Flickring open(BC) del.icio.usly
November 27 2004
There are a lot of social software tools
that I never have time to explore, nor see any value in. Others make
perfect sense right away. It's a challenge to stay on top of trends
in the market while not getting sucked in by flash-in-the-pan hype.
This week, I've dipped a toe in the water on three tools -- Flickr,
OpenBC,
and del.icio.us.
Flickr
is a photo-sharing site; designed around the idea of photos as a social
context. You can find Flickr photos via an RSS feed or searches;
you can also build a network (such as the Lotus
Domino bloggers group). Photos
can be uploaded traditionally or via cameraphone.
I see Flickr as a way to share photos in context of blogging... I don't
see it replacing my photo
album sites. It doesn't
have the tools for that kind of story-telling; rather, in Flickr-land,
each entry seems meant to tell a story on its own. There are other
such sites on the web; Kathleen
McGivney has been using
buzznet
for this purpose (and it seems to have some quite diverse communities going...perhaps
not-so-business-oriented).
Anyway, I
started using Flickr earlier
this week; I think I'll be more active about it next month when I get around
to getting a cameraphone (a topic for another blog/day).
Del.icio.us
is a link-sharing site; while it can provide a sort of organized bookmarking
tool, I believe it's real value is in seeing what other people are reading/bookmarking.
I first started paying attention to del.icio.us because of Ross
Mayfield; he's cleverly set
up a single RSS feed for blog, Flickr, and del.icio.us links at feedburner
(hmm, yet another tool to check out...). So, what value do I see
in del.icio.us? Well, there are often articles and blog entries that
I read that I think would be interesting to edbrill.com readers, but not
quite worthy of a full entry. Today, for example, I read articles
about RIM/Blackberry
and BEA.
They're interesting to me, interesting enough that others might want
to read them...but not really material for an entry here. Thus, I
started using del.icio.us;
we'll see if I continue to find it useful to publish links there.
OpenBC
is an online networking community; it seems to have strong European roots,
as opposed to similiar service LinkedIn
which seems more US-based. vowe
wrote about OpenBC earlier this
week, and it was easy enough to join and start a network. They are
dissimilar from Orkut,
which seems purely social; LinkedIn and OpenBC both seem more business-oriented.
To be brutally honest, I haven't yet seen the value in these services...they
seem like big time-sinks and/or ego boosters to me. Perhaps, one
day, I'll need to know if anyone knows anyone at Foo Incorporated. In
the meantime, we can play "my network is bigger than your network"
-- not that I've really spent much time building on either site. On
LinkedIn, one data point that I noticed was that most of the people with
"Lotus" in their profile who are one-degree away from me are
people I know; those two or more degrees away are mostly people I don't
know. I guess it just means current and former Loti really do stick
together.
It remains to be seen how useful these various tools will be. Like
I said, many have come and gone before -- anyone remember Third
Voice? -- but the idea of
wanting to share and organize web content by community remains strong,
and thus, I'm willing to explore.
Post a Comment
- 2
jonvon http://jonvon.net | 11/28/2004 7:04:35 PM
i did that linked in thing, responding to an invitation from chris byrne. i am now "connected" to chris and cap'n oblivious via linked in. which is, so far, kinda silly. i mean, i was already pretty connected to those guys via the blog and email and so forth. i just can't see myself "connecting" to anyone else there, outside of passively accepting an invitation from someone i know. unless i were looking for a job or contracting assignments or something like that. but i'm not. and if i were, i doubt that linked in would be my first stop...
orkut seems a bust to me as well. just doesn't click for me.
blogging remains the most compelling social networking tool i've seen, although i wouldn't have thought that when i first started doing it. it wasn't long though before i was talking to people all around the world. it remains fascinating to me in a lot of different ways.
- 3
mark santa ana http://booyaa.org/_index.html | 11/29/2004 10:22:58 AM
i'm a big fan of delicious :)
as you already know you can tag bookmarks (and see who else has it a copy of that url). you also have the ability to view everyone's bookmarks for that tag using the "tag" url e.g. { Link }
it's a great way to share bookmarks between a group of people.
another nice feature is the ability to turn any tag into an rss feed. you can even do this on your inbox (used to track subscriptions to other del.icio.users)
- 4
Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 11/30/2004 10:11:10 AM
I am not sure of the true value of LinkedIn yet myself, but I am giving it a go to see what value it might bring. I do know I like the fact that it is business oriented. I had an e-mail discussion with Kevin Maney of USA Today (he is, if you may remember, from my hometown) about it and he shares your view on the perceived value.
I am not so sure it is a question of ego, vanity or "my network is bigger than your network". For me, I have always worked to bring people together, much to the chagrin of SWMBO, who gets mad when I do things like that for free. For me, I just believe in good karma.
I have found that many people agree to be in someone's network without really knowing them. I think of the many people I have added that I have only met by phone, blog or e-mail. Are these valid contacts or just the Lotus Community taking each other at "face" value because we are a community?
I am also experimenting with how effective it is as a networking tool. I have used it to reconnect with two college classmates that I went through Army ROTC with. One is in New England and the other is in Maryland. I would not have found them and made such easy contact without LinkedIn.
On the other hand, the network is only as good as the people are in making it useful. For example, I live in a town of 45,000 people (not including students). There is a computer science professor from the University that I know as a soceer mom that is "4 degrees" away from me via this routing:
Athens ==> England ==>> Maine==>> ? ==>> ? ==> Athens
So I have sent a contact request through to see:
a. How long it takes to get to her;
b. what the actual routing is; and
c. How we are connected
The connection has lagged at the second degree for a couple of weeks now. I also wonder how much people will use the tool once they go to their pay model to make connections.
I also see some risk for people using the service who identify their current employers yet state they are open to contacts for "jobs offers, etc". I wonder what their employers will think of that.
I do not know if I see it as an "ego-boosting tool" as much as an avenue to build contacts and hopefully generate business (much as many of us that have blogs do, so is it really any different?). It is also a way to post a "resume" in a searchable nwtwork.
One way around the "mine is bigger than yours" syndrome is what Robert Scoble and Richard Scwatrz have done: you cannot see who is in in their network, only that they have a network (and it seems the whole world is connected somehow through Scoble).
In deciding how to build my network on LinkedIn, I wanted to have a cross-section of people that might be useful to others. Editors like Libby, Liz and Christa; People with deep experience in auditing and corporate compliance like Bruce W. of PwC; sports information professionals like Tim Hix at UGA; people at IBM like you and Ken Bisconti; the Scobles of the world, etc etc.
And compared to Orkut, they don't even compare. Flicker? is that any different?
1) Cool software.
2) Cameraphones, neat, but most have very low density 1-2 M pixel density and sub ISO 100 senstivity. Most seem to have been built at the expense of communication technology in the phone. But most of all, beware of the security concerns some of your customers may have.
3) The lastest scam around this holiday season is to use the cameraphone in a checkout line to photograph the credit card face of customer in front of you and then send the picture to a confederate who can then use the purloined information immediately. Western Union moneygrams seem to be the financial instrument of choice.
4) But they are still fun to have.