If you fail to disclose certain information on a corporate website, or from a corporate e-mail address, in the United Kingdom, you could be fined. Companies in the UK who do not contain regulatory information on their websites and in their e-mail footers (as of January 1, 2007) are in breach of that country’s Companies Act and risk a fine (see Companies to update websites and email footers before 2007, OUT-LAW News, 20/12/2006).

The revised Act states that every company should list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website. The same information must also appear on order forms and in e-mails that constitute a ‘business letters’ (a somewhat ambiguous term that is open to interpretation and therefore may apply to all corporate e-mails).

“If you prick us do we not bleed?” lamented Shylock (most recently portrayed, and brilliantly played by the great Al Pacino) in The Merchant of Venice. The answer is as certain as George W. mangling his syntax in a press conference on foreign affairs. But the answer confounds many communications managers who still wrestle with the question of whether to blog (or not).

A recent study by Bain & Company involving 1200 executives throughout the world (see Management Tools & Trends 2007 study) reveals that 30% of those companies (a cross-section of small, medium and large companies) use blogs. Those same executives report an underwhelming rate of satisfaction with their blogs of only 3.39 out of 5.

The annual Internet Standard Assessment Report (ISAR) and WebAwards honored the best of the best last week. While this is mostly an American event and contest, the Awards have received submissions from 53 other countries. Leading the international award parade were websites from Canada with 225 awards followed by Hong Kong with 119 awards.

Those countries receiving the best overall scores on average were Spain, Thailand, New Zealand, Taiwan and Canada. The country with the worst scores on average is Brazil, followed by Japan, United Arab Emirates, India and France. In short, the Brazilians look dam sexy in those skimpy volleyball outfits, but aren’t so hot at websites; Canadians are very good at websites, but look embarrassingly pathetic in Brazilian volleyball shorts. In fact, ask a Canadian to spell volleyball and they’ll reply with a smile, “H-O-C-K…”

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.

Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).

In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.

Web content is revolutionizing business. Web content is revolutionizing life. Web content is revolutionizing the World.

Skeptical? Not sold? Need proof? Here are some numbers…

• People click on web links 100-billion times per day
• Five of the top 10 most visited websites are user-generated content
sites that did not exist a couple of years ago
• There are well in excess of 100-million accounts on MySpace – and
growing at a rate of nearly 250,000 per day
• If MySpace were a country, it would be in the top 10 most
populous countries on the planet
• 1 out of 8 couples married last year in the U.S. met online
• The number of text messages sent every day exceeds the
population of the planet
• It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 1018) of new, unique information will be created this year – more than the previous 5,000 years

Forrester Research asked 15 of the largest interactive marketing agencies (think web designers and online marketing companies) to rate the most important emerging technologies for impacting their design practices (see The Emerging Technologies That Matter Most To Interactive Agencies). Their top answer: mobile devices.

Other top emerging technologies of the 30 mentioned:

• Online video
• Ajax
• Social networks

If a geek records a podcast, and no one downloads it, does it make a sound?

Just like the rhetorical “tree in the forest” we do know that podcasts are heard, mostly by nerds and younger enthusiasts, but they are comparably quiet when compared to other social media such as blogs, wikis and social networking.

A recent study by Bridge Ratings has found that only about 1% of the U.S. population listened to podcasts last year. Unfortunately, the real figure is likely much lower as this number comes from a number of interviews conducted with a “podcast panel.”

Want to test the theory yourself? Try asking 100 friends and family if they listen to podcats and I’ll bet, with the exception of 20 and early 30 somethings, the vast majority will never have heard of a podcast.

Now the podcasting enthusiasts will cry havoc and take me to task for this, but only because their enthusiasm has no temper (and the broadcast waves are clouding their heads. It’s okay guys, I don’t have anything against podcasting. In fact, I have my own podcast (The Intranet Podcast) and think it’s a fantastic medium, but it has no where near the reach of blogging, wikis or social networking.

Nonetheless there are podcasters and listeners and it will undoubtedly begin to become more popular as it gathers steam. But it will not won’t explode in the manner of social networking, as exemplified by MySpace and YouTube (both in the top 8 most trafficked sites on the Internet). According to the Bridge Ratings study, a projected seven million Americans will download and listen to podcasts every week by 2010, with an additional 21.4 million listening to a minimum of four podcasts every month. That’s a little more than 5% of the population that is expected to listen to podcasts every week, several years from now. This is hardly a revolution.

