Lots of social networking stuff in the news these days — more than I can keep up with. Here are a few items that have caught my attention recently. More flotsam, as always, in my shared items.
- How to break into Technorati’s top 100: offer free blog templates.
- Social media vital to PR success. Lois Kelly points to some good thoughts on this.
- Struggling to measure social media effectiveness? You’re not alone. The Institute for Public Relations reports that “As more companies adopt social media, they struggle to find effective metrics for deciding who are the most influential players.” This is one of many findings of a survey conducted last fall and summarized in the news release.
- Wikipedia founder says the site has a place in academe.
- Facebook alternative Multiply upgrades, looks great. So says Read/Write Web, which calls Multiply “a small but sophisticated social networking service with one of the most loyal userbases on the web” and offers a good comparison between it and FB.
- Facebook may get all the buzz, but MySpace is still bigger, with twice the audience.
- Colleges try to build buzz with offbeat video. The Chronicle references Karine Joly’s collegewebeditor blog
but doesn’t link to it. Not fair. Also unfair: nNo mention of our campus’ hello campaign. Apparently not offbeat enough. - The Open Web Awards, sponsored by Mashable, let you vote for all sorts of open social applications — from search sites to news sites to social networks great and small.
- Speaking of social search: such sites could challenge the biggies, says Micro Persuasion.
- Participation is the key to social media success, according to Chris Brogan. The post is long and ponderous, but as usual, Brogan makes some good points. He lists some good ways to foster participation and cites Lawrence Lessig extensively.
- Corporations form group to create blogging best practices. GM, Coca-Cola, Dell and other biggies form The Blog Council. Not everyone thinks the council is such a great idea.
- Video: blogs in plain English, another remarkable Commoncraft video, via (dis)information architecture.
- Another social media press release unleashed.
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Andy writes! 
And there is this item about LinkedIn’s upcoming API functionality:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/12/the-new-linkedi.html
Interesting. I had not seen that. Looks like LinkedIn might become more of a social network.