Clint Boulton

While Google’s spokespeople have been doggedly tight-lipped about the absorption of the JotSpot assets into the Google Apps product line, one Google watcher scored a breakthrough. Google Sites, an expansion of Google’s Page Creator software, will be launched in 2008 with collaboration software from JotSpot, according to search engine marketer Andrew Miller, who learned the […]

Facebook’s Beacon advertising system angered thousands of people because it coughed up information that some users didn’t want their friends to see. But how are the Beacon partners, which joined the program when it was unveiled Nov. 6 to share information about users’ online transactions with friends, handling this public relations nightmare? Reactions were mixed […]

Blogging software maker Six Apart Dec. 3 said it has sold social networking software maker LiveJournal to Russian online media company SUP for an undisclosed sum. SUP said in a statement it has launched the namesake LiveJournal service in San Francisco to help LiveJournal become a major worldwide brand. LiveJournal is credited with bringing friends […]

Now that Facebook has switched tack with its Beacon ad system, changing it from opt in to opt out, I wonder how well it will do. The rules of the road for Web sites generally say that opt in buttons are clicked far less than opt out. What does that say about us as a […]

Retailers Embrace the Social Network Model”> Amway is the place where social networks meet e-commerce. In any digital era prior to Web 2.0 this postulation may have seemed absurd, but it is true thanks to a new online entertainment store called Fanista. The site is the latest example of how retailers are employing social networking […]

Publishers are attempting to bringing copyright control back into their own hands, with the launch Nov. 29 of a framework that will give them more power to dictate what content search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN may make available online. The ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) framework, launched at The Associated Press headquarters […]

Caving to the pressure of a petition signed by 50,000 people who felt their privacy was being infringed, Facebook had made it easier for users to opt out of a new ad system that tracks users online activities and shares them with their friends. The changes, announced Nov. 29, will let Facebook users decide whether […]

Unhappy with the way Googles mobile search engine works on the Apple iPhone, enterprise search provider Exalead is launching a version of its Web search engine that is specifically tailored for the popular wireless device. Timed for the release of the iPhone in France Nov. 29, the new search engine enables searches for text-based content […]

Adobe Systems is joining the advertising revenue game, announcing Nov. 29 an agreement with Yahoo to serve ads in an opt-in service for publishers that want to generate new revenues through Adobes Portable Document Format. The free service, called Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo, works very much like typical online advertising models. When […]

The Merging of Virtual Reality, Social Computing”> Three-dimensional virtual reality worlds such as Second Life and social networks such as Facebook have been largely chugging along on parallel planes. Now some experts are claiming virtual reality will have a warm, sunny place in social networks for consumers and businesses. IBM Lotus programmers and engineers from […]