Google announced the redesign of their highly popular iGoogle start page. The start page will have a FriendFeed like feed that shows shared feed items from your contacts in Google reader, their recent photos uploaded to Picasa, Google Talk status messages and shared iGoogle gadgets. Sound familiar? It’s pretty much the same thing as other social networks except that your homepage is your startpage for everything. Google has reduced the newsfeed down to a single feature. Honestly, this makes a lot of sense and I could see Google being successful with this strategy. The only downfall to the new startpage? Well, it’s limited to Google owned items. Currently there is no way to import activities that your friends are involved in else where on the web. One other substantial addition is the creation of canvas pages for Google gadgets. That means that Google gadgets function similarly to Facebook applications as well as the new Google Friend Connect canvas pages. It appears that the concept of canvas pages has become pervasive throughout the social web. While I don’t know how many users interact with iGoogle on a daily basis, I know it is in the millions. That means Google has now developed a way to compete directly with Facebook and other social networks for the first page someone loads when they sit down at their computer.

Hedging Advertiser Risk on User Generated Content Posted: 27 Jun 2008 10:09 AM CDT One of the most significant challenges facing advertisers is the lack of control of what content their advertisements are displayed next to when advertising on social networks. Yesterday while attending the Digital Media Conference in Tyson Corner, VA, I listened to Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A, speak about systems the company is building to protect advertisers. Through leveraging AOL’s parental controls technology Platform-A will have a tool which automatically determines whether or not there is offensive content on a page and will determine whether or not to display an advertisement. I spoke with Lynda and the communications director at AOL, both of which said that there was mention of this technology in their press release about their Bebo acquisition. Apparently I glanced over that part of the release! This type of technology would prove to be extremely valuable. The only question is how effective this technology is. Ultimately, each advertiser has custom demands for what content their advertisements are not displayed next to. The complexities of such technologies have created a hurdle for most social networks to get through. Last year Vodafone, Orange and Virgin each pulled advertisements from Facebook. Google also stated that they decided to cut ads from Orkut due to “complaints in Brazil about offensive content.” The issue is an industry wide problem and this filtering technology is the first I’ve heard of which moves in the right direction. Whether or not the filtering technology works, social networks need to figure out ways to reduce the risks that advertisers face while placing their advertisements next to user generated content. Have you heard of any other technologies that help protect the advertisers?

Next 6 Months Will be Transformative for Social Web Posted: 27 Jun 2008 08:00 AM CDT The upcoming six months are going to transform the social web. Yesterday, MySpace was the first social network to release a public API which extends users’ friend connections (or as Facebook would call it, “social graph”) to the rest of the web. It is highly anticipated that Facebook will be launching a competing version next month at their second annual F8 event. Next month Apple is set to release the second version of their iPhone which will include a developer platform which has fundamental similarities to the Facebook platform released by Facebook over one year ago. If anything could transform the social web, I am betting heavily that the iPhone becomes just as large of a catalyst as Facebook was for change in the industry. Combine the data portability movement with open mobile platforms and then add on Facebook’s highly anticipated payment platform and you are looking at big changes ahead. Companies will be working overtime to adapt to the new platforms and embrace it all. So what does this mean for business? Considering that I was writing about a similar shift taking place one year ago, it means a lot. The most substantial question which has been unanswered is how do large businesses adapt in such a rapidly changing environment? It’s understandable that companies with a few employees can adjust to the change overnight but for most people it’s unsustainable. This may be one of the primary reasons that the social web industry has so much difficulty in gaining traction with brands. Cutting through all the buzz is critical. Large brands will simply need to pick innovative companies that can adapt to all of the change and work with them to help build a presence in social media. The best rule of thumb at this point is: anything is better than nothing. While large companies may not have all the cutting edge tools, staying educated is the most important thing. As the social web transforms over the coming months, what do you think is the best way for large corporations to stay up to date and not appear out of the loop?

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