(Getty Images)By Anne HardingTUESDAY, December 1, 2009 (Health.com) — Happiness, laughter, and smiles are often described as infectious. It turns out you can catch loneliness too.
Having just one lonely friend, relative, or neighbor increases your risk of feeling lonely by 52%, according to a new study led by John Cacioppo, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. Loneliness, in fact, spreads through networks of friends, families, and neighbors more quickly and easily than a sense of social connectedness does, the study says.
It’s the latest research from a team who has discovered that your friends and family influence you more than you may think. In a series of recent studies, Cacioppo’s coauthors, Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, PhD, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have shown that happiness, smoking, and obesity can all spread through social networks.
But can you really “catch” loneliness? The researchers suggest that a lonely person’s body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice may actually make the people around him or her feel lonely too.
What’s more, loneliness appears to be a vicious cycle, according to the study, published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Lonely people tend to lose friends over time, which makes them feel more lonely and isolated; it pushes them to the edge of the social web.
Plus, loneliness spreads—far. The effects were seen not only in the lonely person’s close friends, but his friends’ friends and his friends’ friends’ friends.
People in the study felt lonely 48 days a year, on average. A person surrounded by lonely connections would spend six hours more a week feeling lonely than someone with no direct links, the study found.
Loneliness was more contagious among friends than family. The size of a person’s family didn’t influence the likelihood of being lonely, and, surprisingly, a lonely spouse had less of an impact than a lonely friend.
Distance was also a factor. Lonely friends who lived more than a mile away had less of an effect on the loneliness of others, and their ability to make other people lonely declined the farther away they were. A similar pattern was found among neighbors; a lonely person caused his next-door neighbors to feel lonelier, but not his neighbors farther down the block.
The good news is that while loneliness may be contagious, it isn’t without a cure. The spread of loneliness can be stopped, and lonely people aren’t doomed to a sad, solitary life, says Cacioppo, who likens loneliness to physical pain—a warning sign that alerts us to problems that need to be addressed.
“In the case of loneliness, we’re taking care of our social body,” he says. When social connectedness “starts to slip away, loneliness is a…signal that notifies us so we can act on it.”
Loneliness is different from social isolation, although there is some overlap between the two. The level of a person’s social isolation (or connectedness) is typically measured using outward characteristics such as marital status, number of friends, and frequency of social activities. Loneliness, on the other hand, is a subjective measure that researchers define as perceived social isolation—how isolated a person feels.
The health effects of loneliness can be serious. Research has shown that people who feel lonely are at greater risk for mental and physical ills, from depression and alcoholism to obesity, heart disease, and weakened immunity.
Next page: Women more vulnerable than men
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Must think HAPPY and SLIM! "Happines...and obesity can all spread through social networks."
Great news for those of us who can't get a Kindle! from Gadget Lab. Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again
Updated 12/29 with additional details
Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045, still has a few things to offer carbon-based life forms. Kurzweil has introduced new e-reader software, called Blio, that approaches e-reading from a completely different angle than the current E Ink-based devices like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader.
Blio is not a device. Rather, it is a “platform” that could run on any device, but would be most obviously at home on a tablet. The software is free and available currently for PCs, iPod Touch and iPhone.
“Everyone who has seen it acknowledges that it is head and shoulders above others,” says Kurzweil. “We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive.”
Blio is set to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.
E-readers have become a hot consumer electronics product. About 5 million e-reader devices are expected to be sold by the end of the year. Meanwhile, electronic books for the Kindle outsold physical books on Amazon for the first time this Christmas, said Amazon, one of the largest online book retailers.
Kurzweil — who is better known for his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near — has worked extensively in areas such as optical character recognition, speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. His company Kurzweil Technologies has a joint venture with the National Federation of the Blind called knfb Reading Technology to create reading products for people with disabilities. knfb Reading is the company that has created Blio.
One of Blio’s major advantages over current e-book readers is that the software offers a full color experience. E Ink, which is the black-and-white display used currently in almost all e-readers, works best for text, and even then most e-books still look ugly, thanks to design limitations in the readers.
Blio actually lays out the “pages” as they would be seen on paper, with typography and illustrations copied across. It also supports video and animation. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the interactive magazine applications (also meant for upcoming tablet devices) shown off by the likes of Time Warner, Popular Science publisher Bonnier and Wired’s parent company Conde Nast.
Add to that some nifty features such as text-to-speech and the ability to synchronize things (like bookmarks, highlights and the page you last read) across multiple devices, and it makes for an interesting e-reader.
“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,” says Peter Chapman, an executive at Kurzweil Technologies.
For publishers, says Kurzweil the advantage is that Blio preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.
Though it sounds nifty, Blio is up against some stiff competition. Kurzweil and his team are betting against the trend of dedicated e-reader devices such as Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader.