For once, I think podcasting on the intranet might overtake the use of that on its predecessor. Read how IBM employees are podcasting on the IBM intranet (see Podcasting @ IBM).

Do you listen to podcasts? Do you know many others that do? Let us know what you think by posting a comment below.

According to the experts, Google is the most signtificant development in e-commerce since the White House issued the original e-commerce framework 10 years ago. While I believe the new Web 2.0 phenomena is equally significant, I have to agree.

The Top 10 developments in e-commerce were ranked by 75 policy and industry experts from a wider list of developments chosen by the the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). SIIA is a trade association representing more than 800 software and digital content companies including AOL, Adobe, IBM, Macromedia, McAfee and many others (although strangely enough, not Microsoft).

The Top 10 develoments are all significant. In fact, I can’t find anything wrong with or missing from the list. Not only are they significant, they’ve all significantly impacted all (most) of our lives.

I hate spam. More than liver; more than the Toronto Maple Leafs; more than the Bush administration’s uncanny ability to make friends; I hate spam.

To: Toby Ward
From: Robbie Stiff
Subject: Erectile dysfunction

Cheapest ED pills on the net!!! Order directly from offshore manufacturers!! Surrender both
your health and your wallet to some unknown-punk who claims to be the erectile
dysfunction king!!

I have two spam filters on my computer to support the filter applied by our email provider. And yet I still get it (though not as much as the 150 per day I received two years ago prior to implementing BitDefender and TrendMicro).

According to Business Week magazine:
"In a single day in May [2003], No. 1 Internet service provider AOL Time Warner (AOL ) blocked 2 billion spam messages -- 88 per subscriber -- from hitting its customers' e-mail accounts. Microsoft (MSFT), which operates No. 2 Internet service provider MSN plus e-mail service Hotmail, says it blocks an average of 2.4 billion spams per day. According to research firm Radicati Group in Palo Alto, Calif., spam is expected to account for 45% of the 10.9 trillion messages sent around the world in 2003."

I know there are some of you who read this headline have just had a near instantaneous reaction to call me out, slap me across the face, and put me in my place. But before you 'flame' me, here me out...

The headline above was not written by me. It is from a republished column on DMW written by web aficionado, maverick blogster and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

In his column Cuban laments about the "stagnation of the Internet" and how it is outperformed by intranets. He's particularly upset that the lack of quality video and multimedia on the Internet. He hates when websites crash and timeout when downloading video.

“For some reason the fact that intranets can significantly outperform Internets and in particular THE Internet is a shocking concept. It shouldn't be,” writes Mark in IntraNets vs InterNets. “It’s a stagnant consumer platform (the Internet). We switched to browsers for most of our PC activity. We are getting to the point where the browser on the net as a platform is becoming stagnant.”

In theory, Cuban surmizes, the intranet can do a much better job. In theory...

Flog you! No, as good it feels saying it, flog is not a verb but a noun meaning “fake blog” (as in a sales or marketing gimmick site masquerading as a fan site or genuine consumer blog, and authored by a PR or marketing hack).

Perhaps the most famous flog is the disastrous Walmarting Across America hack job, written by two Walmart “fans” who drove across America in an RV blogging about the Walmarts they visited. While two people did in fact leap from Walmart to Walmart, they were paid very well to do so (and this was not disclosed in the blog). It was a PR stunt allegedly cooked-up by Walmart’s PR firm Edelman PR (see Wal-Mart's Jim and Laura: The Real Story in Business Week).

I personally would have chosen the Trailer Park Boys and been upfront in paying them. You can’t RV across America without some quality trailer park time and some good old Jerry Springer-inspired fun (I know they’re Canadian, but all Canadians love driving across the U.S. because we don’t have Jack-In-The-Box nor Carl’s Jr.).

Live by the sword; die by the sword. It’s an all too familiar quote, and lesson, that many of us have learned by experience. Politicians and writers know this lesson well.

