For the past few years, I've been working part of the time with Bloor Research - friendly folk, doing good work on analysing the markets for commercial software. One of my colleagues there, Carl Potter, has invited me to join him in looking at the...

Danah Boyd is a researcher in social media at Microsoft Research. She describes herself as an ethnographer, which literally translates as someone who writes about people. Like other members of her trade, Ms Boyd uses statistical methods as a...

Before looking at the social networking market overall (see my previous posting), I want to show you an example of what a successful system can offer. Not all its characteristics translate well into the corporate world but you might be surprised at...

Part 1 - What is social netting? Let's start with the usual dichotomising When thinking about this subject, it helps to distinguish between social networking and social media. Social networking is people conversing over a network. The network can be...