Intel has graciously offered to leave this blog online for at least a while, since people are still reading even some of the older posts. I will continue blogging at the Open Culture blog for anyone interested in reading more of my ideas about web 2.0, open source, and community.

I decided to write this entry after learning about how Intel was sponsoring a 72hour experiment running from October 12 through October 15 with an interesting mix of realworld / virtual world content to promote the Intel® Centrino® Duo:

"Seehow Intel® Centrino® Duo can make your virtual and real worlds collide October 12-15, 2006.

Can't live without your laptop? Check out our 72 hour experiment and see how the power of Intel® Core™2 Duo processors enable you to live life without boundaries.

World-renowned virtual builder,Versu Richelieu, is creating a new masterpiece in the Second Life virtual landscape using the power and performance of an Intel® Centrino® Duo based laptop featuring the Intel® Core™2 Duo processor. The world's best mobile processors1. For 72 hours, Versu will eat, sleep, and live a completely digital life... all in a store window in New York City! Can she do it? Check out the live webcam and Second Life feeds below to see how she is doing! Or see the experiment in person at the Datavision Store on the corner of 5th Avenue and 39th Street in New York City." (Quote from Live without Boundaries)

This got me thinking about how other companies are incorporating Second Life into their existing marketing plans. I decided to do a quick tour of the commercial side of Second Life. I started by visiting the American Apparel store in Second Life where residents can buy clothes for Avatars modeled after merchandise sold in the real world. For L$300-L$350 (Linden Dollars) or approximately US$1, you can buy shirts, dresses, swimsuits, jackets and more to outfit your avatar in the latest from American Apparel.

At the Adidas store, I bought a pair ofcustom shoes for about L$55 (less than US$1). The process involved buying a pair of "blank" shoes for L$50 and selecting my custom shoe colors at a coloring station for another L$5. After buying my shoes, I took a break and sat down in a virtual theater to watch thenew X-Men movie. I did not stay to watch the movie, since the quality was less than ideal.

Musicians, artists, authors, companies and others are also using Second Life events to promote real world activities:

• Chris Anderson did a Second Life interview to promote his new book, The Long Tail, and Lawrence Lessig promoted his book, Free Culture, with a discussion about the ideas in the book in addition to autographing digital copies of the book in Second Life.
• Duran Duran is preparing to promote their new album with Second Life concerts.
• Wired News is holding an event today to celebrate the opening of the Wired Headquarters in Second Life
• Ludica held a contest for Second Life artists for the ZeroOne Festival at ISEA 2006 held at the San Jose Convention Center.

In addition to pure commercial interests, other organizations are leveraging the virtual interactions that are possible in Second Life. Harvard Law School is offering a course called CyberOne:Law in the Court of Public Opinion with participants from Second Life. I suspect that marketing is a side benefit, but Harvard seems more interested in leveraging the community aspect of Second Life: "The Second Life environment for Harvard Extension School participants permits us to foster a sense of community among students taking the course at a distance. It provides a rich medium for students to interact directly and satisfyingly with their instructorsand their fellow students."

Theseare just a few examples of how companies are incorporating Second Life into existing marketing efforts, and it will be interesting to see what new marketing models emerge over time to take advantage ofthe virtual world.

First,the why.

Somepeople still tend to think of blogs as a consumer phenomenon, a placewhere discussions focus on kids, pets, weekend excursions, and otherpersonal topics rather than serious corporate content.

Increasingly,blogs are becoming just one of the many channels in a corporatecommunications strategy, and there are a few sizable benefitsassociated with maintaining an active corporate blog:

• Search engine optimization. One of the interesting side effects of blogging is that it can increase your visibility on search engines. I am not a search engine optimization specialist; however, the frequently changing content combined with the back and forth linking between blogs tends to boost search engine ratings. For example, if you Google Dawn Foster (a very common name), most of the first page results refer to me and almost half are links to my blogging activities.

• Visibility. A blog gives company employees more visibility within the industry to showcase their expertise and talents. It is a good way to become known as a company with expertise and leadership in your industry.

• Open discussion. Blogs help facilitate an open discussion between your company and your customers, clients, partners, etc. Some companies are reluctant to have this open dialog, but you should remember that people will have the discussion. Blogging simply gives your company a forum to participate in the discussions that already exist somewhere on the Internet.

Second,some background reading.

