RAA Group

The Internet of Things is fast approaching and with it comes Web 3.0, where “social awareness” will replace “social networking.” Soon tweets and status updates will become fully automated and generated by the world around us versus us ever having to touch a keyboard again.

Ambient intelligence systems are being developed with sensors and smart objects that will instantaneously create awareness about our whereabouts. This data will then be shared with our social networking and messaging platforms. Our friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter will be alerted automatically without us ever having to manually tweet or post a status update.

Achilles KameasAchilles Kameas, a senior researcher at the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (raCTI) of Patras, Greece coordinated the EU-funded ASTRA project which brought together researchers from multiple disciplines, including psychology, interaction design, knowledge engineering and computer science. Their mission is to take social networking to the next level.

Internet of ThingsIn my past blogs, I have written about the Internet of Things and Semantic

Technology where Web 3.0 will eventually no longer need the input of humans, because all the content warehoused from the Web 2.0 era will be able to data-mined by machines and use when needed .

Users of a social networking platform based on the ASTRA approach would no longer need to post status updates manually to let their family know what they are doing or where they are. Surrounded by smart objects and sensors in their home or office, the system will continually update their status information, automatically telling friends that they are unavailable to receive a phone call while they are busy cooking

or that they do not want to be disturbed during a business meeting.

This video gives you a glimpse of the future which is just around the corner. The ASTRA project examines “social awareness” and how it extends the primary tenets of social networking that addresses our need to stay in touch with family and friends or to be reassured regarding our own well-being.

According to Kameas, creating mobile apps is the next step in the “social awareness” process and consumer electronics manufacturer Phillips and mobile operator Telenor are presently conducted trials of the ASTRA technology.  So soon there’ll be an app for that!

The response of test users, Kameas says, “has been generally positive, although many have raised concerns about privacy and security issues.” In that regard, the Kameas notes that the system is similar to Facebook and other online services in that users can choose how much information they share and with whom.

The researchers developed their approach based on the so-called focus-nimbus model to determine what information is shared and what is received by different people in a social network. A Psych Central report states that “in this context, a person’s nimbus consists of the type, amount and detail of information they want to share with others, while their focus contains the type and amount of information they choose to receive from others, including their reaction to the person’s nimbus.”

In an ITC Results report, Kameas notes, “it’s like a window. You can leave it wide open, pull the curtain, or close the blinds. Then, what you choose to put on display in the window, be it content or an activity, can be seen by others.”

So the future is here, my friends. As long as it took us to get to Web 2.0, like everything else in life, we will soon be seeing it fade into our rear-view mirrors. It will be interesting however to see whether Twitter, Facebook and the other social networks transition into this brave new world, or whether they’ll be stuck in a time warp, unable to adapt to the change!

See you on the other side!

Ron Callari
Society and Trends Writer
InventorSpot.com

With the first decade of the new century and new millennium coming to a close, its time to look forward at some of the prognostications that several of today’s visionaries have divined from their social media crystal balls.

These predictions are meant to be thought-provokers more than a specific road map, and derive from an eclectic assembly of thought leaders,entrepreneurs and folks who are in the trenches every day dealing with the evolution of social media in our very many global neighborhoods.

Based on this research, I have also added findings from my own humble analysis that supports, questions and occasionally disputes some of these predictions.

Southeast Asia, Next Social Media Hotspot

Jimmy WalesJimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia thinks the most important changes ahead will be forged by the “next billion people coming online, mainly in India and China.” He discussed the cross-cultural impacts as people from various backgrounds, cultures, and linguistic heritages “mix and match in amazing ways.”

This year I interviewed Shane Lennon, senior vice president of marketing for GyPSii, a location-based social network. On this topic, he noted that their company has “secured relationships with China Telecom and China Mobile.” According to Lennon, “while social networks are built around the premise of who you know (a rather limiting force),” he sees “more of a future and one that’s playing out in China right now – that connects people (based) on where they are located.” (see more on the topic of location-based networks below).

Web 2.0 Attacks & Political Tension

In a recent Websense report, it was noted that Web 2.0 attacks will increase in sophistication and prevalence. In the coming year, their analysis suggests that there will be a greater volume of spam and attacks on the social Web and real-time search engines such as Topsy.com, Google and Bing.com. In 2009, researchers have seen increased malicious use of social networks and collaboration tools such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Google Wave to spread attackers’ wares. Spammers’ and hackers’ use of Web 2.0 sites have been successful because of the high level of trust users place in the platforms and the other users.

