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Social Networking

Another popular activity for teenagers and adults is creating a personal page on one of the many social networking web sites. Many sites offer this service but the most popular are www.MySpace.com andwww.Facebook.com. Each site basically provides the same experience but each has its individual characteristics along with rules and regulations. The way it works is users register and create a personal page called a profile on the site. Profiles can include pictures, personal information, opinions, online journals called blogs, music, videos and basically anything else a person feels represents them and their personality.

Users then browse other profiles looking for people with similar interests or locating people they went to school with etc. Once found, they make contact by requesting "friend status". When accepted, a link is created on each other's page to their new friend's page. Users commonly communicate through e-mail or chat services provided by the site as well. They also visit each other's page to leave messages and meet each other's friends and the social networking cycle continues into one big weblog community. The general rule of thumb is the more friends a user has the higher status they enjoy. With MySpace it displays the number of times it has been visited, which also reflects status.

Replacing the need for face-to-face interaction, social networking has become a new addiction for many who spend hours cruising through endless profiles making connections with old friends or making new ones. Many amateur musicians use this medium to reach their fans and provide music for download eliminating normal distribution costs and allowing the potential for a larger worldwide fan base.

As with anything involving the Internet there are dangers to consider with social networking. For starters, it creates a place for online predators to gather information. This is a concern especially with www.MySpace.comconsidering the number of teenagers who carelessly list personal information such as their full name, town, high school, and post pictures of their house or car. Some sites prevent unregistered users from viewing profiles while others like www.Facebook.com do not. The most popular site MySpace allows anyone to browse and view profiles although certain areas are restricted to unregistered users. Another area of concern with MySpace is the browse and search features allowing searches based on such criteria as body type, sexual orientation, smoker, drinker, and relationship status (i.e. Single, Married, In a Relationship, Divorced, Swinger). Some users also post risqué, nude and sexually suggestive pictures of themselves or others although MySpace has rules against it listed in the terms of use agreement. MySpace also restricts users under the age of fourteen from registering and having a profile. The method of age verification is determined by the birth date the user lists which is easily defeated. MySpace also states that anyone found to be underage might have their membership terminated and their profile removed.

In addition, www.MySpace.com has also made an attempt to crack down on predators by implementing restrictions for adults having access to underage user profiles. Although with no age verification adults can easily pose as the age group they are targeting. Many social networking web sites list safety tips for users to review and typically a safety link is available at the bottom of most webpages.

Social Networking profiles can be set to a private mode which only allows people to view it that have been accepted as a friend by the profile owner. This is default in www.Facebook.com. This prevents random users from viewing it and is a great safety feature for protection. All profiles should be set to private but keep in mind this prevents parents from viewing their child's profile as well unless they have a profile themselves and have been added as a friend.

MICROBLOGGING

Web sites such as www.Twitter.com have been quickly increasing in popularity for their microblogging ability. The act of microblogging basically allows a user to post small messages to an online profile which in turn is being monitored by other users of the service. Many celebrities are using Twitter to post "tweets" about their normal daily activities which provides fans with an insight to their life. Most tweets are done with cell phones as a user would text the information to the site which is then posted. Microblogging is not very popular with children or teens.

VIRTUAL WORLDS

When most people think of social networking they think ofwww.MySpace.com or www.Facebook.com. There is also a completely different type of social network infrastructure available now that has taken lessons from role playing games. Web sites such aswww.secondlife.com, www.kaneva.com, and www.gaiaonline.com offer a virtual world/community that allow users to create a character of themselves known as an "avatar." Once created, they roam through this online world and interact with other avatars. The avatars represent other people sitting at their computers doing the same thing. Avatars allow people to be whomever they want. Men can become women and vice versa. Older adults can build their avatar to be 16 years old. Basically in a virtual world anything goes and no one can prove otherwise.

This is very dangerous because when children and teens are involved in this type of virtual reality world they are literally blind to who they are dealing with. They are mixed into a virtual world interacting with adults and potentially some predators. There are also several adult areas in Second Life including "rape rooms."

There are also virtual worlds targeted to grade school children.Www.weeworld.com is one of those sites that allow very young children to make avatars referred to as a "wee mee." They use their avatar to play with other kids in the virtual world. A potential for danger is very prevalent in this world as well. Similar sites such as www.whyville.net andwww.clubpenguin.com offer a safer environment.

