Pandora Squared - Web and Business Architects, Consultants, Social Media Marketing, Software and Blogging hope not hype

Fox Interactive Media netted news aggregator Newroo, karaoke site ksolo and job search site Simply Hired in its latest web shopping spree.

This is a good precedent for the merging of traditional media not only with the internet, but with the web as people see and use today, and offers a number of possibilities for content convergence and multi-channel delivery of studio-produced and user-generated content.

“Fox Interactive Media’s acquisitions of Newroo and kSolo demonstrate our commitment to empowering users with interesting tools that they can use to further enhance their online experience and online identity,” said Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, in a press announcement. “The acquisitions further validate FIM’s ability to unearth early-stage, technically savvy Web 2.0 companies led by entrepreneurial, forward-thinking management teams.”

Just how “interesting” are these latest acquisitions? For a starter, kSolo lets a registered user record a music track accompanied by karaoke background, thus providing any budding singer or hobbyist a tool to show one’s musical talent (or the lack thereof). This recorded track can become the member’s ticket to fame within the kSolo community as she shares the recording with other members who may in turn vote for her performance. The site’s homepage shows the site’s most popular members.

Newroo easily enables a person to create web pages with a tool that puts together aggregated content from third-party news sites and blogs. More than a news aggregator, Newroo supports the user’s creativity with a webpage creation app and a content aggregator.

Simply Hired is a job search engine which aims to “[build] the largest online database of jobs on the planet.” Companies can easily post job ads upon free registration.

The symbiotic relationship between traditional media and the new web built on user-generated content and social networking is taking shape, as exemplified by FIM’s newly acquired web real estates. While the formula is still in its “beta” stage, it is interesting to note that the web services and platforms complement the content produced both through News Corp.’s networks and its web properties.

Karaoke tracks produced on kSolo can be easily posted on users’ profiles at MySpace, the most-trafficked property, or aggregated and shared on Newroo. Headhunters can use MySpace and Simply Hired as points of reference in reviewing an applicants’ eligibility.

Notwithstanding the barrage of American Idol wannabes that may post an endless stream of videos and karaoke submissions, the more important aspect of this website purchasing project is the way Fox brings together traditional media and its emerging counterparts. TV studios, with their rich collection of content have a new channel through which they can reach audiences who are increasingly tuning out of the boob tube and actively ignoring advertisements.

Aside from MySpace and the three newest web acquisitions, FIM also owns the online men’s magazine AskMen, interactive gaming site IGN, among others. These increasingly popular web channels are poised to meld with content provided by Fox TV networks and even the movie outfit 20th Century Fox. The company’s Idol on Fox now allows users to create fan pages for their bets on the hit TV show which earns 40 million viewership every week.

Any media firm that takes the path of News Corp. demonstrates a good understanding of the commercial viability of the web as a content delivery and advertising generation platform. And while MySpace is still to produce the advertising dollars that its owner hopes to recover, the fact that it has so far generated 70 million registered users may just be a good starting point for capturing the ever-elusive youth market.

Technorati tags: Fox, News Corp., Myspace, kSolo, acquisition

StyleHive: Social bookmarking for the product and shopping obsessed.

eBay is Walmart as StyleHive is to Marks&Spencer

Okay, maybe not a good comparison, but close. I’ve been a regular eBayer – both as a seller and buyer – and so when I saw StyleHive – I go like – OMG! OMG! I just went gaga. Literally.

StyleHive is a social bookmarking site of … titillating … products scattered all over the cyberworld. Stylehive is about the excitement of finding and sharing fresh new things on the net.

Each product submitted by the members undergo screening by the editors. This may seem to defeat the purpose of online community concept and user-generated content, but this, in fact just adds spice to StyleHive. Think of a cozy village store full of one-of-a-kind treasures.

But the site does not look like any village store. In fact, it may resemble more like a top-of-the-line shopping boutique – Louis Vuitton perhaps?

The site is an epitome of a web 2.0 site.

Clean.

Simple.

Elegant.

StyleHive CEO Michael Carrier believes that design matters, and mostly that it is not about how many features you have but having as few of the right features as possible. (We)They constantly are striving to remove things that aren’t needed rather than add them.

