About Internet six years ago: the emerging power of social media

keskiviikkona 25. elokuuta 2004 [Wednesday August 25, 2004] I wrote about Reading blogs six years ago. What has happened since? What’s new? Are the changes so big as we tend to think?

The Internet is quickly becoming the world's primary source of information. Reporters begin every day by reading blogs. They're looking for the pulse of the people, for stories they might have missed. The blogosphere has become fundamental - the plankton of the information ecology.

Helge: That was big news at that time and routine for most journalists today.

But it's not just the media elite who are affected. Television took 13 years to get into 50 million homes. The Web reached that number in only five years. September 11, 2001, was the key moment.

Helge: Small and large businesses don’t yet know how to embrace the web and social media.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that in the days immediately after 9/11, just 3 percent of Americans who were on the Internet used it as their primary source of information. Less than two years later, as the US was preparing for war with Iraq, that number had risen to 26 percent.

Helge: Today, nine years after 9/11 the net is probably the primary source of information.

Now, 77 percent say they have used the Internet to interact with news about the war. They're not just reading the Web; they're emailing one another, posting messages, writing blogs.

Helge: Those figures reflected activities in North America, now the same is true for Finland.

The Internet has been revolutionizing business and culture for years - and that was just a side effect. Some experts believe: the 2008 election will be the first national contest waged and won primarily online.

Helge: Barack Obama was elected the president of USA and Social Media had a central role in campaign financing and his success. 

The Power Of Collaboration In Today’s Blogging World - 10 Reasons to Find a Blog Buddy

The Power Of Collaboration In Today’s Blogging World - 10 Reasons to Find a Blog Buddy: "Working alone as a blogger can at times be lonely. In this guest post two bloggers, Eric Hamm from Up-And-Coming-Blogger and “Motivate Thyself” and Sean Platt from Writer Dad have together written a post outlining some of the advantages of collaborating as bloggers and finding a ‘blog buddy’. This is the first part in a 2 part series..."

Helge: Working alone with any business or social activity can be lonely. Imagine how hard it has been to write books, poems or novels in the past. Blogging is a new thing and involves a much broader layer of the society.

Saying the Internet’s big is a Rushmore of understatement. Our computers are planets, the Internet a galaxy. Viewed from afar, there are a billion points of light, but swimming in the middle of it all, it is easy to feel alone among the black. Finding a comfortable orbit isn’t immediate, but if you stick with blogging, it is an eventuality.

Helge: The Internet isn't always big for the individual writer. Having 10 to 100 readers a day is just a tiny little piece of the Internet apple pie.

Blogopolis bursts with neighborhood upon neighborhood, brimming with amazing people. Some we meet while a guest at their blogs, while reading their words and observe perspective. Some we meet below the belt of our own blog, bantering among the comments. Others send us an email; a more private venue to foster a friendship.

Helge: How to find the friends and supporters on Internet can be just as difficult as in real life.

Why Social Media isn't Good for My Business

I got the inspiration to write this blog post from Andrea Vascellari's posting "Carve out a nice."

There're still numerous business owners who think that Internet is just for the kids and Social Media don't have any meaning for their businesses. I try to cover some of the arguments.

1. Internet is too big for my small business.
   - The message is, I don't want to grow, prosper, and by no means get rich
   - The business owner don't realize the nice marketing potential of Internet
   
   
2. Social Media is just for kids, my clients are not on facebook, twitter, pownce, myspace, etc.
   - The "adult industry" is one of the biggest on the Internet
   - There are all kinds of people on the Internet
   
   
3. People of my age don't have time with Internet
   - I guess the baby boomers are a big part of the Internet today
   - The Internet wasn't created by kids, even though they understood its potential early
   
   
4. My company's products are so unique and complex that they can't be explained on the net
   - Sales people like the idea that big ticket sales can only be done face-to-face
   - The message might be complicated when nobody tried to simplify the story
   
   
5. What if we get too many orders?
   - That would be a great problem for many businesses
   - There is something called "delivery time"
   - You can use "pricing" to control order flow
   
   
6. Our clients are not on Internet
   - They don't have the time
   - They just use email
   - Some might pay their bills on Internet
   - They just buy books, flight tickets, book hotels, order PC's, download music, etc.
   - We're not in that kind of businesses
   
   
7. We've to control our employees for not spending too much time on Internet
   - Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, you name it, they rob valuable working time
   - Employees should concentrate on their work and not "build relationships"
   - We're not in the dating business

I could continue with an endless list. Internet is dangerous, full of viruses, it's the devils nest with no or limited importance for any "serious business". What should we say about Microsoft, Cisco, Nokia, Google, Yahoo, IBM, and thousands of other businesses that have learned to use Internet to build customer relationships and loyality?

