Elliot Spitzer, New York Attorney General, is suing Intermix for spyware. Intermix is best known in the social software world for its ownership of the wildly popular MySpace. I can’t comment on the validity of Spitzer’s accusations. However, I can say that MySpace holds data about its members which is certainly highly exploitable in various illegal and/or inappropriate ways, if MySpace (or any other virtual community with similar data about its own members) chose to do so.

Personally, I hope MySpace will fight instead of rolling over in a settlement like most of the financial institutions that Spitzer has pursued.

The Business Development Institute is hosting Blogging Goes Mainstream. I hope to see you there!

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

2:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Microsoft Customer Briefing Center

1290 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY

Online registration and agenda: http://www.bdionline.com/blogevent

For registration enter promotion code “Teten” to receive a $25 discount.

BusinessWeek May 2, 2005 Cover Story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business” which can be found at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm features BDI “Blogging Goes Mainstream” conference speaker Steve Rubel and sponsors PubSub and Cymfony.

Here is a sample of companies that are registered to attend the conference: American Cancer Society, Audible, Deloitte, DaimlerChrysler, Edelman, General Electric, Ketchum, IAC, IBM, The Five O’Clock Club, Ford Motor Company, Ernst & Young, Latham & Watkins, Little Brown & Co., Microsoft, MPG, Nickelodeon, OgilvyOne, Pfizer, Paul Weiss, Spencer Stuart, Standard & Poor’s, Thomas Publishing, Sony, Union Square Ventures, New York Times Digital

Speakers:

• Robert Scoble, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft and creator of the Scobleizer blog

• Sam Whitmore, founder and editor of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey and monthly media columnist for Forbes Magazine

• Steve Rubel, VP, Cooper Katz and creator of Micropersuasion blog

• Bonita Stewart, Director of Interactive Communications, Daimler Chrysler

• Michelle Horowitz, VP, PR Newswire

• Salim Ismail, CEO, PubSub

• Steve Hall, creator of Adrants blog

• Morra Aarons, VP Interactive, Edelman

• Jud Branam, Managing Director, Hass MS&L

• Lloyd Trufelman, President, Trylon Communications

• Ross Dawson, CEO, Advanced Human Technologies

• Andrew Bernstein, CEO, Cymfony

• David Teten, CEO, Nitron Advisors; CoAuthor, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online

• Dan Burstein, Managing Member, Millennium Technology Ventures

• Jason Pryslak, Information Architect, International Association of Business Communicators, MurrayResults

• Larry Bodine, PM Forum

• Stowe Boyd, COO, Corante

Sponsors:

Brandimensions http://www.brandimensions.com/

PubSub http://www.pubsub.com/

Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/

Cymfony http://www.cymfony.com/

PR Newswire http://www.prnewswire.com/

Trylon Communications http://www.tryloncommunications.com/

All-Ways Advertising http://www.awadv.com/

CooperKatz http://www.cooperkatz.com/

Revenue Science http://www.revenuescience.com/

Leverage Software http://www.leverage.com/

Media Sponsors and Supporting Organizations:

PR Week Magazine http://www.prweek.com/

International Association of Business Communicators http://www.iabc.com/

The Publicity Club of New York http://www.publicityclub.com/

BtoB Magazine http://www.btobonline.com/

Media Business Magazine http://www.btobonline.com/

I Want Media http://www.iwantmedia.com/

Smallbiztechnology.com http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/

Manhattan Chamber of Commerce http://www.manhattancc.org/

Corante http://www.corante.com/

LSSO http://www.legalsales.org/

Online registration and agenda: http://www.bdionline.com/blogevent

For registration enter promotion code “Teten” to receive a $25 discount.

Questions or feedback call 800.830.6687

Rex Hammock and many others report that Infinity has launched a radio station made up entirely of podcasts. You could read this as a triumph for citizen’s media—or look at it as the outsourcing (for free!) of a media channel’s putative core competency.

Are you interested in reading a preview copy of our new book, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online?

This will be the first mass market book about how you can find new clients, raise capital, recruit star employees, or even find a great new job by using online networks. More technically, this is the first mass market book about “social software”: blogs, social network sites, relationship capital management software, and so on. The CEOs of many of the leading companies in this industry have already raved about the book, including the CEOs of Military.com, Best Software, Ecademy, Cvent, Contact Network, and Ryze…not to mention Craig Newmark (craigslist), Bob Cialdini (bestselling author of Influence), and Ivan Misner (Business Network International), among many others. Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” newsletter wrote: “This comprehensive book is a smart addition to any company bookshelf.” The publisher is the American Management Association.