Blogging is a powerful new sword that exacts and enables great freedoms and celebrity, but it also can violently swing back at its wielder with greater viciousness. Debbie Weil knows this well and has been slashed by the darker underside of the blade that is not always seen when it is exacting great things. The well known blogger and afficianado, popularly known as the “Mona Lisa of blogging”, has developed (by all accounts) a very successful business from blogging and consulting about blogging.

Recently Weil was hit very hard by critics who were quick to show her the blade when she promoted a client’s blog, GlaxoSmithKline’s alliConnect blog (a blog for GlaxoSmithKline’s new weight loss drug, alli). Her critics were quick to pounce and were harsh and ruthless, as I revealed in my writings of August 7 (see Flogging). Weil was further upset by my writings relating the exchanges of her critics and called me directly to express her unease. Weil was polite and cordial, but notably upset with me and my piece.

“A do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet,” according to Christopher Beam of Slate magazine (see How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google).

Facebook started as a college alternative to MySpace, but has exploded in popularity and will soon overtake MySpace as the most visited social networking site. According the ubiquitously accepted Alexa.com website rankings, Facebook is now the 10th most visited site on the Internet – up 6 places since the rankings were last updated (MySpace is unchanged in the 6th spot).

“MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature,” writes Beam. “The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom.”

Here’s the wow factor: Facebook was only opened to the public one year ago. Previously, the Face was only available to party-hardy, horny and fun-seeking college teens. Last year, the owners of Facebook reportedly rejected a $900-million offer from Yahoo!

Further to my posting yesterday on the ‘Facebook Revolution’ I came across this article with some interesting statistics regarding employee productivity and use of Facebook on the Aussie version of MSN, “Facebook is a 'vital tool for productivity': expert.”

Ross Dawson says claims that websites such as Facebook are timewasters is irresponsible and contradicts actual business practice.

This flies in the face of findings by internet security firm SurfControl Technology that suggests an average of one hour is being lost to the "underground intranet", costing an employer more than $6200 annually.

Projected across the 800,000 businesses in Australia that operate with one or more employees, the nationwide figure totals productivity losses of more than $5 billion.
Dawson says many major companies such as Deloitte, IBM and Procter & Gamble actively encourage their employees to use social networks.

Research from Harvard and M.I.T. also shows an employee's personal network is a one of their most valuable assets and can make a big contribution to a company.

But businesses are also facing legal liabilities and cyber attacks with the increasing use of Facebook, said Richard Cullen of SurfControl.

"Hackers will no doubt be targeting Facebook as an attack mechanism because of (its) popularity and power as a platform," Dr Cullen said.

"It's only a matter of time before a security loophole is discovered and exploited."
There are more than 230,000 users of Facebook across the country, and there are reportedly close to 100 Australians joining each hour.

This is not a scam… the Internet is not just for big business. Small businesses are beginning to reap the rewards and are planting their banners in the great leveled ground that is the Internet.

While many businesses have a rudimentary website, it’s no longer excusable to have a ‘rudimentary’ website. For a few bucks a month you can set-up a pretty skookum site with e-mail, e-commerce, hosting and search engine marketing in minutes with services such as 1&1 Web Hosting, WebStore by Amazon, and Yahoo! Small business. Talking avatars, pulsating flash, and spinning wheels are not included.

“I imagine that this Internet thing is just one big fantasy world,” said one nameless CEO of a medium-size enterprise to me in a conversation on technology. “I mean, c’mon, what work is really getting done?!”

As I quickly clenched my jaw to block the impending spit-take (I believe it was Diet Coke that was insisting to be ejected on his shirt) I rushed to prop-up my sagging chin and share some of the latest numbers with this doubting Thomas:

The biggest user complaint about most websites and intranets is, “I can’t find anything!” Our ability to produce content has outstripped our ability to retrieve and reuse it in a timely manner.

As we’ve learned from the new social media sites (Web 2.0), people not only like but need visual cues. The biggest social sites YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace are all very visual; chalked full of multimedia.

GlobalIncidentMap.com is mostly visual and in fact buries traditional navigation and information architecture by instead presenting a home page that is dominated by a highly interactive world map. The site is described by the creators as a tool to “give the public, law enforcement, military, and government individuals a new way to visualize, and become instantly aware of terrorism and security incidents” across the world.

