There's lots of activity in the social networking business, with curiosities like photo-sharing site Flickr turning into attractive acquisition plays.
- Is this an acquisition wave? Where is it headed?
- Who might be next?
- Is innovation now naturally outsourced, then bought in?
- What is "tagging" and why does it matter?
- How are Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft charting this path?
- How does social software end up making money?
Some relevant links:
- AlwaysOn - Bernard Moon - The 2005 World Series of Poker ... Tech Style
- Yahoo 360 is invite-only for now (ask me!), but here's a nice parody that shows you the interface
- Forrester's Charlene Li has a good review of Yahoo 360
- del.icio.us (and Jon Udell shows how to use delicious tags)
- WebProNews - Ross Mayfield - Tagging in the Enterprise
- Many to Many - Clay Shirky - Tags Run Amok
- Tagging on Technorati
- Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata - Adam Mathes
- Sponsored Links - Brian Dear
An IRC Chat will be available during the call, here.
Notes after the call
As Om Malik recently put it, Yahoo may be getting its Mojo back. Its recent acquisition of the social photo-sharing site Flickr and its launch of the integrated social-networking service 360 mark several welcome departures from the company's historic trajectory.
360 integrates many of Yahoo's functions in a way I've been waiting for since 1999; Flickr's bottom-up tagging "folksonomy" offers a sharp contrast to its top-down directory. It's not an antidote, but rather a complement.
The Flickr acquisition is part of a larger wave of small-company innovation that these days is more likely to lead to acquisition than to an IPO.
Picasa, Blogger, Keynote, Furl... All useful services bought in the last couple years, with similar acquisitions likely to follow. All good news for passionate entrepreneurs looking for ways to give their inventions greater scale. Now if only the acquirers can figure out how to make money with them....
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