Barack Obama: The Five Internet Jokes That Will Make Obama Win

Barack Obama: The Five Internet Jokes That Will Make Obama Win: "Team The Five Internet Jokes That Will Make Obama Win. The Internet can change elections! Just not through Meetup and Friendster like some people thought. Okay, these five pictorial jokes about Barack Obama and John McCain won't be entirely responsible for Obama's imminent November victory. They're just mobilizing the base! Because Influential Thought Leaders don't join "One Million Strong For Obama On Facebook," but they do link to political jokes on their Tumblr blogs."

• Influential thought leaders
• Obama one million strong on Facebook
• Internet can change the elections
• Meetup and Friendster
• Tumblr links to Political Jokes
  

The Future Internet November 2006

"Internet has been extraordinarily successful and is now a critical part of our economy’s infrastructure. However its limitations due to the design made in the seventies start hampering its potential," I wrote 11/27/06.

Evolutionary improvements to the current network will help sustaining up to a point the growth of the Internet, but are not seen as being enough to face the deep rooted weaknesses of Internet as regards mobility, scalability, wireless generalization and security.

• Connecting people
• Connecting devices
• Connecting objects
  
• The user generated content revolution
• Information day about the future Internet
  

Indeed the Future Internet should be able to sustain by one or many orders of magnitude higher the number of people, devices and objects connected (billions—perhaps even hundreds of billions of users, sensors, tags, processes, micro controllers, etc. ), ensure efficiency, security and trust in transaction for new services, incorporate mobility and universal connectivity in its conception, include the technical features for easy operations and management including guarantees for privacy, multi party governance and delivery of new services .

• ICT in FP7
• The first call will be early 2007
  

The Future Internet research activity in ICT in FP7 is part of challenge 1 and the first call will be early 2007.

Given that the limitations of the Internet are deeply rooted in the architectural design and its protocols and mechanisms, the expected work aims at revisiting the network science foundations of the Internet,

• not only in its novel system components like wireless or sensors networks ,
• but aiming at advanced approaches to architectures and protocols,
  
• driven by the need for general mobility, scalability, new forms of routing, c
• onnectivity in a generalised wireless environment,
• to be coupled later with their validation in large scale testing and interconnected environment.
  

The work of exploratory nature will address how various classes of new requirements constrain the foreseeable evolution of the internet and identify the corresponding long term solutions.

The objective of this information day is to present and discuss views and understandings of which and how long term research could address the challenges for Europe.

It's prime time for selling online properties - Mar. 5, 2008

It's prime time for selling online properties - Mar. 5, 2008: "But with all the big media shops coming to the table with propositions, it becomes evident that no one is really holding the winning hand, at least not in a game against Google.

Helge: Internet Web 2.0 and Google. What happens in Europe? The picture isn't just as clear. We still have all these national markets, brands and operators. It will be even more difficult for European companies to show it big.

MySpace, for example is the largest revenue contributor of all News Corp's Internet businesses. The popular social networking site has money coming in, but its largest deal is a multi-year guaranteed payment plan with Google, which will eventually bring in $900 million for its share of online ad sales.

Helge: MySpace, News Corp and Google.

Last June, News Corp's booked $50 million as its installment from this gravy train. Silicon Alley Insider's blogger and Net media analyst Henry Blodget estimates that MySpace had $600 million in revenue last year. That's merely a ripple on the company's $28.6 billion top line.

Helge: Old media still holds the lead, true.

The point here is pretty much well understood: for all their untapped Internet revenue potential, media conglomerates have yet to strike it rich in their online ventures. TimeWarner's AOL deal set the industry standard for failed Web opportunities and squandered resources. (TimeWarner is the publisher of Fortune.)"

Helge: How to make money with online ventures.

