(thanks to Mazy for his help on this article)

Just three or four years ago, a person could have successfully managed separate online and offline lives (and yes, separate reputations). There was general anonymity to what you did on the internet. You could do the things you wouldn’t normally do in the real world on message boards and internet communities.

Not anymore.

I don’t care whether you’re a 40 year old business executive, a hot-shot entrepreneur, or a 16 year old power user on Digg; you need to control what’s being said about you on the internet or it will bite you in the ass.

You don’t need a high priced firm to help you do this. Hell, you can do a better job enhancing your image and putting out great content because, well, nobody else is you.

Without further ado, six ways to control and enhance your image on the Internet:


1) Search (and research) your name

It’s time to do your homework. You think you know everything about yourself, but you’re wrong. There are millions of people on the internet who have an opportunity to write about you, defame you, or even write about a person with the same name but could inadvertently damage your image. It’s time to do some searching.

• The first thing you must do is search yourself on Google. You’ve probably done it before out of curiosity, but now do it intelligently. Search your name, variations on your name, and all nicknames. For me, that would be “Ben Parr”, “Benjamin Parr”, and “Benjamin E. Parr”. When searching for your name, make sure you use quotation marks (” “) to make sure you aren’t getting results with only your first or your last name.

  Now that you’re searching, take note of anything relating to you. Are there any news articles that pop up? Any blog posts? Are they about you, or are you just being quoted? Does anyone who shares your name come up? Could people searching for you confuse that person with you? Generally, only the first page of search results matter, but I would look at the first twenty to thirty results to get a full picture of your image on Google.

  Repeat this every couple of weeks to track changes in search results.

• Second is to search for your name on Social Media Firehose. Social Media Firehose, built and hosted on Yahoo! pipes, searches specifically through social and networking websites. Kingsley Joseph’s tool will look through Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Technorati, and other social media websites for mentions of you. You can limit searches to exclude specific websites (I suggest removing Twitter if you’re a power Twitter user).

  As you can see from the image on the right (click to see full size), results range from Twitters replies to Technorati results. Great way to know what’s being said about you. And about others with your name. Three of those results are for other “Ben Parrs”, one of them being a male supermodel who once played a stripper on T.V. This is not only very interesting (and strange) to know, but could be the key to explaining anything odd a future employer may find about you on Google.

Now, what if your name is a common name? That’s a little tougher. I suggest using a variation on your name that is not as common for your emails and internet interaction. For example, add in your middle initial, use Freddie instead of Fred, or use a nickname. You WANT to be easily searchable. Friends, employers, and potential customers all will search for you, and that’s an incredible opportunity to give them a good “first” impression. More on that in step 5.



2) Register your name as an internet domain

Read the rest of this entry »

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(thanks to Mazy for his help on this article)

Just three or four years ago, a person could have successfully managed separate online and offline lives (and yes, separate reputations). There was general anonymity to what you did on the internet. You could do the things you wouldn’t normally do in the real world on message boards and internet communities.





Not anymore.





I don’t care whether you’re a 40 year old business executive, a hot-shot entrepreneur, or a 16 year old power user on Digg; you need to control what’s being said about you on the internet or it will bite you in the ass.

You don’t need a high priced firm to help you do this. Hell, you can do a better job enhancing your image and putting out great content because, well, nobody else is you.

Without further ado, six ways to control and enhance your image on the Internet:


1) Search (and research) your name

It’s time to do your homework. You think you know everything about yourself, but you’re wrong. There are millions of people on the internet who have an opportunity to write about you, defame you, or even write about a person with the same name but could inadvertently damage your image. It’s time to do some searching.

• The first thing you must do is search yourself on Google. You’ve probably done it before out of curiosity, but now do it intelligently. Search your name, variations on your name, and all nicknames. For me, that would be “Ben Parr”, “Benjamin Parr”, and “Benjamin E. Parr”. When searching for your name, make sure you use quotation marks (” “) to make sure you aren’t getting results with only your first or your last name.

  Now that you’re searching, take note of anything relating to you. Are there any news articles that pop up? Any blog posts? Are they about you, or are you just being quoted? Does anyone who shares your name come up? Could people searching for you confuse that person with you? Generally, only the first page of search results matter, but I would look at the first twenty to thirty results to get a full picture of your image on Google.

