Illustration by Matthew Hodson

The Economist (October 25^th – 31^st) published an interesting report on corporate IT and global cloud computing (look at “In this special report “on the right of the page for more). According to Ludwig Siegele, The Economist’s technology correspondent, nowadays it is easier for companies, especially start-ups, to try new applications since they can easily buy a server service and not to worry about space and installation. The report estimates that in four years, the number of servers will increase by 10 million worldwide. Siegele believes that many companies will move into the cloud as a way to save money, since the IT infra-structure is very expensive, and the server can be shared. However, he emphasizes that there will always be reasons to not move, such as regulatory and privacy issues.

Recently there was talk of Facebook taking cues from Myspace by providing access to custom layouts from Pagerage, allowing the use of video applications and having an increased problem with spam. But now it looks like the tables have turned. A recent New York Times article talks about Myspace’s new profile by saying “profile 2.0 is going to make a lot of MySpace users unhappy, but only if they’re truly happy with their current profile. We think anyone that’s been waiting for Myspace to do some serious spring cleaning on how users can customize their profiles is going to love Profile 2.0.”

There are some good and bad things about this change. Myspace 2.0 will make it easier to customize your profile allowing you to drag and drop modules and switch between layouts. Among the bad are issues for the more advanced users who’ve in the past relied on 3rd party layouts to modify their pages (Lovemyflash, Flaashy). Unfortunately the new Myspace 2.0 profile will not work with this additional code, “profile 2.0 will break most of the custom MySpace themes available. If you choose to try out Profile 2.0 MySpace reserves your 1.0 profile just in case you don’t like what you see in Profile 2.0.”

At the recent UW Engineering Job Fair, Mr. Bill Benzer of SPU (Seattle Public Utilities) suggested I take a look at how WSDOT (Washington Department of Transportation) was using social networks.  They have a Facebook presence and are asking the public’s opinion on how we want our information .  Do you want traffic jam information Tweeted to you?  On a gadget or widget on your desktop? Cellphone RSS feed?  Some other method?  I encourage you to enter the discussion, if the MCDM doesn’t have the answer, who does?  Now, if they can just link to our car GPS mapping device and update traffic clogs in color like on their map….

Posted by Tharaa

Few days ago one of my friends sent me an email titled “New Presidential Candidate…Someone We know!” I was so excited to learn more about the content of this email because I knew that it will be strongly related to my “Digital Democracy” class. I typed in my instructor’s name of this course “Kathy Gill” and here what I have got.

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Lbuiz1&altl=Hjmm

Read more…

In 2005, News Corp bought MySpace for 580 million. In 2007, Microsoft purchased 1.6% of Facebook’s stock for 240 million. In 2008, AOL acquired Bebo, the biggest social network in England, for 850 million. So, what is the market value of social networks? Is there any credible rule to evaluate social networks?

One article posted on TechCrunch discussed about how to measure the value of social networks. The research build a model that looks at social network usage by country/region and compares that to available data on total Internet advertising spend in each of those countries. In that way, advertisers can see how social networks generate ROI (Return of Investment) and also the potential purchasing power of every region. The advertisers can judge the value of social networks in every region and make a right investment decision.

Although the principle sounds reasonable, it ignores the users’ usage rate. If the membership of a social network is huge, but the members are not actually active or involved in the social network, the social network cannot provide an effective communication channel for advertisers who investigate in it. So, someone generates the following equation to solve the problem:

Social Network Valuation (SNV) = (Repeat Monthly Visitors x Engagement x Virility) Read more…

I wanted to address Adrianna’s comment from the COM 592 Wednesday night class that advertising is a necessary cost of business that must be included in any budget.

The absolute best show on television right now is Mad Men, and it just happens to be about advertising, advertising in the early 1960s when it was experiencing a renaissance. On the DVD extras of season one, there is a great vignette about advertising, in which someone notes that the greatest feat of the advertising industry is convincing people they need advertising. If toilet paper weren’t advertised, would you stop buying it?

The segment on advertising is really fascinating and I’m unable to do it justice in a blog post. Regrettably, I could not find it on-line, but this Making of Mad Men vignette has some insight into advertising as well. If you haven’t seen the show, you are missing a truly remarkable and unique piece of storytelling.

Fascinating article in this month’s Atlantic, written by Andrew Sullivan, titled “Why I Blog”.  Conventional wisdom says that blogging represents the death of journalism.  Sullivan says no, blogging is simply another type of media that complements traditional journalism.  His analogy:  blogging is to journalism what Jazz (when it first came on the scene) was to classical music– it represented a different aesthetic, required a new way to think about music, but it didn’t make Bach or Mozart obsolete.

Some will take issue with Sullivan’s point of view.  After all, the rise of the internet is being blamed for the cutbacks at newspapers.  Right?  But those who “get it” know classifieds are what paid the bills.  So, it’s not, for example, the Drudge Report that’s challenging the traditional newpaper model, it’s Craig’s List.  And Craig’s List is not about journalism.

Of course it’s not so black and white.  But it prompts rethinking the view that online journalism is the primary culprit.

Sullivan’s piece is brilliant because it speaks to the fact that blogging is the great journalistic motivator–  it provides the masses with the opportunity for public expression, idea sharing and knowledge expansion.   “The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction.”

I just read this article in Wire News about “Twitter as a Terrorist’s Killer App” Apparently, a draft Army intelligence report, says that the Twitter’s miniature messaging could be used as a tool to coordinate “militant attacks”. The article provides three different scenarios in which Twitter could become a militant’s friends.

Read more…