Social software Twitter, Facebook called on for higher purpose
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Google.org project InSTEDD launches Thursday and aims to help communities around the world use Web and communications technology like Twitter to warn people of outbreaks like Avian flu or disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
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Social networking site adds Skype service
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Following the announcement by Facebook that it would make its platform available to other sites, the application-sharing environment for social networking is moving quickly and picking up steam.
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Social networking site Facebook called "the greatest paradigm shift in technology since the Internet itself."
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Facebook wants to make its members' profiles portable, get a handle on software developers, launch ad platform.
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Nearly one-fourth of companies are now using Web 2.0-social networking software in some form.
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Study exposes emerging tribes of social network sites
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Dare Obasanjo works at Microsoft.  In his blog post about the Yahoo layoffs, in a postscript, he indicates that Microsoft is interested in creating a Twitter clone.  I've said openly, on Twitter (and now here) that I would like to be part of a venture that aims to create a scalable Twitter. I've had several conversations with people who are attempting to do this. I haven't done a deal yet. My bet: There will be a lot of growth in Twitter in the coming years, and it seems likely that the Twitter company will not be able to scale their systems to meet the demand. There are features that should have been in the product and in the API months ago that are on the back-burner, likely due to Twitter's constant battle to meet meet demand (scaling). As a user, I'd like to view the product and the company as a black box, but that's impossible with the system glitches and outages. What users are doing now with Twitter is far more important, imho, than the servers, or the company. The company, understandably, thinks their issues are most important, but that's a matter of perspective. We don't own any stock in the company, so our perspective reflects that. To us, they're a utility. All this is a verbose way of saying that Microsoft applying their resources and scaling knowhow to this problem woud be an interesting development.
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Co-chief executive Jim Balsillie says an enterprise social-networking revolution is on the way.
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Nearly one-fourth of companies surveyed by ChangeWave Research are now using Web 2.0-social networking software in some form, and another 8 percent intend to do so within the next year.The study is the organization&#39;s first stab at tracking Web 2.0 in the enterprise, said Joshua Levine, editor of ChangeWave Investing, an advisory service from the Rockville, Maryland, firm.&quot;I think Web 2.0 has been simmering a lot for the last couple of years under the radar, at least in enterprises; 2008 looked as we were coming toward it that this stuff would be exploding,&quot; Levine said.Overall, 39 percent of respondents said their firms are very or somewhat willing to use social software. In addition, among respondents whose organizations are already using such software, 35 percent said spending on it will rise in the next 90 days and just two percent said it will fall.Twenty-six percent of companies currently using social software said they plan to invest most heavily in wikis, followed by blogs (15 percent), social networks (13 percent), mashups (5 percent), RSS feeds (5 percent) and collaborative tagging (3 percent).However, the trends were somewhat different among future Web 2.0 users. They said their companies intended to spend the most money on social networks and blogs, which scored 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively.While 79 percent of current Web 2.0 software users said it is being used to improve internal communication and collaboration, only 48 percent of future users said the same. Future users were more focused on external goals, such as better customer service, greater brand awareness and increased sales.&quot;That&#39;s something we really want to drill into next time, why that is,&quot; Levine said. The company plans to repeat the survey, possibly by as soon as midyear.ChangeWave&#39;s report also tracked which vendors are benefiting from the Web 2.0 trend. Microsoft ranked highest in each of the six software categories, followed by IBM in a number of categories.However, open-source and in-house-developed software both showed strength. Some 31 percent of respondents whose companies are using or will begin using wikis within the next year are doing so with open-source technology, and 28 percent of those using mashups developed them in-house, according to the study.ChangeWave surveyed 2,081 people in September.
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Social operating system Facebook, the mainstream media web darling du jour, has opened up its development platform to allow other firms to develop applications to run on top of the site, broadening the range of features available to users.â¦
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Blog: A first look at Searchles: a new web app that seeks to combine social networking with web search functionalities.
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The group-messaging application, Twitter, still hasnât broken into the mainstream or become a to-die-for tool for the youngest early adopters.
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Useful Twitter feeds for people in Southern California. And useful lessons for the next disaster.
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So-called 'white-label' social networks are proliferating in vertical markets and enterprises.
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Social network firms reveal tools and technologies that aim to make the sites more than places to keep in touch.
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InfoWorld - Nearly one-fourth of companies surveyed by ChangeWave Research are now using Web 2.0-social networking software in some form, and another 8 percent intend to do so within the next year.