FormSpring.com is a data collection and management system with a particular emphasis in online forms, registrations and surveys. And enterprise-level system, FormSpring.com might seem rather dry to anyone but an online retailer or event coordinator. FormSpring.me , on the other hand, has tapped the very essence of what makes the social web so addictive. This new application, a free and social side project, nearly has all the requisite puzzle pieces to go completely viral. It's fun, engaging, and slightly game-like, and it encourages the behaviors users love to indulge. It's only missing one critical element. Sponsor A stable back end. But more about that in a moment. First, let me tell you what makes FormSpring.me so infinitely entertaining. First, the site is user-to-user Q&A . This is the kind of formula that has populated the Web with masses of UGC on sites such as Yahoo! Answers and Wiki Answers . It's also the basic formula behind such highly praised startups as Aardvark , which allows users to ping one another across networks to get answers about specific topics. Q&A between end users is a growing trend on the web, without a doubt. Second, the site allows one user to anonymously ask questions of another user. Anonymity has bred some of the most interesting and varied experiments of the social web. Very often, a lack of links to users' true identities leads to bathroom-wall-of-the-Internet content such as 4chan or YouTube comments. But while anonymity breeds trollism and is actually a dying phenomenon online, having a thin veil between the asker and the answerer of a question can act as a confessional booth in a way, allowing for more frank communication or the posing of some very interesting, controversial questions that might otherwise be considered impolite or risky. Finally, one of the most enduring trends of the social web, from its inception to the present day, is our deep and insatiable love of self-reference . The provocative beginning question for the site is, "Ask me anything," which users then tweet or post to Facebook. Answering questions all about you, your preferences, your past, your thoughts, your wishes and hopes, your regrets, what you eat and where you live - nothing is more intoxicating to the average social media user. From our first LiveJournal entries to mid-2000s MySpace chain surveys to our latest tweets, we clearly love talking about ourselves. The way that FormSpring.me caters to this inherently human attribute is by giving us the impression or illusion that someone, somewhere actually cares about what we think and do enough to ask us and expect an answer. So, when you combine the power of a Q&A site with the magic of an anonymous commenting system and the addictive qualities of navel-gazing with the expectation of being noticed, you basically have on your hands the social web app of the year just waiting to happen. And if it weren't for back end - which is likely built on Ruby on Rails, according to a few sources we've consulted today - FormSpring would have not only a money-making enterprise app but also a blockbuster social app. Although the concept is fascinating, the implementation is transparently shoddy. It seems like a hastily put-together weekend project along the lines of a Startup Weekend or Rails Rumble one-off. In fact, several developers we consulted said the site bears all the marks of a Ruby on Rails product, including rampant database scalability errors . ActiveRecord is a Rails class for accessing databases, and it's been shown in past applications to be unscalable. Concurrency issues mean that a small group of geeks or judges can have a grand time with your app, but the second it catches on with the social media crowd and then - god help you - general Internet users, the app's database is unable to handle that volume of traffic over a period of seconds, and end users start seeing error messages and abandoning ship like so many faithless rats. And since FormSpring.me is in all likelihood a side project from a single staffer or a couple employees (the company blog doesn't even mention the offshoot), it might not get the executive attention for further development or resource allocation. After all, without a revenue model, why would an enterprise-focused company waste time and energy on a social application? Speculation aside, FormSpring.com support tech Ryan Dillman writes, "Eventually, we plan to rewrite the FormSpring.me code from the ground up using the same type of database as sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc., so that we can handle the load. In the meantime, the millions of calls to the database cause frequent issues during peak times." Many parts of Twitter are built on Scala , and Facebook's database abstraction layer was developed in-house. If that kind of userbase - millions upon millions of users accessing the site around the clock - is what FormSpring is preparing for, they're going to need a much more robust solution that's much closer to bare metal than whatever they're currently running. And we do suggest they find one. FormSpring should consider monetizing and quickly scaling such an addictive little application before someone else does it next and better. So, to take the site's "Ask me anything" query and pose it to the site's creators, do you plan to seriously devote resources to create a stunning and addictive social app, or is this experiment destined for the digital dustbin? Ask us anything - or give us your frank opinions - in the comments. Discuss

