Read Write Web is appalled (as are we) at the news that apparently 29% of web using types have bought something as a result of spam email. Can this be true?

I’ve finished the opening paragraph with a question that I can’t actually answer. Nevertheless, it’s the only response viable to such a claim. What’s worse is that RWW have unearthed further research that suggests the percentage is on the rise!

Did you know that roughly 150 billion spam emails are sent everyday? I guess it’s like that Lost Boys line about Michael not liking rice, “how could a billion Chinese people be wrong?” When you are talking those sorts of numbers it has to work at some level, we’re at about 25 spam messages for every person on the planet.

What’s worrying is that RWW writer Marshall Kirkpatrick could be close to the mark with his conclusion that if this latest report is to be believed, then people want spam. If this is the case then I guess I’ll be refusing Viagra, money from Nigerian princes/Iraqi senators and the opportunity to see [insert female celebrity name] doing [insert sex act] for the foreseeable future. Worse luck.

Posted by Sam C at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, so you’re in New York and you’re hurting. You just got to get to a bathroom, or the world as you know it may end. Fear not, whip out the mobile and jump on Diaroogle.

The odd named website site follows the same premise as MizPee, unbelievably there are two sites (in fact probably more) dedicated to the task. If you are still unsure, then ‘that task’ is to direct you to a ‘decent’, and for the sake of my reputation we’ll stick with the American terminology, bathroom. In Diaroogle’s own words the site is for, “… the discerning, on-the-go defecator who is brave enough to use a public bathroom, but still demands a hygienic and private bathroom experience. It is also a community authored database of New York toilets.” Eloquent and succinct.

What a site like Diaroogle shows is that geo-tagging social interaction is trying to push itself into a more mainstream arena for the casual web user, arguably be useful, more useful in fact that the usual alternatives. Or, maybe I’ve delved to deep and in fact some alec simply came up with the name and attached a site to it…

Posted by Sam C at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Pingdom using Google Insight data on regional trends. Cool mapping of searches for the most prominent social networking sites.

http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=336

On a sillier front, check out the importance of 'The Hoff' to Estonians or America's cheeseburger fascination.

Posted by Mike Davison at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you want to embrace the passionate then you could do a lot worse than getting involved in a niche social network.

Sneakerplay is a social network like any other, you have a profile, you hook up with your pals, upload pictures, let everyone know what you’re listening to and maintain a status among other things. The difference is that it’s entirely designed to cater for the sneaker freaker, those with a love of all things trainer related.

Whatever the brand, whatever the craze, or whatever the niche, it is likely that somewhere on the web there’ll be a group of connected individuals discussing that very subject with knowledge, insight, enthusiasm and most importantly passion. Sneakerplay is evidence of this. And the key? These people will share an appreciation of wider themes, in the case of Sneakerplay this could vary from design to music, fashion to subculture, niche doesn’t necessarily mean narrow.

Posted by Sam C at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the Orwell Diaries; The Orwell Prize will be serialising them as a blog, opening up the author to those yet to read his most personal writing.

Each entry will be published online exactly 70 years after it was originally penned by Orwell. And they mean everything, August 10^th’s entry, “Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.” Besides following the meteorological concerns of Orwell during his recuperation in Morocco after being shot in the neck, his opinion on the world’s descent into war is also documented.

Does the presentation of Orwell’s diary in a social media friendly format have any effect on the way we read, and subsequently digest the work? I think this is worth considering should you begin to follow the daily musings throughout 2008 and beyond of a literary giant who died over 58 years ago.

Struggling to keep up is arguably part of the deal for those at the exposed edge of social media. Then, once submerged one must find the time to invest. Attention is equal to reward, hopefully. Reacting to such a scenario is Rafe Needleman, Webware contributor and current sinker, in the wild and varied sea of micro-blogging.

The cry for help, Save me from Twitter clones is one that is easy to understand. Each time Rafe jumps into a new and ever so slightly different micro-blogging experience he ends up “mad”. Why? Because one can’t interact across all the venues conveniently, meaning that connections are left to falter.

To get to the basis of the trouble, and the potential trouble Rafe sees with the solutions he suggests, head to the article. Although Twitter dominates, the pulls of difference offered by the latest micro-blogging variations (Check Kwippy, Identi.ca, and Plurk) and the initial connections made within these sites are not something Rafe, or any individual will want to give up out of hand. Something needs to be done!