SOCIAL NETWORKING DANGERS• Adults use the site• Inappropriate language, nudity, alcohol use, sexually provocative images, etc.• Predators use it to gather information • No real method of age verification

• Some Social Networking services allow people to view profiles without logging on; therefore teenagers and young children can access it easily

SOCIAL NETWORKING DO'S AND DON'TS• Set profile to private• Read safety tips on all SN web sites• Ask teenager to show you their profile (all of them)• Discuss online privacy• No addresses, phone numbers, other identifiable information (license plate)• Once posted online it is there to stay

• No Web Cam

Facts about Social Networking Websites

As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally. Emergence of WEB 2.0 came with the concept of Social Network. The purpose of social networking is to CONNECT WITH PEOPLE on a very personal level.

Facebook Statistics:

• More than 300 million active users
• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day
• More than 900 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
• More than 2.5 million events created each month
• More than 35 million active user groups exist on the site
• Big brand names, like Ford, WholeFoods, Comcast, IBM, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and many, many more are establishing a strong presence on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook.
• Facebook membership has just passed the 300 million mark (that’s nearly the population of USA!) and Twitter is marching towards 18 million users by year’s end! That’s a lot of potential customers!
• Although, started with college kids in mind, over 50% of Facebook’s members now are over 25 years old, over 55% are women (the new buying power), 51% have an annual income of $75K, with 33% claiming to bring home $100K or more.
• Finally, Facebook has become one of the most trusted companies in America, and people spend three times more time there than on Google!

Social Networking Websites Statistics:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
• Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia (note that Facebook is now creeping up – recently announced 300 million users)
• Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
• comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
• % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the population of Ireland, Norway, or Panama. Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
• 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
• The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
• Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
• If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
• Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Only 14% trust advertisements
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
• Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
• According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
• Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
• Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregates, and content providers than traditional advertiser

Cost of building a social network site drops to near zero

PLENTY of firms are trying to profit from the gold rush towards so-called social networking sites after the success -or at least popularity- of Facebook, Linkedin, Hi5, and other such sites. And the cost of entry for new players is getting lower all the time.

Facebook may be one of the fastest-growing social network sites, but its technology is far from unique. Besides the existing entrenched competitors, small software firms are also selling scripts that allow anyone to start a Facebook look-alike site for three-digit figures. Of course, those new sites do not have the third-party applications nor any significant number of users when they start up, but those also help dilute the novelty appeal of the concept. Consider webmail: at one point all webmails were the same, until Google came along and reinvented the concept with its GMail.

And now, even Open Source software is getting into the game of offering anyone the ability to create their own social network. All bad news for Facebook which will continue to see competing sites mushrooming. In short, its underlying technology is not unique and, being a web service in the "cloud", can be easily copied. Copycat sites are appearing all over the place and targeting different market niches, whereas Facebook positions itself as the "one size fits all" of social networks.

A firm from India sells a script to run your own "face book" site for £210. Now Open Source software is offering similar abilities to create social network sites.

For instance, there's a handful of popular Facebook clones in operation in China, and those have been in operation for a long time, even before Facebook landed with its own site. About six months ago there was a good comparison of existing Facebook clones published over here.

In Russia, Facebook had to face Vkontakte, the locally-developed, Russian language social network site when it decided to land in the country with a Russian-language Facebook last year. And in Germany there was StudiVZ, sued by Facebook as it claimed it was a "counterfeit product" due to the similar look and feel.

But while most of the high-end Facebook clones already in operation were likely developed in-house, last year we saw plenty of small outfits trying to profit from the social networking gold rush by selling turnkey solutions - scripts written in PHP or other server side languages - for around $500 or even less. These allow anyone with a hosting account or server to create his own basic Facebook copycat. Of course, without the complexity and array of features of the real one - much less the user base.

What shocked this scribbler however is the sheer number of people who continue trying to create their own social network web site from scratch by hiring freelance programmers, and hoping to hit gold as if there were not enough Hi5s, LinkedIns and Facebooks in the webosphere already - see here or here. Of course, the availability of lots of search engines didn't stop a pair of clever guys from creating Google. But we can't help but think there's a bubble of sorts in this social network sites craze.

The only apparent reasons to start coding a new Facebook clone site from scratch seem to be, (a) if you have revolutionary ideas for new features -in other words you want to create the Facebook killer that doesn't resemble any of the existing sites. Or (b), you want to target a special market niche which requires special needs. For the rest, the small shops offering ready-made turnkey solutions can be enough to have a Facebookalike site up and running in a matter of hours or days rather than months. Why would anyone want to run a social site, well, that's a different question. Unless of course you have a very specific market niche.

Some commercial FB clone offerings
One such piece of code that claims to offer a "face book clone" - notice the very wise wording and spacing :) - is dubbed Kootali and sold by "Agriya info way" a firm from Chennai, India. The firm is selling its server side application for $297, £210 or €232 and for that you get "99.9% source code", whatever that missing 0.1 per cent means.