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Anonymity, Self-Reference & Q&A: Formspring.me's Winning Combination for the Social Web

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating the privacy and security implications of cloud computing. That could be quite an inquiry as the debate is still open about how to actually define cloud computing in the first place. Sponsor The investigation should raise some concerns with the enterprise community. Such an investigation could cover aspects of Internet communications that have been in use for years. How would the FTC distinguish between the rights of the consumer and businesses that also use cloud computing services? What regulations would drift into the enterprise sector? Any service provider could be viewed as part of the investigation under such a broad umbrella. The obvious parties would include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace and the other large cloud computing services. SaaS is a form of cloud computing. That could mean a company like NetSuite , Zoho or Salesforce.com would have a stake in the outcome of such an investigation. According to The Hill , the investigation surfaced in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the filing, The FTC recognizes the cost savings of cloud computing but has concerns about information being stored remotely: "However, the storage of data on remote computers may also raise privacy and security concerns for consumers," wrote David Vladeck, who helms the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau. This statement is puzzling. People have been storing their data remotely since the early 1990s on services that predate the social networks. The intent of the inquiry is to protect consumers privacy. But the repercussions of such a broad investigation will also have reverberations throughout the enterprise community if the inquiry is not narrowed. According to The Hill, the FTC is holding a roundtable Jan. 28 to focus on privacy protections. It will include specific discussions about cloud computing, identity management, mobile computing and social networking. Discuss

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FTC to Investigate Cloud Computing

While 2009 continued a downward trend as one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, the decline for venture-backed mergers and acquisitions has not been as severe as the dot-com bust in 2001 and 2002. New figures from the National Venture Capital Association show that in the last quarter of 2009, M&A hit $7.8 billion, up from the previous year's mark of just over $2 billion. Overall, 2009's total of $12.6 billion could not equal 2008's $13.6 billion total. Sponsor Mergers and acquisitions totaled over $68 billion in 2000, only to fall below $8 billion by 2002 following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In contrast, 2007's M&A total of $29 billion has declined to just over $12 billion in 2009 - a much more smooth rate of decay which has begun to flatten out. Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA, says they expect to see continued improvement throughout 2010. "Clearly, we have a long way to go towards a full recovery but we are encouraged by the increasing acquisition values and the number of companies that have filed a registration with the SEC to go public," he says. A late boost in the fourth quarter of 2009 has helped startups from reliving the experiences from earlier in the decade, the largest of which came from Amazon 's July purchase of Internet shoe seller Zappos for $930 million. This acquisition helped internet specific purchases climb to $2.2 billion in Q4 2009 - a near seven-fold increase from 2008's final quarter. Discuss

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It Was a Turbulent Couple of Years But Startups in Q4 '09 Prospered

Dan Zarrella has long impressed us with his discourses on the science of retweets , as well as his psychoanalytic apps that scan and parse Twitter streams - one for general analysis and one for dreams . His latest project, TweetPsych for lists , is an enlightening and often amusing look at what your lists are talking about, how they view the world, what turns them on (or off), and more. Depending on how you group your Twitter friends, you can make interesting generalizations or conjectures about society as a whole. What do the denizens of L.A. or San Francisco tweet about most? What about women - what's got them buzzing? Read on for graphs on precisely that cross-section of the Twittersphere. Sponsor My "I Heart L.A." list, a curation of tweets from the L.A. tech scene, shows a hilarious preoccupation with sex and a lack of tweeting about work, for example. And my lengthy list of San Francisco/Bay Area people on Twitter gave evidence of a complete lack of interest in celebrities and a preoccupation with self, the future and control. But when I looked at my "Southern Comfort" list of geeks south of the Mason-Dixon line, I got a very different picture. These folks are using the social web to tweet about their emotions, the passage of time, themselves, and dreams of unconscious thoughts, while they tweet less than others about celebrities, sex and money. When I looked at results for the list of women I follow, I saw they tweet a lot about sex, themselves, the past, anxiety and negative emotions, in that order. It was like watching an episode of Sex & the City flash before my eyes. They tweeted very little about money, learning, control (including self-control) and constructive behavior. Keep in mind, this isn't a generalization about the state of womanhood on the Internet; I follow a very limited and eclectic group of ladies, all of whom I find very charming in their own fashion. Of course, I had to check out the stats on the ReadWriteWeb crew . We seem to tweet a lot about leisure and activities other than work. Uh, don't tell the boss? However, tweets about work finished a close third, right behind tweets about ourselves. As a group, we don't tend to tweet about personal things, such as money, sex or emotions. Other interesting hypotheses can be drawn when examining "social media" and "technology" lists. Many geek-centric lists I examined were shockingly devoid of tweets about leisure, positive or other emotions or physical sensations and dominated by tweets about learning, the self and control. Perhaps this is due to our realization that the personal and professional are quickly merging and our perceived need to present a reasonably consistent face and least objectionable programming -type content. At any rate, Zarrella's given us another insightful peek into how Twitter reveals interesting snippets of information about various demographics and sociological segments. Give the new lists function a spin, and let us know your findings in the comments! Discuss

