Last week, Gartner released a report titled “Three Potential Pitfalls of Corporate Social Networking” highlighting that social networking utilities and functionalities aren’t a mature enough technology to make it a definitive business element. The four page, $195 report warns corporate America that “little evidence [exists] that social networking will be as beneficial for businesses as other Web-based communications technology, such as instant messaging.” Woah. That’s a bold statement there, Gartner! Maybe I’m wrong, but all forms of SNS are taking off and creating new perspectives for businesses.

Like Suw Charman did on Corante, I’m going to have to break this down…this time, from the perspective of someone fresh out of college who used SNS each day and also uses SNS to conduct research today in the corporate world.

When you’re dealing with a multi-national company with hundreds of offices, communication between employees can sometimes get muffled. A corporate intranet provides valuable but basic information about an individual (think age/sex/location in the hey-day of AOL chatrooms). Shared virtual workspaces can only offer so much connectivity between someone in New York City and Sydney. In the end, we all want robust, interactive and intimate (yet private) ways to communicate with someone the world over. This takes us to Gartner’s primary misnomer: value comes from connections and NOT content.

Put it this way: if a tree falls in a forest when no one is around, did the tree really fall? In terms of SNS application, the tree represents content; I’m not going to know it exists unless someone tells me about it. I’m going to know about it because an inevitable connection exists. Suw says it best: “The content is very important, but the connections are what distinguish a social network from a broadcast network. Without those connections, there isn’t a network, there’s just lots of people creating content.”

I can’t stress enough that how you interact offline (think cultivating friendships, exchanging ideas and knowledge sharing) is the means to a near-ideal setting for online interaction via a SNS.

Blogs and online journals, where communication shifted from a one-way paradigm to that of many-to-many, were/continue to be a disrupted force in major media. Wikis have reshaped the age-old mentality of closed information sharing.

I use Facebook because it best represents my offline connections. It just so happens that my friends push excellent content my way, whether that means upcoming parties or insightful personal notes. In the case of Facebook (or any other SNS for that matter), content is the by-product of the connection.

Back in September when Techcrunch initially reported about Google’s OpenSocial project, Google’s intention was clear: “Google seems to be planning to add a social layer on top of the entire suite of Google services.” Over the course of the weekend, Google release two relatively significant upgrades to their services: social reader shared items and Google profiles. The two services are extremely basic but are a first step toward a more social Google.

Within Google Reader you can now view each of your friends’ shared items. Google Reader determines who your friends are based on your contacts within Google Talk which also happen to be the same as your Gmail contacts. You can imagine this evolving into a list of your friends’ activities across the web (what photos they’ve uploaded, what friends they’ve added, etc). This is a great service and I have begun reading through my friends’ shared items. It’s also a great way to promote your own content!

The other new feature, Google Profiles, “is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like.” The new profiles will enable you to extend your personal profiles across all Google services including Blogger, Gmail, Google Talk and Orkut. The profile also lets you link to your content which is distributed across the web.

These two new features being offered by Google confirms that they are taking the social web seriously and have not given up. It will be interesting to see how successful Google is at tying together user activities across a disperse set of product offerings into one centralized profile and activity feed.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Shervin Pishevar, the President of Webs.com. Shervin provided a lot of insight into the state of the social web and where it’s going. This interview is a little longer than my previous one but well worth the time. Shervin is helping lead Webs.com as it continues its phenomenal growth. According to Shervin’s bio, Freewebs (one of the Webs.com products), is now the 2nd largest publisher of content on the web. He has an impressive background and is a great person to speak with. Here is my interview with him:

Great news today coming out of eMarketer regarding SNS (Social Networking Services) and ad spend. According to the report, Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage, “social network ad spending is expected to grow by 81%, to $2.2 billion in 2008 from $1.2 billion this year” and “spending [in the US] is projected to rise to $1.6 million in 2008, from $920 million in 2007.”

A large portion of the spend is coming from deals between the two largest SNS properties: Microsoft/Facebook and Google/MySpace.

I’d be interested to see what details and best practices are mentioned for targeted ad spend on SNS within the report. Neither I or famed SNS researcher, danah boyd, have seen relevant evidence to track eyeballs into actions.

Last night, Google announced a new service called “knol,” part Wikipedia and part Mahalo. According to Udi Manber on The Official Google Blog, a “knol” or “unit of knowledge” was designed to act as retainer of authoritative information from trusted authors. Manber goes on to say:

“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.”

Google’s approach to collaborative knowledge sharing is interesting and somewhat different to Wikipedia. (Remember, Wikipedia writers (largely) remain anonymous and open until proven named.) The idea of a completely open, authoritative and relevant information directory has consequences outside of what was originally intended, especially coming from the “pure” and “do-good” Google. Om Malik believes this is a further, definitive step toward a Google monopoly:

“Whether it will be successful or not, remains to be seen. Now if you think about it, knol despite its fancy name is nothing but a classic move by a quasi-monopolist who wants to ensure that they keep getting the raw material (in this case content on knols) for free, so that they can keep selling it at a premium. I stopped believing in Google’s “do no evil” ethos a long time ago….”

But for what it’s worth, the Google kingdom has been righteous and beneficial to many, especially those of the academy. (Think IT support and generous/intuitive email systems across campuses.) Imagine what will happen within the hierarchy of information at a university with the advancement of knols. Students and professors can continue the conversation from the classroom to the knol and then collaborate with others the world over. The knol architecture (as seen here) will offer a robust learning experience that creates a unique social dynamic.