Although both leading personalized user portals have been around for years, the two search turned portal turned Augustus Caesars have been upping the ante for your eyeballs.

The ongoing war is being fought with content and Web 2.0 as the delivery mechanism. Both My Yahoo! and iGoogle are personalized portals that allow the users to choose the type of content, layout, design, and tools that appear on the home page.

This spring iGoogle was redesigned and enhanced with new tools including Google gadgets (Google gadgets are interactive mini-applications like personalized, weather, etc. for your desktop – the same gadgets that inspired the gruesome Windows Vista gadgets).

Most press releases suck. They’re frigging awful. And those hacks that right them should be ashamed of themselves. Note I say most, but not all.

The trouble is, a good press release is often awash in a sea of crap. If a press release cries in the sea and a journalist doesn’t hear it, does it actually make a sound?

Press release fatigue is an all too common condition. Journalists don’t want to read them, PR pros are tired of writing them, and companies are demanding more be sent out the door.
'There's too much text, and not enough news," says Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communication, in his interview with Ragan (see Is the press release dead? Ragan.com).

To counter the information glut spawned by many thousands of press releases every day, a new press release format was recently introduced by Todd and his colleagues at SHIFT Communication, a high tech agency based in Boston and San Francisco.

The new press release format is called the "social media press release template".

“There is no evidence that online networking sites are producing anything of real economic value,” said Theresa Wise, global director at Accenture’s digital media practice at a Broadband World Forum session in Paris entitled “The Emergence of Convergent Media” (as quoted by Ken Wieldand in BBWF: Accenture sees little financial value in Web 2.0 for Telecommnications Online).

It is still the Hollywood “big hits” that consumers are willing to pay for, argued Wise, with only a very small percentage of user-generated material being popular. “Big brands do not always lend themselves to social networking websites, as Web 2.0 users aren’t always receptive to them,” she added. “There is no evidence that these sites are monetizeable.”

As for producing measurable statistics, Wise argued that while there was indeed much data available, very few companies made complete use of it.

Traditional economic models assume either that consumers and/or advertisers pay for a service. With online social networking sites, Wise is not convinced that this will happen and, what’s more, there are no alternative workable economic models available to compensate for that fact.

Well, I take issue with Ms. Wise...

If you've been following my posts regarding Facebook, you get my point. But don't take it from me, take it from Forrester Analyst Charlene Li:

"As an analyst, I’m often asked by people why they should bother with services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace, both from a personal as well as corporate perspective. Let’s start with a fundamental premise – that all business is social and personal. Business involves people and communications and we all prize “networking” skills and opportunities. Businesses don’t strike deals with each other – people do. And we build bonds by talking about everything from sports teams and the weather to our families and hobbies.

"So we as business people already engage in social networking every day, primarily through phone calls, emails, meetings, and events. The same activities take place on social networking sites – people share tidbits and moments that build relationships.

While one CEO recently told me that the Internet is “fantasy land”, the reality and surging success of social networking driving big business. My company, Prescient Digital Media, landed its first client from our activity on Facebook. Yes, that means a company contacted us through Facebook and we signed them as a new client.

While social media is not yet as well used as say news sites, 37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month this year. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011, according to eMarketer. Frankly, I think they’re vastly underestimating the potential growth.

”The continued growth of social networking seems assured,” says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage, “unless teens stop social networking as they become adults.”

“By 2011, one-half of all online adults and 84% of online teens in the US will use social networking each month,” says Ms. Williamson.

Additional predictions from eMarketer:

• Worldwide online social network ad spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2008, 82%.
• Worldwide spending will top $4 billion in 2011.
• In the US, spending is projected to rise to $1.6 billion in 2008, from $920 million in 2007.

Most companies are now using social media now in some form. Those that aren’t risk falling far behind the competition and being differentiated to the scrap heap.

“Collaborative tools are overloading employees and killing productivity—to the tune of $588 billion a year, according to a January study by Basex, a collaboration technologies consulting firm,” writes Brian Watson of CIO Magazine (see Web 2.0: Too Good to Be True?). “It’s the money-saving argument that’s getting pushback lately.”

Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).

A CIO Magazines study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008 finds that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A survey of 250 “top IT executives” from a collection of small, medium and large organizations doesn’t even touch on the issue of Web 2.0.

