Social networks

How can distance learning become more student-centred? Dr Mpine Elizabeth Makoe, University of South Africa (UNISA), has been preoccupied with this question for several years. In a long-term study she conducted, she found that isolated students have a need for informal support that is often neglected in distance education. This has led her to investigate on how MXit, a popular South African instant messaging system, can help to fill the gap and drive collaborative eLearning in an attractive, age appropriate manner.

This is the speech made by Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media about "Social Networking in Europe: success and challenges", at the Safer Internet Forum in Luxembourg, on 26th September 2008.

British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) is working with Pluck - the industry-leading provider of social media capabilities to publishers, brands and retailers - to embed an array of innovative social media tools across its range of digital media properties. The new functionality, which will roll out across the portal this autumn, will be positioned under the new Sky Community platform.

Incorporating the likes of skynews.com, sky.com and sky.com/showbiz, the Sky Portal currently ranks as the 6th most popular commercial website network in the UK (ComScore). The incorporation of new social networking functionality - including cross-site user profiling - will help support greater audience engagement and provide improved levels of integration across the portal.

The first Sky website to launch with the new social media capabilities will be the award-winning Sky News site ( http://www.skynews.com/). Sky News has launched a variety of social media features across the site, including blogs, discussion boards and user comments, designed to give people more of a voice in shaping and contributing to the news agenda. The Sky News site will also host a user-generated 'citizen journalism' section in which people can share videos, photos and comments on breaking news events. By the autumn a range of other Sky properties - including Sky.com, Sky

If Slide and RockYou, two of the fastest-growing Web businesses, are any barometer for the future, the Internet is going to look pink. In other words, the future of social media is going to be all about the women. So if you're going to create the next hot Web 2.0 site and you want it to go viral, you'll target women.

It's no shock that men and women act differently online, just as they do in everyday life. The Web is an extremely social medium, and Web 2.0 is all about being social. Traditionally, men are the early adopters of new technologies. But when it comes to social media, women are at the forefront. At Rapleaf we conducted a study of 13.2 million people and how they're using social media. While the trends indicate both sexes are using social media in huge numbers, our findings show that women far outpace the men.