New Social Marketing Trend: Group Buying Sites

Raleigh News Observer

It used to be that companies looking for new customers would take out an ad or make a new TV commercial.

But now a legion of new Web sites are harnessing the power of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to help businesses connect directly with customers.

The sites, which are generally called "group buying sites," combine two of many shoppers' favorite things: bulk buying and a hidden deal.

Three such sites - groupon.com, livingsocial.com and twongo.com - started operating in the Triangle in the last month.

All three offer a deal-of-the-day that shoppers can elect to buy. On Friday, Twongo offered a $50 gift certificate to Cafe Parizade in Durham for $27.

Users are encouraged to share the deals via Twitter, Facebook and other social media for an instant word-of-mouth vibe.

Each site, however, has a unique twist on its deal.

Twongo's discount increases as more people buy the deal. For instance, if enough people purchased that Parizade certificate the price would drop all the way to $23 for everyone. Groupon has a "tipping point" - a certain number of buyers are required before the deal becomes a reality. And at LivingSocial.com, if you get three friends to buy the deal-of-the-day, you get it free.

Such Web sites are gaining popularity, said Larry Joseloff, vice president of content for Shop.org, the National Retail Federation's online shopping division.

"I think it's become hip again to find a great deal and to find great value, and I think retailers are trying to find new ways to be creative," he said. "I've heard both schools of thought, that this is a sea of change and that this is a temporary shift. Only time will tell."

The businesses that offer deals through the group-buying Web sites generally don't make much on the offers.

The deals are usually at least 50 percent off what a customer would normally pay in the restaurant or store. But the businesses don't even keep all of that; most split the profits with the site. So Cafe Parizade would get about $12 for that gift certificate and serve up a $50 dinner.

Still many business owners see the sites as just another way to advertise.

"I think a lot of marketing is keeping your name in front of people, and it costs money to keep your name in front of people," said Brad Hurley, co-owner of the 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh. The restaurant recently sold 277 $50 vouchers for $24 each on twongo.com.

The Twongo deal is better than other advertising methods such as home mailers, Hurley said, because it's a sure thing.

"With more traditional advertising, you have to give something away kind of as a hook to get somebody there," he said. "This way, you're generating some revenue, and if people go online to buy a certificate then there's a real good chance that they're going to come and use it."

Still, business owners should be prepared before jumping into the group-buying social media arena, cautioned Shawn Briscoe, co-owner of the Alter Ego salon in downtown Raleigh. Alter Ego offered a manicure and pedicure deal valued at $55 for $25.

They sold more than 400 of them. Briscoe was expecting a few dozen at most.

"You have to be prepared for the power of it, I think," she said.

The salon had to institute a per-day limit on the number of Groupon coupons they can take.

"Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to pay our rent," Briscoe said.

But overall, she said, she was pleased with the experience; many of the new customers are booking return visits.

"It really blew my mind," she said. "But if we had done haircuts or something, we would have really been in trouble."

As for the sites themselves, they say they hope their growing numbers increase awareness of this type of shopping.

Cary-based twongo, launched in the Triangle on Jan. 22, is already considering expanding to new markets, said Scott Bowen, one of three founders.

"Companies are starting to call us now, which is really cool," he said.

Having started in 2008, Groupon is one of the oldest and largest of the group-buying sites with 3 million subscribers in 40 cities across the country.

The Chicago company launched in Raleigh-Durham on Feb. 7 and has 20,000 subscribers here. It has sold 4,000 deals in the area.

Groupon is trying to entice shoppers by adding things like business reviews and chat functions, said Mark Desky, vice president of marketing.

"We started kind of more as a city guide, but now that we're in so many markets, people now consider us as a travel guide," he said.

And, as social media sites like Twitter continue to expand, group-buying sites see more opportunity.

"I think social media is no longer just for young people," said Jake Maas, CFO of LivingSocial, which is based in Washington, D.C., and launched Thursday in the Triangle and three other cities.

"I think a lot of merchants are surprised at the extent to which they can actually reach out and attract new customers. And they don't have to actually believe us. Because at the end of the day, what they really care about is can you actually deliver customers. And we're able to do that in a very tangible and transparent way."

Please Accept Cookies: Girls Scouts take to the Web

Voice of America News

Each year, young girls fan out,  turning to friends and neighbors — as well as their parents' coworkers — to sell Girl Scout cookies.

The treats have been something of an institution in the United States for more than 80 years. The ad campaigns have been updated over the years, but perhaps the biggest change is happening in 2010. This year, girls are taking their pitches for the $700 million a year business online.

Enabling cookies

Four girls from Troop 30313 cluster around a laptop in troop leader Monique Lazzarini's kitchen. The San Francisco scouts are learning how to market their cookies with eVites, text messages and on Facebook.

They're taking advantage of the fact that, for the first time, the Girl Scouts organization is embracing online cookie marketing.

Eleven-year-old Emily Costanza says she's enjoying the chance to learn about social media. "I feel that everyone should be using this resource," she says. "It's very helpful and it's a very [good] experience for younger children because when they're older they'll know how to use it, and it's a way to have fun with technology."

That makes Laurel Richie, chief marketing officer for the Girl Scouts of the USA, happy. "I love the fact that we're moving from door-to-door to online because it says that we're really in touch with girls today," she says.

Leadership for the 21st century

The century-old girls' organization promotes cooperation and leadership. Richie says, whether the girls are selling cookies in person or marketing them online, the important thing is they're coming up with plans and executing them.

"We've been hearing all kinds of things," she says. "I almost can't think of a media outreach vehicle that isn't being used. We have 2.6 million Girl Scouts across the country; there are probably 2.6 million different little marketing plans for the cookie program."

This official enthusiasm for digital marketing wasn't apparent last year when a young Girl Scout in North Carolina posted a simple video on YouTube to pitch her cookies. The organization called the video a violation of its rules, and the scuffle over the 8-year-old's viral effort became a national story.

Richie says the girl's safety was the main concern. "So we just took a moment to breathe and to make sure we could find a way to meet their desire to market online with our desire to make sure they do it in a way that is safe."

Staying safe online

The organization worked with Microsoft to develop a safety program for their scouts.

Ten-year-old scout Natalie Guitierrez ticks off some of the points. "Don't show your picture, don't tell your last name, you don't want anyone to come find you, which is really bad. Don't tell them your phone number." She knows that people are not necessarily what they seem online. "If they say, like, 'It's safe, I'm OK, I'm a doctor or something,' they might be lying."

Laurel Richie says a new Girl Scout pledge to be careful on line incorporates those ideas, and is just as important as teaching girls the technologies themselves.

