web 2.0

HotGigs Inc., an innovator in web-based staffing solutions, has upgraded its online staffing exchange HotGigs.com, adding new tools and capabilities, such as the ability to compare billable hourly rates for a large variety of consulting professions.

social networking

In the past year social networking has taken the online world by storm.Social networking is undoubtedly the internet buzzword and activity of the moment, continuing to grow with startling speed each day; social networking websites, such as MySpace and Bebo, attract more than two million visitors every month.The idea behind social networking is to let users build online profiles that advertise their interests and to help them connect with a network of friends.Users are also encouraged to share their own content online, including photos, videos, music, and other digital files. YouTube, for example, allows users to upload videos for others to view and comment on.Just like instant messaging, chat rooms, forums and blogs, social networking has become a powerful way for people to communicate online - and another place for people to spend their time online.

bebo

Social networking website bebo.com is one of the largest and most successful drivers in the evolution of "Web 2.0" services, the second generation of Internet-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.Birch has been wedded to the idea of social networking since 2003, when he recognized that it could achieve what portals could not. Birch launched bebo.com in July 2005, and since then it has grown to become the largest social network in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. Every day Bebo's users upload more than 1.2 million photos, which are stored in five formats and managed by an Oracle database. The website currently has over 30 million registered users and turns over five billion page views a month, a figure which is growing at 20 per cent per month. Birch believes that this growth rate will position Bebo to be a market leader in the US within a year. Already, Bebo has been listed as the most searched-for site on Google (at least among those suitable for polite society), ahead of the current US market leader in social networks. Today, Bebo employs 50 people.

web 2.0

MySpace has decided to donate their database of sex offenders to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As you might expect, the authorities will be receiving a huge amount of information. According to MySpace, the database features around 600,000 offenders from state registries of almost all 50 states. MySpace's previous action was to make the Sentinel Safe technology part of its defense system, back in December. The technology, which revolved around the same database and included identifying information that could be matched to profiles on the site, enabled the site to identify and ban sex offenders from getting an account.Enabling sexual predators to get in contact with their victims, this was the main reason MySpace has been so highly criticized for some time. Needless to say, the social networking site had to take some steps to calm down such critics and restore its good image

web 2.0

Google's £803m acquisition of YouTube, NewsCorp's £310m purchase of MySpace and the recent rumoured interest in student networking site Facebook, valued at more than £500m, suggest the market is taking web 2.0 seriously.But what is web 2.0, what makes it different to websites that have gone before, and why is there so much interest in this sector?The traditional media world is one where power is concentrated in the hands of a few. The capital cost of launching a TV channel, magazine or radio station has ensured that only those with very deep pockets could afford to participate, because building distribution and an audience took a long time.

web 2.0

A study conducted by management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton found that 41% of UK internet users currently access Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, to connect with others in a worldwide online community and this figure is set to increase.Booz Allen Hamilton suggests that companies need to take advantage of the social networking and video driven developments of Web 2.0 to win customers. The consultancy also advises companies to use social communities to drive buying decisions, in particular by using online forums to generate feedback.The survey found that 43% of UK MySpace users are happy to use purchasing recommendations from unknown peers, which the study says could signal a new trend in the way consumers make buying decisions. Other results highlighted by the survey were that newer sites have predominantly young user communities, with 50% of MySpace users under the age of 25, but older people are also turning to Web 2.0, with 24% of MySpace users in the 35-49 age bracket. This is borne out, the research says, by the finding that 25% of Amazon users are over the age of 50.

web 2.0

Developers of iWiW, Hungary's number one social networking site, are facing various problems as the site's popularity nears that of the largest Hungarian site, Sanoma's Startlap, which is visited by one million people a day. One difficulty is that many members of the community have died since they registered, and others do not agree on whether they should be deleted from the system.
A solution to this problem could be allowing users to give the date of death as well as the date of birth. Currently, relationships with some dead users are maintained by friends and family members to honor their memory, while others stay in the system if nobody requests them to be deleted. web 20

web 2.0

immense popularity of MySpace and other social networking sites on the Web still strikes some as bizarre, the technology industry is clearly bent on extending that puzzling phenomenon to the cell phone as a ripe new revenue opportunity. Mobile manifestations of social networking are springing up as both a cellular extension of existing Web sites and communities that exist only on mobile devices. Complicating the discussion is that there's no strong agreement as to what exactly mobile social networking is or should be.The concept of mobile social networking isn't entirely new. Hookt, for example, has its origins in a mobile service launched five years ago by AirG Inc. of Canada. It's grown into an international community of 10 million users who access it through 85 different cell companies under assorted brands. web 20

web 2.0

Indian search engine ByIndia.com is debuting a new look and feel today as part of upgrading the site’s functionality before launching India’s largest internet sweepstakes, the ByIndia.com $5 Million Dollar (USD) Sweepstakes. The site’s logo, which has been the same since the search engine’s launch is also being updated to better reflect the site’s new, “Web 2.0” functionality.ByIndia.com is a different site than it was four months ago,” says William Mobley, CEO of Web2Corp, “we thought it was time to update the site’s overall look to reflect that. We believe this update goes a long way to show that ByIndia.com has embraced Web 2.0 and embodies the youthful technology culture in India. web 20

