Social Networks for Babies

How does everyone feel about having your kid on a social network specifically for babies? Cause there are apparently a good several Web sites available. My favorite from the ones I saw was Totspot. You can put up pictures, fill in milestones they accomplish, videos, document their first words.. it's like a journal for your baby. I personally love it. I would just make sure my profile was private, obviously. I think things like this are so fun and I would probably be more likely to document more on my child's special events and monumental moments.

For more conversation on this subject, check out the New York Times article and ParentDish.

MySpace Music: News Corporation and Major Music Companies Combine

A joint project is launching with Myspace (owned by News Corporation) and major music companies like Sony and the Warner Music Group. It's called MySpace Music - taking over their old way of music.myspace.com. MySpace users can create a 10-song jukebox for free, picking from millions of songs. And of course, the question is: How are they going to make money? Well, advertisements like most other things. In addition, users can buy any of the songs in the system through Amazon.com if they want to move the music off of their computer. I think this is so great! Hopefully it will help the music business remake some of the money they have been losing in recent years. One day this online stuff has got to start paying the music business back. That would at least be fair. We will see, though! And now we have tons of songs on MySpace to pick from. The rest of this story can be found in the New York Times.

Too Social on Social Networks

Who would've thought that you could be too social on a social network? Turns out, according to an article in the Washington Post, a girl named Elizabeth Coe was taken off Facebook after sending a message to 100 of her friends. Apparently, she was informing them of where she works now and sending them a link. Facebook took this as spam and decided to take her off of the site.

I thought this was interesting because over the summer when I was interning at the Georgia Aquarium, the same thing happened to us. I was helping them launch their social media campaign. We decided to create a Facebook page for them, replacing their profile that they had already created. We were trying to bring all of their friends they had already made on Facebook and move them to being "fans" on their Facebook "page." So, we had to message all 500 of their friends. In result, the Georgia Aquarium was taken off Facebook as well. Now, you can e-mail Facebook and once you explain what you were doing they will return your page to you. For us, it didn't take long to get it fixed but for Elizabeth, apparently it took her three months to get her profile restored.

I don't know what I think about this. I like that they are trying so hard to keep spammers out of Facebook. But at the same time, Facebook is primarily for socializing, and it is frustrating when something like that can cause you to be taken off the site completely. I will eventually be planning my high school reunion and we were definitely planning on using Facebook. Now, I am going to be nervous about getting my whole profile deleted. I guess we will see...

Tennis Tournaments Utilizing Online Tools

I am a big tennis fan as well as a big social media fan and this summer has been a lot of fun getting to mix the two. It first started with Wimbledon, which is one of the grand slam tournaments in London, and they had someone blogging constantly about the matches in progress. So, I could get a minute-by-minute update on what was going on. It felt like I was there and I LOVED having that option to hear about every little thing that was going on so I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Now, with the U.S. Open going on currently, I checked their web site and found a bunch of new additions there as well. For example, they have a "Fanbook" section where people can add comments about anything from cheering on their favorite player to just commenting on the tournament in general. This makes the website more personal to it's visitors. Also, they have a widget that you can add to Facebook, Myspace, or iGoogle. This gives you the opportunity to have constant updates on your own personal site. Love it. I think it's really neat that everyone is starting to use all these different tools to make a more friendly and personal environment for their audience on their web sites.