A few days ago, I wrote about the commoditization of social networks or rather the social networking feature sets that currently make Myspace and Facebook so unique and neat. Pioneers in social networking like Friendster and Myspace introduced a new data and software architecture that, at the same time clumsily and elegantly, met Internet users’ desire to interact and share content with each other. Finding old friends, connecting with new friends, sharing music and videos, playing collaborative games, and expressing oneself to virtual audiences of thousands all were groundbreaking features …

I co-founded a tiny little agency a few months ago called SocialOptimize that was focused on producing Facebook apps. At the time of founding, my partner and I received almost overwhelming demand from companies who were desperate to gain a presence on social networking site Facebook. Facebook was already quickly turning into a cultural phenomenon as everyone and their grandmother started registering for the site and “poking” each other.
Essentially, it was this mass of humanity in digital form that attracted advertisers and marketers to jump on the bandwagon and either …

Robert Ricks, a marketing maven and not too shabby graphic designer, writes a good piece about the commoditization of Web widgets. Robert’s resumé includes working at some of the early trend-setting dotcoms during the boom, creating his own trading card game (Magic for the ghetto), and even patrolling the halls as a security guard at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) where he learned his craft in digital media. Yes, he started there as a nightstick-wielding muscle man but took the initiative to learn some marketable skills from the environment around him. …