Last week I interviewed Mark Pincus of Zynga gaming network. At the time, Zynga was the largest gaming network on the social networks. This week the tides have turned with Social Gaming Network’s acquisition of Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block. While these aren’t necessarily games they are some of the most active applications on Facebook.

Just like Zynga, Social Gaming Network has built their own toolbar which sits at the top of their games and helps distribute users across their network. The platform enables any developer to become part of their network and benefit from some of the traffic being generated by the network as a whole. Currently Zynga and Social Gaming network sit at the top of the food chain but there are a number of other competitors that are joining the race.

While it will be extremely challenging for new entrants to compete thanks to the decrease in application virality, an evolution of gaming technologies could easily bring about new competitors. Social Gaming network is also rumored to be raising another round of funding. It will be interesting to see how this space pans out.

An article posted today in Popular Mechanics asks if social may end up defeating search. Are they suggesting that social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others could actually defeat a multi-billion dollar company like Google? Yes and I completely agree. How do I know this? Well I found this article through my Twitter feed thanks to Alice Marshall. Honestly, over the past few days a large percentage of my news sources have come through Twitter.

Is there anything wrong with this? Andrew Keen (who I’ve been blabbing about for most of the day) would argue that yes there is a problem with this. The lack of editorial oversight is damaging. When I’m linked to a source that has been processed by an editor, I see nothing wrong with it. What’s wrong is when our group of people is made up of a network of uninformed sources. Thankfully, I am networked through a group of people that I perceive as informed individuals.

The article states that “what may turn out to be the strongest signal of all is the footprint you make with your online identity.” I couldn’t agree more. Just take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk’s book which has become the 85th most popular book on Amazon in under 24-hours all because of word of mouth. Whether you like it or not, Gary has one of the strongest digital footprints on the web.

What we want to avoid is mob rule and while we do occasionally see mobs result (as took place at the Sarah Lacy/Zuckerberg interview), much of the time the collective is more then happy to share information in a rational way. If we build our networks large enough we can leverage the power of them to find solutions for us. Don’t have a large enough network yet? No worries, you can leverage one of your trusted friends that has an effective network. That’s already how hiring takes place, why not use it for finding information?

Adam Smith Was Right, Specialization is Key
Adam Smith suggested that economic growth is rooted in division of labor. In the digital world, that division is rapidly becoming the specialization of knowledge. I mean aren’t most of us already information workers anyways? If we all specialize in a specific topic, we can each provide others with the information they are looking for. I’ll ask Gary Vaynerchuk for a good wine and ask Frank Gruber for the best tool to install polls on my blog. While this works much of the time there are a number of conflicts which arise from social knowledge sourcing:

• Challenge of balancing pleasure and work - One of the primary conflicts in an information age where we leverage specialized social knowledge is the conflict of socializing for work and socializing for pleasure. We’ve already begun to see this conflict arise and you can watch it take place all day on Twitter.
• Plethora of disinformation - It is all too often that we cite one source as our source for information and use it to make judgements. This is because we assume that the other end performed due diligence. I would argue that this is easily defeated in a world of social knowledge by simply having multiple social knowledge experts on the same topic that can give us multiple references.
• Lack of access - If you aren’t plugged into the network (as most of us are), you aren’t going to be able to easily find information. For this I think of my friend who’s dad gets all of his sources via the newspaper and library books. While perfectly acceptable and most likely accurate sources (since they went through an editorial process), he does not realize how quickly he could access certain information. Luckily anybody with a phone will have access, they just need to be aware of services.
• Details - There are a bunch of other issues that need to be worked out and unforseen issues that will arise.

So is social already beginning to substitute search for you? Do you think we will get the majority of our information through social instead of search?

This afternoon I received a new twitter follower that goes by the name “mediaexpert”. I have posted a Twitter screenshot of her profile below (if it’s even a her). By the time I checked out her profile, I realized that she had already added and interacted with local D.C. social media expert, Doug March. Now I may be an aggressive self-promoter but this person takes the cake. I have seen a number of people like this but Ms. “Social Media Expert” has absolutely no idea what social media is about.

