How To Get Freelance Writing Jobs

How To Get Freelance Writing Jobs

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How to build Your Social Networking Site

One of the key features is that there is a great deal of user participation. User’s generate content, comment on it and so on. Therefore, it becomes essential for the website designer to make it easy for user’s to do everything that they want or need to do. In terms of generating interest (and business) it is important to have the website linked to other websites that will refer back to your website. The connections that the content on your website shares with many other websites are extremely important and so one must design and optimize in such a way that it is easy for search engines to link to your website (similarly it should be easy for people to refer to your website through Social Bookmarking tools).

Essential concepts
Before beginning to start work on your website it’s necessary to understand what makes social communities click. This begins with an awareness of the most common tools and applications that are available today such as Blogging, Social Networking, Wikis, etc. The best way to get this awareness is browse aggressively and personally experience social networking online.

Some key concepts in these websites are the following: the concept of a Mashup, the concept of building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), optimizing for the Semantic Web and search engines, and referencing. A Mashup is an Web application that enables a user to integrate (Mashup) information from different sources to a single location. It also refers to the fact that a Mashup allows several different kinds of web services to be accessed through a single webpage. A Mashup in turn will enable you to create an RIA.

For example you may have a webpage that displays rich media along with related content (possible stripped from several sources) and advertising: this will be possible through Mashup technology. The Semantic Web is a way to connect content on the Web by utilizing the meaning and context of content. This will enable more relevant advertising to show up on your website which is important in terms of revenue creation. The success of the website however is directly proportional to the number of users who visit your website.

Optimizing for search engines and the Semantic Web will improve this but you need to be more aggressive as a website designer. This is where referencing plays an important part. This begins with collecting user feedback (comments and ratings) about the content on your website and displaying it for others to see, making it easier for user’s to bookmark content from your website, tagging to make searches more effective, providing a search engine within your website to make it easier for users to search for desired content (filtering by rating levels will make this process even more effective), making it possible for users to share content with others, and so on.

Planning and tools
Before you start building the actual website it is important to realize who your audience is and how far do you expect the user community to grow. These have implications on the design and it may become essential for you to have a scalable solution (or at least plan for scalability in the long term). For a business-oriented approach it also makes sense to have a successful business model.

Once you have decided on the scale of the system it becomes easier to start building your website. Something like Wordpress is sufficient for the needs of a website with a small audience, other similar options are ExpressionEngine and Django. More advanced solutions are necessary if you have a significant audience in mind. It may become necessary to hire professional help under those circumstances (if not for the entire project, at least for parts of it). For example, Elance is a site where one can look for freelance professionals to work on your project.

Steps
The process of site building can be broken down into the following steps:
1. Planning: We already spoke about this. It is certainly the most essential and is the step where you draw out a plan for the rest of the process.
2. Website Design: User Interface (including look and feel), Logo, the name of your website, developing a sitemap, designing a navigation are all part of this step. Wordpress is an excellent resource for getting a lot of this done. Professional help can be hired through Wordpress. A lot of the concepts need to be incorporated here.
3. Scripting and coding, building webpages: This is where the technology aspects come into the picture. Again Wordpress is an excellent way to get off the ground, or one needs to hire professional help.
4. Web hosting: You need to find an affordable hosting solution for your website. Things to look for are service quality (and reputation), future scalability options and
5. Domain Registration: Once you decide on a name you need to get it registered. It may make sense to register more than one domain extension (such as .com, .net and .org). You may also want domain name aliases. These cost more but have a long term benefit in that you’ll be guaranteed to have the domain name you need when the site grows.
6. Marketing: In addition to setting up advertising on your website (through a service like Google AdSense) you may also want to advertise on other websites. Referencing again plays a key part here and one needs to rely on viral advertising for success. It’s important for users to find your website.

Examples
The following links are examples of how to create a Web 2.0 website:
• Using Wordpress: http://www.socialmediapower.com/articles/how-to-build-a-web-20-and-social-media-optimized-site-using-wordpress/
• Portal Using Wordpress: http://www.howtospoter.com/wordpress-web-20-guide/
• On Linux: http://blog.thembid.com/2007/04/05/build-scalable-web-20-sites-with-ubuntu-symfony-and-lighttpd/

The Top 5 Web 2.0 Tools and Applications

It’s natural to think of Web 2.0 as the second version of the World Wide Web (WWW), which seems to imply that this version has now replaced the original version (presumably Web 1.0). But this is not correct. In effect, WWW technology still remains the same, and most applications run on that existing WWW technology. In layman terms it can be thought of as the revival of the web after the dot-com bust. The applications are characterized by a great deal of interactivity between the user and web-based content as well as interconnectivity between content (through hyper-linking and tagging). Generally this usually means that a significant amount of the information or content being manipulated / accessed is also stored over the Web. This has resulted in the proliferation of a rich set of web-based applications. We discuss 5 of the most important:

Social Networking
The sheer popularity of MySpace and Facebook has shown that this was actually a need which was waiting to be filled. What began as a simple means of staying in touch with friends has now grown to include a rich set of networking apps. MySpace Music allows upcoming musicians to post their work on the Web and enables them to get in touch with fans and well-wishers. Facebook’s programmable interface has allowed third parties to develop rich applications that run on the platform. Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, ho.tli.st, and sidereel and Social content-creation sites such as digg, diggdot, reddit and ContentPop are other Social Networking related solutions. Evite, eventful, socializr are event management sites (Facebook also allows a user to send out invitations and receive RSVPs). Cylive is a social productivity solution. LinkedIn is a professional networking site.

Blogging
In terms of participation blogs are the only things that rival Social Networking sites. These began initially as personal blogs (such as blogger) have now grown in scope to include corporate blogs and Q&A blogs. It is not uncommon nowadays to have a news site carry a parallel blog for its journalists to post their thoughts on current issues.

Photo, Video, Music and File sharing and storage
Something like Allmydata enables a user to harness grid storage technology to store email, photos, music, movies and other file. There are other file storage, sharing and backup utilities such as xdrive, omnidrive, StreamLoad, rapidshare and filestube. Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterbook, etc. are dedicated image storing services. YouTube is obviously the most popular video sharing site that has spawned a number of imitators. iTunes is a music manager and media player that also links directly to the online iTunes store to download songs as and when desired. Pandora allows a user to specify their musical tastes so that they can hear streaming music that they will like.

General Information and Wikis
The Web has always been a valuable source of information. The applications have simply enhanced this capability and enabled easier information access, often in richer formats. Searching is improved through the use of tagging which makes the process of searching similar to how the human brain remembers and recalls information. Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps and other mapping utilities make for excellent resources for getting directions. Google Earth enables a user to get a 3D view of the World. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia which is stored over the Web with information being provided by its users. In general a Wiki is an information base where people can contribute relevant information to and that is available over the Web. A Wiki can be used by corporations to share information with their customers as well as by teams of various sizes to keep information current among them.

Others
These include office productivity (ex: Google Docs and Spreadsheets), business and financial (ex: Google Finance, NetWorthIQ, ThinkFree, DimeWise, StockTickr, ProjectPlace, Project360), calendars and scheduling (ex: iCal, Google Calendar, CalendarHub), To Do lists (ex: Ta-Da, Remember the Milk), online dating, shopping, quotes (ex: Quotiki), entertainment recommendations (ex: Grepr), Karaoke (ex: kSolo, SingShot), Art related (ex: imagekind, TheBroth), travel (ex: 43 places, couchsurfing, TripMates), world improvement (ex: knowmore.org, 43 things, ChangeThis, funadvice) and many others.

Learn how Web 2.0 is influencing e-learning