The kids are doing their work online supervised by troop leaders and sometimes, parents. Parents who are getting busier by the day welcome technological help for cookie sales.

Marina Park, who heads the Girl Scouts program in Northern California, says it's been hard to find parents with the time to volunteer with the group, let alone do cookie sales door-to-door. "If the parents are working, you really don't want [to be] walking your kids after dark when there's homework to be done and dinner to be made," she says. "It really simplifies the whole thing."

Sweet success

The new marketing technique seems to be having an effect on sales. At the group's national office, Laurel Richie says she's been hearing that this has been an impressive selling season around the country. Troop leader Lazzarini says her girls have sold two to three times as many boxes as they had by this time last year.

Marina Park says advanced sales have gone up 9% across Northern California. "That's a significant change, particularly because by and large, cookie sales have been flat to declining nationwide for some time, and so to see a big uptick like that is pretty significant."

And pretty important, too. The money raised from cookie sales helps train troop leaders, improve camp sites and offer financial assistance to make Girl Scouts activities available to all girls who are interested.

But if for some reason the online sales don't work out, there's always the old tried and true approach — selling in person.

Twitter Approaching 10 Billion Tweets

Mashable

About one year ago Twitter reached a huge milestone: one billion tweets. Four months ago, five billion tweets were served. And now, in about one day, Twitter should reach another very important milestone: 10 billion tweets.

Notice the trend? Although Twitter (Twitter) has been somewhat struggling with traffic (compared to its earlier immense growth) in the last couple of months, it still managed to go from five to ten billion tweets in four months; quite a remarkable achievement.

Counting tweets is actually quite easy: Just look at the URL of any tweet. The number at the end of the URL seems to be the number of that tweet, and at this moment the number of one of the latest tweets is 9917803012. If this seems like a long way to go before we reach one billion, check out this counter. Yup, we’re getting there fast.

The five billionth (now deleted) tweet was a simple, “Oh lord,” written by Robin Sloan. I wonder what the ten billionth tweet will say?

Social Networking a Big Hit With Patients; With Doctors, Not so Much

Portland Business Journal

When Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon launched a feature allowing patients to rate their doctor’s office experience on a scale of 1 to 5, executives figured it would be a hit with consumers.

It is, drawing about 270 physician ratings each week, plus comments.

The reaction among doctors has been decidedly less enthusiastic. Many complain that they can’t counter what is said about them without violating patient privacy, and that they may be penalized for important professional decisions, like not prescribing antibiotics for a common cold.

Though use of such Web 2.0 technologies is the rage in marketing, health care companies wary about privacy and fairness issues are still struggling.

Web 2.0 is a technology platform that seeks to disseminate information in new ways, including via blogs, social networking sites, discussion boards, Internet video and video games.

It represents a move away from tightly-controlled marketing messages and toward greater dialogue and collaboration with customers. Consumers increasingly rely on peer-to-peer information about products, and Web 2.0 can help them access it online.

Health care organizations are eager to engage consumers in social marketing, but “everyone is struggling with health privacy issues while moving into this space,” said Dian Crawford, business development manager at Bellevue, Wash.-based interactive marketing firm Ascentium.

Despite these challenges, interest in 2.0 technology is at an all-time high. The trade group Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society is building its upcoming conference around how health care companies can safely harness the power of 2.0 technology.

Regence officials say they carefully planned the execution of their member feedback feature. Regence execs traveled around the state to teach doctors about it and to assure them the company would not use member feedback to set payment rates or choose providers.

Regence leaders see the feature as a way to convey constructive feedback to providers about the patient experience.

“It’s intended to provide members with information they find useful,” said Dr. Ralph Prows, senior medical director for Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon. “We hope it’s useful in helping (providers) improve the quality of what they do.”

Health insurance giant Humana Inc., based in Louisville, Ky., has also been a pioneer in Web 2.0, launching a four-pronged initiative late last year.

One of the company’s most gutsy strategies was starting a public Web site called ChangeNow4Health.com that tackles some of the most untenable problems with the U.S. health system head-on through blogs and public discussion boards.

The reputationally-challenged health insurance industry typically takes heat as a source of problems with the U.S health system. While allowing public criticism embodies a shift from tightly-controlled marketing messages, it is critical to the success of social marketing sites.

“It’s a good thing to feel that you have been heard and paid attention to, but that’s also where social media can be dangerous,” said Zach Hyder, managing supervisor at marketing giant Fleishman-Hillard Inc.’s Portland office.

Regence is a Fleishman client.

One troubling aspect of the endeavors is that health care companies are spending patients’ health care dollars with little solid information about the return-on-investment.

One local hospital hopes its foray into Web 2.0 will pay off with more patients. Vancouver, Wash.-based Southwest Washington Medical Center in April launched the interactive site YourBabyYourWay.com that has already attracted healthy traffic.

It includes discussion boards, blogs, news articles and links to hospital courses and resources. In the thick of the so-called baby boom — a 45-year-high in the U.S. birth rate — such mother and baby sights have proven popular.

“Women rely heavily on the opinions and experience of other women when considering the potential of parenting,” Dr. Joe Chang, a site blogger, said of the YourBabyYourWay.com site.

Facebook Replacing Blogging for Teens

San Francisco Chronicle

Blogging is becoming a thing of the past for teens and young adults, who are now far more likely to keep in touch with friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, according to a new study.

"Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults," states a Pew Internet & American Life Project report on social media and mobile Internet use among young people. "As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging 'macro-blogging' for microblogging with status updates."

In 2006, 28% of teen Internet users were blogging, and now only 14% do so. Adult blog use is steadily increasing, with one in 10 online adults now maintaining a blog.

Social networking sites are becoming more popular among both teens and adults. Nearly half of adults who use the Web belong to a social networking site, but the trend is even more pronounced among youth.

"[Seventy-three percent] of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys," Pew reports. "Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008."

Young adults ages 18 to 29 have similar habits to teens when it comes to social networking, with 72% of Web users in that age group using the social Web sites. Facebook is the most popular social network for both young adults and adults 30 and older.

Most social networking users are embracing multiple sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Among young adults, 71% of people with a social network profile use Facebook, 66% use MySpace and 7% use LinkedIn.

Among the 30-plus crowd, 75% use Facebook, 36% use MySpace and 19% are on LinkedIn.

Twitter is most popular among young adults ages 18-29, with one-third using such services. Just 8% of kids age 12 to 17 use Twitter.

The study also found that "wireless internet use rates are especially high among young adults, and the laptop has replaced the desktop as the computer of choice among those under thirty."

The Pew Survey included 800 teens ages 12 to 17 and their parents; and 2,253 adults ages 18 and older.

