Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We’re fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them; about who they are, what they do, and what they’ve been up to lately. We hope you’ll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.

Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision-makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages that we’d love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.

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Ready to learn more about the smart companies that support this site you love to read? Read on…

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Skip to info about:
Calais: semantic Web API |
Socialtext: enterprise 2.0 |
Mashery: API management services |
Rackspace: cloud computing experts |
Aplus.net: Web hosting |
Crowd Science: demographic data |
Smub: mobile sharing |
2009 Semantic Technology Conference: semantic search and tech |
Hakia: semantic search |
Media Temple and SixApart: our hosts and blogging software

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Calais

Calais, powered by Thomson Reuters, brings state-of-the-art semantic functionality into your blog, content management system, site or application. Calais 4.0 was released in January, for the first time allowing publishers to connect to the Linked Data Web standard. Calais 4.0 goes beyond meta-tagging and enables publishers to integrate their content with Linked Data assets from Wikipedia, GeoNames, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Shopping.com, and others. Calais 4.0 also lets publishers share semantic meta-data about their content with “content consumers” such as search engines, news aggregators, related stories recommendation services, and more.

Check out the incredible work being done at Calais and let us know what you think.

Socialtext

Socialtext provides an enterprise wiki platform for organizations who want to accelerate knowledge sharing, foster collaboration, or build online communities.

Socialtext is currently offering a free white paper entitled “5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration.” It explains how collaboration solutions (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0) can “dramatically reduce enterprise cycle times and costs. These results may be critical to survival in difficult economic times, and the right collaboration solution is the easiest, most cost effective way to achieve them.”

Download Socialtext’s free white paper at http://socialtext.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we’ve struggled to get in the past. It’s important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery’s expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper “Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services” to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world’s largest hosting providers, but it’s also competing in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while JungleDisk is one of our favorite online backup services. JungleDisk used to rely on Amazon’s S3 storage solution, but it now also supports Rackspace’s cloud storage solution. At the same time, Rackspace also announced a new suite of services, Rackspace Cloud Hosting, which combines a hosting platform (CloudSites) with a cloud storage solution (CloudFS), and, in the long run, a tight integration with Slicehost’s services.

Click here to explore Rackspace’s hosting and cloud computing solutions.

Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, dedicated server, managed hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

Smub

Smub is the first truly mobile bookmarking, link-sharing tool. Smub lets you share and save any link easily from your iPhone, Mac, or PC without a plugin or application.

Type smub.it/ to the left of http:// on any link to save or share, and Smub will automatically take you through the process. Make the link public to share with others, or keep it private just for yourself. Smub has built-in sharing to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and more.

2009 Semantic Technology Conference

What are the big players doing in semantic search? Which startups are challenging them? How does semantic technology change search results? What key advantages and new opportunities does semantics provide in consumer and business search markets?

At the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference, taking place from 14 to 18 June 2009 in San Jose, semantic applications and usage cases will be presented by product developers and technical experts in such fields as advertising, business process management, cloud computing, digital asset management, and e-commerce.

Hakia

Hakia is a general purpose “semantic” search engine that delivers a search experience based on focus, clarity, and credibility. Today’s search engines retrive popular results via statistical ranking, but popular websites are not always credible and credible websites are not always popular.

Hakia’s semantic technology provides a new search experience based on quality, not popularity. Its search results come from credible websites recommended by librarians; they represent the most recent information available and remain absolutely relevant to the query.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart’s Movable Type.

If you’ve ever wondered what ReadWriteWeb looks like behind the scenes, or if you’ve never seen the Movable Type publishing interface - that’s it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available - in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That’s customer service for you!

The companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you’ll stop by their sites and see what they’ve got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb’s? Drop us a line and let’s talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

Discuss

Last week, we took a look at FileTwt, a file-sharing service for Twitter. After publishing that post, we heard from Bob Brinker, founder of TwitDoc, another Twitter file-sharing app. We did a couple cursory tests of his site, but were disappointed that sent files couldn’t be downloaded.