“People don’t want an extra piece of hardware,” says Kurzweil. “They want to take one device and do everything with it and they want color screens.”
Instead, Kurzweil is betting that tablets that are scheduled to be launched next year — including the much speculated Apple tablet — will be used by consumers instead for reading digital books. Blio could fit well on those tablets.
Blio will also go up against existing e-reader software such as Stanza for the desktop. Amazon acquired Stanza earlier this year, and its Kindle for PC and Kindle for iPhone apps also sync with the Kindle device. Barnes and Noble also plans to offer desktop and smartphone-based e-reader software that will work with its Nook. But Kurzweil says they can’t support multimedia and text-to-speech like Blio does.
Blio creators are also working with major book publishers to port their e-books from the Adobe PDF format to Blio for free. They are trying to partner with Google to make its massive library of free book titles available in Blio.
On its own, Blio looks solid, but it signifies something much bigger: the end of the paper book. Right now, e-books are poor copies of paper books, with a single advantage: convenience. A book is just a container for text, not its natural home.
The upcoming rash of tablets could provide a better place for reading words than these old wads of paper, usurping print the way Gutenberg usurped hand-copied manuscripts.
A chart from Blio shows how the software compares to its rivals:
See Also:
- Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live
- Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives …
- Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
- Review: Amazon.com Kindle 2
- Review: Barnes & Noble Nook
- Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
Photos: Blio/knfb Reading Technology
From Dave Kusek. Music Trend-o-Rama 2009 | Future Of Music
OK
Here are some good summaries of trends that apply to music. More to follow…
10 music-tech trends that will shape the next decade – from CNET
“With recording revenue plunging, bands must draw fans to their live shows in order to make a living. The common wisdom today dictates that musicians need a personal connection with their fans. They must blog, tweet, maintain their MySpace and Facebook profiles, and generally act like your next door neighbor who’s always pestering you to see his band. There’s a word for receiving “personal” messages from your favorite 100 bands–it’s called “spam.” Eventually, this cloud of self-promotional noise will dissipate, and will be replaced by old-fashioned word of mouth. Only acts that put on a great show–not just singing and playing songs, but entertaining in the old-fashioned sense of the word, with video and stagecraft and humor and spectacle–will cut through the noise. Bonus points for the first act that somehow integrates an audience-accessible game console into their act.”
The 20 key digital music trends in 2009 – from Music Ally
“There’s no doubt that consumers like streaming music when it’s done well, as illustrated by the success of Spotify and Pandora this year. And it seems equally certain that streaming has a significant role to play in the future of the music industry. That role, however, will be alongside other revenue streams, rather than being the downloads killer it’s sometimes painted as being by the media. However, as 2009 draws to a close, there is still huge debate around the economics of streaming music, with ad revenues nowhere close to paying for the licensing costs, and artists and labels still grousing about their royalty cheques while fearful about cannibalisation of music sales. ‘Freemium’ has replaced ‘ad-supported’ as the business model of choice; but even that has yet to prove itself as a truly sustainable option.”
MidemNet Chooses Top 15 Digital Music Startups – from Hypebot
“The 15 start-ups chosen by Music Ally and a jury of entrepreneurs cover a range of digital fields that offer opportunities for the music industry including live applications (Awdio, Songkick, Streamjam), digital licensing of sheet music and lyrics (DigiClef, TuneWiki), artist management (BandCentral), managing key data for artists (Band Metrics), digital distribution (Pops Worldwide), web radio (Radionomy), remixing (Aviary, GoMix and Tracksandfields), musical discovery (Thesixtyone), artistic financing (Kickstarter) and on-line advertising (Silence Media).”
How about launching one in 2010? Now, that's a thought! From the NYT. Internet Radio Stations Are the New Wave
Early fans of the iPhone bemoaned that, unlike many of its competitors, their favorite “do anything” device couldn’t do one obvious thing: play local radio stations.
Skip to next paragraph
Myine’s Ira radio connects to a home stereo or powered speakers, and offers 11,000 Internet stations.
Sanyo’s R227 model includes the ability to receive Internet stations, and FM ones as well.
Livio Radio allows listeners to create a radio station based on an artist or genre they like.
Logitech's Squeezebox devices let you play Internet radio and music stored on connected PCs.
They didn’t get it. FM tuners are passé. Why include tuner technology to play a few dozen stations when you can harness thousands of radio stations over the Internet?
Unlike standard broadcast radio, Internet radio stations can be heard virtually anywhere (copyright restrictions aside), as long as you have a device that can go on the Web; that can be a PC, a smartphone or a stand-alone receiver.
An Internet radio station may have started out life as a traditional local broadcast outlet, and then management decided that it would be great to let people hear it everywhere. Or an Internet radio station may be nothing more than one person in a basement uploading music or talk to the Web, hoping that someone out there will listen.