What StyleHive was able to use effectively was social bookmarking. Carrier firmly believes that bookmarking sites like the Stylehive are here to stay and will become part of the Internet application world, the same way email, search and chat have all before it. Bookmarking in a social context will become as natural as email eventually. It will be the method through which we collaborate and seek out shopping recommendations from others.

On web 2.0 and bookmarking, Carrier leaves this wisdom:

The web 2.0 movement is a small part of a larger destiny for the net, where just having connection to it gives you everything you need.

Tag. Search. Sea of Information. Bingo! The power of tagging.

Image courtesy of zenzenok

After being out of circulation for a couple of days, I couldn’t wait to log on to the net and browsemy feeds. One of the feeds that caught my attention was a blog post by Jeremy Geelan of Sys-Con Australia dated May 3, 2006:

Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream

On Monday, March 27, newspapers started displaying the April 3 issue of Newsweek with its cover story about Web 2.0.

What struck me about this idea is how late mainstream media had caught on the web2.0 bandwagon. By the time Newsweek talked about “the living web”, the subject was already old news. The flip-side of the story, though, is that when mainstream media starts talking about web2.0, it is when it has reached – and perhaps passed – the tipping point. I can’t agree more with Mr. Geelan:

When newsstands throughout America…started displaying the April 3 issue of Newsweek with its cover story about “Web 2.0” – “Putting the ‘We’ in Web” – it seems to me that we have reached one of Malcolm Gladwell’s now-famous Tipping Point..

The Tipping Point is defined in Malcolm Gladwell’s book of the same title as:

”...that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

Jeremy Geelan believes that web 2.0 has reached its tipping point primarily because it is now mainstream:

What’s the tipping point, you ask? Well, for me – and for plenty of others, it seems – what’s special/unusual is that Newsweek, a mainstream publication, deems “Web 2.0” worthy not just of an in-depth article but also of an in-depth article that it puts on its cover. It means that the notion of a “live Web” is getting prime time, along with the terminology of Web 2.0 like “tagging,” “mash-ups,” “collective intelligence,” and “social media.”

Tim O’Reilly first popularized the term “Web2.0” in September of 2005 in an article What is Web2.0 which roughly defined the new model as the rebirth of the web that puts the user at the center of the development cycle and innovation, and harnesses the collective intelligence of users in delivering web-enabled services.

Although some key features of web 2.0 such as syndication and web service APIs have been around as early as 1997, and O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International started brainstorming about the web 2.0 concept as early as October 2004, the term Web 2.0 wasn’t coined until the “O’Reilly Conference in September 2005.

Not discounting this important new approach to doing business on the web and through the web, what needs to gain momentum are web2.0-inspired applications and ideas that promote human welfare and social development. The most important question to ask after “What is web2.0?” is “Of what use is web2.0?” Otherwise, it is just another empty buzzword.

Global digital divide is narrowing, says study.

This is the first time we see a level playing-field between developed and developing nations, in terms of connectivity.

Indian women check emails and browse the Web at an e-learing center in Malappuram.

The annual “e-readiness” study, published by IBM and the intelligence unit of The Economist, noted: Encouraging is the apparent narrowing of the digital divide.

The study also found that this is particularly evident in basic connectivity: emerging markets are providing the vast majority of the world’s new phone and internet connections.

Peter Korsten, European director at IBM’s Institute for Business Value. It’s up to governments to take advantage with education and other initiatives.

Creating a social software specifically for social development programs is one avenue that is worth looking into. The are several foreign assisted projects being implement and/or has been implemented in third world countries like ENRAP and Intersard. These projects, however, has to reach out to its target beneficiaries, the grassroots communities, to be more effective. Can social software address this? Joel Yuvienco has started looking into this.