  Repeat this every couple of weeks to track changes in search results.

• Second is to search for your name on Social Media Firehose. Social Media Firehose, built and hosted on Yahoo! pipes, searches specifically through social and networking websites. Kingsley Joseph’s tool will look through Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Technorati, and other social media websites for mentions of you. You can limit searches to exclude specific websites (I suggest removing Twitter if you’re a power Twitter user).

  As you can see from the image on the right (click to see full size), results range from Twitters replies to Technorati results. Great way to know what’s being said about you. And about others with your name. Three of those results are for other “Ben Parrs”, one of them being a male supermodel who once played a stripper on T.V. This is not only very interesting (and strange) to know, but could be the key to explaining anything odd a future employer may find about you on Google.

Now, what if your name is a common name? That’s a little tougher. I suggest using a variation on your name that is not as common for your emails and internet interaction. For example, add in your middle initial, use Freddie instead of Fred, or use a nickname. You WANT to be easily searchable. Friends, employers, and potential customers all will search for you, and that’s an incredible opportunity to give them a good “first” impression. More on that in step 5.



2) Register your name as an internet domain

Read the rest of this entry »

Share This Post!

A few days ago, I wrote the first article in a series on the future of social networks. Last time, I framed it within Web 3.0. If you haven’t read part one, a quick recap of Web 3.0: Web 3.0 (or whatever buzzword you like) is about taking the information we have on the internet, in we are currently sharing with each other, and using and integrating that data in order to solve problems.. At least, that’s how I define Web 3.0.

Facebook, MySpace, and current social networks are great for sharing, but still haven’t been used to solve many problems beyond boredom. By problems, I mean anything that will help save individuals or society save time, money, or energy. I not only mean solving global warming, but the problem of your computer breaking down or your food being too expensive and taking too long to cook.

The Components of a Social Network

First, though, I need to break down the components of a social network. The interaction between the main components of a social network are what make them tick. Robert Scoble, in an article about Facebook not allowing Google to access its information via Google’s FriendConnect, does most of the breakdown for me. And yes, I split information into three components. You interact in completely different ways with each, so it makes sense to me.

The Components

• Your Personal Information: This is the info you willingly put into a profile. Name, age, likes and dislikes, phone number, relationships, work and educational info, etc.
• Your Friends’ Information: This is the info all of your friends put into their profiles. You have access to most of your friends’ information
• Strangers’ Information: This is the info anyone outside of your social graph. Unless you are Facebook friends with me or work at Facebook, you probably don’t have access to this information.
• Your Social Graph: This is perhaps the most important component of a social network. This is the actual map of who your friends are and your relationship to them and to their friends. This is how Facebook knows both you and Jimmy are friends with Nancy, or that you might know Eric. It tells who is 2 degrees away from you (friend of a friend) or 3 degrees away (friend of a friend of a friend). See the picture above? That’s part of my social graph, specifically who is connected to who.
• The Interface: That would be how you see this information. That’s Myspace.com or bebo.com. This also includes things like Developer platforms, so I include Facebook and other 3rd party social networking applications in this component.

It’s the interaction between these components that allows for you to find friends and keep connected. But it’s also the interaction that could allow for an integration of this data in order to solve problems and make life easier.

What can all of that Information do?

Now for the fun part. What can we do with these five components? Let’s try a story example. Say you are a psychologist who is trying to figure out the key characteristics of individuals that become suicidal, especially teenagers and college students. Currently, you take thousands upon thousands of surveys, the answers to which you can never fully rely upon. You pour across data that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars before you come up with your results.

The issues here? The data can’t be fully trusted (someone taking a survey will change answers, even unconsciously, in order to “give” the results they believe the researcher wants), it costs enormous amounts of time and money to get the data, and the same size is still relatively small.

Now, what if you could tap into the likes, dislikes, and behavior patterns of nearly every teenager and college student in the country with a simple program? See where I am getting at yet?

No, it wouldn’t be perfect, since people leave a lot out of their profiles, but this hypothetical researcher would have access to far more information than ever before. Hell, let’s go a step further. You could create an algorithm that highlights a red flag when a user deletes certain information from their profile, adds certain information, changes their behavior with their friends on MySpace and Facebook, etc. It’s not just about the information on a profile: wall posts, the changes to a profile over time, and messaging habits are all important information as well.

