bmf sticky: 5/17/09

Friday, May 22, 2009

The artvertister

Ok, it's the latest tech fad, but i do like this application...

http://theartvertiser.com/

The Artvertiser: Augmented Billboards. from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

Augmenting a Postcard from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

Truth in Vodka - cheers to that!

I believe that this article from Marketing Daily is a really interesting example of a premium Vodka brand from Poland, taking on other premium Vodkas by attacking the premium image....hmmm

Sobieski Expands 'Truth In Vodka' Campaign

by Karlene Lukovitz

Sobieski Vodka is investing $5 million on a new round of creative and expanded consumer media exposure for its successful "Truth in Vodka" campaign, according to Chester Brandes, president/CEO of Imperial Brands, Inc., exclusive importer of the brand.

The top premium vodka in Poland, its country of origin, and the #7 premium brand in the world, Sobieski was launched in the U.S. in August 2007 and sold 255,000 cases in 2008, making it one of the hottest liquor introductions in years. The brand is 52% ahead of its projected sales for 2009 and on track to be the fastest vodka brand to reach 1 million cases in the U.S., reports Brandes.

Excellent timing is certainly responsible for some of that success. According to the Distilled Spirits Council, sales of super-premium vodkas are slipping in this wretched economy, while those at the premium price point continue to climb. Sobieski sells for a relatively modest $10.99 per 750 ml bottle and stresses value for the money.

The "Truth in Vodka" campaign, which urges consumers to focus on what's in the bottle rather than pay inflated prices to subsidize gimmicky marketing claims and showy bottle designs, has made the most of the brand's made-for-these times positioning.

Imperial initially focused on getting the word out to retailers via a $1 million trade campaign, moved into consumer media with a $4 million investment starting in mid-2008, and is now unveiling the creative for a more ambitious, integrated consumer push starting now but running primarily in this year's second half.

The latest round of ads from Meter Industries, the New York agency that created the campaign, continues to leverage the current value-over-status zeitgeist. Taglines include:

* Overspending on Vodka? That's So 2008.

* Flashy and Extravagant Are Out. We'll Drink to That.

* Ever Feel Like You're Not Getting Your Money's Worth? We Hate That Feeling.

* Buying a Vodka Because It's Filtered Through Diamonds? We Have a Ponzi Scheme You Might Find Interesting.

* Are You Paying for the Bottle? Or Are You Paying for the Vodka?

* Like Many Vodka Companies, We Used a Focus Group to Vet Our Product. It's Called 'Poland.'

The last tagline homes in on the heritage theme that's being stressed along with the vodka myth debunking. "Sobieski is a real product imported here from Poland," Brandes stressed to Marketing Daily. "Unlike some of our competitors, we didn't create it for the U.S. market."

The graphic approach continues to be minimalist -- nothing but the copy and a photo of the bottle on a solid black or white background.

The media plan, handled by Horizon Media, will include third- and fourth-quarter print ads in consumer magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Rolling Stone, SPIN and US Weekly and outdoor media (bus wrap shown in photo) in key markets nationwide. Online media -- including regionally targeted sites -- will also be tapped.

In addition, Cramer-Krasselt Public Relations has been added to the team for the latest consumer push.

Tinker is no longer merely the name of my late cat.

Thanks to 3 minute Adage for their video on the launch of Tinker in which they described a service that aggregates and curates real time conversations online using Twitter as their platform. This has great potential for catching positive sentiments surrounding our brands... read more below in an article from Tech Crunch.

Twitter has become one of the most effective ways to catch and track breaking news in real-time. It also has become an invaluable resource for tracking chatter on major events, from conferences to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The problem has been that there has been no single place to easily track the chatter on Twitter. Hashtags, Twitter searches, and Twitter apps like monitter all have some functionality, but aren’t comprehensive approaches to event tracking.
However, Glam Media, a popular advertising and publishing network, has launched its solution to the event tracking problem. Dubbed Tinker, it’s both a social media service that makes it easy to track specific trends and news, and also a fully-fledged Twitter Web interface that has a monetization model for brand advertisers.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Building alive with lights and sounds

Just pain beautiful...

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo.

Via psfk

'Virtual currencies' power social networks, online games

Thanks CNN... jesus, am i really reposting something from CNN?

(CNN) -- When Santiago Martinez wants to give his friends birthday presents, he buys a cake or flowers or sometimes a teddy bear.