Philippines

with the recently concluded web 2.0 training workshop, our company had to catch up on its internal operations and meet deadlines. we’ve had enough time to bond… not just as a business team but as a family… in fact, i think im still hungover from the team building activities we’ve had… :) whew!

but seriously, integrating human element into our virtual office and the relationship we have developed now is what enables our company to move ahead and getting things done, rather than just yakking on and on about web 2.0. so as nike would say it, JUST DO IT. there’s just too many yakkers out there. it’s time somebody DO something and bring forward the essence of web 2.0. and that is

ENABLING, EMPOWERING AND ENRICHING LIVES.

and for now, that mission has also started here in the philippines. we started with the web 2.0 training workshop.

the 2nd iBlog summit and davao city councilor peter lavina’s participatory governance shows that filipinos are starting to acknowledge the powers of blogging. several filipinos have also made social communities like luis buenaventura of www.gibbity.com, www.oks.ph, www.highfiber.org, and www.filmcrowd.com, jason banico’s funchain and if there’s somebody i missed please feel free to add to this…

all these simply shows the filipinos’ ability in adapting new technologies and if harnessed to its full potentials, the philippines, does indeed, have a shot at becoming the center for software development and training hub in asia.

one of the gaps identified that needs to be addressed to is the lack of capability building opportunities for our local IT people. and conducting this training provided an insight as to what our developers really need.

enablement.

through

education.

a little push will go a long way. after three days of interaction, i realized by enabling our local IT guys, the philippines will not only emerge as asia’s IT hub for software and training development but the world as well. these guys that attended the training have fantastic ideas that if nurtured, will scare the hell out of those nerds and so-called innovators at san francisco and silicon valley. and we will make sure the nurturing process continues.

after the training was the pinoy web 2.0 chikahan. and we met some guys who, until the chikahan, we have been communicating with online. guys that are quitely making their own mark in the industry. and talking to them in person reinforced what i realized at the training.

and our hope for the philippines emerging as a leader in IT development is not just a dream. it is becoming true. and this is just a start.

I keep forgetting to begin my campaign.

You see I have met the enemy face to face…and its not Google, not Microsoft, it is Yahoo and those who think like them.

That is right:

We have decided that Yahoo is the enemy.

That is right. They suck. They are arrogant and they have done their best to KILL the innovation and do it yourself values of Web 2.0

We keep planning on launching some sort of Manifesto against the Yahooligans but we are too busy you know building and doing what others are talking about.

No we are not being cocky, we are just tired of seeing so many people (like some AUSSIES we know and bad ass coding and innovating Pinoys insert name here ) with so many brilliant ideas and executions, who just so happen to be doing great work and not calling their work trendy Web 2.0…(okay guys great work but…for the love of God you gotta kill that oz web2 crew thing its lame its like wearing an ugly shirt that no one tells you not too…feel free to tell me when I am naked too.)

these same ninja class of people are not involved with the Nor Cal/circuit/nch cliques standing around drinking each others kool aide. (ok cold Sierra is never a bad thing)

But really…Yahoo sucks the big two point 0h.

A lot of people who work hard to produce value- and you know what? Let us start promoting the market to reward value created. And it aint all living in Northern California folks.

I mean READ THIS! We should be in the streets…but again we are busy working...

Henceforth, “Yahoo!” will be synonymous with “Web 2.0.”

Not just an April Fools the Yahooligans, Murdoch and ilk…are not kidding. That is the scary part and they ARE THE death of innovation

So…Okay, lets keep the innovating Bala’s of this world, keep coding late at night, lets keep DOING…

Many think getting purchased is some sort of business strategy. You can find them all over at the “Innovation crunch things.”

yep. Drinking each others comfortable kool aide.

Its hot and sweaty in Manila and we took a lot of risks to our small startup to be able to do this training, and just like many other geeks who are all over the world…

we would have it no other way.

Salamat Po.

One of the greatest points of the training at the The National Defense College of the Philippines was that we used our social software engine as a live collaboration tool, allowing each member of the class to Visually See each classmate- interact- blog, email, and store their notes on their private wiki.

This was our first major event where we used the engine as a tool for collaberation. I have to say it performed flawlessly.

So you can see how we used it even in our request for feedback…

This is my cut and paste of the Genesis Engine CSS and HTML – Will this work? will I think of myself as the coolest? or will this violate some sacred CSS law – I don’t know about… will I break the HTML again.

