Artesia Spotlight: February 23rd, 2009

Artesia Spotlight is a bi-weekly review of key news in the fields of social media, user communities and virtual worlds. If you want to be the first to read the news, you can subscribe to receive Artesia Spotlight by e-mail on this page.

Report Spotlight

The Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum has released a report, which reveals the top Web 2.0 Security Risks for business. Some of the highlighted security threats have been present on the Internet for a long time, but are now becoming more damaging by spreading through Web 2.0-style sharing and viral distribution of applications, widgets and content. These security threats are certainly something that companies and their IT departments should keep in mind when adopting Web 2.0 technologies.

Tool Spotlight

Social media can successfully be used to provide customer support and collect user feedback. Here are two of the best known web services that provide an easy and professional way for companies to get in touch with their users' needs.

Get Satisfaction is a website that provides tools for companies to support their customers and get feedback about their products or services. Anyone can open a question or feedback related to a specific company and both employees and customers can answer topics and rate the importance of certain issues. Get Satisfaction is free and easy to use, although companies can also choose paid packages with advanced features, such as moderators, single sign-on and a custom look and feel if you choose to integrate Get Satisfaction into your existing site.

If you want to collect user ideas like Dell or Starbucks are doing, you can also use a similar service called UserVoice. UserVoice allows users to submit their suggestions or assign a limited number of votes to their favorite ideas, and companies can easily mark ideas as accepted or completed. As with Get Satisfaction, a basic package is free to use, and companies can choose among several paid packages to get advanced moderation, analytics and customization tools. 

Other news

• Google has launched Social Web Blog, a new official blog "about Google products that are helping to make the web more social". The first announcement on this new blog covered the launch of a Google Friend Connect social bar, which allows site owners to easily add social functions at the top or bottom of their website.
• Facebook has announced its first social widget for Facebook Connect called the Comments Box. This widget allows websites to add social comments that are linked to users' Facebook profiles.
• 17 leading social networking companies (including among others Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Netlog, YouTube and Habbo) have signed a European agreement to improve the safety of social networking users under the age of 18. All companies will aim to reduce the risks by implementing a number of safety policies and tools.