Setting-up a spoof Facebook site in the name of a celebrity, athlete or politician is a popular past time. For a Moroccan computer engineer and father, his spoof has delivered him to jail -- three years in jail for setting up a Facebook site in the name of a member of the royal Moroccan family.

Fouad Mourtada was sentenced this week on suspicion of stealing the identity of Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid (see Jail for Facebook spoof Moroccan, BBC).

The prosecution had urged the court to impose a sentence which set an example for others. Mr Mourtada was convicted of "villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the [prince's] identity".

In his defence, he said he admired the prince, and that the Facebook entry was just intended to be a bit of fun.

A website supporting him published a letter addressed to the prince apologising for the incident.

Earlier this week some Moroccan bloggers went "on strike", suspending their regular blog entries for 24 hours in protest at Mr. Mourtada's detention.

According to the website, he told family members who visited him in jail that he had been blindfolded and beaten unconscious at the time of his arrest.

Apparently using Facebook is dangerous after all. While I can’t imagine such severe punishment in the Western World, there undoubtedly will be some price to pay in severe cases of liable and slander when misusing Facebook and other social media that make it easy to spoof people.

It is said that our ability to create Web content vastly outstrips our ability to digest it. Consistency in how content is structured, catalogued and managed is consistently inconsistent, to say the least. The problem also persists in the world of digital signage.

Digital signs are the electronic or digital signs that you find in elevators, in lobby kiosks, or even the billboards in Time Square. It is believed that China already has more than 100,000 of these digital signs.

Cisco® today announced the development of a new qualification program for those creating content for digital signage. The Cisco Academy of Digital Signage (ADS) will offer a specialized curriculum focusing on the three vital areas of digital signage:

• content creation
• content management
• content distribution

Known for its glitzy TV ads with star power (though they haven’t done much for Michael Jackson nor Britney Spear’s career) Pepsi-Cola is launching their new beverage line without traditional media.

Pepsi-Cola North America will market its new no-calorie, carbonated drinks named Tava without TV, newspaper and magazine advertising. New age drinks such as Brazilian Samba and Tahitian Tamure will rely on the web and free samples to create a ‘buzz’. Tava’s marketing is mostly contained to its website (www.Tava.com), banner ads, and free samples to movers and shakers at MTV and other ‘hot’ organizations crawling with mavens of cool.

My recent article Web 2.0 fails the grade, according to executives, republished on www.Ragan.com (membership required) drew a string of visceral responses. Most couldn’t agree more with my assertion that “Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).”

Supporting my assertion is a recent CIO study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008, that reveals that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A couple of people disagree including a colleague of mine, Shel Holtz, who points to contrary research from CIO and Forrester.

Research is a big business. And there are so many forms and so many formats that it is in fact quite easy to develop a research study that produces just about whatever results you want. Genuine researchers, and there are many, will wince at the suggestion and leap to defend their industry and practices. They are right most of th time and their defense is well-based as most studies are astutely conducted with no smoke and mirrors, but understanding the research source, type and sample or target audience is the most critical part to understanding the study and its conclusions.

As part of an initiative for “transforming the Starbucks customer experience” the Seattle coffee maker has launched a new, social website for customers. MyStarbucksIdea.com is part of a greater strategic thrust for bettering their coffee business and engaging their customers.

The site actively engages customers for their ideas on improving Starbucks, allows customers to vote on and comment on the ideas, and serves as a vehicle for implementing those ideas at Starbucks coffee houses:

“What’s your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple—we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people’s ideas and join the discussion. We’re here, and we’re ready to make ideas happen. Let’s get started.”

My first reaction to learning about this new site: how bloody patronizing and pretentious! Who do they think they are, The Body Shop? Why not just launch a new website dedicated to “Going Green” in an effort to convince me that the millions of disposable cups they add to the landfills of the world somehow actually benefit our forests and drinking water (errr, coffee)?

I have a profound respect for charities with great vision and execution. However, I possess a monstrous disdain for those that manipulate the disadvantaged, use them as a platform to further their own personal goals, and take for granted, or even abuse their patrons.