It isalways a good idea to learn from the pros, and a number of companiesare doing a great job of blogging. Here are just a few of my personalrecommendations:

• Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems

• Ross Mayfield, CEO and co-founder of Socialtext

• Guy Kawasaki, Venture Capitalist

Third,who should blog.

Somewould say everyone, some would say no one, some would say the CEOmust blog ... and they would all be wrong. Each company should selectthe "right" people to blog based on your company's uniquesituation. If your CEO hates technology, does not enjoy writing, oris otherwise unlikely to be a fantastic blogger, then she should notblog. Instead, find at least one person, preferably within thesenior management team, who is excited about blogging and have himstart the effort and be the primary cheerleader for the rest of theteam. In the case of Sun Microsystems, their primary bloggingchampion in the early days was CTO Jonathan Schwartz (now CEO).

Groupblogs are another good technique for many companies. It takes thepressure off of any one person and provides a diverse perspective. Google'sofficial blog has postsfrom across Google to provide updates on the newest Google productsand feature updates. JiveSoftware, a localPortland software company, also has a great group blog because eachblogger provides a unique perspective on the company with the CEO,CTO, VP of Engineering, VP of Marketing, and Director of ProductManagement each contributing regular updates about different aspectsof Jive products and related technologies.

Fourth,how often.

Thereis quite a bit of debate within the blogosphere about how often youshould blog. Ideally, you should blog nearly every day, which is mygoal on mypersonal blog; however,this pace is just not practical for many people. In most cases,weekly is fine.

Theimportant thing is to be fairly consistent with your pace. If youusually blog daily and have not blogged in two weeks, people mayassume that you have stopped blogging and unsubscribe from your feed.In general, if you anticipate being unable to blog for a period oftime, it is a good idea to post a notice about your upcoming absencefrom the blog with an approximate return date.

Finally,a few tips:

• Be genuine. Write under your own name (no pseudonyms) and in your own words (no ghostwriting by other staff members). Even if you have a speech writer or PR representative who writes everything else, the blog should be written by the person whose name is on the blog.

• Be transparent. I am not suggesting that you divulge corporate secrets, but you should discuss what you can openly and transparently. Acknowledge mistakes and never try to hide something. If someone inadvertently posts something confidential or inappropriate, deal with the issue openly, because in today's world of RSS readers and cached pages, disappearing posts generate more press than open acknowledgments about posting mistakes.

• Solicit feedback. Use the blog as a research tool to get feedback on ideas and solicit suggestions from your readers. Comments are a great way to facilitate this interaction.

Bloggingis not going away anytime in the foreseeable future, and we shouldembrace it as an informal channel to our customers and otherinterested parties. Blogging is just another tool to be incorporatedinto your overall communications strategy ... you might even consideradding podcasts to the communications mix.

• Web 2.0 Moving into the Enterprise
• Social Software in the Enterprise
• Web 2.0, the Do-It-Yourself Mentality Enters the Enterprise
• Using Wikis for Corporate Collaboration

Earlier this Month, Gartner released a new report entitled, Enterprise Social Software to Boost Efficacy of Non-Routine Work by Nikos Drakos, released on September 4, 2006. In this report, Gartner states that "The next bigwave of productivity gains will come from improving the efficiency of non-routine, creative work, particularly that which results from the key activities by which workers create value -- discovering, innovating, collaborating, leading and learning." According to Gartner, "Enterprise social software will expand the options available for augmenting key behaviors that rely on social interactions such as discovering, innovating, collaborating, leading and learning. The challenge is to adapt and adopt different ways to stimulate and channel the creativity of high impact workers toward developing new ideas, collaborating across organizational boundaries, and establishing more effective virtual teams."

Along these lines, a number of social software technologies can be adopted to facilitate innovation and collaboration in the enterprise.

• Wikis: As I discussed in my previous post, wikis can be a great tool for corporate collaboration, and this group interaction can also increase innovation and stimulate creativity as employees build on the ideas of others.
• Blogs: Like wikis, blogs facilitate group interactions that can increase creative thinking and innovation by giving employees an opportunity to comment on blog entries. Bloggers also tend to write posts that start with what another blogger or journalist wrote and elaborate to take the idea in a slightly new direction by adding their own perspective.
• Social Bookmarking and Tagging: These two similar technologies give people the ability to easily share information and knowledge on topics of interest. As people find new articles or blogs relevant to a topic, they can be bookmarked and tagged with keywords allowing other team members to easily locate and absorb any new information.
• RSS: Technically, RSS is probably not social software; however, I would argue that RSS makes most social software more valuable. By putting RSS feeds on blogs and social bookmarking software, for example, other team members can use an RSS reader to see which items are new. This makes it easier to find new content; therefore, more likely that employees will take advantage of the knowledge available to them.

