by muhammad Saleem.

with the recent launch of yelp and the ever-increasing popularity of social networking sites, the question is becoming more important than ever: do we still need ‘events sites’?

yelp is a way to announce, find, review, and talk about upcoming events and events the users have previously attended, and is not unlike yahoo’s upcoming.org.

while both these event sites, along with multiple others have been getting a lot of attention lately, the future of these sites may not be so bright. to see why, let’s first look at some statistics for the two leading social networking sites and then how they are going head-on against these smaller sites.

even by these compete figures (according to some estimates, these figures are underestimated by at least 20 million users) the two networks account for about 90 million users, and doubling yearly. both myspace and facebook have launched their versions of on-site events creation and sharing.

events on myspace

give myspace events two minutes and you will see that you have all the important features of any events site available to you.

you can create events with event name and summary, created/hosted by information, the when and where, ability to upload pictures, option to indicate whether you will be attending the event, add it to your calendar, share the event with others, and finally discuss the event with others interested and attending. as for the question of whether people use this feature, i found over 12,000 upcoming events listed (within this week).

events on facebook

facebook offers a similarly (if not more) robust events feature set.

unlike what your first instinct would suggest, these social networking sites don’t restrict you to events just in your network. facebook, for example, let’s you browse events by your network or by choosing a global setting, by date, and by event type (party, trip, sports, etc.). again, you can create events with all the relevant details, can keep it open or restrict it to a select geographical network or social group, create a guest list, and allow users to interact with the event (share, upload pictures, create and participate in discussions, and more). as for the number of events, i was able to find over 500 events per category per day.

so are event sites dead?

with over 200,000 new users signing up for myspace daily, and with facebook’s growth at over 200%, and looking at the extensive events-related features that both social networking leaders offer, though event sites aren’t dead yet, the future seems rather bleak. not only do these sites offer most of the features of events-only sites, but they offer much more developed social networking abilities along with a much larger network to advertise to or share your events with (keep in mind you can also share events with people who aren’t actually members of these networks).

as for the question of whether events-functionality will be fully embraced by users of these networks, we have already seen that both the networks are seeing substantial events creation and sharing. as networking becomes easier and more mainstream, people are more likely to create and share events with people they know and can easily connect with and invite to their events through these online networks.

lastly we have to keep in mind that this information is only from the two leaders in the social networking space and there are countless others who have embraced or will embrace events-functionality.

Technorati Tags: yelp, upcoming.org, yahoo, events, social networking, facebook, myspace

jay neely, a boston-based entrepreneur and a social strategist takes an informative look at the linkedin versus facebook debate.

LinkedIn is smarter than a lot of people are currently giving them credit for. Compared to Ryze and some other business-focused social networks, they’ve put together a really well-developed site. I can’t blame them for being caught off guard by Facebook suddenly going from a college student network to the next hot business trend with platform potential.

For business networkers, the fate of LinkedIn vs. Facebook will depend on a few things:

jay points out the weaknesses of both social networking sites and what each must do to overcome them and gain ground over the other network.

Technorati Tags: jay neely, linkedin, facebook, business networking

it seems like this is going to be one of those weeks. following yesterday’s digg redesign, boing boing has now unveiled their new layout and features. at first glance, the new look seems like a cross between the federated media design and the wired blogs, but you start liking it after a little while. the design is much cleaner and since it displays less content at a time on the screen, it is not as overwhelming as the previous layout (which displayed multiple posts with graphics, etc, at one time).

in addition to the new look, boing boing is also reintroducing comments and they have hired a community manager to oversee the conversations on the site, and have launched a companion gadget site.

Technorati Tags: social media, boing boing, blog, design

daniel scocco has put me up agains raj dash in the latest addition of blogger face-off.

For some bloggers, one blog is just not enough. They have the talent to write skilfully on a variety of topics, and also the discipline to produce a huge amount of content on a consistent basis. It is an enviable position to be in. They get paid well and they end up developing a strong brand around their names.

