Friday, November 02, 2007

» Google’s OpenSocial APIs pick up steam–MySpace and Bebo | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Speaking during a press conference about MySpace joining the OpenSocial train, Google CEO Eric Schmidt painted the big picture. “The broader story is the Web has moved to the next state. We knew the Web would have social framework and we knew it would be would be standard, open and extensible.” Schmidt said the Google had been working for more than a year with MySpace in the social area.

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe said, “OpenSocial APIs will be the defacto development platform for social application development.” Until recently, MySpace was working on its own markup languages, similar to what Facebook has done.

Bebo, another popular social network, has also signed on to join the Google OpenSocial train. So far Google has amassed about a dozen partners in addition to MySpace and Bebo–Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Google orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.



» Google’s OpenSocial APIs pick up steam–MySpace and Bebo | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Thursday, November 01, 2007

PayPerPost is Now IZEA

If you haven't heard yet:


PayPerPost flame Zookoda Bloggers Choice Awards RSS WWW Rockstartup Blog In Space Disclosure Policy PostieCon
IZEA

Dear jeremy,

I am very excited to present our new corporate name and identity, IZEA, Inc.

Going forward our company will be known as IZEA, with PayPerPost as its flagship product and other properties including Blogger's Choice Awards, RockStartup, Zookoda and BlogInSpace under the IZEA corporate umbrella. These changes are the natural result of our phenomenal growth as a company and the continued success our user community is having with our social marketing tools and strategies.

This new corporate framework will enable us to further execute on our established mission statement: To empower everyone to value and exchange content, creativity and influence. We will be adding additional services over the coming year and I feel strongly that the IZEA brand will allow us to present all our solutions in a more complete and understandable way to our clients, users, investors and the press.

I know many of you have come to love the PayPerPost name. We love it, too. The company started a new era for bloggers and advertisers and will continue on as the brand name for the world's largest consumer generated advertising network.

I look forward to seeing you all at PostieCon on November 10 in Las Vegas, when IZEA takes the next step forward with the release of our next generation platform, codenamed Argus. Argus will deliver an unparalleled collection of social marketing tools and features you will have to see to believe. The product has its own brand name that we are eager to share with everyone. The name and logo are awesome, so stay tuned!

Again, thanks to all of you for your continued support.

All the best,

Ted Murphy

www.izea.com
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©2007 IZEA, Inc. • Contact Us
150 North Orange Ave, Suite 412 • Orlando, FL 32801

Candidates Pander to Geeks in the Webbiest Campaign Ever

Online campaigning used to be a geek niche, the province of alternative fund-raising geniuses and self-righteous meet-up organizations. Now just about everyone running for president is jockeying to show how socially networked, virally videoed, and blog-commented they are. Still, it's not easy stumping in the future. We checked out the six leading candidates' online efforts, and while there's a lot to like, we saw plenty to suggest that this geek thing is still pretty new — and probably temporary. After the primaries, you just know the candidates will tack back to the jocks and preppies.

Candidates Pander to Geeks in the Webbiest Campaign Ever

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

VentureBeat » Cookie tracking: How Facebook could be worth $100 billion?

When Facebook launches its “SocialAds” advertising product on November 6th, the technology will reportedly rely on cookies — unique identifiers sent to each user’s computer from Facebook, and tracked by Facebook when they visit web pages.

VentureBeat » Cookie tracking: How Facebook could be worth $100 billion?

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 — Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block — Facebook.

On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.


The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

The New York Times learned of the alliance’s plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party on Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance. The group’s platform, which is called OpenSocial, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.

“Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got. This is an open alternative to that,” the person also said.

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers. The start of OpenSocial comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network’s pages outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google’s.

Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, said that the alliance’s conversations preceded Microsoft’s investment in Facebook. “Obviously, we would love for them to be part of it,” Mr. Kraus said of Facebook. Facebook declined to comment.

Facebook’s success with its platform has proved that the combination of social data and news feeds is a powerful mechanism to help developers distribute their software. They are now seen as must-have functions for many Internet companies. Other social networks and Web companies, including MySpace and the instant messaging service Meebo.com, have announced plans to open their sites in similar ways.


Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times

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