Rafe notes the ‘not ideal’ status of the two fixes he suggests, linking accounts and multi-posting, “Here's the real problem with these solutions: Neither allows true participation in all the services at once”. A point that is entirely valid as frustrated end users are left to wait for a work around.

Posted by Sam C at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

RWW has, courtesy of writer Corvida, put together three ‘cool sites’ that allow you to bookmark all the hip imagery you pass your eyes over while travelling cyberspace. Why does no-one call the interweb cyberspace anymore? As she points out, the web is evolving, just like our surfing habits and the race is on for venues to serve these preferences. And these three are doing just that.

Vi.sualize.us, you see what they’ve done with the URL? Very clever. Corvida decribes it as a “Delicious for images”. A more than fair assessment and add in the options of embedding latest bookedmarked images to your blog and subscribing to a pals Vi.sual.us RSS and away you go.
 

As an early-to-post bookmarking site for images alone, Ffffound! is presented simply, like a blog in fact. Invite-only means that you can act like an art snob, always fun, and as you bookmark more the site starts providing recommendations specific to you. How artificially intelligent.

Finally Corvida gets to We Heart It, a site perused by myself with a modicum of regularity. Nothing gets past her, highlighting that We Heart It is basically an attractive Ffffound! This is no bad thing, however, I mean we’re talking pretty pictures, aesthetics are our thing!

Got a favourite? Has Corvida missed it off? Then let us know…

Posted by Sam C at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My Yearbook is a social networking site aimed squarely at teens and despite its rather shameful tagline of ‘You’ve Got Friends’, it is popular. In fact, if social networks were like the cliques at school, My Yearbook would be the outsider upstart that defies his younger age by maintaining a cool demeanour. It’s the Ferris Bueller of the social web.

The aesthetics of the site are some what contradictory to the stretched metaphor I’ve employed above; it is brash and gaudy, similar in colour clash to anything sponsored by T4. However, it’s on the money for its audience, literally. Announced yesterday was the news of $13 million venture capital raised to “develop new services for its members and continue to drive revenue”. Yep, that’ll certainly help.

Although it is not in the same class as MySpace or Facebook, it is making a move. Pushing toward 8 million members, courting new sign-ups everyday numbering in the tens of thousands, and employing partnerships with the Teen Choice Awards, for example, My Yearbook is mobilising. Backed with a bag full of cash and the power of youth, which isn’t a bad combination at all.   

Via Webware.  

Posted by Sam C at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So sung The Vikings in Monty Python’s infamous Spam skit, but for the majority of us with office, home and small business email accounts across the county, we’re seeing a whole heap more spam on the virtual menu.

“Kyle our specially designed replics [sic] look exactly like their highly expensive brand prototypes” proudly announces one email (addressed to sam@...). “Bright light, big titties and with your new enlarged tool, you will be the talk of the town” promises another. The offers are endless, the irritation more so!

And according to researchers from security firm Sophos, spam “now accounts for more than 96 percent of emails” and worse still, “hackers are now using social networking sites and mobile phones to spread junk mail”. A problem MySpace has encountered for many months – and one to which Facebook is beginning to succumb too. Sophos again: “Corporations are now facing the fact that only one in 28 emails is legitimate”. Ouch!

The more I think about it though, looking back at the wide-eyed youngster who baulked at his first offer of ‘FREE XXX’ filtering through to ones first hotmail account, right through to the first time you were contacted by the ‘President of Burundi’s daughter’ offering you $489,000,000 – spam has always been a problem – and I can only see it continuing, despite all of our best attempts.

So is the answer to develop a sense of humour as we spend the first 20 minutes of every day deleting “No Pumps! No Surgery! No Exercises!” Or have you found a truly infallible method or service for entirely eradicating junk emails. Pray tell all….

Via The Metro

Posted by Sam C at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gigaom’s Alistair Croll has written a post on Google’s Lively, and in doing so offers a intriguing proposition – the possibility of Google as a realtor (or estate agent depending on which side of the Atlantic you happen to reside).

Although Lively, as Alistair points out, enters a market that is seemingly flooded leaving its only real differential being that it’s a Google baby, there are possibilities. Especially when the Google well studded stable is considered.

