Side Project: Taking a look at Unofficial Social Media

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Submitted by Bryan on

I'm working up a story idea on the success of fan-based or unofficial social media sites over their official counterparts. For example, while Apple Computers has almost no official presence on Twitter (at least from what I can tell), @MacRumors has almost a quarter million followers. Another example, would be a fan-based/watchdog Facebook site called Protect the National Weather Service has almost as many "Likes" as the official U.S. National Weather Service Facebook site.

The rise and success of unofficial social media is an interesting phenomenon to me and I'm very interested in additional references, research and examples I know some of you can proivide.  Feel free to leave your comments here or you can reach me via Google+ or through CMS Report's Twitter account.

Social Umami and Liferay Portal

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Submitted by Bryan on

I like the concept of Social Umami as it likely would be what you would get if you combined Pinterest, Amazon, and Facebook all into one site.  Social Umami is a product recommendation network for the social consumer (that's you and me). People can share their favorite products with friends, purchase their latest finds, get recommendations or discover and follow other Umami users and their tips.

I've been an occasional beta tester of this social network for several months. The site definitely has some rough edges to it which is likely why it is still in beta. However, if you have ever met Manish Dixit, a co-founder of Social Umami, you soon realize this site has the building blocks of something big. Social Umami is a evolving site with lots of ideas that just needs a little more time to come into fruition.

Social Umami is also a great example of what Liferay can do for social networking and shows that Liferay is much more than a portal. I've attached Liferay's recent press release announcing Social Umami officially to the press and public. This is a site that I encourage you to look at more than once whether you're a Liferay fan or a social networking fan.

New Social Network Features Rich Social Collaboration Capabilities within Liferay Platform

Social Umami leverages Liferay’s out-of-the-box tools to create viral shopping experience

LOS ANGELES — (February 14, 2012) — Liferay, Inc., provider of the world’s leading enterprise-class open source portal, announced today the launch of a new social shopping network by Liferay partner Social Umami that was built on the Liferay platform. Social Umami, which allows users to share their favorite consumer products with friends, is now available in beta at www.socialumami.com.

Google+ first week of use review

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Submitted by tsvenson on

Editor's Note: CMS Report has only worked with the very new social networking site Google+ for a couple days. Luckily for us, Thomas Svenson, IT Expert and Drupal Mill founder, has allowed us to share his review of Google+ with you. The content of this article first appeared a couple days as a post by Thomas on Google+.

I have used Google+ for about a week and I like it. Compared to other social networking solutions I found it instantly useful, with a clean design. When I started using Facebook it took quite some time to get a grip on what the benefits was for me, but for Google+ I didn't have to look as they were very visible directly.

Features of Google+

Google Plus LogoCircles is almost perfect, they let me organize both people I know and people I want to follow (Twitter style almost). This helps me to be able to easily be able to filter the stream of information in a very good way.

Circles would be almost perfect if it also was possible to filter the posts on keywords/tags like you can do using TweetDeck by creating a column that only shows posts containing the hashtags/search terms I decide.

With the combination that those filters would only work on the people added to that circle, it would make it a very powerful information filter.

Four Ways to Use "Pull" to Increase Your Success

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Submitted by Bryan on

Harvard Business Publishing: "The first two levels of pull — the ability to access and attract — are ultimately static. They assume that the people and resources we need already exist and that the challenge is to find or discover them. Yet each of us may need to further develop our own personal and professional skills before we can even recognize how best to access and attract what we need and want.

Utilizing Web 2.0 in business

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Submitted by Bryan on

IBM developerWorks: "While Web 2.0 has been a huge hit with consumers, some businesses have been much slower to embrace it. Many companies, however, are now realizing the great potential of Web 2.0 and how Web 2.0 services such as YouTube, Twitter, and SlideShare can provide value to their organizations. See how businesses can exploit the power of Web 2.0 services while simultaneously improving workplace relationships.

Socialize Online with Bitrix Site Manager

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Submitted by bitrix on

Alexandria, VA - November 6, 2008 -- Bitrix Site Manager latest module will add that zing to your portal's Social Networking capabilities.

Bitix Inc., a pioneer in developing content management applications, today announced the launch of the Social Network Module. This module will raise the performance bar for all social networking portals and empower them with some of the most exciting and innovative features ever offered on online Social networking portals.

Very simple to setup and install, the module will allow any sized social networking portal to quickly add multiple functionalities to their portal. The module allows multi-user functionalities including access levels for restriction and content privacy. Users can also upload and share all types of media like pictures, video, etc.

The portal also allows hosting and sharing of audio files. Talk about setting up a new social network for budding musicians!

Some of the exciting features include:

  • A full fledged social network technology architecture
  • Ability to create and manage multiple forums
  • Ability to launch and moderate multiple blogs on different categories
  • Moderated photo gallery that can run competition and quizzes
  • An advanced media player for movies, clips, trailers or even home made videos
  • Powerful index based search algorithm that makes content searching a breeze
  • Detailed registration forms to capture information of each user
  • Tagging
  • Updates about other members or groups
  • Notification of any system event or blog posts and forum messages

Use this new social networking module to: