New year, new president, new administration in the White House, and new focus on technology as an integral aspect of all the changes that lie ahead for President Obama’s term. Just this morning, Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and already we’ve seen some major updates and changes to the White House’s website.

Aside from a new face and a new blog, the administration’s goals for technology have been laid out on a dedicated page within the website. Nothing posted here seems to be surprising or different from what we’ve heard throughout Obama’s presidential campaign in the past year, but it is important to note some of the changes outlined by the new administration.
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A new study from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in the United Kingdom reports that more British parents are using newer technology to stay connected with their children away at school, according to AllHeadlines.

Now, my mother and I weren’t always the best of friends, but while in college I still called her every Sunday afternoon. Back then, I called her on her landline. She rarely used her cell phone and had no idea how to send or receive text messages. Things have changed in the past few years, and my mother now happily embraces her Blackberry, email and LinkedIn. But how much easier would things have been if my mother had been on an online social network when I was in college?
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This weekend I was pondering the existence of many of the niche social networks that exist out on the web. A quick look at the growth in traffic for Ning.com shows that there is a huge demand for sites catering to specialized interests. Can’t all of the discussion that takes place on the niche social networks just as easily take place on a site like Facebook or MySpace? Why do we need to have distinct websites for each of these conversations?

Ultimately even a blog can be a social network in theory since it assists in connecting people but in this instance I am referring specifically to social networking websites that enable users to present public profiles of themselves. My online identity has become so distributed that it is occasionally overwhelming. As we age and obtain new priorities, the time available for socializing via the web decreases dramatically.

Wouldn’t it be much more useful to keep all of our conversation contained within one location? It would make for easier management and better organization. While I know that this won’t be happening anytime soon (this is the internet, a distributed platform), perhaps we will see conversation consolidation. Do you think there really is a need for niche social networks? Are you an avid participant of any niche social networks?

Last night Ian Kennedy of MyBlogLog sent out an email to users notifying them of new features coming to their website. This tool will automatically aggregate all of your publicly available information on sites such as Last.fm, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and other sites. I think MyBlogLog may be stepping up their activity due to an unforeseen threat: Facebook. Although it hasn’t been created yet, someone is bound to launch a MyBlogLog competitor in the coming weeks. Given that Facebook has an even larger user base, MyBlogLog is seriously threatened.

The race is no longer to get users to choose your website as a primary location but instead to have a central location of identity. Even Google has joined the race with the launch of their Social Graph API. The exploration of the implications of managing individuals’ social graphs have only begun but the race to own it is in full swing. We will see once lucrative companies collapse as the battle rages on. In the past 9 months we have only seen the beginning.

MyBlogLog is clearly one of the threatened entities. Honestly, I’m amazed that it has taken this long for them to realize that their company is in the business of identity management. Even still, MyBlogLog risks some backlash as Leslie Bradshaw points out. When launched, the “New with Me” feature will be opt-out instead of opt-in. Creating a feature as opt-out is a no-no in the web world and is seems that MyBlogLog may not have learned from the Facebook Beacon fiasco. I have a feeling that they may learn their lesson soon!

Do you think MyBlogLog should change this new feature to opt-in?

Launching a social platform can be a daunting task especially if you build it in less than a year. That’s exactly what Bebo did when it launched its platform last month. Since then thousands of developers have contributed close to 1,300 applications on the site and it has become the second largest platform (then again it’s the only other alternative platform to Facebook currently). As a result of their platform launch, the site suffered increasing downtime.

It appears that the site is on pace to surpass their downtime from the previous month after suffering more then 190 minutes of downtime this month so far. It’s well known that the launch of social platforms rapidly reduce a site’s performance. Last month reports were released that showed Facebook being the slowest social network.

At this point slow social networks appear to be a fact of life. If you can recall back to when MySpace experienced their exponential growth, the site appeared to be down for a substantial amount of time on a daily basis. Looks like Bebo is suffering from the same illness. It appears contagious so hopefully Orkut doesn’t catch the same cold when they launch their social platform.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to sit down with Sebastian Traeger the CEO of Razoo.com. Razoo was initially launched as the social network for social good but since its launch last year it appears that Sebastian has decided to switch business models. During our interview Sebastian discusses the challenges of building an online community and where they are headed over the next few months.