On August 6, I reported on Twitter’s announcement that it was “defending against a denial-of-service” attack which was initiated when hackers commanded a whole army of computers to attack a particular site. As the story played out we learned that this attack was based on a very old turf dispute between Russia and Georgia. In my estimation, it is clear that social networking will become a new battleground for opposing forces around the globe to threaten and harass each other. This coupled with the Iranian Election Protests, I predict that more of this these types of global tensions will bubble up over into the social media space in 2010.

The Growing Popularity of eReaders

Sarah Rotman EppsJames McQuiveyAccording to Sarah Rotman Epps and James McQuivey of Forrester Research, eReaders will get apps, too. “As anyone with an iPhone knows, apps are where the magic happens: They make the device infinitely more useful.” iRex Technologies, which has a B2B e-reader business in Europe and is launching its first consumer-targeted e-reader in the U.S, will release an SDK (software development kit) so that software developers can make their own apps for the iRex DR800SG. Rotman and McQuivey said they “wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon launch a Kindle app store, too, including anything from a social-reading app from Goodreads to an enterprise app from Microsoft or Oracle would make e-readers vastly expand the possibilities for consumers and businesses.”

As far as the iPhone replacing the Kindle, there is evidence to indicate the contrary.  While the “Kindle for iPhone” is a possibility, particularly since a user doesn’t have to purchase another expensive device, the iPhone’s small screen is cumbersome. My research indicates that for the voracious reader, the Kindle’s size and feel is more comparable to the book reading that many of us have grown accustomed to. Its advantage over an actual book is its light-weight and the ability to store hundreds of books in one self-contained device.

Magazine and Newspaper Apps

Sarah Rotman Epps and James McQuivey have also weighed in on magazine and newspaper publishers launching their own apps and devices. “Magazine and newspaper publishers aren’t satisfied with the way their content looks and functions on the Kindle and Sony Readers—they want color, video, interactivity, the ability to sell ads and control the subscriber relationship.” Old media moves slowly, but in 2010 we’ll see them crawling towards some solutions. Time Inc.‘s John Squires is spearheading an effort to get other magazine publishers together in a joint venture, which would sell access to digital versions of their magazines that could be consumed on portable devices.

In November, I reported on ZenNews and its Zensify life-streaming app that provides a cutting-edge analysis of the latest breaking news stories from sources in real-time using a “tag cloud” visualization technology. All articles are available to read as click-thrus and include news from acclaimed news sources such as the The Guardian, AlJazeera, CNN and the NY Times.

Location-Based Social Networks

Pete CashmorePete Cashmore from Mashable recently reported in his CNN column, that “Fueled by the ubiquity of GPS in modern smartphones, location-sharing services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Google Latitude are suddenly in vogue…with Foursquare (potentially becoming) the breakout services of the year … provided they’re not crushed by the addition of location-based features to Twitter and Facebook.”

Cashmore also believes that “location is not about any singular service; rather, it’s a new layer of the Web. Soon, our whereabouts may optionally be appended to every Tweet, blog comment, photo or video we post.”

In a recent report I published titled, “Pinpointing Popularity: Social Networking Gets Physical,” my claim is that the potential of LBS lies in the hands of the major players who have been developing this technology for the last couple of years.

Whether or not ‘location’ becomes the must-have service for Twitter and Facebook to entertain and potentially absorb will most likely be based on monetization. And based on the forecasted numbers around the globe, it looks like location-based social networks are scaling fairly well in that arena – with Foursquare out front, not only striking deals with developers and new apps but also with restaurants, bars and gyms.  As a result, my prediction is that Foursquare and perhaps Gowalla will monetize their networks to a lucrative position faster than Twitter in 2010.

Augmented Reality Success or Bust?

augmented realityCashmore’s position on AR is somewhat mixed. While he believes, “it’s yet to become part of the consumer consciousness- it has attracted early-adopter buzz in the latter part of 2009,” he has his doubts as to its continued functionality.

Enabled by GPS, AR maps the data from the likes of Google and the accelerometer technology in modern phones and overlays data on your environment with reviews of the restaurants you walk past and Wikipedia entries about the sights you see.

According to Cashmore, “the challenges for such services is to prove their utility – they have the ‘cool factor,’ but can they truly be useful.”

While I understand Cashmore’s concerns, I think there were several examples of AR used effectively in 2009 that counters his position. In an analysis I conducted in October, titled, “Real-Time Augmented Reality: Future or Fantasy?” I uncovered a application for AR that utilized real-time search most effectively.

