"It's Bacn!"

New Online Terminology: Bacn


Everyone should know by now that a misspelled word isn’t always misspelled. Bacn is not spelled wrong, and it's not food. It's a new online Spam term slithering into the social networking community. Spam is unwanted emails, forum advertising or totally annoying junk. However bacn is the new in between term for email that is neither wanted or unwanted that you receive through your social networking site – be it a message, a comment or a new blog posting from one of your Friends. Every time your friends do something you can opt to receive bacn from them too. Before you know it your In Box is full of bacn.

Bacn (pronounced bacon) is the term given to electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited. - Wikipedia


What is the fascination with bacon?

It’s Not Playdo It’s Plaxo With A Pluse (Review)

As a online researcher with what seems like a billion news sites, social networking communities and information resources along with my personal interests, local events I would like to attend and blogs I would like to read -- I simply can not keep up with them all. I’ve tried a handful of free online tools that make big claims to simplifying my life by coordinating everything in a one two three WOW format but so far none of them have held up to what really works for me.

So I stumble upon yet anther one called Plaxo 3.0. Plaxo is an online address book service founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker. However they’ve received a lot of scowls from earlier Plaxo versions. Plaxo 3.0 is said to be better, more secure, less spam and basically a new Plaxo with less evil. Their website tour didn’t impress me but I decided to watch their video tour which was more impressive. Not yet a wow kind of moment, but enough so that I decided to sign up and see if it can hold up to their marketing of “it’s simple” and “don’t leave home without it” tactics.

Using my Hotmail as my test it did indeed easily sync up my Hotmail contacts into Plaxo. I could have added my Outlook if I wanted to download the software and instant message people through Plaxo. However, since I use AOL I didn’t seem the necessity of adding anther. What I would have liked to do though is sync up my AOL instant message contacts with my instant messages in MySpace. I don’t use MySpace for IM but it does tell me when I have new mail when signed in.

After syncing my Hotmail, it didn’t point me to do anything else so I moved over to Pulse to explore what that was.

“Welcome to Pulse. Let's get you up and running.” - Size 18

Get me running with what? What is Pluse? For all I know it’s the newest internet plague…I don’t want to run with the plague!

Thankfully in very small font it says “Not sure what Pulse is or why you should use it? Read our blog.” – size 8

According to the blog “Pulse is a social network for your REAL life.”
Real life? Is that like Second Life? I call my real life by my real name that I rarely use online… Than again I’m not even sure if that’s real either though…but I’ll run with it. Pulse is for real life, got it.

So what Pulse is suppose to do is gather all of the social networking and community websites that I belong to and “through the power of RSS and APIs” Pulse will pull in whatever community website I update and share it with whomever I designate to read those particular websites i.e. family, online buddies business contacts and real friends.

As of May of 2007 (and a promise to add more in the future) Pulse can “pull together” Amazon.com, AOL Pictures, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Jaiku, Last.fm, LiveJournal, MySpace, Picasa, Pownce, Smugmug, Tumblr, Twitter, Webshots, Windows Live Spaces, Xanga, Yahoo! 360, Yelp, and YouTube.

Here’s the promise that seems too good to be true. The webshots on the What Is Pulse blog look tempting and technically I belong to more social networks than a nerd should. I don’t read or even check in with most of them regularly, but from time t time one will send me an automatic email telling me I have mail from Webcam Wendy or Make Money Mike. Sometimes though rarely, I do receive a genuine email from a potential network buddy or online acquaintance. The social networks I use on a daily basis has blogs from a select few I would love to keep up with but have seem to lost time to do so. So I’m giving Pulse a chance to impress me.

The simple 1 2 3

1 Set up your profile.
2 Connect with your friends, family, and business network.
3 Add feeds for the sites you use.

Profile – simple enough

After I click on Save Changes, nothing happens. This is one of the things that may or often frustrate new internet uses (whether your 15 or 85). It doesn’t tell you what to do next. So I take the initiative and click on “Pulse Feeds”.
Here a not so long list of available feeds allows you to add whatever communities you would like to coordinate and sync. Here is where I take Pulse for a true test drive.

