Eideard

Dunkin’ Donuts, the popular fast food chain famous for its coffee and baked goods, has released Dunkin’ Run, a free app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s designed to make it easier for Dunkin’ Donuts customers to make group orders — a social application, according to the press release.

“I’m making a run to Dunkin’ — does anyone want anything?” is a refrain heard in workplaces near where Dunkin’ Donuts are common. The Dunkin’ Run app and its companion Web site help to make it easier for Dunkin’ customers to solicit and place those group orders.

“Runners” initiate the group order, then interactive alerts are sent to the Runner’s friends and co-workers, informing them when a trip is planned and inviting them to place an order online. The Runner can then print the order or use their iPhone to produce a checklist, to make sure everyone gets what they wanted.

Makes sense to me.

It’s not just relatively low retention rates that Twitter has to deal with. Turns out, according to a Harvard Business School study, that the median number of messages a Twitter user sends—ever—is one.

The researchers found that a small group is sending out most of the tweets on the service. Ten percent of Twitter users account for more than 90 percent of messages. That’s more than on the typical social network or on Wikipedia, where 15 percent account for 90 percent of entries.

The implication, according to the Harvard researchers: Twitter “resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.”

Twitter executives have said they working to keep Tweeters engaged with the service. Last month, a study found that 60 percent of new Tweeters abandon Twitter.com after a month.

Anymore news like this you’d think the moneyboys would stop offering all their geedus to Twitter!

Courtney Holt, head of MySpace Music
Daylife/AP Photo

The “Place for Friends” is starting to feel lonely. MySpace, the Rupert Murdoch-owned website once synonymous with social networking, is losing popularity and key staff in its biggest troubles since launching five years ago…

MySpace’s loss of status as the cool place to be is an object lesson in the notoriously fickle internet, where today’s cultural icon is tomorrow’s passing fad. From humble origins in 2003, the site led the so-called “Web 2.0″ revolution in which users could create their own profile pages and share content with friends. Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace for $580m was seen as a masterstroke as membership continued to soar, with celebrities and politicians joining the craze.

But then came Facebook, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, which soon snowballed with an older and apparently more affluent demographic to steal MySpace’s crown. Gradually newspaper coverage of social networks switched from references to “MySpace and Facebook” to “Facebook and MySpace”. The rise of Bebo also undermined MySpace’s dominance, while Twitter is among the latest novelties eating into users’ attention spans…

There are clues behind the scenes that all is not well at Murdoch’s Fox Interactive Media, which runs the site.

Amit Kapur, MySpace’s chief operating officer, resigned after little more than a year in the post to set up a new company. He will be joined by Jim Benedetto and Steve Pearman, senior vice-presidents of engineering and product strategy.

And, no, I really don’t care. But, some of you do.

Mister Morality brags about forcing Craigslist to monitor hookers
Daylife/AP Photo by Bob Child

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

Did they count the honey pots run by local coppers as dangerous sites?

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the group’s report…

The report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

Not everyone was happy with the conclusions. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, who has forcefully pursued the issue and helped to create the task force, said he disagreed with the report. Mr. Blumenthal said it “downplayed the predator threat,” relied on outdated research and failed to provide a specific plan for improving the safety of social networking.

And it may get in the way of Blumenthal’s plans to run for the Senate and, eventually, president.

Then, there’s all the crap legislation already trundling around the political dance floor. Congress and state legislators waste an incredible amount of time patting themselves on the back for corrosive attempts to oversee speech and thought on the Web – in the name of “we’re protecting the children”. What a crock!

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

An Australian couple have been served with legal documents via the popular social networking site Facebook.

Mark McCormack, a lawyer in Canberra, persuaded a court to allow him to use the unusual method after other attempts to reach them failed.

The couple’s home is being repossessed after they reportedly missed payments on a loan of over A$100,000.

It is believed to be the first time Facebook has been used in this way.

In granting permission to use the social networking site, the judge stipulated that the papers be sent via a private email so that other people visiting the page could not read their contents.

We’re getting to where the only place some people exist is online. Sad.

Companies have been trying to create their own social networks ever since Friendster became popular. It was part fad and part marketer’s hope that customers were so devoted that they were dying to discuss shampoo or tires online.

With a campaign beginning this month, Vaseline is testing a more conceptual approach. Rather than creating an online social network, it is aiming to map the social network of a small town in Alaska.

The idea is to show that a new Vaseline lotion, Clinical Therapy, is so effective that the residents of Kodiak, Alaska, passed the word around. It was partly of their own accord, and partly because Vaseline was pushing it: Vaseline representatives set up shop in a storefront in Kodiak and gave away free bottles. The residents had to pinpoint which of their fellow townspeople had recommended it.

Vaseline representatives began mapping who was suggesting the lotion to whom. It was not curiosity that drove them, but commercialism. They were trying to find a plugged-in Kodiak resident who had widely recommended the lotion, to be featured in commercials.

Har. Any other suggestions?

It would be easy to assume that the first month of Cameron Chase’s life followed the monotonous cycle of eat-sleep-poop familiar to any new parent. But anyone who has read his oft-updated profile on Totspot, a site billed as Facebook for children, knows better. Cameron, of Winter Garden, Florida, has lounged poolside in a bouncy seat with his grandparents, noted that Tropical Storm Fay passed by his hometown, and proclaimed that he finds the abstract Kandinsky print above his parents’ bed “very stimulating!”

Of course, these busy social networkers don’t actually post journal entries or befriend playground acquaintances themselves. Their sleep-deprived parents are behind the curtain, shaping their children’s online identities even before they are diaper-free…
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