DARPA Red Balloon Winner On Colbert Report

See Also: Team From MIT Wins DARPA Red Balloon Contest
And Also: Pentagon Trying To Crack Social Media

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Riley Crane
www.colbertnation.com

Facebook Blocks Profile Removal Service

BBC News

Social network giant Facebook has blocked a website from accessing people's profiles in order to delete their online presence.

The site, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, offers to remove users from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace.

It does not delete their accounts but changes the passwords and removes "friend" connections.

Seppukoo.com, which offers a similar service, was issued with a "cease and desist" letter by Facebook in 2009.

Netherlands-based moddr, behind Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, says it believes that "everyone should have the right to disconnect".

However Facebook says that by collecting login credentials, the site violates its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).

"Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely," the company said. "We're currently investigating and considering whether to take further action."

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine claims that it only stores the name, profile picture and "last words" of its clients, who can choose to watch their friend/follower connections disappear in real time as their profiles unlink from others.

"Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom," says a statement on its website.

The machine operates on an adjusted Linux server which runs open source software Apache 2.

Seppukoo.com, which offers to remove people from Facebook, received a letter from the social network site's lawyers in December 2009.

Once they have deleted their friends Seppukoo clients can choose an image instead of their profile picture to remain as a "memorial" .

The site is run by a group called Les Liens Invisibles, and describes itself as an artistic project. The name Seppukoo is taken from a Japanese ritual form of suicide known as Seppuku.

In November 2009 the group orchestrated the "virtual suicide" of a group of fictitious Facebook profiles set up in the names of deceased well-known figures including Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Virginia Woolf.

Twitter Buys Location Tracker Mixer Labs

BBC News

The micro-blogging website Twitter is buying the location tracking start-up Mixer Labs for an undisclosed sum.

Mixer Labs, founded by two former Google employees, makes an application for Twitter called GeoAPI.

Twitter chief executive Evan Williams said the deal would allow Twitter users to show people where they are when they post updates to the site.

The application will also allow users to search where an event is happening, the firm said.

On the company's blog, a statement said: "We want to know what's happening, and more precisely, where is it happening.

"As a dramatic example, twittering 'Earthquake!' alone is not as informative as 'Earthquake!' coupled with your current location".

Twitter is a social networking site in which users write messages of no more than 140 characters.

An estimated 58 million people use Twitter around the world.

3 Facebook Privacy Mistakes

Channel Web

No organization is exempt from screwing up, but lately that holds especially true for Facebook. While perhaps well intentioned, Facebook has committed a series of blunders with recent changes to its privacy settings in an effort to simultaneously protect users' information and make it accessible to open Web searches. Needless to say, the social networking giant seems to be having trouble doing both well.

1: Everyone Means Everyone

When in doubt, go the transparent route. Following its privacy overhaul Wednesday, Facebook forced users to review their privacy settings with a series of prompts that ostensibly enabled them to have more control over what information they share and with whom. If they so chose, Facebook users could change their privacy settings from the default "everyone" to "friends" or "friends of friends" settings, which only allowed contacts on the user's network to view status updates and other information posted on a user's profile. However Facebook failed to make clear that the "everyone" setting didn't only mean the entirety of the user's Facebook network, it meant the entirety of the Web. The "everyone" setting puts users' Facebook status updates and profile information up for grabs by online search engines such as Google or Microsoft's Bing, as well as some third-party Facebook enhanced apps. Had that been made clearer, it's doubtful that more than 80 percent of users would retain the default "everyone" setting.

2: Another Manual Prompt

In response to a firestorm of complaints regarding privacy setting issues, Facebook improved the Friend List visibility option, making it slightly more challenging for members to view friends' personal and professional contacts, whether or not they're a member of the network. Facebook eliminated the link to a Friend List on user's profiles, while also including an option for members who wish to block everyone from viewing their contact lists, whether they're a member of the network or not. But once again, it's not clear who exactly will have access to Facebook users' Friend List. The information is still publicly available, and can also be accessed by third-party applications -- just not within Facebook itself. Meanwhile, Facebook users will be required to manually and deliberately uncheck the box marked 'show my friends on my profile" if they want to implement these restrictions.

3: What Facebook Isn't Telling You

First and foremost, Facebook has its own best interest at heart -- not yours or your privacy. Facebook's privacy redesign was intended to make the social networking site more competitive with micro-blogging site Twitter, which touts simplicity and ease of use, along with openness and availability to all. Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Microsoft publicly announced that it would be forming deals with both Twitter and Facebook to funnel tweets and other user content onto its search pages. Since then, both Microsoft and Facebook have been rather tight lipped about how exactly Facebook posts and updates were to be incorporated into Bing. In light of Twitter's explosive growth, it's likely that all of Facebook's content, including personal status updates, could be subjected to search engine searches.

Meanwhile, Facebook also said it responded to a firestorm of criticism regarding privacy settings by limiting visibility to users' Friend Lists. However Friend List restrictions, coupled with revamped privacy settings, also give Facebook a foot in the door in the professional networking arena, priming the site to compete toe to toe with LinkedIn, which is geared toward professional networking. By limiting access to Friend Lists, Facebook acknowledges that some users might be hesitant to post something online that might jeopardize their current or future job.

Facebook Shuts Down Beacon, Settles Lawsuit

PC World

Facebook has agreed to shut down a program that sparked a lawsuit alleging privacy violations, and set up a $9.5 million fund for a nonprofit foundation that will support online privacy, safety and security.

The lawsuit centers around Facebook's Beacon program, which let third-party Web sites distribute "stories" about users to Facebook. Beacon was launched in November 2007 and less than a year later plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit "alleging that Facebook and its affiliates did not give users adequate notice and choice about Beacon and the collection and use of users’ personal information."

In addition to Facebook, the lawsuit's defendants include Blockbuster, Fandango, Hotwire, STA Travel, Overstock.Com, Zappos.com, and Gamefly.

Facebook never admitted wrongdoing but as part of a proposed settlement the company began sending notices to Facebook users this week. The settlement provides no compensation directly to users who receive the notice. Facebook users can opt out of the settlement, and should do so if they wish to pursue further legal action against Facebook related to the Beacon program.

"If you choose to do nothing, and remain in the settlement class you will be legally bound by the settlement," an FAQ on the settlement Web site says. "By doing nothing, you will be giving up the right to sue Facebook and the other Defendants over claims related to or arising out of the Beacon program."

Facebook has terminated the Beacon program and agreed to pay $9.5 million into an interest-bearing account to create a nonprofit foundation that will "fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security." Although users in general will not receive compensation, the settlement includes $41,500 for the 19 individuals who filed the lawsuit. Court approval of the settlement is expected as soon as Feb. 26, 2010.