Amazon Wish List – why is this the first one? I have never created a wish list because it just seems like internet begging. Maybe I should create one – maybe some generous anonymous online sugar daddy / sugar mommy will buy me one of the more pricier reference books, tech toys or perhaps someone indulge me in escaping reality with a fantasy books.

When you choose to add a social networking and or community website you belong to you have five options to choose from. However you are only allowed to choose one. What if I want both my family and friends to view a website but not my business contacts to view a website?

• Business network
• Friends
• Family members
• Public
• Nobody

“Sites you use’ will ask for you to choose a nickname and than provide you with a public profile and calendar. Not sure how or why I would use this but that is what experiments are for.
Add site

Again, not sure how this is used but it says that any site you add will be listed on your Plaxo profile and asks if you would like it to be seen on your public profile.

It seems like Plaxo has a lot of features and I keep adding content and links to the features.
After you’re done with Sites you use and adding any sites you would like to, it again leaves a user hanging in “what next”? So I go over to Connections. In connections it asks for you to add your connections from their list of available capability such as Hotmail or Outlook, but didn’t I do that already at the beginning? Ahhh you have to go to Address Book to see them. So if you want to find a connection you have to sync up your contacts which is a separate function and sync from Address book. That’s sort of annoying.

I don’t often save my planned and potential events in Hotmail but I want to try out Plaxo’s calendar, but if I want to try it out I have to download Plaxo’s software for Outlook in order to sync my Outlook calendar with Plaxo even though I have no intention of using the Plaxo IM feature. That’s annoying!

Calendar download for Outlook was confusing and I never was able to get it to sync -- so I can’t give a review of this feature which says a lot in and of itself.

So I’m done – now what? Yet again I’m left hanging with “what now?”

I lick on My Profile and it an edit profile window comes up. I don’t want to edit it I want to see what others see.

I click on Plaxo and assume that will take me to a home page. No, It takes m to the last page I was on.

I log out and than back in to see the promise of easy coordination and it’s not what I was expecting after almost an hour of adding social network community websites and syncing my Hotmail account. I log out and use a different browsers to see if I can find me as a non member. Nope. There isn’t a search field to look for my membership name.

I log back into Plaxo using my regular internet browser and share a message. It shows on Pluse page but since I have no friends (oh is me) no one sees it. In connections I can look for names so I randomly choose a name. I pick dawg because there is always a Dawg somewhere right? Not in Plaxo, no Dawgs to be found. Okay, how about a Smith? Smiths are like ants you can’t take a step forwards or backwards without stepping one right? Apparently in the internet world Smiths are hiding under the cyber sidewalk. Than it hits me… You can only search for connections that you have always established in your profile and only with connections that also have Plaxo profiles.

Test

As a test, I send an Plaxo Invite to my work email address. This is what I get.
From: Plaxo Pulse
Subject: Sierra added you as a connection on Pulse
At that point you must open the email or view it if you have Outlook.

Email says:

I'd like to connect to you on Pulse.
Pulse is the easiest way to stay up-to-date and share photos, contact info, recommendations, or just about anything from the sites you already use (YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc.) with the people you know.

Thanks,
Sierra

To accept this request and see what I'm sharing:

I accept the invite from myself and join Plaxo to see what I’m sharing.
Only a small portion of all that I added shows up and the picture I added to the profile is non-existent.

The news sources for Plaxo says this is a don’t leave home without it…I’m leaving home to go outside ad play.

Last thoughts of Plaxo: A couple of hours wasted and disappointed yet again.

Why: because I wanted to be able to read postings and blog entries from MySpace, Live Journal & Tribe all in one location.

Scripps Networks Buys Incando - Social Networking

Scripps Networks, leader in lifestyle media, has acquired Incando Corporation, a provider of social networking and content sharing tools online. Incando is known for its user media-sharing service Pickle.com and the user-generated content management platform Powered by Pickle. Pickle’s website quickly uploads photos and videos from consumers' computers, mobile phones and digital cameras and can be used on social network sites such as MySpace and Blogger.

