Technology Mashup

Bizreport have a recent article indicating that 3 new social ad formats are coming to Facebook. I was writing not so long ago about the need to do more in inline interactive advertising, to treat ads as more natural social content than some of those dreadful interruptive techniques.

Widgets, comments and fan pages will be utilised in an attempt to virally distribute the brand messages.

It will be an interesting one to check out, I hope it is not just more petrol on the fire of 'capitalist spam'.

I was thinking a while back (before I started the site upgrade) about why the Social Media love-in on Problogger had been so successful. In time honoured tradition I thought I would list the 5 key reasons as I see them.

1. Topical - Social Media is certainly on the hype wave, and timing is everything
2. Centralised credibility - By this I mean Problogger was an established hub for those with an active interest
3. Success breeds success - As the popularity grew and the word went out on other platforms this pulled more contributers into the 'perfect storm'
4. People followed through - contributors actually hooked up with others and the Problogger folks produced consolidated lists of people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. for simple reference
5. The activity was 'time boxed' which created a sense of urgency

More cat fighting with Facebook...

Facebook challenges German rival - Germany's Studivz says the intellectual property dispute that Facebook has brought against it is without merit.

[BBC UK Technology News]

Crying wolf on Facebook security - Facebook is today's version of the conversation by the water cooler.Why are we so hung-up on the security issues of social networking sites? asks Cliff Saran

[Cliff Saran's Blog]

This is the kind of thing that will hold back development of Social Media - the inherent nature of human beings! It is no longer the technology barrier but the need for a serious shake up of modern society to remove such nonsense. When will we see ASBOs emerge on Social platforms!

Cyber-bullies - New face of anti-social networking [BBC UK Technology News]

Visa leveraging Social Media and Social Networks...

Visa taps into Facebook following - Visa, the world's largest credit card network, is paying Facebook $2m to advertise its small business service.

[BBC UK Technology News]

Social anxiety, meet social networking - As many surveys have suggested, fear of public speaking is one of our strongest anxieties. The following won't help: These days, the audience could be skewering you on blog sites -- not after your presentation, but during. And just about everyone in attendance could know about it, except you.

Web users 'fear media intrusion' - Most users of social networking websites are concerned about media intrusion, a survey suggests.

[BBC UK Technology News]

Facebook 'violates privacy laws' - Social networking site Facebook is accused of 22 counts of privacy breaches by a Canadian group.

[BBC UK Technology News]

More painful news for Facebook and its users. The key advice must be to limit personal information exposure, or to adopt some degree of anonymity.

Identity 'at risk' on Facebook - The personal details of Facebook users could potentially be stolen by malicious hackers, the BBC's Click has found. [BBC UK Technology News]

Facebook to track Darfur suspects - A group hunting suspected Darfur war criminals turns to Facebook and Google Earth to try to find them. [BBC UK Technology News]

What not to do about Social Networking - Computer Weekly has just published an article setting out some of my views on social networking in advance of next week’s Infosec Europe 2008 event in London, when I’ll be speaking on “Locking down social networking vulnerabilities”. In fact the...

David Lacey [David Lacey's Security Blog]

Israeli officials: Facebook is national threat - Read full story for latest details.