Facebook has taken several actions to improve privacy in recent days, including the formation of a safety advisory board designed to improve user safety on the site. A new security section on Facebook will be more comprehensive and include content tailored for parents, teachers and teens, the IDG News Service reported. Facebook has also decided to eliminate regional networks, which let users share information with potentially millions of other members.

Facebook's privacy section already allows users to control which of their friends can see content such as status updates and tagged photos, but the site remains a lightning rod in online privacy debates because it is so widely used and offers such an easy way to share personal information.

People who want to learn more about the Beacon issue should check out the Beacon class settlement Web site, which provides access to court documents, important dates and deadlines and other information. For those of you wondering how the now-defunct Beacon program worked, the Web site offers a detailed explanation, which reads as follows:

"If you were logged in to Facebook and visited a Beacon Affiliate, an action you took (like writing a review or purchasing an item), may have triggered that website to want to publish a story to Facebook. Before that happened, the website would send some information to Facebook in order for Facebook to generate a notification that would display in the lower right corner of your screen. If you clicked 'No, Thanks', no stories or information would be published anywhere on Facebook. Any information that was sent to Facebook's servers would be deleted. If you clicked 'Close' or ignored the story, the story would be sent to Facebook, but not yet published.

"The next time you visited your home page, you'd see a message reminding you that this story was being sent. There are three things you could have done with this story: approve the story by clicking 'Okay,' remove the story by clicking 'Remove', or ignore the entire message by doing nothing. If you approved the story and clicked 'Okay,', the story would be published on your Wall and may have appeared in your friends' News Feeds. If you removed the story using the 'Remove' link next to it, the story would never appear in your Wall or a friend's News Feed. If you ignored the whole message, it would go away after a few days and nothing would have been published to Wall or News Feed. However, when you ignored a story, it remained queued, so that the next time you generated a Beacon story, this home page message would have two stories, instead of one."

For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2008 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

Facebook Adding More Privacy Settings For Individual Data

AP

Facebook is changing its privacy settings to give users control over who sees the information they post on their personal pages.

Beginning Wednesday, the networking Web site is taking the rare step of requiring its more than 350 million users to review and update their privacy settings.

The new controls are designed to simplify the cumbersome privacy controls that have confounded many users. Facebook said the changes are based on user feedback — though it remains to be seen whether the shift will mean fewer surprises for people who have unintentionally shared party photos with their bosses.

As part of the changes, Facebook users will be able to select a privacy setting for each piece of content, such as photos or updates, that they share on the site — as they share it. The choices are "friends" only, "friends of friends" or "everyone." There is also an option to customize groups of friends for certain kinds of updates — such as "college buddies."

Jules Polonetsky, co-chairman and director at the Future of Privacy Forum think tank in Washington, praised how the process resembles the way people decide what to share in their day-to-day lives. He said putting the controls "when you need it, right there, is far better than putting it in a `privacy' or `help' location" somewhere on the site.

Facebook will be asking users to review and alter their settings through a tool that explains the changes. People will be able to either keep their old settings or take recommendations from Facebook that are largely based on how they have configured their information.

As promised, Facebook is also getting rid of its geographic networks, because many of them — take "New York" or "Australia" — have gotten too big. If users were previously part of such a geographic network, this location will now be listed in their profiles under "current city."

Other networks, for schools and workplaces, are staying.

The changes have no effect on advertising on the site, said Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public policy at Facebook.

But he added that by giving users such granular control over the content they share, Facebook is encouraging more sharing and a greater connection to the site.

"If users feel more confident with our service, they will use our service more," he said. "And the more they use our services the more benefits we derive."

Team From MIT Wins DARPA Red Balloon Challenge

Information Week

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers took less than nine hours to find 10 weather balloons that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had placed randomly in public places around the United States, claiming the $40,000 contest prize.

About 4,300 teams participated in DARPA's Network Challenge over the weekend. The Pentagon will study the results to better understand how social networking can solve large-scale problems that require fast solutions.

DARPA placed the 8-foot, red balloons, all marked with numbered pennants and most with a DARPA banner, in public parks and other locations, from Miami's South Beach and San Francisco's Union Square to a tennis court in Charlottesville, Va. [see: Pentagon Trying To Crack Social Networking]

Teams used various methods to identify balloon locations, from synthesizing public information to collaborating in large groups. Some tried to confuse challenge participants with false locations, including a large paper copy of a balloon in Providence, R.I.

The winning team was headed by scientist Riley Crane, who is studying social networking in a post-doctoral fellowship at M.I.T. and author of academic papers about YouTube. His team, the M.I.T. Red Balloon Challenge Team, was a collaborative effort that used an inverse pyramid model to encourage the help of others.

The team divvied the $40,000 by giving $2,000 to the first person who sent them correct coordinates for each balloon, then $1,000 to whoever invited that person to participate, $500 to whoever invited that person, and so on. Leftover funds will go to charity.

In addition to studying interaction that took place on the Web, DARPA plans to interview teams in order to understand the strategies they used to build networks and collect information.

DARPA is the government agency that developed many of the technologies that became integral to the Internet. The Network Challenge is one of a series of recent DARPA-sponsored challenges, which have included a $2 million prize for the builders of a robot car that drove itself over a 131-mile desert course in California.

Pentagon Trying To Crack Social Networking

NY Times

The prize is $40,000, and it goes to the first person or group to determine the locations of 10 red balloons that can be anywhere in the continental United States.

 The apparent frivolity of the challenge is only on the surface. This is not a game invented by some eccentric Web Midas. The contest, which takes place on Dec. 5, is being sponsored by Darpa, the Pentagon’s research agency.

The goal is to learn more about social behavior in computer networks and how large computer-connected teams use their resources and connections to compete.

There is also an invention being celebrated. Peter Lee, a computer scientist and one of the Darpa directors organizing the contest, said Dec. 5 would be the 40th anniversary of the day when the first four nodes of the Arpanet — the experimental military-sponsored computer network that was the forerunner of today’s Internet — were connected.

Darpa has previously sponsored three “grand challenges” in an effort to advance the technology for autonomous vehicles. In the second one, in 2005, a Stanford University team won $2 million when its roboticized Volkswagen Touareg was the quickest to navigate a 131-mile course through California desert.

The mission of the agency, created in 1958 after the Sputnik satellite’s launching, is to guard the country against technological surprise. But Darpa prompted concerns about privacy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when it created a program to use data-mining technologies to identify potential terrorists.

Dr. Lee said he was not certain what to expect in the tactics that teams might use to track down the balloons, which will be visible from public roadways for a single day. Some groups are developing software applications. Dr. Lee said he also expected large teams of spotters and even the possibility that some groups might use subterfuge like disseminating false information.

