I have seen a lot of business ideas lately using money as a way to motivate users to submit content and participate in the community. But I keep asking myself, is money really a viable option to build a social network or online community? Here are some examples of companies that are using, or have used, money as a motivator: Revver and MetaCafe – Advertising sharing based on the number of views a users video gets. Dovetail.tv – Pays $.10 every time someone downloads a users video. Yelp – Paid users $1 per post at the beginning. No longer do...

UPDATE: Some really interesting conversation about this is taking place in the comments. Anyone else who has an opinion, please chime in! I have stated a few times that without Facebook I probably wouldn’t still be in contact with half of the people I currently am from college and high school. It provides an easy and informal way to stay up to date with friends. Despite this, I sometimes just can’t comprehend the way that some people interact with Facebook. Take for example this post I found on someone’s wall readable to hudreds of people: “[Name], Dont forget to always...

We have already seen some politicians use sites such as MySpace and Facebook to reach out to the younger voters, but recently Hillary Clinton posted the question, “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?” on Yahoo! Answers. Joshua Porter at Bokardo has some good comments on this. This action really shows the power of social media. At time of posting there have been about 36,000 responses to the question, with the majority of them being quality responses. But this presents another problem. Who in the world...

I am a huge fan of local review site, Yelp.com. I have been amazed at how active and dedicated Yelp’s community is. A good portion of the members have each written hundreds (even thousands) of reviews, posted numerous threads in the forum, created multiple lists, and continually give “compliments” to other members. I can honestly say it is one of the most active online communities out there. This fascination lead me to a question that I was dieing to answer. Why in the world do so many people contribute so much to Yelp? But instead of making conjectures based on my experiences...

KanTalk is a social networking site that targets those learning a second language. Simply put, the general concept behind KanTalk is that a person would rather learn how to speak a second language by having real conversations with people of similar interests that going through the same learning process. I certainly know I would have been more motivated to learn spanish back in college if I was talking to a good looking girl. Users can sign up with KanTalk and through the traditional social networking model find someone who is has the similar interests and is learning the same second language....

Recently I have talked to many entrepreneurs who have experienced the same issue I have with starting a new company; having a couple great ideas, but lacking the right people to make them happen. For a startup to be successful it ideally needs a few different types of people. For example, an internet startup would ideally have the entrepreneur/business person, a tech superstar, and a creative designer. The problem is that professionals, especially young entrepreneurs, seem to have a personal network that is very vertical. For example, an entrepreneur will know a lot of other entrepreneurs,...

Yesterday there were reports that all flash applications would not function on MySpace. While MySpace is claiming it as a bug that they have fixed, a lot of others are claiming it was a test run to see if a flash block would be effective in eliminating third party widgets. This comes shortly after a great piece by Robert Young on why MySpace could erect a toll booth model. Is this within Myspace’s right? Absolutely. If other companies were making money off of your site’s traffic and users, you would want a piece of the action too. Is it a smart decision for MySpace? No. Which...

In a number of my posts I have talked about how there will eventually need to be a way to bring all of your social network memberships together in one place. This will definitely become more evident as niche social networks who offer more engaging features become more popular. “Profile Aggregators” such as ProfileLinker, Spokeo, Profilactic, Iceflake, and FindMeOn are already trying to solve this problem. I commend all of their efforts in trying to solve a growing issue. ProfileLinker is currently the best, however, all in their current state still aren’t...

I must admit, I jumped the gun a little on the new LinkedIn Answers feature. Sometimes I just get too excited when I see the potential of something. I previously posted on the usefulness of LinkedIN’s version of professional oriented Q and A, when I should have talked about the possible potential. The main issue of LinkedIN Answers is the quality of questions. These are actual questions I just pulled from the first two pages: “Who needs leads?” “Any Mark Cubans on LinkedIN?” “Do you anticipate failure?” “Who has tables and chairs for sale?” Do...

Shuzak.com is a new niche social network for geeks. They describe themselves as: Unlike MySpace and other social networks, that adhere to the traditional peer-to-peer models, Shuzak actively encourages community oriented interactions. To meet the demands placed by our members, Shuzak provides unique tools that let programmers, scientists and mathematicians communicate more efficiently. I find the geek vertical to be an interesting niche. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of thriving “geek” communities on the internet oriented around programming languages, computer platforms,...