Spinning Guyro

Social Media For The Sake Of Social Media = ?

I ran into this post from Kfir Pravda about companies and organizations getting into social media just for the sake of it. Couldn't agree more, Kfir.

It brought up my memories of communications I had last year with a very traditional organization. They were probing how to get into social media. When asked what the end goal was, they didn't know. They said that their grandchildren were on YouTube - so they figured they should be too.

Therefore I'd like to augment Kfir's analysis and present two things required from you when getting into social media:

1. Goals: you can achieve so many different things by using social media. In this day and age especially, it is critical to define where you are going and how you will measure it. Nobody seems to like ROI in social media but it cannot be ignored.

2. Commitment: social media is an on-going process, not a side job. If you don't respond to your Tweets on time, forget to check your Facebook Inbox for a week or simply lose track of your comments on YouTube - it's gone.

The moral of the story? Plan well, execute well, and you're in for a ride!

Yahoo Mail The Next Platform?

GigaOM is reporting that Yahoo are looking to turn Yahoo Mail into a platform with application and social aspects much like Facebook. This is an interesting move for troubled Yahoo which has been having quite a year.

I'll be watching this one. For a while now I've believed that Yahoo should focus-focus-focus: its #1 asset is the immense subscriber base, unmatched by any other web property. Yahoo should leave others to research and develop technologies. It should pick and choose the best of the crop and then specialize on delivery of these technologies into an unmatched user experience.

Google & I

I was brushing off my Java skills the other day. It's been a little while and I ran into a task I could not, from memory, recall how to write. So I turned to Google and quickly came up with this post from 1996(!) on the subject:

From: Lawrence Page

I have a web robot which is a Java app. I need to be able to set the User-Agent field in the HTTP header in order to be a good net citizen (so people know who is accessing their server). Anyone have any ideas?

Right now, Java sends a request that includes something like:

User-Agent: Java/1.0beta2

I'd rather not rewrite all the HTTP stuff myself. I tried just searching in the JDK for the Java/1.0beta2 figuring I could just change the string, but I couldn't find it. Perhaps it is stored as a unicode string?

An easy method of setting the User-Agent field should probably be added to Java, so people can properly identify their programs.

Thanks, Larry Page

Hmm, I wonder what kind of "web robot" this Larry Page was working on and hope his project was successful!

Does it bode well for me that I ran into the same question?