SharedBook: On Demand

What Goes Around

Five years ago, when SharedBook technologists started working on the specs for what is now the SharedBook Reverse Publishing Platform, we believed that our platform would particularly resonate within the trade publishing world. Pre POD, pre-Web 2.0, pre-personalization, we learned the hard way that we were just too pre. So, we turned our attentions to the travel and sports worlds, where we found wonderful customers like Regent Seven Seas and Yosemite National Park and Little League International and AYSO. Then came social networking and clients like Legacy.com and CarePages (launching soon) and a slew of others to come this summer. Having just returned from the O’Reilly TOC Conference in San Jose, I’m excited about the creativity and thinking within the trade publishing world. For most, a book is no longer text within bound covers, but content that can be distributed in a host of new ways. Watch for a SharedBook installation within this world soon.

Social Networking Redact

Don't you hate it when news completly obliterates an opinion taken on a previous post?   I, like everyone else, feel compelled to post about the latest Facebook announcements.  As astute readers will note, in previous posts, I thought the old school social netorking sites would play out, in favor of more vertical based sites.  Facebook has essentially leapfrogged that position by offering itself as the Internet's "social-networking platform."  Any site can take on this functionality.  This, I get!  Also by allowing a more open, yet controlled platform, its users have more power to create their own experience through partnerships and mashups.  These guys are pretty amazing. I vow today to bow down to the Zuckerburg Gods. But again I ask....won't these users want to keep some of this amazing content offline?   

Social Networking

Good lunchtime discussions around here the other day about the old social networking standbys: Facebook.com and MySpace.com vs. everything else.  My long term bets are on everything else.   My family uses social networking daily.  My 8 year old is obsessed...obsessed with ClubPenguin.com.  What kind of biz dev person would I be if I didn't use LinkedIn.com regularly?  My husband is part of lots of group blogs on education reform and Marquette basketball.  We weave and bob through networks based on our needs and wants at a point in time.   I think this is much more powerful than the teen phenomenon.  First, that group has no loyalty to a particular site and no real reason to choose one vs. another.  Second, they will find soon find a cooler way for expression.  I look at one of our partners, CarePages, and I see the real power of social networking to make life better.   Oh yeah, and you may want to capture and preserve some of this content in print, right? :-)

Update:  Well that's timely!  An astute friend, just sent this interesting update regarding Club Penguin.  Based on my family's monthly expeditures, I'd say worth every penny.