Blogger Profile: Dave Fleet

Dave Fleet is a communications professional with a passion for social media, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is also a self-described “fanatical runner” who has chronicled his training and fundraising efforts leading up to the Boston Marathon at TorontoRunner.com.
Though Dave has worked in marketing and communications for major corporations like Hitachi Europe and Lloyds […]

Evaluating Trust With Web Companies

I spend a lot of time checking out the newest web services. Microblogging? Let me at it. Video plugins for blogging software? Yes please. A new way to aggregate multiple RSS feeds? Clear my calendar. In spending much of my time hunting for the new, the cool, and the interesting, I notice patterns. And one […]

Why Recommendations From “Experts” Will Never Work

This morning I read an article by Andrew Keen entitled “The Napster bloodbath damaged music more than Lennon’s murder.” Keen is known for his anti-amateur book “The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values”, and his frequent appearances on shows like the […]

friendfeed- Not Just A Clever Name

 
 
 
 
friendfeed has been attracting a lot of buzz lately, and I needed to see why. So I put an hour aside and signed up for an account. Here’s what I’ve found.
It’s a feed
friendfeed is appropriately named, as it is just that: a feed of your friends’ activity. You sign up, give friendfeed your username and […]

Personalization, Recommendation and Discovery: Getting To What I Want.

One of the most difficult things about my job here at matchmine is explaining what we do. It’s not that it is a difficult concept. The problem is the words we all use. There are three terms that typically arise in conversations around what we do here: personalization, recommendation and discovery. Though the terms have […]

video thing.

Do We Need Video? Video as a Communications Tool
First, “blog” was The Word*. Then, it was “Podcast.”* Logically, the next step was “Video,” and over the last few months, video has become easier to make, upload, find and enjoy. We have seen YouTube enjoy tremendous success, while everything from corporate […]

WhyGoSolo

WhyGoSolo is a new social network focused on making “spontaneous offline connections”. While most social networks focus on virtually representing friendships from the physical world, WhyGoSolo is attempting to do the opposite: making the transition from online to in-person connections.
How It Started
In February of 2007, WhyGoSolo founder Ann Bernard was sitting in a Chipotle […]

Why Do We Like What We Like?

At my day job (at matchmine), we’re working on creating a better way to help people find the stuff they like. Sure, it’s infinitely more complicated than that, but I think that’s  a pretty good single sentence description. Because of that, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to understand the problems involved in […]

DEMO 2008 Wrapup- Ten Exciting New Technologies

This week, 77 companies had six minutes on stage at DEMO 2008 to introduce a new product to the world. For the first time, a free live video stream was available, allowing anyone to watch the live presentations on the web.
Being a new tech junkie, I watched all the presentations in real time, and […]

Control vs. Privacy

Chris Saad has a great article entitled “Top 3 Privacy issues for DataPortability on Social Networks” on the core issues at the center of the data portability debate. Asked for his top 3 concerns for privacy on social networks, Saad answered:

Perception
Control
Language

Chris’ second answer was the one that stuck with me. In his explanation, he said:
“Privacy” […]