social networking

world's biggest children's brand, Disney, is jumping into the social-networking trend with a character-laden website that it promises will be safe for children. With characters from Captain Jack Sparrow to Tinkerbell, the site is expected to be launched by the end of the month.Taking the lead from other social-networking sites, Disney will let children create their own fairy and share the character with friends. Or they can play a game with Lightning McQueen and compare scores.On the site, children can play video games, watch music videos, chat with friends and personalise the content in a way that is more like a mini MySpace than the relatively static offering at Disney.com.

IBM social networking site

IBM/Lotus Tuesday launched a social networking Web site that combines information analysis and discussion features that let users slice, dice and talk about data they upload themselves from spreadsheets or other files.IBM's Many Eyes lets uses create visual representations of data, such as graphs, and share those representations as a starting point for discussions. IBM says the service can harness "collective intelligence" by having many users look at data and contribute their insights to a discussion forum.The service, which is now live at IBM's alphaWorks Services Web site, is part of IBM's efforts to create social networking software for corporate users. It can be thought of as a next-generation business intelligence tool.web 20

web 2.0

Kevin Bacon has started SixDegrees.org, a social networking site for charity that trades on the famous game based on the actor's ubiquity. The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon held that any actor could be connected through films to Bacon within six links. In a video on his site. it as fitting into the "small world phenomenon," where everyone is connected. It's an idea that much of the Web 2.0 is built on - linking people with social networks like MySpace and Friendster. Unfortunately, Bacon's site has little do with the Six Degrees game - which in some form, one figures, would make an excellent website. But it's hard to fault Bacon since his heart is in the right place. In less than a week, the site has raised more than US$67,000. social networking

web 2.o

Returning to its multi-media roots, the Oxygen cable network announced plans to launch a social networking site called Oomph.net and a broadband site called SheDidWhat.tv.The six-year-old company, which scaled back its original Web plans when the Internet bubble burst in 2001, also unveiled a slate of new TV programs in development, including an animated series produced by Jennifer Love Hewitt.
The network is holding its first upfront sales presentation for advertisers in New York Tuesday night.Oomph.net is designed to connect women with shared interests such as pop culture, careers, art, culture .social networking

web 2.0

IBM is in fierce competition with Microsoft in the markets for communications and collaboration software, and the new Lotus Connections offering could give it a leg up -- at least temporarily. Last November, Microsoft introduced a new version of its collaboration software, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, which includes some basic social networking technologies, including blogs and wikis.In the earlier days of computing, innovations that were created for corporations gradually seeped into consumer products. But now, the traffic is going both ways -- and moving quickly. The most significant example of this trend is the social networking phenomenon.
Web sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr have seen their popularity boom with quick and easy technologies for doing everything from creating blogs and forming communities to posting photos and videos on the Web. Now these technologies are starting to arrive in packages designed specifically for large companies. Ready or not, MySpace is coming to the enterprise. A major advance came Jan. 22 with IBM's announcement of a new product called Lotus Connections.social networking

web 2.0

Business applications giant SAP this year will be rolling out enhancements meant to make end users more productive through easier collaboration, according to company executives.These additions are being designed around so-called Web 2.0 technologies, such as shared Web pages called wikis, as well as online forums and mini applications called widgets. The goal is to make it easier for knowledge workers who use SAP products to collaborate.SAP is far from alone in getting the end-user collaboration bug. IBM on Monday debuted its own Web 2.0 strategy, introducing two new tools that bring social-networking instruments such as blogs and wikis to its Lotus suite and portal software. For these entrenched business software companies, the idea is to invest in end-user productivity to entice customers to upgrade. SAP earlier this month said it expects to miss its 2006 sales target. More workers are expecting the same "user experience" at work that they get on the Web, noted Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. Introducing Web-based collaboration can help sway a customer decision to upgrade. web 2.0

web 2.0

Online social networking isn't just for youngsters anymore. Of course, only 1 million of the more than 215 million social networkers regularly active today are older than 50. But by the end of the year that number could explode to 20 million, says a new study from global analysts Deloitte. Baby boomers have both time and money. Jeff Taylor, the entrepreneur who made millions off popular job-search site Monster.com, which he founded back in 1993, seems to have another hit on his hands with Eons, the social-networking site for the 50-plus crowd only. Eons hit the Net in late July, backed by $10 million in venture capital, and now boasts more than 100,000 members and has welcomed almost a million unique visitors.That means they have time to spend on networking sites that are wholly reliant on user-created content. Unlike their parents, baby boomers aren't looking for a quiet retirement. They want to stay active, social and connected during a retirement in which they're likely to live to more than 80. Finally, the technology to create and personalize networking Web pages is getting easier to use with every software release.