Literally thousands of genres of Internet radio exist, from oldies, classical and religious to ultraradical talk, from the right and left. The first trick is finding them, and the next is playing them. Fortunately, with a little information, both tasks are rather easy.
TUNE IN To find an Internet station of a particular genre, start with the basics: a Web search. Type in “60s,” “NPR” or “Catholic” and the words “Internet radio” and you’ll come up with a list and links to those channels.
Another useful source is streamingradioguide.com. The Web site lists more than 14,000 stations that can be searched by genre. While extensive, the list is not complete.
Internet radio hardware and smartphone apps that offer radio transmissions don’t typically accumulate station offerings themselves; rather, they use aggregators, companies that create a selection of channels. On the Web, you can access radio channels directly from those aggregators as well; they include Reciva.com, Radiotime.com, Vtuner.com, 1.fm and Freeradio.tv.
In addition, Apple’s iTunes software (Mac and PC) offers hundreds of Internet radio stations. To listen to them, click on “Radio” under “Library” in the left vertical column.
TURN ON A wide variety of stand-alone players are now available that allow consumers to listen to Internet radio without using a PC.
One compelling feature: many offer wireless connectivity — with a wireless router, you can place the player anywhere in the home within range of the signal, and use the player as you would with a normal radio.
Livio Radio’s wireless line includes its AARP, NPR and Pandora models. (Pandora’s music service allows listeners to “create” a radio station based on an artist or genre they like. Then, Pandora automatically plays other music that the service believes fits the same category.)
Each $200 unit features programming from its model name; however all are capable of playing any of the 16,000 Internet stations offered in the unit’s menus, from ’80s music to police scanner intercepts.
The models can be connected to an external stereo system, or the unit’s built-in speakers can be used.
Logitech’s Squeezebox line of Internet radio devices ($200 to $400) include, depending on model, a color screen, speakers and the ability to play both Internet radio and music stored on connected home PCs.
Models range from a tabletop unit to a boombox to the Squeezebox Duet. They are designed to send the Internet feed and your PC’s music collection to a home stereo system, and they come with their own remotes.
For about $120, Myine’s Ira Internet radio receiver connects to a home stereo or powered speakers, and offers 11,000 Internet stations. It incorporates a simple, two-color display and a remote.
Sanyo’s R227 model, $180 at Amazon.com, takes its styling cues from the KLH Model 8 radio of the 1950s, and includes not just the ability to receive Internet stations, but FM ones as well.
The unit features eight presets for both Internet and broadcast stations, and also functions as a music-playing clock radio.
Philips offers a number of wireless Internet radio models under its Streamium brand. The NP2900/37, about $300, includes a color screen, and is housed in a sleek, horizontal sound bar, with a stand reminiscent of an iMac’s.
With four speakers and 30 watts of power, this Streamium can also play music stored on a network-connected Mac or PC, and can display cover art. It also includes a month of Rhapsody, a subscription-based music service.
DROP IN (TO AN APP STORE) Hundreds of radio apps are available at Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch app store, both free and fee-based.
AOL Radio (free) does what its name implies: it simply offers 200 Internet stations across 25 genres, plus 150 CBS radio stations, and includes not just music, but comedy and sports as well.
Crave real-life drama? Police Radio and Scanner 911 (both 99 cents), as well as Emergency Radio ($3) allow you to listen in to dozens of police, fire and emergency service broadcasts around the country.
For public radio fans, at least three apps will give you easy access to “All Things Considered” and other shows. Public Radio App ($3) allows listeners to pause and rewind 300 public radio shows, and bookmark them to return to listen later. The app also displays the Web page associated with the show, and can be set to play as a clock radio.
Other public radio apps are available at no charge, including Public Radio Player and PRI; the latter plays only shows from Public Radio International. In addition, many public radio stations have stand-alone apps for their program stream, including KPCC in Los Angeles, which is free, and New York’s WNYC, which costs 99 cents (for podcasts). Android users can get streaming Internet stations using apps like Streamitall and Last.fm, which are also available to iPhone users (Pandora also has an Android app). BlackBerry users have FlyCast and Slacker Radio (which are also iPhone-friendly) among their options.
So the next time you are browsing through your music library, wishing you had something new, do not lament the absence of AM or FM. Instead of a limited number of stations, a global selection is merely a click away.
