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

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

In 2009, when Ray Ozzie stepped into the ring with the news that Microsoft was launching a full-on social lab, it was clear that the Enterprise 2.0 movement was moving into a new phase. Now comes the question of what effect Microsoft will have on the way Enterprise 2.0 evolves and what roles the players that are early to the game will play in its future. 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! Ozzie is Microsoft's chief architect and one of the most respected people in tech circles. Lillian Cheng will lead the Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs and report to Ozzie. Cheng is a luminary in her own right, leading a number of research efforts for Microsoft, including the Vista UI. FUSE will combine three labs: The Creative Systems Group, which has been led by Cheng, and the Rich Media Labs and Startup Labs, now commandeered by Ray Ozzie. In an email to Microsoft employees this week, the message was pretty clear about the direction the company will take with its technology development. In essence, the tea leaves say that pretty much every product at Microsoft will include social or sharing features. FUSE will serve as a resource for the product groups. In Ozzie's words: Myriad scenarios involving the notion of 'social' have now gone far beyond communications and collaboration and are transforming experiences that are key to our customers and key to our business, in leisure & entertainment; productivity & teamwork; experiences extending how we use the OS itself. The three groups being combined have concrete skills and code in areas where 'social' meets sharing; where 'social' meets real-time; where 'social' meets media; where 'social' meets search; where 'social' meets the cloud plus three screens and a world of devices. FUSE Labs will bring more coherence and capability to those advanced development projects where they're already actively collaborating with product groups to help them succeed with 'leapfrog' efforts. Working closely with (Microsoft Research) and across our divisions, the lab will prioritize efforts where its capabilities can be applied to areas where the company's extant missions, structures, tempo or risk might otherwise cause us to miss a material threat or opportunity. Microsoft's apparent deep commitment will create a rising tide for the Enterprise 2.0 movement, which is already in full swing. A number of best-in-breed applications are being used by business people. Microsoft's high-profile commitment will further fuel interest in these applications. Part of this is just the natural order that is taking place. Corporations have historically relied on document-based systems such as Sharepoint. Web pages reflect the next extension, but they, too, are essentially a form of a document. Enterprise 2.0 is forcing a change by fitting social layers that surface information from traditional data silos. That shows no sign of slowing down. FUSE will push the effort forward in its work with the product groups. It will be a wholly different kind of approach that has its roots in IT more than in the business departments. A Different Development Burden Microsoft faces a different developmental burden than what faces the young best-of-breed companies that are building social applications for their business customers.These companies are building products from scratch that they can quickly change without worrying about software upgrades. Their products will continue to fill a gap for the business manager. This means that the Enterprise 2.0 movement will see a dual form of growth, both from business and IT departments. How Will The Customer Fare? Perhaps more interesting will be the changing dynamics for Microsoft customers. I spoke with Tim Young, CEO of Socialcast about this topic. The advantage of social technologies is their ease of use and how they fit into a line of business. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools can be treated as an expense. They perform a service. Business users like that model. The applications are easy to use and affordable. They do not require an IT team to put in place. Business users have been free to use these technologies at will. They have been pretty much ignored by the IT Department. But recently, Microsoft has been pressuring their IT contacts to upgrade to Sharepoint 2010. People we speak to say that IT is now starting to ask business users about the social technologies they are using. IT is skeptical to some extent. They have relationships with Microsoft that are important to maintain. But unlike in the past, business users are the early technology adopters and hold a bit of power. They have started using social technologies and are not looking back. They have crossed the chasm and are looking to employ these applications even more. The news from Microsoft just proves that the social enterprise is here to stay. Microsoft is not in such a bad space. Companies are still heavily reliant on spreadsheets and email. Documents remain the crown jewels of the organization. Their social offering only stands to improve with FUSE now in place. Several companies, like Jive Software , are integrating their products with Sharepoint, providing an edge they previously did not have. We expect Microsoft will play a heavy hand in how Enterprise 2.0 evolves. But the foundation has already been established to some extent without them. They have their own allies in the enterprise. Now it's just a question of how fast the culture shifts. Discuss

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Ray Ozzie's New Social Lab: What It Means For Enterprise 2.0

