Social Mention is a search engine that scans major sources of user-generated content such as blogs, comments, news, bookmarks, and microblogging services such as Pownce and Twitter to discover what people are saying about you, a company, a product or any other topic.

Search results are collected from heavily-trafficked social media sources, including Google blog search, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Flickr, Digg, YouTube etc. and conveniently remixed as a single stream of information. You’ll find this helpful to track your reputation, identify partners & clients, or learn about trends in your field of expertise.

Although much has been proposed to make energy-hungry hosting facilities “green” – a term that may mean non-polluting and/or energy-efficient and/or self-sustaining and/or something else – our hosting company has been quietly searching for ways to be more green. Their efforts are commendable, admirable and honest. Read their initiative here.

I was asked (again) how to use social media – here’s a very good overview of the fundamental factors driving this web trend that isn’t going away anytime soon: Attention > Attraction > Affinity > Audience.

Don’t miss the free white paper at the end of the post!

Thanks to Maria Reyes-McDavis of Web Success Diva for the story.

Tonight I’m closing rozzo.org, which I created 2 years ago not only to create something for my family but also to improve my skills for Joomla-third-party software integration. In deciding that the time had passed for this domain, I thought it useful to suggest several reasons to stop development of a site – and turn off the lights.

The most obvious: no traffic. If your site is not generating “sufficient” traffic by “core” users in your target audience – all terms that are subjective and that have been defined at the outset of your project – then you either need to work to generate traffic & use, or to stop investing your time, money & sweat.

Another not-so-obvious reason, and one that even I resist admitting: some has built a better mousetrap. Yes, it’s possible that a similar site exists, and if you cannot compete or cannot develop a unique selling propositin that distinguishes your site from others, then admit defeat and move on.

The web and technology render many sites, domains, business models and pricing obsolete. Although it’s essential to constantly update, redesign and/or evolve your site, it may be untenable or just plain exhausting to maintain competitive.

In the case of rozzo.org, it’s been a case of all three: only a dozen family members registered, no one (me included) desired to create and maintain an online genealogy, online services are free and really good (!), and although I considered re-inventing the site for anyone with the family surname (quite a bit bigger, international, multi-lingual responsibility), in the end I decided to pull the plug on this project. The domain expires next January.

I think it’s good to do a post-mortem: try to comprehend the causes that do and don’t make your site work, take the lessons that you’ve learned, and move on.

The future of the web is social as well as commercial, requiring a new discipline as well as a new paradigm for how an organization will operate, collaborate and compete.

These are just a few insights I gathered from this extraordinary video from The McKinsey Quarterly. Broken into several segments, the conversational interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt is worth watching (even if the video seems occasionally choppy!). Did someone say that school is back in session?

Welcome to the “official” blog – after several blogging platforms, this is it – no more foot-dragging, this time it’s for real, let’s get going! This will be a dynamic place for my thoughts and recommendations on online communities, technology services and web development. With your feedback and comments, I look forward to germinating material that we all find enriching and practical for organizations or businesses.