Recommend Next Article in Technology (3 of 16) » A version of this article appeared in print on December 31, 2009, on page B7 of the New York edition.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
No magic bullet here - and there shouldn't be: The Role of Microfinance - Nicholas D. Kristof Blog
Does the aid world exaggerate the benefits of microloans? How much do they help? Here’s a thoughtful, evidence-based analysis by three economics professors: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T, and Dean Karlan of Yale. Their work is sometimes cited in critiques of microlending, so here’s their take:
Microcredit is undoubtedly the most visible innovation in anti-poverty policy in the last half century. In the three decades since Mohammed Yunus gave his first loan to a group of Bangladeshi women, the number of microcredit borrowers has crossed 150 millions. The majority had no access to credit from banks before microcredit came to them. When they needed to borrow, and most people do at some point or the other–to pay for an illness or a wedding, to grow a business or to fix their roof—they would go to money lenders and pay rates that have, justly or otherwise, accounted for the universal unpopularity of moneylenders (they can be over 20% per month). Now they borrow from MFIs at significantly lower (though often high by US standards) rates. At the same time MFIs have managed to find ways to be financially sustainable and to keep growing fast.
This is itself is a remarkable achievement. Very little works in many of these countries in terms of delivering to the poor; previous attempts to deliver credit, through state-run banks, for example, collapsed in the face of widespread corruption and defaults. Many microcredit institutions are led by dynamic entrepreneurs who have mastered quality service delivery on a large scale, a tough challenge in many developing countries.
However, many see microcredit as much more than a financial instrument: it has been suggested that it has the potential to be entirely transformative. There is an influential view that argues that, by putting more spending power in the hands of poor families, and, perhaps more importantly, in the hands of women, microcredit can expand investment in child health and education, empower women and reduce discrimination against them. There is even the suggestion that, by making people feel that their lives could be better and giving women independent access to capital, microcredit could fight the AIDS epidemic.There are, of course, others who are skeptical or even hostile. They see MFIs as old-fashioned money-lenders, preying on the inability of people to resist the temptation of a new loan. One self-described expert, in a recent letter to the Financial Times, goes as far as to suggest that microcredit leads to the “death of the local economy”.
Unfortunately, till very recently, there was little rigorous evidence on either side—is microcredit transformative or ruinous? However this is changing now, thanks to the courage and vision of a few leading MFIs (including Spandana in India, Al Amana in Morocco, First Macro Bank in the Philippines, Compartamos in Mexico) that have allowed researchers (each of us was involved in one or more of these) to evaluate rigorously the impact of their programs. We now have results from two (Spandana and First Macro Bank).
The two programs evaluated are very different. First Macro Bank provides loan to existing business owners, male or female, on an individual basis. Spandana uses the classic group-lending model and lends only to women.
Yet at one level the results are remarkably similar. The effect on businesses is not dramatic but some clearly benefit. In the Philippines, male-owned businesses increase profits, although female-owned businesses do not. In India, borrowers who already own a business buy assets for their business. One borrower out of eight starts a business they would not have started otherwise. Others buy durables for their homes.However, there is no evidence that microcredit has any effect on health, education, or women’s empowerment, at least right now, eighteen months after they got the loans. On the other hand, there is also no evidence that people are behaving irresponsibly. Indeed in India we have evidence of people giving up some of the little daily pleasures of life (like tea, snacks, betel leaves and tobacco), to pay for bigger things that they could not previously afford (carts for their business, televisions for their homes).
Many seem to think that this is not enough. However, as we see it, microcredit seems to have delivered exactly what a successful new financial product is supposed deliver—allowing people to make large purchases that they would not have been able to otherwise. The fact that some people expected much more from it (and perhaps they are right, may be it will just take longer), is perhaps inevitable given how eager the world is to find that one magic bullet that would finally “solve” poverty. But to actually blame microcredit for not promoting the immunization of children is no different from blaming immunization campaigns for not generating new businesses.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Decade of mobile: From the first camera phone to the iPhone 3GS - Recombu
Decade of mobile: From the first camera phone to the iPhone 3GS
By Andrew Lim on Sunday, 27th December 2009
It's almost 2010 so we thought we'd take a look at what's happened in mobile over the past ten years. Everything has happened. No, really, have a look. From the first camera phone, to the first 3G network, to Windows Mobile, to the iPhone – it's been an incredible ten years. We can't imagine what the next ten years hold but we expect it will blow our phone-loving minds away.
2000 Sharp launches the first ever camera phone, the J-SH04. This year also sees the first Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and headset.
2001 The first commercial 3G network is launched in Japan. Europe follows suit shortly afterwards and 3 launches the first commercial UK 3G network two years later.
2002 RIM launches its first BlackBerry smart phone. Sony Ericsson launches the T68i, the first phone to support MMS, allowing users to send longer text messages and even pictures.
2003 The Windows Mobile brand is launched with Windows Mobile 2003. Windows Mobile is widely used by businesses to do work on the move.
2004 Motorola launches a very thin clamshell phone called the Razr in the US and it soon becomes a global success. It's still one of the best selling handsets of all time.