I’ve only given you one example. You can collect data with a voluntary Facebook app on energy usage to pinpoint which products need to be made more efficient, you could integrate the information of a social network with your email to prioritize it and filter it, etc. Some of these things are already happening, but a combination of protectionism and a lack of technology hinders these efforts.

But I’m only thinking of today, with what we currently have in our social networks. We, with the help of social networks, are capable of so much more, and that’s what I’ll write about in Part 3.

- Ben

Coming in Part 3: Designing the next social network, plus what it could do to solve problems. (did someone say mobile?)

Share This Post!

A few days ago, I wrote the first article in a series on the future of social networks. Last time, I framed it within Web 3.0. If you haven’t read part one, a quick recap of Web 3.0: Web 3.0 (or whatever buzzword you like) is about taking the information we have on the internet, in we are currently sharing with each other, and using and integrating that data in order to solve problems.. At least, that’s how I define Web 3.0.

Facebook, MySpace, and current social networks are great for sharing, but still haven’t been used to solve many problems beyond boredom. By problems, I mean anything that will help save individuals or society save time, money, or energy. I not only mean solving global warming, but the problem of your computer breaking down or your food being too expensive and taking too long to cook.

The Components of a Social Network

First, though, I need to break down the components of a social network. The interaction between the main components of a social network are what make them tick. Robert Scoble, in an article about Facebook not allowing Google to access its information via Google’s FriendConnect, does most of the breakdown for me. And yes, I split information into three components. You interact in completely different ways with each, so it makes sense to me.

The Components

• Your Personal Information: This is the info you willingly put into a profile. Name, age, likes and dislikes, phone number, relationships, work and educational info, etc.
• Your Friends’ Information: This is the info all of your friends put into their profiles. You have access to most of your friends’ information
• Strangers’ Information: This is the info anyone outside of your social graph. Unless you are Facebook friends with me or work at Facebook, you probably don’t have access to this information.
• Your Social Graph: This is perhaps the most important component of a social network. This is the actual map of who your friends are and your relationship to them and to their friends. This is how Facebook knows both you and Jimmy are friends with Nancy, or that you might know Eric. It tells who is 2 degrees away from you (friend of a friend) or 3 degrees away (friend of a friend of a friend). See the picture above? That’s part of my social graph, specifically who is connected to who.
• The Interface: That would be how you see this information. That’s Myspace.com or bebo.com. This also includes things like Developer platforms, so I include Facebook and other 3rd party social networking applications in this component.

It’s the interaction between these components that allows for you to find friends and keep connected. But it’s also the interaction that could allow for an integration of this data in order to solve problems and make life easier.

What can all of that Information do?

Now for the fun part. What can we do with these five components? Let’s try a story example. Say you are a psychologist who is trying to figure out the key characteristics of individuals that become suicidal, especially teenagers and college students. Currently, you take thousands upon thousands of surveys, the answers to which you can never fully rely upon. You pour across data that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars before you come up with your results.

The issues here? The data can’t be fully trusted (someone taking a survey will change answers, even unconsciously, in order to “give” the results they believe the researcher wants), it costs enormous amounts of time and money to get the data, and the same size is still relatively small.

Now, what if you could tap into the likes, dislikes, and behavior patterns of nearly every teenager and college student in the country with a simple program? See where I am getting at yet?

No, it wouldn’t be perfect, since people leave a lot out of their profiles, but this hypothetical researcher would have access to far more information than ever before. Hell, let’s go a step further. You could create an algorithm that highlights a red flag when a user deletes certain information from their profile, adds certain information, changes their behavior with their friends on MySpace and Facebook, etc. It’s not just about the information on a profile: wall posts, the changes to a profile over time, and messaging habits are all important information as well.

I’ve only given you one example. You can collect data with a voluntary Facebook app on energy usage to pinpoint which products need to be made more efficient, you could integrate the information of a social network with your email to prioritize it and filter it, etc. Some of these things are already happening, but a combination of protectionism and a lack of technology hinders these efforts.

But I’m only thinking of today, with what we currently have in our social networks. We, with the help of social networks, are capable of so much more, and that’s what I’ll write about in Part 3.

- Ben

Coming in Part 3: Designing the next social network, plus what it could do to solve problems. (did someone say mobile?)