"With the acquisition of Incando, we now have the back-end tools to engage consumers, viewers, and marketers in a multi-branded, multimedia online universe with compelling, personalized experiences." - John Lansing, president of Scripps Networks

Scripps Networks also just acquired Recipezaar.com, a popular user-generated recipe and community site. User content has quickly become a highly valued commodity. Consumers want both professional guidance and personal opinions, outlook and suggestions. According to Deanna Brown, president of Scripps Networks Interactive Group, within the next few years, Scripps Networks expects as much as 50% of its online content to be co-created by its users.

Virb – A Place For Webbies

On the surface, it isn’t obvious why Virb is useful or even fun. It looks like just another social network and it doesn’t do anything revolutionary. However, Virb offers a lot of features that take away the constantly annoying traits that are present at other social networking sites.


Virb is a cleaner sleeker and more personalized neighborhood with a ton of great features that combines easy user customization, Flickr photostream, VirbTunes (aka iTunes plugin), a wide screen video player with a light box effect and a ton of other features that annoy users at other social networking sites. In addition, Virb is busy building new features and functionalities such as a Twitter module.

According to Virb

“Virb.com is a music-oriented content and information website that provides a service to musical artists and to record companies on behalf of musical artists” -- the people behind popular music networking service PureVolume. Conversely, Virb is attracting non-music industry users who simply enjoy music but are not involved in the music industry and who doesn’t like some form of music?

The Downers

Virb isn't for the 'newb", "nub" or "n00b (new to social networking / internet). While Virb has fantastic customization features the problem is that most people (including myself) don’t know how to use CSS that well. Until there are a large number of easy to find Virb layouts that users can copy and paste Virb growth will be slower than it could be. Yet, if Virb implements easy to use ‘copy and paste ‘ Virb layouts will the viewers be forced to see “this layout created by XXX” ads? Anther thing to consider is that a business driven user cannot reach a mass audience through Virb alone -- but a business driven user can certainly reach a quality audience.


Here are some the coolest Virb features that I found and believe have the potential to steal MySpace users.

• Gives you the ability to easily customize your profile and unlike MySpace, if you don’t want to hear today’s Top 40 blazing song or yester year’s classic, Virb has a feature that allows you to turn off the person's customizations while viewing their profile.

• Virb Rocks: Shows off some of the best designers and designs on Virb

• Virb Transport: Allows you take any piece of your Virb profile and put it on your own website or other profiles

• Virb Music Browse: Choose the music you like and choose only the music you want to locate on Virb. When you find a musical artist you like, you can save all the songs in your personal player list on your profile. The top 3 songs you enjoy the most show at the top of your profile -- similar to MySpace Friends.

• External Blog: Syndicate your external blog and Virb will feed it into their system which will show up in your friends' recent activity, and will be displayed as if it were part of Virb.

While I do consistently use MySpace for writing placement, I have never cared for MySpace and the numerous Spam messages, ‘meat market’ and teenage atmosphere and "it's ok to look" display ads. Virb has much more of a community feel that displays the personal, the artistic and the business aspect of people. It is an all in one social networking site that should pick up more of the technically minded people as the site gains popularity


Virb is what MySpace should have been by now if it actually worked as an online social networking community and not an enormous marketing flea market. I won’t say that Virb will overtake MySpace (yet), but as more of the age 25+ web savvy users get sick of web cam girls, emo attitudes and pyramid messages, people will want a social networking community and not simply a “place for friends’. So if you're looking to connect with webbies, Virb looks like the place to do it.

SierraNightTide: Virb - A Place For Webbies

Linked In?

I’ve been avoiding new social networking sites because after a while they all just start to melt together like ice cream on a Chicago summer day. On the other hand, that is sort of like going online and reading only one news source and thinking you know everything there is to know about the article subject matter.

I keep hearing about LinkedIn and figured it was time I paid anther visit to the site and do my homework.

What is LinkedIn?