In this edition of the Bloggers Face-Off we have two bloggers that fit this profile perfectly. Do you read Pronet Advertising or Copyblogger? Then you probably know Muhammad Saleem. He covers mainly online marketing and social media, and you can also read his articles on MuhammadSaleem.com.

Raj Dash is the second blogger, he writes for several high profile blogs including Search Engine Journal and Performancing. His personal blog is located on RajDash.com. Now to the face-off!

check out the blogger face-off at daily blog tips and cast your vote!

p.s. please vote based on the answers provided in the face-off.

Technorati Tags: daniel scocco, daily blog tips, muhammad saleem, raj dash

digg just updated their site and to clarify what has changed and what has been added, here is a tour of the updated site with before and after screen-shots.

first of all, here’s a ‘before’ screen shot of the home page followed by the new look.

starting from the very top, digg has removed the three-level layout which had the option of content-type (news, videos, and podcasts) on level one, the topics/categories displayed under it, and collapsible subtopics hidden within each topic. instead, they have opted to use a much more streamlined interface with each content-type displayed at the top and expandable as follows:

accessible from right under the content-types you still have the popular topics (such as world and business, technology, and so on).

the next big change has been made to the submitted story box.

with the new design, more importance is given to the title and the summary of the story. information about who submitted the story, when it was submitted/made popular, now joins the interaction options (like commenting, emailing, burying) at the bottom and all of the options are accompanied with fancy new buttons. the new layout is more efficient because it focuses on the content first and then gives you the option to interact with it and the rest of the extra information.

the one addition to the box is a button that allows you to select a story as a favorite. the button appears once you have dugg a story, and clicking it will add a story into the same archive where the ‘my number one’ stories were previously displayed.

the single most important change in the update is the new ‘one-click bury’ system digg has instituted. you are no longer required to give a reason for burying a story (though you still can if you want to). simply click the red x at the bottom of a story and you’re done. note that the option to bury a story exists only as long as you haven’t already dugg a story. unlike before, you can’t digg and then bury a story without undigging it first.

going back to the menu bar at the top, checking out your friends’ activity has also been made much easier. the total activity is displayed in a collapsible button at the top, and clicking it opens a drop-down menu allowing you to see the activity in more detail.

while much anticipated changes like a new comment system and a pictures section were not released in this update (which is largely cosmetic), there were some additional smaller changes as well. for example, the recent top stories section is now being displayed more prominently (thanks in part to the orange color), news and videos have been combined into one section (users can change this), and the ‘top in all sections’ lets you choose between all, news, and video.

overall, the update is great. the interface has been streamlined and compacted so that there is minimal clutter. the new design is not drastic and ensures that users will find it both easy to adapt to and more efficient to use.

Technorati Tags: digg, social media, social bookmarking, socially driven, design

imagine if your business meeting was being run by people that comment on internet message boards and blogs.

Technorati Tags: business meetings, internet, comments

bloglines has opened the beta of their latest version to the public, and it’s looking great. richard has a complete review and tour of the 3.0 beta, but here is a snapshot of the two main new features:

1. drag-and-drop management for the feed page and personalizeable start page

the drag-and-drop functionality lets you manage your feed page as well as your personalizeable start page by simply dragging items across panes.

2. three different views for reading your feeds

you can view all your feeds in one place (the quick view), read the titles and clippings from posts one by one (the full view), or, use the three-pane view that separates the feeds, the post titles, and the post contents into separate panes (the view is reminiscent of desktop mail applications).