Geography, social media and breakfast - Feb. 29, 2008

Geography, social media and breakfast - Feb. 29, 2008: "NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The next big thing is the integration of location-based information with social networking applications. At least that's one conclusion I took from a high-energy 'social media' breakfast for 100 techies in New York this week.

Helge: Social Media and location. Hi, here I'm in Loviisa, Finland. It's a small town in the southeastern Finland. It takes an hour to drive to the Helsinki Airport. One hour to the Russian border and 300 kilometers to St. Petersburg.

Not only will you see what someone is doing online, but you will know where they are doing it. That might significantly change how you relate to people in the real world.

Helge: The world becomes a fast-food restaurant. You can see the people from the window (screen) and what they are eating. Hmmm! Cool. Maybe.

The breakfast, which took over an entire mid-sized restaurant, was organized (using Facebook) by networker extraordinaire Jeff Pulver. The city's growing community of new media experts and practitioners came here from both bedrooms and giant corporations. The only agenda was exchanging business cards and ideas.

Helge: I got this information from my Facebook.

Like a surprising number of digirati, Pulver - a longtime Internet voice and video entrepreneur and evangelist - is devoted to getting to know people in the flesh. He thus cleverly attempted to bring online techniques to this real-world event. He spent the night before the breakfast stuffing plastic sandwich bags for each participant. Inside were nametag stickers, a bundle of post-it notes, and a sheet of tiny blank labels. (Here are what his bags looked like.)"

Helge: Social Media turning into Social Realism. Great.

"I am someone who believes that the more virtual we become the more we need to have face to face meetings. So at the breakfasts I have been hosting, I have taken some concepts from social media which we typically experience when we are online and have brought the concepts to real life," Jeff Pulver writes in his blog...

February 26, 2008

Getting Ready for another Breakfast with “Real-Time Social Networking”

Another one rides the bus on ZDNet.com

Another one rides the bus on ZDNet.com: "Another one rides the bus Taking Wi-Fi on a ride

Cisco Systems is collaborating with cities around the world to see if broadband can be exploited to cut down energy consumption and traffic. In San Francisco, the company has rigged up municipal buses with free Wi-Fi to coax commuters out of their cars. CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos grabs a transfer and checks it out.

Helge: The connected city, commuting, bus riding and wi-fi while you ride. Mobile phoning while on the move hasn't been a big deal for ages. Internet is now ready for the ride. Green and Connected while on the bus. While you are going green. Cisco is showing a pilot project in SF. There is a pilot in Amsterdam as well. Hamburg and Madrid are also among the cities. If this concept succeeds they take this around the world.

6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet | Frank Gilroy Was Here

6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet | Frank Gilroy Was Here: "6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet

Posted January 23rd @ 11:15 pm by Frank

I consider myself a pretty well rounded guy. I know I’m a geek and consider it a term of endearment. On the other hand I’ve got a fairly eclectic set of friends, family and co-workers that posses varying degrees of technical savvy.

It’s occurred to me recently however, that even though I work in IT I have very few friends or acquaintances these days that are truly web savvy. Here is a quick list, off the top of my head, of 6 things I don’t think average people do on the Internet."

Internet Ten Years Ago

The picture to the right was used by me in a report ten years ago, 1997.

The statement "Futurists say that the Internet will radically alter global culture" is becoming reality.

1. We Twitter
2. We Jaiku
3. We Facbook
4. We Ning
5. We Basecamp
6. We Barcamp
7. We Pownce
8. We Blog
   
9. We Microblog
10. We Skype
11. We YouTube
12. We Podcast
13. We Webcast
14. We Collaborate online
15. Internet has become a communication work horse

Ten years ago email was the killer application. Today its a spam-machine.

Ten years ago a web-page was a huge step forward. It was your business card.

Today I blog on several channels on a daily basis.

Internet Direct

Future of Blogging

French popular blogger Loic LeMeur has moved over to the States. Blogging isn't that old phenomenon yet. It might be to early to declare the death of blogging. The Cisco CEO Chambers stated recently that the Web 2.0 is doing well and he expects to see growth in the use of video on the net.

Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said yesterday, "We want to have a leading position in the field of Mobile Internet." Nokia wants to strengthen its Internet presence and content services in cooperation with the Carriers. The mobile giant don't want to step on their toes.

loiclemeur people saying blogging is dead with social software growth are totally wrong. I'm reading amazing blog posts you don't find in the press