Two social media networking giants will take a major step forward on Friday, September 28th . Professional social network LinkedIn will add photo capabilities to profile page. Photographers, get ready for a million professional head shots request.
While Facebook gets ready to launch its first IM client, Friendvox. Can’t wait!
There is a fierce competition between the top social networks to see who will provide the most attractive platform and eventually steal the greatest majority of people. I think Facebook is the main player so far although there are a few things I would like to see on Facebook. Mainly, I will like I way to organize my friends into groups and give specific access to each group. For example, I will like to drag and drop all of my professional contacts into my “FB Rolodex” and give them limited access to my pictures. This way I can access them without having to scan through my 500+ friends and I can keep my drunken college pictures private. The IM client will keep me happy for now.
I hear Twitter is coming our with video capabilities. What is that all about? Hit me up with a comment if you have any interesting news about new developments with major social networks. I’d like to hear about people’s reactions to the Facebook IM client as well.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) announced their Give 1 Get 1 program on Monday, September 24th. The Give 1 Get 1 program will run for two weeks starting November 12 and will enable U.S. and Canadian customers to pay $399 to buy two XO Laptops-one for themselves and one to be shipped to a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti or Rwanda.
The Right Idea
The OLPC mission is to breach the digital divide by giving every child in the world access to “new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression” in the form of an innovative educational tool: the XO Laptop. This concept is pure genius, nothing less than to be expected from MIT’ s Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte has built an organization around a rather lofty yet idealistic concept: bringing every child in the developing world up to par with children in developed nations. This generation and the generation to follow will be highly depended on the internet and the technologies and applications that it provides. Negroponte recognizes that if we don’t do something to educate children now, they will irreparable disparities to face in the future.
Challenges
1. How will poor communities in developing countries set up and support internet access and electricity?
XO Laptops consume very little electricity. However, I believe the ticket to success lays in OLPC’s ability to create partnerships with other corporations in order to have the resources and man power to create teams of volunteers to plan and implement the necessary systems within these villages. The OLPC initiative already has plenty of support from Google, AMD, eBay, Intel and News Corp. A massive employee volunteerism between all of these companies would make history.
2. Getting governments to buy
Peru, Uruguay and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu have pledged to buy and donate hundreds of thousands of XO Laptops. They need more government support! Partnering with high profile NGO’s and outreaching to like minded politicians would be my first suggestion.
3. Training children and educators
This goes along with the same corporate partnership ideas and employee volunteerism programs.
4. No longer the $100 laptop
The Give 1 Get 1 is a clever marketing move to target the price hike ($100-$188). Once a steady channel of distribution is established, the XO Laptops will surely get cheaper.
OLPC is a new idea and, like most world changing innovations, Negroponte’s mission to breach the digital divide has met significant challenges and criticism. OLPC is moving forward and the momentum of its growth will become exponential upon the world’s first glance at the results.
I attended a Social Media Club event yesterday and participated in a panel discussion with Steve Restivo, Wal-Mart’s Director of Corporate affairs for the northeast, Dan Lyons, senior editor at Forbes, and Forrester’s Josh Bernoff.
I asked Steve about the lack of commenting capabilities in the Wal-Mart blog and prefaced my question with a basic principal of social media-two-way communication and community building. Below is John Cass’s thoughts about my question and my response to his post.
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Steve received a few questions from the audience but was not pressed very hard except by one audience member from the Digital Influence Group about Wal-Mart’s current efforts in communicating with customers online. The chap from the digital influence group was a little muddled in his question delivery, more of a statement so I thought he lost his point by the time he pitched the question. The guy from the Digital Influence Group did not even address his question to Steve Restivo but seemed to want the other two panelists to berate Steve for Wal-Mart for not doing a good job with social media. Josh Bernoff stated that he thought Steve should speak for himself. Which he did and so Steve easily sidestepped it.
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I really want one of these! 
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=RW3m0JEMrYk]
After telling the audience to stop clapping and flubbing her speech for a moment, Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no -” But Fox cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence which was: “god-damned wars in the first place.”
When she was told that she had been bleeped, Field responded: “Oh well. I’ve been there before. Well, good. I don’t care. I have no comment other than, oh well. I said what I wanted to say. I wanted to pay homage to the mothers of the world, and let their work be seen and valued.”
I appreciate artist that speak their mind and express their thoughts freely. The day will come where the media belongs to the viewer; a day without censorship and network subjectivity. I give it 3 years when social media and online TV surfaces as the dominant medium. It will be then that visionaries like Sally Fields will be able to express themselves freely. How long do you think it will take for online media to overtake TV?
http://entertainment.newbodogbeat.com/sally-fields-emmy-speech-censored-by-fox-28513.html