'Virtual currencies,' like the hi5 Coin, shown here, are becoming more important on the Internet.

But the 41-year-old, who lives on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, doesn't spend pesos or dollars. He buys the gifts with an online-only currency called hi5 Coins.

He also doesn't deliver the gifts in the physical world. They appear digitally on his friends' online profiles on a site called hi5, which is a social network like Facebook or MySpace.

"They can't eat the cake. It is an image -- the thing that it represents," said Martinez, an accountant with a wife and two kids. "You can send the feeling of that [cake] that you want to send."

In any given month, he spends the equivalent of $40 in this manner.

But Martinez is hardly alone.

As our identities migrate further onto the Internet, currencies that exist only online are becoming a more significant part of commerce on the Web and in the real world. Some, like the hi5 Coin, operate almost like tokens in an arcade or tickets at a fair: They're a stand-in for real-world currency.

Don't Miss

Other "virtual currencies," like Second Life's Linden Dollars, however, are traded on markets. The currencies also fuel online gaming communities and are becoming an important part of social networks.

Several online currencies are competing to be the economic engines for MySpace and Facebook, which don't have their own unified currencies. Other social networking sites, like hi5 and myYearbook, have created their own units of money for their users to spend.

All of this movement leads some experts to see a future in which virtual currencies enter the same trading space as their real-world counterparts.

The online monies are not robust enough to trade competitively against real-world currencies, but people underestimate the large amount of cash that is transferred from the real world into virtual currencies, said Edward Castronova, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University.

Castronova says people transfer at least $1 billion into the virtual currencies each year, with most of that money going into online games. The actual amount could be much higher, he said, but the market is hard to quantify.

"The question is really one of scale," he said. "Is this big enough for someone to take their 401(k) [out of real-world currency] and start looking into this? No, absolutely not."

Sometimes, people collect online money simply by purchasing it.

In "World of Warcraft," players earn WoW Gold as they advance through the game. The currency has become so sought-after that it is bought and sold on a black market, experts said.

Low-wage workers in China are known to play the game for a living and then sell the virtual currency they earn to avid "World of Warcraft" players in the West. This despite the fact that the game's maker prohibits such activities.

As the market for online-only currency grows, problems that plague real-world economies start leaking in, said Charles Hudson, who runs the Virtual Goods Summit, an annual conference.

"Once you get a virtual economy that's functioning, you run into all the problems that we have with the real economy: taxation, interest rates, inflation. All of the same problems that cause headaches for the Federal Reserve come up in the virtual economy -- and the stakes are the same," he said.

The solution has been for each social network or game that uses its own currency to appoint a money manager. Hi5, for instance, employs a staff economist for this purpose.

The site soon hopes to make as much money through its virtual currency exchange as it does from advertising, which is the primary revenue source for many social networks.

Mark Methenitis, a Dallas attorney who writes a blog called "Law of the Game," said online currencies are "completely unregulated," which will make trading them against each other dangerous.

"There is huge potential for fraud, for what would be the equivalent of insider trading," he said. "Also, since these economies are completely under the control of the virtual world owner, it's pretty easy to cause massive hyperinflation."

Social networks and virtual worlds are currently trying to find ways to manage or capitalize on their developing economies.

These networks' successes may hinge on how they are able to manage their economies and currencies may, experts said.

Facebook is researching the idea of creating a unified currency but is "very early" in the process and has not committed to it, the site said in a statement to CNN.

Currently, applications on the site -- which allow users to play games with each other and trade gifts -- are powered by currencies made by the application's developers, not by Facebook.

These developers are making good money on the system, and Facebook is missing out on profits in that area, said Hudson, of the Virtual Goods Summit.

Joey Seiler, who writes about virtual worlds, said virtual goods are becoming more popular because people are taking their online identities more seriously.

At first, it may seem ridiculous that someone would pay for virtual currency in order to buy a T-shirt icon to put on a social-network profile. But Seiler said more or his friends see the virtual T-shirts on his Facebook page than see any T-shirt he wears in real life.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Brands tap do-gooder impulse to encourage consumers to pass along marketing messages

Thansk Matt for shiring this from Adweek

May 18, 2009
-By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Target is no stranger to cause marketing. The retailer is unusual in that it dedicates 5 percent of its income to charity. It's also no stranger to social marketing, having more than 260,000 fans on Facebook.

