Jeremiah Owyang

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: May 2, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
Busy week, yet again. Vignette starts to come forth with it’s community features, which are a direct challenge to the community platform vendors. Facebook extends further into the era of social colonization by allowing activity streams to be displayed on third party sites. The impacts of the swing flu echo throughout social networks.

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Launch: Vignette CMS rolls out social features
Community platform vendors need to be prepared to be squeezed from above as more CMS vendors prepare to enter this market. Vignette, who has a stable footprint in the enterprise space, launches first generation social features. They’re also demonstrating thought leadership by publishing best practices documents. Watch this change –the incumbents are waking up. I spent an hour with this team last week reviewing their live product, they just rolled this out, and hope to have customer adoption soon.

Colonization: Facebook exposes activity stream
Social colonization is when every web experience will be social. With FB opening it’s activity stream for third party developers (like Seesmic) it’s the start of the experience extending beyond the Facebook walls.

Government: Obama addresses nation on Flu
Using his weekly Youtube platform, Obama gives a clear assessment – Google Search of the situation, gives recommendations to schools, businesses, and people, then discloses the solution that have in place for vaccines, all without doublespeak. These simple social tools are empowering –but the content is most important.

Feature: Silverlight and Facebook create shiny UI
This is shiny, meaning it’s pretty, but doesn’t neccesarily offer multiplicative collaboration (useful), either way, see how silverlight flexes it’s UI muscles by displaying FB pictures.

Culture: US Military uses Social Networks to recruit soldiers
Now, you can befriend a recruiter. The pentagon is making considerable shifts towards using social networks to recruit young Gen Y folks for the military. Facebook is the leading social technology where they will deploy.

Context: Early examples of social context via scraping
Social networks are the first place where we’ve seen people voluntarily give up so much information about themselves unprompted. As a result, we’ll see an increase of services that scrape demographics to increase marketing and advertising effectiveness. While not a mature example of social context, it’s getting closer.

Risks: Social networking sites have downsides
This is an important article by Computerworld, in which it shows the potential risks that social networking sites bring to professional relationships and the office as many users are not aware of how privacy works. Beyond this, potential IP and corporate knowledge could be spread in social networking sites, learn about these risks.

Twitter Hype: People come –but don’t come back
The overhyped Twitter shows that some come but never come back, yet Nielsen responds vis this video suggesting that the small community is indeed very influential.

Oddparts: Facebook trivia
Culture, anonymity and a strong virtual gift economy make Facebook a misfit in China. Facebook is able to map mentions of the Swine Flu within it’s network from state to state.

Personal: IBM’s Impact and Calgary’s Web Strategy Summit
Last week, I started to give personal updates, and some suggested I continue. I launched the future of the social web report this week, and it received positive feedback. I’m headed to IBM’s IMPACT conference in vegas to speak, then to the Web Strategy Summit in Calgary to present my findings on the future of the social web. I’ve mentioned several times on Twitter that I’m forgoing shaking hands to protect the community, I’m a germ magnet, since I travel so much and meet many.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 26, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
For once, this week has some actual strategic news: Google’s intent to bypass closed social networks by creating public profiles are aligned with it’s strategy. MySpace is undergoing some leadership changes, in order to win back the media’s attention, they’ll need to quickly innovate. Following the executive turnover we’re seeing all over the industry, Hi5 follows suit.

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Strategy: Google to circumvent social networks
This is an important gesture in the world of social networks. Google has launched a profile feature that allows people to create profiles in exchange for influence on search results page. As you know, social networks are comprised of profiles and people connecting to each other. This strategy enables Google to build a ‘non-social network’ that rather than focus on a destination, instead lives on the open web. This is aligned with Google’s open strategy towards the web. Given their large user base, this will likely be successful, my question however is simple: what took so long?

