Note: We’re back from holiday, digging out of email and catching up with news. 
Really good data on growth in social network traffic in the first half of 2008.  Inside Facebook carries results of recent comscore rankings. In short, Facebook and Hi5 are the fastest growing networks, while MySpace is less hot in terms of growth, […]

It’s a never-ending sport.  With some drastic implications.
There’s ample evidence that the social networks are nothing more that the dot.com bubble revisited.  At the same time, big time players are putting heavy bets down that there’s a pot of gold out there somewhere.  So what are social networks really worth?
MIT’s Technology Review, in my opinion, […]

I’m just back from Google’s I/O developer conference. Look for deeper thoughts in coming days and weeks, as the REM cycles process all the new info. In the meanwhile, here are some top-of-mind impressions:
1. I’m always on the lookout for corporations (like Google) to fall from grace. As near as I can […]

People who are leading a business, non-profit or other organization instinctively know that “online social networking” will, can, and should have a big impact. But during the busy business day, week, or month, it’s hard to find the time to translate this notion into practical strategy and performance metrics.
Although the development of functional tools […]

Note to entrepreneurs, especially those whose plans I’m currently reviewing for the upcoming Colorado Capital Conference: if you still think that you can support any type of social media on ads, think again.
You can’t scan the RSS feed of a latte-fueled digerati without tripping over tales of low low low advertising CPMs for social networks. […]

With the whole silicon valley echo chamber trying to figure out how to make money from social networks, I had very low expectations about our tiny little blog’s performance on Google search results.
When researching CPM and other detailed info on that very subject, our own blog hit the front page of google, specifically for the […]

Ning, the largest provider of customizable social network software, just raised $60 million, on a pre-money valuation of $500 million, so says Venture Beat. This on top of $44 million on a $170 million valuation back in July, 2007. In a generally depressed venture environment, according to the Industry Standard, this is […]

Here are some interesting stories I saw this week, and why…

Industry Standard: 10 ‘Net Services that Will Succeed and 10 That Probably Won’t.  A new set of choices for the new new new new new thing, most of which I hadn’t heard about yet, and some harsh knocks on buzz darlings Second Life, Zillow, Twitter […]

It has taken me the better part of a decade, but I finally think the Economist might understand a thing or two about the business of digital media. Throughout the 90’s and into this century, it seemed they were late to the table, with obvious observations that hit the newsstands six months after they […]

Today, I went to check an old online workspace at Omidyar.net for Targeted Currencies, a project I co-founded back in 2004. And I found out that the Omidyar network had closed down.
The Omidyar Network (O/Net) was an early phase community collaboration site for progressive global activists, founded when Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay and […]