we are not perfectly however we work on it. :)

Web 2.0 also known as social Networking

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, these are typically the types of sites that one thinks of when they hear the phrase "Web 2.0." Though, as you'll find at the first annual Web 2.0 Expo in N.Y., the official definition for what is “Web 2.0,” it is constantly under revision. NY1’s Adam Balkin filed the following report.

“Basically, you're talking about sites that instead of publishing your stuff to the web, invite people to participate in the web. We've got about 5,000 developers, designers, internet entrepreneurs, marketers who come together to figure out what's next for ‘Web 2.0,’” said organizer of Web 2.0 Expo Jennifer Pahlka. “It's the people who are building sites like MySpace and Facebook who are mostly here.”

Friendster.com, the social networking site that helped started this whole “2.0 movement” is also constantly under revision. Its vision now, help to prevent you from having to jump from one place to the next, having to constantly start from scratch on the latest hottest spot online to connect with friends.

“It's going to be more convenient to keep in touch with people to share content, to discover content from other people you may know, and to kind of participate in multiple networks at once without physically being logged in to every single one, every minute of the day,” said Jeff Robert of Friendster.com.

But really what this conference focuses on is taking what people like about using “Web 2.0” technologies on their own time and letting them use those same technologies to be more productive at the office.

“We're seeing companies coming to us to build a social networking strategy within their internal networks that make these young people feel comfortable with their usability and with their executions and actions everyday,” said Jerry Sheer of Sparta Social Networks. “Social networking, in a large company, specifically, is about people connecting to other people who are not in their cube, in their work environment, and in a satellite office.”

And considering a new study by Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, found that social networks have surpassed porn, as the most popular spots online now, it makes sense that big companies are also hoping internal social networks will help employees feel more like part of a community while at the office, rather than just another cog in a giant wheel.

HelloTxt Launches Status Message API

HelloTxt, a service that lets you update your status message across multiple services at the same time, opened up its developer platform this week.

The service, which we first covered on Mashable in 2007, is a way to update your status on multiple social sites at once: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Bebo, Friendfeed, Identi.ca and many more. This is useful for power users who network across multiple sites but don’t want to visit them individually to post status updates. The API release puts that functionality in the hands of web developers

.(An API, for the uninitiated, is a specification describing how web developers can make applications that interoperate with a service in interesting ways - Twitter owes a measure of its success to the many thousands of applications built on the Twitter API.)

HelloTxt Apps and Tools Coming?

What can developers do with the API? Among other things, retrieve a list of services a user has added to HelloTxt, create apps that send status updates to all of a user’s HelloTxt services at once and request a list of the last 20 updates a user sent to HelloTxt.

In plain English then: users can look forward to some cool apps, and interested developers can start developing. However, HelloTxt may be a little slow to move here: their rival Ping.fm, which also allows posting of updates to multiple sites at once, has provided an API for some time.

We’ve known it for quite some time now: Facebook’s new design will soon be Facebook’s only design, although many users aren’t particularly happy about it. Now, we have a precise time frame, and the clock is ticking fast: by the end of this week, all users will be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the new design.

Personally, I switched to the new design as soon as the option became available and I never looked back. It is, in my opinion, immeasurably better than the old one: cleaner, more intuitive, less clutter. However, I’m only one of Facebook’s 100 million users, and although some 30-40 million have already made the switch, the rest haven’t, and they probably have good reasons for it. The “People against the New Facebook System” Facebook group has reached 220,000 members, which is another indication that the number of unhappy users is significant.

The Top Social Networks of 2008

We’ve shared a lot of numbers recently, from Twitter’s robust growth to Facebook’s chase of MySpace for the title of most popular social network (in the US). Now, we’ve finally got the final numbers from 2008, and with them, a look at the rankings and trends within the top 20 social networks, according to Nielsen Online.

Here are the highlights:

- Facebook nearly caught MySpace in traffic. MySpace had 58.4 million unique visitors in December, Facebook had 55.2 million.

- Facebook passed MySpace in time per person: 2 hours, 7 minutes to 1 hour, 40 minutes.

- The fastest growing sites were Twitter (664%), Tagged (421%), and Ning (303%)

- Of the sites in the top 20, three saw traffic declines in 2008: Meetup (-7%), Flixster (-6%), and MySpace (-3%)

- Time spent on social networks decreased for 14 of the 20 sites on the list.