Enterprises can easily begin utilizing these technologies, particularly in smaller group settings as pilot programs. For enterprise teams focused on innovation and creative thinking (strategists, new product development, marketing, etc.), now might be the time to start experimenting with social software to get a step ahead of your competition.

"Wikisprovide an easy to use mechanism for knowledge sharing andcollaboration between employees. Intel has an employee-driven wikithat we call Intelpedia designed to provide a complete and accurateIntel encyclopedia with everything from lists of Intel acronyms topresentation skills tips to product information. Individual groupswithin Intel also use wikis for project collaboration."

Theprimary benefit of using a wiki is for collaboration. Since wikis canbe behind a firewall, password protected, or completely open to thepublic, the topics can vary from the creation of an internalencyclopedia to private collaboration with a client on a pressrelease to public collaboration with your customers to share newways of using your product. Wikis also have a number of otherbenefits:

• You are always working with the current version of the content.

• Diverse talent can be leveraged for contribution regardless of the location.

• Changes can be controlled based on user permissions.

• Mistakes (and even vandalism) can easily be reversed by rolling back to a previous version of the content.

• Accessible anywhere via a web browser (for viewing and editing)

• Most wikis do not require knowledge of HTML.

• The page history and recent changes are tracked and most wikis provide a mechanism to send proactive notifications of changes.

• Most wikis have talk, discussion, or comment pages where the debate about tough issues can occur before deciding how to best revise a controversial page.

Lately,I have been making extensive use of wikis for collaboration on a fewof my side projects. I am currently working on a book about the Artof Community for O'Reilly Media jointly with Danese Cooper. Weare writing the book on a wiki allowing us to collaborate together onthe current version without worrying about having an out of date copyof the book. The wiki also provides the editors with an up to theminute status on our completion of deliverables and gives them theopportunity to provide feedback along the way. This book will be abit unique in our use of the wiki because we plan to release thepartially edited copy on the wiki allowing the community to makechanges and provide feedback on the book. As a book about community,we thought that it was only appropriate to have participation fromour community of readers in the creation of the book. The wiki iscurrently password protected, but when we open it to the public, Iwill post a link to the book on this blog or on my OpenCulture blog.

I havealso been participating in conferences that make extensive use ofwikis. FooCamp, for example, is a self-organizing conference where theattendees write the agenda for the event. Prior to the conference,attendees post snippets about their current projects, theirinterests, and anything else that attendees should know about them.People also post ideas for sessions on the wiki and begin tocollaborate on ideas and gauge interest in their topic. Attendeesalso organize ride sharing, make suggestions on what to bring to theevent (it is literally a camp at the O'Reilly headquarters), andpropose fun activities to accompany the technical sessions. Bar Campis a similar event usually organized on the BarCamp wiki.

Hopefully,this blog entry will provide you with a few ideas about how you mightwant to use wikis in your environment. For more information aboutwikis, the Wikipediaentry is a good place to start.

Traditional Media vs. New Media:

It is not unusual to hear people makeextreme arguments on both sides of the traditional media / new mediadiscussion with some arguing that blogs and other new media are justfads that will quickly fade away while others argue that new mediawill completely replace traditional media. Jay Adelson and Kevin Rosefrom Digg.com led an interesting session about democratization /disintermediation of traditional media, and most of us seemed toagree that the two are complementary and both will continue to beimportant.

Traditional media excels in areas whereyou have limited distribution (only so many people can be invited toWhite House press briefings, for example). Fact checking and accuracyalso allow traditional media to act as a definitive and reliablesource of information over time with copies forever housed inlibraries. With this accuracy comes a speed trade-off that blogshave been able to use to their advantage. Bloggers can quickly getinformation online before it has been completely verified, andcorrections can be made by other people via comments or posted asupdates when more information is available.

Traditional media will need to adjustsome of their business practices in response to new media. Opinionand editorial pieces are being eroded by new media, and some of thesmart traditional media companies are embracing this change andadding blogs to their mix. Competition for advertising dollars isreally hitting the traditional media. Local newspapers are losing adrevenue to other advertising mediums with classifieds being thehardest hit now, but the revenue loss is also moving into otherareas. Bloggers who do original reporting (like TechCrunch) ratherthan relying on mainstream reporting will get more attention and moreadvertising dollars, which will continue to erode the ad revenue fromtraditional media.