Last week, it brought the two together by kicking off "Bullseye Gives," a campaign that invites users to choose from a list of 10 charities to which Target will donate $3 million. The social twist: After voting for a charity, users are invited to broadcast their selection to their Facebook friends via their news feeds, the running summary of updates that is central to the Facebook experience. In less than a week, Target tallied 40,000 votes, which translated into tens of thousands of peer-to-peer impressions.

The effort is one of several undertaken by companies recently that use charities to give people a reason to share brand messages. In the social world, the central front for brands is what's been called "the stream," the real-time feed of updates, links and bits of content that has become the defining characteristic of Facebook and Twitter. Entry to the stream is coveted by brands desperate for the word-of-mouth appeal that comes close to a personal recommendation to friends.

"What we've learned is it's not the cause but it's the idea of a brand truly doing good that has a significant impact through social media," said Joe Marchese, CEO of SocialVibe, a Los Angeles-based startup that runs cause-related social campaigns for brands like Kraft, Sprint and PowerBar. "When you do something good, it used to be that you had to buy a bunch of media and tell people or do PR. Now, the potential is for people to tell each other that you do good."

For brands, particularly those in low-consideration categories like consumer goods, charities can become a cheap way to get access to the megaphones everyone has in social media. Take Colgate. It created a Facebook application called Smiles that languished for months, with just a few hundred people sharing it. Then it hooked up with SocialVibe to recast the tool to tap into the do-good vibe. The brand offered charitable donations each time users shared Smiles. The result: The widget was shared 500,000 times in five weeks.

Kraft is in the midst of a "Share a Little Comfort" campaign that offers to donate 1 million boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to needy families based on the number of messages people share via Facebook and Twitter. The added bonus of such programs, according to Marchese, is that brands can simply redirect some of their media budgets to cover the donations. It can turn out to be cheaper to offer donations in exchange for people-powered media than buying ad space for promotion. So far, more than 23,000 messages have been posted in response to Kraft's effort.

There is a downside, of course. Efforts can cross the line into social-media spam. Giving people an incentive to pass along messages from brands could come to be seen, reasonably, as an alternative way for brands to buy their way into conversations.

"If it's viewed as a front and that you don't really care, then it can be a setback," said Steve Rubel, svp and director of insights at Edelman. "If it's viewed as a tactic to build buzz, not as a tactic to solve problems or effect change, then you're going to lose all credibility."

This has caused Procter & Gamble, for instance, to shy away from incentivizing sharing with its Tide "Loads of Hope" program, which donates clothing to disaster-stricken areas. It dabbled in the tactic during its "Digital Hack Night," when social-media experts tapped their networks to sell "Loads of Hope" T-shirts. But P&G has not chosen to promote the program the same way with consumers. "There's always a balance of inspiring authentic conversation and being too promotional," said Kash Shaikh, a Tide rep. "We don't want to be too promotional."

To get over that, and to give the marketing programs legs, SocialVibe in some cases sends participants evidence of what their pass-along did. For instance, charity: water, a cause devoted to providing clean drinking water in impoverished areas, takes pictures of the wells dug and sends them to participants a few months later. "People think back to the brands supported over the months and connect it with a specific action," Marchese said. To date, SocialVibe has raised $500,000 for three-dozen charities.

Charities are also a handy way to ensure that "viral" efforts don't completely fail. Sun Products brand All Small & Mighty used the lure of charities to goose distribution of YouTube videos it created last month. It linked up with NBC's Celebrity Apprentice to drive viewers to an All Web site to see videos created by Joan and Melissa Rivers. Each time a video is forwarded, All donates 50 cents to charity. The gambit fits with the Apprentice construct of awarding a winning team with a donation to the charity of its choice.

"We wanted to test how big of a role this would play," said Shiv Singh, social-media lead at Razorfish, the agency that created the program. "You can only create so much passion around a detergent."

The charity game has even gone in an unusual direction. Unemployed copywriter Chris Kahle is trying the approach in the hopes of getting his dream job with Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Last week he posted an offer to donate $1 to charity for the first 200 people who sent Twitter messages to Crispin co-chairman Alex Bogusky and interactive creative director Jeff Benjamin, urging them to hire him. That part of the gambit worked: Dozens of people sent messages to the execs. Bogusky was impressed, calling the idea "really smart," although he didn't commit to interviewing Kahle.

