Exclusivity of Social Networks Update
Almost as soon as Lee has me thinking that maybe I'm being a little paranoid with social networks trying to go the way of e-learning's early days and trying to lock in users...Scott Leslie over at EdTEchPost highlights a new social bookmarking service from Blackboard that is...you guessed it....locked to Blackboard users - the general public can browse but not add to the system.
Named "Scholar" - apparently in some ironic attempt to conjure up an image of an open, academic environment, the system does nothing that I can tell (except perhaps finding proprietary objects within BB's system and allowing users to import those objects directly into your BB course) that can't be accomplished using any one of a number of Webtops or Web-based aggregators. Unless of course your intent is to lock in customers - oh and charge them more because you went out and once again "invented" a bunch of services that were already available.
Yes...and they'll sue you if you try to lock in your users...so put away your plans for Premium Content on your site!
Posted by: mark oehlert | January 12, 2007 at 01:08 PM
They may have the patent on locking users in?
Posted by: lkraus | January 12, 2007 at 01:01 PM