Capturing Passion

KathySierra gave a fascinating talk about passionate users. Peopletend to be passionate about the things they do really well, and whensomeone is both passionate about and good at some activity, they havewhat Kathy calls a higher resolution experience. They pick up onthings that the rest of us would not; the really great Jazzmusicians, for example, hear musical nuances that the rest of us justdo not have the resolution to hear. Learning increases thisresolution.

People can get very passionate aboutonline experiences like World of Warcraft, Second Life and others.Keeping users constantly engaged is one way to facilitate this higherresolution experience and passion within a user base, and to keeppeople engaged, you have to avoid interrupting the flow of theexperience. If the software interrupts and users become aware of thetool, the flow and outcome are disrupted; therefore, focus on theend result, not the tool. It is not about the tools, but what you dowith them that matters. Pictures and surprises get people'sattention.

On a related topic, AnnaleeNewitz talked about fan culture, which she defined as freecollaborative narratives often incorporating elements of commercialculture. Fan culture seems to have some of the most passionate userscoming together on a topic. We also had an interesting discussionabout how more of these fan communities seem to be based aroundscience fiction. I am not sure whether this is because we had areally geeky audience or because science fiction tends to inspiremore fanaticism.

Art of Community

Danese Cooper, Karl Fogel, and I led asession about the Art of Community, and we had a great discussionaround the topic. We talked about how open source and other developercommunities tend to start with a more tangible end goal, while othercommunities (social networking, communes) tend to be more about theevolution of the community than about the end goal. The tools alsotend to be different across different communities with web 2.0communities having intuitive user interfaces, while developercommunities tend to use the technical tools that developers arecomfortable with. The barrier to entry is also a bit higher for manydeveloper communities while anyone can easily get involved in web 2.0communities. We had an active and engaging discussion withparticipation from many different people, and more of my thoughts onthe topic of communities was previously postedhere. We even had a mascot for the session.

Web 2.0 Fact or Fiction

Geir Magnusson led a discussion aboutWeb 2.0: Fact or Fiction starting with the caveat that he reallydidn't know much about web 2.0, so he was hoping to learn from thegroup discussion. We talked about the definition of web 2.0 as a newmethod of using data: collective intelligence / user created content(MySpace, blogging, Digg) along with combining existing data in newways (mashups using Google Maps APIs). The web 2.0 market is stillfairly immature, and in many cases, it is not yet clear which siteswill prevail; for example, will MySpace be replaced by one of themany other social networking sites?

The current web 2.0 market can also becompared to the dot-com bubble, but with a number of differences. The current buzz, frenzy, and venture capital investment generated byanything web 2.0 remind many of us of the dot-com bubble. Lookingback to the bubble, we were creating products that the market was notquite ready to embrace often mistaking our own enthusiasm for aproduct (we are a very small minority of the overall market) withmass market needs. The difference now is that people are ready forthese products. Young people today are embracing sites like MySpacein droves and many non-technical people are creating blogs to talkabout their passions, families, kids, pets, hobbies, or work. Thebarrier to entry is also lower, which pushes venture capital fundinglater into the start-up process. During the bubble, companies werebeing funded based on presentation-ware alone without any customersor solid business model. Digg.com was started with less than $5000and had a sizeable user base and product prior to receiving venturecapital dollars to expand the business. At this point with web 2.0,we can only wait to see which sites become successful in the longterm and which sites will fade away into oblivion.

DionHinchcliffe also has a great summary of several web 2.0discussions at Foo.

A key element of Foo was also aboutusing fun activities to stimulate creative thinking and facilitatenetworking with JaneMcGonigal as our Chief Play-Maker (she just completed herdissertation on the historical intersection of ubiquitous computingand experimental game design). She has a greatsummary of our foo play on her blog.

Hereis a preview of my thinking. This is a complex topic, and Iencourage people to leave comments with suggestions, additionalideas, or to point out any errors in my logic.

Communitycollaboration and collective intelligence are key reasons for thesuccess of open source software. Open source focuses on cooperationand a desire to avoid duplication of effort as opposed to proprietarysoftware's focus on secrecy to maintain competitive advantage. Thisis manifested in several different ways:

• People build on the ideas of others through mailing list discussion and reuse of code or ideas.