web 2.0

In the same way that double-decker busses used to materialise out of the dimness of the London smog, shape and substance is being added to the affirmations made - back in the Web 1.0 era - that the internet was only the beginning of great big change.Examples almost at random are the Silicon Valley email and computer calendar company Zimbra, Open Xchange - a collaboration business based in New York state and Germany; the San Francisco web integration specialists ActiveGrid; the rare British open source company Alfresco which does global document management from Maidenhead in Berkshire. There are also many companies - such as Platial of Portland, Oregon - who base their personal atlas on Google Earth maps, emphasising Google's benign role as a great gift to the open source movement.

web 2.0

Barely out of the shadows of 2000's dot-com downturn, Internet mania is back.
The first time around was not that long ago -- the great dot-com gold rush of the late 90s, powered by venture capitalist sugar daddies and excitable Nasdaq punters.And by the millennium, it all came crashing down.But today, a second boom is under way. One that is different from the last.And it goes by the name "Web 2.0," a term used to describe a new, more collaborative Internet.In the Web 2.0 era, start-ups want to be profitable from the outset and most are itching for acquisition, not IPO.And there is a common theme that runs throughout -- get yourself connected.The stars of Web 2.0 -- MySpace, Flickr and YouTube -- have new, inspired ways to connect and new ways to conduct business.Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of American media company O'Reilly Media, has organized the annual Web 2.0 conference for the past three years.He expects the Web 2.0 principles currently being embraced at a consumer level to take off in big business.

web 2.0

Web 2.0 describes a new generation of the Internet, which is fitted to each customer. "Personalization" and interactive participation are the catchwords for the new version of the web. Platforms like wikipedia®, YouTube ™ or SecondLife® show the success of the Web 2.0. They profit from the participation of the users and from user-generated content.The Internet becomes more personal. Nevertheless it is not so personal like the real life. For example, users are confronted with texts, pictures and videos in online shops. Compared to a shopping mall users cannot see any salesmen and saleswomen. So the Web 2.0 seems to be relatively impersonal in spite of the personalization.The IT professionals “copy” people – including their voices, their appearances and their motions – 1:1 to the Internet. People are filmed with high definition video (HDV) cameras in so called "green boxes". The produced film sequences will be digitalized with the newest interactive technologies and converted to animations with transparent background. The result

web 2.0

When people talk about Web 2.0 it's this all-new, never-seen-before thing. If you think back to the 19th century, if you wanted to listen to a song you'd get the family together, go into the parlor and everybody would pick up their instruments and play a song.Over the course of the 20th century that changed with the invention of radio, movies and television, so that when you wanted to listen to a song it wasn't something you made yourself; it was something you purchased and consumed. The idea of people making music or art or entertaining themselves is much older and I think more fundamental. A lot of the more creative outlets you see in Web 2.0 are a return to that more fundamental human nature.People think about the bubble of 1999 and 2000 and bursting over 2000 and 2001. What really mattered both in the macro-economic sense and to individuals were the public markets, the crazy IPOs, the insane valuations and then the money that a lot of individual investors lost, either directly investing in stocks or mutual funds.It might be a better name for a point in history, an era, rather than any specific technology, partly because no one really agrees on what the ingredients of Web 2.0 are. I think it's useful for describing the innovations that happened after the collapse of the dotcom bubble -- the sorts of business models and Web technologies that developed.

web 2.0

Ten new internet business partnership opportunities have emerged in the 2007: Advertise.it Network is a group of websites dealing with the emerging Web 2.0, Web Advertising, Online Shopping and with the mission to let the users interact, voting, commenting, arguing and sharing their opinions free and freely. They launched 10 websites in 2006 and are now seeking appropriate partners for developments in 2007. If you are looking for a business partnership opportunity, you should start watching how their activities already developed and how will grow in early 2007; you should also notice that they are already involved both in the America and Europe, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy.If you are interested in a partnership with Advertise.it Network, you can directly contact them through their websites.

web 2.0

In the first three quarters of 2006, venture capital firms poured $455 million into Web 2.0 startups, according to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young. Yet, not one Web 2.0 company went public last year, and only four were acquired, Dow Jones found. Other than Google’s $1.65-billion acquisition of YouTube, these were not high-profile exits. Meanwhile, several web companies are starting to show signs of failing.The much-ballyhooed San Francisco-based startup Browster, for example—backed a year ago by with $5.8 million in VC funding—is now widely believed to have closed its doors. Its phone is no longer taking messages, and its site is running only intermittently.Why the slowdown? This year will put many of these companies to the test, says one Silicon Valley VC. Only a few of the many Web 2.0 companies that launched in the past few years will be able to make it.This could explain cutbacks this month at such outfits as Palo Alto, California-based FilmLoop, which reportedly laid off most of its staff recently, and RawSugar, an Israeli/Silicon Valley search startup, which closed its offices in late December.