Primarily there is advertising, Lively offers wall space. A space that can support social advertising, generally a medium that is considered more effective than the regular chaff one must traverse on a daily basis. Alistair also mentions the ability to purchase via Googlebase and Checkout, but it is Google Earth and SketchUp that are getting his cogs whirring.

Combining the two, as many have already done, the selling of virtual real estate (an interesting oxymoron of feasibility) is not a massive leap away. The scenario used to illustrate the situation by Alistair, involving Trump Tower, may be a little flippant, but gives you the idea.

So what are we to take away from this? Lively may not be the most incisive thing Google have ever done, but united with an advertising model and Google Earth, it could become a holy trinity of cash for the interweb giant…

Posted by Sam C at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Swurl aggregates social media presence, functioning under the same guise as FriendFeed, to name just one of the current options for getting your online life in one place. What makes the recently launched (in beta) Swurl a slightly different proposition in the space, is that it pulls everything together in the form of a blog.

You can see what it all looks like through this link to the blog of one of Swurl’s founders, Ryan. Be sure to click on the timeline tab on the header, which shows off the feature of being able to filter in social media activity from the past, all of which is offered up for viewing in calendar format.

Of course this is social media, and therefore you need to be able to include your pals by definition, and Swurl does this by allowing you to create a feed of all their activity too, Ryan’s is here.

Currently with 19 services able to be sucked into a Swurl blog, including those you’d expect, Youtube, Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter, Flickr etc. there is a far reach of usability as diversity can, depending on your own integration into the social netscape, reign supreme. Style Sheets can also be altered giving your piece of Swurl that unique look.

There appears to be a fair amount of activity in terms of people getting on board, and from initial impressions of the service and the site itself, it is easy to see why. However, one reservation would be the number of services that can be aggregated. Even though the big names are there, Swurl’s 19 is less than half of what FriendFeed currently harvests content from. Is this enough for the hardcore social media trend setter?

Posted by Sam C at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tripwolf has launched in a public beta format. What is Tripwolf? It’s a social travel guide that allows users to get together and create trips, while offering features that make investigating possible destinations a breeze.

It is also possible to use a drag and drop feature with the places of interest on the site to create printable pdf files that function as your own travel guides. A nice idea, but I am as of yet unconvinced of its success.

An attitude that is arguably applicable to the entire site. Although comprehensive in many ways, pulling in data from Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia among others, it feels a little surplus to requirements. This is probably a harsh assessment, especially since they have a groovy logo and name, and incidentally, are backed ($1.2 million) by MairDumont the travel guide publisher, an announcement made in conjunction with the launch. It’s as with most things, a case of time and in Tripwolf's case specifically, how ‘hungry for travel’ the social media savvy are.

Posted by Sam C at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Social applications are where things are at, well to degree at least. And despite this, many would still suggest that when it comes to business models, the social application market is yet to demonstrate one that is tried and tested.

Now, whether this is the case is an argument for another day. As RockYou, the company behind many apps, notably a host of Facebook and OpenSocial efforts has just tipped its cap and filled it with £35 million in venture capital. This hefty cash injection (I doubt it is in actual cash) will be spent on additional tools and services, increasing the company’s already dominant position in the market.  It is even being speculated that the “current momentum” will see RockYou becoming a top 10 internet property in a relatively short amount of time.

Via WebWare

Posted by Sam C at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What with recent downtime on everyone’s* favourite micro-blogging site Twitter, we thought we’d bring you yet another site designed for keeping in touch with 140 character sized slices of life.

Readers meet Plurk, micro-blogging with a prefix and karma. The prefix can be any number of words from ‘says’, ‘wants’, ‘hates’, etc. So you could say, 1000heads ‘loves’ social media, for example. Karma is a little bit more complicated, and quite a nice touch at that. It is a score out of 100 calculated on a variety of activities and interactions that you undertake within the Plurk world. The better Plurker you are, the better your karma. It is arguably nothing more than a ploy to keep you coming back, though if it is, then it’s a good one.

Want to see your life on the line? The horizontal Plurking time line that is… Then head to Plurk and see what you think.

*Not necessarily accurate…

Posted by Sam C at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ReadWriteWeb has taken a stand and begun to wade through the ever rising tide of Social Media venues, apps and tools that want to connect you. At the centre of this discussion is speculation on when we’ll have that one site/app that’ll pull our Social Media personas together.