Technorati Tags: bloglines, rss, feed reader

while scoble’s earlier commentary on why he thinks mahalo, techmeme, and facebook will kick google’s butt in four years may provide us an interesting look at where the future of search may lie, it certainly isn’t correct in its central hypothesis. in fact, the argument he makes is not far from the older argument that wikipedia will kill google (google share of search has increased over 130 percent since that claim).

truth of the matter is that the wikipedia relies on google for financial and hardware/bandwidth support. not only that, but over 50 percent of wikipedia’s traffic comes from google (over 1.6 billion users, which accounts for around 2% of google’s outbound traffic).

let’s look at the 3 contenders mentioned by name and if they stand a chance against google individually, and then let’s see if they stand a chance if they pool their collective strengths.

contender number 1: mahalo

the first reason why mahalo won’t affect google is the same reason wikipedia hasn’t been able to do so. rich skrenta, the founder of the open directory project (dmoz.org) has elaborated in much detail on why mahalo must rely on search and seo for success. furthermore, acknowledging that the top 10,000 search queries make up 24 percent of all searches, mahalo plans to cover only those queries. what this means is that mahalo will serve google results for 76 percent of all searches.

that said, scoble correctly points out in his example that mahalo is great for some verticals (i.e. if you want to book a cheap flight or buy an hdtv)

contender number 2: techmeme

techmeme works off a list of only a few thousand sites that it monitors continuously and then constructs a ‘what’s happening on the web right now’ page that changes in real-time based on linking activity. the higher up a post is displayed, the more important it is. this linking and displaying of the content is done automatically and the only part where editorial judgment comes in is in creating the original ‘seeding list’. this list is hand-picked by the site’s founder to ensure that the content displayed on techmeme is always of interest to techmeme’s readers.

once you understand they way techmeme works, it begins to look more like a competitor for socially driven news and content sites. while techmeme is a great tool for discovering what is happening at any given moment it’s not good at all if you want to find some older content. in fact, the aggregator doesn’t even have search functionality and you have to look for old content by entering a date on the main page of the site (which means you’re lost if you don’t know the exact date an article was published). while i love the ‘content discovery’ and the ‘conversation grouping’ features of techmeme, if i want to find an old conversation from the site, i find myself going back to google and using the ‘site search’ operator.

even if techmeme included search functionality on their own site, the fact that they index only a few thousand sites takes them out of the running.

contender number 3: facebook

scoble’s mention of facebook and the role of social networking (along with social search) in improving the trustworthiness and accuracy of search results isn’t a completely new idea and in fact google has the technology, they just haven’t integrating it into their search engine. if they wanted to at any point (i.e. if they felt that it needs to be done) they could easily use their own social networking site, orkut, along with google co-op custom search to offer any benefits of an integrated socially-networked social-search engine.

so what now?

as we can see, each of these contenders on their own are not strong enough to take on google (and in some cases either rely or need to rely on google to succeed). and as for scoble’s idea of a united entity, that takes their collective powers to compete with google, i think we mustn’t forget that google has the following entities that it has yet to completely incorporate into it’s search:

1. Google Search
2. Google Co-op
3. Blogger
4. Google Reader
5. Orkut
6. Dodgeball

combining google search with blogger and google reader, google could create a techmeme-like technology, and then combining orkut (and even dodgeball) with google search and google co-op custom search, google could very well create a mahalo-facebook-like socially-networked social-search site. ultimately, I think a more interesting scenario to hypothesize about is what happens if/when google incorporates all these products into a new google search?

Technorati Tags: google search, mahalo, social search, techmeme, blogs, facebook, social networking

scoble has a three-part video series up on his site arguing that technologies like mahalo, techmeme, and facebook will disrupt the search industry and kill google in four years.

Part I of Social Graph Based Search. 14:41 minutes.
Part II of Social Graph Based Search. 15 minutes.
And a bonus round III. 6 minutes.

while scoble goes on to say that his post is too short to show up in either google or techmeme, i found it on the latter of the two sites.

Technorati Tags: robert scoble, mahalo, techmeme, facebook, social networking, search, google, social graph

until the recent announcement of twitter people search it was incredibly difficult to know who was using the service and find that user on the site. the initial implementation of ‘people search’ was a small step towards adding that functionality which is now greatly improved thanks to a new ‘find and invite‘ tab accessible at the top of the page.

you can add people by using your gmail address book and if they’re not currently using the service, you can invite them to join by email. if they are already on twitter, you can also look for them by using a first name, last name, url, geographical location, and more.

Technorati Tags: twitter, micro-blogging, people search, find and invite