• The source code is made available publicly for anyone to examine, modify, and distribute.

• Communities conduct peer review, especially for contributions from newer community members, as a collaborative form of quality control and a mechanism for providing feedback.

Communitycollaboration and collective intelligence have also contributed tothe success of web 2.0 communities. In the Whatis Web 2.0 essay, Tim O'Reilly says that a key lesson of the web2.0 era is that "users add value". Many web 2.0 sites arearchitected for participation to take advantage of user createdcontent and build communities that improve as more people use them.Starting with this focus on collective intelligence and user-createdcontent, a number of similarities between open source and web 2.0communities emerge:

• People build on the ideas of others through blogging and contributing content to sites like Wikipedia

• The discussions and content are made publicly available for anyone to examine and contribute to the discussion through features like comments (blogs, Digg, etc.) and reviews (Amazon.com). Wiki discussion and history pages are another way to make the conversation behind the content available for anyone to view.

• Many communities have peer review functionality built into the site. Digg, Newsvine, and Netscape have mechanisms to review and vote for user submitted content to promote the best news stories to the front page. Sites like Digg, Flickr and others also have ways to flag content as inappropriate, which provides a self-policing mechanism where the community members monitor the behavior of other users.

• Eric Raymond's Linus's Law ("Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow") was originally written with open source software in mind, but it can be applied to web 2.0 communities. Regardless of the nature of the error from obvious to obscure, if enough people look at a site, someone will notice the problem, and point it out or correct it

Inaddition to these similarities, there are also some differences:

• OSS community members have historically been highly technical, self-sufficient, are comfortable with minimal tools (text editors, command line, html, coding). While some web 2.0 community members have technical backgrounds, we see more members who may be new to online communities, less technical, and expect tools to make it easy to contribute (blogging tools for example).

• OSS communities can be more difficult enter for a new user because typically more time is spent upfront understanding the community history and source code before a new member can be truly productive. Web 2.0 communities have a much lower barrier to entry, since anyone with an opinion can start commenting on Digg; anyone can create a MySpace profile to share with their friends; or any amateur photographer can upload, tag, and share photos on Flickr.

Thesimilarities and differences lead to a number of areas where web 2.0and open source can learn from each other:

• Open source communities can learn new ways to bring people into the community and lower the barrier to entry. Using web 2.0 tools that are intuitive to more people may help bring in more marketing people and other less technical community members. SpreadFirefox is a great example of how to engage with the less technical user community.

• Web 2.0 communities can learn from the long history of lessons learned in open source communities around etiquette, defined processes, dealing with poisonous people / trolls, and more.

I amsure there are more similarities and differences between web 2.0 andopen source communities, which would lead to additional ways that thetwo can learn from each other. I look forward to having thisdiscussion in the comments on this blog and with other people at FooCamp this weekend.

TheWeb 2.0 Starter Kit

Step1: Read Tim O'Reilly's essay, Whatis Web 2.0, andthe
Wikipedia entry on Web2.0.

Step2: Read web 2.0 blogs.

Irecommend these:

• TechCrunch: profiles the newest products (a who's who of web 2.0)

• Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog: ideas and philosophy of web 2.0

• O'Reilly Radar: an eclectic mix of new ways to think about technology

• Mashable!: social networking and Web 2.0 startup companies

• Scobleizer: blogging culture and other new technologies

• TechMeme: not really a blog, but it provides a summary of the current happenings in the blogosphere

Extracredit:

UseRSSand subscribe to the above blogs plus five others. If you need morehelp getting started with RSS, Netvibeshas a fairly intuitive interface, and you can even clickhere to get a copy of myWeb 2.0 / technology rss feed tab.

Searchfor blogs on another topic of personal interest using any of thecommon blog search engines: Technoratior GoogleBlog Search, for example.

Step3: Stop reading and starting participating.

Thisis the most important step. You will not truly understand web 2.0unless you participate in it.

Homework:

Ifdo not already have a blog create one! Bloggeris an easy place to start. Pick a topic that you are passionateabout (technology, photography, wine, beer, cats, dogs, sports, yourkids, or anything else) and commit to posting something every otherday.

Usethese sites every day for one week.