When I heard about One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), I immediately stepped-up and supported it. I immediately wrote about and promoted the campaign to encourage the world to buy one of their computers, so that a like computer could be donated to a child or classroom in a third world country.

In fact, the Internet and its denizen of bloggers have helped turn this charity into a massive darling that has received heaps of wonderful, international praise. I encouraged friends, colleagues and readers to support it, and instructed my company, Prescient Digital Media, to spend thousands of dollars on the program.

In fact, we were a relatively early contributor during the Christmas campaign of 2007. At the time, OLPC promised the delivery of their computers before Christmas. Four months later, and five months after they took our money, no computers have been delivered.

Have you noticed a lack of formal grammar or punctuation in your kids’ homework? How about in correspondence with friends?

Informal communications and writing styles adopted in text messages, email, and new social media tools like blogs have begun to creep into the world of print.

A new study by Pew Internet reveals that nearly two-thirds of surveyed students (700) say their Web communications style sometimes bleeds into school assignments.

Roughly 50% admit to omitting proper punctuation and capitalization, and, shockingly, a quarter of them admit to using emoticons such as smiley faces.

“The state of writing among teens today is marked by an interesting paradox: While teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world and craft a significant amount of electronic text, they see a fundamental distinction between their electronic social communications and the more formal writing they do for school or for personal reasons,” says the reports authors.

I’ve been saying for about 8 years that the Internet would spawn a writing revolution. I must admit however that I didn’t forsee a possible re-writing of our English language :) LOL! IMO!

After failing in their US$47.5-billion bid for Yahoo, the giant Microsoft is looking more closely at Facebook. While the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft bankers have begun to look into a Facebook purchase, neither side has commented on the story (a sure sign that something is afoot).

Facebook in itself is a giant… one that could make Yahoo blush one day. With more than 70 million active users its value was pegged at US$15-billion last October when Microsoft bought a minority stake for a mere US$240-million.

What makes Facebook an even greater value than its investment price a mere 8 months ago is its growing popularity – and growing platform. There are only 7 websites on the planet that receive more monthly traffic than Facebook – and Facebook only opened to the public 18 months ago after starting as a college only niche. Of the sites that get more traffic (Yahoo is 1st, Google 2nd, YouTube is 3rd), Microsoft’s flagship portal sits in fifth (according to the industry benchmark, Alexa.com). Its viral power is far stronger than MySpace (notwithstanding the music scene), and its growing at a faster clip. I don’t know of anyone that uses MySpace, and yet virtually everyone I know under the age of 45 has a Facebook account. According to ZincResearch.com, 90% of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 are Facebook members (9 million).

Of perhaps greater interest is the ever-expanding “Facebook Platform” and its potential as a platform service inside the corporation (for example, intranet platform). Facebook Platform is the place where all of those creative nerds build and add those cute little applications that are optional add ons to your Facebook profile. Popular applications include “Fun Wall” (2.5 million active users), “Scrabulous” and that dam vampire biting ‘game’.

All of these are nice, viral tools with little or no business value (more than 23,000 have been created in one short year of existence), but the platform has the opportunity to be expanded to host “intranet” type functionality and collaboration tools. Create an invite-only Facebook site, sprinkle in some applications and voila – you have the semblance of a corporate intranet. Of course, I said “semblance.”

According to Facebook, some 1000 business applications have been created. One application, Feedheads, allows the users to “share the feed items you like with your different friends and networks while also displaying your shared items on your profile.” It also works with Google Reader and NewsGator. So, in other words, think of the collaborative calendar offered by Lotus Notes (or Outlook) where the user can see the schedules of others. Feedheads allows you to see a lot more than their schedule depending on what that user or colleague wants to share (e.g. interesting articles, reports on the competition, meeting reminders, etc.).

Notwithstanding the security challenges of a hosted platform, and those security holes that Facebook has worked feverishly to close (or prevent), the Platform is not a real substitute for the intranet which must feature among other things, federated search, application integration, robust security, etc. (At Prescient Digital Media we’re using it as a networking tool -- feel free to join us on the Facebook community Intranet Global Forum).

“The problem for any business considering Facebook is that it’s a determinedly consumer play, to the extent that I don’t think it can ever seriously fly in the enterprise,” says analyst and ZDnet writer Phil Wainewright. “Facebook trades free functionality in return for attention and relationship data — and users give up a lot of their control over that data. Businesses aren’t willing to make that trade-off.