How marketers can leverage the semantic web

Via imediaconnection.

If you think semantic is the same as contextual, think again. Here's what you need to know about harnessing the power of words online.

Online advertising is all about relevance -- being in the right place, at the right time, when consumers are most receptive to your message. But as any marketer who's been around the block can attest, that's easier said than done. Keywords are one thing; piecing them together to infer meaning and context is quite another. In this interview, Lori Xeller, senior director of sales for Kontera, discusses the opportunities offered by in-text advertising, as well as the misconceptions and market climate surrounding the technology.

iMedia: At the summit, you'll be discussing the importance of leveraging the semantic web. Can you give me one or two simple examples of how you help clients do this?

Lori Xeller: Our semantic technology enables us to make the most relevant associations between and among the user, the content he or she is consuming, and our advertisers. The key phrases that we highlight in an article can be thought of as predicting what the user would type into a search engine to get to that page. By associating this phrase with a relevant ad, we deliver a very high level of engagement and an extremely qualified user to the advertiser.

There are a few different companies talking about the semantic web today, with networks, for example, amplifying certain takes on relevance and directing search queries to their clients' products. But delivering the most relevant results that anticipate what a given user's query will be within the in-text segment narrows the purchase funnel in ways that no other segment can.

iMedia: What's the biggest danger in neglecting the semantic web and focusing exclusively on keywords when it comes to searches and ad placement?

Xeller: The danger is that you are missing a valuable opportunity to engage with your audience at the moment when they are most engaged -- within the content. In-text provides an additional opportunity to capture your audience further down the consideration cycle, after they've performed a search query, possibly, and landed on the page of interest. Upon user mouse-over, the ad is delivered in the content that they're reading, or where they're doing research -- wherever the user is engaged. Sometimes that can occur in a nonintuitive or hard-to-reach place, and with in-text, you're not competing with banners that are on the side of the page.

Leveraging the semantic web is smart because it anticipates what the user is thinking and will consider. Our campaign data show how powerful this can be.

iMedia: What's the most common misconception you hear from marketers when it comes to leveraging the semantic web? What do these people need to know?

Xeller: The most common misconception is that semantic is the same as contextual. Semantic does not just target keywords -- semantic infers meaning and context. Semantic technologies can then anticipate what the user is thinking and deliver appropriate ads accordingly.

iMedia: On a more general note, how has the recent downturn affected the marketing needs of your clients? What are the most common questions or issues that clients are coming to you with right now?

Xeller: All marketers are more and more accountable for every dollar they spend. They want to know how they can continue to drive toward their engagement, consideration, and revenue goals with either reduced budgets or higher expectations. We provide them with a great solution because our units are user initiated, which requires the user to engage. At the point they see it; the high level of relevancy of the ad to the page encourages their consideration or brand involvement. The result benefits the advertiser, providing them with an extremely cost effective and engaging solution

Our business is doing well, so perhaps the marketing downturn has driven dollars to more accountable segments. Clients are asking about the brand effects of in-text when they're buying clicks. We know they exist because once a user mouses-over and the unit launches, it's impossible to not have a brand experience with in-text. An advertiser receives the brand engagement for no additional charge -- and we're talking about some of the best engagement rates in all of interactive.

iMedia: Beyond the semantic web, where do you see the greatest untapped opportunity for digital marketers? And what is your high-level advice for breaking into this opportunity?

Xeller: One thing that in-text does is enable publishers to leverage the newest technologies, while being unobtrusive to users and performing extremely well for performance and brand marketers. It's one of the few new marketing technologies that maintains the triangle of benefit for buyers, sellers, and users, and we expect it to continue growing indefinitely.

There are a lot of new great opportunities out there for digital marketers today. These would range from in-text to mobile, content integration, and so on. My advice to the marketers would be this: Don't be afraid to test them and see the results for yourself, but make sure to have a clear understanding of the vendor's history and experience before signing on.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

SUPERCOOK!

Thanks mashable for this highlight of MEGACOOL cooking site, Supercook... i totally agreee with the post on the final cracking of an idea that long held great promise.

Name: Supercook

Quick Pitch: Supercook finds recipes based precisely on the ingredients you already have. Unique search technology, “virtual” kitchen concept, and customized suggestions.