We wrote Brinker with these concerns, and his response was an interesting commentary on how folks use Twitter and how apps should adapt to those user habits and patterns. “Our experience is that Twitter is for fast, real-time consumption of content, not collaboration and file sharing in the editing mode,” he wrote. “We find most of our users are focused on display-only content.” And for display-only files, you could hardly find a simpler solution.

Sponsor

The UI gives users an easy, clean, one-click process for choosing files to upload, writing the tweet itself, and shortening the URL. And the list of use cases for a one-step Twitter/file sharing service mashup could form a line around the block.

Here’s how it works.

User A fills out this dead simple form:

Once the upload button’s been clicked, the tweet is posted. That’s it. TwitDoc gives User A the status ID for the tweet as well as a short URL for the file itself. Here’s what the tweet will look like:

And here’s what a text document looks like. PDFs fare well, too. TwitDoc uses Scribd for these files types, and Scribd allows the files to be emailed or embedded, for when retweeting just won’t cut it.

The service is still fairly young, so kinks are being worked out constantly. For the time being, image files are a mixed bag. Everything gets sized to fit the screen width at the moment, so a small PNG was bloated and awful-looking, and a larger JPEG looked ok but was definitely smaller.

Also, the creators are working to expand the number of supported file types. Currently, in addition to image and text/Word files, TwitDoc supports PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.

“Our primary focus is on sharing documents, but we also want to smartly handle all types of files as we grow,” wrote Brinker. “Our plan is to identify the best handlers of various file types and route them the way we think users would want them handled.

“We also want the reader experience to be safe, fast, and easy,” he continued. Especially considering the risk of virus transmission during file swaps, he wrote, “We do not think downloading files to users’ machines is the right model for Twitter.”

Brinker also wrote that TwitDoc has an open API and that his team is working with Twitter clients to provide support to those who don’t use the Twitter web interface.

Discuss

Over the past week or so, we’ve encountered several sites that offer file-sharing services via Twitter. Though some of our commenters are dubious about the userfulness, legality, and peer-to-peer nature of the services, we generally like the idea of using Twitter to send documents, presentations, and…

Oh, let’s be honest. Each for our own reasons, we want to send one another songs online, usually as illegally downloaded and shared MP3s; and Twitter seems like a more interesting way of doing that than email. We’ve discovered a new site that lets us send songs as MP3s on our hard drives, as MP3s hosted on a website, or even as YouTube videos or imeem audio clips plucked from the app’s library. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you SongTwit!

Sponsor

The site, which is still in its infancy, gives users a three-step process for sending music via Twitter. First, the user finds the song. As aforementioned, the song could be on a website, on a user’s hard drive, or in the SongTwit library, which seems to consist of third party-hosted audio clips (this seems fine for web-based sharing, but we wonder how well it will work for various mobile devices):

If the user is working from the SongTwit library, he is presented with a range of selections and is able to preview the song/video before it goes out as a tweet:

The user then provides his Twitter username and password and a message of 115 characters or fewer. The tweet is sent (publicly or as a reply; the creators are still working on DMs); and the world rejoices.

When other users click the SongTwit link, they are redirected to a SongTwit page with a little custom player (video for YouTube clips is minimized) and the original sender’s message:

There are a few flaws of the service, aside from the DM-less-ness. No downloads from these pages are yet available, and they’re still working on the broken pause button on the media players.

Still, the search function really does help save time that would likely have been spent trolling YouTube for clips of that one Venga Boys song from 1999. And that’s what the Internet is for, no?

We’d love to see musicians using Twitter more for blatant self-promotion, and this would be an excellent way to send fans demos or previews of new songs. The download function would be an excellent addition to the service for this use case alone. Then again, without the download function, that’s one more piece of content the musician doesn’t have to completely give away for nothing while not denying the fans who really just want to listen.

