www.asudekonaklari.com

Further reading on social networks: The Social, CNET News.com’s Caroline McCarthy’s blog; and Mashable, a superblog devoted to the topic.

Webware 100 voting starts on February 25.

Now, It’s cool if you want to run a network for cartoon watchers (Nicktropolis) or for collectors (iTaggit), or sports clubs (SportaVista). But I question the need for clubs such as these to set up their own network when there’s a good general-purpose social network platform like Ning around to do the heavy lifting.

Not to say that there’s no room for innovation and growth in this space. As I wrote from Demo 2008, while I think it’s a bit daft to launch yet another new network now, there’s room for a new kind of social network: The implicit network–one that connects you without requiring you to recruit your friends yet again.

Of the nearly 5,000 distinct Webware 100 nominations we have, more than 1,000 are in the social network category. A few are social network subapplications that run on the Facebook platform, but really, too many are just little teeny social networks.

Social network sites, as a group, may also be in business trouble. While users turn a lot of pages on social sites, general advertising programs are apparently not delivering the goods.

Right before we closed the nominations for last year’s Webware 100 awards, I wrote a post about there being too many social networks in the running. Apparently, all you genius Web 2.0 entrepreneurs skipped school that day, because for the 2008 Webware 100, we have, again, way too many social networks competing.

The audio-only user guide didn’t help. The FAQ didn’t help.

With the Web allowing any artist to present music to the masses, listeners are less likely to distinguish between the local band they saw down the street and major label acts they heard on the radio. Of course listeners know the difference, but they don’t care–they want to be able to flip between all the music they’re interested in without hunting each song down on a particular Web site. Unfortunately, local artists with limited resources tend to stick to social networking sites like MySpace, and finding music on these sites can be painful. Plus there’s no guarantee the music you want will be on the particular site you’re searching.

Until I hit the “play” button on the site and was informed I had to download a desktop application, Qplayer. Grumble grumble–if this stuff’s all being streamed from the Web, why should there be a desktop app? Nonetheless, I downloaded, shut down my browser, installed the player, opened my browser again, signed in to the site again, conducted a search for Curious Mystery, and hit play. This time the player launched. As you might be able to tell from the screenshot on this page, it looks like little more than a modified Web browser: it basically displays the relevant MySpace page on the right, with a playlist on the left. The artist’s graphic appears above the playlist, but below that appear two random images which link to other artists–presumably some sort of promotion.

I visited the site and ran a search for some fairly obscure Seattle-area artists I’ve played shows with before and really admire, like Wah Wah Exit Wound and The Curious Mystery. Sure enough, all the songs they’ve posted on MySpace appear immediately. It’s not like MySpace, where I have to make sure I’ve selected “Music” rather than “People” from the dropdown menu, then wade through a bunch of sponsored links to visit the musician’s site.

(Credit: MySpace, The Curious Mystery)

World-famous bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd also have songs on MySpace, and therefore appear in the search results. In theory, I could construct a playlist with all of these songs interspersed with one another. So far so good.

Fine, but where’s my music? Unlike the case when I load a MySpace page into my regular Web browser, it didn’t start playing when the Qplayer loaded. So I hit the “play” arrow above my playlist. Nothing. I went back to the Web site and tried hitting the “play” icon next to the song I wanted, and it just relaunched the player. No music.

Alas, that’s beta software. Take a deep breath. Uninstall. Come back next week and try again.

Update: Qbox seems to have fixed the problem, and songs from MySpace now play fine within the Qplayer. See my updated post here.

That’s why I was excited to read about Qbox, a new service that entered public beta-testing today. It attempts to be an all-in-one catalog of all music stored on social networking sites. At launch, the service catalogs tunes from MySpace, Bebo, and YouTube.

The Qplayer embeds MySpace music pages, but when I tested it out, I couldn't get the songs to play.

Then there’s social media. An audience member asked Castelli what he thought the “next big thing” in advertising would be, and the Google sales director responded that he thought it would be the likes of Facebook and MySpace, which have heretofore struggled with monetization. The most high-profile entry in the field, Facebook’s Social Ads, has been considered as controversial as it is innovative. “The social community aspect of the Web is something that’s not going anywhere,” Castelli said, and suggested that Google may delve into social advertising somewhere down the road.