2005 Sony Ericsson launches a superb new camera phone called the K750i and a great music phone called the W800i. These two handsets establish Sony Ericsson as a serious consumer player.
2006 Nokia launches the very simple Nokia 6300, one of the best-selling phones of the past ten years. HTC launches its own brand and LG turns its brand around by launching a fashionable phone called the Chocolate. RIM also revamps its lineup with a phone called the BlackBerry Pearl.
2007 Apple launches the iPhone in the US, Nokia launches a fantastic smart phone called the N95 in Europe and Samsung beats Motorola to second spot for global sales.
2008 The first Android phone is launched, the T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream). The G1 receives a mixed response but manufacturers are keen to engage with this new OS. iPhone SDK and iPhone 3G announced - native iPhone apps go wild.
2009 Palm launches a brand new operating system called webOS and a shiny phone called the Pre. Apple launches the iPhone 3GS and Motorola makes a comeback with the Dext and Milestone.
2010 There are rumours that Apple is going to launch a larger iPhone/tablet device. Palm will hopefully announce a new phone at CES and everyone hopes that Nokia will unveil something amazing.
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Showing 3 of 3 Comments
I don't think the rise of browser-agnostic website has anything to do with iPhone at all. It has been growing steadily, far before the inception of iPhone, supported by the growth of Firefox and other (and to some point, Safari on OSX) standard-compliant browsers.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Well said @seth. From TechCrunch. The Medium Is No Longer The Message, . . . You Are
Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Seth Goldstein (@seth), the Co-Founder of socialmedia.com, which is building the first ad server based on people not pages. Its platform provides authoring, serving and reporting across different types of social media. All of its ads are real messages from real people. Seth is also the Co-Chairman of the IAB’s Social Media Committee.
Social Media and Identity
We are witnessing a profound change in the media and advertising industries due to the emergence of social media. Companies that did not exist ten years ago, like Facebook and Twitter, have captured significant share of the attention economy from traditional publishers. Underscoring this trend is the fact that at the same time that Businessweek was selling for less than $5 million (plus assumption of debts) to Bloomberg, Foursquare’s pretty cousin Gowalla drove up Sand Hill road and collected $8.4 million for a minority stake.
Amidst this disruption, media companies are chasing after “their” audience in order to continue to broker the attention of that audience to marketers. But just at the moment that media has mastered the art of blogging, search engine optimization and CPM yield management, they are now faced with a new set of consumer behaviors that elude their programming faculties: mobile devices, location-based services and the social graph.
Driving this change in consumer behavior is the emergence of social media as a means of content production. Social media started more than ten years ago with online personal communications tools such as Evite, Shutterfly and Blue Mountain Arts. Since that time, systems have been built to support broader and more subtle social interactions. This has been achieved primarily by the introduction of new creative formats that make it easy for individuals to express information about themselves (such as status updates, tweets and check-ins) and new distribution models that enable this personal information to be shared easily among friends and followers.
Social media’s ascent has led to an Internet experience based less on pages and more on people. As a corollary to this (and counter to Marshall McLuhan’s thesis), the medium is no longer just the message. The permanence of words and images and their meaning in context has long been promoted as a foundation of media theory. In an increasingly real-time environment, however, content gives way to identity, and traditional contextual analysis gives way to dynamic social interactions.
The medium is the message . . . is the member. This is why there can be no discussion of social media without a simultaneous discussion of identity, and why the growth of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are one and the same with the growth of identity systems online. There are a number of technology and business trends that are converging around this thesis.
Here are some that seem to be of particular importance as we head into 2010:
- The only check and balance for Facebook is Twitter. Twitter is significantly smaller than Facebook in terms of users, and its social graph is asymmetrical and therefore looser. But what it lacks in terms of the size of its contributors, it makes up by offering a broadcast media model. Celebrities find it easier to reach large audiences directly by using Twitter. Even though Twitter follows far more of a media model than Facebook, it too is being pulled into the identity space by Google who is unlikely to integrate Facebook Connect under any condition. Google is bringing the Twitter API to the fight (while Yahoo and MySpace drop their identity ambitions and happily incorporate Facebook Connect). The interesting question here is Microsoft. Although it is impossible to imagine Microsoft siding with Google on anything these days, integrating Facebook Connect may end up doing to Windows what Microsoft itself did to IBM many years ago.
- Agencies are tired of being treated like commodity procurement organizations. They want to increase their margins through the application of data to media and become demand side platforms (DSPs). This is the strategy of IPG’s Cadreon unit and Vivaki’s “audience on demand network” which both look to add proprietary data from sources such as cookie exchanges and re-targeting databases. In addition to leveraging new data to better target existing creative assets, agencies wish to also transcend the one-off “give me a big campaign idea” business. Consumers will increasingly ignore the high-bandwidth, homepage-takeover distraction tactics of traditional online marketing. The average social media users have trained themselves to focus on real messages from real people. Agencies will need to learn how to produce low bandwidth advertising content that can be shared and distributed in lots of different ways by lots of different social groups, all the while preserving some underlying essential brand equity.