She has posted a background image on her Twitter profile of practically every “Web 2.0″ startup she could find. One of her tweets states that she is giving a presentation on “what social media can do for organizations.” Whoever she is, she should definitely not be the one advising organizations as she is going to walk them down a plank. Her horrible profile doesn’t stop at her background image.

She fails to place her name on her profile, she links to Myspace.com as her website (trust me it’s not … it’s owned by a small company called News Corp) and her bio describes herself as a “social media expert.” As I wrote about this morning, Andrew Keen states how anybody can tout themselves as an expert in today’s age of social media. You just need to be loud and opinionated. All I can say is that I feel bad for whomever she is speaking to next week (if she really is).

While I have been known for aggressively promoting myself, I have at least personally met at one point most of the contacts in my social media life. If I haven’t, I have reached out to them directly and privately to learn more about them. Social media is not about counting your friends on Facebook or Twitter, it’s about making connections with real people. If you came up and poked me without me knowing you, I would most definitely remember not to interact with you in the future.

Go say hi to the social media expert on Twitter. I definitely hope she is not the future of this industry.

Two nights ago I had the opportunity to speak on a panel held by the entrepreneurial club at the Kogod School of Business. Big thanks to Robert Neelbauer for putting the event together. We had the opportunity to speak with a large group of entrepreneurs at the university and it was the first time that I was involved in a local university event. Following the event I was engaged in a number of discussions about how universities can play a larger role in building entrepreneurial communities and what role they should play.

Andrew Wright attended the event and told me about some of the challenges he had faced when working with one of the local universities in trying to build engaging events and getting the university to play a larger role in the community. Ultimately there is a conflict of interest that I see at universities. They frequently invest more heavily in the brand name of the university then in the students. Case and point: bringing large keynote speakers that students find it difficult to relate to.

In my own opinion it is best to have local universities involved with the local professional event producers to get jobs for students and to increase the likelihood of students finding mentors. While I’m not quite sure what the role of a local university is, I believe that investing in the students should be a priority over investing in the brand name of a university. When those students become talented individuals in the professional world, it will come back to benefit the university when those individuals return to speak.

How do you think local universities should be involved in building entrepreneurial communities?

Last night I was reading “Cult of the Amateur.” The book discusses how truth is being redefined by the new social technologies that we use daily. Early on in the book the author, Andrew Keen states “it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.”

If you want more details behind the debate, check out the video “The Truth According to Wikipedia.” Much of what is argued make a lot of sense but to say that I have been completely convinced of Andrew Keen’s argument would be inaccurate. There is a valid point made though. At one point editors determined what truth was. You had to get Wired magazine to find out the truth about Technology. Today, Techcrunch and Techmeme are defining what is technology.

The news is now frequently defined by mob mentality and that’s what Techmeme has become. Last night, the big technology news was that Facebook had created a new feature to enable users to share their del.icio.us links, Flickr and Picasa photos and Yelp! reviews. Yes world, today I bookmarked 9 articles via Del.icio.us. Let’s be honest, most of these things don’t matter but when 20 influential people say it does … it does.

Andrew Keen is accurate when he states that the loudest and most opinionated individuals survive. Honestly Andrew Keen may be one of the most opinionated individuals around but he does make a good point. I am a product of this model. I was able to produce a large volume of posts on Facebook and suddenly AllFacebook became the largest blog on Facebook and was at one point one of the top 50 blogs on Techmeme.

What suddenly stuck with me last night was that those individuals at the top of Techmeme are frequently controlling the conversation. Take a look at the Techmeme leaderboard and you’ll see who are the top creators of the conversation that has taken place. The media has become the conversation and the leaders on the Techmeme leaderboard are those that are currently guiding the discussion. Is this wrong? Not necessarily but what if you don’t want to be part of the technology conversation?