Google is far ahead of Facebook in this respect with the Google App Engine (Google Gadgets), and already has made impressive inroads in the enterprise software business with the Google Mini and Google Enterprise Search. And now you can see why Microsoft is particularly interested in Facebook (more than just acquiring those eyeballs).

The Facebook Platform is not a legitimate enterprise or intranet platform… yet. But it’s only a year old and continuing to evolve; don’t think for a second that Facebook’s management isn’t looking at your business and the revenue potential of becoming the host of collaborative employee applications – or the entire intranet. Microsoft knows it too, and wants a bigger slice of that multi-billion dollar pie.

There are a number of reasons why a corporation or a not-for-profit should adopt Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 tools. Enhancing communications and collaboration with customers and employees is the primary, over-arching driver for most. But there’s another more pressing need: snooze or lose.

“You really have no choice,” says Steve Krol, EVP of Professional Services with Lyons Consulting Group, which has worked with the likes of AON, Porsche and even Playboy. “Social media represents a full-fledge media /communication channel that will evolve with or without you. It’s another accepted form of communications that people want.

According to a web survey by the Software Information & Industry Association, only 41% of participants are using social media, but 35% plan to use it. While the survey is not scientifically significant for all organizations in all industries and is biased towards the audience that participated, the numbers are pretty close to the mark. As it relates to large organizations, the numbers echo other recent study findings from CIO and Forrester. However, the adoption numbers are far smaller in small and medium size organizations.

Quick, what is the most read and used website on the planet? It’s not Google, it’s Yahoo!

What is the most read news website on the planet? It’s not Google News, it’s Yahoo! News.

Despite its position as media darling, Google trails is competitor (and advertising partner) Yahoo! in many respects. Not only does Yahoo! beat them on total aggregate traffic, but its news site has more than three times the traffic of Google News (35 million monthly, unique visitors compared to only 11 million). In fact, Google News sits in eighth spot, right behind the lowly Gannett Newspapers and flounders with the lowest growth of all the top 10 news sites.

Perhaps a key reason for Google’s fledgling traffic status when compared to Yahoo! (though they are often rated as the 2nd most used website on the planet so they’re still doing fine thank you very much) may be the nature of its websites. In short, Google lacks original content. While Yahoo! not only compiles news from other sources, it also creates its own content with expert columnists.

Additionally, Yahoo! uses real humans to aggregate and promote news, Google relies completely on computers. Google crawls news websites and compiles the news articles automatically. This automated, no human process doesn’t always work. Case in point: when news anchor Tim Russert died recently, the story quickly became the top news story on many sites including the #2 news site, MSNBC. The New York Times was quick to point out that Google News didn’t list it as a story until an hour after it broke on MSNBC (see At Google, Slow Growth in News Site).

But content is more than just static text – it also includes multimedia such as photos and video. All of Yahoo’s top features have links to video, compared to only two headlines on the first screen of Google News (Noon PST, June 24, 2008) with links to video. Readers love video, and Yahoo! has understood this for some time. Google News is playing catch-up.

Speaking of video, while Google presently holds the overall #2 traffic spot behind Yahoo!, a couple of months ago it was supplanted by YouTube and bumped to #3. Social media sites representing “user generated content” are also putting the heat on Google. Other social media sites in the top 10 most visited websites include MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia – all are gaining traffic faster than Google.

Yes, Google is still great, but content is still king.

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Flash is a wonderful and cool programming tool for any cool website. Flash can be used to present dynamic content such as video, other multimedia, and interactive tools. However, as all of us know by know, multimedia and interactive tools are often more than just cool, and sometimes serve a business purpose.

The trouble with Flash, despite its flexible and dynamic presentation, is it has until now been unpopular with anyone looking to get indexed by Google, and virtually all search engines. Until now (or soon hereafter) Google and the other search engines didn’t index Flash content, and Flash content did not appear in search results (though some organizations have been smart to create accompanying HTML text that is indexed by the search engines).

Flash forward to this summer, and Google is now able to index most Flash (.SWF) files. Yahoo is also beginning to also index some Flash.