Genius Idea: Supercook finally executes on a concept that I have heard floated around for years: tasty recipes based off the items you already have. Supercook asks what’s in your kitchen and then uses that information to provide dozens, if not hundreds, of unique dishes that you probably would never have thought of on your own.

Adding ingredients to the supercook system is easy, and you don’t even have to register. The niftiest feature is the tag cloud of common items it pops up to make adding new ingredients easy. As you add items, the system automatically begins to suggest recipes based on those grocery items.

The recipes are aggregated from several recipe websites, including AllRecipe and RecipeZaar. The system even suggests yummy dishes to make that require one or two additional items, allowing you to discover more new foods.

One of my favorite features of Supercook though is the suggested shopping list. Based off the items you tell the system are in your kitchen, Supercook will provide a suggested list of additional items to buy to build amazing food delights.

Overall, Supercook is very simple, but that’s what makes it so easy to use. It doesn’t take long and it turns recipe hunting from a painful chore to an enjoyable adventure.

12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters

And thanks again RWW for this on some companies offering real smarts and bringing the bleeding edge to the commercial space.

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.

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

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 APIsMashery's expertise. At the "Business of APIs" conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michelsexplained 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. using

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.

Web 3.0 Conference

The core idea behind Web 3.0 is to extract much more meaningful, actionable insight from information. At the Web 3.0 Conference, taking place in New York City from 19 to 20 May 2009, participants will explore how companies are using the emerging technology collectively known as Web 3.0 for significant bottom-line impact in areas like marketing, corporate information management, customer service, and personal productivity.

ReadWriteWeb readers save 15% with the discount code XRWW.

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 SmubSmub has built-in sharing to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and more. will automatically take you through the process. Make the link public to share with others, or keep it private just for yourself.

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.

Find out what makes Hakia different.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

/>rwwmt.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/370_rwwmt.jpg" align="right" width="370" height="203">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!

Linked Data

Thanks ReadWriteWeb for this latest on where the web is heading... a useful universe of open, linked data sets. Enjoy

Written by Richard MacManus / May 18, 2009 3:15 AM / 12 Comments

« Prior Post Next Post »

Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year, evangelizing Linked Data. He said that Linked Data was a sea change akin to the invention of the WWW itself. We've gone from a Web of documents, via the WWW, to a Web of data. Berners-Lee is now on a crusade for everyone from government departments, to individuals, to open up their data and put it on the Web - so that others can link to it and use it. In this post we give a high-level overview of Linked Data. Read on to stop and smell the roses.

A great place to start to understand Linked Data is Sir Tim's TED talk, embedded below. It's just over 15 minutes and highly recommended if you want to grok where the Web is headed. The slides are also available.

Linked Data: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Linked Data is an official W3C project. An independent community page for Linked Data describes it as "using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods."

Tim Berners-Lee described Linked Data as a grassroots movement in his TED presentation. The above image shows you how many participating data sets there are now (it'll have increased even more since then, as that was a March 2009 snapshot). Linked Data is ramping up fast. To give you an idea of how much it's grown over the past two years alone, here is a snapshot of the data sets that were available in May 2007:

Linked Data in a Nutshell

In a W3C memo that Berners-Lee published in July 2007, he described four principles of Linked Data. The Wikipedia paraphrased it as follows:

Use URIs to identify things that you expose to the Web as resources.
Use HTTP URIs so that people can locate and look up (dereference) these things.
Provide useful information about the resource when its URI is dereferenced.
Include links to other, related URIs in the exposed data as a means of improving information discovery on the Web.

Even that paraphrasing is a bit technical, but we can sum it up like so: Linked Data allows you to discover, connect to, describe, and re-use all kinds of data. It is to data what the World Wide Web was to documents back in the 90's.

W3C: Linked Data: Principles and State of the Art, April 2008

On ReadWriteWeb we've discussed Linked Data a number of times. Alexander Korth wrote a good high level intro last month. He noted that Linked Data builds on and interconnects existing ontologies such as WordNet, FOAF, and SKOS. He went on to explain that the data sets grant access to their knowledge bases and link to items in other data sets:

"The project follows basic design principles of the World Wide Web: simplicity, tolerance, modular design, and decentralization. The LOD [Linking Open Data] project currently counts more than 2 billion RDF triples, which is a lot of knowledge. (A triple is a piece of information that consists of a subject, predicate, and object to express a particular subject's property or relationship to another subject.) Also, the number of participating data sets is rapidly growing. The data sets currently can be accessed in heterogeneous ways; for example, through a semantic web browser or by being crawled by a semantic search engine."

Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom

If there's one idea we want to leave you with about Linked Data, it's that the data is there to be used. Linked Data enables data to be opened up and connected so that people can build interesting new things from it. At TED, Berners-Lee described Linked Data as boxes of data that - when connected via open standards - enable things to sprout from it.

Slide from Tim Berners-Lee's TED talk in Feb 09

Linked Data is one of the most important trends of the Web circa 2009 and we'll be blogging more about it in the coming months. Let us know in the comments if there's something specific you'd like us to explore in the Linked Data world.

Answers to Questions from Twitter on Teen Practices

Thanks Futurelab for this Q&A on teen Twitter usage and attitudes

by: danah boyd

Before I headed to Atlanta to do fieldwork, I asked folks who follow me on Twitter (@zephoria) what questions I should ask teens. Many of the questions that I received were more general questions about teens, rather than questions for teens. Still, I'm going to take a stab at very briefly answering some of the questions that I received based on what I know and what I learned. I am not answering the larger questions that would require pages and pages and my apologies if my short answers are not sufficient but I wanted to at least respond. Thank you all who contributed questions and my apologies if I didn't answer yours.

To all who asked questions about Twitter: average teens don't use Twitter. They may in the future, but they do not now. Those who do are early adopters and not representative of any mainstream teen practice. Because of Oprah and celebs, some teens are starting to hear about it, but they don't understand it and they aren't using it.

@connyb: Parents' concerned with what kids do online, right? I'd ask teens if they know what exactly their parents do at their dayjobs.

Teens do not tend to know exactly what their parents do, nor do they particularly care. (It's important to note that parental concern stems from a position of power, not interest in the actual activities.)

@mauraweb: when they're searching for info, how do they know what info to trust? esp. w/internet searches

Media literacy amongst teens is extremely varied, but the short answer is that most don't know what to trust. They know that they are not supposed to trust Wikipedia because it's editable (and they automatically recall Wikipedia when you ask about trustworthy information.. that's so actively hammered down their throat, it's painful). One girl told me that she trusts websites that "look" like they are reputable. When I asked her about this, she told me that she could "just tell" when something was a good source. And besides, it came from Google. Le sigh.

@AlterSeekers: According to Facebook Era, Teens see email as a "work" tool and prefer to Facebook message. Is this true among these teens?

I was surprised to find that email is deader than ever among teens. As more of their parents and teachers are getting on Facebook (or MySpace), they see little reason to email with anyone. Thus, email is increasingly needed for having an account on various sites and for getting access to or sending attachments. But even when teens do use email for "work", they do not use it for social purposes.

@mirroredpool: What borders to teens place of social networking sites and education? How would they react to using an SNS to do class work?

@annejonas: i'm curious if they want schools involved in social networks or if they like it as a social space outside the realm of formal edu.

This is messy. Many teens have ZERO interest in interacting with teachers on social network sites, but there are also quite a few who are interested in interacting with SOME teachers there. Still, this is primarily a social space and their interactions with teachers are primarily to get more general advice and help. In some ways, its biggest asset in the classroom is the way in which its not a classroom tool and not loaded this way. Given that teens don't Friend all of their classmates, there are major issues in terms of using this for groupwork because of boundary issues.

@shcdean: What future do they see for FB or Twitter.

They don't use Twitter. When asked, teens always say that they'll use their preferred social network site (or social media service) FOREVER as a sign of their passion for it now. If they expect that they'll "grow out of it", it's a sign that the service is waning among that group at this very moment. So they're not a good predictor of their own future usage.

@lazygal: Do they really care about/use school library websites? Twitter? Pageflakes? Libguides? or only if teacher insists?

Nope, they don't. All but Twitter are categorized as school tools and are only used when absolutely necessary and Google won't suffice.

@anindita: My favorite question: read anything good lately?

I asked "Recent book that you enjoyed" on my questionnaire. Half said "none" and most said books they read in school (with a *). Books that were mentioned: City of Bones, Ashes & Glass, A Year of Impossible Goodbyes, The Outsiders*, Drama High Series, Mice and Men*, Catcher in the Rye*, The Poisonwood Bible*, Twilight series (twice).