Welcome to the first ReadWriteWeb Event Guide of 2010. There's a new seminar in London later this month that we've added to this week's list. As always, you can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 11 January 2010: Nashville, Tennessee Social Fresh Nashville This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Nashville will have 30-plus speakers, including Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Gavin Baker of Ruby Tuesday and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 14 January 2010: Palo Alto, California The Founder Showcase The Founder Showcase , by TheFunded.com, is an open startup pitch and networking event that highlights the newest cutting-edge businesses and helps innovators gain traction among the Silicon Valley elite. On Thursday, January 14th, 10 of the most promising early-stage companies, as selected by over 13,000 registered Founders and CEOs on TheFunded.com, will present to an audience of over 300 investors, founders, and members of the press. A panel of experts will critique the pitches, and an open ballot of those in attendance will determine the Founder Showcase Winner. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 10% discount when registering, just use discount code "RWW". 20 January 2010: London New Digital Revenue Streams Seminar Madgex and Abacus e-Media are hosting a free seminar that will offer advice and case studies from media organisations that have successfully created a direct impact on profit margins. The event is supported by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Haymarket-owned Brand Republic, and will feature speakers, including David Archer, CEO of Scottish Television. The breakfast seminar takes place at the Council Chambers, Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London from 8.30-11 a.m. (registration and breakfast from 8.15 a.m.). To register, book here or email marleen.kinder@madgex.com . 26 January 2010: San Francisco, California Catalyst Conference Vator.tv , a leading platform for entrepreneurs and innovators to broadcast themselves, and provider of news and information through VatorNews, and Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on education and empowerment of influential women in technology, are seeking five women-led startups across any stage to present at the Catalyst Conference on January 26, 2010 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. To be one of the five, join the Catalyst competition today and win the chance to present. 27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI? This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions. The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include: How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies? Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs 1 – 5, February 2010: New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto, São Paulo Social Media Week The second annual Social Media Week conference will explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large. The conference is designed as a series of localized events, which city partners are responsible for organizing. Programs will span a variety of formats, ranging from talks and panel discussions, to interactive workshops, seminars and networking events. Registration will open in January 2010 and the majority of events will be free thanks to the global sponsors and event partners. You can find more information at http://socialmediaweekny.com . 4 February 2010: San Francisco, California Vator Splash Vator.tv , a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its inaugural Vator Splash event on February 4, 2010 at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Catch onstage presenters: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Smule CEO Jeff Smith, August Capital VC Howard Hartenbaum and Google Ventures VC Bill Maris. Ten promising startups will also get to present onstage. Enter the Vator Splash competition if you want to present. ReadWriteWeb readers get a 25% discount on their tickets using the code VatorReadWriteWeb . 8 February 2010: Tampa, Florida Social Fresh Tampa This is the social media conference that comes to you. Social Fresh is a one-day, case-study-rich conference targeted for marketers. Social Fresh Tampa will have 30+ speakers, including Chris Barger of GM, Maggie Fox of Social Media Group and John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart). ReadWriteWeb readers get a 15% discount with the code "RWW15". 10 February 2010: New York City Online Community Unconference East The Online Community Unconference East is a gathering of online community professionals - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners. The event runs from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Digital Sandbox. 11 February 2010: New York City NYC Venture Capital and Angel Showcase FundingPost is hosting a VC showcase where 20-plus VC funds and angel groups will be exhibiting their firms during a great cocktail party setting. Each fund will have their own table setup for the sole purpose of meeting great new companies. Additionally, there will be an optional pitching workshop from 2:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. The cost to participate in the workshop will be $400. This workshop includes the $125 ticket to the event, and a 1/4 page listing in the Venture Guide Magazine. This event is sponsored by Credit Suisse, and takes place at One Madison Avenue, from 6-9:15 p.m. 18 February 2010: Silicon Valley, California Future of Funding Active limited partners, top rated venture capitalists, and successful entrepreneurs are invited to Silicon Valley on February 18, 2010 to discuss the Future of Funding. The venture capital bubble has burst, and change is coming. Now is the time to have a constructive dialog about the future with all of the stakeholders at the table. Don't miss the opportunity to partake in this exclusive event hosted by TheFunded . Please visit www.futureoffunding.com to see speaker and event details. ReadWriteWeb readers use the code "RWW" and get 10% off. 15 – 16 March 2010: London, England 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams: Social Networking World Forum Enterprise social media Social TV World Forum Mobile Social Networking Forum The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more. Full workshop program within exhibition area Evening networking reception Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates Free pass for exhibition only 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 2 January 2010

