Wow, I don’t know where the week went!  It’s too late for a formal Web Weekly, but I’ll briefly share some of the most interesting things I came across this past week:

Chime.in

“Another social network!”, you groan?  Anyone entering the social media network scene these days had been be sure that they really have something compelling in order to attract users away from saturated Facebook, Twitter, and other networks. Chime.in attempts to lure users with an “interest-based” approach.

Here are 2 major distinguishing factors of this UberMedia product:

• Instead of status updates, users share “chimes,” which are like a cross between a Facebook status update and a blog post. The chime includes a headline, post excerpt, piece of multimedia, photo, tags, and of course, share options.
• Full user control over profile, including advertising and sponsors.  Users can monetize their accounts by placing their own ads and keeping all the revenue, or placing UberMedia’s partner ads and receiving half the revenue they bring in.

What would it take for you to join a new social media network?

GMail Gets a New Look

My beloved e-mail application is getting a full makeover for the first time since I’ve been using it.  ReadWriteWeb has a fabulous post about all of the new GMail changes and how to get the most out of them.  While some people aren’t thrilled about increased +1 integration of Google Reader and GMail, I really don’t mind.  I hope that it encourages more people to hop onboard!

The new look hasn’t fully rolled out yet. If you’re not seeing it, you should be able to access it by a little link pop-up in the bottom-right corner of your Inbox that says “Switch to new look”

Google+ Integrates With Apps

If you’ve been looking for a reason to bother joining Google+, now you’ve got one.  Tech News World reports that Google+ is now integrated with Google’s Apps. The Google team keeps adding new features to make their social network more robust, and integration with Google Apps is a biggie.  It means that in addition to sharing content with their Circles, users can ship it to everyone in an organization.  These new features, combined with the group video Hangouts, have a lot of professional implications.  Just as Google Docs and other products are useful tools for companies, Google+ may soon become a communication standard in the business world.

The way I see it, Facebook is still seen as a place to casually socialize, Twitter is a place to get questions answered and send quick check-ins, LinkedIn is a place to search for jobs and professional contacts, and Google+ can carve its niche as a tool to legitimately use at work, for collaboration and development.

And…

Check out my post on some new LinkedIn features you probably haven’t heard about!

Share/Bookmark

Tags: chime.in, gmail, google apps, Google+, linkedin, monetization

• Facebook Buys Gowalla - Web Weekly
• Bonus: Tools Special - Web Weekly
• Facebook's Frictionless Sharing Turns Some Users Off - Web Weekly