Go on… Check out PinoyWeb2 for yourself. Play with it… see how you might possibly be able to enable your own organisation…

peachyherrin said 7 days ago:

TRAINING EVALUATION

as a final process, we want you to write a blog post and rate the training as to the following:

1. resource persons
2. mastery of the subject matter
3. communications abilitiy
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise
5. relevance of the topic
6. rapport with students
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities
8. training course content/relevance
9. expectations – were they met? if not, what needs to be done to

allanctan said 6 days ago:

My Feedback

1. resource persons 5 – You guys are cool!!! Manila, let’s rock the world!
2. mastery of the subject matter 5- Kevin, Hans and Hunter have their own specialized area of expertise and blends very well. Peachy provides good user feedback.
3. communications abilitiy 4 – Not a problem. Equipment was distractive.
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise 5 – Looks cool and authoritative. :)
5. relevance of the topic 5 – Exactly what I expected.
6. rapport with students 5 – couldn’t be better.
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities 4 – good food, lots of pictures, kinda hot and poor audio.
8. training course content/relevance 3 – The outline was not clear. It kept on changing until the actual training day. (e.g. group activity, order of topics). Also, the time was loose… would be better to specify exact start-end time with specific topic.
9. expectations – were they met? if not, what needs to be done to 5 – Exactly what I expected.

peachyherrin said 6 days ago:

training evaluation

thanks allan. will keep that in mind and we really appreciate your feedback/s. helps us do better next time. see each other soon. :)

rhodyl said 5 days ago:

my rating

1. resource persons – 5:talented tutors
2. mastery of the subject matter – 5:all ninjas on different ares of expertise
3. communications ability – 4 :just right sometimes fast
4. over all appearance, confidence and poise – 5:well poised, very confident, nice apprerance
5. relevance of the topic – 5 :Super
6. rapport with students – 5 :Super again
7. physical arrangement/venue/facilities – 3 :hot, not so good sound system but delicious food, i like the coffee
8. training course content/relevance – 3 : time management is lacking
9. expectations – 5:just what i expected

peachyherrin said 5 days ago:

training evaluation

thanks rhodyl. hope you can re-echo what youve learned to your school. and we will be fine tuning our course outline – for developers and separate one for non-developers

Whenthesongbirdsings said 3 days ago:

Manila Web 2.0 Training Review

Here’s a long-ish evaluation of the training, which I hope you guys will find helpful. Sorry for the bit of delay. Just having a looooot of catching up to do outside web2.0.

EVALUATION OF PINOY WEB2.0 TRAINING – MANILA

1. Resource Persons

a. Kevin – Kevin as Pandora Squared’s Chief Courage Officer is the best person to give an overview of Web2.0 to the participants. His strengths play up to the requirements of being a motivator, such as his working knowledge of web2, his ability to articulate ideas in a way that ordinary people will understand and his academic approach to the strategy by sharing his knowledge sources.

b. Hans – I missed Hans’ session for search. It was in fact the part of the training that I was most looking forward to learn about since part of my current job is SEO and SEM. Hans is open to questions about search, and he answered my queries about the topic even at the “chikahan” session of the training.

c. Hunter — Sad to say, Hunter is the last person whose area of expertise I could relate to because I am not a developer. But by observing the RoR session, there is so much to be learned from this geek

2. Mastery of Subject Matter

a. Kevin – The most obvious guru in web2.0, the person among the three trainers who presents the bigger picture of the subject. His mastery of the subject comes from three areas: Communication, Sociology and Marketing, which he combines with network technology to enable him to deliver his knowledge to the intended audience.

b. Hans – Pandora Squared’s Search Guy. As I have stated, I missed his search session, but his training on Google Adwords proved helpful. It was only too bad that there wasn’t time at all for touching up onYahoo Publishers Network. I have been studying Google—the company and its technologies—for a couple of months now, and will soon focus on Yahoo!. Therfore, an introductory overview of what the next biggest search engine offers would have been much appreciated.

c. Hunter – Pandora’s Tech Guy to my opinion. I can’t make an objective review of how well he knows his stuff, but it was apparent that he established rapport with the developers among the participants. Not only is he open to questions from fellow developers but actually invites discussions about RoR.

3. Communications Ability

a. Excluding the fact that the ability to speak in English is a mark of a person’s communication skills in Philippine context, the trainers were able to communicate their ideas pretty well to the participants because of their knowledge of the respective subjects that they discussed. There were times when I had to ask them to restate their questions or instructions because the microphones were not working properly. I would like to suggest, however, that they speak a little slower next time.