Other groups may try to pay for information, he said, noting that even during a brief experiment the agency ran with a balloon near its headquarters, information on the location was offered for sale on Craigslist.

Dr. Lee said the agency would continue to pursue a number of large and small challenge-style contests to foster what he described as new ways to tap into pools of talented individuals and creative groups. Contestants from anywhere in the world may participate in this contest, he said, and registration will stay open until the contest begins.

Let The New (Online) Games Begin

Wall Street Journal

Online gaming is heading in some tantalizing new directions.

Spurred by the spread of social networking, faster Internet connections and powerful mobile devices, game makers are experimenting with a host of innovations that drastically improve online play.

A new crop of games lets friends cooperate or compete on social-networking sites, or team up online using their gaming consoles. New hand-held devices let you pull down games directly from the Internet, instead of having to plug in a cartridge or a disk. And cloud computing, which lets people tap into computing resources over the Web, makes it possible to have feature-rich gaming regardless of where you play or what kind of machine you use.

The upshot is that consumers can play online games wherever they want—whether on their personal computers, mobile phones or consoles—and have access to the widest possible array of game titles.

Here's a look at some of the new games, trends and devices that companies are hoping will reshape online play.

Social Games

Facebook Inc. and other networking sites have made social gaming a popular new category. Users play with others in their network, often cooperating to achieve a goal. One of the best-known offerings was an unauthorized version of Scrabble that ran on Facebook and boasted about two million registered users before legal threats shut it down. Now a host of new social games are cropping up. Playfish is one of the most successful developers, with 10 games in its lineup. Its success was recently highlighted by Electronic Arts Inc., which acquired the company last week for $400 million.

One of Playfish's most popular games, Restaurant City, which has 15 million monthly active users, allows gamers to join with their friends to manage a virtual restaurant. Users pick food ingredients, furniture, decorative items and fancy additions like a jukebox or an arcade machine; they can also hire friends as waiters or cooks, as well as trade ingredients with them. The object of the game is to increase your friend network—thereby bolstering the status of your virtual restaurant.

Free Multiplayer Games

One of the most popular varieties of online games is getting a lot more affordable. In September, a Korean game publisher, Nexon Corp., introduced its Dungeon Fighter game to the North American market. Popular in Asia, the game differs from dozens of other massive multiplayer online games, which require users to pay monthly subscription fees to play. Nexon allows gamers to play free—but makes money by selling in-game items and tools, such as magical weapons, that help players advance to higher levels of the game.

Since it was introduced in Asia in 2005, the game has been a wild success, with more than 10 million South Koreans playing the game since its launch. It also inspired dozens of other online-game publishers to use the same no-subscription strategy.

Still, Nexon executives are unsure if the model will succeed in North America as it has in Asia; parents of North American teens may not want to use their credit cards to buy $3 blue hairdos for their kids' in-game characters. To hedge its bet, the company has augmented the model to include prepaid cards. Gamers can go to Target or 7-Eleven to purchase cards, which can later be used to purchase virtual items.
Cooperative Console Games

In 2002, Microsoft Corp. introduced an Internet service called Xbox Live for its Xbox game console, making it possible for fans to battle each other inside, say, its popular Halo game.

With the latest version of Xbox Live, introduced last fall, Microsoft wants to expand the reach of its consoles by offering more games that are aimed at the casual player and foster cooperation. While plenty of attention will still be paid to hard-core gamers and their shoot-'em-up games, there will be a growing focus on cultivating cooperation between players interested in less violent fare.

For example, in June, Microsoft launched 1 vs. 100, a live quiz show for the gaming community. Every Friday and Saturday, gamers can sign on and play as a single contestant called "The One," or as one of 100 players called "The Mob" and collaborate on answers. A live studio host tosses out trivia questions and players try to accumulate Microsoft Points, which can be used to buy certain items. About three million gamers have downloaded the game, and according to an Xbox Live spokesman, as many as 100,000 people have signed on to play a single session of the game.

Games in the Cloud

Typically, consumers who wanted to play graphically rich games needed to buy high-end personal computers or dedicated gaming consoles. But new technology promises to make a top-notch gaming experience available to users on less powerful PCs or inexpensive set-top boxes that are connected to their televisions. OnLive Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., is developing technology that runs games on powerful servers that players can access through their Internet connections. The service, which plans to launch this winter, has signed such top-tier game publishers as Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. to open their libraries for the games. Pricing hasn't been determined.

Downloading Fun

Most hand-held gaming devices require users to buy videogame cartridges or disks. Last month, Sony Corp. introduced the PSP Go, a portable device that plays only games that can be downloaded from Sony's online marketplace. Users can download the games via built-in Wi-Fi, or download them onto a computer and transfer them to the device with a USB cable. Gamers can choose among 225 titles, including top names such as Sony's racing game Gran Turismo and Electronic Arts' John Madden football game. They can also buy PSP Minis—simple games that run about $10.

Battle Of The Professional Networks

The Economist

Does local beat global in the professional-networking business?

IN THE three-way fight between the biggest online professional networks—America’s LinkedIn, France’s Viadeo and Germany’s Xing—this week the French contender scored a victory. Last year LinkedIn had struck a deal with Apec, France’s best-known professional-recruitment service, to offer search functions to its huge customer base of over 30,000 companies and 500,000 executives. But on November 17th Apec made a new deal with Viadeo, having noted that although LinkedIn could reach executives at France’s biggest international companies, it failed to connect enough people in the country’s thousands of smaller firms.

In professional networking, argues Dan Serfaty, Viadeo’s founder, having local depth is better than signing up a narrow slice of the highest-powered people around the world. A typical LinkedIn member would be an investment banker at Société Générale, a French bank, he says, “too proud to invite his friends to join or to pay for it”. In contrast, Mr Serfaty claims, Viadeo signs up branch managers for Société Générale, who use the site often and are happy to spend €5 ($7.50) a month on a subscription. Local entrepreneurs and provincial civil servants may be less impressive as members than Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, Mr Serfaty continues, but they are more engaged. (Mr Gates has been on LinkedIn since last year, and so far has made only five connections to other members.) At Xing, too, a hyper-local network which went public in 2006, the typical member is not a senior executive but a middle manager, says Stefan Gross-Selbeck, its boss.

“We have the most elite, international and aspiring people,” says Kevin Eyres, head of LinkedIn in Europe. The firm’s global approach, he says, has brought rapid growth in members at a low cost relative to its competitors. Having a large American membership is a particular advantage. In Mexico, for instance, Viadeo started from scratch and had to visit dozens of local alumni associations to recruit members, whereas LinkedIn could offer Mexicans the chance to connect to American business people right from the start.

In Italy and Japan, LinkedIn is number one even though it has not translated its site into the local language in either place. In China, however, LinkedIn has to compete against the Chinese-language website of Tianji, the country’s biggest professional network, which is owned by Viadeo.

Which is the most attractive model? All three networks have benefited from the crisis, as executives fearful of losing their jobs have rushed to burnish their contacts. But it is estimated that fewer than 1% of LinkedIn’s 50m members worldwide actually pay for the service, compared with around 10% of Viadeo’s members in Europe and 18% of Xing’s German-speaking members. LinkedIn, therefore, relies on firms’ human-resources departments and advertisers for most of its revenues, which reached $100m last year. The firm has been profitable for two years. Revenues at Xing and Viadeo come mostly from subscribers. In the first three quarters of 2009, Xing, with 8m members, brought in revenues of €33m, 33% higher than the previous year, and operating profits of €9m.

LinkedIn is concentrating on growing quickly around the world, not on extracting profits in each market, says Mr Eyres, and is only starting to localise. It could soon launch an initial public offering of its shares. In October Viadeo bought Unyk, a Canadian-based networking service with members in several countries including America and Brazil. That put the French firm in second place behind LinkedIn measured by number of members: it now has 25m in total. It too is contemplating a share offering. That may advance the day when all three firms are obliged to focus on profits, making the relative value of humble local managers versus masters of the universe clearer.

Facebook Changes May Benefit Brands

from Online Media Daily

Facebook on Wednesday laid out a "roadmap" for developers, outlining upcoming changes aimed at making it easier for users to find and use applications and help app creators build their business on the social network.

Among the key updates in store, Facebook will enable developers to ask for users' primary email address within applications to facilitate direct contact. At the same time, developers will only be able to send notifications and invitations via email, a user's Facebook Inbox or the News Feed and other activity streams.

New application and games dashboards are slated for the home page, making it easier for people to see the latest apps they have used as well as discovering new ones based on what friends are engaging in.

To provide easier access, the applications bookmarks will be moved from the bottom left side of any page on Facebook to a more prominent location on the left side of the home page. An "Ad Bookmark" button will also be created for apps.

Among broader changes in the works, Facebook will end its verification program for apps, instead applying the initiative's more rigorous standards to all apps. Facebook is also launching an "Open Graph" API (application protocol interface) so any Web page can, in effect, become a Facebook brand page -- users can become a fan of the page, and it will show up on that user's profile and in search results.

"This means that Facebook could become a more important distribution channel for publishers even if they don't have a Facebook Page -- which could be very powerful for both Facebook and publishers in general," noted Inside Facebook editor Justin Smith in a blog post Wednesday.

Other social media experts said the changes planned in the next six months could have far-reaching implications for brands, especially the Open Graph initiative. "This is a big change because it means Facebook is no longer a destination and the experience is spread to all kinds of places," said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at digital consulting firm Altimeter Group. In that sense, Open Graph is a developer focused follow-up to Facebook Connect, the service that lets users log onto third-party sites using their Facebook account information.

Social marketing specialists also noted that the new developer rules open the door to email marketing and branding via Facebook. The ability to collect email addresses "is enormous for our brands and agencies because we will be able to create strategies around giving Facebook users ways to opt-in to share their primary email addresses with the brands," said Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, which helps companies manage their social media presence.

He added that the step will bridge the gap between the more established technique of email marketing and newer approaches via social media. In a blog post Thursday, Facebook's Austin Haugen said the email practices the company is developing will be similar to signing up for or creating accounts on other Web services. "When you do so, those services can email you directly to confirm a purchase, or provide newsletters or updates for which you signed up," he wrote.

But he also emphasized the voluntary aspect of the new email feature for users: "Keep in mind that applications will never be given your email address unless you explicitly grant them permission, and like other websites you can always choose to unsubscribe if the service is no longer of value."

Facebook has had a series of privacy stumbles from the Beacon program, informing friends about users' purchases on other sites, to its terms of service controversy, where it was forced to revise its rules after appearing to claim perpetual ownership of material posted to the site.

The company separately Thursday posted an updated privacy policy as part of the public comment process it adopted for all new Facebook governance policies it adopted in April following the TOS controversy. As with the revised terms, the latest version of Facebook's privacy rules are intended to do away with legalese in favor of plain language and greater clarity.

The Facebook Backlash Continues

From PC World

Facebook's latest interface tweaks make the default feed more like it was before the last major home page overhaul, but the changes aren't without some issues, and they have sparked some backlash among Facebook users.

Facebook gave its home page a makeover … again. On Oct. 23, the social networking site quietly rolled out some fairly significant changes to the way information is displayed on users' home page. The updates make the default feed more like it was before the last major home page overhaul, but the changes aren't without some issues, and they have sparked some backlash among Facebook users.

The Good

When Facebook changed the home page earlier this year, it went to a more Twitterlike feed of real-time status updates. Basically, every status update from your network of friends is displayed as it is entered, without any filtering.

I have bad news for those whose day gets ruined when Facebook doesn't look the same: It will continue to change. Everything does.

The new Facebook home page News Feed brings relevance back to the main feed. Rather than displaying everything from everyone, the News Feed uses an algorithm to display only the posts and status updates that your network is interested in. The more likes, comments or interactions a post within your network has, the more likely it will appear in your News Feed.

Robert Scoble, a technology evangelist and social networking guru, described the change on his blog: "This makes Facebook much more useful because you only see the items that your friends have found important enough to comment on or 'touch' in some way. Overnight my news feed went from something that looked pretty cold and lame to something that has tons of ‘warmth.'"

The changes, which merge the Highlights back into the News Feed, also allow for the Events box in the right panel to move higher on the page. That is great news to me because, frankly I never saw it with the previous design, so it has been months since I have known if it was someone's birthday today.

The Bad

The complete real-time stream still exists, but now it's called the Live Feed. While you are viewing the default News Feed, a bubble next to the Live Feed link keeps a running tally of the number of posts you're missing in the Live Feed.

You can click over and view the real-time stream. One problem, though, is that the Live Feed continues to refresh as new posts are entered. Each time that happens, the screen changes focus and you have to scroll to figure out where you were when your reading got interrupted. Facebook needs to figure out how to stream the updates without refreshing the screen or changing focus while you're reading.

The new News Feed also has created a problem. You have your network of friends on Facebook because those are the people you are interested in networking with. But, because Facebook displays the comments from your friends, as well as comments from their friends, you end up with comments from users you are not networked with and excess noise to read through.

Scoble points out: "Twitter, on the other hand, doesn't have comments. So you can't easily have a back-and-forth conversation about something like you can over on FriendFeed or Facebook. But it has a HUGE advantage: I only see items from people I invited to get on my home screen."