Share This Post!

A few days ago, I wrote an article asking how you would rebuild and change Facebook given the opportunity. It got me thinking some more, so I wanted to share my thoughts on the future of social networking, Web 3.0, and what role both could play in our lives. Sorry, but I’m doing this one in parts. Otherwise I might be up all night.

So let me start with three statements:

• I believe that social networks have the potential to transform how we manage and run our lives.
• I believe there is the opportunity for a new social network to compete with MySpace and Facebook as the top dog or “the Google” of social networks, but that it may never come to fruition. I think Facebook especially is nimble enough to seize on the opportunities.
• I think the next great social network will be tied strongly with mobile phones and even GPS.

Take my statements as you will, I intend to walk you through my logic in four articles on Web 3.0 and social networks. But we’ve got to start by talking about Web 3.0.

Web 3.0: Making Social Networks Useful

Really quickly, I need to define Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 for you. I’m going to use the Resourceful Idiot definition, because it explains it in terms of progression.

• Web 1.0: Turning “Hard” data (books, movies, opinions) into Digital Data. Examples include Netscape, Geocities, and AOL (they were all ways to post content online or gain access to that data). There were rudimentary ways to share this data (i.e. sending a link to a friend). But we knew we could do it better, so…
• Web 2.0:Taking that Digital Data and finding better ways to share it. Facebook shares data via a social graph, RSS Feeds and News Readers sends news and data from other sources to one location (my Google Reader for example), flickr and YouTube shares photo and video data by integrating the data with other websites and APIs (application programming interface). Basically, we found better ways to share data in Web 2.0
• Web 3.0: Now that we’ve shared the data, let’s do something with it. Let’s figure out trends, let’s integrate two service to make a better one, let’s solve problems with all of this data.

Now how does this relate to social networks? I’m using Facebook as my example. What do you use your Facebook for? Talking to friends, promoting events, seeing what they are up to, wasting time. This is nowhere near the potential of Facebook’s uses, but this is what most users use Facebook for. You’re sharing experiences and data, but you’re certainly not solving the world’s most pressing problems with it, yet (unless you could activism, but it’s only a tiny fraction of how Facebook is used)

So let’s talk about a Web 3.0 Social Network. As I’ve defined it in this article, the Web 3.0 social network not only allows you to share information, but allows you to take that information and do something useful with it. It save you time, it saves you energy, it saves you money, or a combination of the three.

Facebook saves time, energy, and money in some respects: We exert less energy keeping up to date with our friends and we don’t have to spend as much time doing it. But it’s not leveraging the information to, say, figure out where we can go next to network, prioritize our relationships, or use our combined knowledge to save the environment.

The next social network will be able to do all three. The next social network will be able to take all of the information it gathers on you and your friends and will be able to use it to prioritize our lives, save us time, and use our combined knowledge to solve social and world issues.

Facebook and MySpace don’t yet meet these criteria.

Coming in Part 2: How a Web 3.0 social network could transform our lives (with examples!)

Share This Post!

A few days ago, I wrote an article asking how you would rebuild and change Facebook given the opportunity. It got me thinking some more, so I wanted to share my thoughts on the future of social networking, Web 3.0, and what role both could play in our lives. Sorry, but I’m doing this one in parts. Otherwise I might be up all night.

So let me start with three statements:

• I believe that social networks have the potential to transform how we manage and run our lives.
• I believe there is the opportunity for a new social network to compete with MySpace and Facebook as the top dog or “the Google” of social networks, but that it may never come to fruition. I think Facebook especially is nimble enough to seize on the opportunities.
• I think the next great social network will be tied strongly with mobile phones and even GPS.

Take my statements as you will, I intend to walk you through my logic in four articles on Web 3.0 and social networks. But we’ve got to start by talking about Web 3.0.




Web 3.0: Making Social Networks Useful

Really quickly, I need to define Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 for you. I’m going to use the Resourceful Idiot definition, because it explains it in terms of progression.