The general message was that Google’s making big moves to bring its advertising strategy that’s proven so successful on the Web–up-to-the-minute, uber-targeted advertisments that give advertisers access to detailed analytics, and the ability to cater to both major brands and tiny businesses–to more traditional platforms like print, television, and radio, and that ad agencies should pay attention. The audience likely left the offices either fired up or terrified.

Somewhat ironically, despite the large number of ad industry professionals in attendance, Google’s proposed acquisition of online ad firm DoubleClick never came up.

Several hundred New Yorkers involved in advertising and marketing packed a room in Google’s Chelsea offices here Monday night to find out. A panel of Google advertising employees, moderated by sponsor Mimeo Vice President Jeff Grill individually addressed the crowd at the January installment of the New York Advertising Club’s bimonthly meetup to talk about what they do and how they do it: New York ad sales director Tim Castelli; East Coast team manager for audio sales, Joe Anastasi; head of television sales Long Ellis; print ads account executive Tiffany Shen Miller; and consumer packaged goods team manager Sarah Carberry.

But overall, despite its successes, Google was still largely pitching to the agency professionals in the audience and helping to sharpen its image among the Madison Avenue crowd–not scare them off. “The future (for Google advertising) is bright only because it’s a partnership with ad agencies, and it’s a platform to make them smarter,” Ellis said.

With television ads, for example, Ellis explained that Google aims to “take the benefits of online and move them to the television world…(which) means measurement and accountability and optimization.” Google already has a partnership with EchoStar to sell advertisements on the Dish satellite network, and will soon be launching a partnership with metrics giant Nielsen to gather more specific demographic details. In about three weeks, Ellis said, Google television ads will allow for program targeting.

Google does have access to a whole lot of eyes and ears with the impending OpenSocial program, after all.

New York ad sales director Castelli told the audience that Google’s prime advantage is that it can connect a marketer to a consumer “at that moment of relevance.” Not only is targeting niche audiences more necessary than ever, but so is streamlining a process that (according to Google) has been largely unchanged in traditional media for decades.

What’s next? First off, there’s mobile advertising, something that none of the Googlers present really talked much about. Mostly it’s because the Android mobile operating system is still hush-hush. But it’s also because the industry’s not yet mature overall, Derek Kuhl said, and a lot of things have to be decided. “None of us know” what the monetization models could be, he admitted.

On the print ads side, it’s more about restructuring a musty business. Google hopes to drive targeting and efficiency by providing “a single Web interface where you can go and research available inventory across multiple publications, and make that buy online, and track and plan and do everything within our system,” Shen Miller said.

“Every meeting I’m in with an agency, I learn more than I could ever give,” Kuhl said. “The planners and the agencies are just fascinating people. I learn from them every time.”

Web video advertising, which Carberry discussed, was the only truly “online” market niche that was talked about Monday evening. Carberry spoke less about how Google would revolutionize the industry–after all, Web video ads are quite new to begin with–and more about how its YouTube property would be ideal territory for advertisers looking to reach a truly media-savvy audience. “(Being) able to dive into that community where people are so responsive to seeing their video messages,” she said, will be a gold mine.

NEW YORK–Just how much will Mountain View invade Madison Avenue?

Likewise, in radio, Google also believes it can revitalize an industry that some critics have declared moribund in the face of new media. “Google is just re-engineering the offline space,” audio sales manager Anastasi said. “After your ads start running, you can go online and you can see when your spots are running,” he explained as he talked about how Google could revolutionize the efficiency levels of the radio ad market. “You can get that air check literally seconds after it runs. You can change that copy in less than 24 hours.”

Some of the below steps are set up to manage an in-box that gets in excess of 200 new e-mails a day, it can be scaled to an account that gets anywhere from 50-100 new e-mails a day from various people. While Bill Gates has gone on the record saying he uses a three display set-up to deal with deluge, this method will let you get by with just one.

Turn e-mails into tasks by dragging them over to your to-do bar.

3. Turn e-mails into tasks: Mital’s a big user of Microsoft Outlook’s to-do bar. To turn any e-mail you get into something that needs your attention, just drag-and-drop it into the “today” category. The list can be prioritized and managed without needing to open another application, and information about what you need to do is often contained solely within that e-mail, which is now linked up to the task directly.

2. Delete the old stuff: Archiving is easy, but it leads to massive local files that can make start up and portability a problem. Instead delete or archive items as soon as they’re tended to. For everything else, create a smart folder that pulls in any messages older 30 days. Set up a reoccurring calendar event to tell you to check that folder and you’ll find you can delete almost everything that’s not important or worth holding on to somewhere.