@texas_sooner: I'd be interested to know if teens denied access to SNS (by parents/choice/SES reasons etc ) feel left out/pressure to join, etc.

Parental restrictions are a huge source of frustration because of a sense of isolation. (As a result, they are typically ignored.) SES is not actually a predictor of non-use at this point except in more rural regions where Internet access is generally absent for the majority of teens. In these cases, teens don't feel left out because they aren't being socially isolated by it.

@SavvyPriya: what is one thing that teens are passionate about?

This varies across teens, but God comes up a lot. The only thing that really competes is friends. Family is also important to some teens. School and sports are also important to some teens. And then some teens have particular hobbies or activities that they love. But God and friends really dominate the passion list.

@paullowe: where do they get their news from and what kind of news do they want to get

Teens primarily get their news from word-of-mouth, not directly from any particular source. School current events and TV time are the other dominant place I hear about. Otherwise, it's generally osmosis. They walk through the living room when their parents are watching the news. Or they pass by a news article when they get online. But they are not directly and intentionally consuming much news at all.

@thornet: ask 'em how they judge whether a news outlet is credible.teens r good @ spotting fakes & phonies;wonder what their news criteria r

They don't watch a lot of news and they have no media literacy training and they're not even thinking about credibility of news.

@andrewmiller: how does having a smartphone change their interactions w/each other on SNS? more photos/videos? faster rumors? have/have-not gap?

A gap is definitely occurring. A smart phone means more more more more more - more SMS, more web consumption, more status updates, more photos, etc. Certain smart phones are desperately desired items. That said, teens are also doing quite well with the iPod Touch + wifi as an alternative. Smart phones are helping them stay more engaged and connected.

@shawncalhoun: Were teens more engaged in politics by Obamas #socialmedia storm? If so has engagmnt continued evolved in2 something new or faded?

Most teens are pretty oblivious to his social media practices. That's actually hitting the college/20-somethings more.

@alexleavitt: Ask them if they feel like they'll want to develop the social Net when they get older: eg., developers developers developers.

No. Most don't associate using social media with computer science or developing software whatsoever. And the classes on programming in their schools aren't helping.

@pbernard: do they still care about changing the ringtone on their phone, even though they make less and less calls?

Ringtones are tricky with American youth because it very much depends on who pays for the phone/ringtones. Among teens who can change their ringtones whenever they want, there's still motivation. The phone still rings (and beeps with new SMSes) and having a cool sound is desired. But of course many teens spend most of their day with their phones on buzz-only.

@harraton: Do they care about their privacy?

VERY much so. But what constitutes privacy for them is often quite different than what constitutes privacy for adults. Privacy is not dead.

@simonchambers: I'd ask how they see themselves helping to solve problems like climate change and extreme poverty...

They don't. Most teens are not that engaged with larger societal issues (except as activities to get into college). This makes sense - they are not part of public life. They have no voice. They don't hear the debates. They aren't exposed to much beyond their narrow worlds. And, for most of them, their parents aren't involved either.

@dougthomas: Teens; what are their thoughts about downloading songs? films? software? without paying for it.

They want access. Their parents won't pay for it. They don't have credit cards. They get what they are looking for by any means necessary. And those who get access to it traffic in that content among their peers who may be less technologically savvy/economically privileged.

@jamesb: how does their mobile contacts differ from social network contacts? When do they crossover?

Mobile consists of their closest friends because of the economics of the phone. Social network sites are their broader peer group. Their closest friends are a subset of their broader peer group.

@alfredtwo: Do teens view all adults in social networking the same or are parents a special case? Young relatives friend me not their parents

Depends on the teen, but many are happy to connect with adults who don't directly hold power over them or who they "trust" - aunts, older cousins, youth pastors, "cool" teachers, etc.

@mjmantey: how aware are they of general advertising/marketing ways and means?

If it has advertising, they think that it means that it'll be free for a long time. But they don't really think much about it.

@mojo_girl: how many email accounts do they have that parents don't know about- do they use same password 4 all #socialmedia ? #teens

They don't use email so it's more a matter of which ones they forgot about. They often forget their passwords so I would guess that they don't use the same password consistently. Of course, they also share certain passwords with their closest "trusted" friends so that gets messy really fast. And they change it when there's a breakup.

@matlockmatlock: OMGSEXTINGWTF?

