Social networking

Proof of six degrees of separation

In a research paper from June 2007, titled "Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network (PDF)," Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University analyzed 30 billion conversations among 240 million people using Microsoft Instant Messenger in June 2006. It turned out that the average path length, or degree of separation, among the anonymized users probed was 6.6.

Six degrees of separation posits that a person is a step away from people they know and two steps distant from people known by the people they know--thus the magic number six.

Following is … Read more

Podcast: AOL gets social with Bebo, Microhoo talks and Semantic Web progress

This week on the EIC Squared podcast Larry Dignan and I discuss the merits of AOL's $850 million Bebo acquisition and the status of Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo. Apparently the Microsoft and Yahoo are holding informal talks. The general consensus among industry watchers is that Yahoo should take the money and run, especially if its first quarter earnings are going to disappoint Wall Street. Larry explains the role IT played in helping to turn Eliot Spitzer into an ex-governor of New York, and I outline the latest developments in the Semantic Web, including Yahoo's efforts in this … Read more

Can Bebo revive AOL?

When the media talks about the Web giants these days, it's Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace.com, and Facebook, with AOL as an afterthought.

Since its merger with Time Warner in 2001, AOL has been an odd duck among the swans, trumped by competitors despite its more than 100 million U.S. users, according to ComScore (below).

Speaking at a Bear Stearns Media Conference on Monday, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said AOL's ad revenue is flat, advertising has slowed, and the shift from paid subscriptions to free membership has cut into search ad revenue.

Bewkes also he would … Read more

Yahoo warming up to OpenSocial; Facebook staying cool

Google's OpenSocial APIs may be gaining a major new adherent this week. According to the New York Times, Yahoo is expected to join the group that includes MySpace, Plaxo, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Six Apart, Oracle, salesforce.com and Ning, among others. In fact, Facebook is the only major social networking platform that has not joined the OpenSocial club.

OpenSocial allows applications to tap into the social graph, the network of friends and their feeds, of multiple social networks without code rewrites.

Speaking with CNET News.com's Caroline McCarthy at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival over the … Read more

Podcast: Apple iPhone, Microsoft's syncromesh, and Facebook's new hire

My former teammate and now editor in chief of ZDNet, Larry Dignan, and I continue our weekly podcast (formerly called "Between the Lines") covering the top headlines of the week. This week on "EIC Squared," we two square editor in chiefs discuss the iPhone's quest to seduce business users, some of the highlights from Microsoft's Mix '08 conference, and Facebook's new chief operating officer.

One of Zuckerberg's smartest moves, so far

The crew at Facebook has done well to amass a huge war chest (Microsoft's $240 million investment), 66 million members, 200,000 developers, 16,000 applications, 500 employees and somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in revenue for last year.

With the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg as COO, the odds just increased for Facebook to survive its adolescence (more on Techmeme).

Sandberg is 15 years senior to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. She has been through the gauntlet, working in the Clinton administration and then at Google for six years, starting when the company had less than … Read more

Pizza time for OpenSocial applications

The first wave of applications built on Google's OpenSocial APIs is set for liftoff in the next few weeks as MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5 make the final push to release their software.

I spoke with David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at the Graphing Social Patterns conference, who told me that it's "pizza time" for the developers, meaning they are putting in long hours to deliver the apps sooner than later.

The OpenSocial APIs allow developers to create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds without modification for compliant platforms. The … Read more

Graphing Social Patterns: Facebook aspires to the frictionless platform

Ben Ling, director of product marketing for the Facebook platform, gave a brief peek of the upcoming profile page update and outlined Facebook's vision at Graphing Social Patterns conference. The new profile page will combine the Wall and Minifeed, and additional tabs have been added to showcase users' favorite apps.

Ling said that Facebook has 200,000 developers and 16,000 applications so far. Of the 66 million current Facebook users, 98 percent have used at least one third-party application, and a significant number use six or seven applications, he said.

Ling described Facebook's vision as making its … Read more

Graphing Social Patterns: Turning social networks into air

The social Web is spawning more than millions of widgets, applications, and people connections. It is also has its own themed conference. Graphing Social Patterns got under way today in San Diego with a keynote by Charlene Li of Forrester Research on the future of social networks.

In the future social networks will be like air, Lee said. "No matter what you do, your social networks will be there. The social graph and your identity will be at your fingertips."

She predicted that by 2013 social networks will be open and ubiquitous. Reaching that plateau won't be … Read more