The Backlash

It seems inevitable that any change in the way Facebook displays information is met almost instantly with some sort of organized backlash. It is both ironic and apropos that users leverage the social network, using Fan Pages and Groups, to organize grassroots uprisings to complain about Facebook changes they don't like.

The backlash seems to boil down to users who simply don't like change. It doesn't matter if the change is good or bad, what matters is that it forces them to alter the way they use and interact with Facebook and they don't appreciate having a new learning curve. There are also some legitimate issues as well, though, like those I pointed out above.

The thing is, with more than 300 million users, you can't please everyone. Facebook says the changes were made based on feedback from users and possibly in response to the organized grassroots backlash from the last home page update. Many users like the new changes, but more than half a million have already joined the group CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!

The changes made by Facebook make the default stream "cozier" and foster more interaction. The Live Feed is good, too, but displaying the posts that are getting the most attention within the network helps engage more users in the conversation or get more users to connect and participate rather than just reading the status updates as they stream (quickly) past.

I have bad news for those whose day gets ruined when Facebook doesn't look the same: It will continue to change. Everything does. Social networking in particular is a rapidly evolving medium, and entities like Facebook and Twitter are aggressively trying to stay ahead of the curve and define how people use social networking.

Ulitzer Named 'New Media' Partner For iStrategy 2010

Sys-Con

SYS-CON-owned Ulitzer has been touted as the ‘Wikipedia Killer' with now over 7,000 authors online sharing news, views and industry trends on the sites' innovative blogging system. Magazines are managed and created on Ulitzer by visionaries of the digital media space, some of which brought the sites attention to the organizers of what is now the most anticipated New Media event to happen next year - The iStrategy 2010 in Berlin.

The iStrategy program is famed for educating the corporate elite in the relatively infant innovation of Social Media. Such visionaries as Michael Donnelly Group Director Worldwide Interactive Marketing at Coca-Cola, Michael Buck, Global Head , SMB Online Dell and Ralf Ahamer CMO, XING are sharing their successes at the conference in February next year, looking at; ever changing media consumption patterns and the rapid growth of mobile web, social networking, behavioral targeting, vodcasting, email marketing, viral marketing and how their companies have so brilliantly embraced online advancements to bring them closer to the consumer.

"We have over 150 CMOs confirmed for the Berlin Conference, they are all keen to learn what web 2.0 can do for their business, and we are delighted to welcome such a luminary within the digital media space as SYS-CON's Jeremy Geelan." Richard Owen - iStrategy Director.

A new ‘Internet' has been born that can flatten the market place if not managed correctly. New opportunities create greater challenges for any company to stay ahead. Thanks to sites like Ulitzer the corporate world has finally embraced online social media as a real competitive advantage, and the tier ones are now incorporating such initiatives in their 2010 business plans.

Social Media Switch-a-Roo

Story from the Wall Street Journal

Last summer, a Facebook page was launched in the name of MarkMonitor Inc., a company that specializes in helping businesses safeguard their reputations online. Only MarkMonitor didn't create the profile, making the company a victim of just the kind of fraud it helps clients stamp out.

"The page basically said MarkMonitor was a marketing and advertising company in Nigeria," recalls Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer of the real MarkMonitor, which is based in San Francisco.

Thanks to its own technology for identifying impostors on social media, MarkMonitor learned about the bogus profile within 24 hours of its appearance and quickly had it removed.

On social-media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, cyber criminals and pranksters are confusing consumers by creating fake profiles in companies' names. They're also reposting blog entries that companies put up on social-media sites and replacing the links they contain with ones to sites where they hope to scam users, sell them something or promote a venture of their own. At the same time, discussion boards and other user-generated forums on company Web sites are being infiltrated with posts linking to malicious content. Now, many businesses are fighting back by using new technology designed to detect and deter such tactics.

It's unclear just how widespread the problem has become. But Stephanie Giammarco, a partner at BDO Consulting, a risk advisory firm based in New York, says social-media sites are a natural target for cyber criminals since they're highly populated and users tend to expose a lot of personal information about themselves.

What's more, many of the outlets that cyber criminals previously relied on to con victims, such as email and copycat Web sites, have been exposed. "The old is getting blocked and this new social-media avenue can still be exploited," she says.

Kenton Olson, digital-media manager for the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks and Major League Soccer's Seattle Sounders Football Club, says people often used to change the links within the teams' blog entries on Twitter and Facebook when reposting them. The entries otherwise looked identical and the teams typically were identified as the original source of the information. Some of the changed links went to Web sites selling nonlicensed sports merchandise; others pointed to fans' personal photo galleries. "They [were] trying to use our brand to promote their own initiatives," Mr. Olson says.

Uniqueness Helps

The Seattle teams were using one of several free services that assign short URLs to Web links so that the links fit more easily in brief Twitter messages and other places online where space is limited. But the URLs provided by the service all started the same way, so there was no way for a reader to tell whether a link had been generated by the teams or by anyone else using the same service.

So the teams last month began using customized short URLs provided by Ez.com, a new service from Live Oak 360 Inc., a software firm based in Austin, Texas. Now, consumers who click on links that start with shwks.com or sndrs.com can trust that they're from the Seahawks or Sounders, respectively. Mr. Olson says he's spreading the word on Twitter and Facebook to let fans know they should click on links associated with the teams only if they start with the unique URLs.

Live Oak also sells a similar service called BudURL.com. As a bonus, the links both these services create can be tracked. Chris James, a social-media strategist for Advanced Micro Devices Inc., says this is helpful for determining which social-media outlets drive the most traffic to the semiconductor company's Web site and what time of day people click on them the most. While AMD has never seen the content it posts to social-media sites reposted with the links altered, Mr. James says, the company decided to invest in BudURL.com to be proactive.

Live Oak charges between $99 and $499 a month for access to Ez.com, depending on the number of unique domains a customer wants to use and the number of employees with accounts for the service. The fee for BudURL.com is $1,000 a month because the technology behind it is more complex.

Spam Trap

For companies that allow consumers to post content on their Web sites, software programs like Defensio from Websense Inc. detect entries that contain links a company wouldn't want its visitors following. "As soon as you accept user-generated comments on your Web site, you will get a lot of spam," says Carl Mercier, director of software development for Websense.

Praized Media Inc. of Montreal has been using Defensio for about two years, says Sylvain Carle, chief technology officer. The company develops and manages networking platforms for more than 50 company Web sites and publishers of online directories. Defensio notifies Praized Media whenever someone tries to post a suspicious link on a client's Web site, which Mr. Carle says is a common occurrence. "It gets trapped before it even gets published," he says.