It's a professional networking website. Some call it MySpace for Adults without webcam girl emails and pictures of that drunken night at the last holiday party.

There are no blogs about how Joe Smo can’t get a date or ‘Princess waiting for her Prince Charming’ lack of love.

Linked In is a place where you can build a network of valuable networks. The first step is joining Linked In and creating your professional profile. Then search for people you've worked with, worked for, or just know from school.

Why Use LinkedIn?

The more creative way to go about utilizing LinkedIn is to travel around the site and see who may be a valuable professional connection for your long-term career goals. However, remember that others are also looking for valuable networking sources – so to find value, be valuable.

Is there a company you have always wanted to work for but just haven’t been able to get an interview with? Search for people who currently and or formally have worked for the company.

Once you have exchanged greetings and agreed to link, you'll have access to they’re network connections as they will have access to yours.

After some research I find that LinkedIn definitely deserves some more attention. So here are some tips & tricks I discovered.

Don’t expect LinkedIn to do the work for you. It’s a tool, like the keyboard. Just because the keyboard has letters doesn’t mean it’s going to write an email for you.

LinkedIn won’t automatically connect you to people. Relationships don't just happen, you have to go into the system and introduce yourself and get involved.

The more time you spend exploring LinkedIn, the more helpful it can be.

Being friendly pays -- the more connections you have and a potential contact has will increase the amount of networking possibilities that exists.

Let me know what you find by exploring LinkedIn. I’m looking forward to experiencing all that LinkIn has been bragged about -- feel free to add me.
SierraNightTide

Cisco Systems + Tribe + Five Across = ?

Where is Cisco Systems heading? Cisco Systems known for networking equipment for telecommunications providers and other big companies has purchased Tribe.net which is a social networking site that has continued to lose users to My Space and Face Book.

The Tribe purchase in addition to they’re Five Across (provider of social networking /community technology) purchase will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling My Space or You Tube in order to bring their customers together online. If in fact that is the direction Cisco is heading, that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies are thinking about social networks.

Everyday I read how social networks continue to push into the future and soon sites like My Space will be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites. Social networking attracts masses of people in one space and advertisers are salivating over how to best reach them. With new websites and technology advances, the Social Network players are aiming to create tools to let consumers, large companies and even presidential candidates create social web sites tailored for their own customers, friends, fans and employees.

Ning, is the latest venture of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen. After a limited introduction last year, Marc Andreessen reintroduced Ning to users. “The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,” said Mr. Andreessen. “They are restrictive about what you can and can’t do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online.”

Ning users who are creating communities can pay $20 a month to have a community free of advertisements (delivered by Google). In addition, users can also have the option of delivering their own advertising on Ning.

Soon, everybody will just do it.

Nike has taken they’re Just Do It motto online by creating they’re own social networking site called Joga for soccer fans. A Seattle-based start-up, recently began a service called Shelfari to let book lovers share their favorite books and opinions. Last month, Senator Barack Obama unveiled the social network site My.BarackObama.com for his presidential campaign.

Brand social networking isn’t a simple 1 2 3. The challenge is getting users to join new social networks when there are few other members. With so many new social networks popping up like wild mushrooms, the next challenge is persuading users to enter all of they’re online personality information into a new online community.

Firms are quickly trying to solve the problem by encouraging a standard tool called Open ID, which would let users sign on and easily transfer profile information among social sites.

Cisco now has a subdivision called Media Solutions Group that has handled previous consumer related purchases of the wireless router company Linksys and the cable box maker Scientific Atlanta. With the purchase of Tribe.net & Five Across, Cisco Systems is trying to further its goal to become a consumer-oriented company.

Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, runs the division at Cisco, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and Tribe.net. Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web.

“Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so consumers can consume what they want online,” he said.

Where is Cisco Systems heading? The dominant player in the networking equipment market place, continues to throw considerable weight into the consumer related industries. Cisco's strategy has been to provide consumers with "anywhere, anytime" and they have aggressively been pursuing just that. Consumers have a variety options when it comes to internet and media usage and it looks as if Cisco may be included in almost all of them.

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