Sporting events are perfect venues to adapt this type of technology, and this past June, Wimbeldon was the first major international arena to actually test it. The beta version of the Wimbeldon Seer developed by IBM, which runs on Google’s G1 smartphones provided fans at this past year’s matches with AR read-outs about what was being viewed during the tournament. The Seer’s features included match updates, players’ stats, newsfeeds, menu items available at the refreshment stands and could even tell you if the lines at a particular restroom were too long. All the real-time data on this system came from Wimbeldon’s own controlled channel.

Companies to develop social media policies

Dave AmanoDavid Armano’s Harvard Business Publishing report asserts that “if the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year.” From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.

My tongue-and-cheek review back in October, titled, “Social Media Nazi Says ‘No Twitter For You‘” explored the ‘prohibition’ of Twitter and Facebook in the workplace. While Armano touches on the possibility of a formalized employee ‘social media’ handbook, I think there are going to be more stringent social media restrictions put in place as it pertains to social networking at your place of business.

Affecting more than half of all businesses in the US and according to a new survey conducted by Robert Half Technology, fifty-four percent of companies have completely blocked social networks at work, while another nineteen percent will only permit it “for business purposes.” According to a CNET Report, social networks “have become so ingrained in culture and communication that some companies choosing to block them can appear draconian rather than prudent.” Unfortunately , this ‘big brother’ trend, I believe will see even more traction in 2010.

Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web, which has been discussed, debated and debunked by many of the social media gurus mentioned here will emerge as a major sea change in 2010 as to how we conduct business and socially interact on the Web.

Peter SweeneyAccording to Peter Sweeney, founder of the semantic technology firm Primal Fusion, “Web 3.0 is industrial” and as an industrial entity “the automation of tasks displaces human work.” He states that “instead of users manually creating content, machines will automate the heavy lifting. Consumers simply push the buttons and get stuff done. Think textile
mills versus spinning wheels.”

Semantic web refers to the web-study of interlinked documents accessed via the Internet. Web pages are generally written in HTML,which describes the structure of information i.e the syntax but not the semantics. But if the computers can understand the meaning behind the information then this can help us surface the information that we are looking for more expeditiously. There are quite a few Web 3.0 applications we have been exposed to already including the likes of Twine, Google Squared and Mozilla Ubiquity. Also many regard Google Wave as the first major door-opener of Web 3.0 wave era.

In my article, “‘Social Awareness’ To Replace Social Networking,” I see us getting closer to the ‘Internet of Things’ where ‘social awareness’ will aggregate everything we do online to the extent that tweets and status updates will become fully automated by the world around us versus us ever having to touch a keyboard again. This will be accomplished by the coding of every object, appliance and entity we interact with on a daily basis where all of our movements will be recorded, stored and communicated automatically when appropriate. This coupled with all of our content being warehoused for future data-mining purposes, the involvement of humans for some of these tasks will no longer be needed (as noted above by Sweeney).

My feeling is that while real-time search, location-based social networks, augmented reality and the other predictions noted here will all make significant inroads in 2010, the one most noteworthy will be Web 3.0  –  as all of these other new developments will have a direct correlation with how that movement unfolds.

The next decade has been marked as the beginning of the age of semantic technology. Once that ball starts rolling downhill, all of these other social media components will unfold at a faster and faster clip. Jennifer LeggioJennifer Leggio, also known as “Mediaphyter” notes in a ZDNet article, that “2010 is the year that social media will just be, rather than serving as a shiny new toy.” I concur with Leggio’s assumption that social networking will become ubiquitous, and add that Web 3.0 will replace Web 2.0 as the next new shiny thing we can’t stop talking about in 2010.

Ron Callari
Society and Trends Writer
InventorSpot.com

Anyone on Linkedin needs to read this once a year to check and fix mistakes, and to help refocus maximizing one’s networking efforts.

December 01, 2009

Top 10 Tips For New Twitter Users

Written By Marcelo Lewin

Your friends are on Twitter. Your son talks about Twitter. The news mentions Twitter every other minute. Even your mom is on Twitter. But did you know who’s on Twitter that can affect your business? Your competition.

It doesn’t matter what you do, what industry you are in or how big (or small) your company is, you should be on Twitter engaging with new leads, checking out what your competition is doing and finding out what people are saying about you and your company.

Twitter is the world’s largest “cocktail” party and like all cocktail parties, there are some rules you need to follow so that you are accepted, become popular, attract the right “followers” and ultimately convert them into leads.