my space

The families of five abused teenagers in America are suing the social networking website MySpace, claiming that it did not do enough to protect their children.
They are seeking millions of dollars in damages after the teenagers were approached by sex offenders on the site .MySpace, which is now the world's biggest website, responded by saying that parents should monitor their children's internet use. "MySpace serves as an industry leader on internet safety and we take proactive measure to protect our members," said Hemanshu Nigam, the company's chief security officer.

internet

About a third of Americans used the Internet to find political news or exchange views over e-mail during the 2006 midterm election campaigns, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report .Among those who generated political content, 13 percent forwarded or posted someone else's political commentary; 8 percent posted their own political commentary to a newsgroup, Web site or blog; 8 percent forwarded or posted another's podcast or video content; and 1 percent made their own political podcasts or videos

web 2.0

With all the hype surrounding Web 2.0 technologies, serious IT organisations may be tempted to dismiss them as just more consumer-oriented fads. After all, do we really need something like MySpace or YouTube on the corporate network?Don't dismiss Web 2.0 so quickly. The concept of bottom-up interaction, collaboration and communication within and across an enterprise promises leaps in productivity and other benefits at very little cost.The caveat for IT is to make sure Web 2.0 is adopted proactively and openly. It should be deployed where it makes the most sense and delivers the most benefits, and where the overall risk is minimal.
The hardest part about Web 2.0 may be defining it.

MySpace gives parents a bit of access

The online hangout MySpace.com has been quietly developing software designed to give parents the bare-bones of what their kids are doing on the site.The tool, which will alert parents of the user name, age and location a child lists on personal MySpace pages known as profiles, is designed to spark conversations about Internet safety.But it is also meant to give kids enough room to maneuver lest they flee to rival social-networking sites.Unlike third-party monitoring software available for sale, the free MySpace tool won't let parents see their kids' password-protected profiles or any communications they have with friends.MySpace, which announced the initiative Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal reported on its existence, expects the software now known as Zephyr will be available this summer.Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have been increasingly warning of online predators at sites like MySpace, whose youth-oriented visitors are encouraged to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages.

social networking

Social networking is one of the primary functions of the Internet. Internet makes it easier for us to search for data and information. But Internet is not a library only. Internet gives us platform to connect with friends faster. It also gives us a platform to make new friends crossing thousands of kilometers. All this was not possible earlier. Social networking is the backbone of Internet.

orkut

When I left college, I went through the motions of writing ‘stay in touch’, ‘don’t forget to invite me to your wedding’ and other cringe-worthy messages that I won’t mention here to the entire student body. I refused to sign in the ‘slam books’ of my best friends though. “What’s the point?” I argued “You guys are like a recurrent rash. You’ll never really be gone.” In the years since I have passed out of college, I am glad to say I am yet to be proven wrong. Today, my circle of friends consists of people who really mean something to me. Who I know I can turn to in times of need. Who will get me last-minute flight tickets and waive off five-digit excess baggage fees. So last week, when one such friend sent me an invite to join Orkut, the online community, I hesitated. If I was in touch with the people I liked, why would I want to actively seek out people I... well didn’t like? But my friend wheedled and pleaded. “It’ll be fun! Don’t you want to know what so-and-so is up to now? Aren’t you the least bit curious if x’s children have got her wonky nose?” Of course I was. My friend had found the right button to push. Secretly I was dying to know how the others were. Were they successful? Rich? Had childbirth packed on the pounds? Were they on Prozac? Did they still deserve to be called Miss Talented? In short, were they doing better than I was?

So I signed on. Within an hour I got two ‘scraps’. One from a girl who I had last seen at my wedding and another from a friend I chatted with every other day. Zero axe wielding psychopaths had contacted me. So far so good.

youtube controversy

Hawaii-based NRI comedian, Gautham Prasad has created a huge controversy in India, with his parody of Mahatma Gandhi. The 3 minute 24 second act, on Google's video sharing site, YouTube, has resulted in angry protests across Ahmedabad , Bhubhaneshwar, Varanasi, with the vulgar portrayal of Gandhi.The video, shot in the US, shows Prasad clad in Gandhi's trademark attire, pole dancing and stripping for an audience. Records on YouTube show the video, called 'Time to get sexy' was uploaded a month ago.While Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, saw members of Gandhi Sena holding a silent protest, Varanasi saw a more violent one. Students of Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, stopped a train from leaving the Varanasi station and threatened to call for a state-wide shutdown, while the silent protesters demanded action against Gautham Prasad. Children also joined the protest by singing religious songs.To add fuel to the controversy, two Hindi news channels have been issued a notice by Information and Broadcasting Minister P. R. Dasmunsi, demanding an apology to the nation in their telecasts during prime time, for showing the offensive clip on air. He also warned the Indian media against any attempt to copy or publish the same. The TV channels have now expressed regret, saying they telecast the capsule to expose how the "Father of the Nation was being insulted".

