Can You Scrub Away Your Digital Footprint?
Every social networking website you have used likely still retains the information you placed there even after you abandoned the website. For some the Friendster social network may be a website they used and abandoned years ago. Forbes explains.You may have forgotten about Friendster, the once-booming social networking site that faded as American Web users flocked to MySpace and Facebook. But Friendster may not have forgotten about you.The Forbes article called "How To Disappear Online" goes on to explain how to get informaton removed from Facebook and how information is not always easy to erase - especially if it wasn't created by you. There are also companies that will help you erase your personal data for a fee. Some companies also help to remove negative information. This process is sometimes called Googlewashing. This video from MSNBC explains how it is done. The video mentions some web services that claim to perform these services. They include Reputation Hawk, Defend My Name and ReputationDefender.com. One expert argues in the video clip that removing all negative information is not possible so it is better to counter the negative information by creating lots of positive information about yourself.
It still remembers, for instance, that John Smith from Salisbury, Md., enjoys hobbies including "comic books" and "copulation." And any Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) user can read a glowing testimonial written to Brooklynite Sam Brown, describing his habit of walking around his apartment drunk and naked, as well as his talent for using a certain part of his anatomy as a puppet.
In fact, Friendster is a ghost town of detailed personal information: The site received only 2.4 million unique visitors in the U.S. in January, but has more than 10 million American profiles, many of which publicly display information that users would probably prefer to keep private.
Posted on April 10, 2008
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LinkedIn Launches Answer Service for Business Advice
LinkedIn has launched a new answer service called LinkedIn Answers. The service will not compete directly with the leading answering services like Yahoo Answers. Instead the service will focus on the business niche and offer business advice from experts. Pronet Advertising is impressed with LinkedIn's new service.
LinkedIn has launched its new Answers service, which allows LinkedIn users to both ask questions and answer them. The service is very similar to Yahoo Answers except for the fact that it only covers a small niche whereas Yahoo Answers covers topics for anything. This actually gives them an advantage because they aren't in competition with other questions & answers sites.Social Degree is also impressed and calls LinkedIn Answers extremely useful. More discussion can be found at 606tech, WebConnoissuer and AppScout.
I am really impressed with LinkedIn Answers and think the service is a great fit for their site and is also beneficial to the LinkedIn community. Even though Google recently threw in the towel for its answers service I really think LinkedIn Answers is going to be hot, it seems to really make sense
Posted on January 8, 2007
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New Web2.0 Directory Launches
Go2web2.0 is a great new directory of all the Web2.0 applications. The directory displays a pages of Web2.0 logos. You simply click on the logo to find out more about each Web2.0 application. You can also sort the directory by tags or search for a specific listing.
Go2web20 is an application that builds for users to have easy access to Web 2.0 services. Services in Web 2.0 are defiantly putting accentuation on their company logo design what makes it easier to remember what the service is all about by looking at the logo.The blog for Go2web2.0 can be found here. (via Somewhat Frank)
Simply click the logo and read some information about the service you choose (on the right sidebar) then click the link to access the site or read more reviews about it from the blogsphere (technorati) that will appear below. Perform your search by tags or free text.
Posted on September 20, 2006
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Startups Want to Imitate MySpace's Success
The popularity of MySpace.com, a social network with over 60+ million profiles, has led to an increase in the number of companies launching social networks. There are numerous competing social networks like Xuqa, Bolt, TagWorld.com, Tagged and Friendster. Then there are emerging social networks for young people like Industrious Kid. There are also new niche social networks like Joga (soccer), CarSpace (auto enthusiasts) and Xianz (bills itself as the Christian MySpace). There is also a new service that lets you spy on MySpace members. Could this be the beginning of a bunch of product launches that work with MySpace?Posted on March 28, 2006
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Web Surfers Are Building the New Web
BusinessWeek has an interesting article that says the new web is being built by you -- the web surfer. The article talks about websites that are powered by users like MySpace.com, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Meetup and Wikipedia.And this time, it's Your Web. No longer content to be merely viewers and consumers, people increasingly are taking an active part in creating their online lives. With its longtime tagline, "The network is the computer," Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW ) made the case that computing transcended hardware. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz thinks another crucial shift is under way: "The network is now your computer."The article also says that the web will continue to develop more services like the ones mentioned above and new programming tools will make the web even more user-friendly and customizable.
At many new Web sites and services, the creative energy of countless souls virtually crackles off the screen. They're cobbling together their own services from customizable Web sites and Lego-style pieces of Web software. By the millions, they're gathering and disseminating their own news with blogs and podcasts, creating customized article and photo feeds from their favorite sites and even annotating them with helpful text tags that others can search for on the Web site del.icio.us. They're producing their own entertainment on video, social-networking, game, and photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo's Flickr. At MySpace.com, some 21 million monthly visitors spend up to several hours a day sharing their thoughts, photos, and music with friends on personalized home pages. Ditto at Cyworld, which claims almost a third of South Korea's 48 million people as members.
"The Web isn't so much a place anymore," explains Ross Mayfield, CEO of Palo Alto (Calif.)-based startup Socialtext Inc., which offers services to create collaborative Web sites called wikis. It's more of a doorway into services, from the user-written reference site Wikipedia to the community organizing service Meetup to the folksy classifieds site Craigslist. As Mayfield noted in a recent blog post, "They Google (GOOG ), Flickr, blog, contribute to Wikipedia, Socialtext it, Meetup, post, subscribe, feed, annotate, and above all share. In other words, the Web is increasingly less about places and other nouns, but verbs."
Posted on September 19, 2005
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