Another company that has been offering for quite some time its own social networking software "like Facebook" calls it "SocialGroupie" and it sells for $490, £345 or €384.

The CMS approach
Others build a "facebook clone" on top of existing Content Management System (CMS) back end software, like the popular Drupal. One such scripts is dubbed "Kickwork", and is listed over here. Ebizon charges between $900 and $3000 per project for customization.

Open Source enters the picture
And as if all this wasn't enough, and the barrier of entry wasn't already low enough with £200 scripts from India, there's now Joomunity described as "a facebook clone for Joomla" in other words, a community site and social network built on top of the popular Joomla CMS.

Joomunity, of which version 1.1.0 beta3 has been released two weeks ago is GNU/GPL Free Software, with no licence fees and all source code available for you to hack. Find it over here.

As some have noted, except for the use of the Facebook name, there's very little Facebook can do to sue copycat sites, unless they make an exact copy of the HTML or bitmaps, you don't have many chances of winning a trial on the U.S. on the grounds of user interface look and feel, at least after the landmark Lotus vs. Borland legal case.

So what are you waiting for? There is certainly room on the Net for a thousand more Facebook clones. Or is there? In any case, this scribbler hopes the open source project thrives and kills all the cheap for-profit knock-offs.

Connecting the Social Graph: Member Overlap at OpenSocial and Facebook

OpenSocial is a Google-led initiative to get into social networking (in a bigger way than Orkut) and, purportedly, to create "open standards" so users can access their data on any social network. The project is still taking shape, but it looks like it will give users access to widgets across a bunch of social networks, at least as a first phase.

Looking at the OpenSocial coalition of social networks, some, like LinkedIn, clearly fall into the professional branches of the "social graph" or that virtual map of all our relationships. Other social networks, like Friendster are much more personal in nature.

Facebook, though not in OpenSocial, may be the only social network to have criss-crossed professional and personal boundaries, at least among internet professionals. Lastly, the family branch of the social graph, can be found on sites like Ancestry.com.

As developers think about connecting the disparate branches of the social graph, either through widget access, personal data portability or an aggregator for easy management, Compete asks, "How do the user communities of the social graph overlap today?"

This chart shows the members of any 2 social networks as a percentage of the members of the social network in the purple row. So, for instance, 20% of MySpace members are also Facebook members.

• Meanwhile, 64% of Facebook members also belong to MySpace. This asymmetry makes sense when you consider MySpace has nearly 3x the unique visitors of Facebook and a few years head start.
• Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster all share more than 49% of their members with MySpace.
• Plaxo, Salesforce and Viadeo share more members with LinkedIn (the largest professional social network by 4x) than with either MySpace or Facebook.
• LinkedIn shares 42% of its members with Facebook and 32% with MySpace.
• Ning, which lets users customize their own social networks, has greater overlap with both MySpace and Facebook than with LinkedIn.

We can see the social graph, as it is online today, consists of mainly personal relationships, though a large group of users belong exclusively to professional social networks and many belong to both. A collective solution to bringing the entire social graph online might do well to take a closer look at the particular needs of this early adoption crossover group.

Worlds Most Dangerous Plants & Deadliest Plants on the Earth

Over millions of years, plants have developed some crafty ways to fend off hungry animals. Deadly neurotoxins, thorns capable of puncturing car tires, and powerful digestive enzymes are just a few. Following the recent discovery of Nepenthes attenboroughii, a giant pitcher plant large enough to digest rodents, PM tracked down poison-plant aficionado Amy Stewart to discuss some of the world's deadliest plants. Stewart, who is the author of Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities, lives in Eureka, Calif., where she tends a garden that contains more than 30 different species of poisonous plants.

1. Most likely to eat a rat

Giant Pitcher Plant: Nepenthes attenboroughii

Discovered more than 5000 feet above sea level on Mount Victoria in the Philippines, the giant, carnivorous pitcher plant secretes a nectar-like substance to lure unsuspecting prey into a pool of enzymes and acid. A series of sticky, downward ribs makes it nearly impossible for trapped prey to escape. The plant's 30-centimeter diameter is large enough to trap unlucky rodents, but insects are its most common meal. Pitcher plants, of which there are about 600 different species, tend to grow in nitrogen-deficient environments, and therefore get their nutrients from decaying victims.

2. Most likely to be in your garden now

Castor Bean Plant: Ricinus communis

Castor-bean plants can be purchased at just about any garden center, despite containing the deadly poison ricin. Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and poisonous plant expert, has an affinity for the plant and grows several in her poison garden. Concerned gardeners can simply pluck the seeds off the plant, Stewart says, which is where the ricin is stored. Though the process to extract enough ricin and process it into a weapon is complex, Las Vegas authorities have discovered the toxin in a hotel room in February 2008, and the KGB used it to permanently silence opposition.