With so much out there, the lost at sea sensation is always a mere step behind you when it comes to being net social. RWW’s post explores this battle to stay afloat as new start ups vie with latest trends for your online networking attention.

Posted by Sam C at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As a response to the excellent BrandTag, Jane of Dear Jane Sample blog came up with the clever idea of presenting her daily routine – using only brand logos.

It is a concept-and-a-half, and surprisingly accurate and easy to read with each logo being so easily associated with a particular activity, there is no difficulty in understanding exactly what Jane has been up to. There seems to be one error however, as I’m not entirely sure which brand is represented by a Cannabis leaf, something brought up by the mass of comments.

Posted by Sam C at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With a badge for each and every social bookmarking site an option, avoiding the bottom of your post looking like the arm of a dedicated boy scout is a concern that must be addressed by the discerning blogger.

This is a problem that Aza Raskin decided to address, and has done so rather successfully by all accounts. Rather than selecting a choice few or go the whole nine yards and represent everything available, both of which risk the alienation of a proportion of readers, Raskin created a workable solution for everyone. A piece of JavaScript that is able to tell where your blog readers have been recently, and in light of the information it digs out, present suitable badge options.

It works on the same bit of clever stuff that makes a link you’ve been to previously change colour, so you know where you’ve been, as you fly from one corner of the webosphere to the other. It is interesting and inventive stuff, and available at his site.

Via RWW

Posted by Sam C at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Zombies are registering highly on the popular horror-monster hierachy and as such are over-running the film industry in a similar manner to which they dominated a certain, well-used social network. However, there is no such zombie-fatigue as witnessed within facebook occurring in the moving picture business.

It is maybe this continuing interest that has encouraged Lost Zombies to risk the merger of flesh-eating undead with Social Media once again. Functioning as a social network, the site encourages users to provide evidence, in the format of uploaded content, of the existence of zombies. Once enough ‘evidence’ is collected then a feature length documentary will be produced to inform the masses of the holocaust around the corner. Personally, I can’t think of a better reason to join an online community. The world needs to be warned!

Posted by Sam C at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mashable has been talking about mothers online and how the ever-expanding internet user base is a demographic in constant flux. Specifically, new born babies entering the world in a blaze of social media glory. An example is Mena Trott’s dedication to the art of blogging as she updated her readers via her mobile phone from the hospital as she gave birth. Arguably, this is an extreme case in point; Mena is after all a founder of the new media start up, Six Apart.

What the piece does illustrate though, is that habitual users of sites including Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and many other Social Media spaces are entering adulthood with no let up on the necessity to stay connected.

Posted by Sam C at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in the gloom of February we featured on this very blog the glorious We Feel Fine. An excellent example of frivolous, yet brilliant Social Media utilisation, the site allowed you to spend longer than you intended gauging the emotion of the blogosphere.

Well, in its wake comes Twistori, a simple, aesthetically pleasant site that pulls in tweets relating to six specific expressions of desire. Meaning if you put ‘I’ before love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish, someone on the other side of the world wide web may see your tweet scrolling gently upwards the Twistori page. A favourite quote lifted only a few minutes ago, “I think yogurt gives me an asthma reaction…”

Posted by Sam C at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Naming conventions for the recent spate of web 2.0 start-up companies have resulted in some weird and wonderful brands popping up all over the place, inventing words and forsaking vowels with impunity. While it is tempting to regard companies such as Flickr, Joost, Twing, and the rest as symbolising the cool, trendy generation of internet entrepreneurs, the simple fact is that they are reacting to a common issue encountered by online businesses – all the good domain names have already been snatched up.

For anybody in this position, the options are twofold; they can either take advantage of this web 2.0. company name generator and reinvent themselves as Zoomjam or something, or they can keep their chosen name and compromise with a potentially clumsy and less intuitive URL.

The issue then becomes how to get visitors to your disastrous, incomprehensibly-addressed website. With the information bombardment suffered by consumers these days, you can hardly expect them to remember their level of debt, let alone every web address that passes their way. Look no further than the Far East for your solution, where the clever trend is to advertise search terms rather than full domain names.