Leadership: MySpace names Owen Vean Natta as CEO
News Corp’s MySpace has been doing the executive cleanse, having removed a handful of leadership now including Chris DeWolfe. This move, likely in response to the daunting growth and buzz of Facebook, and the potential fall out from the Google deal. While MySpace has been innovating with media, music, and catering to small businesses, they’ve not caught the eye of the market as the innovative player. Brands shouldn’t walk away from MySpace, they’ve still a thriving community, and this new leadership could offer innovation –although expect it to takes months to emerge. I’ve requested numbers from MySpace, to evaluate their current capabilities.

Leadership: Hi5 appoints new CEO of axe swings
Hi5, a very quickly growing social network with 60mm users missed it’s opportunity to monetize that growth resulting in layoffs that cut deep in this social network. They’ve now appointed Bill Gossman as the CEO, who has connections with their investors. Former CEO Ramu Yalamanchi, will step to a Chief Product role with a focus on operations.

Culture: Silicon Valley Social Media Deployed in Iraq
Cultures are often defined on how the common people are allowed to communicate and share their voices. Silicon Valley leaders or founders from Twitter, Meetup, Hocast, and YouTube assemble in Iraq to share expertise and discuss how social tools can improve the local situation.

Security: Cybergangs crowdsource thugs
Not uncommon, but social networking tools can be used to steal people’s identity, financial info, or release harmful code. Cybergangs are employing crowd created mobs to break captcha codes, a brute force tactic to get into people’s personal info.

Verticals: Social network for the beautiful…only
Modelfeed is a social network for the beautiful, and is in line with social networks being created for every possible vertical. What’s next? How about a social network for the fugly.

Deals: Mzinga lands Playboy
This large media company will try it’s hand to let the community of 6 million users to it’s website to engage by participating in voting, sharing, and discussions. Mzinga scored well in my recent Wave for moderation –which could come in handy for a large, and ‘passionate’ community.

Features: Facebook continues to emulate Twitter
Facebook made motions to buy Twitter, but the deal didn’t go through, Facebook can easily replicate the features, and has done so with text based updates that you can now receive on your mobile phone. This is an example of social colonization.

Research: Social Networks used by Marketers
This research, (I can’t vouch for the methodolgy) suggests that many marketers are using social networking tools, with a focus on Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs. Overall, these numbers look high, but it depends on how the questions were posed, and over what time period.

Hype: Twitter growth numbers misleading
Twitter is overhyped, and although they’ve received mainstream attention, it doesn’t account for true recurring users on a monthly or weekly basis. Visitors to the site don’t account for registrations –nor can it truly count for global and client based activity such as tweetdeck. The true Twitter usage numbers are allusive –although it’s clear, it has media attention.

App: When did you join Twitter?
For kicks: this little application tells you when you joined Twitter. It says I joined in Dec 2006, and at the time, I felt I was behind the early adopter curve.

Personal: On the road
This is the first time I’ve done a weekly update on me, let me know if you think I should continue this. I’ve been on the road for the last 5 out of 6 weeks, I got back at midnight last night from Forrester’s marketing forum in Orlando. While I find my work enjoyable, at the same time it’s exhausting. I do look forward to these quiet moments on the weekend where I can really think about where the industry is headed. It’s moving so incredibly fast, I find that aggregation, and a quiet hour every weekend is very important to do. On Monday, my report “future of the social web” launches. Stay tuned. Next week I go to IBM’s Impact event, then to Calgary to speak at the Web Strategy conference.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 19, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
This is only a sample of the news that happened last week. Without a doubt, this space is starting to move faster and faster, and it’s real struggle for me, an industry analyst, to keep up. Here’s what I think is important: things beyond the hype, deals, partnerships, movements of money, and potential for future growth.

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Europe: Facebook trumps Hi5 and Bebo
Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries. Facebook Captures #1 Ranking in Spain for the First Time in February, comScore, April

Partnership: Adobe and Gigya Partner to spread widget advertising
Adobe allows flash developers to extend advertisements to Gigya’s widget network using flash pro. This makes flash development easy to use and now social.

Security: Twitter compromised by hacker
Popular microblogging service Twitter was afflicted with a worm last weekend, causing the company to scramble to deal with it before the larger media attention mid week, and briefly resurfaced on Friday. Twitter must focus not only on making it’s site scalable (had major issues last year) but now must focus on making it safer through hardened security.

