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Category · 21 posts

Social Software

Social Search, User Discovery

As a follow on to my social profiles post I’m adding more images to help examine the way in which users find each other on a given social network. Billions of dollars have been…
November 13, 2009 · 19 photos
43 Social Profiles

One challenge any community site faces is how to let users express themselves. It is hard to express the sum total of any individual on a web page, but in the virtual world that…
November 11, 2009 · 43 photos
Social Network Dilution

My wife thinks it’s funny that I never check Facebook anymore. I got her into it and now she checks it daily. I got my account way back when you still had to have a .edu email…
October 27, 2009
Twitter – The New Borg

I’m not a twitter power user but people frequently ask me what it is and why would I use it. I used to tell them it was a ‘micro-blogging’ service. Of course that explanation…
March 15, 2009
Make Facebook Butt Out

Marion told me that he rented ‘Enchanted’ for his kids from Blockbuster.com. Now in all his friend’s feeds it says ‘Marion rented Enchanted’. Maybe I am not truly social yet, but…
April 2, 2008
BuddyPress

There’s real information on the BuddyPress site today. I am so excited. This is one of the first steps towards easy to create, distributed social networks. Hopefully it is as easy…
April 1, 2008
Ringside Networks

I have been writing quite a bit lately about open Social Networks and the infrastructure that I think will emerge from WordPress to help fill that niche. Then David sends me to…
April 1, 2008
Family Search Conference

I am at the FamilySearch conference at BYU today which means that I had to get up at 5:30 this morning which is one my least favorite things in the world. Luckily caffeine is my…
March 12, 2008
This Clears Things Up a Bit

I’m not sure if anyone has seen David Wiley’s blog today, but I think his efforts help to illustrate the idea of distributing the social network. Take a look at it. It might…
March 10, 2008
Turn WordPress Into Social Butterfly

I have been pitching this idea of a distributed social network to everyone that can stand to listen to me. I realize that the conversation around WordPress and the future of…
March 6, 2008
Connected Communities

When Digg was new I spent plenty of time following the latest news ‘dugg’ up by the community. Now I rarely go back. Somewhere along the line Digg became an online Frat house and…
March 5, 2008
Disposable Communities

I had a great chat with Brian Lamb yesterday. He and his team are working to use WordPress to support learning communities at UBC. In case anyone else is sick of WebCT, Blackboard…
March 5, 2008
Niche Communities

Over the past few months I have talked quite a bit with Joel about online communities and about what philosophically makes a community. I think it is a group of individuals who…
March 5, 2008
Note to Facebook, Myspace and Other Social Silos: DIE

I wrote three Facebook apps and I have ideas for several more. The most successful was the House Plans application I did for ThePlanCollection.com, but in the Facebook world you…
March 4, 2008
Utah WordPress Meetup

I spent this afternoon with some really cool and interesting individuals from around utah. Matt Mullenweg, the original developer of WordPress was in town and was willing to come…
February 3, 2008 · 4 photos
Another Social API – I might explode

Just as I finish my Facebook app here comes OpenSocial which is supposed to be an API that works with LinkedIn, Orkut, other Google services and the big recent addition, MySpace…
November 1, 2007
Facebook as an Authentication System

I have been playing with OpenID for about a year now. It is a very cool, distributed authentication system. The concept is great and I love that I don’t have to create accounts…
October 5, 2007
Social Software is for the Young

An interesting study by business week shows who is doing what on line. The visualization helps to show what is in many ways obvious – young people are more likely to do social…
June 22, 2007
New Website for Academic Types

We have started a new site for those who are academic in nature. As part of what we do at COSL we have Brian Lamb helping us out with research. As we searched for good research…
June 21, 2007
Yahoo opens browser authentication

You can use Yahoo to authenticate your users if you want. http://developer.yahoo.com/auth/ This might be worth looking at. 500 million people have accounts at Yahoo. Numbers tend…
November 8, 2006
Social changes at Amazon

There are some interesting changes happening at Amazon. Pick a product and look close. You will see two new features. One is the addition of tags. You can now add a tag to a…
November 22, 2005