The patented personal relationship management system offered in this Lot enables members of an online network to share and manage information among large groups of users. The system facilitates communication of select information between different members according to users’ individual preferences. Members of the online network may control which individuals may access any given piece of information they create and distribute, as well as what information may be presented to them by other users. “While online social networking sites have enabled people to establish and maintain multiple connections in a way not previously possible, other concerns arise as a result of the amount of information being made available as well as the growing number of users,” said Jason Hardebeck, Chief Executive Officer of WhoGlue, Inc. “Specifically, users will want much greater control over which individuals access their personal information and how it is shared with their contact network. In order to emulate the true nature of personal relationships and the various levels of trust between users, social networks must allow each user to fine-tune access to their profile data as they see fit. Ultimately, the online social networking sites that offer these privacy-management features will appeal to a much broader base of users.
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Many members of the so-called Web 2.0 generation of Internet companies, such as social-networking sites, blogs and other similar “social media,” have made little revenue, the Financial Times reported.Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures, told the FT there is going to be a “shakeout” in the industry in the next year or two, with many Web 2.0 companies disappearing.
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Social networking sites need more regulation in order to ensure that they won’t pose major security risks to users, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). The agency issued a preliminary version of its General Report (PDF) covering online security this morning, pointing out that it views social networks as a “positive social phenomenon” that are not without their own set of security problems, and the organization has a set of recommendations meant to protect users online. ENISA said that some of the main threats identified so far through social networks involve digital dossiers, face recognition, and social engineering attacks on enterprises. Phishing attacks, reputation damage, ID theft, stalking, and cyberbullying are common as well. The organization says that, because of the human desire to connect and the growing popularity of social networks, it’s easy for users to let their guards down and not be aware of the size of the audience accessing their information. “Social Networking may be seen as a ‘digital cocktail party,’” read the report. “However, compared with a real-world cocktail party, [social networking service] members broadcast information much more widely and sometimes unadvisedly, either by choice or unwittingly.”
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Last November, when Google launched Open Social we asked readers if Facebook would join Google’s platform. The results were split right down the middle, but as we get farther from the Open Social launch, and the two sites continue to launch competing APIs (Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect, for example — the former banned by Facebook), that seems less and less likely. This is becoming a social networking cold war according to Duncan Riley.
Even though the battle for social networking supremacy is a fight between Facebook and MySpace, the social networking arms race is really being played out between Facebook and Google. Google has demonstrated the unique ability to bring rival social networks together around its proposed open standard APIs, such as Open Social, FriendConnect, and the Social Graph API. Google has built up its own little iron curtain with MySpace, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Ning, and the Google-owned Orkut to prop up its open source platform initiative. (Don’t bother trying to follow the Cold War analogy all the way through — it doesn’t really work.)
Facebook is now planning to follow Google’s lead and open source their platform. Previously, Facebook’s platform technology only powered an app development platform on one site outside its own — that of rival social networking site, bebo (recently acquired by AOL). An open sourced platform means that any social network could implement Facebook applications. More details should emerge in the next couple of days, according to TechCrunch, who broke the story.
Two questions immediately spring to mind following this news: 1. Does this help users? 2. Do platforms even matter?
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Seattle-based Pelago, which has been developing a mobile social network called Whrrl, plans to announce either today or tomorrow that it has secured $15 million in a second round of funding, however several media outlets are already reporting the news today. Participating in the round is Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, T-Mobile Venture Fund, with funds coming from Reliance Technology Ventures and Palo Alto-based DAG Ventures. Original investors in Pelago’s first round, totaling $7.4 million, were Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Trilogy Equity Partners and Bezos Expeditions, also participated. Originally, Pelago received funding from Kleiner, but after the prestigious valley firm announced it was launching the $100 million iFund, Pelago was transfered over to become the first iPhone application investment.
Think of the company’s application, Whrrl, as a mix between Facebook, City Search and Loopt. The social networking element is that you can share this information with friends, the directory part is that there’s a list of restaurants and events that your friends can rate and say whether they are going to or not, and the Loopt part is you can see what your friends are up to. The information is exclusive to Whrrl because it’s updated by a team in the Phillipines. Today, the application supports about 17 cities, and the Java application runs on a number of phones with Blackberry (and presumably iPhone) support coming shortly. With GPS support coming, users will also be able to update their whereabouts and write reviews of restaurants where they are at much faster. The new funds will be used for deploying the application across North America and into new overseas market
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