Gapingvoid’s take on online social networks and business boils down to:
You can’t blame the tools – they’re here, they work.
Niches rules (and they make money)
Nobody cares what the MBA’s think
You need a great product
Integrity matters
Love works.
I wouldn’t normally write about specific competitions or even gadgets, but Jane Slowey (once my boss for a few months) e-mailed me about a tie-in between her organisation The Foyer Federation and Dixons and I really want others to blog about it. After all it’s a huge improvement on reports that homeless people were paid to queue in Tokyo and the US when the PS3 was released there.
The fundraiser is a competition. Enter here to win a PS3 from Dixons and a proportion of the £1 fee goes to the Federation. (It might also help get round fears of shortages) So think of this as an experiment in attracting a new audience for you and helping a good cause. If enough of us use this link perhaps we can get it onto the front page of technorati. With the tags below we’ll certainly find new readers and give them a way to turn their gaming passion to good use. If you give it a go please send me a link and I’ll add it here, or use trackback or perhaps add a comment with a link. I’d also love to know what effect it has on hits to your blog.
David Wilcox has just put up a post which helps think about the relationship between formal and informal structures – whether in non-profit or profit organisations.
He cites a thought which popped into the head of Lloyd Davis at It’s Social Stupid. It occurs to Lloyd that creativity most often happens in the ‘shadows’ – the informal links into and out of formal organisations – rather than within the naturally constraining structures which were designed to get things done.
I think we all spend some considerable time in the shadows. You know: Read more
People have been bursting to write about the combined move by Yahoo and Reuters into allowing any and all of us to submit our pics (through flickr). If they sell them you’ll get a deal – if they don’t they might still show them on their own sites (free content).
There’s been mixed reaction to this – much of it along the lines of wailing at big corporations exploiting the little man. That of course is nonsense. You choose whether to send a pic their way. There’s also the death of the photo-journalist line – maybe true but missing the point – the value is in the image, not the person who gathered it.
Deep Jive (lovely clean site) has a much more mature approach in this post. To quote: Read more