I’m going to claim this might be the best resource for explaining Web 2.0 communication platforms to newbies ever! See my post below about CommonCraft, and if you’re someone who would like a better understanding of stuff like blogs, RSS, social networking, podcasting, Twitter and more, there are easy to understand and remarkably clear and enjoyable CommonCraft videos about each of these subjects on the CommonCraft YouTube channel. Enjoy!
OK. I’m someone who has been doing his best to “span the Grand Canyon Gap between people and technology” for quite a number of years, so when I say this is impressive, I at least have some vague idea of what I’m talking about… 😉
I was trying to explain Twitter to my associate and went to Twitter.com and clicked “Watch a Video” Ta-da! A simple, cleverly animated, and impressively clear (and that’s the main thing) explanation. What a concept! No kidding. As I once wrote, “making it look easy is the hard part.” The creative production company is CommonCraft.com They say, “Our product is explanation.” I love that and I love their work.
I’ll let their work speak for them and maybe you’ll agree it’s impressive. Here’s “Podcasting in Plain English”:
Here’s the kind of easy to use, immediate user feedback and ultra-highly-interactive application that makes Web 2.0 so interesting for me. Actually, it’s a kind of convergence of online discussion forums & real time chat, all of which can be embedded within any page of your site. Impressive stuff!
http://www.tangler.com/ | TechCruch review
I made a post re the build-your-own-social-network platform Ning below, so this is just a small follow up because I couldn’t resist passing along TechCrunch‘s quote of the NYTimes quoting Ning’s founder, Marc Andreesen regarding Cisco’s buyout of social network-building company Tribe.
Andreesen said, “The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches.”
Be careful out there… 😉
Yesterday, I started experimenting with Ning, and I was impressed. It’s amazingly powerful for such an truly easy-to-use system. Now, (no kidding) virtually anyone with an ounce of web-savvy can create their own social networking website. This is Web 2.0 at it’s best. (Oh, and I should mention this company is backed in large part by Marc Andreesen.)
But why take my word for it, when Ning’s attractive and articulate CEO, Gina Bianchini is virtually right here to demo it for you:
Thanks to TechCrunch for their review and you may also gain further illumination from GigaOM’s post.
Rupert Mudoch’s Fox big media conglomerate’s ownership of mega web upstart MySpace.com is not only controversial, but also apparently largely driven as a platform for video content. Illumination of this phenom appears in the AlwaysOn interview with Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn and in the BusinessWeek Online article, “Fox Feeds the Online TV Frenzy.”
I knew MySpace was a major site growing very rapidly, but I didn’t realize that it’s pretty much off the charts. For example, did you know it’s the second biggest website on the web, solidly ahead of MSN, AOL, EBay & Google? MySpace generates roughly 30 billion monthly page views (10,593 per second) with users who are passionate enough to spend quite a bit of time there. TechCrunch has more data and links to the sources. Wow!
The Republican Congress did what many of us had feared and dealt a blow to Net Neutrality. Next the Senate will speak… Meanwhile, opponents of this move now include Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports.
And O’Reilly Radar quotes a report that reveals that the NSA may well be “funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks” (like MySpace). Beware!
The extraordinary, run away success of MySpace is way big. How big is it? So big that MarketingSherpa had to exclaim “Even My Dog Has a MySpace Account”, and then assign her researchers to write a special report. So big, 50 million ++ accounts and counting, that it requires reflection on why and what exactly is this “social networking” phenomenon?
Bottom line, it’s a new kind of media environment, er, channel, uh, platform… ok, aw right, a media space! Toward understanding this new myspace media space, I’d like to recommend this short perspective piece called Social Networks are the New Media by Robert Young on Om Malik’s blog (that’s his pic.)
Here’s another great pick from Michael Arrington at TechCruch, a simple site that let’s you post images for linking from your blog or EBay or whatever web page you like. It also will resize the images automatically if you wish. This saves the necessity of having server space and using FTP. And as the name implies, AllYouCanUpload is without limits in terms of disk space or bandwidth usage. Wow! As the site says: “1. Upload Your Images 2. Copy the Links 3. Post!” Simpler really is better. Arrington explains it well.
Oh yeah, did I say that it’s totally FREE? And you don’t even need to create an account (neither a user name nor a password is required). Just do it. (Really.)
ComBridges
66 Via Holon #11
Greenbrae, CA 94904
Phone:: +1 (415) 758-2932
Send Email