3. Most violently toxic plant in North America

Western Water Hemlock: Cicuta douglasii

Deemed the most "violently toxic plant that grows in North America" by the USDA, the water hemlock contains the toxin cicutoxin, which wreaks havoc on the central nervous system, causing grand mal seizures--which include loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions--and eventually death, if ingested. Water hemlock is different from poison hemlock, Socrates' notorious killer, in that it contains coniine alkaloids that kill by paralyzing the respiratory system. Both are members of the carrot family.

4. The plant that killed a president's mother

White snakeroot: Eupatorium rugosum

Drinking milk from a cow that decided to chow down on white snakeroot could lead to deadly milk sickness, as was the case with Abraham Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks. Every part of this perennial plant contains tremetol, an unsaturated alcohol that can cause muscle tremors in livestock before killing them. "People were trying desperately throughout the 19th century to figure out what was poisoning their animals," Stewart says. It wasn't understood until the turn of the century, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture pinpointed the cause and quickly got the word out. Now, white snakeroot still grows wild, but more control in the agricultural industry has helped to prevent cows from eating it.

5. The best plant to murder a dinner guest with

Monkshood: Aconitum napellus

Stewart was once asked what the best plant would be to murder a dinner guest with--after much deliberation she landed on monkshood. "You could just chop up the roots and make a stew," she says. "You don't need a chemistry plant to do it." The vibrant purple plant, commonly found in backyard gardens, is loaded with the poisonous alkaloid aconite, which tends to cause asphyxiation. While Stewart is certainly joking about cooking up a batch of monkshood stew, she urges anyone who has the plant in their garden to wear gloves when handling it.

6. Most gruesome killer

Common Bladderwort: Utricularia macrorhiza

This aquatic meat eater relies on several submerged bladders to capture prey such as tadpoles and small crustaceans. An unsuspecting passerby will brush against an external bristle-trigger, causing the bladders to spring open and capture it. Once inside, the victim dies of suffocation or starvation and then decays into a liquid that is sucked up by cells on the walls of the bladder.

7. Most animal-like

Venus flytrap Plant: Dionaea muscipula

With the ability to clamp shut in a half-second, the Venus flytrap's reaction time seems fit for the animal kingdom. Insects need to touch two of the flytrap's hairs consecutively in order for the plant to react, but the precise mechanism that shuts the trap remains unclear. The Botanical Society of America notes that early theories suggested that a sudden change in the water pressure of cells triggered the response, but this theory has since been abandoned. It now seems that when the plant is touched, the electrical potential of the leaf is altered, triggering a host of cellular-level events.

8. The most likely plant to turn a person into a zombie

Angel Trumpet: Brugmansia

The droopy, gorgeous angel trumpet, native to regions of South America, packs a powerful punch of toxins, containing atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine. As documented in the 2007 VBS.tv documentary "Colombian Devil's Breath," criminals in Colombia have extracted scopolamine from the plant and used it as a potent drug that leaves victims unaware of what they are doing but entirely conscious. Scopolamine can be absorbed through the skin and mucous membranes, allowing criminals to simply blow the powder in a person's face. The documentary is filled with scopolamine-related horror stories, including one account of a man moving all of his possessions out of his apartment (and into the hands of his robbers) without remembering any of it.

9. The most enticing poison

Oleander: Nerium oleander

This extremely common evergreen shrub is one of the most poisonous plants in the world. "If I were a parent and covering every electrical outlet in the home to protect the kids, I would really have to ask myself why I had an oleander plant growing," Stewart says. The leaves, flowers and fruit contain cardiac glycosides, which have therapeutic applications but are likely to send someone into cardiac arrest should he eat part of the plant. Stewart points out that there is a woman in California currently on death row for trying to poison her husband with the plant, and two young boys were found dead after ingesting oleander a few years back. "People tend to be blasé, because the flowers are bright and pretty, sort of candy-colored. But it is a very poisonous plant that will stop your heart."

10. Best home-security system

Mala Mujer: Cnidoscolus angustidens

Stewart describes this garden plant as more painful than poisonous. Mala mujer, which translates to "bad woman," can be found in parts of the southwest and Mexico and is covered with nasty thorns, which could be turned into makeshift barbwire if needed. The real danger, however, comes from the caustic, milky sap that can leak from the plant. The sap, a common feature among many plants in the Euphorbia genus, can cause painful skin irritations and unsightly discoloration. "I've had several people tell me they had euphorbia saps in their eyes," Stewart says. "And they had pretty surprisingly long-term eye damage."