Below are my top 10 tips for new Twitter users (Top 10 music kick in now please):

Tip #10 – Provide useful and value added information.
No one really cares if you are drinking coffee now, if your kids just left for school or if you have a headache. Twitter is about providing tips, customer service and useful information that people can use on a daily basis. For example, if you are a photographer, provide daily tips on shooting better photographs. If you are a mechanic, provide daily tips on how to keep your car maintained properly. Providing these tidbits (in under 140 characters of course) that people can walk away with and use daily will keep you and your services in their mind space, and soon, you’ll be able to convert those leads into customers when they need your services.

Tip #9 – Listen to people first.
Like every cocktail party, if you walk up to someone and immediately tell them everything about yourself and what you sell, they will be turned off. In the Twitterverse, this is exactly the same. Don’t jump in and start “selling”. Listen to what people in your industry are doing and what they are looking for. Then jump in and provide useful information, but only if it adds value (see the tip #10).

Tip #8 – Participate in conversations.
After you’ve listened to people and understand what they like (and not like), jump in and start new conversations and participate in current conversations by adding your expertise. Answer as many questions as possible. Be honest and be passionate about what you offer. The effort you put in now to nurture these relationships will come back to you as business.

Tip #7 – Earn trust
I’ve always been taught that you earn trust, you don’t automatically get it. In Twitter, you have to multiply that by 100. You build trust by providing useful information on a daily basis, by answer questions honestly and without bias, by being transparent, by apologizing in public when you (or your company) did something wrong and by giving kudos to people that do great things (e.g. company partners, great employees, fantastic customers and yes…and even your competition). Once you have the trust of the Twitter community, they will seek out your services.

Tip #6 – Quality over quantity.
It’s not about how many “followers” you have; it’s about having relevant followers following you. What do I mean by “relevant”? That depends on your industry and whom you are targeting. If you are a catering company, maybe you want to attract people that just got engaged or throw a lot of parties. Perhaps you want to attract companies (or people) that you want to partner with (such as wedding photographers and videographers). The key is to have relevant followers. It’s better to have 2000 qualified, focused, relevant followers, then 100,000 generic people you know nothing about and may not be interested in what you offer.

Tip #5 – Seek out people that are “influential”.
As tip #6 stated, finding relevant people is very important, but finding “influential” people that are relevant to your industry is even more important. It’s much better to have 1 or 2 followers that are influential (known in your industry, have many relevant followers themselves) then to have 100 people that ultimately, can’t influence anyone.

Tip #4 – Give it away for free.
Provide as much useful information as you can for free and I promise you it will come back to you in the form of business. Social media is all about sharing and interacting with people. The more you share, the more transparent you are, the more people will want to “follow you”. Soon, you will be the “influential follower” that everyone wants to friend.

Tip #3 – Market indirectly.
Once you’ve earned the trust of the Twitter community, have become an influential person in your industry and have provided enough useful and value added information, you will be able to “indirectly” market to people your services and products in between your informational Tweets.

Tip #2 – Do not SPAM.
There are plenty of spammers on Twitter already. You can easily recognize them. They usually follow hundreds (if not thousands) of people, but only 10 people follow them (and those are usually fake accounts they created). They always link to their site, never offering any useful information. They don’t interact with other users in conversations. It’s always one way. Do not become one of those people. If you follow tips #10 through #3 above, you won’t be a spammer. Don’t start with tip #3 directly.

Tip #1 – Don’t expect to tie a Twitter entry to a Balance Sheet entry.
If you are the type of person that expects an immediate ROI after Tweeting for a week, then Twitter (and in fact, all of social media) is not for you. You will not be able to tie a specific Twitter entry to your balance sheet. It just doesn’t work like that. Twitter is a pre-sales tool that allows you to create relationships and nurture them to the point where you can convert some of those relationships into customers.

I hope this article has encouraged you to take on the leap on Twitter. Twitter is not only fun (and free) but it’s a great tool that allows you to build relationships with potential new customers, allows you to nurture the relationships of current customers and allows you to see what your competition is up to.

Join the Twittervolution today! If you are interested in learning more about Twitter, you can take one of our free Twitter webinars or you can, of course, follow me at Twitter.com/NewMediaDude for daily tips about new media.

It might be the ultimate in retail technology: A way to make huge profits by selling things that do not need to be acquired, stocked or shipped. But these items—perhaps a diamond-lined collar for a virtual pet or a special power in a shared game—are becoming big money. Virtual goods sales are projected to hit $5 billion this year, according to The New York Times.

But virtual goods are hardly free. The paper of record said the revenue was “all for things that, aside from perhaps a few hours of work by an artist and a programmer, cost nothing to produce.” Would they have said the same thing about a bestselling—albeit basic—applet? What is software other than the work of artists and programmers? The more important thing about virtual gifts, though, is what they say about the gift buyers. As Winston Churchill’s Web designer said, “Never before have so many spent so much on so little.” Is this pent up demand for immediacy? Entertainment? Is it a sign that consumers are now ready to embrace micropayments? Regardless, $5 billion is nothing to virtually sneeze at.

Twitter, LinkedIn Cut Deal – We’re Still Waiting for the Big Announcement

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / November 9, 2009 9:00 PM

Twitter and LinkedIn are announcing a deal tonight that will allow LinkedIn users to publish status updates to their Twitter profiles and pull in some or all Twitter updates to their LinkedIn accounts.

Wait a minute…the two social media companies with some of the most valuable, interesting data on the web made a deal and what do we get? Spammy Twitter streams clouding up our LinkedIn feeds and an occasional uptight Tweet on Twitter that was born inside LinkedIn? We’re still waiting for the meaty announcements everyone says are coming someday soon – that Twitter and LinkedIn are open for business.

I don’t mean to be too grouchy, but this looks like just one more sweetheart Silicon Valley deal that has limited imagination and represents a lost opportunity for the kind of innovation everyone expects these kinds of companies to drive.
In the announcement video recorded by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Twitter’s Biz Stone, both talked about how Twitter is great for business. What did they mean, though? They meant it’s a marketing platform, a way to get your message out further, etc. If you have something you want to say to everyone on LinkedIn, why not say it on Twitter too?

But is business just about broadcasting your marketing message? What about the listening part of doing business, thoughtful analysis, responding to actionable information and market conditions? Conversations with your customers and business partners?

Twitter is arguably better for listening than it is for broadcast and conversion of marketing messages. This kind of cross-posting deal falls short of the huge potential latent in the data both of these companies control and instead appeals to the craven broadcast-model of marketing. Challenging that broadcast-model is where many people believe social media derives its meaning.

What could this look like? It could look like an option to view the employer and job title of anyone you see on Twitter or through a 3rd party Twitter interface. It could look like Twitter opening up its fire hose for unfettered 3rd party analysis and development – then you’d see social graph and content analysis done that gave a big boost to the User Experience on LinkedIn. (“This LinkedIn user has been conversing with friends on Twitter who were talking about ‘mobile,’ ‘Wisconsin’ and ‘gaming’ over the last 2 weeks.”)

Whatever the case may be, both occupational data (LinkedIn) and social messaging data (Twitter) are rich green fields for mashups and analysis – but these two companies are holding back the tide of innovation by refusing to offer a clear path to their data by outside partners.

LinkedIn partners with next to no one. Only large, established organizations like Business Week, the New York Times and now Twitter get access to LinkedIn data. Other services all around the web will tell you stories about reaching out to LinkedIn for API access and getting the cold shoulder.

We wrote about this concern three weeks ago (“LinkedIn Hits 50 Million Users; Still a Roach Motel“) and the company told us then and today that big changes are coming to its API soon. That’s great. That’s something to look forward to, if cautiously. We’re years into the LinkedIn Platform today and there’s only a select few partners doing anything there so far.

Likewise, Twitter is fabulously open with its data in some ways (on a per-item basis) – but it’s leaving a substantial number of outside developers frustrated because they can’t get their hands on the full feed of Twitter data (the fire hose) to analyze. Startup companies that do appear to have relationships with Twitter tell us things like “We won’t describe our relationship with Twitter to you and neither will anyone else who has one.” That’s charming. It’s unclear whether anyone but Google and Bing have access to all the Twitter data.

Twitter investor and real-time web guru John Borthwick told us in another conversation today that he believes Twitter is just in its early days as a company, that there’s nothing mysterious going on. “I’m hoping there will be a click-thru EULA [End User Licensing Agreement] to the firehose [someday],” he wrote. (Emphasis added.)

That sounds good.

So everybody’s working on the wide-open web that so many of us want to see? Standards and APIs and open platforms to facilitate a new era of innovation are right around the corner?

Sounds great. For now though what we get is a little cross-network message broadcasting. Hopefully it’s just the beginning.

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