Growth: Ning hits 1 million communities
White label do it yourself social networking site Ning has reached a milestone, having hit 1 million individual social networks, or communities. Expect this trend to continue as we’ve seen an increase in ‘joiner’ behavior from year to year.

Amazon “Ham Fists” it’s adult books
A Twitter storm erupts, followed by blogs, then mainstream media as an apparent glitch by a ham fisted error caused the community to backlash. During the incident, it was hard to separate fact from fiction, but it became clear that from these news stories what really happened.

Spinout: StumbleUpon breaks free from eBay
I spoke with David Hornik, who’s on the board of Stumbleupon, who has now broken free from eBay. Expect to see some innovation occur now that the company is back in an open space environment. If they do this right, they could impact search as we know it.

Case Study: CPG $1.28 Million in Sales From $1 Million Social-Media Campaign
While not the highest possible margins you’d hope for in a social media campaign, this measurement reported by ad age shows that myspace worked with comscore and other agencies to measure a recent sales of a CPG effort. The study doesn’t indicate the positive word of mouth or other social residuals that may increase awareness, consideration, or brand preference.

Hype: Social noise as celebrities jump on Twitter
Of course, it shouldn’t go without mention that there’s quite a bit of noise within the social sphere beyond the AmazonFail incident, but the race to 1 million users by Ashton vs CNN. Ashton going on Oprah, her evangelizing the tool to her millions –and the continued growth we should expect from that. I have another blog post for that topic in a few.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 12, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I used to publish these on Wednesday, but now I’m spending more quiet time on the weekend reflecting on this fast moving space, do you know of any other industries that have this much movement?

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
It’s interesting to watch the bridges being drawn between the different players moving into the social space, such as Webtrends partnering with Radian 6 to offer a social media offering to traditional web analytics customers. Secondly, there’s reports of growth in a variety of areas of Facebook, Twitter, and Chinese social networks. Finally, more mobile devices and deployments are occurring, as Sony’s latest phone comes pre-installed with Facebook, and SalesForce offers a mobile version.

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Partnerships: Webtrends and Radian 6. Social monitoring meets web analytics
Webtrends is now offering the Radian 6 package in a co-branded solution. It makes sense for Webtrends to partner to quickly get out the door as brand managers are in current need to monitor the social web. I’ll be watching the other analytics players to see how they respond. Expect to see more partnerships between vendors in brand monitoring, web analytics, CRM, CMS as they connect with the social web.

Global: Chinese social networks get more traction –and revenue
Chinese developers have long since copied social networks like Facebook and MySpace, yet the twist is, their generating revenue from a far larger consumer base than the US. As a result, we’re seeing some interesting stories of successful apps and social networks (like Farming) emerge like QQ, 51, and Baidu.

Storage: Facebook creates storage ‘Haystack’ to manage photos
With more photos than even some dedicated photo websites, Facebook needs a way to quickly serve up photos, as a result they created ‘haystack’ which is 50% faster than traditional systems. Niall has a more detailed look at how this storage system works, the backend servers are powered by NetApp. (update: Niall points out that Haystack is designed to reduce reliance on NetApp servers)

Culture: Britney Spears trumps Obama –at least in Twitter
With the rise of celebrities joining Twitter, it’s interesting to note the original power geeks have had to share the spotlight with mainstream celebrities. Perhaps on a note of what the world really cares about, Britney Spears now has more followers than the non-tweeting Obama. The one to watch? Ashton is quickly moving up the ranks, with 800k followers.

Mobile: Facebook to come pre-installed on Sony Ericsson mobile devices
Sony’s C510 phone will come pre-installed with Facebook on it’s latest phones. What impacts could this bring? In the near future, people could dial their contacts from their Facebook address, or contact them through IP phones.

CRM: SalesForce goes mobile
I’ve my eye on CRMs as they get closer to the social web (or as Paul Greenberg would suggest, the other way around) as SalesForce launches a mobile version to allow sales, account, and support teams to support customers on the go. Imagine meeting someone in real life, and watch as they update their account on your interaction. “Firm handshake, check. Lack of eye contact, requires followup”

Revenues: Facebook financial breakdown
This Forbes article breaks down the cost per users, and advertising per user, and reflects on the overall financial viability of Facebook. BusinessWeek asks if Facebook’s future plan involves premium memberships, and Facebook continues to focus on advertising.

Stats: Twitter Growth and Demographics
While we already know that Twitter is quickly growing, it’s important to see by who. This Cnet article states that; “ComScore also reported this week that 10 percent of Twitter users are between 55 and 64. That’s the same percentage as are between 18 and 24. In fact, the majority of Twitter users are 35 or older. And here’s Reuters telling us that 18- to 24-year-olds are 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter.”

Stats: Facebook continues to grow
Facebook continues to to grow, and Inside Facebook suggests that in the last 2 months, US membership has doubled, with a spur in an older crowd of 35-44. I suspect that Gen Y and X is nearly saturated in US, thus we’re seeing other age groups grow.

Culture: Twitter used for nefarious purposes
Dangers of the internet? Do we blame the people or the tools? Apparently Twitter is being used for prostitution, police to crack down from this mobile social network and microblog.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 5, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
This has been one busy week, between the many announcements stemming from Web 2.0 Expo, to the toll of the recession, there’s a lot to keep track of, here’s what matters: Twitter is starting to monetize through a few different trial directions, from working with Federated Media to do sponsored aggregation, advertising with Google, and in preliminary talks with Google that don’t prove to be much of anything. MySpace and Microsoft team up, also on a similar vein Facebook and Adobe. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to track everything that’s going on in this space, so if you see I missed anything, leave a comment.

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Advertisements: Google and Twitter
Google offers Ads using Tweets, seem odd? Intuit is the first to take this on by: “…Intuit, whose TurboTax brand is trying to boost its Twitter followers. Intuit used several of the measures available for any AdSense campaign to target the ads, which are running on sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and Alltop.” I guess it goes to show, if you can’t earn ‘em, buy ‘em.

Launch: MySpace runs after Yelp
This article states is succinctly that: “MySpace announced Tuesday that it is adding local business ratings tools to its social network. As with Yelp, MySpace users will soon be able to look up phone numbers and addresses for local restaurants and bars on the site and post comments about their customer experiences.”

Partnerships: Adobe and MySpace vs Facebook and MYSpace
Coincidental timing? Or competitive response? It’s hard to tell as Adobe offers Flash to Facebook. In rapid succession, MySpace partners with Microsoft to offer Silverlight, or is it the other way around? The MySpace website will also now be available on windows mobile. Either way, the web experiences for both containers will become richer.

Culture: Digital youth may feel overconnected
This study indicates there are difference classes of those who are connected, each with a different sentiment and ability to cope with the digital world. I know some colleagues that feel that their blackberry is actually a tether.

Partnership: Federated Media and Twitter Team Up
In addition to the ExecTweets campaign, which aggregates executive tweets with Microsoft sponsor, FM and Twitter have teamed up to offer a campaign around March Madness with AT&T.

Targeting: Researches can determine who anonymous members are
Do you have an anonymous twitter account? These researchers can get a general sense of who you are based on your friends, and cross-comparing it to other social networks. Add in behavioral analysis, and this could start to get targeted.

Challenges: Mainstream Media Doesn’t Care about Twitter Tantrums
This interesting AdAge article suggests that mainstream users aren’t aware –nor care — about social media brand backlashes like Motrin moms. The next question is to ask “do these edgelings influence the mainstream?”

Viewpoint: CMS vs Community vs LMS
Clark Quinn compares the product direction of LMS systems, CMS systems and Community Platform systems and discusses how each approach is different. Decoupled vs coupled, or distributed or centralized? Clark then poses some questions on which direction you think these vendors should head.

Degree: Social media taught at University
Community, conversations, and sharing of ideas aren’t just within the corporate world, they’re now spreading to academia, take for example, this college which are offering classes –and degrees.

Strategy: Facebook Analysis
Ravit writes an excellent strategy breakdown of Facebook, and gives some very practical advice to Facebook, the top three tips include: Start thinking like the large company you are becoming, Choose an identity and stick with it, finally, Listen to your users

Layoffs: Hi5 Reduces Staff
This fast growing network doesn’t appear to be trending well. Despite their rapid growth that we’ve outlined in previous digests, they’ve not been able to monetize this traffic, with the change in the economic weather, they’re now dealing with downsizing.

Digg launches DiggBar
This portable bar is an ‘overlay’ to visiting other websites (sure a simple frame) but when you add social features to it, the Digg army travels with you as you surf the web.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: March 26, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
Facebook undergoes user revolt for latest redesign, although they trump most other social networks for usage. Expect to see more integration between social networks and traditional media sites like Twitter and BusinessWeek. Earlier this week, Twitter announced API integration with SalesForce –notice the connective tentacles from social networks spreading everywhere. This is a race to see who can spread the fastest.

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Feedback: Facebook community not happy about latest changes
Communities always overtake the brand, and even in this case, Facebook’s redesign is getting some fire from many members, and Facebook may make some changes to meet the community concerns. Ben Parr from Mashable suggests Facebook should stay the course. I suggest next time, that the redesign have a bit more community testing and acceptance before making dramatic changes.

Usage: Facebook is for your Mom and Dad
Apparently so, since the “older” generation of “Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” says Wired

Deal: Twitter integrates with SalesForce
SalesForce CRM can now show simple displays of twitter conversations and discussions within it’s interface. This is the first step in many where social networks and communities become the first step in CRM. My take here.

Privacy: UK government discusses monitoring social networks
Fueled by the thought that terrorist discussions could be within social networks, the Guardian suggests that social networks like Facebook and MySpace could ‘hold information’ and perhaps make it accessible to authorities.

Spending: Social media marketing funding to increase
This data is from eMarketer, that indicates that most marketers are going to increase their social media spend, and only a few (3%) will decrease. These findings are related to the report we just published on the same topic.

Integration: BusinessWeek syncs Twitter Comments
One of the first media companies to integrate twitter comments is now BusinessWeek –which allows users to provide feedback and responses about articles from Twitter which will be aggregated on BW.

Transparency: Questions over transparency over Yelp –and other SNS
Yelp under continued scrutiny over how it’s treating restaurants and small businesses. There’s been increased criticism against this company as the community asserts control over restaurants, this quote sums it up best: “Yet as the site grows, some of the businesses scrutinized on Yelp are turning the tables and griping about the company itself.”

Best Practices: Online Moderation
This moderation professional is sharing a great deal of expertise, swing over to Mike’s blog.

Money: Tencent grows and grows
Tencent, a fast growing social network in China is generating revenues based off virtual goods. Their reporting healthy revenues at 70.5 percent or $719.1 million, a 95.5 increase over 2007.

Data: Social networks trump email
Social networks more popular than email says this report from Nielsen and covered by Cnet, and further goes on to show that member communities are more popular than email. Data from eMarketer via Cnet

Usage: Twtiter fastest growing soical network
Twitter’s growth up by says Nielsen sporting: “Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009,”

Irony: Government employees disocuraged to use social networks
Although these employees are encouraged to use social networks, they find it ironic they’re discouraged not to use these same tools.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: March 18, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
There were several announcements at SXSW, primarily highlighting new apps, and connectivity between the iPhone and Facebook. Simple ads appear on Twitter, and security pros are ever concerned about social networks as they connect to each other.

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SXSW launches: Facebook, Tweetdeck
Facebook made a series of announcements extending Facebook connect with the iPhone, and there are several other announcements from this Techcrunch roster. Tweetdeck allows users to publish to both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. Best Buy launched an API that extends their corporate website, my thoughts.

Advertising: ‘House’ Ads on Twitter spotted
This screenshot shows some “house” ads (promoting the features and fuctions) on Twitter’s right hand column, this could be a potential placement for other types of ads.

Security: Social Networks post Threats
This interesting article suggests that as social networks continue to share data across multiple platforms that security risks are likely to be exposed. For example, information that you share cross network could be seen by friends that are connected to competitors –causing potential leakages. Expect more risks to surface as the social web continues to proliferate.

Best Practices: Streamlining Community
Social media scientists will appreciate the heavy recommendations in this article, which suggests the following: User anonymity should be forced, Barriers to participation should be as low as possible, Moderation should not focus on users or on comments in isolation, but on the relational quality of comments. Read more in attacked from within

Fandom: Coke’s Unexpected Facebook Community
Adage highlights the Coke community within Facebook that has grown –yet it’s not from it’s own marketing team, but instead from fans.

Deals: Pluck wins Batanga
Integrating with it’s Sitelife product, Pluck powers the Batanga Latin music portal and claims to have 38% increase in registrations since the deployment.

Strategy: MySpace continues to focus on hypertargeting
In this article based on interview with MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe, MySpace is critiqued for having slower growth yet maintains a large community. They plan to focus on hypertargetted ads which are customized to users.

Redesign: Facebook’s redesign leaves some wanting
Facebook’s redesign last week has indicated how the web is moving real time, however with every change comes drawbacks, RWW suggests that the profile pages are limited, access with twitter, and confusion between pages and profiles. Ugh, now I need to take a closer look to make sure I can tell the difference.

OpenStack: Twitter now oAuth compliant
Twitter has now announced compliance with oAuth, which will allow third party developers to access the data–without exposing your personal info and login info. Ya’ know all those twitter clients that require you to fully login with your user name and password? Now it could authenticate, keeping your password just to yourself.

Data: Twitter growth, small, but quickly growing
Comscore data shows that “In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior.”

Culture: Cell Phones Cameras + Teens = “Sexting”
A recent trend among teens is apparently to share photos of themselves in suggestive and inappropriate situations. This has led some contributors and receivers to be considered to be participating in illegal activities.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: March 11, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
Facebook launches redesign, indicates that the web is moving faster to real time with Twitter-like features. Social Networks grow in online activity, it’s becoming a mainstream activity. Jive made a lot of noise with their new product launch (Social Business Software) yet the market needs to see the product –beyond vapor.

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Redesign: Facebook becomes more real time
Facebook does a redesign (read the pronouncement), and makes it real time, you can see a variety of screenshots, all showing the real-time life streaming features. They are clearly watching what Friendfeed and Twitter are doing.

Usage: Social Networks 4th most popular online activity.
Nielsen Online shows that: Social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email, Member communities are visited by 67% of the global online population, time spent is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, PDF, Nielsen Online, March

Launch: Jive attempts to redefine a category, yet where’s the product?
Jive has launched a new major version of their platform called Social Business Software (SBS) software which is intending to redefine this space as a new category for enterprise software. Will they succeed? It depends if customers are ready to adopt this phrasing –I’ll be watching. I want to get a product demo –beyond slides then I’ll blog some of my findings. Update: Scoble has a video interview with Dave the CEO, see part 1 and part 2. First video focuses on the famed tattoo.

Economy: Social Networks help cash strapped firms and brands
Forbes indicates that companies, marketers and PR professionals that want their money to go the distance are looking at social networks.

Ads: Social Networks should couple with Oscars
Interesting thought piece by CEO of Nielsen Online who suggests that social network adoption goes mainstream –esp during Oscars, giving advertising opportunities for brands. I say don’t limit this to just the Oscars, but look at other large TV events.

Identity: MySpace rolls out MySpace ID
Similar to other identity systems, this allows third party sites to access a MySpace users information and network contacts. Critics suggest that it’s too complicated and doesn’t support SSO. Why don’t they use OpenID?

Revenue: Tencent’s Monetization a Model
This interesting post suggests that China’s IM social network Tencent be a model that Facebook and MySpace copy. The stats? “TenCent was founded in 1998, has 355 million users, US$1.2B in annual revenues, and a US$11.2B market capitalization.” The challenge is that social networks act differently depending on each culture, deployment and features. Sure figure out what worked, but don’t expect it to work the same in Western markets.