Right now you need to use Twitter, Facebook and other resources to determine what other conversation is out there but so far technology, politics and gossip are the primary categories that have benefited (or suffered depending on your perspective) from memefication (I just made up that word). The bottom line is that we want to have interesting stories aggregated around different content and Mixx.com is a perfect example of aggregating diverse information.

The only problem is that it requires everybody “mixxing” their content rather than tracking what people are talking about. Enough of my written diarrhea. My main point here is that the Techmeme effect that we have seen take place over the past couple year or two can only be sustained for so long. People will get tired of “conversing” with the same people and go elsewhere. That’s why there has been so much discussion recently (as there was yesterday) about new alternatives.

Will everybody leave? Not necessarily but once somebody comes close to duplicating the Techmeme technology I could see it rapidly used for other conversations with other participants. Do you think the echo chamber can be defeated? Perhaps my solution of creating more echo chambers doesn’t make as much sense.

My really good friend Gary Vaynerchuk made big announcement today: his book has gone for sale on Amazon. It is now available for pre-order and has hit the top 300 books on Amazon. The goal? To hit the Top 100. If anybody can get their book to the top 100, Gary Vaynerchuk can and it makes a great case study for the impact of social media. The best part is that the book only costs $13.57.

If you want to get an early copy go grab it on Amazon. The most amazing part is just through his announcement on his show today, the book has reached the top 300 on Amazon. I have no idea how good the book is but given Gary’s enthusiasm about wine I can guarantee you that a lot of passion went into the writing of it.

Gary is a great find of mine so I had to help him out and “link it up”. If you don’t know much about Gary then you need to check out his show Winelibrary TV as well as his personal blog Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is one of the most passionate people I know and is a true symbol of social media self-promotion. Check out his video below if you don’t know much about him.

Buddy Media new york based social media company has raised $6.5 million and will be announcing the launch of their new ad network later tonight. This is their Series B financing and consists of Softbank, European Founders Fund, GreyCroft Partners, Ron Conway and Buddy Media’s Series A investors.

Ad Network
Everybody seems to be launching an ad network these days but Buddy Media’s stands out. Their existing client list includes Priceline.com, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch (Sea World, Aquatica, and Bud Light), People.com, InStyle.com, Real Simple, Makeover Solutions, Sherman’s Travel, Campus Tech, FedEx, Readers Digest, Huffington Post, Time Inc. and many others. Participating developers get access to high quality visitors since it is invite only. These are large ad deals that will provide premium advertisers not seen on other networks.

New Financing
This new finance round ads another powerful set of investors to an already all-star lineup (which included Peter Thiel, Howard Lindzon, Mark Pincus and James Altucher). Softbank brings on Eric Hippeau who according to Buddy Media, “was instrumental in SoftBank’s first investment in Yahoo! in 1995. He currently serves on the boards of several public and private companies, including Yahoo!, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Purevideo, Thumbplay, Associated Content, Huffington Post, and Goodmail Systems.”

The European Founders Fund will contribute Alexander, Marc and Oliver Samwer. “Together, they founded Alando, which was sold to eBay, and Jamba!, which they sold to VeriSign.” The remaining investors, Ron Conway and Alan Patricof of GreyCroft also have extremely impressive resumes. Currently, Buddy Media has been one of the top recipients in new rounds of funding since this social platform market opened up last May with the launch of the Facebook platform.

Duncan Riley is reporting that ads began showing up for some users during the Twitterquake last night. While I was not one of the lucky few to receive ads, it may be a sign that ads are soon to come on Twitter. Many have wondered how Twitter would ever generate revenue from their service. Most predicted that ads were the path to profit.

For some reason I’m slightly disappointed by this approach. I guess there aren’t creative ways to generate revenue on the internet anymore. We’re an entire industry that’s advertising supported. While I’m concerned that this isn’t sustainable in the long-term, I wonder how long this will last before the advertising peaks and we all jump the shark. Conversely, as I argued earlier this morning, the real value is in community and Twitter has been successful at building a platform that supports multiple communities.