- Publishers don’t want their quality audiences sold cheaply outside of their sites. Their expensive sales organizations have no chance of maintaining high CPM rates from an agency that can offer the same audience to its client at a fraction of the price by sprinkling some cookie data on top of a remnant ad network buy. This will embolden premium (top 100) publishers to align themselves with consumer advocacy groups looking to erase cookies and anonymize users. ESPN and the WSJ would love it if all of their readers were rendered anonymous as soon as they clicked away. This echoes Murdoch’s supposed interest in removing his content from Google’s search engine index. The value of “free” distribution is materially impacted when the distributor is able to separate a user’s identity from the context of his consumption.
- Advertisers will recognize that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain their own social graph. Until now social media has been an ROI-free playground for brands looking to experiment with new formats. Marketers have built Facebook and iPhone apps, only to learn that distribution is not free. Now they are managing Twitter accounts and Facebook brand pages that deliver more scale, but still with limited insights that they can own and apply to the rest of their marketing initiatives. Consumers, meanwhile, are constantly talking about brands within their communities and are expressing their affinities for commercial products and services. Advertisers can no longer afford to cede knowledge about these interactions to the social networks within which they are occurring. Inevitably, companies will require their own social graph data that includes all mentions of their brands and information about the identity of users (and their friends) discussing them.
So what are media companies and advertisers to do as the former audience use their social identity as a fulcrum for content creation? To prepare for this change in the media economy, companies need to establish an identity framework that integrates Facebook Connect and/or the Twitter API. And in order to profit economically, startups might want to address one of the agency, publisher or advertiser challenges listed above.
Companies: SocialMedia.com, Bazaar Labs Seth Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia Networks. In his role as CEO, Seth drives the strategic direction of the company, overseeing the development of technologies and services to keep SocialMedia Networks at the forefront of social… Learn More
Website: twitter.com Location: San Francisco, California, United States Founded: March 21, 2006 Funding: $155M Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006… Learn More
Website: facebook.com Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Founded: February 1, 2004 Funding: $716M Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 350 million users.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
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Thursday, December 10, 2009
You know it's the end of the year when lists become popular. Here's The Guardian's 100 Essential Websites.
Illustration: Nigel Sandor/Illustration Works/Corbis
Andy Warhol talked of a time when everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. With hindsight, however, he might have wanted to revise that down to about five minutes. On today's web, phrases such as "here today, gone tomorrow" seem to involve ridiculously long timescales.
People who moaned that blogging represented a move to shorter attention spans – 250-to-350-word posts rather than 1,000-word stories – have now seen blog posts start to look big and, frankly, old-fashioned. Today's trendsetters are using "microblogging" sites such as Tumblr, Posterous and Soup.io, which are taking the opportunity for creative "borrowing" to new heights.
But the smash hit of 2009 has been (apologies: I know this will cause pain) Twitter, where 1,000-word stories are reduced to 140-character tweets. Short attention spans R us.
Twitter's rapid growth and open programming interface have given the site a wide impact. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of ancillary sites and services have been launched to help Twitter users post pictures, track followers, or – more usefully, from a commercial point of view – find out what the "hive mind" is thinking. Twitterfall is just one example. More recently, Listorious stepped in to make it easier to find and explore lists made using Twitter's new list feature, while The Twitter Tim.es cleverly turned selected tweets into a personalised newspaper. How many of these sites will survive is, of course, open to question. Some are less like standalone sites than parasites.
Major web players such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft also got involved. Both Google and Microsoft signed deals for Twitter searches, while Facebook paid it the ultimate compliment of more or less copying its service. Or, perhaps, copying FriendFeed, which many users link to both Twitter and Facebook.
Facebook, while far from new, was another big player in 2009, reaching more than 350 million users. And through Facebook Connect, it has extended its presence across the web. Once you have a Facebook identity – and you must have one, mustn't you? – then you can use it to access a growing number of sites and services. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. The web might be a kinder, more polite place if people said things under their real names, which is what Facebook's about.
Those in search of their five minutes of fame or, more likely, five minutes of fun fun fun, headed for YouTube. Although it has been challenged by rivals such as Vimeo and Microsoft's Soapbox (RIP), its dominance has not been seriously threatened. Only the pornographers have been able to build much of a following outside YouTube.
