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"Creating Your Own Social Network" Software with Community Server

Posted by Bob Brin on July 15, 2008 at 9:41 AM

We've been kicking the tires on Telligent's Community Server as a social network platform to create a Facebook-like environment for intranets or special communities. We've played around with others in the past and we like that you can get this one affordably and still customize the look for your particular application, for example a B2B network of clients, distributors and business partners. For some clients, when it comes to social networking, we say go where the society is (i.e., Facebook and the like). For others, the community is more tight knit and not interested in their conversations being exposed to everyone. We like that CS is built on .NET, or at least our developers like that, and it appears to now have integration with MS SharePoint 2007, which is great for organizations that can afford it. SharePoint's a great collaboration platform and WSS 3.0 has built-in wiki and blog support. It's more of an information-sharing, structured environment, whereas Community Server is centered on the individual and groups. You can share files, but it's not as structured around the information. Let us know what you use/like.

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As The World Goes Digital....Newspapers Struggle To Find Revenue

Posted by John Scally on July 14, 2008 at 9:27 AM

The Los Angeles Times Media Group announced it will axe 250 jobs, including about 17% of its editorial staff, and publish 15% fewer pages.

Many media analysts claim that the industry's most pressing problem is the state of print circulation, which has been in decline since the mid-1980s. However, US newspaper websites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors during the first quarter of 2008 -- a record level and a 12-percent increase from '07, according to Nielsen Online analysis. In fact, according to the report, 40 percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site regularly.

The newspaper industry must figure out a way to generate more advertising revenue from its print and online properties. Nielsen reports that online advertising accounts for only 10 percent of total ad revenue for newspapers. It's evident that online content does not generate enough ad revenue to maintain a fully professional staff of reporters and editors at a top tier newspaper.

Requiring visitors to pay for access to content is not the answer. The key to sustainability for print media outlets will be finding ways to maximize online ads that bring value to the reader while providing results for the advertiser.

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Flashed by Google

Posted by Jason Swartz on July 3, 2008 at 10:56 AM

Google recently announced the ability to crawl and index textual content in Flash, using a newly developed search algorithm. For you non-nerds, this basically means that your super rad, flashy site will finally be recognized and indexed. Straight from Google, "In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines." However, just because your pages can be indexed, doesn't mean they will rank higher.

Overall a cool development, but I don't think this should give us free range to go Flash-crazy in our designs. Although this is a positive step forward in the Web marketing world, there are still many issues that can exist with heavily Flash-based sites. Long load times and risk of seizure to name a few. Ultimately, Flash is a tool and should really be used as such. Keeping a nice balance is usually best.

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