I guess my disappointment isn’t completely justified. Isn’t e-commerce really the only other way that revenue is generated on the web? This simply supports my concern about how long this will last. Then again, the parties are still going on and we might as well enjoy the current boom in internet advertising! Do you support Twitter adding advertising to your feed? Would you pay to use Twitter?

Update
Alley Insider is reporting that these rumors are completely false. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter was quoted, “We’re not putting ads on Twitter.com. As far as I can tell, a customized background image had some folks confusing and speculating.”

A significant discussion took place over the weekend and continued into yesterday evening. Sarah Perez provides a great write-up of the discussion that took place. This discussion is monumental. For the first time bloggers are becoming concerned about the same thing that media companies have been complaining about for the past 10 years as Napster sparked the beginning of commoditized content. Other sites can take our content and reuse it and ultimately take the conversation elsewhere.

One of the key offenders: Friendfeed. Friendfeed doesn’t stand alone though. Facebook, Digg and numerous other sites have been doing this for years. They take our content and other peoples’ content and offer it as a way to spark conversation on their site, not ours. This is substantial, they provide the venue for conversation to take place and take the content for free. I would argue that the key differentiator between friendfeed and the content creator is the community.

The battle taking place on the web is over community ownership. Ultimately we are members of multiple communities in our lives. If sites can build a community of passionate users around a topic that they are passionate about, then everybody wins. The only challenge is in how that content is leveraged and if the community members benefit from this usage of this new technology. The saying goes around that if we all raise the water level then everybody can float up and everybody benefits.

While I would argue that some peoples’ raft (or whatever flotation device they are using to stay afloat) eventually gets holes punctured in it, most of us get a net benefit. If you want to build value then build a community, don’t simply produce content. That has been the failure of blogs and while breaking news will always attract visitors, it is an unsustainable business. While content has become commoditized, it isn’t completely free. Fortunately though content has been commoditized into different subsets: high quality, medium quality and low quality content (not very original categories, I know).

We will not see the complete commoditization of content as a whole but in the end do you really want to be playing in a commoditized market? I don’t! Are journalists the next farmers? I hope not. Where I foresee the real value is in community. Mainstream media has destroyed this but fortunately thanks to their reach there is time to revive some of what has been lost. If you can become a central node for a community, you win and ultimately all the members benefit.

We are all content producers and we all deserve our fair share of revenue for the commodities we produce. In the whole scheme of things if you are in the content business, you better start building a community because that’s what matters. What are you doing to build community with your content?

While hi5 may not have beat out Facebook for the number one social platform, they have taken the spot of number two. Eric Eldon points out that the hi5 platform has been more successful in attracting users. Rock You, for example, has received a whopping 2 million installations since the launch. Compare this to Myspace where the total number of installations for the top application is just over 100,000. While the hi5 platform doesn’t appear to have launched their application directory yet, the apps have been spreading virally.

hi5 proclaimed that there were unlimited invites for applications at launch hoping to add to their developer base. While there is no word on how many applications have joined the hi5 platform, my guess is that it is still well below 1,000. Eric Eldon also questions the value of many of these applications. Right now there is some debate as to how valuable branded pokes on Facebook and other social networks are. RockYou claims that because millions of users have sent pokes to other users, that there is some marketable value behind all that.

I’d have to see statistics showing that branded pokes have resulted in an increase in sales before I think these marketing campaigns are valuable. As to whether users feel like they have been spammed on hi5, it appears not. Eric Eldon states, “Hi5 has instead come out with a new notification system specifically for applications. This means that there is little risk of users feeling spammed by applications messages, because they can just ignore invites, etc. if they don’t want to deal with it.”

Currently, it is still early in the platform race and it is difficult to declare a winner but hi5 has definitely taken a risk by opening up their platform to make it really viral. MySpace on the other hand has provided practically no viral features aside from displaying in user profiles. Once MySpace opens up their platform a little more, I would look for them to become a viable competitor to Facebook and rapidly surpass hi5.