chmac

What will the next generation of social content look like then? Personally, I think the next "big thing" will be trust metrics. Wikipedia's challenges could be solved by a trust matrix.

If users were given trust values (think eBay feedback, but a bit smarter) and then users could in turn rate articles, that would at least partially solve some of Wikipedia's biggest criticisms (the content is unchecked and liable to spam / abuse).

Trust networks like that scale exponentially with the number of nodes (users and articles) so I suppose it would significantly increase the resources required to host something like Wikipedia.

Sweet service, you best trust them though, they could log everything, although then I guess their business would fast evaporate...

This is a great article not just about pitching to bloggers but sending press releases to anyone. The core of the post is a simple question, is your press release relevant? If not, save everyone's time and don't send it.

Top tip, it's a great table comparing the services side by side with links to their sites. I'll bookmark that one.

This is a really tough one. Google are already taking serious heat over privacy and other concerns because of the amount of data they hold on users. Facebook will face the same challenges unless they allow users ways to opt-out, even if that means deleting your whole profile.

It's once they start actually selling the data though, that's when we need to really worry.

That is deeply awesome. Only of use if you want to listen to a window that you can hit almost perfectly straight on though. They have the two components at quite an angle, that wouldn't be practical if you were trying to be discreet...

True, lower the risk, lower the reward if it pays off. However, I think starting a business beside a job is a good way for people who want to start something small. Sure, they're not going to create the next Facebook part time in their garage. But they might build a nice lifestyle business that gives them quality of life.

But apparently we're still way behind Europe in terms of speed... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6041446.stm

24Mbps is standard in France apparently, I need to get myself to Paris! :)

It would also be great to be able to get an RSS feed for individual threads, or even for all comments (that would be a lot of data though).

HighScalability is an insane site. Their stuff on how Google's datacentre works is crazy! http://highscalability.com/google-architecture

Whether the affiliates would allow the revenue share is a valid point. I was thinking from the perspective of a community site. A site with even 200k active members in a specific field would have a good basis to negotiate a specific deal with an affiliate. I think it's a trend we'll increasingly see.

Fundamentally, affiliates make money by giving recommendations, but they're paid for giving those recommendations, so they can't possibly be totally objective. In a revenue share model, the affiliate is paid for negotiating a better deal for their users. Instead of the current situation where only the affiliate wins, this model means win-win for affiliate and user.

That's how I reckon it'll play out anyway... :)

That's an interesting point. We're working on some AdSense revenue sharing stuff at the moment, thanks for the link.

I think the key to making money on facebook is not by delivering ads but by delivering products and services. For example, TripUp provide a service where you can say where you're travelling and invite your friends to join you or look for people to meet in those areas. That's a goldmine for affiliated sales. Travel services (flights, hotels, hostels, car rental, etc). Local knowledge (internet cafes, guidebooks, taxi services). The list goes on and on.

Ads are an invasion of your viewing space. Smart, affiliated services are a win-win.