Which is not to say that YouTube owns the web video market. The BBC has made a huge impact with its iPlayer catchup service, and in the US, Hulu has enjoyed great success with TV series and movies. Of course, both sites are showing videos that YouTube would love to offer, at a profit, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Music has been a significant player in the growth of the web since Napster, and its influence continues to grow. Spotify has made the biggest impact this year, gaining mindshare lost by Last.fm and Pandora. Meanwhile, Pitchfork has expanded its role as the web's authoritative music magazine, and The Hype Machine came to prominence as a source of instant erudition by tracking the music blogs.
Almost finally, it may be that we are seeing the return not just of the browser wars but of the search engine wars as well. Google still rules the world, but in Bing, it now has a competitor that does some things better and has, in Microsoft, an owner with deep pockets. Alas, Bing also does many things a lot worse.
Possibly the most contentious part of this year's list is celebrity gossip. The argument against would be summed up by a Wikipedian in two words: "not notable". The argument for is that sites such as Perez Hilton and AOL's TMZ are now helping to drive the news agenda. Even if you aren't interested in Michael Jackson's death, Tiger Woods's affairs or whatever, this stuff has become impossible to avoid. This is one case where many people would prefer the web's short attention span to be even shorter.
Blogging/microblogging
Now easier than falling off a log.
Tumblr Multimedia microblogging plus Twitter-style following.
Posterous Goes from instant microblogging into lifestreaming.
Soup A "super-easy" tumblelog for scrapbook keeping and lifestreaming.
Blogger Fast way to start blogging; training wheels for Wordpress.
Bloglines For reading web feeds. Smart and clean.
Wordpress Free, and most importantly spam-free, blogging.
Browsers
Do we all need five browsers nowadays?
Chrome Now here for Mac, and anticipating future world domination via Chrome OS.
Firefox Everyone's favourite is under attack from all sides.
Maxthon Based on IE code. If it stays "hip in China" it could reach a large global audience.
Cartoons
Everyone needs some relaxation. This is a visual one.
Dilbert It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't so true.
XKCD Stick-figure strip poking fun at geek topics and relationships.
Celebrity gossip
No one needs this stuff, but it's starting to drive world news and web traffic.
TMZ Rose to fame when it broke news of Michael Jackson's death.
Perez Hilton Among the bitchiest of goss sites and often involved in 'interesting' celeb baiting.
Gawker New York-based media alert and gossip blog network, with fingers in many pies.
Create/collaborate
With all of us now living more of our lives online, these sites just scratch the surface.
Netvibes Your to-do lists, news, weather and photos on one page.
Scribd Shares 35bn words online: they can't all be wrong.
Slideshare Like YouTube for PowerPoint decks.
Zamzar Useful: converts files from one format to another.
Film
Sites to see before heading for the latest blockbuster at your local multiplex.
IMDb The most authoritative site about all things film and TV, which is why Amazon bought it.
Rotten Tomatoes Collects online film reviews, aggregates a score out of 100 and rates the film "fresh" or "rotten".
/Film Said to be the favourite film blog of directors Jason Reitman and Darren Aronofsky, /Film features news, reviews, interviews and a special UK update each Friday.
Cinematical Terrific film blog with a Hollywood focus.
Gaming
A field where handheld, bedroom and Flash games are becoming mainstream
Eurogamer Reportage, with breadth, if not always depth.
The Independent Gaming Source A great place to pick up on tomorrow's breakthrough Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PSN hits.
Pocket Gamer Still by far the best site on handheld gaming.
Gamasutra Where professional games creators hang out, and sometimes get jobs
Geek squad
Here be programmers …
Stack Overflow Where programmers gather to try to solve their problems.
The Daily WTF Daily dispatches from the coding warzone.
Joel On Software Essays by a former Microsoftie, now head of Fog Creek Software.
Government/public services/politics
Recycle Now Winner after a slight false start of the government'sShow Us A Better Way competition. What can you recycle close by?
British and Irish Legal Information Institute A database of laws. Only survives hand-to-mouth on voluntary donations; where's yours?
What Do They Know? Makes filing a Freedom Of Information request as easy as sending an email. Too easy, some in power think.
Upmystreet All the detail on your area you could ever want.
They Work For You A site set up by volunteers to keep tabs on our elected members of parliament – and our unelected peers.
Link economy
With millions of links on the web, we all need sites for sharing the best ones.
Digg Still the reigning champion of where the latest internet memes are though not always polite.
Delicious The thinking person's link aggregation site. We use it.
Popurls Aggregating the aggregators: the web in a window.
Metafilter Living if isolated proof that a site can be successful without pictures or video, and can also host thoughtful conversations.
Slashdot Now looking venerable and old, but "News for nerds" site with a jokey name (/.) still attracts a big, and often knowledgable, audience.
Techmeme Technology news chosen by computer, though it's now refined by human editors.
Location, location
Services like these blossom with a mobile phone that can access the internet.