• Web 1.0: Turning “Hard” data (books, movies, opinions) into Digital Data. Examples include Netscape, Geocities, and AOL (they were all ways to post content online or gain access to that data). There were rudimentary ways to share this data (i.e. sending a link to a friend). But we knew we could do it better, so…
• Web 2.0:Taking that Digital Data and finding better ways to share it. Facebook shares data via a social graph, RSS Feeds and News Readers sends news and data from other sources to one location (my Google Reader for example), flickr and YouTube shares photo and video data by integrating the data with other websites and APIs (application programming interface). Basically, we found better ways to share data in Web 2.0
• Web 3.0: Now that we’ve shared the data, let’s do something with it. Let’s figure out trends, let’s integrate two service to make a better one, let’s solve problems with all of this data.

Now how does this relate to social networks? I’m using Facebook as my example. What do you use your Facebook for? Talking to friends, promoting events, seeing what they are up to, wasting time. This is nowhere near the potential of Facebook’s uses, but this is what most users use Facebook for. You’re sharing experiences and data, but you’re certainly not solving the world’s most pressing problems with it, yet (unless you could activism, but it’s only a tiny fraction of how Facebook is used)

So let’s talk about a Web 3.0 Social Network. As I’ve defined it in this article, the Web 3.0 social network not only allows you to share information, but allows you to take that information and do something useful with it. It save you time, it saves you energy, it saves you money, or a combination of the three.

Facebook saves time, energy, and money in some respects: We exert less energy keeping up to date with our friends and we don’t have to spend as much time doing it. But it’s not leveraging the information to, say, figure out where we can go next to network, prioritize our relationships, or use our combined knowledge to save the environment.

The next social network will be able to do all three. The next social network will be able to take all of the information it gathers on you and your friends and will be able to use it to prioritize our lives, save us time, and use our combined knowledge to solve social and world issues.

Facebook and MySpace don’t yet meet these criteria.

Coming in Part 2: How a Web 3.0 social network could transform our lives (with examples!)

Share This Post!

Today is the official launch of FriendQuilts, a dynamic, useful, and incredible Facebook application that I firmly believe improves the usefulness of Facebook and will catch fire with Facebook users.

Okay, so I’m biased because I’m part of the project. Sue me after you’ve visited the app.

We would like to invite you to participate in the launch of Free Lunch and Sociable Apps newest facebook application, FriendQuilts. This unique online application let’s you show off your digital photos and videos in an exciting and interactive way!

Don’t want to deal with having to upload your stuff? We automatically support Facebook photos, web images, and Youtube videos. Check out some of the screen shots below for details.

.




No registration is required to view and interact with quilts. Customization is simple and easy.

.

Share photo albums around events. Invite your friends to fill in your empty patches. Zoom in to view and play videos at a larger size.



FAQ:

“How much does this cost?”

• FriendQuilts is entirely free.

“What if I don’t have a facebook account?”

• No problem, you can still view and interact with quilts anytime you see them. Although you can always sign up for a facebook account here.

“What about privacy?”

• We provide a variety of privacy settings to meet all needs. Quilts can vary from “Invite Only” to “Public” with the click of a button.

Share This Post!

Today is the official launch of FriendQuilts, a dynamic, useful, and incredible Facebook application that I firmly believe improves the usefulness of Facebook and will catch fire with Facebook users.

Okay, so I’m biased because I’m part of the project. Sue me after you’ve visited the app.

We would like to invite you to participate in the launch of Free Lunch and Sociable Apps newest facebook application, FriendQuilts. This unique online application let’s you show off your digital photos and videos in an exciting and interactive way!

Don’t want to deal with having to upload your stuff? We automatically support Facebook photos, web images, and Youtube videos. Check out some of the screen shots below for details.

.




No registration is required to view and interact with quilts. Customization is simple and easy.

.

Share photo albums around events. Invite your friends to fill in your empty patches. Zoom in to view and play videos at a larger size.



FAQ:

“How much does this cost?”

• FriendQuilts is entirely free.

“What if I don’t have a facebook account?”

• No problem, you can still view and interact with quilts anytime you see them. Although you can always sign up for a facebook account here.

“What about privacy?”

• We provide a variety of privacy settings to meet all needs. Quilts can vary from “Invite Only” to “Public” with the click of a button.

Share This Post!

An article today in the Mashable Blog had me thinking about Facebook and social networking in general. Before I continue with this article, disclaimer: I have interviewed with Facebook for a position in the past and I am partly responsible for Facebook’s biggest PR disaster, the Students Against Facebook News Feed Controversy.