Connecting the home

It has long been promised that the PC will become the entertainment hub of the home. However, the problem with this vision is that our computers tend to sit in the bedroom and means getting those movies, music and pictures the last few metres to the living room is a real pain.
This year's CES - the world's largest consumer gadget show - boasts a wealth of new kit which aims to make it easier to access digital media around the home - and in particular on TV screens. Ideas on what should be at the centre of it all vary, from PC-based media centres, digital video recorders or even video game consoles.Microsoft is promoting its Xbox 360 as the place to store and access movies and songs.

social networking

Seventy million people now use social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.com. These sites allow users to create profiles and post photos or journals and build a personal network of connections. In the study released Sunday, 70 percent of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, had profiles compared with 57 percent of boys in the same age bracket. Researchers expected the results to be even between the groups. Older teen girls though, are perceived as leaders in communication-style tools.
The Pew Survey of 935 youths ages 12 to 17, found that 55 percent said they used social networking sites. Researchers said that teens use the sites to manage friendships, and older teen boys use it as tool to make new friends. Boys were almost twice as likely to use social networking to flirt - 29 percent of older boys, compared with 13 percent of older girls.Adult behavior on social networking sites show an increased risk of becoming a victim of cyber crime.

what is web 2.0

the term Web 2.0 does not have an exact definition. It was first coined by publishing group O’Reilly Media in 2004 at a brainstorming conference intended to look forward to web developments arising from the ashes of the dot-com collapse in 2001.An O’Reilly paper on the matter suggested that Web 2.0 be visualized “as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles.Put another way, Web 2.0 envisaged “the web” as a platform for the delivery of services, with web browsers and web servers being little more than commodities. As the O’Reilly conference perceived it, the real value would lie in the services.

BBC to add social networking features to web sites

BBC to get into social networking concepts with some of their sitesThe UK based media giant BBC has said that they would enhance its online presence by providing social networking sites based on its most popular brands. Their automotive channel Top Gear is going to be one of these brands to get social networking features.They are inspired by the growing popularity of social networking services including MySpace.com and FaceBook to enhance their services to get more feedback from their subscribers and visitors.

Brazilian judge reverses YouTube ban

A judge reversed course Tuesday and lifted an order that led to a ban of YouTube in Brazil because a sexy video of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli had circulated widely on the video-sharing site.The move came after telecommunications companies and Internet providers blocked YouTube from the Amazon to Brazil's populous south in recent days, saying they were unable to limit blocking to the video of Cicarelli making out with her boyfriend.The case, the first of its kind in Latin America's largest nation, spotlights the extremely gray and technologically challenging area of when and how Internet companies and providers should remove content when privacy rights are violated.

mobile internet

Yahoo! Go 2.0 is an innovative new application that redefines the mobile Internet experience for consumers through a unique product design, ability to personalize with content from the entire Internet and a reinvention of mobile search.Yahoo! has created this new version of Yahoo! Go from the ground up to bring the Internet to the mobile phone with a suite of services that are fast, easy to use and highly personalizable. The unique carousel design of Yahoo! Go 2.0 makes it simple for consumers to navigate the selection of Yahoo! Go widgets for e-mail, local information and maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, photo sharing and search. The new service also includes Yahoo! oneSearch a completely new mobile search service designed to give consumers what they want on their mobile phone—instant answers. Yahoo! Go 2.0 is the next generation of the service that launched for Symbian and Windows Mobile phones in 2006.

growth of youtube

Launched in February of 2005 purchased by Google in the fall of 2006 for 1.6 Billion, the website YouTube grants their more than 72 million subscribers the ability to view, upload, comment on and share short videos.Google shares may balloon in 2007, thanks in part to new growth opportunities in video and advertising.the growth of video advertising via MySpace and YouTube, the free video share website will be a boon to shares.

mybloglog

Yahoo said that it has acquired MyBlogLog, a networking hub for blog publishers and readers, for an undisclosed amount.The Orlando, Fla.-based MyBlogLog has built a Web platform, which allows blog readers to create communities and connect with bloggers in a simple-to-use fashion.

web 2.0

In the first three quarters of 2006, venture capitalists pumped over $450 million into Web 2.0 startups. But job cuts at some of these startups have caused venture capital to stop flowing as freely, and many startups are still waiting for their second and third rounds of funding.Still, some analysts suggest that the innovative players that gained a first-mover advantage, such as YouTube in the video-sharing space, are thriving, whereas imitators are falling by the wayside. A lack of major technological breakthroughs in recent years may also be contributing to a less-crowded Web 2.0 space.

smart money

Successful Web 2.0 applications are usually successful because of its ability to harness collective intelligence; the ability to provide very simple mechanisms to collect and aggregate data that can then be turned into something useful for its users, such as for decision making or to find information. For example, collective intelligence makes Wikipedia the most popular online encyclopedia. Collective intelligence in the form of spam reporting helps GMail filter spam. Collective intelligence on what people like to read makes digg the most popular site to find blogs. Collective intelligence, in the form of social bookmarking, makes del.icio.us the most popular site to find tagged links.

news

A growing number of Web 2.0 startups are going under, laying off employees, and failing to raise second or third rounds of funding.In the first three quarters of 2006, venture capital poured $455 million into Web 2.0 startups. This accounted for nearly a third of all venture backing, according to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young, and was a key driver of growth.But with a weak IPO market and only a handful of notable acquisitions, venture capital firms are starting to pull back. Job cuts at various Web 2.0 startups indicate that second and third rounds aren’t coming as quickly as some might have expected, or hoped.