4. Overall Appearance, Confidence and Poise

a. Granted that the training was an informal one as most tech- or web-related training-seminars go, there was no need to dress up too formally for the occasion. The trainers who donned on corporate (Kevin most of the time) to smart casual (Hans and Hunter) attires commanded respect on the strength of their knowledge of their respective topics and rapport with the jeans-clad participants. I assume that we participants already knew that it would be an informal but very informative training right from the very beginning so we dressed for the occasion as we would for our daily jobs.

b. As far as poise and confidence go, I think that Hunter will benefit from doing exercises in public speaking (uh-oh…Hunt, don’t kill me!). While he’s the guy who speaks most clearly (could it be the accent?), he seems too shy to stand in front of a dozen and a half wide-eyed web2.0 enthusiasts.

5. Topic Relevance

a. Not sure if by topic relevance, it means the relevance of the entire training to the participants. To me, it is. I have been reading up on Web2.0 since October last year while preparing a business plan for a website. I think that web2.0—both the enabling technologies and as a business and marketing approach—is more relevant now than ever. From a personal perspective, I feel that now I am given a platform from which I could share to the public my messages. As web marketer, web2.0 is an approach which enables me to communicate about products and services, and research about what my end-users want, cost-effectively on a global basis. Whereas I used to feel disenfranchised by traditional media who think less of the normal citizen who may or may not have a valuable opinion, web2.0 empowers me to communicate and gives me new options for pursuing my interests.

6. Rapport with students

a. There is no doubt that in spite of the cultural differences, everyone at Pandora Squared established rapport with the participants. This is a testament to what the group promotes: it does not matter who you are or where you are, as long as you have something of value to share, people will listen.

b. Keep up the PinoyWeb2 site because this is where the participants should converge to discuss ideas, share updates about web2.0-related developments and provide knowledge and information related to their interests. The site is an essential ground to establish Pandora Squared’s relationship with current and future clients. It is also important for individual members of the team to be in touch through the site and start discussions and topics that people will talk about.

7. Venue and Facilities

a. The sound system also needed a lot of improvements. Mics should be replaced. In some events I’ve attended, there were mic stands at the back of the training room for people at the other end of the room to use for asking questions.

b. Computer and Internet worked okay. Internet was reliable.

c. Camp Aguinaldo is accessible although one needed to walk from the gate to reach NDCP. It is still a very good training venue and the staff is very friendly.

8. Training Design

a. My understanding is that the purpose of this training is to present Web2.0 as an enabler. I think that a more effective strategy in conducting a web2.0 seminar is to create specific trainings for specific groups. Most of the audiences are developers and so they see the topic from a different point of view. Most of them looked forward more to the RoR training than social networking, and that was only natural for people who are in their line of interest or work.

b. I suggest that there be follow-up trainings on individual topics that we touched on: Search Engine Marketing, Social Networking/Computing, Web2.0 as a business strategy, RoR for developers at various levels, Usability. I haven’t heard of any trainings related to these topics conducted in the Philippines and Pandora Squared had better work on it soon. Better establish Pandora Squared’s presence on each of these areas if the company wishes to gain more ground in the Philippines.

9. Expectations

a. Not sure if expectations were set at the very start of the training because I missed the morning session of April 17 when Web2.0 overview was supposed to be discussed briefly. In my past training experiences, trainers asked for expectations from the participants (sometimes along with their own suggestions) at the start of the training. At the end of the training, both trainers and trainees check if their expectations were met.

10. Use of visuals and other training aids

a. The use of internet helped a lot in training delivery since most of the topics are web-based. On the other hand, there should have been a few other materials provided to the trainees, such as schedules, training outlines, and resources, print outs of reading materials such as book pages, web articles, web addresses that we could access after the end of the training.

b. On top of web-supported hands-on exercises and discussions, a PowerPoint presentation would definitely have helped in further explaining web2.0, search, social networks and RoR. PowerPoint presentations help with definitions and instructions, and provide visual cues and interpretations of topics. This is also a good backup should the problems with the network occur.

pitalow said 3 days ago:

Feedback

On a scale of 1 to 5

1. Resource persons—5
2. Mastery of the subject matter—5
3. Communications abilitiy—5
4. Over all appearance, confidence and poise—5
5. Relevance of the topic—5
6. Rapport with students—5
7. Physical arrangement/venue/facilities—5
8. Training course content/relevance—5
9. Expectations—5

Were they met? If not, what needs to be done?

