Dion Hinchcliffe reports on “Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0“.

One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently is how people can leverage Web 2.0 techniques in their applications and infrastructure today. Now that it’s getting more well known, more people seem to be actively interested in making immediate, practical use of Web 2.0 ideas.

On a related note, the new meta-search tool Zuula looks very useful. (via Shally)

By now I’ve gotten used to seeing the occasional generic blog comment that is designed to get through the spam filters just to get a link to some spam site:

Quite interesting site. I’ve bookmarked it and will return. (oh please don’t!)
…
Your site is also very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas. Well done and good luck with your work. (this one cracks me up)
…
Wonderful web site, was very useful. Lovely touch having this guestbook. Thanks (guestbook??)

But I can usually spot them because they’re linking to some domain for Tramadol or Viagra or porn or something. Today, though, I got one that was linking to a social bookmarking site - more specifically, to one particular user’s links on that social bookmarking site. Guess what all the links were to? Various breast enlargement sites. Non-obvious from the user name or the domain.

Two degrees from spam. Ugh. Watch out for it.

Via Barbara Safani:

Career Hub, a career advice blog I contribute to, recently launched their second free ebook, Insider’s Guide to Resume Writing. The free download is http://careerhub.typepad.com/main/2007/01/resume_writing_.html

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking:

Sony, for instance, paid $65 million for a video-sharing site called Grouper.com and started a nifty service through which you can load your favorite clip from one of its movies — say, Jack Nicholson barking, “You can’t handle the truth” at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” — onto your MySpace or Facebook page.

Over the last few weeks, other media companies have accelerated their efforts in social networking. For example, the Hearst Corporation on Jan. 8 bought a small company called eCrush.com. And the Walt Disney Company, the CBS Corporation, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites.

more at the NY Times

Thanks to some regulatory arbitrage, AllFreeCallswill let you make phone calls to many foreign countries for free. Dial 712-858-8094, and at the prompt dial 011, the country code you are calling, and the number you wish to call. Easy.

Some of the bloggers writing about this service call it “free”, but that’s a bit misleading. Because AllFreeCalls is taking advantage of certain government subsidies, you as a taxpayer are really paying for this call.

Via recruiting expert Shally Stackerl, the pros and cons of sites like LinkedIn, Spoke, and Plaxo .

My friend Dean Hua just did something really cool… he put me on The Dean’s List.

Now, I’m not posting about this as an ego thing for me — I’m posting because I think it’s a really, really cool relationship-building thing to do. What a great way to strengthen relationships — to make a public acknowledgment to people who have made a difference in your life, whether recently or long-term.

This would be a good blog meme.

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Seeking ecommerce/consumer technology experts for Chicago Jan. 16th and San Francisco Jan. 17th Hedge Fund Dinners.
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Nitron Advisors, an investment research firm, is hosting two dinners for ecommerce and consumer technology experts to talk with hedge fund investors interested in these sectors. These invitation-only events will be taking place in Chicago – January 16th and in San Francisco– January 17th. You will have a chance to talk informally with some of the major institutional investors in this sector.

We’re looking for senior industry executives and other experts with the following backgrounds:

Consumer technology areas of interest:
+ Personal computers (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, etc.)
+ Flash memory (SanDisk, Kingston, Corsair, etc.)
+ MP3 Players (Apple, Creative, Archos, etc.)
+ GPS Systems (Garmin, TomTom, etc.)
+ Mobile telephones (Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Blackberry, etc.)
+ Distributors (Ingram Micro, Arrow Electronics, Synnex Corp, Tech Data Corporation)

Ecommerce areas of interest:
+ Online specialty retail (eBay, Amazon, Blue Nile, Overstock, Audible)
+ Online auctions (power sellers on eBay, other auction sites)
+ Search engine space (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
+ Consumer generated media/free video hosting services (YouTube, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, Google Video)
+ Online advertising/marketing (ValueClick, 24/7 Real Media, aQuantive)
+ Lead generation players (Autobytel Inc, Move Inc, Bankrate, IAC InterActiveCorp, HouseValues, etc.)
+Online media (PRIMEDIA, New York Times/About.com, etc.)

