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Everybody, at one time or another, has dreamed about a social networking do-over -- completely gutting their social networking presence to get rid of all their fake followers, annoying ads and blatant intrusions by brands into their daily lives. If anything, the Im quitting Facebook or Im quitting Twitter comments are becoming more and more common. Thats because theres a growing sense that the Webs leading players are selling users to advertisers, rather than selling products to users. No wonder App.net, the much-hyped initiative to create an ad-free social platform, was able to raise more than $800,000 from everyday Internet users in less than a month.

But can it work?

At a time when Facebook seems to have lost its mojo and Twitter appears to be aggressively pursuing paid advertising opportunities, the App.net project (they prefer to call it a movement) tapped into the popular zeitgeist at precisely the right time. More than 12,000 people have chipped in anywhere from $50 to $1,000, according to The Next Webs Jon Russell, to help build a social platform completely free of ads. The campaign has attracted the support of some of the tech worlds leading evangelists, as well as a healthy number of "tech snobs", to borrow a term from Gawker, who dont mind shelling out $50 per year to be part of an exclusive social experiment. The brilliance of the App.net project is the fundamental insight that any truly social platform should work for the users and developers not for the advertisers.

Bold claims of building a social networking alternative, though, are nothing new. Remember two years ago, when Diaspora was the trendy social network that was going to upend Facebook? Back then, the rallying cry wasnt Death to advertisers! it was Give us back our personal privacy!

Users were concerned that they no longer owned their own data, and that they could not easily port that data across various social platforms. So, four NYU students raised $200,000 via online donations, promised to build a new social network that was ad-free and data-friendly, and... two years later, we're still waiting for Diaspora to become a full-on technology migration. Getting to 100,000 users is nice, but getting to 1 billion users is nicer.

This well-intentioned desire to give users a chance for a do-over has been the inspiration for nearly every recent innovation in the social networking field. The big innovation of Google+ was Circles, the ability to sub-divide your friends into smaller groups, so that you arent sharing weekend exploits with your boss, or family-related matters with your weekend softball team. More recently, Foursquare did a total revamp to its social platform in order to become more of a location-based social network and less of a gaming platform. Now that mobile phones are changing how we connect with each other, Foursquare felt that most people would like their social experience to better reflect the context of their current geographic location. Indeed, the number of social networking alternatives seems to expand every couple of months.

This should sound familiar. The Social Networking War is reminiscent of the Google Search War, when competitor after competitor came after Google with knives sharpened. Each promised to do search just a little bit different, a little bit better, than Google. Some promised a better algorithm, others promised the ability to search in real-time, or to search rich content such as images and video. At the end of the day, though, Google is still the king of the search mountain.

The difficulty of unseating Google as the king of search or Facebook as the king of social networking illustrates the inevitable problem that any great idea faces in the tech world: inertia. Just as people continue to use Google for search because they dont perceive any great value in switching, people continue to use Facebook and Twitter for social networking because thats where their friends and family are. App.net has already proven that there is momentum and support for a social alternative that is advertising-free. Punching through the wall of inertia that accompanies any tech do-over, though, is harder than it sounds. Especially when it comes with a $50 annual subscription fee and sky-high user expectations.

What do you think: Will you sign up for app.net? Do you think it will become the next, great social network, unseating Facebook?

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App.net and the myth of the social network do-over

By Natalie Hayes Contributor August 14, 2012 6:42PM

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Several years ago Glenview entrepreneur Bob Hunt left his job as a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and decided to put his Internet marketing talents to good use by launching his own company aimed at helping local businesses optimize their online presence.

Deviating from the traditional 9-5 corporate career, the 34-year-old Hunt now works as his own boss operating The B24 Group, a start-up Internet marketing company that offers a variety of online marketing services to businesses in the North Shore area and beyond.

Two years since starting his company, Hunt has so far proven himself as a successful business owner, adding more than 25 clients and four employees to what started as a one-man endeavor in 2010.

Working around-the-clock from anywhere with an Internet connection, Hunt is focused on helping local businesses grow by widening their customer bases and increasing sales through a variety of tools including automated lead capture and follow-up systems, Google Places optimization, specialized YouTube videos, and text message marketing.

Hunts list of Internet marketing services has expanded during the two years since he started The B24 Group, but the initial idea for the company started with his objective to help businesses increase their search engine optimization, or achieve better rankings on Google search results pages.

Hunt, a Glenview native and graduate of Loyola Academy in Wilmette, first got his feet wet in Internet marketing after he left his job as a trader in 2004 and started following his interests in marketing and web site creation.

Fully confident that the last place he wanted to be was in an office working for someone else, Hunt began deeper exploration of his personal interests and talents by writing e-books on topics like dating, silver and gold investing, and a variety of health topics including pet health.

Needing an effective way to get readers to find his e-books online, he taught himself the best ways to use SEO to get his sites ranked higher on Google search results pages.

The rest is here:
Glenview Trader leaves Merc and starts internet marketing company

14-08-2012 15:19 DL Hughley and Stacy London debate how much is too much when sharing online.

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'GAA' Toe-to-Toe: Oversharing on Social Media Sites - Video

Mumbai, Aug. 14:

A silent killer is how National Liver Foundations Dr Samir R Shah refers to Hepatitis B.

It is a disease that you do not have a control over, and it leads to serious liver disease and death, says Dr Shah, a liver specialist with Mumbais Breach Candy and Jaslok Hospital, who had treated former Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.

Reports say that the former Chief Minister, who passed away on Tuesday, had Hepatitis B and developed cirrhosis of the liver.

About 2-4 per cent of the countrys population carry the Hepatitis B virus and most of them are not aware of it, says Dr Shah.

Of this, about 20 per cent develop serious cancer diseases, he says, urging greater intervention and screening.

Singling out transmission of the virus from a mother to her child as one of the key causes of prevalence, accounting for about 90 per cent of the incidence, he stressed the need for intervention through vaccination.

In the case of a Hepatitis B infected mother, the infant needs to be given its first doze within 12 hours of being born, Dr Shah said, adding that even doctors need to be sensitised to this critical fact.

In Taiwan, a similar intervention is reversing the prevalence of liver cancer in kids, he added.

In India, about 25-40 million people have Hepatitis B and a lakh die each year from serious liver diseases. Globally, about six lakh people die from serious liver ailments.

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Hepatitis B: The silent killer

BEALLSVILLE, Ohio -

Coal miners, their families, and supporters of the coal industry gathered in Beallsville, Ohio Tuesday to hear what Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney had to say about the issues that matter to them.

11-year-old Hailey Mallet came to the Century Mine to support her dad and all coal miners.

"It's sort of scary because every day he goes underground and he sort of risks his life because anything could happen to him," she said.

Coal mining is a profession and industry that's important to voters in Easter Ohio. Mitt Romney made a stop on his bus tour in the swing state to convince voters he's a friend of the coal industry.

Jac Chaffee has been working in the coal mines for almost a year and thinks Mitt Romney is a good candidate for president, and says it's hard to find someone who supports the industry.

"It's not looking good for us and we're trying to do everything we can to keep our jobs," Chaffee said.

Alcwyn Elliot was among the hundreds in the crowd Tuesday at the Century Mine and said he agreed with 100 percent of Romney's speech.

The feeling for some coal miner's Tuesday was unexplainable.

"I mean, he could have been anywhere, any coal mine, and he's here today," said Rodney Enos, who'sbeen working in a coal mine for five years.

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Coal Miners Hope Romney Keeps His Word