The third folder should be for VIP senders. Create a short list of people in your company or inner circle that should go directly to your inbox. People like your CEO, boss, boss’ boss, or family members. You can also set it up to give you a desktop notification, just in case you have them turned off by default.

A few weeks back at the Web 2.0 Expo, I got to catch up with Amit Mital, general manager of Microsoft’s Live Mesh (review), and formerly of Office Live Meeting and BizTalk who told me some of the ways he deals with the hundreds of e-mails he gets every day. His solution deals with Outlook specifically, but the same techniques could be used to manage an in-box in Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or even Gmail with good use of its labels and filters. With Outlook helper Xobni opening up its doors to all today (story) I thought it would be a good chance to share some of these tips that will keep your e-mail in check.

The first one should be just for you, so set up a rule in whatever service you’re on that will take e-mails that have been sent to you specifically, have them sent straight to your in-box, and flag them red.

Mital’s other tip? Don’t leave the office until your tasks for the day are complete, and your in-box is back at square one for the next day’s work.

Mital’s approach follows a pretty standard “zero in-box” solution, designed to keep you from having to maintain or parse through an endless inbox full of messages–both read and unread.

How do you manage your in-box?

( surveys)

The second folder should be for any messages where you’re on a list with other recipients. Mital’s got his set up to filter messages that include up to 50 other people. If it’s more than that, have it sent to an alternate folder that’s to be looked at after direct messages.

1. Folders: Start new by setting up three folders. Each one will have rules that will help you sort through the influx of mail without dealing with it yourself.

For another take Outlook and its place in the world, check out the rant by Charlie Cooper of News.com about bringing Outlook into the post-1997 era e-mail world.

Leaked logos: Intel's upcoming processors based on the Nehalem platform will reportedly be dubbed Core i7.

(Credit:
Expreview.com)

Tick: The latest Core 2 Duo processors are based on the 45-nanomater Penryn core, which was a die shrink (but using the same architecture) of previous-generation 65-namometer Core 2 Duo chips. Tock: Core i7 processors will introduce new chip architecture based on the same 45nm die and are expected to be released in Q4 of this year. The next tick is expected in 2009, when Intel shrink 45nm Nehalem chips to 32nm, which is currently being developed under the code name Westmere.

Let’s quickly recap Intel’s tick-tock cadence model of shrinking the size of its chips with one release followed by the introduction of new chip architecture with the next release.

Intel has revealed some details about its next-generation processor platform, which it has developed under the code name Nehalem.

According to an article on Expreview.com, the processors based on Nehalem architecture will be called Core i7, and Intel will introduce the Core i7 name next Monday. The significance of the i7 moniker is lost on me. Care to posit any theories, Crave readers?

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) is expected to commit up to $640 million to clean tech-focused firm Khosla Ventures, according to a report at Private Equity Hub which cited two sources.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET News.com)

Khosla Ventures has invested in a number of ethanol companies including Range Fuels and Mascoma, which both require money to build beyond their initial pilot plants.

But a capital commitment the size of $640 million to a venture capital fund is significant as it can provide the capital required to scale up energy industry start-ups.

Calpers has already created a $400 million clean-tech fund which launched last year.

Until now, Khosla Ventures has been funded by family money from billionaire Vinod Khosla.

Ethanol companies, for example, need hundreds of millions of dollars to prove out their technologies at a commercial scale.

Billions of dollars have gone into clean-tech start-ups. But many industry observers expect many of those to falter in the face of a “funding gap,” or “Valley of Death,” between technology development and commercial production.

Vinod Khosla, head of Khosla Ventures.

After users of the new Electronic Arts video game, ‘Spore,’ revolted against its DRM restrictions by leaving hundreds of one-star reviews for the game on Amazon.com, the online retailer temporarily removed all reviews for the game, though it claims the move was nothing more than a ‘glitch.’

On Friday, every single review for Spore for the game was gone.

(Credit: Flickr user TINZ)

Before Amazon.com took down the reviews, there were more than 2,200 one-star reviews for ‘Spore.’

But Amazon says there was no foul play at work.

Although the actual reviews were removed, Amazon did leave up a discussion thread on the Spore page. And during the period while the reviews were down, some users angrily employed the thread to paste in reviews that had originally been left for the game.