The benefits of offering memorable and intuitive keywords to replace long URLs are obvious, and by using search terms you can even direct people to specific pages on the site without needing to further complicate things by showing ‘slash’ or sub-domains. Of course, the use of search terms sound like an easy answer, but the possibilities offered pave the way for the future of advertising to put even greater importance on SEO and which search terms current visitors are already using to visit your site.

For more on the this head to here…

Posted by Sam C at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With aggregating yourself online becoming an ever more desirable activity in which to partake, it is well worth investigating FriendFeed. The site allows all your updates across the ever-expanding mass of social networks to be collated within your ‘friendfeed’ that all your pals can subsequently subscribe to. This basically means they are far less likely to miss that Flickr update of your cat riding an invisible bike.

FriendFeed is also likely to alter that social network throng having made available its API. If as many developers get involved as were seemingly calling for it to be made available in the first instance then FriendFeed may be appearing in new places, on new platforms and in varying forms.

Posted by Sam C at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The popular micro-blogging platform has been taken as the core of Ze Frank’s latest online escapade, a Twitter war.

Named Colour Wars the concept despite being barely conceived, received a swell of interest and people eager to take part. A few of which exist in this very office! The current challenge is a bad-ass ro-sham-bo based rumble that is yet to be resolved.

Once the throws of rock, paper and scissors have been dealt and a victorious team announced, the challenge will begin anew, completely reborn. As what? Who knows? And that’s why we love it!

Posted by Sam C at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft Research during the month of June 2006 anonymously tracked all messenger activity. After analysing the data, it is apparently clear that we are all much more connected than one could possible imagine!

Actually, we’re about as connected as we thought previously. It is however nice to have it confirmed. Six degrees of separation is about spot on, with Microsoft’s bespectacled brain heavy types discovering from the 45 terabytes of information they skimmed that we, are on average, 6.6 steps from any other messenger user.

It is likely we are, if anything, more connected than this, as the study only takes into account MSN users and therefore omits other IM clients. The Mashable article covering this has a link through to the actual report should you feel like thoroughly enveloping yourself in statistics lending weight to the concept of a global village.

Posted by Sam C at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

THINK! and Transport London decided to mine the potential of viral marketing for their latest campaign attempting to get viewers to consider how aware they are as a driver.

If you are yet to see the campaign that speaks with a reserved assurance then it would be unfair of us to discuss it anymore, instead you should simply take the test.

Posted by Sam C at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If being nice to others just isn’t your angry bag, and you are thinking that social networks offer no purpose for your miserly ways, you are wrong.

Mashable have collected the best anti-social networks at your disposable to express hatred, name enemies and should you be in the mood, declare holy war on an individual. Go ahead, turn your negativity to action, deride proactively!

Posted by Sam C at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Riding the mobile social network wave is something that is proving particularly popular right now, and LinkedIn is endeavouring to place itself on the crest.

So how would one describe the untethered web? Probably like LinkedIn’s European managing director Kevin Eyres - “quick” and “convenient”. It’s a good place to start.

Posted by Sam C at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Times recently featured an article highlighting that in a particularly short period of time the amount of female net users has grown considerably. And while the increase is not unexpected, some of the statistics certainly are.

Paul Glazowski at Mashable points out the most interesting, such as the fact 70% of girls are operating a social network account compared to only 56% of boys. Or that 35% of the female demographic are operating a blog, something a minor 20% of males partake in.

If Paul’s slim line rundown isn’t enough then we suggest landing on the Times article for some more assessment and detail on the altering gender topography of net users.

Posted by Sam C at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Daniel Steinbock, a doctoral student in Design and Education from Stanford, has developed TagCrowd. The site gives anyone the ability to generate a tag cloud from a slab of text, a specific document or, and most interestingly, a URL.

Entering the URL of a blog for instance, will immediately return a tag cloud, visual representation of the most common terms of language the site uses. It is a feature that, as far as Word Of Mouth marketing is concerned, will validate TagCrowd as useful tool. 

Posted by Sam C at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Never able to find what you need in a forum? Never able to find the right forum where the conversation relevant to you might be taking place? Then Twing could be your thing!

The beta release of the new forum search website will not only fire you into the heart of discussion on your desired hot topic, but also seek out the most fast and furious communities when it comes to growth and activity. Presented well with an easy to use interface, Twing is great way to find the forum for you.

Posted by Sam C at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)