• Create del.icio.us bookmarks
• Share some of your photographs on Flickr
• Join any social networking site. I suggest MySpace for those under 30 or LinkedIn for the over 30 crowd. Add 5 MySpace friends or LinkedIn connections.
• Participate in Digg by submitting a story and digging a few stories that you find interesting. Extra credit: Add Kevin Rose as your friend.
• Visit YouTube and watch three of the "most viewed" videos of the day. Forward one to a friend (congratulations you are now viral).
• Add yourself to my Web 2.0 Starter Kit Frappr map with a "shout out" message.

Step4: Repeat Step 1.

Afterparticipating in various web 2.0 activities, you will gain newinsights from re-reading the O'Reillyessay and the Wikipediaentry.

Step5: Continue Learning

Watchthe Web2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary.

Web2.0 is not something that you can learn once and then stop. Becauseweb 2.0 is still developing and maturing, new ideas and new websitespop up every day. Keep reading the blogs in Step 2 and continue toplay with new web 2.0 technologies as they appear.

CNEThas an interesting take on this "do-it-yourself Web". Morestart-ups "are trying to bring Web application creation to themasses, letting mere mortals share spreadsheets online or 'mash up'information from different Web sites. The idea is to empowernon-programmers to make sites that are more than a simple collectionof static Web pages. In the process, individuals will gain bettertools to collaborate and communicate online, particularly when theseservices are brought to the office, say experts." (CNET)

In arecent IDC article, PromotingMashups While Avoiding Crashups: Preparing for the Advent of theCitizen Coder, Kathleen Quirk discusses how the relative ease ofweb 2.0 programming is changing the nature of enterprise IT. Shelists a number of benefits to this approach: "Social networking andother Web 2.0 collaborative tools are moving into the enterprisebecause people find them beneficial and easy to use. Use of thesegrassroots process or project management tools should be encouragedas they can provide improvements in efficiency and informationsharing. Users know their own needs best and may be able to createmashups that meet those needs faster and possibly better than aprofessional developer." (Source: IDC Link, Doc #lcUS20291706August 2006).

Thereare certainly risks associated with this approach: security,infrastructure stability, data loss, reliability, and more; however,in many cases, the benefits may outweigh the risks, especially ifsome precautions are taken to mitigate the risks. Enterprises shouldconsider giving users the freedom to take a do-it-yourself approachwithin some specified set of boundaries. The boundaries need to besufficient to protect the data without providing so many restrictionsthat it becomes impossible to innovate. Users sometimes see IT as aroadblock or obstacle to accomplishing "real work", and this is agreat opportunity for IT to shine as a collaborator, instead ofgatekeeper. Assigning someone to the role of answering user questionsand providing advice for best known methods may also help users makegood choices and encourage people to seek input from IT expertswithin the enterprise.

Chancesare good that you have smart and creative people working within yourenterprise (both within and outside of IT). Encourage them to usetechnology to innovate in ways that meet their needs as your user.

Iwill admit to being surprised by the IntelCentrino® Duo MySpace page;we are starting to move into more web 2.0 arenas (these blogs andsome podcasts for example), but I did not expect to see an officialMySpace page. I often think of music and movies as natural fits forMySpace, but even my favorite local specialty grocery store and anumber of other businesses and products that I purchase regularlyhave MySpace pages. Others jumping into MySpace include BurgerKing, Procter &Gamble, and many more. In some cases, it can be hard todistinguish fan sites from "official" corporate MySpace pages.

LinkedIncan be a great way to keep in touch with professional contacts andget updates when someone changes jobs or companies. I have usedLinkedIn to get in touch with people at other companies usingexisting colleagues who can make a personal introduction. I am alsoseeing companies use LinkedIn for job searches. One of the best waysto find a new employee is through a referral from someone whoseopinion you trust. Social networking sites, like LinkedIn, helpfacilitate these connections and referrals for both personal andcorporate use.

Companiesneed to carefully think about how to use social networking sites.People will see through usages based entirely on marketingpropaganda, so the key is to offer something of value to theconsumers. I tend not to add corporate sites as MySpace friendsunless they add something of value; my local specialty grocery postsbulletins when they add new products, and they frequently carry itemsthat cannot be found at other stores. This is a service that I findvaluable enough to pay attention to their MySpace page on a regularbasis. The viral aspect of social networking can also amplify theeffect when someone influential add you as a MySpace friend orLinkedIn contact, which can drive their friends and colleagues toyour page. If you can offer something of value to your customers,social networking sites can be a great opportunity for companies.