• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank
• 08/29/2007 - HostMySite.com Limits ColdFusion, Does Not Tell Customers
• 08/14/2007 - New Song: Chocolate Rain - Sonic Remix
• 08/03/2007 - If You Use Open Source, Leave the License and Credit
• 07/31/2007 - Add Links to Profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and More
• 07/23/2007 - SocialNetwork.in API Promotes Cross Site Networking

As a followup to yesterday's post, where I announced the plans for SocialNetworkServer.com, I feel it would be a good idea to cover some of the competition in this space.

Obviously, all the top social networks are competition, although I'm sure many users of the current social networks will continue to experiment with other sites and services as they go online. This current wave of social networks is loosely called Social Network 2.0. While we can't ignore these sites, they do not (yet) provide a service for launching social networks.

I've collected a list of a dozen companies who either currently provide a social network service, or some form of community platform. I'm sure there are more, especially when you consider how many open source content management systems have evolved to be social platforms. Again, this is a competitive group to be aware of, but the soltuions lack the 'service.' You need people, a great network, the fastest hard drives, a load balancing system, etc - if you don't, then your social network will not scale nor will it stay online, and you'll find yourself working on administrating a site instead of having fun with your social network.

This brings us to the actual group of competitors of SocialNetworkServer.com - each of these offers similar things as my platform, although, none are using the idea of a network of networks with shared resources.

• CommunityServer.com
• CollectiveX.com
• CrowdFactory.com
• FiveAcross.com
• KickApps.com
• PeopleAggregator.com
• PHPfox.com
• SelectMinds.com
• SmallWorldLabs.com
• SocialPlatform.com
• SpartaSocialNetworks.com
• Wetpaint.com

A few of these are not providing the services aspect, but only the solution as explained above. I've added them to this list since they could very well add the services portion of the pie, and elevate themselves to become a greater competitor. In particular, PeopleAggregator.com.

If you feel there are others in this space, let me know, I can add them to this list and to the one on http://www.socialnetworkserver.com/about.htm

BTW... it's my birthday tomorrow :)

Services like mp3.com in 1999 could be considered Social Networking 1.0 - where there wasn't much more than loosely organized profiles, music downloads, and forums.

Years later, many new sites pop up on the Web, with photos and videos, friend linking, and widgets and we find ourselves in the 2.0 stage of Social Networking. At that time, I took notice of these changes, and began adding several to ArtistServer, bringing it up to date with what people call "Web 2.0." While the vast majority of the world knows nothing of Web 2.0, they are starting to hear about it, especially about Social Networking.

As you can imagine, after 2.0 is 3.0, but have you thought about what 3.0 could be?

What will change between 2.0 and 3.0?

I've been thinking about it, and I'm getting ready for it.

Fortunately, I was thinking about the future when I started the development of my platform, and I coded the whole platform from the ground up with the idea that other companies would license my application to launch their own sites. Then it hit me earlier this year, that there was more value in running a service which creates a network of social networks. This would allow for a fluid environment for users, greater exposure for content creators, a better use of network resources, in addition to supporting the 'long tail' by allowing companies, groups and individauls to launch niche social networks.

The main push behind this idea, was the realization that others would come along as I did, and find what I'm doing to not meet their direct needs, just as I found mp3.com to no longer meet my needs. Therefore, I should support these people and this behavior. I should give people the tools they need and to support change and evolution. By empowering the wheels of change, I can better position my platoform for the future. Some of you may have heard the term "future proof," and while it tends to be applied to technical things like protocols, there's no reason why you can't start looking for ways to future proof your business. I suggest you start considering how you'll empower people, and how you can incorporate change, because that's what 3.0 is going to be about: Empowering people by embracing change.

With that said, I'd like to introduce http://SocialNetworkServer.com

Please visit the site and look over the information - and keep in mind that the service is not yet available. I have several changes I'll need to apply to the code so it can support multiple sites on a single codebase, in addition to building a team and securing some startup capital. Just a quick note to the artists on ArtistServer.com, you'll ALWAYS have full control over your content, and will have control over what sites you don't want your content displayed on. Ok - now on with the future! Here's a quick description of SocialNetworkServer.com

Our service allows you to launch your own social media network without having to do any programming, and little customization (unless you want to). When you create your site with us, it will be generated using our system, and your domain name. You'll then have many options with site customization from skinning the whole site, to designing the layout of the homepage.