Dopplr "Share your future travel plans with friends and colleagues", then find out if others will be there too.
Qype Localised search for pubs, restaurants, etc; also a bit of a social network.
Loopt "Transforms your mobile phone into a social compass".
Brightkite A "location-based social network".
Maps
The flipside of location-based services: seeing where you are.
OpenStreetMap A rights-free map created by people like you. Remarkably detailed and precise.
Google Maps Street View Virtual tourism with practical applications, too.
Money/finance/consumer fightback
We all need someone on our side.
Money Saving Expert Does what it says on the tin.
Say No to 0870 Direct-dial numbers, not expensive national-rate ones.
Consumer Direct Government site for consumers.
Music
Last.fm British-made, now CBS-owned, music recommendation station.
Amazon Now has its own MP3 store in the UK as well as the US.
Hype Machine Picks up the latest news by tracking the music blogs.
Pitchfork The magazine of the music web, now with video, and lots of great lists.
Offbeat
The Onion Still the satirical newspaper of record. If it's not in the Onion, it's probably happened.
B3TA Beyond classification; its forum has spawned many memes … and more than its fair share of trolls.
Lolcats respite from stress with daft cCaptioned cats and other animals.
News Lite respite from stress with daft cGreat source of news that's much too trivial to print.
Oddee Setting an internet standard for sets of curious and mildly amusing pictures, not cats.
PostSecret Notes of secrets sent by people who want them posted. So they are.
Passive-Aggressive Notes Would it be too much trouble for you to have a look?
Photography
Flickr The granddaddy of photo-sharing sites.
Picnik Photo editing in your browser.
Picasa Google's photo organisation and editing tool.
DPreview The web's best guide to cameras. Now Amazon owned.
Reference
CIA Factbook All the data you need on pretty much anywhere.
Wikipedia en.wikipedia.com the gradually growing user-edited encyclopaedia is Still a first port of call on most topics.
Internet Archive/Wayback Machine The web in aspic. Useful for research into how the web used to look.
Metacritic Aggregates reviews of movies and DVDs, TV programmes, music and games
Wikileaks Anonymous source of a huge range ofleaked documents. If you dig, there's something important there
Search
Google dominates but Bing is challenging, and Yahoo and Microsoft are left in the dust.
Google So good it's become almost synonymous with search.
Bing Microsoft would like you to bing it, but its "decision engine" still has a long way to go.
Wolfram Alpha An "answer engine"that delivers when it has the data, but not that easy to use.
Social software
Two years ago it was nascent; now it's embedded in our culture. Chances are high you're a member of at least one, and perhaps all, of these sites.
Facebook Still changing and growing to become not just your home on the web, but your ID provider.
LinkedIn Contact sports for business users.
Ning One place to start your own social network – just as Madonna did – though it has yet to really take off.
Travel
Expedia Still the daddy when it comes to travel sites, and particularly good if you can bundle a flight with a hotel and other services.
TripAdvisor Essential reading for the user reviews of hotels, but it now covers much more.
Laterooms Specialises in hotel discounts.
Twitter, and associated
Twitter has proved itself over and over this year, from the Chinese earthquke to the Mumbai attacks to the Madoff fraud as a vector for news.
Twitter The ur-site, where you can create an identity (or several).
Twitter Tim.es Creates your personal newspaper based on your friend's tweets.
Twitterfeed Posts blog contents to Twitter.
TwitterCounter Graphs the growth in your followers.
Twitterfall Tracks trending topics; enables custom searches.
Listorious Twitter lists make it simple to follow large groups of Twitter users, and Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists.
Video
YouTube Dominant provider of video content online.
Vimeo Better rights control than YouTube and a cleaner interface
BBC iPlayer The king of the online catchup services.
Hulu The networks fight back with their own video site, which may make the UK in 2010. We hope.
Videojug The motherlode of instructional videos, all in one place.
Virtual worlds
Second Life Continues to exist and is, apparently, still popular, but not the media darling it was.
Entropia Universe Set in a distant future on the untamed planet of Calypso.
Club Penguin Minigame-tastic virtual world for youngkids.
Moshi Monsters "Educational" virtual world for kids.
Visual arts
Saatchi Gallery Gallery, listings and artworks for sale.
Art Daily The first "art newspaper" on the net.
Culture 24 Everything about UK galleries and museums.
Visualisation
Information is Beautiful Creating effective infographics is one of today's key skills, and on this site, it's also an art.
Infosthetics.com An archive of some of the finest examples of "information aesthetics".
DabbleDB Create online databases and analyse them.
• Which essential sites have we missed? Tell us below• This article was amended on Wednesday 9 December 2009. Picasa is no longer for Windows only; Streetwire.org is no longer operational. These have been corrected.
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