The article, if you don’t care to read it, is basically reaction to a very surprising Mashable poll where over 75% of respondents were, in some way, fed up or annoyed with Facebook as it currently stands. I’ve heard complaints from people stating that profile pages are too cluttered (though a profile redesign addresses this problem) to applications are useless to restrictions on both users an developers are not adequately balanced.

People in the blogosphere have compared Facebook to the next AOL (they once had a great business model and all the momentum and then poof!) or the next Myspace (spammy and losing usefulness). Though I think a lot of these comparisons are unfair and unfounded, there’s a reason these comparisons are appearing in the first place. Expectations for Facebook are lofty. It has been collecting the best talent of Silicon Valley, including former top Google Engineer Ben Ling, former VP of Online Sales Sheryl Sandberg, and most recently, former Google VP for Public Relations Elliot Schrage, drawing comparisons as “the next Google.”

That’s a lot of damn comparisons.

So I thought I’d go through a brain exercise: If you could dismantle Facebook and rebuild it, what would you do? Yes, I’m basically asking you to envision a new social network, but go from the basis of Facebook’s goal: to create a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers and to facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph (aka the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections)

Here’s some of my initial thoughts. I’ll write a more complete post with more complete ideas:

• Make it tougher from the start to create “spammy” Facebook applications. There needed to be fewer, higher quality applications or a better way to weed them out. A lot of users are now trained to just click “ignore.” I don’t know how you can untrain people: changing habits is one of the most difficult things to do in business.
• Divide it more into two uses: personal and business. The business social network LinkedIn is on a roll and gaining traction. There’s a ton of opportunity in this area still. Facebook friend lists weren’t enough (though I appreciate it very, very much); there needed to be a business networking system in place (and still needs to be).
• On Friend Lists, I wish I had had the option of separating my friends into “degrees of friends”. Some are far closer than others: I wish I could choose that at the start. That would allow me to organize how I interaction multiple levels. I could only Facebook chat with my First and Second degree contacts, for example.
• True email from the social network. Integrate receiving your gmail or other emails into a well-developed email system until it became more robust. If you could link emails to people, you could know more about your history with them.
• Tracking of your history with an individual. I’d love to know when I became friends with a person, what we have done, and where we may continue to connect. (a Fb application probably already does this, matching interests, but see my first point on what has happened to apps.)

Damn, I need to think about this some more. I sure as hell can’t build a social network (yet: there’s a reason I’m learning PHP programming after all), but I sure as hell can design, promote, and operate one.

Maybe I’ll just do that. Expect another post in a few days. In the meantime, Go visit my new blog on the recession.

- Ben

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An article today in the Mashable Blog had me thinking about Facebook and social networking in general. Before I continue with this article, disclaimer: I have interviewed with Facebook for a position in the past and I am partly responsible for Facebook’s biggest PR disaster, the Students Against Facebook News Feed Controversy.

The article, if you don’t care to read it, is basically reaction to a very surprising Mashable poll where over 75% of respondents were, in some way, fed up or annoyed with Facebook as it currently stands. I’ve heard complaints from people stating that profile pages are too cluttered (though a profile redesign addresses this problem) to applications are useless to restrictions on both users an developers are not adequately balanced.

People in the blogosphere have compared Facebook to the next AOL (they once had a great business model and all the momentum and then poof!) or the next Myspace (spammy and losing usefulness). Though I think a lot of these comparisons are unfair and unfounded, there’s a reason these comparisons are appearing in the first place. Expectations for Facebook are lofty. It has been collecting the best talent of Silicon Valley, including former top Google Engineer Ben Ling, former VP of Online Sales Sheryl Sandberg, and most recently, former Google VP for Public Relations Elliot Schrage, drawing comparisons as “the next Google.”

That’s a lot of damn comparisons.