Continuing to be present and very very messy. Sharing of naked photos seems to be more prevalent in certain teen groups than others and I'm still trying to work out what this means.

Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/05/16/answers_to_ques.html

Tags:

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags

Thanks Mashable for this useful stuff on #

One of the most complex features of Twitter for new users to understand is the hashtag, a topic with a hash symbol (”#”) at the start to identify it. Twitter hashtags like #followfriday help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organize it.

The hashtag is a favorite tool of conferences and event organizers, but it’s also a way for Twitter users to organize themselves: if everyone agrees to append a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in search, and more likely the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics.

So how do you disseminate and make sense of all this hashtag madness? By going through the art of the hashtag step-by-step, of course. This short guide details how to identify, track, use, and organize hashtags in an efficient and useful way. Just be sure not to flaunt your new hashtag wisdom.

Have a tip to share on hashtags or a unique way you utilize them? Be sure to share with everyone in the comments.

1. Identifying hashtags

For new Twitter users, and even we veterans, figuring out what a specific hashtag is being used for can be a major chore. When a hashtag starts to trend, it gets even more difficult to parse the information stream.

So what’s the most efficient way to figure out those nasty hashtags? Luckily, there a few great tools that can assist in hashtag enlightenment:

What the Trend?: This useful little service makes it really easy to learn about trending hashtags. When something starts trending, What the Trend? will provide a quick blurb on what’s going on.

Twubs: Twubs, which we recently reviewed, uses a wiki system to help disseminate information on a hashtag. It aggregates tweets and imports pictures to help illuminate the topics being discussed.

Hashtags.org: While not the best at helping you understand the meaning behind a tag, Hashtags.org is good at showing you its use over time and recent tweets, which oftentimes is enough to figure out the meaning behind the tag.

Tagalus: Tagalus is a simple dictionary for hashtags. It’s very easy to find information on thousands of hashtags as defined by other users. You can also define a hashtag by tweeting tagalus.

2. Tracking hashtags

What’s buzzing on Twitter right now? If you’re a tech journalist, marketing professional, or just a person interested in trends, there are many useful tools and techniques to keep up with the Twitter conversation via hashtags.

If you’re trying to track tweets from a hashtag in real-time, Monitter and Twitterfall are good choices. Once again, Hashtags.org provides graphs and hour-by-hour information on top hashtags.

One last tip: if you need to track a less popular Twitter hashtag, try setting up a Twilert to get a daily email of the use of a specific hashtag.

For more, be sure to check out 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends.

3. Using hashtags

Although not terribly complicated, hashtags have some unwritten rules. The primarily one to remember: don’t overuse them. If every one of your tweets IS a hashtag, you dilute the usefulness of them by fragmenting the conversation. In addition, many people will shy away from you because it seems spammy.

Another simple tip: give your hashtag context. Most people won’t actually know what your hashtag means, so give a quick explanation in one of your tweets or, if you’re making a hashtag, make it very apparent what it’s talking about.

Finally, if you’re looking to create a hashtag, be sure that it adds value for yourself and your followers. The best way to utilize them is when you need to organize information. Conferences, major events, and even reminders (i.e. #todo) can help organize specific tweets and make life easier on you and your followers.

The Twitter Fan Wiki also has some interesting reading material on hashtags if you’re looking to further your hashtag education.

4. Organizing hashtags

When I speak of organizing hashtags, I’m talking about conferences and events, which rely on the hashtag system more than almost any other entity. It’s become standard to track the conversation regarding speakers and afterparties via a hashtag.

If you’re about to put on an event or are looking to take your event to a new level, here are some useful tips for hashtag organization:

- Choose a single hashtag early: This may seem simple, but it is vital to get right. Choose a simple hashtag that represents your event or brand. If your event is the Business of the Calling Ducks conference, don’t use #businessofthecallingducks as your tag. How about #bizducks instead?

- Remind attendees of the hashtag constantly: On your website, on your Twitter feed, at the opening remarks, and throughout the day, make a friendly reminder about your hashtag and that you can track the conversation through it.

- Provide a website widget: For anyone who isn’t using or knowledgeable with Twitter, provide an easy conversation tracker tool on your website. You can make one via Widgetbox or Tweetgrid.

More Twitter resources from Mashable

- HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service
- 5 Terrific Twitter Research Tools
- HOW TO: Find a Job on Twitter
- 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates
- 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

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