The final selection of experts to attend is based in part on the interests of specific investment firms who are attending. Attendees receive an honorarium as well as travel expenses and of course dinner covered.

If you are not already a member of our Circle of Experts and would like to attend, apply as an eCommerce specialist at: http://circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=17&rid=0 . Apply as a Consumer Technology specialist at: http://circleofexperts.com/apply-form.html?i=11&rid=0 .

Otherwise, please contact Jesse Mandell, 1-212-682-6455, JMandell@nitronadvisors.com, with your response or further questions. Please note that we must review your bio and talk with you before we can accept you for the dinner.

Every so often in the business-oriented online communities in which I participate, the issue of free speech and censorship comes up, usually from someone (or several someones) who is testing or pushing the envelope of the acceptable boundaries within the community — profanity, flame wars, etc.

Is free speech an absolute right within online communities? Can an online community, regardless of its size and membership requirements, establish and enforce a more restrictive code of conduct?

There is a long, well-established precedent for moderation/governance in online communities — even ones that are open to the public. Whether it has been tested for constitutional validity in court or not (and I haven’t found any court cases, but would greatly appreciate any references anyone may have), online communities have for years been in the practice of having codes of conduct that were far more restrictive than constitutional protections. Even large, open membership communities have moderators who are able to edit or delete posts and suspend or eject members who violate those codes of conduct. To say that the boundaries of constitutionally protected free speech is applicable to any privately-owned online community is to go contrary to decades of business practices.

Do blogs change this? What about sites like Gather, Ecademy or AlwaysOn, in which individual blogs are aggregated or displayed in the front page and other pages? One could make the argument that blogs are somehow different because of the fact that they are an individual voice rather than a community space. However, the aggregation of them on the front page and the nature of the threaded comments would, I think, negate any such argument. The site may call them blogs, but if they’re aggregated and allow comments, they’re still really just one big threaded discussion forum. I doubt a court would see a substantial difference simply based on the slight technical difference.

Even so, most hosting companies, including blog hosting companies, also have terms of service that are more restrictive than free speech limits, typically restricting hate speech and pornography, among other things. For example, WordPress.com prohibits the use of PayPerPost. Is that a violation of a blogger’s right to free speech?

Under the Uniform Commercial Code, we all have the right to voluntary restrict our free speech by contract, and when we join an online community we are doing just that — subject to whatever the terms of service are. In fact, the contract doesn’t even have to be explicitily signed in order to be in effect. Consider that when you walk into a theater or restaurant, you give up some of your free speech rights. Do anything that is significantly unpleasant to other patrons — talk too loudly, let your kids run wild, etc. — and you’ll be warned and eventually ejected.

Why would anyone expect an online community to be any different?

You do have the right of free speech, but the owners of a community also have the right to establish and enforce codes of conduct within the community, and be joining that community, your right of contract supercedes your right of free speech.

So when you find yourself bumping up against the boundaries of behavior in an online community, you might want to consider whether that community is really the right community for you. If so, then you can either adapt your behavior to the code of conduct or you can use persuasive means to try to change the code of conduct. But don’t make cries of “Censorship!” — you gave up that right when you joined.

I’ve recently talked with a few people about ‘social commerce‘—the idea that our online business activities will both reflect and in part be driven by our personal social network. My coauthor Scott Allen recently did a market research study on “Transactional Trust in Social Commerce”, which provides some context on this.

For example, many people would prefer to buy a used car from a friend or a friend of a friend, rather than a stranger. The social context is particularly important, in my experience, when purchasing services as opposed to products. Why? Because the quality of a service varies wildly depending on the motivation and context of the service-provider.

For example, my wife and I are currently evaluating some contractors to do some renovation for us, and a contractor who lives near us and knows some of our friends socially is less likely to rip us off than someone who is a stranger.

