Social Media

The project managing Elgg, an open source networking platform, announced a couple days ago that the software is "now more open than ever".  The project will be opening "the development process, codebase, direction and software roadmap to the community".

More recently, expected changes at elgg.org were starting to take place with expectations of discussions taking place throughout the week.

This will mean structure both in tools to better support community led development of the software but will also mean putting together procedures how to organise it all.

I am a loyal reader of Andrew McAfee's articles which he posts on his Harvard Business School blog, The Impact of IT on Business and their Leaders.  Andrew McAfee is an associate professor at Harvard and spends a great deal of time on his blog discussing and defining Enterprise 2.0.

I'm always amazed how Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, always remains tuned to the geeky side of life.  This time Adams uses the "What is Web 2.0?" question as a "powerful anti-meeting" spell.  You gotta love it.

Due to copyright laws, I can't show the Dilbert comic strip here.  However, if you click on the thumbnail in this post...you'll magically arrive to the correct page at Dilbert.com.

BusinessWeek published an interesting article titiled, Did MySpace Really Beat Yahoo? The article discusses the difficulty to confirm which site actually has more traffic, MySpace or Yahoo.

Google Buys CMSReport.com. That's at least what I would have liked this week's headlines to read. Instead, everyone in the business world is still scratching their head and wondering what to make of the Google and YouTube deal. Are we about to enter real growth and value in tech or are we about to face a Dot-Net Bubble 2.0? I don't have all the answers, but it looks like everyone is watching. BusinessWeek has this to say in their article, Smart Move or Silly Money 2.0?

WHO'S NEXT? Now, the question is whether YouTube's valuation will extend to up-and-coming buyout contenders. So far, it looks like only a few sites have demonstrated growth and engagement with users that might command similar prices. Exhibit A: Facebook, whose value as determined by its venture investors has jumped from $100 million in its first round in September, 2005, to $500 million in a second round last April. And that's just the start. Sources say bidders such as Yahoo are willing to pay up to $1 billion today.

So was Google's buy of YouTube smart or silly? Just as the BusinessWeek article discusses in their own article, the answer to that question is anybody's guess. I think if Google bought YouTube only for its young fickle audience and the level of synergy currently present at the site...it was a silly move. However, Google may have also bought YouTube before anybody else could which is likely a very smart move.

Taking the term of Web 2.0 further, CNET has an article about Family 2.0 sites:

Cook is one of a growing number of parent-entrepreneurs who are putting their time and money behind their familial interests and starting a new generation of Web sites for parents and older people--sites that borrow many of the social networking concepts, such as photo-sharing and the wiki, that are found on well-known destinations like MySpace.com and the aforementioned Wikipedia.