Defensio costs $99 a month for organizations with less than 500 employees and $499 a month for those with more than 1,000 employees.

Impersonations Every Day

MarkMonitor, the brand-protection firm, scans social-media sites throughout the Web on a daily basis for unauthorized profiles in its clients' names, including ones with common misspellings and abbreviations. Whenever an impostor is identified, the company notifies the victim and helps it get the fake account removed. "At least one case of impersonation of a client is found daily," says Mr. Felman.

MarkMonitor also offers to create accounts on social-media sites for its clients, even if the companies don't intend to use them, to prevent impostors from hijacking their names. The company added both options a little over a year ago to its mix of services, which include defending against malicious software attacks, traffic-diversion schemes and other online threats, says Mr. Felman. MarkMonitor charges between $25,000 and $1 million a year, depending on the number of brands a company wants to protect, he says.

Companies also can search for unauthorized social-media accounts in their names on their own at no cost by going to KnowEm.com, a site owned by KnowEm LLC of Morristown, N.J. KnowEm also offers a range of paid services, including instructions for getting unauthorized accounts removed.

E-Mail No Longer King Of Communication

Story from the Wall Street Journal

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.

We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.

Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don't need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public "status" on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.

Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

"The whole idea of this email service isn't really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks," says Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

So, how will these new tools change the way we communicate? Let's start with the most obvious: They make our interactions that much faster.

Into the River

Years ago, we were frustrated if it took a few days for a letter to arrive. A couple of years ago, we'd complain about a half-hour delay in getting an email. Today, we gripe about it taking an extra few seconds for a text message to go through. In a few months, we may be complaining that our cellphones aren't automatically able to send messages to friends within a certain distance, letting them know we're nearby. (A number of services already do this.)

These new services also make communicating more frequent and informal—more like a blog comment or a throwaway aside, rather than a crafted email sent to one person. No need to spend time writing a long email to your half-dozen closest friends about how your vacation went. Now those friends, if they're interested, can watch it unfold in real time online. Instead of sending a few emails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.

Consider Twitter. The service allows users to send 140-character messages to people who have subscribed to see them, called followers. So instead of sending an email to friends announcing that you just got a new job, you can just tweet it for all the people who have chosen to "follow" you to see. You can create links to particular users in messages by entering @ followed by their user name or send private "direct messages" through the system by typing d and the user name.

Facebook is part of the trend, too. Users post status updates that show up in their friends' "streams." They can also post links to content and comment on it. No in-box required.

Dozens of other companies, from AOL and Yahoo Inc. to start-ups like Yammer Inc., are building products based on the same theme.

David Liu, an executive at AOL, calls it replacing the in-box with "a river that continues to flow as you dip into it."

But the speed and ease of communication cut both ways. While making communication more frequent, they can also make it less personal and intimate. Communicating is becoming so easy that the recipient knows how little time and thought was required of the sender. Yes, your half-dozen closest friends can read your vacation updates. But so can your 500 other "friends." And if you know all these people are reading your updates, you might say a lot less than you would otherwise.

Too Much Information

Another obvious downside to the constant stream: It's a constant stream.

That can make it harder to determine the importance of various messages. When people can more easily fire off all sorts of messages—from updates about their breakfast to questions about the evening's plans—being able to figure out which messages are truly important, or even which warrant a response, can be difficult. Information overload can lead some people to tune out messages altogether.

Such noise makes us even more dependent on technology to help us communicate. Without software to help filter and organize based on factors we deem relevant, we'd drown in the deluge.

Enter filtering. In email land, consumers can often get by with a few folders, if that. But in the land of the stream, some sort of more sophisticated filtering is a must.

On Facebook, you can choose to see updates only from certain people you add to certain lists. Twitter users have adopted the trend of "tagging" their tweets by topic. So people tweeting about a company may follow their tweet with the # symbol and the company name. A number of software programs filter Tweets by these tags, making it easier to follow a topic.

The combination of more public messages and tagging has cool search and discovery implications. In the old days, people shared photos over email. Now, they post them to Flickr and tag them with their location. That means users can, with little effort, search for an area, down to a street corner, and see photos of the place.

Tagging also is creating the potential for new social movements. Instead of trying to organize people over email, protesters can tweet their messages, tag them with the topic and have them discovered by others interested in the cause. Iranians used that technique to galvanize public opinion during their election protests earlier this year. It was a powerful example of what can happen when messages get unleashed.

Who Are You?

Perhaps the biggest change that these email successors bring is more of a public profile for users. In the email world, you are your name followed by a "dot-com." That's it. In the new messaging world, you have a higher profile, packed with data you want to share and possibly some you don't.

Such a public profile has its pluses and minuses. It can draw the people communicating closer, allowing them to exchange not only text but also all sorts of personal information, even facial cues. You know a lot about the person you are talking to, even before you've ever exchanged a single word.

Take, for example, Facebook. Message someone over the site and, depending on your privacy settings, he may be a click away from your photos and your entire profile, including news articles you have shared and pictures of that party you were at last night. The extra details can help you cut to the chase. If you see that I am in London, you don't need to ask me where I am. They can also make communication feel more personal, restoring some of the intimacy that social-network sites—and email, for that matter—have stripped away. If I have posted to the world that I am in a bad mood, you might try to cheer me up, or at least think twice about bothering me.

Email is trying to compete by helping users roll in more signals about themselves. Yahoo and Google Inc. have launched new profile services that connect to mail accounts. That means just by clicking on a contact, one can see whatever information she has chosen to share through her profile, from her hobbies to her high school.

But a dump of personal data can also turn off the people you are trying to communicate with. If I really just want to know what time the meeting is, I may not care that you have updated your status message to point people to photos of your kids.

Having your identity pegged to communication creates more data to manage and some blurry lines. What's fine for one sort of recipient to know about you may not be acceptable for another. While our growing digital footprints have made it easier for anyone to find personal information about anyone online if they go search for it, new communications tools are marrying that trail of information with the message, making it easier than ever for the recipient to uncover more details.

A Question of Time

Meanwhile, one more big question remains: Will the new services save time, or eat up even more of it?

Many of the companies pitching the services insist they will free up people.

Jeff Teper, vice president of Microsoft Corp.'s SharePoint division, which makes software that businesses use to collaborate, says in the past, employees received an email every time the status changed on a project they were working on, which led to hundreds of unnecessary emails a day. Now, thanks to SharePoint and other software that allows companies to direct those updates to flow through centralized sites that employees can check when they need to, those unnecessary emails are out of users' in-boxes.

"People were very dependent on email. They overused it," he says. "Now, people can use the right tool for the right task."

Perhaps. But there's another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person.