de.icio.us tags 01.19.07

Addicted to the Web in China — I don't know what it means to be an addict, but Reuters reported on Monday that 2 million teens in China are addicted to the Internet (thanks to EchoDitto for the heads up). It's actually pretty ridiculous — and alarmist. "Good kids who impress their parents and teachers" are the most vulnerable to becoming addicted. If they're good kids, then what's the problem?

Doing It Better — Wikiseek says it's "a better way to search Wikipedia". I like the fact that, unlike the search field on Wikipedia, it doesn't presume you want to see (and comb through) the main entry for the search term (I used "jeff tweedy"), but let's you easily see the range of entries in which the term shows up. In my case, Jeff Tweedy, A Ghost is Born, Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Loose Fur and Bellville IL turn up on page one. But what's with other search results that aren't Wikipedia entries? Keep it simple.

If geriatric1927 Can Do It — Bill Marriott, the 75 year old CEO of Marriott International, launched his blog this Tuesday saying to the press, "This is where the action is if you want to talk to your customers directly -- and hear back from them." So far there has only been one post, so we'll see how often he posts, but that one post generated quite a few comments, enough that there are probably a few folks in the company that are wondering why the heck they opened the flood gates on this one. (geriatric1927, by the way, is Peter Oakley, an elderly English man who has become a YouTube legend.)

Share Your Books — This made me think of Kristen when I first saw it, so hopefully she'll read this. Shelfari is a social network for people who want to share and talk about their favorite books. I've signed up, but haven't created my shelf yet, but am hopeful that this will get me back on track as far as reading something besides the newspaper and my blogfeeds.

Who Says? — NetSquared, GetActive and Squidoo have teamed up to name the 59 smartest nonprofits online today. 901am thinks it's just a bogus publicity stunt, "cheap and cheesy". As someone who thinks that the proliferation of lists among social media marketing types is turning into a major circle jerk, I'm leaning toward 901am's side of the road, although I appreciate having all of these groups in a list so that I can check out some potential digital advocacy best practices. But the fact that Product (Red) made it into the list, makes it seriously questionable how good the others are.

Building Trust — This list (yes, a list) from Seven87.com of "10 Steps: Making It Easy for Your Customers to Trust You," came to my attention at a time when I was checking out a web site on behalf of a client. In brief, this web site was talking crap about my client and the client wanted to be able to respond effectively. But the problem is, this web site is sooooo non-transparent about who they are and how they work, that it's impossible to communicate with them effectively. They just get to talk sh*t about folks and make money (through advertising) doing so. And if you look at this list of 10 Steps, they fail on every count. But does that mean that my client has nothing to worry about because no one could possibly trust the web site? I'm not so confident.

Speaking Their Language — According to AdWeek, there are a number of social networking sites cropping up that aim to appeal to second and third generation Hispanic youth, who make up 25 percent of the teenage population.