Sometimes, it feels like terms we thought had some meaning really don't apply as much anymore. Take the term "social media," as an example. It's like every SEO marketer decided that "social media," was the ticket to a sweet consulting gig. Just look at Twitter. You find a lot of social media experts with tens of thousands of followers. Kind of feels like you are looking down a street filled with hucksters. 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! Social media once served as a term to help people understand the concepts that have risen over the past several years. It helped people understand the tools that can be used to gain a web presence. But the term took too broad of a meaning. At some point, a nervous rush ensued. Everyone needed a social media strategy. In the process, the term and the rush for "social media" adoption became ripe for satire: A More Holistic Approach But that's only part of the story. The other, more accurate story, reflects a trend toward a more holistic approach in the enterprise. Social media may only represent the tools we use but social computing reflects a deeper view of how the enterprise will adopt this new generation of lightweight technologies. We disagree that executives will continue to shun the term "social." If they continue to do so, they will be swept out by a generation of far more modern managers. Still, companies lack the capabilities and the discipline to develop operations that integrate lightweight applications into the enterprise. They need help. They use the new tools available but lack the experience for implementation. There is a need for more community managers who can help with the overall approach. These people are not "social media" managers. They use social media tools to help join a culture that is fragmented in part due to the "data silo" approach that has become predominant in the enterprise. We spoke with the people behind two consulting companies about their approach to social computing in the enterprise: Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 and the Dachis Group . Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 is a new consulting company started by Dion Hinchcliffe and Michael Krigsman . The enterprise, in their view, is still wary of social computing. They are primarily concerned about risk, control and trust. To succeed with social computing, the enterprise has to work toward three major goals: Address key business concerns Demonstrate business value Acquire social computing competency Both Krigsman and Hinchcliffe are respected members of the Enterprise 2.0 community. Hinchliffe is the founder of Hinchliffe and Associates. Krigsman leads Asuret, a company that focuses on project intelligence and risk navigation. They work exclusively with Socialtext, led by Ross Mayfield. Socialtext predates the Enterprise 2.0 movement. Their approach is a combination of Hinchliffe's 20 years of experience as an enterprise architect and Krigsman's long time work examining IT failure. Socialtext is their de-facto technology environment, which they chose after a review of about 70 companies. The company begins its project by gathering intelligence, followed by tool integration, community management development and a degree of project intelligence to define the risks involved. "We gather strategic intelligence to avoid the downsides and reduce project waste," Krigsman said in an interview. "We leverage best of breed social tools and build social computing competency." Here's a full look at their approach: Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 Overview View more documents from Dion Hinchcliffe . Dachis Group Dachis sees the enterprise going through an age-old transformation. Traditional software is essentially adapting to a new age. They call their approach: "Social Business Design." Social Business Design, as they view it, is the process of creating socially calibrated and dynamic business systems, process and culture. That's a mouth full but it reflects the enterprise demand for measured systems that show people are being productive and getting the work done. Unlike Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0, Dachis is technology agnostic, partnering with vendors when it makes sense. The Dachis approach puts a large emphasis on the need to focus on process, culture and technology. This means creating a plan for systems architecture, helping companies adapt to the cultural changes involved and all the aspects of the enterprise that need to be taken into consideration. This means understanding issues about governance and having a pretty keyed in measurement strategy. Here's their slide deck. It's a long one but it moves along. Pretty good, overall: Social Business Design: The Enterprise is Dead. Long Live the Enterprise! View more presentations from Jeffreydachis . Last Words About Social Media Social media is still a term we use. But it has become so cliche that it is somewhat of a turn off. It's important to distinguish that the people who have championed the cause for social computing are often deeply involved with the "social media" community. They are important people in the enterprise who should be sought for leadership in bringing the world of social computing to the ways we conduct business. Social media sounds too much like buzz hype. We need to get down to business. Social computing is a good thing. But even better is the proof that these practices work so we may use tools that help get the work done. Discuss

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Let's Move Away From Social Media and Get Down to Business

