This morning's All Things Considered had a report on podcasting. Notable items covered:
Today's New York Times has an article on how social networks are moving into the business world.
The article references a new social network called Ning, developed by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. I set up a social network through the Ning service which you can view here:
I must say that it is really quick well done. It has all of the features I want in a social network. It is very intuitive and easy to use. And it is free (with ads). In about 20 minutes I was able to blog, set up a discussion, add a video and integrate my social network with my flickr account. Everything is customizable with CSS so you can have a unique identity for your network and each member of the network can completely customize their own pages (a critically important feature, in my opinion).
You can run your own ads on your network for $19.95 per month. For another $4.95 per month you can have a unique URL. The basic bandwidth and storage allotments are very generous: 5 gigs of storage of public content and 100 gigs of bandwidth. You are only allotted 500 megs of content if you choose to make it private but you can add units at the rate of 5 gigs of storage and 100 gigs of bandwidth for $9.95 per month per unit.
I have been looking at options for social networking for enterprise and learning communities. Ning seems like a very good platform for things like alumni and professional associations, and communities of interest.
This is a very new service and the social networks seems pretty thin. But there are some interesting starting places: a network for residents of Westford, Mass, a network of music blogs, and a private network for Howard Rheingold Associates.
I am writing a paper on web 2.0 in the enterprise and will be including information about how organizations are using social networks. The Times article references the Barack Obama network, which seems extremely well done, as well as social networks developed by Nike (joga.com), the Portland Trailblazers, and the University of South Carolina.
Stay tuned for a more thorough analysis of what is being done in this area.
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