One of the most valuable online professional communities out there has only 400 members and is barely known by anyone. Recently the VP of Products and Marketing at ZoomInfo told me about Creative Good. The community reminded me of one of my previous posts, An Inefficency of Professional Social Networking. I was impressed by Creative Good due to the number, and quality of responses to a thread that was forwarded to me. The question posed by a member: “We are looking for a tool to measure the end-user experience of loading a web page. Can anybody recommend specific tools to accomplish this?” The...

Well…I survived some incredible adventures in Honduras and Belize. Unfortunately it looks like my server didn’t survive my trip. At some point during the past week my server was shut off for no apparent reason. I apologize for an inconvienence. But everything is back up and running. I’ll be spending the next couple days catching up, so my posts might be a little slow coming.

Just wanted to let all of my readers know that I will be on vacation until Feb 12th with out computer access. Unfortunately I will not be posting anything over the next week, but I promise to have plenty when I return.

Fantasy betting sites around pop culture have been becoming a popular new social networking niche. These types of sites let you bet with friends or others of the communities around things like “How many people will Jack Bauer kill in season 6 of 24?” or “Another Paris Hilton sex tape will be released by June of 2007.” I think these types of sites which include Fafarazzi.com, PicksPop.com, and GottaBet.com have interesting potential. They cover topics that draw in the average person and appeal to the masses. But the most promising aspect is that most open the door to...

Everyone knows that YouTube recently announced that they will soon be sharing revenue of in-video ads with users. While most people think it is a bad move for YouTube, I think it could be great if they execute it correctly. Yesterday I talked about how Money As A Motivator is ineffective in building a dedicated community. However, YouTube already has built the community to a critical mass. Just as we have seen with Myspace and Facebook, as long as you have critical mass, you can implement features that piss off your users (aka Facebook feed), and still be fine. Despite this, I think the smartest...

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....