Me and the other 2

Links for 2008-11-17 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Links for 2008-11-16 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

That Was Quick: Google Shuts Lively Down

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:17:47 GMT

Without much fanfare, the 20% time project Lively is now facing the end of it?s brief lifespan, as Google announced today that the virtual chat and meeting tool is set to be shut down by the end of the year.

??despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.?

Given the already vast amount of resources being devoted to their core company interests like search, ads, and apps, there is likely other reasons behind the shutdown, like the inability to police the service in the manner they planned, or the fact that hardly anyone uses it.

There?s No Sex in the Champagne Room in Lively

Frankly, I didn?t imagine that the service would be that unpopular, but perhaps I should have. Linden Lab?s Second Life has had issues creating a legitimate and sizable userbase outside it?s red light district.

The other popular service that was anything akin to what Lively had to offer was the immensely popular (and profitable) IMVU, which thrives off their always flirtatious, frequently risqu?, and occasionally obscene userbase.

Meanwhile, Lively promised to be all the fun of a virtual chat room with none of the ?benefits? offered by its competitors, promising to root out what I?ve always called the building blocks of the Internet:

I?ve said it before and I?ll say it again - the Internet has been built on two cornerstones: sex and hate. You?ll have griefers anywhere there?s a group of people, and if there?s anywhere that creativity?s encouraged, folks will use that creativity to come up with new ways to talk about, view, or engage in virtual sex.

As Eric Rice noted on FriendFeed last night, though, ?the top rooms on Lively right now: Sex, Gay, Sex, Goons, Brasil, Developer City, Caroline, Sex, Sex, Sex.?

It?s unfortunate that this technology wasn?t pushed a little bit further, as I think Google had a real opportunity to advance the future of what we see as ?the Internet experience? to new heights. Unfortunately, their goals simply didn?t align with their blue-sky methods, and it was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Yahoo! Glue Launches in America

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:06:40 GMT

Back in May, Yahoo launched a new variant of search entitled ?Glue,? something which combines news, images, videos, and other content from around the Web (and other Yahoo properties) along with traditional search results that link to web pages.

We just received word here at Mashable that Yahoo found the service so successful in their India test launch that they?re extending the product for inclusion in US search results off main Yahoo.com search queries.

They?re starting out with a limited set of search terms, pulling content from Wikipedia entries, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and news. It?s an interesting way to get at-a-glance update on who a particular new player in the news might be or for a quick briefing on what might be going on about a certain current event, very similar to the modus operandi over at Mahalo.

Links for 2008-11-18 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

The Social Organization: Women & Leadership Cont.
The Social Organization: You Can Count Your Money...and You Can Count Your Leads...
The real value of social software is that it helps develop and maintain closer relationships with more people than you could without it.
Why bother with Social Software? | Jon Mell - Web 2.0 ideas and strategy
Musing about the value of social software
RIP: ROI :: Blog :: Headshift
Veni Vidi Luxi » Beyond Enterprise 2.0 ROI, evaluation and management of knowledge in the workplace
Social software ROI | Jon Mell - Web 2.0 ideas and strategy
Whereas traditional IT supports business processes, social software helps you when the business process breaks. But you don?t necessarily know how often the process breaks, it?s not as predictable as number of invoices processed per month, or new clients signed up per week. You don?t know what benefits could be realised if Joe in Finance talked to Sarah in HR. It might be absolutely nothing. On the other hand it might fundamentally change the company for the better. Social software is a serendipity lubricant that increases the chances of valuable interactions occurring - but it makes no guarantee on their frequency or their value.
Web 2.0 to manage business process exceptions - another ROI | Jon Mell - Web 2.0 ideas and strategy
User Adoption « Infovark

HOW TO: Use Twitter For Social Bookmarking

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:44:35 GMT

Mashable reader Patrick de Laive over at Fleck, at the suggestion of our fearless leader Pete, put together a simple bookmarklet that posts URLs to Twitter (in a shortened form, of course) and then saves that tweet as an easy to find bookmark in your browser.

The tool, Fleck Lite, looks pretty slick and it doesn?t require an email address to use, and really simplifies the process of sharing cool stuff with your Twitter friends.

It?s pretty cool ? and a single page signup process. Give it a shot!

It?s Time For The Crunchies!

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:59:01 GMT

It's hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since we gave out those crazy gorilla awards to the best startup and product successes in Silicon Valley and around the world. Some of the photos from last year are here. The Crunchies are back. We are once again partnering with some of our favorite blogs - thank you to co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat (click the links for their announcements). Thanks as well to 1938 Media, our video production partner (see their first video below in the comments).

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:51:10 GMT

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Google Kills Lively

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:36:27 GMT

Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-baseed virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31, so we are adding Lively to the deadpool. Lively just never took off, and was extremely far afield for Google. We should have known something was up when we noticed that it didn't work with Google's own browser, Chrome. What else is being cut at Google?