Invitation to join a conversation & network via my Web site
05:18, 12 February 2009
.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt.. Link
You can use an online profile/account that you ALREADY have, via Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID, to network with others and to post messages on my web site. No need to create yet another online profile in order to participate! You can create an online conversation about whatever you read on my web site or here on my blog (what you are reading now) or a recent presentation I've made.
JOIN THE NETWORK & THE CONVERSATION
Some background on why & how I did this:
I don't think FaceBook and MySpace and other networking sites, in their current form, will sustain their popularity over the next five years. Yes, online networking will survive -- it will continue to flourish, because online networking is what the Internet has always been about (remember USENET?). But FaceBook and MySpace are just more sophisticated versions of the America Online universe from the 1990s -- the demise of AOL was the realization by users that the entire Internet was a lot bigger than the AOL platform. I've been saying for more than a year that, eventually, people will get tired of creating and maintaining lots of different online profiles -- whether for social or professional purposes -- and will eventually want just one that anyone can access and link to, regardless of the company behind it. You know, like a web site?
Google obviously agrees with me. They have created "Friend Connect", a free tool even a techno-idiot like me can add to a web site, allowing networking and online conversations not limited to just one web site or profile. It's an open and distributed approach that will allow anyone with a web site to add their own networking dimension to that site, and doesn't require users to create and maintain yet-another-online-profile.
On another note: Facebook has Facebook Connect, which allows you to display your FaceBook profile and activities via your web site, and the MySpace Data Availability offers even more flexibility than the FaceBook App (as least as far as I can tell). Both are good moves in the right direction, as users, more and more, want to consolidate their online activities and access to their information. If your nonprofit has a profile on FaceBook or MySpace, you most definitely should add these applications to your web site, so visitors can see your activities all in ONE place.