For its part, EA said it was looking into the situation.

More than 2,200 one-star reviews of the new Electronic Arts game Spore, left on Amazon.com as part of a well-publicized and coordinated user revolt against the game’s digital rights management restrictions, disappeared Friday.

And as a way of striking back, some users had coordinated their efforts by leaving the more than 2,200 one-star reviews on Amazon.

“Utterly disgraceful,” wrote Amazon user Paul Tinsley. “This means that the Amazon review system has not value at all to its customers. Sad days indeed.”

And while Amazon customers reacted angrily to what they said was obviously Amazon’s caving in on a bad situation, the retailer itself said that the take-down was the result of nothing more onerous than a glitch.

By 2:10 p.m. PDT, the reviews were back up on the site.

Asked if perhaps Amazon had decided to put the reviews back up in anticipation of bad PR for taking them down, Hovey said, “Customers always have their opinions about all the products on our site, and we don’t censor them, whether they’re favorable or unfavorable.”

Users have been angry at EA because the game’s DRM system appears to limit the number of activations per copy of the game to three.

It’s not clear how users will respond now that the reviews are back.

For example, “1.0 out of 5 stars Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM, September 7, 2008,” Amazon user Keri Gibson-tutt posted.

(Credit:
Amazon.com)

“There’s just a glitch on the site that ended up wiping those reviews clean,” said Amazon.com spokesperson Tammy Hovey. “So we’re working on putting them back up. I don’t have any details (on what happened). But we’re working on it so all the customer reviews will be back up on the site.”

There’s been no shortage of candidates; the market has been flooded with new grease gun wannabes. The challenge has been to come up with something both more powerful than the pistol ammunition now used by many PDWs, yet lighter than the 5.56mm round used in assault rifles.

(Credit:
Knight's Armament Company)

The Army’s position: don’t rush us. “The subcompact has to serve a lot of different people…it’s much too early to say this is what we are looking for,” Jim Stone, the head of the Soldier Requirement’s Division at Fort Benning, Ga., told Military.com.

“I see this as an uphill battle,” C. Reed Knight Jr., owner of Knight’s Armament Company told Military.Com in an interview. “I think it will probably die a slow death.”

Knight’s Armament submitted a 6x35mm PDW–a streamlined, 4.5 pound weapon that can fire 700 rounds per minute. But there’s less than “a 50-50 chance” of anything getting adopted, Knight said. “The government still doesn’t know what it wants.”

There are plenty of other contenders on the shelf, including the LWRC International PSD, which sports an 8-inch barrel and comes in both 5.56mm and a punchy 6.8mm, and the Adams Arms at 7.5 inches.

Crews hoping for more personal fire power when scrambling from a tank hatch or other confined conveyance will be disappointed to learn that the U.S. Army is putting the search for a “subcompact” carbine on hold, according to industry reports.

While searching for a possible alternative to the M4 carbine, the Army had also been looking at a new “personal defense weapon” to give drivers and crews a little more punch than the currently issued Beretta M9 9mm pistol. But that plan has followed the economy, and the military budget, down the drain, according to the industry press.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference is a little over 60 days from now, but that’s close enough put that rumor back on the front burner (as if it ever really left). Apple will have to be careful about how it introduces the 3G iPhone as not to hurt demand for the model currently on sale, if there’s a gap between the announcement of a new model and its availability.

Uncle Walt thinks a 3G
iPhone will arrive within the next 60 days.

Walt Mossberg, the legendary technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, made the prediction during an executive summit held by Beet.tv last week. For some reason, Mossberg’s comments were not noticed until over the weekend, perhaps because the title of the post referencing his talk was “FTC Should Stop Verizon from Calling DSL ‘Broadband,’ Walt Mossberg.”

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Mossberg is in the select group that gets early access to important Apple products, he was one of the first to review the initial iPhone last June. So, he’s probably in a good position to know when his next iPhone review might be coming around.

Most of his talk is about how broadband networks in the U.S. are somewhat lacking compared to the rest of the world, and how that’s a big problem for video-over-the-Internet businesses. But at about 6:30 into the clip, he starts talking about wireless broadband, and the iPhone. Mossberg notes that the iPhone already offers a pretty good video experience with its
iPod capabilities, and then dismisses concern over the lack of a 3G iPhone with this gem: “It will be 3G in 60 days.”