Discuss

I’ve poulated the BIGWIG Lita Calendar with Annual 2009 events — remember to check your timezone settings… I switched my computer to Central time, changed the BIGWIG calendar to Central time and changed my gCal setting to Central time before I enetered the events…

read more

A

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on Google’s announcement of a new communications and collaboration platform called Google Wave, look at Microsoft’s latest challenger in the search market with Bing, analyze the current trends we’re seeing on the Web, look at the latest smartphone statistics, and more. We also update you with the latest from our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

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The Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by PowerReviews:

Subscribe to Weekly Wrapup

You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below).

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Introducing the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management

Our First Premium Report for Businesses

Recently we released our first premium report: The ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management. It’s been in the works for more than four months and we believe it’s unlike anything else you’ve seen. Businesses seeking to engage with online communities on their own websites or all around the social web will find the guide invaluable in getting up to speed on the state of the art and making sure their employees have the foundation they need to be effective.

The end product is in two parts. Part one is a 75 page collection of case studies, advice and discussion concerning the most important issues in online community. Part two is a companion online aggregator that delivers the most-discussed articles each day written by experts on community management from around the web. The Guide is available for purchase at a price of $299. (You won’t be charged until you complete a few simple steps on that page.) You can download a free sample section of the report here.

Web Trends

Web Trends: What’s New in 2009, Part 2

Last week we discussed some of the new trends we’re seeing on the Web in 2009: open data, structured data, apps that filter content effectively, real-time, personalization, mobile (especially location-based), and Internet of Things (the Web in real-world objects). We asked for your thoughts on these trends, along with your suggestions on what we should add. Also we were interested to know what products you’ve seen this year that are doing something new and ‘beyond Web 2.0′. In this post we look at some of your responses, to try to define further what defines this current era of the Web.

Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid

What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - but the event-driven nature of the social Web may be putting such a premium on broadcasting about what we’re doing, that software designed to help us answer important questions like who and why are at risk of being neglected. It seems quite likely that we’re going to miss those opportunities because our software is focused entirely on doing (and advertising) instead of on helping us think as much as it could. Of course that’s much harder to do.

ClearSpring Sees What 1/2 The Internet is Doing (API Coming Soon)

It’s a little bit scary, but widget and sharing service ClearSpring said this morning that the company’s media widgets and newly acquired AddThis plug-in are now seen by more than 500 million unique viewers each month, according to Comscore. That’s half the people on the internet, the company says. That’s a whole lot of information. ClearSpring sees not just what you’re sharing, but nearly everything you’re doing on the pages its products are on. (AddThis is on ReadWriteWeb, for example.) So what on earth is it going to do with all that data? Like they said in Spiderman, "with great power, comes great responsibility." We asked ClearSpring’s CEO about these super hero-like responsibilities and his thoughts are in this post.

Report on Mobile Web Use Shows Apple/Android Usability Issues, Successes

According to a report released this week from mobile advertising company AdMob, smartphones accounted for nearly three times more use than their relative market share last month. The report also found that relative use of both mobile-specific websites and HTML sites was highest on Apple and Android devices. Results were based on user-generated requests for mobile ads during April 2009 as well as on a Gartner report on smartphone sales in Q4 2008.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

A Word from Our Sponsors

We’d like to thank ReadWriteWeb’s sponsors, without whom we couldn’t bring you all these stories every week!

• Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
• Smub, a bookmarking and link posting tool for the iPhone.
• Power Reviews, get the facts about customer reviews.
• Mollom, stop comment spam and build your community.
• Semantic Technology Conference, the future of the Web, IT, search, business.
• Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
• hakia is a semantic search engine.
• Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
• Socialtext brings you 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration Success
• Calais brings semantic functionality into your website or app.
• Aplus provides web hosting services for small business hosting needs.
• MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
• SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

ReadWriteStart

Our new channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Working Booms and Busts to Your Advantage (Cyclical Trends)

Figuring out which wave to ride (secular trends) is vital. Figuring out when to get on and when to get off is also important. You will never get the timing exactly right. It is like calling the top or bottom of a market. If you do manage to make exactly the right call, it is probably luck. But you can get the basic timing right. It doesn’t take a genius to see which cycle you’re in at any given time. What matters is figuring out what to do in each stage of the cycle.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

Google Wave: Google Tries to Reinvent Email

Google this week announced a new Internet-based communications and collaboration platform; Google Wave. While some of the details are still a bit sketchy, Google Wave looks to be an integrated communications platform that brings together email, chat, photo-sharing, and collaborative editing features. Google describes a ‘wave’ as “equal parts conversation and document” and the Wave team basically sees it as a replacement for email and other collaboration tools.

Bing It Is: Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Search Engine

It was no secret that Microsoft was getting ready to roll out a new search engine, and this week, the company began the official roll-out of Bing - the successor of the company’s less than successful Live Search efforts. Formerly known as Kumo, Bing, which should become available worldwide by June 3, is Microsoft’s latest attempt to steal market share away from Google. According to Microsoft, Bing, while providing a good general search experience, wants to focus on providing an especially good user experience in four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

Comparing Yahoo and Google’s Voice Search Applications

At the end of last week, Yahoo! introduced an update to their iPhone application (iTunes URL) which now includes the ability to perform web searches using only your voice. This is the first real competitor to Google’s Mobile App, whose voice recognition technology came to the iPhone back in November of 2008. Now the only question is how do these two apps compare?

PeopleBrowsr Launches Beta

PeopleBrowsr, the online dashboard for tracking the social web (previous coverage) left alpha this week and moved into beta. Although many people use the app for tracking Twitter, it’s actually capable of tracking a ton of the top web properties including Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, and even RSS feeds. You can also use the app to update multiple networks at once. The service was built more with the needs of brand managers, social media marketers, and other customer service professionals in mind than it was built for the casual everyday user.

Mir:ror: A Glimpse Into The Future of an RFID World

Mir:ror is an Internet of Things app from the company Violet (follow on Twitter @violetOS). As the name suggests, it is literally a mirror - but an Internet-connected one which detects the objects you show it, triggering applications and multimedia content on your computer. It works via RFID stamps, known as "ztamp:s" in the company’s terminology. These are colorful adhesive stamps that contain a relay chip. When the user waves a stamped object over the mir:ror, a pre-programmed action occurs. For example waving a stamped coffee mug over the mir:ror might trigger your computer to read the news aloud to you.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss

With the launch of MySears and MyKmart, it seems like the thing to do this week is to give your customers their very own social network.

Can something like this be far behind?

Sponsor

More Noise to Signal

Discuss

Time once again for the ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, our weekly roundup of upcoming social Web events. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

27 May – 3 June 2009: UK (various locations)

FOWA Tour 2009

That’s right. FOWA is hitting the road in 2009!

They’re hitting four UK cities in May and June 2009 to bring you a free workshop on “cloud computing” and an afternoon of Web apps and speed networking. Not to be missed!

FOWA will be at the following locations:

• Edinburgh: 27 May 2009
• Leeds: 28 May 2009
• Cambridge: 2 June 2009
• Bristol: 3 June 2009

Tickets are just £59 + VAT. Check out the site for all location and speaker details.

ReadWriteWeb readers save £10 with the discount code RWW

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4 June 2009: Dallas, Texas

Early-Stage Venture Event

Every CEO wants to meet early-stage venture investors. At FundingPost’s next event in Dallas, you’ll get your chance! The panel of investors will focus on early-stage venture investing: how to meet investors, pitch them, and what it really takes to get them to write you a check… especially in this economy! We will be discussing trends in early-stage investing, hot sectors, sectors that these VCs look at, things that are most important to them when they are considering an investment, the best and worst things an entrepreneur can do to get their attention, additional advice for entrepreneurs, and, of course, the best ways to reach these and other investors. There will be plenty of time for networking with the investor panelists, both before the panel and afterwards.

