Content Monetization and Social Sharing

Grouptivity is a content sharing tool for information sharing with monetization opportunity to publishers. The tool works with plugins both for information sharing and to enable the process. Once the tool has become implemented into a blog or a website visitors are enabled to share the content and to start co browsing and sharing the content. This leads to a viral effect by spreading the content across the web by promoting the content source. To publishers there is a monetization opportunity by integrated adverts. The advertising revenue even goes 100 % to the publisher as the key issue to Grouptivity is to develop publisher tools.

Glue combines Semantic Data with Social Networking and Shopping

Glue seems to me one of the first true semantic web applications. It is a social networking and social shopping hybrid. The Glue application is a browser bar, that connects to friends and others like a co browsing application. Opposite to most other co browsing applications Glue connects and interacts with particular web pages, which have enabled the Glue experience. Whereas there is no limitation actually this happens mostly at popular shopping destinations for books and movies and other things. By showing up the browser bar at enabled pages users are able to get reviews and recommendations by friends and other people and of course to add own ratings and reviews. People can also connect within the browser bar, join lifestreams of others and put their own lifestreams onto the web by connecting to other social networking services. Below there is a shared video supplied by Glue


Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Co Browsing with Plista

A new co browsing application has been launched. The service is called Plista. As the other covered co browsing applications the tool enables to share interesting sources and to leave comments at third party websites. And there are a couple of further things this application can do. Plista makes recommendations in several ways. There are suggestions and a menu to navigate as well as matching with other people and their choice of websites. The latter feature may be used to find like minded people. Furthermore there are intelligent recommendations based on the user behaviour and made available by the self learning application. This is a similar feature like the just introduced newsfeed applications do offer. Last but not least it is a social networking applications to share sources and information with others, known and newly matched friends. The application is free.

Co Browsing and Information Management by Online Annotations and Notes

This is the fourth part and for now the last part of the co browsing software and tools series. At this article annotation tools and information sharing services with sticky notes at third party websites are introduced.

Online annotation services enable to share information about a site either by a social networking community or by sticky notes at websites. There are annotation services strictly for sticky notes and others are real social networks. The way these services do work is most different, too. Usually there is a browser plugin necessary to make annotations, but the information sharing can happen in completely different ways. As diverse as the services work so are the purposes they may be used for. But at all online annotation services are closer to clickstreams and used for information sharing even in a professional way opposite to co browsing with chat.

At first there are the social networks, where Diigo is probably known best and the service with the most features. Diigo works by a browser extension. It enables to make sticky notes and to share these notes by different means. Information can be tagged and there are buzz and top lists. To find like minded people and relevant information the service is stuffed with a recommendation engine. It is a real research and information sharing service, which is offering particular conditions to educators. Another annotation service that works with a browser extension is Fleck. Fleck enables social notes and information sharing.

Reframe It offers two different way to share information and to make annotations. This may either happen by a plugin or within the community. When browsing from within the community the information will appear within a sidebar. Too, collected information and annotations may be shared by emailing a link.

Another way of sharing information about a website is by citing it. kwout is a tool to share whole websites or citing parts of it. For sharing members get an own website or can post the citations to other social networks. Quotations are also a feature of SharedCopy.com. Annotations and quotes may be shared with others and posted to other social networks. A further step beyond does ShiftSpace. It is an open source software that even enables to change the look of a website for sharing.

Last but not least there are collaboratiion tools. A.nnotate and Stixy do enable to make annotations to uploaded documents, that may be changed or complemented by co workers.

There are a couple of further tools that have been reviewed lately at FOLDEN.INFO. If you are interested in these have a look at information management.

Co Browsing with Lifestreaming Part 3

This is the third part of the co browsing software and tools series. This article is about co browsing software with a social networking approach.

At first there is Socialbrowse. It is one of the easiest way of social bookmarking and sharing websites I have seen and a complete social network and networking tool. The application consists of a browser extension that consists of three tiny buttons and a sidebar. By the buttons a bookmark is added with just one click and becomes catogorized already with just two clicks. Add and view comments is done the same way. The sidebar is displaying lifestreams either of all, hot or personalized topics or comments. Managing topics happens at an own profile page that is equipped with several feeds to share activities at other services and a facility to follow others. Twitter is completely integrated and posts and messages may become posted and reposted at Twitter immediately.

The second exciting tool is yoono, which again is a complete social networking solution. The primary element of yoono is a sidebar that may become personalized by a couple of ready to use proprietary widgets. The friends widget has complete social network aggregator capabilities. It integrates the most important social networks and instant messaging services and enables to follow updates either by streams at the sidebar or by tiny popups at the screen. New friends may be found at yoono by similar interests and a profile seach engine. An interesting feature to share links and content is integrated at the web notes widget. By this widget any content, text parts or media, may become shared by copying or drag and drog. Other great features are photo and video widgets, the integration of last.fm to listen music and more. Furthermore yoono offers several tools to discover new sites and recommendations.

Last but not least I had a look at Cluztr, which I guess is unique by streaming clicks instead of social networking activities. As what they are doing this feature is called clickstreams. Another interesting thing about these clickstreams is that these do replace bookmarks as clicks become recorded automaticly. Co browsing may happen with friends or by visiting popular websites evaluated by the own ranking system based on the number of clicks. There are a couple of tools to connect with others like recommendations, instant messaging and chat. Cluztr is in private beta and the only service I have not tried. Invitations may become requested at the registration page.

All co browsing services at this article are useful social networking tools offering aggregation facilities and integration with other social media services. Another feature all of these services do claim is the ability to leave comments at third party websites. This has been the only feature I have not been able to experience, which might be due a lag of time and being a novice user. Doing annotations at websites will be the topic of the next article about co browsing.

Co Browsing beyond the Web Part 2

This is the second part of the co browsing software and tools series.

me.dium is a co browser software that visualizes website visitors like the introduced avatar software does. The software is primarily designed to surf the web with friends. These may become added manualy or by synchronization with other services and if enabled the online status of friends is displayed and the location. If friends are online it is easy to start a chat and to surf the web together by a click within the sidebar. Last but not least there are a couple of facebook tools integrated at the me.dium toolbar.

A new feature that has been added lately is the me.dium social search, which is still in alpha. There are two ways to find results, either by searching pages visited by others or by searching the web. More about this new social search engine is available by the faq.

Co Browsing beyond the Web

Co browsing or shared browsing is a way of social networking beyond the web. It is in some way a mixture of instant messaging and lifestreaming but either enhanced or different. By co browsing there are other issues shared than with lifestreams and messaging happens not only within a software but at websites in person by avatars and chat. By this it is a kind of immersive web experience.

weblin is a browser add on and software. The service describes itself as a 3d avatar chat and instant messaging. What makes it unique is that members may meet at third party websites with their avatars like within a virtual reality world. There are some typical vr features like an own inventory and even a virtual currency. The software integrates a couple of social networking features to share websites and to make posts to popular social media sites. A useful tool to meet others is the tagcloud of topsites. By the tagcloud it becomes easily recognized that weblin users do populate well known social media sites. For further information there are couple of videos available.

A similar service is itzle, which is in public beta. To use it there is no download necessary, just a plugin to install and a registration.

There are a couple of other services that will be introduced by upcoming posts. To keep connected you may subscribe to the newsfeed at the upper left.