Deployment: HiveLive
Thoughtworks launchess community powered by Hivelive, which is intended to be a customer focused community.

Opportunities for Twitter
Twitter has a few business opportunities, and this Business Week article shows that some of the opportunities include rich data about what people think and prefer –including celebrities.

Social CRM: Neighborhood America buddies with Microsoft
Although I’ve not seen what they are working on, they’re indicating that they’re going to connect with Microsoft’s Dynamic CRM, this is a trend, as we know that Leverage Software comes pre-integrated with SalesForce CRM. Expect to see more of this in the upcoming months.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: March 4, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

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Web Strategy Summary
The big trends? Facebook recoils from PR nightmare over terms of service and goes democratic style “let the people decide”. Social network adoption continues to increase with tools like LinkedIn, Congress, and takes the mainstream media as it gets overhyped. Several minor announcements from vendors, with more studies being done on how people actually interact with each other in these social tools.

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Privacy: Facebook asks for Communtiy Feedback for ToS
Mark composes this well crafted PR blog post asking for community feedback on the next Terms of Service, that stirred a community revolt a few weeks ago. The question is, why didn’t they just do this in the first place? You can start to see some of the sample ToS that venturebeat is highlighting.

Usage: LinkedIn usage up, even during recession
Unsure about what goes up when everything else goes down? LinkedIn is in the midst of a growth opportunity, as well as other social networks as usage goes up from those that have more time –and need to connect to each other.

Adoption: Twitter takes Washington DC by Storm
AFP news reports that more political folks are now on twitter, and are tweeting live from congress and meetings.

Data: How people interact with Twitter
Twitter, a social network with microblogging features provides users the ability to rapidly exchange information. See how the breakdown of tools is used, most are using the web browser, and a few clients.

Data: Why Facebook Dominates MySpace
Compare the dominant Facebook vs MySpace traffic, stickablilty, and engagement, in this report from Compete which shows a few tipping points at the end of 2008.

Headcount: Changes in MySpace Exec Board
Related to the above: It appears that three executives are leaving MySpace, reportedly to start a new company. When you have this many leaders leaving at the same time, there was either a cleaning of the house by the board, or a revolt against upper management. Either way, MySpace must innovate to keep up with growing Facebook.

Usage: Facebook users only interact with a few
Despite those that have over 100 friends, most only communicate with a smaller subset of friends, and the rest is broadcasting to others. Now there’s not enough data presented to see if if content actually can still spread across those that do not interact. On a similar thread, primates appear to be prone to grooming.

Launch: Radian 6 releases new features
Socila media management company Radian 6 launches alert features, management features to tag information, and route ‘tickets’ to different team members could help brands manage their online reputation.

Culture: When ‘friending’ celebrities becomes in style
This interesting WSJ article tells Jeff Shapiro’s story of how he befriended (virtually that is) a few celebrities which quickly launched him into the inner circle of friending other celebrities.

Twitter: Brands jump on the Twitter wagon
The twitter wagon is getting more brands on board, the barriers to entry are low, there’s media hype, that results in these top brands to follow on Twitter and why.

M&A: Why the Twitter and Facebook deal fell through
BusinessWeek digs into why Twitter walked away from Facebook’s offer for acquisition, the quick: Uncertain valuation made the equity trade a risky bet for Twitter, that was already gaining traction.

Future of Social Networks
Fred Wilsons vision of the future of the social web, showcases some key attributes that entrepreneurs, investors, and others must know.

Expansion: UserVoice shoots for global
This young startup provides ‘embracing’ software for companies and employees to submit ideas. They are now expanding with global reach by launching in different languages. I’d like to see them partner with Yammer to bring in-house innovation to companies.

Humor: Comedian Jon Stewart Tweets
This silly video pokes fun at Twitter –now we know it’s going mainstream

Humor: Stats about Social Networks that ought to be true
Gotta give credit to the brainz folks for coming up with this silly –yet sad– truth about the citizens of social networks.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.