Teen Social Networking

according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12- to 17-year-olds provides some of the first independent numbers on social networking for that age group _ and found that older girls, in particular, are the most likely to have used social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook.The popular sites are among those that allow users to create profiles, swap messages and share photos and video clips, with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.The Pew survey found that 70 percent of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, had profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57 percent of boys in that age bracket.
The survey also found that MySpace was, by far, the most popular site. Of the youth who'd used social networking, 85 percent said they used MySpace, while 7 percent had done the same on Facebook and 1 percent on Xanga.The survey of 935 U.S. youth, ages 12 to 17, was done by telephone in October and November. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.When looking at the entire age bracket _ 12 to 17 _ Lenhart and her colleagues found that 55 percent said they used social networking sites. Not surprisingly, she said, younger children in that age range were the least likely to do so, with just over a third of 12- and 13-year-olds saying they'd created a profile. Experts say this is partly due to the fact that sites such as MySpace require users to be 14 (though they can lie about their age to gain access).

web 2.0 search in 2006.

Google has just released its top search terms and themes for the year 2006, and Web 2.0 is a prominent theme."Define Web 2.0" was the second-most popular request for a definition on Google all year, and Web 2.0 components wikis and blogs also enjoyed the spotlight. "How to wiki" was the second-most popular how to search on Google, "how to podcast" was number four, and "how to blog" came in eighth.
Web 2.0 has long been a term popular among bloggers and technology elites. Its surprise appearance so high on Google Zeitgeist indicates that ordinary Web users have become aware of it, and that blogs and wikis are now firmly mainstream.

news about web 2.0

1..'Wikipedia had a big blog boom itself this year with almost 29,000 citations, a 54% increase from 2005. The site also saw its audience more than double, leaping from 17.8 million unique visitors in November 2005 to 37.8 million in November 2006, according to Nielsen NetRatings. It should come as no surprise, then, that actual encyclopedias such as Britannica and Columbia have nowhere near the web readership as their Wiki counterpart these days.
2.The growing success of web 2.0 services has been further evidenced by advances made by social networking within the Chinese market, it has been suggested.
China is home to 132 million internet users, but the country's relatively recent arrival on the online stage means it is a notoriously hard market to conquer.But the prominence of social media and user-generated websites within the country has led the world's biggest media companies to believe that they could have success in the region.

web 2.0

what is Web 2.0? Where Web 1.0 was the web itself--technologies like HTML (the page markup language), plus browsers, plus interaction with the preceding--Web 2.0 often seems like Web 1.0+. It is all of the stuff that existed in Web 1.0--plus more!.a set of technologies called Ajax as being core to Web 2.0. (If you really must know, Ajax is short for "asynchronous JavaScript and XML.") The essence of Ajax (the technology, not the cleanser) is that it makes it easier to create zippy, interactive graphical applications that run in your browser. While that was possible before, it required technologies like Java, which was difficult to use. Ajax proponents argue that new Ajax-built online tools like Google Maps are harbingers of a fabulous new future

reality of web 2.0

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter… It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. recent survey of e-retailers found that 63 percent of 1,000 businesses that trade online had seen an increase in revenues over the past 12 months. As we reported last month, the addition of videos to an e-retailing site creates a whole new site landscape and customer experience.One of the benefits of the networking technology is that it can greatly increase the diversity of the talent pool accessible to recruiters. The technology also allows recruiTters to source more quickly and leaves more time to meet the needs of valuable candidates.the second Internet boom at least appears marked by greater discrimination than the first — notwithstanding some of the prices being paid for young, unproven companies. Yet “Web 2.0” viral may simpy be hype ters to source more quickly and leaves more time to meet the needs of valuable candidates.Despite better attention paid to the current boom, we may be looking at another Internet bubble burst. We have a new generation of public sites appearing with greater regularity and a new generation of speculators seeking to stake their commercial claim to the traffic. The hype is building — as is the spending. Will there ultimately be another burst, a shakedown, with only those few who are generating solid revenue to remain?What do you think: a business revolution or another over-hyped bubble burst-in-waiting?

