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Digg was the best social destination of 2007

During this past year, a number of oddities emerged in the world of tech. First, Microsoft was forced to live through an unbridled flop, Apple was enjoying its meteoric rise as the most successful company of the year and social networks gained even more steam. On the back of that, the world's favorite social network, MySpace, quickly gave ground to Facebook and companies like the ill-fated Netscape tried to take on Digg.

And it's that site -- Digg.com -- that emerged this year, not necessarily as the most popular social site (it's tough to call it a full-fledged social networking company in the vein of a Facebook or MySpace), but as the best destination for people surfing the Web.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look at some other social networking sites to see why they couldn't make the cut.… Read more

Facebook in 40 years...

Ross Mason sent this on to me. It's clear that Facebook has a bright future ahead of it...perhaps as part of Medicaid?

Click the link. Trust me. Very funny.

My new Facebook strategy and the FB power level

I had heard there was a 5k friend limit on Facebook. I just didn't take it to heart. Until I reached 5k and tried to add 5001., at which point FB reminded of the limit.

It was a weird moment, but actually one that I have come to respect and appreciate. Facebook went from being a way to broadcast information to 5k people, probably 4k of which I didn't know or even have a business link to, to a platform I either had to take seriously or walk away from.

I try to have open lines of communications … Read more

Gift guide: What Web addicts want

We bet you know someone who does everything online, from banking to making friends, to kicking back. If you're stuck trying to find great gifts for the constant blogger, video vulture, or online socialite in your life, take a look at this virtual gift guide that shows you get it, and you care.

Bits from Beyond Binary--Dec. 13, 2007

Activision sued over 'Guitar Hero' for Wii--Suit follows admission by Activision that the Wii version of Guitar Hero III was outputting mono, rather than the advertised stereo sound. Office 2007 SP1 autoinstalls confuse Vista, XP users--While most users won't get the Office service pack automatically for some time, beta testers of Vista Service Pack 1 are having the update pushed automatically. Microsoft's Ministry of Truth--Blogger Long Zheng noted last week that Microsoft is hiring for a Director of Windows Client Disclosure, a position designed to making sure there are "zero surprises," when it … Read more

Google: Don't give up on OpenSocial

When Google unveiled its OpenSocial developer initiative at the end of October, observers hailed it as the future of the social Web.

But is the search king already too late to the party?

It's been over six weeks, and OpenSocial--which uses open-source code to allow any participating social media site to implement a common set of application program interfaces (APIs) and create "universal" applications--isn't finished, though developers believe it will be ready early in 2008. In the meantime, a number of partners have launched independent developer platform strategies, and Facebook has announced that other social … Read more

Clipmarks opens up sharing platform, adds multinetwork widgets

Yesterday Clipmarks added a new feature called ClipCasting. Like the name would suggest, it's a way to syndicate whatever content you've bookmarked using the proprietary Clipmarks toolbar. In this case, Clipmarks has opened up its service beyond just letting users link to bits of bookmarked Web material, and putting everything in a small widgetized container that can be added to blogs and social networking profiles. Readers can quickly jump back and forth through stories and note individual clips they like, or favorite the entire thing. Incidentally, the previous iteration of the site, which created a separate page for each piece of bookmarked content, is now called "classic view," with the ClipCast pages taking the spotlight.

To supplement the embeddable version of the widget, there's a new Facebook app that accomplishes the same thing, albeit with less installation work on the part of the user. It'll denote any new piece of content that's been added to the ClipCast in the user's new minifeed for others to see. Likewise, if your friends have the app installed, you'll be able to keep track of whatever bits of content they've bookmarked. Compared with Facebook's standard sharing feature, ClipCast is better in that you can view the content right in the widget without having to venture off the site. It's also nice because your friends don't need to install the app to see the items you've shared.

As a content creator, services like Clipmarks are a mixed blessing. It's a super simple way to share stories with other people, but at the same time it takes potential visitors away from the original article, and moves the power to pick out what bits of content are published away from the original author. I still think Clipmarks has done a great job with ClipCasting. On the surface, it's a lot more approachable than some other bookmarking services that rely on text links alone.

We originally checked out Clipmarks back in late February. Since then, it got snatched up by Forbes Media, which noted that many of its editors had been using the service internally as a way to track and share Web content. Also worth looking at is eSnips, which has a toolbar that lets you grab and share page clippings, along with Yoono (review) and Diigo (review).

I've embedded a ClipCast:

Episode 623: Mouse ambush on a cat

Will iLike users like Thumbplay's ringtones too?

Thumbplay announced on Thursday a deal it just wrapped up with iLike, a music recommendation service big on Facebook, to exclusively stock iLike's virtual shelves with ringtones.

Thumbplay's ringtones are disguised on iLike.com by the generic command to "get ringtones," and placed alongside iTunes links. They'll also be sprinkled throughout the iLike Challenge game on iLike's site and will be available for purchase through the iLike Facebook app.

This is a definite win for Thumbplay. The mobile content distributor's limp Facebook app, a Photo Portal that pushes pictures uploaded from a Thumbplay … Read more

An exceptional year for Alfresco

It's hard to talk about the rising success of open source without at least mentioning Alfresco, given the successes of this past year. Given that I work for Alfresco, I try to keep references to Alfresco isolated and only part of larger discussions of open source. But there has been so much momentum and traction lately that today I can't help myself. Indeed, CMSwire went so far as to write:

Every week, it seems, there's a big announcement from Alfresco....The [company] has...some kind of magical app-building framework which enables them to rattle off integrated products at lightning speed.

The latest of these [Red Hat + Alfresco collaboration] is not quite as sexy, on the face of it, as the Facebook hookup. But in terms of its implications for the collaboration portal industry, i.e. for Microsoft, it could prove to be the killer app which takes Alfresco into the big time.

In the last quarter alone, Alfresco racked up the following:

Alfresco registered 400% sales growth over an already very robust fiscal year 2006;… Read more