Most of them were met but this has been better than most of the seminars I’ve attended. Geez, I could’ve just given one big 5 for the rating. I learned a lot from this seminar and even got me inspired to start some projects. Thanks guys!

the past three days have been a whirlwind of activities. but i’d say it was also the most productive and enlightening week on my part. and a milestone for Pandora Squared.

for a company operating on two different continents, simply getting work done is a big challenge. yes we have all the technology that enables such operations or businesses to function but it does not provide team building exercises amongst the members of the company. having everybody in Manila, Philippines for the Web 2.0 Training Workshop provided the opportunity for Pandora Squared to gather the team together and work as a team – in person.

i believe no technology can ever replace the kind of relationship or bond forged with human interaction. nothwithstanding the training activities, we also had the opportunity to bond in a personal level that gave each of us insights about our team mates.

!

and coming from the philippines and being the only female among these geeks – meeting them in person added human value to names and faces i’ve been working with over the net. and no social software can provide that. More about this later on.

We have a webcam covering the training event in Manila for those who can’t make it. It will be online between the hours of 8:30am and 6pm Manila Time until Wednesday.

Update: Webcam moved to a later post

There have been numerous “definitions� or visualizations of the web 2.0 concept from every corner of the world but all converge to a single focal point: the USERS. Social networks and blogs are proliferating like mushrooms. Accordingly, the web’s brain has burgeoned to a tangled colossal mass of information floating in a multi-dimensional space of context.

Ben Hunt’s vision of the coming generation of the web is more interconnected and powerful. And at its core, it will incorporate a universe of connections that reflects the real-life links between people, organisations, services, products, web sites, and other entities. And despite the fact that there are great applications developed, this mass of information that we have are still fragmented and inconsistent when they could be interconnected and co-operative.

He site’s his case for example:

He wanted to find someone to come in and help clean his house.

Now, there’s someone living half a block away who would be perfect for the job.

But…

They won’t have a web site advertising their services. They won’t be in the Yellow Pages or on other listings guides. They promote their services only via word of mouth.They have done similar work for a neighbor whom he doesn’t know.

There is someone out there, but how can he find that person?

Like any internet users, he Googled for Cleaner Chesterfield, what did he get? Absolutely nothing of any use! Google returns about 248,000 results, which are useless to him! Google’s algorithms might be powerful but it’s not enough to solve his problem.

What’s needed is a new way of looking at the problem – a new system that appreciates the context of his query, not just the words he used.

Recognizing the relevant context relative to his query would now require consideration of his personomy.

Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski or PG has defined personomy or personomies as digital manifestations of an individual. Personomies combine identity (who you are), activity (what you do) and sociality (who you know). They include emails, contacts, blog posts, comments, purchases, page views, forms filled, bookmarks, ads clicked, chats, feeds subscribed and more. All these bits of data that can be tracked back to an individual is his personomy. A person’s personomy is built over time independent of any platform or system.

PG contests that an individual’s personomy is essential because personomies = data and data = gold. Because the more someone can understand, model, predict someone’s personomy, the better they will understand the user, hence can be targeted more precisely according to that person’s desires and build a long lasting relationship and we all know that that’s where the money is.

If the search engine’s algorithms could have known Hunt’s personomy, he could have gotten his cleaner and that would have been translated to gold for the search engine company quickly and efficiently.

Hunt’s sees these fragmented and inconsistent information classified and connected through commercial interest and open-source community.

According to him, open-source route can connect all these and the resulting connected web is so simple in architecture and he further challenges individuals, organizations and corporations to co-operate to build and host the infrastructure required to facilitate the connected web.

He is convinced that this is possible, with different interests running the identity servers that store ID accounts and the applications that interact with them, and he has developed a model for this. But he does not believe that open-source movement can push through quickly because of the commercial gains at stake.

Competitors working together? Can you imagine Google and Yahoo working together? Nah.

He poses this challenge to the public community. I would have to say PG might want to team up wit him though. To refine his architectural model in the pipeline and come up with open-source community.