news

1..Design flaw discovered earlier this week in Web-based Google applications spotlights a troublesome security trend for IT departments: what to do about protecting internal systems and data as workers access Web-based e-mail and collaborative applications using their employer's PCs. Google's problem, first reported by the Googlified Web site and since patched by Google, resulted from the way Google software stored information in a JavaScript file on the company's servers. Prior to the patch, an attacker could overwrite the JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, that Google used to send information from its servers to a user's client device and gain access to all of the contact information stored in a user's Gmail account, as long as that user was logged on to any Google application. This is known as a "cross-site request forgery.
2..IT experts buzzed by the phenomenon of ‘Web 2.0’ have been sounded the final call to share their bright ideas on how to revolutionise the internet.O’Reilly media group, which invented the term, wants a cadre of IT stars, like hackers, developers and entrepreneurs, to discuss the second birth of the Web at their conference in May.
Anyone with a pulse on “what's viable now, and what's lurking just below the radar” thanks to advances in net technology can submit themselves for a place at the California-based event.

growth of social networking sites

Facebook, with nine million users, claims to be seventh most trafficked site on the Web. But Net statistics need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Because at the same time, Hi5, with 40 million users, only claims to be the eighth most visited U.S. social network. And MySpace, which has its own internal email system, claims to be the world's fourth most popular English-language website, the sixth most popular website in any language, and to have a 100 million users. But however conservatively you look at it, we are talking of socially networked populations as large as entire countries, big or small. Advertisers love that, but, as with all bright ideas on the Net, success means imitation, and perhaps imitation so good that you could lose your business as instantly as you gained it. Google cottoned to the same idea with Orkut in 2004, an invitation-only site. America Online is getting ready to challenge Facebook and MySpace with its own social networking venture. That success can be ephemeral is illustrated by the experience of Friendster, which went from 20 million visitors/ users in 2003 to less than a million in 2005. And when the traffic shifts so does advertising
It is nothing like the Internet that you know where you blog, search, email, chat and are discovering Internet telephony. MySpace.com has racked in 73 million members in two years, Friendster has 27 million, Orkut has some 18 million and there are millions of others who are raving and ranting about the world in their own space.Is this safe for teenagers and children? Nothing is safe or bad by itself, it is how we use it that matters. All the sites have moderators with western standards of morals, but virtual clubbing is nothing like a chatting or browsing that are difficult to track. If you sense trouble with your teenager or ward, just get him/her to show the thumbnails of pals. If there is a lot of skin or computer doodles, fly right off the handle. On the other hand if the images are normal people, smile, pat and walk away from the computer. You are de-networked.

safe surfing

Internet users seem to forget how vulnerable they are. When the net first became popular, the numerous horror stories about the creeps and criminals online were sufficient to ensure people were wary about the information they posted. However, today, when you use the computer for almost everything, whether it's booking buttered popcorn at the theatre or asking for advice on how to clip your Labrador's nails, it's only natural you get lulled into feeling secure. Getting information on others has never been so easy. There are about 200 popular social networking sites such as Orkut, Friendster, Hi5 and Facebook .sites like Orkut have their good points, which is why they have so many members. You can use them to find old college buddies and classmates and make new friends. Unfortunately, you're also likely to stumble across very strange people: If you're a woman, you'll constantly get friend requests from men, sometimes accompanied by obscene pictures or emails. It can be annoying, and occasionally frightening.Site moderators have little control since any user can start a community, and users multiply faster than gremlins at a swimming meet. Orkut, which began in 2004 had 30,089,043 members by October 18, 2006, according to Wikipedia. And about 20,000 people add themselves to Facebook everydaWith dozens of new groups springing up everyday — ranging from `I love potato chips' to `Hack the Universe' — moderators find it difficult to weed out the bad guys. So anytime you log on, it's possible to get anything from a `credit card hacking tutorial' to tips on how to hack into someone's e-mail account.

orkut and india

Online groups are passé. Move over and make way for tech-savvy teenagers' latest fad — Orkut. Popular across nations, Orkut is described by Wikipedia as an Internet social network designed to meet friends. But it is more than just that. Snazzy scrapbooks, photo albums and picturesque profiles are just a small part of this organised network of friends. How did this group become a worldwide phenomenon in a span of two years? On January 22, 2004, Orkut Buyukkoten, Turkish software engineer and Google employee, designed this network as a meeting place for friends. As it is by invite only, it was exclusively for friends. This grew exponentially, revolutionising its popularity. By September 2004, the number of users skyrocketed to two million. And tech-savvy Bangalore is right in the thick of this phenomenon.Orkut has had its share of controversies too. There was chaos in January 2005 when a Brazilian hacker attacked to steal community ownership rights. It was a nightmare for the developers who managed to bring it under control and gave more rights to moderators of communities allowing them the discretion of choosing, editing and deleting spam users who flood communities. Racist and hate groups emerged as a by-product of this saga. And anomalies like false profiles with wrong information creep up now and then.Orkut means "holy meeting place" and that's what it became — a haven for all those to connect with old friends and new buddies. As it draws more and more number of people, it remains to be seen whether it overrides the existing networks or not.