Wikipedia will still be Wikipedia but the knol will become academia’s new best friend.

Thanks you to everyone that was able to attend the Social Times launch event last night. Around 200 people showed up and there were awesome demos from Webs.com, Amnesty Widgets, Why Go Solo, Clearspring, Qloud and Searchles. Also, thank you to each of the sponsors that helped make this event possible:

• Webs.com
• Clearspring
• Amnesty Widgets
• Razoo
• Viget Labs
• Utterz

Unfortunately the projector wasn’t working and I couldn’t have each sponsor’s logo display in rotation. I’m hoping to put up some pictures of the event last night. Unfortunately the photographer didn’t show up and I was left to run around and take pictures with a camera that I couldn’t figure out how to work. The ironic thing was that it was a point and shoot camera!

Again, thank you for showing up and I look forward to hosting other events over the coming year. There will be some really exciting things going on in D.C. and elsewhere as we relaunch the Social Times. Thanks to everybody for your support!

Earlier this week, Geoff Livingston wrote a post about Convergence. Geoff referred to the convergence of marketing, customer service and PR. Not only are those fields converging but there is a rapid convergence of traditional and new media. We learned earlier today that the new Jackass movie will have its premier on the web. This convergence is powerful. Over a week ago I said that we would begin covering the convergence of social technology, advertising and media.

The bottom line here is that many industries are beginning to collide as a direct result of the internet and new social technologies. As communication changes we are going to see this trend continue. The Social Times is a perfect example of this. Over the next month you are going see a significant change take place. We will be redesigning and redeveloping the site to make it comparable to a major media outlet.

There will also be a number of new channels that we are going to add to our lineup. Not only will this cover social technology but we will also expand to cover food and the arts. While our coverage of social technology will continue on a national level, our intial coverage of food and the arts will be limited to D.C. We will also host events pertaining to each channel that we cover. Every area that we cover must be something that can be social!

If you would like to contribute to any of these new channels please let me know. Also, if there is anything else that you would like to see covered by the Social Times, please let us know. Thanks for reading and I look forward to providing you with continuing coverage of news and analysis of the social world.

Evite has just announced the launch of a mobile event planning service. The new service, QuickVite, “allows users to reach out to a group of friends from either their computer or mobile phone and send out a plan simultaneously via both email and text message.” This is a pretty powerful service. If I had all my friends listed on Evite, it would be even more significant. Unfortunately I don’t have my friends listed so I probably won’t be leveraging the new service.

While I won’t be using the service frequently, I did get a chance to check out the service on my Blackberry and it was simple and easy to use. My initial reaction to this announcement was that Facebook should do the same thing. Facebook’s current event system is extremely powerful and is my primary source for discovering upcoming events. Apparently Evite realizes this and “will launch its QuickVite application on Facebook, offering yet another point of entry and convenience for organizing casual get-togethers.”

The main problem with Evite’s Facebook application will be getting enough users onto the application to make it relevant. It’s a battle that must be fought though because Facebook’s event system is now significantly larger than Evite and all other event scheduling sites on the web. Evite is rapidly becoming less significant and Facebook users have witnessed the power of tying their social graph directly into an event management system.

While Evite is rapidly falling behind, this new service puts their service’s feature set about the competition. If you want to check out the new QuickVite service you can access it on your mobile phone from http://m.evite.com.

Anil Dash has posted that as of today Movable Type is now open source. As most other bloggers I have chosen Wordpress for my platform since it is easily customizable and has excellent documentation. Also, creating plugin-ins in PHP is a snap with Wordpress. I have yet to thoroughly analyze Movable Type though and may consider making the move if there is a big upside to switching platforms.

There are already a number of large sites that are leveraging the Movable Type platform including the soon to go public, Huffington Post. I have done installations of both Wordpress and Movable Type for clients and I have to say that Movable Type was always the easier install. Prior to caching plugins provided by Wordpress, I would have recommended Movable Type as a platform for high traffic sites. That’s no longer the case and I always default to Wordpress.

Can you think of any reason to switch to Movable Type aside from their willingness to embrace open standards?

Following up on today’s platform launch of Friendster, Bebo is scheduled to launch their platform tomorrow. Bebo will be announcing a number of partners including the usual suspects: iLike, Last.FM, Vampires, Where I’ve Been, Flixster, Horoscopes by Rock You, My Music by Qloud, Super Comments by Rock You, Likeness, Yahoo Answers, Warbook and more! This platform sounds surprisingly similar to Facebook and even includes one of the most highly critized applications on Facebook: Vampires.

Today’s announcement of the Friendster platform experienced minimal buzz in the blogosphere. In my opinion, much of that is due to the fact that Friendster’s platform is more of a widget platform rather then an actual application platform which the Bebo platform will be. It’s impressive that Bebo has even beat MySpace to launching their platform especially after all the buzz about the impending MySpace launch.

Clearly, all of the competing social networks will launch their own version of the Facebook platform. Expect each of those platforms will roll out in the next 6 to 12 months. According to my sources, the Bebo platform is not an exact duplicate of the Facebook platform and will require adjustments over the coming months. It’s pretty impressive that they’ve been able to get something out so soon with a powerhouse team of launch partners.

Some of the developers I have spoken with are skeptical about the launch tomorrow as changes are being made at the last minute but the PR people have been briefed and are ready to go tomorrow morning. We’ll see how much of an impact this really has.