This isn’t exactly news hot off the RSS-reader, but here are three interesting things to look into.

The Bivings Report: Not every site needs to be a social network

When I hear folks talk about launching social networks I’m reminded of what people say about opening a restaurant: proceed with caution because nine out of ten fail in the first year.

For nearly all organizations, the best approach is to (1) add some light social features that encourage interaction around your content to your own site and/or (2) participate in established, external social networks. It is a lot cheaper and easier for you to go to where the people are than to try to bring them to you.

Media Post: 85% Of World’s Online Population Shopped On The Web

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.

ReadWriteWeb: Reuters wants the world to be tagged

In the same vein, last week Reuters – an international business and financial news giant – launched an API called Open Calais. The API does a semantic markup on unstructured HTML documents – recognizing people, places, companies, and events. This technology is the next generation of the Clear Forest offering, which Reuters acquired last year.