web 2.0 and math

DesiMartini.com, an SMS-based online social networking site for Indians around the world, launched by Pahwa KBS last month, says it has plans to beat the competition and reach a registered user base of 1 million members in six months.Started by 25-year-old Vivek Pahwa, a recent graduate from the Indian School of Business, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the site lets users create their own customisable homepages, send in updates (what they are doing) via SMS wherever they are, upload and share pictures, join groups and communities, chat with other members, and stay in touch with old friends and discover new ones.
Social networking has been one of the hottest areas of interest since Web 2.0 took off as a concept and media buzzword. In one of the most high profile media deals of 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace for $580 million, a staggering amount at the time. This year, viral video has become the latest hot category with the defining Internet deal of 2006 being the sale of YouTube to Google for $1.76 billion.
math theorem...1.A (presumably autobiographical) character in one of astrophysicist Fred Hoyle's novels opined the following. "I figure that if to be totally known and totally loved is worth 100, and to be totally unknown and totally unloved is worth 0, then to be totally known and totally unloved must be worth at least 50."
2..Dunbar's number is a value significant in sociology and anthropology. Proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it measures the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships". The so-called rule of 150, states that the size of a genuine social network is limited to about 150 members ( called Dunbar's number). Dunbar supports this hypothesis through studies by a number of field anthropologists. These studies measure the group size of a variety of different primates; Dunbar then correlate those group sizes to the brain sizes of the primates to produce a mathematical formula for how the two correspond

web 2.0 growth

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources.The Web, though, is becoming the first piece of the bigger network as it meshes with new technologies that started from disparate corners of the industry — such as Wi-Fi wireless broadband connections, the Global Positioning System (GPS) and radio frequency identification tags (RFID).Web creator Tim Berners-Lee has been talking about a version of such a system for a couple of years. "The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people,".
Life span of Net
1994:38 million Internet users; 3,000 Web sites worldwide; 35% of U.S. schools wired
GPS satellites fully functional
Web grows at a 341,634% annual rate
1995:eBay and Yahoo founded.
The first macro virus is discovered in a Word document.
1996:The number of Net hosts exceeds 9 million.
1997:71,618 Usenet newsgroups.
1998:Google officially opens its doors, about two years after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin developing a search engine.
1999:Online retailers register $5.3 billion in sales.
2000:304 million people have access to the Net.
2001:30 million Web sites exist.
Osama bin Laden No. 1 searched on Google in October.
Apple unveils the iPod.
2002:Verizon launches first high-speed 3G cell network.
Friendster social networking site founded.
2003:Wal-Mart tells its suppliers to put RFID tags on all pallets by 2005.
Hewlett-Packard ships 1 million digital cameras each quarter, double the previous year.
2004:One millionth BlackBerry e-mail device sold.
Google indexes 4.2 billion Web pages.
800 million Internet users, 100 million songs downloaded from iTunes; 99% of U.S. public schools wired.
In the year and a half since, the term "Web 2.0" has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. But there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom.

google services

Clicking the "more" link on Google's front page takes you to a screen full of icons that provide access to the less common services, such as Google Answers, Catalogs, Maps and Print (printed books). Beneath that is the Google Tools section, which includes Desktop Search and the Google Toolbar. Blogger, Keyhole and Picasa are also featured here, though neither Gmail nor Orkut gets a mention.Gmail has been in beta test for more than a year. Access is still by invitation only, though there is no shortage of those. However, Gmail's initial selling point - a gigabyte of storage - has since been matched elsewhere. Yahoo Mail now offers a gigabyte, so Gmail's latest offer, 2GB, is no longer such an attraction.Gmail scores because it has a good user interface, works quickly, has good spam filtering and because you can use Google to search your email. But Gmail has drawbacks, too, such as the lack of integration with other services, and the AdWords down the right hand side. It is now roughly equivalent to Yahoo Mail, though Microsoft's Hotmail remains consistently horrible.

www.gmail.com

www.google.co.in/options/

social networking

1.In 2006 it was YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and many other social sites that grabbed the headlines. The focus on users and online communities will continue in 2007 said Kathy Johnson from Consort Partners - a Silicon Valley-based firm that advises start-ups targeting the so-called Web 2.0 space. The ease and speed with which web programs can be put together is driving more and more businesses to question how they create the software they use to keep their organisations running.
2..
The Puffin, from Singapore, offers its own network and also connects to Yahoo, MSN and AOL instant messaging accounts -- allowing multiple social communities to converge in one portal.You can chat, do on-the-fly blogging and share photos and video on the multiple networks from the Puffin portal. They call this ``integrated social networking'' and it can be used on Java-compatible mobile devices.
3..
The latest addition to social networking sites is DesiMartini.com, an SMS-based online social networking site catering to Indians residing across the globe.
Launched end November'06 by Gurgaon-based Vivek Pahwa (25), an entrepreneur and recent Graduate from the Indian School of Business, DesiMartini.com claims not only to incorporate the best from sites such as Orkut, Friendster, and MySpace, but also go a step further and enhance user experience through a rich user interface and SMS-based features