From Daily ‘Dog: “The new website, called Wallop, is bound to make a splash in the competitive pool of friend-collecting websites. Microsoft’s tagline for the site, which will offer a wide range of tools and features that will hopefully set it apart from similar pages, is ‘the exclusive social experience.’”

My Two Cents: I have seen a couple of articles mention Google and how it is playing catchup, well, I think it’s safe to say that Microsoft is playing the same game (read: Zune & Wallop). Hopefully for Bill Gates and company it isn’t a day late and a dolar short. We’ll see how Wallop fares and the Zune in November–which, by the way, it was announced this morning will be priced almost $1 more than the equivalent iPod.(Read the Reuters article here on CNN.com)

A number of people of have commented on using Digg. Read Greg Hartnett’s post and comments; Steve Rubel’s thoughts and responses; another post here and here.

My Two Cents: I recently had a good friend Digg a news release about a client. At first I felt this was a misuse of Digg, but after further thought, I think to Digg one’s own release is just a step beyond putting the Digg link on the release page. I mean, with so many news sources on the net, why not cut through the clutter and get the story in the communications channel? Where I see it being a problem is if the entire agency and client Diggs the article and creates a pseudo-popularity and I think crosses a line. What are your thoughts?

I am probably one of the last to hear about youtube and the lonelygirl15.com hoax/stunt??? It was brought to my attention by Mike Pogue of the New York Times.

My Two Cents: This youtube event reminds me of the .com vs .org discussion wherein we need to know the source of information to determine credibility. I am not familiar with thelonelygirl15 story but from the sounds of it, it’s pretty innovative, regardless of who is promulgating the videos and site. The danger I see is that, in an era when trust and transparency are in more and more demand, events like this can blur the lines and hurt credibility. Time will tell, and again, this is part of the learning curve.

What do you think? How important is disclosure in advertising? Do you see this as detrimental to corporate or brand trust?

Let me say that as a PR person, Wikipedia is an important player in PR 2.0 and social media tactics, not only does it get your message, client or product in front of a lot of people in a very unbias location, but it is also a great SEO tool in the Web 2.0 realm.

Here are a couple of articles discussing the growing pains Wikipedia went through:

BW’s Heather Green’s post and CNET’s article

My Two Cents: I don’t think this is a bad thing. Granted it isn’t pleasant for Wikipedia or the parties that have been wronged, but we–players in the media industry–need to figure out how to use these developing media and I am hesitant to regulate the heck out of them, so I think this is an interesting point of discussion as long as some resolutions are made in the end and can be applied to the media industry.

What are your thoughts?