Social Networking news and information

Fast Company started a Social Network Portal at beta.fastcompany.com.  TechCrunch writes about it in Fast Company Goes Social

I'm logged in right now and was invited last week by Lee Odden, so I took a quick look around when I was in Miami, speaking at the Social Networking Conference about Building a Social Network for the Web Analytics Association.

Here's the links to my presentation in Miami last week.

At the Social Networking Conference in Miami - Day 1

Back from Miami - Social Networking & iDate Conference recap

Speaking at the Social Networking Conference in Miami, Feb 1st, 2008 (you can download the presentation from this link).

But Fast Company - that's a different story - with some reports the portal software, Drupal, having problems.  I took this from Jeremiah

An Initial Analysis of the Fast Company Community

"...Objectives
Fast Company is attempting to involve readers and the market to be involved in creating content. We’ve listed out there are five major social computing objectives, (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) and this one could fall under embracing, where customers and employees collaborate to build next generation products and services.

Challenges
Once the initial buzz wears off, we’ll have to see who will remain leading the and joining in the conversations. Will the lines between professional created editorial and community continue to be blurred? How will high quality content be elevated so usefulness is found? Most importantly, with the many reports showing that advertising on social networks is ineffective, how will Fast Company monetize?

 

	jowyang Have you ever seen how many Drupal themes there are? It's like wordpress themes http://tinyurl.com/3xcwza about 1 hour ago from web
	jowyang I find the drupal interface at Fastcompany confusing and non-linear, I need some structure to get started. about 2 hours ago from web
	jowyang fast company community site is now up, they are using Drupal. I advise clients to only launch with 3 features, never more. its overwhelming about 2 hours ago from web

 

Here's the problem with Social Networks - creating a lot of content is hard work - and people are more busy all the time.   I've been wanting to log in and post stuff on Fast Company - but I just don't have the bandwidth.

People need more than a platform - they need rewards - tangable rewards, for contributing content to a Social Network - or they won't be able to keep it up.  That's Fast Company's challange - that's the challalange we have with the WAA Social Network too.