Amazon has a primitive version of this functionality, in that I can see that people who like book A also like book B. I’ve also seen quite a few startups who are working on various variations of, ‘What is an efficient way to buy stuff from friends as opposed to strangers?” See for example www.stylehive.com and www.thisnext.com. This was supposed to be a significant part of Tribe’s business model, and some of the local services directories (e.g., Yelp, LinkedIn) are also trying to leverage the fact that you trust your friends’ (or friends of friends of friends) recommendations.

I see several advantages of socializing commerce, in general:
1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising. The friend is less likely to lie about how lemony the used car is, because he knows that interacting with you is a repeated game, not a one-time game.
2. Reduced purchase cost because of fewer intermediaries. By buying a car from a friend, you don’t have to pay a dealer’s markup.
3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product. Friends (or friends of friends) tend to have similar tastes. If my friend is (like me) a city dad with a child, then my friend is also likely to have a car to sell me that suits the needs of me and my family.
4. Helping out your friends/your community. No one does a business transaction unless he/she derives some benefit. You’d rather that your friend gets the economic benefit of selling a car than a stranger.

So does it make sense to use online networks to make commerce more social? To evaluate against the criteria I listed:

1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising. Possibly also true online. However, online we already have measures of reputation that are not dependent on me knowing someone who knows the person in question: eBay’s reputation functionality, Rapleaf, etc.
2. Reduced purchase cost. I think in most cases this doesn’t apply online, and in fact the purchase cost when buying via a social network can be higher because I lose the advantage of a broad seller base competing with one another. In addition, somehow the intermediary (e.g., Amazon, eBay) has to make a markup. If I’m buying something online anyway, then I’ve got access to a shopping comparison engine which will lower my purchase cost to the bare minimum.
3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product. This is likely true, but only for a small number of products. For many products, my friends are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the product category than Cnet.com—so I should really just buy what Cnet recommends, not what my friends are buying. The one advantage of buying what my friends recommend is that, if conforming is my goal, this helps me to conform. If everyone else pays a premium for an iPod or Treo 650 then clearly I must buy one too.
4. Helping out your friends/your community. To some extent this is also true online. However, I doubt it’s a big motivation for many people.

Research from the likes of Forrester, Resource Interactive and Morgan Stanley is also beginning to focus on a new generation of consumers they term the Millennials (aka, “Generation Y”) who range in age from 18-26 years old. Their buying patterns differ from prior generations. The Millennials exceed the Boomers in size, distrust media and have little to no affinity for brands. As opposed to earlier generations, they value their peers’ advice and validation: therefore, CNet recommendations are less valuable. Jeff Leventhal, CEO of Spinback, observed, “this generation is the largest consumer group to date and will shift the commerce paradigm.”

It’s clear that many people like doing business with others in their community, or with others to whom they’re interconnected. Think how many offices have an internal email list for people to sell sporting tickets, TVs, etc. Think of the bulletin boards with things for sale that you’ll see in many churches or synagogues.

However, if you are already doing commerce online as opposed to face-to-face, I’d argue that in many cases it’s irrational to make your commerce decisions dependent on your social ties. In most cases it’s more rational to just buy things via a comparison shopping engine (Shopzilla, Froogle, etc.), particularly when buying a commodity good that could otherwise be found in a few block radius.

The good news for the startups trying to do something in this area: first, many people are irrational and will prefer to buy via a social intermediary, even if they get a worse deal. And second, for certain types of purchases buying via a social intermediary can be more rational, especially when the item is a not a common good, but rather a unique or collectible item. Used cars are the most obvious example, because there are so many ways in which the seller can deceive you about the true value of the product. If you’re a Pez dispenser collector, fellow members of your community can also turn you on to an impulse purchase which you would not have searched for yourself on Shopzilla, but which you are excited to buy because a trusted peer refers you to it.

Feedback welcome.