So I thought I’d go through a brain exercise: If you could dismantle Facebook and rebuild it, what would you do? Yes, I’m basically asking you to envision a new social network, but go from the basis of Facebook’s goal: to create a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers and to facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph (aka the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections)

Here’s some of my initial thoughts. I’ll write a more complete post with more complete ideas:

• Make it tougher from the start to create “spammy” Facebook applications. There needed to be fewer, higher quality applications or a better way to weed them out. A lot of users are now trained to just click “ignore.” I don’t know how you can untrain people: changing habits is one of the most difficult things to do in business.
• Divide it more into two uses: personal and business. The business social network LinkedIn is on a roll and gaining traction. There’s a ton of opportunity in this area still. Facebook friend lists weren’t enough (though I appreciate it very, very much); there needed to be a business networking system in place (and still needs to be).
• On Friend Lists, I wish I had had the option of separating my friends into “degrees of friends”. Some are far closer than others: I wish I could choose that at the start. That would allow me to organize how I interaction multiple levels. I could only Facebook chat with my First and Second degree contacts, for example.
• True email from the social network. Integrate receiving your gmail or other emails into a well-developed email system until it became more robust. If you could link emails to people, you could know more about your history with them.
• Tracking of your history with an individual. I’d love to know when I became friends with a person, what we have done, and where we may continue to connect. (a Fb application probably already does this, matching interests, but see my first point on what has happened to apps.)

Damn, I need to think about this some more. I sure as hell can’t build a social network (yet: there’s a reason I’m learning PHP programming after all), but I sure as hell can design, promote, and operate one.

Maybe I’ll just do that. Expect another post in a few days. In the meantime, Go visit my new blog on the recession.

- Ben

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I wanted to get in a quick post to say that my blog on the economic slump and recession has launched. If you haven’t visited it yet, here’s the link:

Buck the Slump

I need your feedback (and maybe your writing) as I craft out the direction of Buck the Slump.
- Ben

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I wanted to get in a quick post to say that my blog on the economic slump and recession has launched. If you haven’t visited it yet, here’s the link:

Buck the Slump

I need your feedback (and maybe your writing) as I craft out the direction of Buck the Slump.
- Ben

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Since the collapse of Bear Stearns and even before, many of us have been bracing for an economic downturn or, more seriously, a recession. Let me not that we are NOT in a recession yet. It takes two quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t had that yet. But there’s no doubt the economy has slowed down and unless those tax rebates we got perform some miracles, we’re going to have to deal with the issue for a while.

This is why I am launching a new website and blog on Monday, May 5th, called Buck the Slump. It is a blog on the recession and how to better succeed within it. The side images are screenshots from the website. The first one is an article page; the second one is the job board, where people can search for jobs or submit them.

I encourage you to visit Buck the Slump’s About page and learn more about what the blog will cover. I have some help, though I will be the main writer. I am looking for guest writers and promotional help. The blog is about community, and it won’t succeed in its goal to provide support and analysis in regards to the economic downturn without it.

So I’m giving you a sneak peek now. Please, tell me what you think about the design, the layout, the topics, and any bugs or issues you find. I am going to be writing content all of this weekend for the launch while I juggle my other three major projects (Novel, FriendQuilt/FreeLunch, and the GMAT. Trust me, I’ve become a master of the art of the multitask).

Tell me your opinions on the project! I’ll be reaching out for help soon: I am going to make this successful, but I can’t (and don’t want to) do it alone.
- Ben

Share This Post!

Since the collapse of Bear Stearns and even before, many of us have been bracing for an economic downturn or, more seriously, a recession. Let me not that we are NOT in a recession yet. It takes two quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t had that yet. But there’s no doubt the economy has slowed down and unless those tax rebates we got perform some miracles, we’re going to have to deal with the issue for a while.

This is why I am launching a new website and blog on Monday, May 5th, called Buck the Slump. It is a blog on the recession and how to better succeed within it. The side images are screenshots from the website. The first one is an article page; the second one is the job board, where people can search for jobs or submit them.

I encourage you to visit Buck the Slump’s About page and learn more about what the blog will cover. I have some help, though I will be the main writer. I am looking for guest writers and promotional help. The blog is about community, and it won’t succeed in its goal to provide support and analysis in regards to the economic downturn without it.

So I’m giving you a sneak peek now. Please, tell me what you think about the design, the layout, the topics, and any bugs or issues you find. I am going to be writing content all of this weekend for the launch while I juggle my other three major projects (Novel, FriendQuilt/FreeLunch, and the GMAT. Trust me, I’ve become a master of the art of the multitask).

Tell me your opinions on the project! I’ll be reaching out for help soon: I am going to make this successful, but I can’t (and don’t want to) do it alone.
- Ben

Share This Post!