Uncle Walt says the iPhone will be able to download Web pages even faster in 60 days.

“We definitely wouldn’t view ourselves as a social network, and we probably wouldn’t disagree with folks that say the world doesn’t need another social network,” Goldman, a former executive at Movielink and founder of Broadband Sports, said in an interview. His preferred jargon? “Socially programmed communities.” Buzznet, in other words, wants to be the 1980s-era MTV of the social-media age: an epicenter for youth trends and cultural influence, where the content is fueled by a community rather than hand-picked editorial content.

As a result, Buzznet’s team is attempting the dual challenge of building a social community as well as pulling in established content–and its readers–through niche acquisitions. Gossip blogs JustJared and A Socialite’s Life have already been pulled into the Buzznet fold, and earlier this month, Buzznet announced the acquisition of Stereogum, a popular independent music blog, and announced the launch of a sister blog, Videogum, edited by New York blogging veterans Gabe Delahaye and Lindsay Robertson.

“We’ve done a poor job,” he said, “of explaining that we’re not a social network.”

Buzznet does appear to be off to a strong start. Nielsen numbers last summer indicated a spike in popularity, and its VideoCensus numbers for February ranked Buzznet as one of the top 10 online video destinations for the 12-24 age demographic in the U.S., ranking ahead of Facebook and popular gaming-culture site 1Up. Goldman said Buzznet is now pulling in over 10 million visitors per month, and that because of its focus on content rather than networking, advertising click-through rates are promising. He declined to provide numbers.

Buzznet’s strategy is unapologetically think-big. Founded in 2005, the Los Angeles-based company counts veteran execs from Yahoo and Time Inc. among its upper ranks.

So have they made any mistakes along the way? Goldman was willing to admit to one.

It wasn’t a traditional acquisition. Stereogum had been owned by the Pilot Group, the investment firm operated by former AOL executive Robert Pittman, who was so impressed by Buzznet that he traded it in exchange for an equity stake. “Pilot Group approached us awhile ago, and we have some common friends there,” Goldman said of the Stereogum acquisition, which was finalized earlier this month. “They were interested in investing in the company. Unfortunately, we had already finished our investment round, so (the Stereogum trade) became an opportunity for them to invest in Buzznet.”

Goldman said he sees Buzznet as “much more competitive in term of an offering with an MTV.com or a Yahoo Music” than a MySpace or Last.fm.

Buzznet.com CEO Tyler Goldman doesn’t want people to think of his company as a social network. No, what Goldman says he’s running is a music- and pop-culture-focused community site.

Up next, per blog rumors, is reportedly Qloud, a startup backed by AOL founder Steve Case that makes music applications for social-networking sites. That’s another rumor on which Goldman wouldn’t comment.

But at the same time, Alexa traffic graphs show Buzznet has still been growing much more slowly than Imeem, another acquisition-happy social-media site targeting music fans. And MySpace has opted to refocus its efforts on media content with the launch of its MySpace Music service.

That’s some ambition. In an age when Facebook takes up all the headlines, MySpace still dominates traffic, LinkedIn invites are choking our inboxes, and the Web-futurist set is trying to come up with solutions to all the usernames and passwords we currently juggle, saying that you want to be the next big social-networking destination has gotten a little d?class?. And when the economy’s grown tepid, the music industry has fallen and can’t get up, and every day another blogger is talking about the tech bubble bursting, saying that you want to be the next mass-media hotspot is bound to raise a few eyebrows.

“Our goal is to build the world’s biggest and best music experience and then to do the same thing in other pop culture topics,” Goldman explained. Instead of starting from a grassroots following, the way MySpace did as a hub for independent band promotion, Buzznet wants to break out at the top by scoring high-profile investors, tasty acquisitions, and powerful partnerships. The company is rumored to have roped in about $25 million in venture funding, with one of the reported investors Universal Music’s Interscope. (Goldman declined to comment on that.)

And Goldman said that next week, Buzznet will make the first of a number of partnership announcements designed to get more audio content on the site. When asked if that meant a record label deal, Goldman replied. “That’s a logical assumption.”

But he would comment on the future. When asked if he was willing to say he wanted his company to be the next MTV, in true Buzznet fashion, he aimed higher. “I would say more the next Viacom,” he replied excitedly. “We believe this formula of social-media programming is very successful and applies to all areas of pop culture…television, film, fashion, celebrity.”