We are now looking for reviewers interested in our book. We would be happy to send you a copy. All we ask is that you consider writing a review of the book, and/or mentioning it in a news story related to the themes of our book.

FOR JOURNALISTS:
If you write for a major newspaper, magazine, or major online news service, please contact Ms. Kama Timbrell, Associate Publicity Manager, AMACOM Books, ktimbrell(at)TheVirtualHandshake.com, and send her your name, publication, mailing address, email, and circulation.

FOR BLOGGERS/OWNERS OF NEWSLETTERS:

We will only consider providing complimentary copies to people with newsletters with at least 2,500 verified readers; and/or to bloggers with at least 300 incoming links on Google. If you’re interested, please mail your name, publication, circulation, title, company, email, phone, and mailing address as soon as possible to Ms. Kama Timbrell, ktimbrell(at)thevirtualhandshake.com . If appropriate, you may also be interested in joining our Amazon affiliate program.

FOR BULK PURCHASERS:
For purchases of 5 or more copies, please contact Renita Hanfling for Amacom’s quantity discount schedule. Discounts start at 40% off retail.

Please note that we have only very limited supplies of complimentary copies; we can only provide reviewer copies to influencers in a position to reach many readers.

Thank you!

Clay Shirky wrote:

As the net gets bigger and karma, previously bottled up in human relations, becomes convertible for real currency, in everything from ZeroDegrees/SMS.ac style spam to real sales of virtual characters to this, we are going to have to find ways to defend against this sort of karmic hijacking.

In another example, and following up on my post about reputation-checking for dating,
Opinity nows offers a cross-platform reputation management service. Susan Kuchinskas reports the story here. Opinity aggregates your online reputation across all the sites that allow you to develop a reputation.

My greatest difficulty with this is that some people are perhaps bad girlfriends but good ebay vendors. So I only care about that woman’s reputation on ebay (not on jdate)… but then what do I need Opinity for? I can just use ebay’s rating system.

I’m fascinated to see how people abuse Opinity’s system, which they will. How do you think people will try to game it?

USA Today provides a comparison of MSN Spaces and Yahoo 360. Without commenting in depth on those systems, my general recommendation is to avoid becoming dependent on gated communities.

From our point of view as authors of a book due out June 30, the entry of big players like MSN and Yahoo is very exciting. It validates the space and shows the mass market appeal of these services. Plus, these services will make good marketing partners for the book.

Via the Social Software Weblog

You could see this coming: leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Tapuz’s Blog TV (the personal broadcast forum of a popular Israeli portal) has evolved into primarily a porn broadcast vehicle. The Pro-Am economyhas come to porn just like many other industries.

I recently had a series of conversations with Craig Callé, Founder and CEO of the very newly launched COMMON.net. I have added a profile of COMMON.net to our Social Software Guide. You can see it here: COMMON.net corporate profile.

Highlights:

The Company challenges the convention established by many business-focused SNSs such as LinkedIn, which Craig Calle describes as, “little more than Friendster without the pictures.”
…. COMMON.net is different in its design from most other social networking sites (SNSs) because of its trust mechanism (shared affiliations, not chains of relationships); method of inclusion (no chain letter invitations); and chain length (direct, not multi-node).

To its credit, COMMON.net is not another me-too site—Craig and his colleagues have thought through some of the problems with the existing approaches and tried to be build a better mousetrap.

Clive Thompson reports on: Rate-a-date:

One of the big criticisms you hear about online dating is that people aren’t quite honest in describing themselves. So along comes TrueDater.com, a site where people post reviews of those they’ve had dates with — and link to the original ad that sucked them in.

A more elegant way to do this is to look at people’s track record when interacting with other people. e.g., eventually LinkedIn will no doubt allow you to see scores about how quickly and effectively its member pass on requests. Or the dating sites could use the rich data sitting on their servers, and show who are the most popular people on their system, and how quickly they respond to emails.

A great resource for job-seekers and just about everyone else: QuintCareers’ Internet Career Networking Tutorial for Job-Seekers:

A Guide to Getting Connected Online

This tutorial is a comprehensive guide to the many ways you can use the Internet to connect with people all over the world.