Social Media and Privacy: Where Are We Two Years After Facebook News Feed?

It’s really only been two years. How quickly the digital world changes.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by the New York Times for a piece written by Clive Thompson, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy: I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You.” I talked with Clive about my experience with social media, my revolt against News Feed, my blogging, and my embrace of Twitter and FriendFeed.

The NYT piece is a thorough piece over 5000 words long, so I’ll try to sum it up with my three main takeaways from the article:

1) Zuckerberg and Facebook created a revolt by privacy advocates by launching Facebook News Feed. And strangely enough, I was the leader of that very revolt.

2) Since the revolt, people have changed how they view privacy and friendships online and have embraced streaming their lives and struggles over platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

3) This change in how we share our lives has had a profound effect on how our friends, audience, and strangers see us and how we see them.

The article is a profound insight into how much privacy and digital friendships have evolved in such a short time span. It’s only been two years and two days since Facebook News Feed launched. And since then, the social media universe has exploded like a big bang: microblogging via Twitter, conversations via FriendFeed, corporate identities via LinkedIn, an explosion of blog readership and RSS, and the evolution of the Facebook platform, live feed, commenting, and the new profile design. What were we doing online two years ago? Think about it.

All of these social media platforms are designed to help us share our lives, our experiences, our thoughts, our beliefs, and our personalities in the digital realm.

Our views on what should be shared, what shouldn’t be shared, and with whom we share our lives are what have changed the most.

When I woke up and saw Facebook News Feed 732 days ago, I was aghast, shocked and upset. I didn’t want every one of my friends to know instantly that I had broken up with my girlfriend or that I had commented on a close friend’s new picture. So I created Students Against Facebook News Feed, told some of my friends and an online message board to spread the word, and by the end of the night, 100,000 people were members of the group. At its peak, the membership was a hair shy of 750,000 users, 8% of the Facebook user base at the time.

The irony of News Feed fueling the protest still boggles my mind.

My followers and I got our wish - the ability to opt out of sending information such as relationship breakups or wall posts. I opted out of everything, thinking this was what I wanted.

Two years later, I’m Twittering, FriendFeeding, and Facebooking like a madman. I didn’t see the value before, but I do now. What the hell happened to my views on privacy and the views of so many others?

In 2006, we were warning our kids not to post pictures online. Now millions of us share our pictures via Flickr photo albums. In 2006, very few marketers saw any reason to be part of Facebook or MySpace. Now companies are hiring people just for social media marketing. In 2006, most of us sent our thoughts via private IMs, Facebook messages, or email. Now we want thousands of people to read our thoughts and give us feedback.

Here’s the major change in the last two years: We are more comfortable sharing our lives and thoughts instantly to thousands of people, close friends and strangers alike. The development of new technology and the rocking of the boat by Zuckerberg has led to this change.

We don’t tweet about our sex lives (usually) and we keep personal family matters private (usually), but we are receptive to asking for opinions and feedback online or commenting on the victories our friends post about through News Feed. Humans as a species are always curious about the lives of their friends. The last two years have been major steps towards filling that curiosity information gap and exposing us to new friends, many of which we’ve never met in person.

We’ve grown more accustomed to sharing our lives with more people as the technology has allowed it. I’m not afraid to post a quirky bio or my thoughts on the political campaign (I used to fear it being used against me). The entire digital world does it now. MySpace has news feed. Twitter is growing at stellar rates. Email is even seen as a dinosaur by some of our youth.

The thing we’ve realized is that we still have control over our privacy. It’s called choice. If you’re uncomfortable with speaking to people digitally, you can decline to sign up for those social media websites. Or you update them differently than others. I can either block relationship updates from News Feed or, in my case, I just never update about it.

News Feed truly launched a revolution that requires us to stand back to appreciate. Privacy has not disappeared, but become even easier to control - what I want to share, I can share with everyone. What I want to keep private stays in my head.

All of this in just two years. Just imagine how social media will change our society in two more.

I look forward to sharing my life and my experience with even more people. I’m not afraid of losing my privacy anymore. You shouldn’t be, either.