Last night I returned home to see a post by Jeremiah Owyang about online community best practices. Included in the post was the following image of the life cycle of a successful online community:

If you take a look at this graph you may think, wow this is definitely how I’d like my community to end up. My immediate response was “is this possible?” Thanks to “continual improvements” these online communities appear to have continued growth even past the standard maturation phase of the business. If you’ve read “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore you will immediately realize that this chart makes no logical sense.

When selling a client on why to invest in building an online community this chart is extremely useful yet it doesn’t make much sense that once the community matures it continues to grow. Back in August of last year Alex Iskold questioned if it is time to rethink the “Crossing the Chasm” phenomenon. The Chasm that Moore speaks of takes place between the early adopters and the “early majority.” This is where most businesses fail supposedly.

The chart that Owyang provides appears to ignore the chasm phenomenon and instead focuses on those communities that have been successful. My biggest concern with his chart is that it defies traditional logic. Even after the early majority have adopted the product (or community in this case), it continues to grow. Perhaps this is why Warren Buffet argues that creating a valuation for an internet business is completely ridiculous.

While valuation in internet businesses may not be completely ridiculous, suggesting that a community will grow indefinitely is absolutely ridiculous. My guess is that the length of analysis on this report is not long enough or suddenly online communities have defied business logic. Where do you think the truth lays in this circumstance?

When I got the information last night about Zynga’s developer network I figured that they were pretty much defining themselves as the leaders in the social gaming space. Apparently the Social Gaming Network was aware of the announcement and, according to Caroline McCarthy also decided to make the same one. At this point developers are getting spread thin across multiple platforms. Then again, developers have always been required to learn development for new platforms on a regular basis.

I think this is a great move but I also think that it will be difficult to attract developers en masse because of the development requirements of building a new game. Regular programmers were able to launch new applications and simple games overnight. Robust flash games on the other hand take a little more development time and also typically require design input. As such, the barrier to entry is already set higher then the average social platform.

Even still, this is a big play and for those companies that decide to create new flash based games, these platforms could prove to be extremely useful distribution channels. Caroline McCarthy has also highlighted the rivalry between the two companies (and founders):

Shervin Pishevar [who we previously interviewed] has been critical of Zynga’s games, which he claims infringe upon existing ones (Sea Wars, for example, is a lot like Battleship), and company representatives have said that they think Zynga’s popularity metrics are exaggerated. Both gaming start-ups claim to be “the biggest social gaming network.” It might not be HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, but this is a rivalry that could get ugly.

As I continue to say, this is one area in social technology to keep your eyes on. It’s going to be big.

There has been a ton of buzz today about Loic Le Meur’s new site Seesmic and how he raised $6 million. Apparently the majority of the funding came from Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis after a dinner conversation. I got on Seesmic a few months back but I haven’t been able to figure out what the main point of it is. It’s a video version of Twitter but personally I don’t have time to flip through a ton of videos in a conversation. That’s why Twitter has been so successful is that the messages are so short.

Seesmic on the other hand is not a micro-blog but is instead just another video platform for posting videos in a conversation. YouTube already offers a similar service via video replies. If you want a really entertaining review of this by Loren Feldman, check out the following video:

As others in the blogosphere have been saying, I just don’t get it. I’m not a big video person though aside from my weekly interviews and as such maybe that’s why I don’t understand what’s going on. With so many video solutions available on the net at this point, what makes this so different?

If you think about it, one of the greatest successes of Twitter has been the ability to easily communicate while on the go. You can view what your friends are talking about and participate in live conversation all from the comfort of your mobile phone. For those with little time, sites like Facebook and MySpace can be too time consuming to become involved on a regular basis. That’s why social networks are going to rapidly become more mobile.

Browse through Facebook and you’ll rapidly begin to notice that it resembles a phone book in the way that you can search through your “friends” and view all of their contact information. In a session at the GSMA Mobile World Conference, RIM’s co-CEO stated that social networking is the future of the company. He stated that social networking will soon become as pervasive within enterprises as instant messaging already is.

Mobile companies will need to either become “pipes or platforms.” As I wrote earlier this morning, Zynga has already launched a platform. It appears that the concept of building platforms that any developer can build on has extended beyond social networks and has moved into social networks and will soon enter mobile. So far the best mobile social network tool that I’ve used is Facebook for Blackberry.

There is a whole new wave of services being offered for mobile and soon enough we’ll begin seeing new mobile services appear at the same pace that new “Web 2.0″ sites have been sprouting up over the past couple years. Have you used any highly engaging mobile social networks?