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8 June 2009: London

Corporate Social Networking Forum

Taking place at the Riba in London, England, the Corporate Social Networking Forum lets you learn from global brands that have successfully implemented a social networking framework. Find out what impact this has had on day-to-day business; understand what products and tools are available to incorporate Web 2.0 functionality in your business; and listen to analysts, top commentators, and experts on how social media can improve employee satisfaction and output.

• Evening networking reception
• Discount for early booking (expires May 8th)

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10 June 2009: Mountain View, California

Online Community Unconference

The Online Community Unconference will be held June 10th in Mountain View, CA. Now in its fourth year, the Unconference is the largest gathering of online community practitioners — managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors — to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. The Unconference is held in an “open space” environment, where participants drive the agenda.

The event is facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin (@identitywoman) and hosted by Forum One Network’s Bill Johnston (@billjohnston).

Admission is $195 pre-event, $250 on site.

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14 – 18 June 2009: San Jose, California

2009 Semantic Technology Conference

Business and government organizations have been pioneering semantics in knowledge-based applications. Increasingly they are now combining semantic web technologies to create even more powerful applications for data integration, SOA, collaboration, and publishing.

What are the big players doing in semantic search? Which startups are challenging them? How does semantic technology change search results? What are the key advantages and new opportunities that semantics provide in both the consumer and business search markets?

Semantic Applications and Use Cases will be presented by product developers and technical experts with semantic solutions in a rich variety of fields including: advertising, biomedical, business process management, chemistry, cloud computing, digital asset management, disaster preparedness, e-commerce, and more.

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17 June 2009: London

The Future of Digital Marketing 2009

In just one day, learn about the future of digital marketing from those leading the way. Get inside the minds of expert practitioners and leading thinkers to find out what needs to be in your development plans if you’re to be amongst the best.

Who should attend? People who already know a little, or a lot, about online marketing and e-commerce but want to:

• Know what is on the horizon, for planning future online marketing and e-commerce activities;
• Hear from those in the know about the realities, not just the theory;
• Get ideas that can applied to their own projects to make them outstanding;
• Benchmark and consolidate what they know or plug holes in their knowledge;
• To meet and network with peers.

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18 – 19 June 2009: Barcelona

Mobile 2.0 Europe

The Mobile 2.0 Europe conference brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists. The conference is an opportunity for companies to connect to industry leadership and startup innovation and broaden your C-level relationships.

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22 – 25 June 2009: Boston

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is “the one place where business and IT professionals looking to leverage 2.0 technologies and culture can learn from real enterprise case-studies, get a glimpse of the future from thought leaders, demo the leading solutions and benefit from each other’s experiences to help their organizations survive - even thrive - in today’s marketplace.”

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24 June 2009: Boston

Early-Stage Angel and Venture Event

Interested in meeting early-stage angel investors and venture capitalists? At FundingPost’s next event in Boston, the panel of investors will focus on early-stage venture investing: how to meet investors, pitch them, and what it really takes to get them to write you a check! We will discuss trends in early-stage investing, hot sectors, sectors that these angels and VCs look at, things that are most important to them when they are considering an investment, the best and worst things an entrepreneur can do to get their attention, additional advice for entrepreneurs, and, of course, the best ways to reach these and other investors. There will be plenty of time for networking with the investor panelists, both before the panel and after the panel at the cocktail party!

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4 July 2009: London

PubCon London 2009

Registration is open for PubCon London’s networking event at the Citte of Yorke pub, London, 4 July 2009.

Internet and search engine marketers will meet and discuss the latest hot news topics, current challenges, technologies and developments, and have the opportunity to network in an informal environment. Such events are high productivity networking sessions for webmasters and for businesses seeking practical Internet and search marketing solutions.

