flyingrose/internet

Using autoresponders is one of the (many) first things most online businesses should learn. This is an online workshop on how to use them.

From the page: "social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size. "The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded," says Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster. Despite their name, therefore, they do not benefit from the network effect. Already, social networks such as "aSmallWorld", an exclusive site for the rich and famous, are proliferating. Such networks recognise that people want to hobnob with a chosen few, not to be spammed by random friend-requests.

This suggests that the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph. Ning, a fast-growing company with offices directly across the street from Facebook in Palo Alto, is built around this idea. It lets users build their own social networks for each circle of friends.

So are Facebook and its graph really worth many billions? From an advertiser's point of view, says Rishad Tobaccowala, the boss of Denuo, the new-media unit of Publicis Groupe, an advertising company, Facebook is so far anything but the new Google. The search giant does have traditional network effects in its advertising system, he says: it aggregates advertisers and sends them to potential customers who have expressed specific intentions by typing search queries. But Facebook has only "large crowds who are communicating without expressing specific interests", says Mr Tobaccowala. On Google, advertisements are valued; on Facebook they are an annoyance that users ignore."

From the page: "there's no question in my mind that this integration is the tip of the iceberg. The outcomes are several:

1. Social networking applications will grow into a kind of "smart address book" that aggregates our knowledge about and contact with the people we care about.

2. The social network operating system will require interoperability between many applications that touch on our connections to other people, and our knowledge about them.

3. There will be many niches, ranging from managing contacts among a group of friends or people with common interests, or managing contacts among people at an event (a la Crowdvine), to mass scale outreach, and eventually, to a kind of CRM 2.0 for corporate outreach. (To this latter point, some people have compared MySpace to Facebook by saying that MySpace isn't really a social network so much as it's a way for bands to connect with their fans. But that's a great use-case for social networking, as MySpace's deal with Sony (announced earlier today) demonstrates. There will be many use cases! Don't get trapped into thinking that today's use cases represent an end point.)

Here's the meat of the announcement, from the press release: " (on the site) social-net

From the page: "Identify Open Ports on Your Internet Connection - your external address - 67.77.68.106 - open port finder"

Oh no...hacked already.

I recently mentioned that a friend of mine who happens to be a Canadian writer bought a new laptop and forwarded 230 email messages FROM HERSELF to three different email addresses TO HERSELF and after 72 hours only 173 ever arrived. That is a HUGE loss ratio. I will ask if any were g-mail related; however, I know that these issues are not ONLY with g-mail.

This is one of many pieces of clear evidence that I have seen that email is no longer reliable. I have no idea how many email messages have never reached their destination or me but I do know that every day some are not getting to me. I highly recommend that all correspondence be CLOSED-LOOP ONLY! What this means is that until you receive a REPLY assume the message may not have been received.

Most of us have never done this. Many relationships have been lost forever by assuming one thing when the other party never even received your message. If you have a Web site that is hosted on a shared server it can end up blacklisted very easily and prevent your email from being delivered. Because of the magnitude of SPAM, most servers are now configured to NOT even notify you when they send your emails to the "bit-bucket". (Bit-bucket is computer jargon for a trashcan).

There are services that are widely used by ISPs (Internet Service providers who host Web sites and provide Internet connections) that blacklist entire servers. You don't get notified. Your ISP doesn't necessarily get notified and even if they do they may not understand it and do nothing.

From the page: "The headers in the email show that this email was rejected purely by Google, and not the server of the recipient, which is typical of email delivery failure, so for instance when an email is rejected by AOL for whatever reason, e.g. a full mailbox, the message would come from the AOL Postmaster Mail Delivery Subsystem MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com
Spam Email Filtering At Source

I can understand why Gmail prevents the delivery of executable files via email, as that is heavily abused by people looking to hijack innocent people's computers, but preventing someone responding to a legitimate email enquiry using some poorly tested filter system is totally wrong.

It is down to the recipient as to whether they wish to receive email communication from someone, and not down to Google who or how you communicate with them, and what words you use.

Whilst many will argue that Gmail is a free service, so they can do what they like, they have millions of users who have accepted a "social contract" to use Gmail for free in exchange for viewing advertising along side their email."