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Twitter's Psychologist Strikes Again: Analyze Your Lists

Forget losing weight or finding the perfect life partner: All we want to do is make 2010 the biggest geek-out year ever. The ReadWriteWeb crew have collectively planned to take over the world next year by honing our nerd super-powers. From programming in Python to building AI houses, we've resolved to be smarter, more curious, more technical and way geekier than we were last year. Read our resolutions, and definitely let us know what you plan to do to be the best geek you can be in 2010. Sponsor The editor-in-chief himself, Mr. Richard MacManus , is known for his fascination with machine-to-machine communication via the Internet of Things . This year promises to be an interesting one at the MacManus residence if Richard's resolutions hold true. "One of my goals for 2010," he said, "is to experiment with Internet of Things in my own house and life, using tools like Pachube and sensors. We'll see how that goes..." We wish you lots of luck, boss! If all goes well, you'll be a prime candidate for the first episode of Geek Cribs, and we'll all be very, very jealous. Our own ReadWriteStart warrior, Dana Oshiro , is going to be a busy bee this year. "I'm finding that the coolest ideas come out of academic institutions and enthusiast groups before they're ever thought of as business-related products. In 2010 I plan on attending more hackathons,

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2010 New Year's Resolutions from the RWW Geeks & Friends

Over the last week we ran a series of posts outlining the five biggest Internet trends of this year: Structured Data , Real-Time Web , Personalization , Mobile Web / Augmented Reality , Internet of Things . Effectively this was ReadWriteWeb's State of the Web 2009 . We've now compiled the main points into a single presentation, available on Slideshare and embedded below. You can view the presentation in full screen by clicking the "full" button at the bottom of the presentation. You can also download the presentation as a Powerpoint file. All of the links in the presentation are clickable, should you wish to explore a certain topic more. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! Structured Data The Real-Time Web Personalization Mobile Web & Augmented Reality Internet of Things Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends of 2009

In what has become a Christmas tradition, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales posted a personal appeal for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation earlier this month. On the first day alone, the nonprofit raised $430,000 from 13,000 people. Today, Wales announced that Wikimedia reached its fundraising goals. In total, the foundation managed to raise $7.5 million. Last year, when Wales posted a similar appeal, the Wikimedia Foundation received $6.2 million from 125,000 donors. Sponsor Still No Ads Wikipedia and other Wikimedia properties like Wikiquote or Wikibooks could easily find enough advertisers to finance these sites. In order to remain as independent and impartial as possible, however, the Wikimedia Foundation prefers to rely on donations from users. It is worth noting, though, that the Wikipedia does have deals with some other companies like France Telecom's Orange . These businesses license the site's content and share advertising revenue with the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation has fewer than 35 employees and needs roughly $10 million per year to operate. About 340 million users access Wikipedia per month. According to Wales, this represents "almost a third of the Internet-connected world." Discuss

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$7.5 Million: Wikipedia Reaches Fundraising Goal