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22 – 23 September 2009: Singapore

Social Networking World Forum — Asia

This two-day conference hosted by the Social Networking World Forum - Asia features key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and mobile social networking formats
• Evening networking reception
• Discount for early booking (expires August 21st)
• Free pass for exhibition only

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9 – 10 November 2009: Santa Clara, California

Social Networking World Forum — California

This event taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center actually consists of three conferences: two days dedicated to social networking, one day dedicated to enterprise social media, and one day dedicated to social TV. Key speakers include social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and enterprise social media formats
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Discount for early booking (expires September 25th)
• Free pass for exhibition only

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10 – 13 November 2009: Las Vegas

PubCon Vegas

PubCon Las Vegas is a multi-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld & WebmasterWorld. PubCon events are for thought leaders and professionals in search engine and Internet marketing to gather and to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their Internet businesses and brands. PubCon London 2009 is a social networking event.

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11 – 12 November 2009: Denver, Colorado

Social Networking World Forum — California

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data. In the largest sense, we’re all looking to augment the pace at which we achieve insights on raw data — to accelerate the “A-ha” moment.

Defrag explores the intersection of topics like:

• Business intelligence
• Business process management
• Social computing and analytics
• Next-level discovery
• Enterprise 2.0
• Next-gen email
• The semantic Web

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15 – 16 March 2010: London

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

1. Social Networking World Forum
2. Enterprise social media
3. Social TV World Forum
4. Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

Discuss

When I first saw Twitter I immediately knew that this tool would be great for conferences. You can discuss the speaker while still in the session. You can find out what else is happening at the conference (and even leave if something sounds better). You can share with those who aren’t there. And more.

Check out this new preprint:

How People are using Twitter during Conferences

Wolfgang Reinhardt, Martin Ebner, Günter Beham, Cristina Costa University of Paderborn, Germany, Graz University of Technology, Austria, Graz University of Technology and Know-Center, Austria, University of Salford, UK

Abstract: The popularity of microblogging, with special emphasis on twitter, the most famous application of the kind, is growing rapidly. This kind of tools for micro-exchange of information and communication is changing the daily life of knowledgeable worker as well as Internet savvy people. From this perspective this paper aims to show how Twitter can be used during conferences, and furthermore how different people are using it. With the help of a survey and analysis of the collected data, benefits regarding the use of a microblogging tool such as Twitter can be presented. The publication shows evidence on how Twitter can enhance the knowledge of a given group or community by micro-connecting a diverse online audience. Statistical data was also used to support this research.” [9 page PDF]

Stephen

Remember my post on TSCPL’s Meebo chat widget embedded in our library catalog? Since then, we have stopped using the Meebo Me widget. It was great – it helped us start our IM reference service, and it was easy to embed pretty much wherever we wanted. But we grew out of it!

We discovered a few shortcomings, like not being able to send hotlinks through it, and our public services staff really wanted the ability to send an IM to someone else. So now, we’re using Libraryh3lp for our IM reference service. Libraryh3lp gives us those added benefits and more.

And we’re doing a few different things with the catalog embed, too. Here’s a pic of the keyword, No Records Found search:

We’re trying to make instructions clear, friendly and attractive. If you click the Ask Now button, you get a tiny IM widget pop-up page. Why pop-up? With our Meebo widget, we discovered that a lot of people would start asking a question, then click something … and they’d be gone, because they had clicked away from the page with the embedded IM widget. Bumer! With our new pop-up version, that problem is solved. Users can click away all they want … and still interact with us.

But even cooler than that – Michael, our web designer (one of his many hats) discovered a way to embed a similar thing on the Search Results page:

This provides more opportunities for patrons to ask questions when they get stuck on a search – even if they’re finding things. Basically, they have access to us ON EVERY SEARCH they do.

And not just IM access – that’s provided via the Ask Now button. But we also include our phone number and a link to our email Ask a Librarian form.

We’re excited about this – should be fun to see if we get more catalog-related questions.

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