We offer this as a shared service, which means all the content, music, members and artists who participate on a site on our service, are also potentially available on all other sites. Artists and members can select if they do not wish to show up on specific sites, and retain full control over their content. Site owners can select to feature specific genres, content and artists, which allows each site on our network to express it's own unique pressence.

Our service also provides potential revenue streams by sharing profits from ad revenue and account upgrade revenue with site owners, and ad revenue with artists who have upgraded thier accounts.

"An elegant, self-detecting technical solution is not in reach of the everyday small business owner or individual." (Neil Edwards on 04/10/2006)

In an ideal world, the client-side device type would direct the type of page served, but that is not how things have evolved.

The fact is the majority of the 80 plus million sites across the web do not work well on mobile devices and do not detect device type before redirecting you. (.mobi blog on 11/07/06)

Unfortunately, the folks at .mobi continue by stating that they've solved these problems by selling you yet another domain, when in fact, the problems would still exist after you buy a .mobi domain name.

MobileWebDeveloper.com not only serves to provide you with mobile Web solutions, but also tips, and suggestions on how to best plan your mobile site. In the coming weeks, I'll add a forum for developers, marketers and executives to interact and discuss mobile Web development. The forums will also provide users of MobileRedirect and MobileLaunch to interact and share how they've advanced the products.

I'll be making these two products available under a 'dual license':

• GNU General Public License - Open source developers and projects
• Commercial Software License: No Restrictions or requirements on use or distribution of our software in derivative works.

I hope to have both products launched in the next two weeks, until then, read the descriptions below and visit the site for more information.

MobileRedirect

Add MobileRedirect to your website, and use your current Web address as your Mobile address. It's easier for people to remember, and easier for you to promote. MobileRedirect provides a simple solution for detecting and redirecting mobile devices on your website. Available in multiple programming languages, takes a minute to setup and available as shareware, give it try!

MobileLaunch

With MobileLaunch, you can get your mobile website online today. It's a mobile site template system with multiple skins to choose from. Simply add your content, set 6 settings, install our included MobileRedirect code on your current Website, and you're live.

About the subject of this post: while I do not think there is any need for .mobi, and I feel the world should simply ignore .mobi's existence, you can definately use a .mobi name with MobileRedirect and MobileLaunch. Especially when you consider that my solutions are based around your current domain name and redirecting the initial request to your mobile site. Once the initial request is redirected, the URL of the actual mobile site could be: m.mySite.com, mobile.mySite.com, or even mySite.mobi - it's up to you. Just don't believe the hype, you still need a redirection setup on your current site, as most people will still use your .com address.

In conclusion, I'm not really fighting against .mobi, and I'll look over their style guides to make sure the generated code from MobileLaunch fits with their 'rules' - chances are, it already does since I'm currently generating 100% valid xHTML-MP, and supporting multiple header/content types (not all mobile devices can accept the same DocType or ContentType). I do want to say thank you to .mobi for making me angry, which in turn caused me to proclaim that I was going to provide these solutions back in April of this year. What's funny about this, is that the same thing happened back in 1999 with mp3.com. They kept changing things on the indie artists, making the expierence there more frustrating than fun. After a few months of that, I decided to build what is not ArtistServer.com . So now you know - if you want me to build something, just piss me off. :)

Google Analytics Opens to Everyone - No Invitation Required

Google announced today that the popular Google Analytics is now instantly available to the public. No more waiting for invitation codes. Anyone with a website can now install the website tracking tool by directly signing up at the Google Analytics homepage, or by clicking through the "Analytics" tab in any Google AdWords account. It is not required to have a Google Adwords account to run Google Analytics. http://www.google.com/analytics/

If your site receives a fair amount of traffic, and you currently attempt to process your log files, you should definately consider Google Analytics. Sign up, drop in the javascript from Google, and turn off your web logs. If you need the log data right away for some form of testing, you can always turn it back on.

After their tracking script is on all your site's pages, you'll gain access to far more than stats. You'll have charts, you'll have the ability to track goal pages, get reccomendations on search terms for your ads, you'll see where people enter and exit your site, how long they vist, and more.

Let a month or two pass, then dive into the tools they provide for analyzing your data. With a little time and effort, you'll learn a lot about your site, including what's working, and what pages need reworking.

As you can imagine, it gets more interesting once you get more than six months or so worth of data in their system. The hard part, is figuring out how to digest and reapply what you learn from the many charts and tables Google Analytics presents you.