Although the daily trends on Twitter over the past year have often been silly or even obscene , hindsight has proven to be much more interesting. WhatTheTrend has compiled a great overview of Twitter hashtags and trending topics. Their Twitter Zeitgeist 2009 gives us food for thought as we move into a new, hopefully less gaming-prone era of examining and measuring what real users are really talking about on the social web. Now, let's talk about Twilight and Michael Jackson. Or, in the choose-your-own-adventure model of blog posts, you can skip to the part where we talk about tech-related trending topics instead. Sponsor One of the most notable uses of any social network to date was the role of Twitter in the Iranian election/debacle/bloodbath. The U.S. State Department even made a call when Twitter was scheduled for maintenance downtime during the pursuant protests because the messaging service had proven so vital to the democratic process in that country. The worldwide buzz - and the sudden surge of green-tinted user icons and locations changed to "Tehran" - make #iranelection the number one Twitter trend of 2009. In an interesting convergence between mainstream Internet use and high-tech geekery that only Google could engineer, Wave appears in the number four spot for top Twitter trends. And we have a pretty good idea that Twitter users' out-and-out begging for an invite provided the bulk of that talk. As our loyal readers know, the ReadWriteWeb team is divided on whether Wave is a win or a fail so far, but there's no doubt that this tech launch was one of the hottest this year. In a stunning and welcome upset, #musicmonday pulled ahead of #followfriday, besting the well-known but spam-heavy hashtag by four places (Monday landed in the second position, Friday in the sixth). Is Follow Friday, a charming concept created with the most harmless intentions by our dear friend Micah Baldwin , simply a trend that has seen its day? Or is there something about taste-making and multimedia content curation that draws users to simply participate more? Also, there are the films. New Moon, the second in the Twilight franchise, earned a number five spot in the rankings. We are grateful that our sole experience of these tweets are a brilliant collection of snarks from professional lampooner, newly minted TV pretty boy and TheOnion.com web editor Baratunde Thurston. Also-rans are Paranormal Activity, a horror flick that turned a $15,000 budget into around $80 million in box office receipts, and the latest Harry Potter movie. Finally, as a longtime Trekkie, I am happy to report that the new Star Trek film beat out Bruno by around 20 places in these rankings. Both the Palm Pre and BlackBerry were mentioned in the top 100 trends, and one of our top ten international apps , Spotify, earned a number 63 spot on the list for consistent chatter and news throughout the year. Bing and Google Voice each earned a spot lower on the list, coming in at 81 and 100 respectively. Finally, to nod graciously in the direction of our good-natured rivals at Mashable , their Open Web Awards were the 27th most talked-about thing on Twitter this year. For a topic that didn't appear until mid-October (and for a topic generated by a tech blog, no less), this is a great measure of success for which Pete Cashmore and his team are to be congratulated. To get the full list, send an email to the folks at WhatTheTrend . Discuss

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Twitter Trends in 2009: A Retrospective

Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest. Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry. 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! Works With Just About Anything We'll use the field of Education as our example, because there is a lot of activity there and we presume we've got more educators as readers here than butchers or candlestick makers. These methods can be applied to discovering the hottest people and topics in social media in any field, though. If you doubt that these kinds of steps could help in your line of work - check out this post , where we found the best work-related RSS feeds for Fire Inspectors and Physical Therapists, just to prove that we could. In the following 13 steps, we'll walk you through how we identify top blogs on any topic, how we quickly figure out what their most popular recent posts have been about, how we incorporate their blog archives into our knowledge about the field and how we find where else they are participating in conversation around the web. Going through the whole process takes us less time than it took us to write this post. No end of variations are possible, of course, on this method - but we expect a lot of readers will find this useful. People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to "join the conversation" - because they aren't sure where to find the conversation. Here's how we find and track the most popular conversations in niche fields. Popularity isn't a perfect judge of quality by any means, but it's a good place to start from. Is this post a cheat sheet? Maybe, but we think of it as a way for you to make your cheat sheet on whatever sector you follow. Find The Most Popular Blogs in Your Field There are many different ways to identify the top blogs in a given field, systematically, but some methods work better than others depending on the niche you're looking at. We compared six of our favorite methods in this post . Here, we found that visiting http://delicious.com/tag/blog+teaching gave us good results. By default the URLs are listed in reverse chronological order - the most recent items that anyone has bookmarked and have ever been called both "blog" and "teaching" will appear first. In the image above you can see that we're running two Greasemonkey scripts called Autopagerize and Sort By Popularity . Greasemonkey is really easy to use, see our post How to Learn to Use Greasemonkey in 5 Minutes. . These scripts let us open multiple pages of bookmarks all at once and then sort them in order of popularity. So we did that, then scanned down the top several pages of most popular items tagged both "blog" and "teaching." We tried words other words like "education" as well. Each time we found a good site, we copied the link to it and went to step two. Add The Feeds to a Reader We like to use Netvibes to build collections of feeds because it's easy. Click on "add items" then "add feed" and paste in the link to the top blog you found. Netvibes will auto-discover the RSS feed for the site, often multiple variations but it shouldn't matter which one you choose. We pick "RSS 2.0" just because it's the most standard. Add it to your page and then go back to Delicious to find more sources. We repeated the discovery step until we found about 10 good blogs to subscribe to. Then we visited those blogs and looked at their "blogrolls" or sidebar links to their favorite blogs. We found a number of good sources to include in our list that we had never heard of before. One was a good looking blog about education and technology that was written in Spanish, so we grabbed its feed and ran it through Mloovi.com to have it automatically translated into English, then put that translated feed into Netvibes. Once you've got a good collection of top blogs in that Netvibes "tab" it's time to get it out of there. You can read the blogs in Netvibes, but there's more that we're going to do with these blogs. When you're in the "add feed" screen, you'll see an "OPML Export" link. OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the format that reading lists are imported and exported from feed readers in. It's really simple. Export it to your dekstop and then move onto the next step below. We're now going to edit an OPML file - but don't be scared! It's easy, we promise. Anyone can do it. Pull Out Your New Tab's Feeds This step assumes you've using Netvibes, or some other start page, for other things in addition to this project. If that's not the case, skip to the next step. We use Netvibes for a number of different things, so when we put together a new collection of feeds in it and want to export them, we have to deal with the fact that our whole collection of feeds in all our tabs gets exported. Simply search for the title of your tab in the file, then delete everything outside of that section! Everything except the very beginning and end of the file, that is. You can see what it should look like below, in the next step. The Top of the OPML File. Don't delete the document type declaration of the body tags. Rename the title of the file and resave your document. Now don't you feel smart? That was really easy though! Now to Find the Hottest Posts from Those Top Blogs Now that you've got an OPML file of the most popular blogs in your field, you can take that file over to Postrank.com and import it. You'll need to create an account, and the service doesn't allow you to manage multiple OPML files, so you may need to create a new account for every time you do something like this. I just create a new account with a GMail alias. Did you know that as while other apps, like Postrank, think that emailmarshall@gmail.com, emailmarshall+1@gmail.com and emailmarshall+2@gmail.com are all different emails - Gmail considers them the same thing? It's true, that's an alias and all emails sent to any of those will end up in the same inbox. So I create a new account for each OPML file (silly, but that's how you've got to do some of these things) and then import my new OPML file. Rank the Blog Posts With Robots! Once you import that OPML file from your desktop, you'll probably notice that Postrank has seen some of the feeds and not seen others. You should probably come back in an hour once they've processed the remaining feeds. What are they doing? They are checking every item in every feed to see how many comments it has, how many inbound links, how man times it's been bookmarked in Delicious or Digg, how many times people Tweeted about it, etc. It's then ranking each item in each feed on a scale of 1 to 10, relative only to the other items in that same feed. What does this mean? It means you can have Postrank show you only the most popular posts in each of these top blogs, as determined by the blogs' own communities of readers. That's valuable information! It's a very fast way to get up to speed on the latest hot topics in your field and by subscribing to the feeds filtered for popular items, you can pay peripheral attention to this field but know that you'll never miss a really big story. Thanks Postrank! If you're interested in the Greatest Hits of Top Education Bloggers, here's the OPML file we built with the feeds we've found so far: Top Education Blogs - Greatest Hits . Just right click and save that link, then upload it to your feed reader. Banish Content Overload By selecting all the feeds in your collection, then setting their filter to "great" - you'll be shown just the hottest posts from each blog. Selecting "best" will show you almost nothing at all, though. Once you've set the filter to Great, export this filtered version of your OPML file and move on to the next step! Pretty Up Your Collection We would recommend opening this new OPML file in your text editor and renaming it something more useful. Check Out the Hotness By clicking on any of the feeds you imported into Postrank, you can check out the hottest posts in that blog's recent history. Hello time saver! Some of you might be temped to call it a day at this point, and we have captured a lot of good intelligence with relatively little work - but don't stop now, there's more we can do! You'll want to take these next steps, too. Import Into a Feed Reader Go back to your Netvibes or other reader's "add a feed" page and you'll see the option to import an OPML file. Import your new Postrank.com filtered OPML file and you'll be subscribed to just the hottest posts from the best blogs in your field of interest. Oh but there's still more we can do! Make a List of the Links You Found There's a number of different ways you can do this, you could have made a separate list of your links before you subscribed to their feeds, but I didn't in this example. Instead I went into Netvibes, clicked on the title of each blog and copied its home page URL over to a list in a text editor. Why do you want this list of links? Check out the next step. Make a Reference Search Engine! Google Custom Search Engine is really easy to use and is an incredibly powerful tool. Just paste the list of all your top sources in your field into the box on the page, save it, then bookmark the URL of the resulting search engine. Now any time you want to look real smart on a topic in education, you can just search for keywords in your Top Education Blogs Custom Search Engine. We have a lot of different Custom Search Engines that we use here at ReadWriteWeb. Want to see what the results look like? Here's the Custom Search Engine we've got so far for Top Education Blogs .

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How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic