Orange to open up mobile social net service

Orange is to launch a major push for mobile social networking in the UK, introducing a service which aggregates users' accounts across the major social networks.
Launched as a trial in France last month under the name MySocialPlace, Orange has now partnered with the biggest social networks - Facebook, MySpace and Bebo - to introduce the service in the UK in the autumn under the Orange World branded website.
UK users will also be able to access the chat service Flirtomatic and the photo-sharing site Pikeo, while Orange customers in France can use the Skyrock community, DailyMotion video site and dating service Meetic.

If you are a developer or site owner who wants to develop mobile aplications similar to Orange you will be able to use Copenda's API which will be released soon.
For more information please contact us : info[at]copenda.com.

Read the full article : The Guardian

Recent online dating and social networks statistics

Mark Brooks the author of online personals watch has recently interviewed ,Alex Burmaster , the Internet dating and social networking specialist for Nielsen Online.

Here are some intersting numbres:

The strongest growing personals sites in the US:

The strongest growing personals sites in the Europe:

The number of people visited dating sites in the USA, and the countries that they cover in the EU, last month

US = 25.8 million
DE = 5.6 million
FR = 4.7 million
UK = 3.6 million
IT = 2.7 million
ES = 2.3 million

The number of people visited social networks in the USA, and the coutries that they cover in the EU, last month?

Member communities category (social networks & blogging)
US = 104 million
UK = 18.9 million
FR = 17.6 million
IT = 15.1 million
DE = 14.6 million
ES = 11.7 million

See full interview here

Facebook IM service will debut soon

Facebook plans to launch an instant-messaging application for members to embed on their profiles as early as next week, TechCrunch reported Friday.
Details are sketchy, but it appears that this will be a Web-based IM service that would allow Facebook users to chat with other people on their friends lists without needing to go through a third-party program. Additionally, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington detailed, the service would likely be based on the Jabber open-source platform, which would mean that third-party "universal IM" clients like Pidgin, Trillian, and Adium would be able to implement it.
Facebook representatives were not immediately available for comment.

One of the things that we are currently evaluating is a web messenger platform to embed in our search results.
There are couple of good options : Live messenger, Yahoo messenger , Google talk and smaller third parties IMs.
I don't think that Facebook IM can currently compete with these IMs but personaly I will use it in Facebook if it will be embedded like gtalk in Gmail.

Source: Webware.com

The Challenges of Social Networks

Jeremiah Owyang , Sr Analyst at Forrester , listed in his blog some of the chalenges social networks are faceing these days:

Difficult to Monetize
Members aren’t hunting for information like they do on a search, instead they are communicating with each other, and self-expressing. (We’ve data to back that up too), “Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them”

Excess of Players
In the case of the many white label social networks (white label means you can rebrand, and create your own Facebook), there are too many players in the space.

As Marketers Move In, Users Move Out
Remember Friendster? Tribe, or waay back and eCircles? Nothing is new, as communities form, marketers will move in, and in some cases bastardize the experience and the hip, cool, influencers will leave to the next network.

Lack of Metrics Makes Success Hard to Measure
For many marketers who want to deploy a campaign on a social network, access to server metrics isn’t always available. As a result, they have to often visually monitor the interaction on the site, or measure click throughs to their site. In some of the more sophisticated platforms, a crude dashboard is provided.

Stalkers and Other Unwanted Activity Ruins Lives
Child stalkers in MySpace continues to be a problem, and in some cases, masking oneself as someone else is easy, and to readily fool others.

Plateau or Social Network Fatigue?
recent reports show that suggest that the usage of social networks are slowing down, if not reducing perhaps it’s from the endless tasks that occur, or the shinyness has rubbed off.

Successful Networks have hard time scaling
Facebook and Twitter (yes a social network too) are suffering from scaling issues, as a result, their sites have a great deal of downtime or latency. The complicated applications will only increase in intricacy as more users are added.

Loss in workplace productivity “Social not-working”
Companies, organizations, and individuals are concerned about the time wasted in managing social network profiles, in some cases, companies have banned Facebook from their employees, often using Firewalls.

see full post at web-strategist.com

A new feature from Google - Google profiles

"A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you're all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like."Until now, you could create profiles in Blogger, orkut, Google Groups, Google Co-op and all of them could contain different information. You could also add photos in Gmail, Google Talk and orkut, so the situation started to become confusing.The new Google profiles are already available in Shared Stuff, Google Maps, Google Reader and will be added to other web applications. For example, in Google Maps you'll find the link to your profile at the top of the page.

This is a very good news , I would recommend them to add some more profile characteristics such as : age,gender,high etc. adding these profile characteristics will enable people search engine such as Copenda integrate these profiles into their search results.

Read more at: Google blog

A Kiss-Off to Online Dating

According to Sarah Lacy from BusinessWeek the era of Web 1.0 is over, online dating is dead. Going on sites like Facebook or MySpace it's like going to a bar with your friends, whereas a dating site is like walking past a bunch of animals in cages at the zoo. According to comScore, the number of people visiting online dating sites dropped 6% in September. Unique visitors to Yahoo Personals and eHarmony fell 21%, Match.com had a 16% drop, and True.com's visitors plummeted 46%. ComScore does show some names like Plentyoffish.com growing, but these are new sites with far smaller user bases.

here is her funny fictitious letter to the online dating sites:
"Dear Online Dating Sites,
I am writing to tell you it's over between us. It's not you. You've been great. You've helped me connect millions of happy couples and no one can take that away.
It's just that—well, I've changed. My needs and users are different now. And you were right when you asked about my relationship with MySpace and Facebook. I can't ignore the feelings I have for them any longer. Please don't be hurt. We had a good run, and you'll always be a part of me. But I'm moving on. I hope we can still be friends.
Love always,
The Internet "

I agree with here , I don't know if online dating will vanish but we cant ignore the recent statistics showing that the younger generation are using social networks to meet new friends and not using online dating sites.
Although many users use social networks for dating purposes, the social network user experience is not suited for this purpose.
We predicted this trend two years ago when we initiate Copenda ,
Copenda is a revolutionary social people search engine that allows people to search for their soul mate or new friends in social networks and dating web sites. Our complex algorithms crawl semi-structured data from multiple social networks and online dating sites.
Copenda will bridge the gap between social networks and online dating sites by integrating an innovative user interface with dating site features such as personality search and social network features such as ranking, comments and tagging.

See the full article

Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control

I have just found a very cool control from Microsoft , Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control lets people on the Web reach you in Messenger by showing your Messenger status on your web site, blog, or social networking profile. The Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control runs in the browser and lets site visitors message you without installing Messenger first.
Yahoo has a similar presence control , but unlike the MS control when you want to contact the person you are redirected to yahoo web site.

For more details check the folowing post.

I had this IM control to our blog so you can now use it whenever you want to contact us.

Google OpenSocial - new opportunities

Last week Google launched OpenSocial a new set of javascript API's adopted by the industry leaders. these set of API's will enable the development of cross platform applications.
So far the following websites have committed to the new initiative: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
From our side it is a very good news , developing Copenda application for the leading social networks in on our roadmap and the new initiative will enable us to expose our app to broader audience.

Read more here

Myspace has been spammed

Today I have found a very odd thing when I browsed Myspce profiles , hundreds (maybe more) of fake profiles , all of them contain some general information and a link to an adult web site.

I cant understand how web site like Myspace can allow such a thing...

If you want to see it yourself just click "browse" on Myspace and browse for women in the US.

More statistics - Consumer trends in social networking

ComScore analyst Gian Fulgoni has shared some interesting findings on social networking abroad. These findings were very surprising , at least for me , For example, it’s commonly thought that with the success of sites like MySpace and Facebook, the U.S. is the hub of social networking activity. However, Asia is not only the fastest-growing region for social networking, it is also the largest: By contrast, fewer Latin Americans visit social networking sites, but are much more engaged:

You can find more statistics regarding leading social networks share on each region here.

More social networks are lunching new application platforms

More and more social networks are going the Facebook rout and lunching new application platforms.
Hi5 had also already announced on its blog the release of its API, which seemed to offer some additional tools for the developer community. According to VentureBeat, the full platform will be available to developers within the next 12 months.
Tagged, which has well over 40 million members, is building a platform that will exactly mimic the Facebook Platform API. In other words, if successfully implemented, Facebook apps will be able to run on Tagged without any significant code changes (developers will have to manage the different user communities, of course).

Source: Mashable

What is your Facebook strategy?

With the groundbreaking launch of the Facebook Platform this past spring, and the subsequent runaway growth of Facebook Apps adopted by millions of users this summer, the question on everyone’s lips (including Google and Microsoft) has been: “So what’s your Facebook strategy?”.

A very intersing post, writen by Dave McClure , was recently published on TechCrunch.
Dave write about seven major aspects of Facebook you can use to increase the visibility of your startup, business, product or service:
1. Set Up Your Graph: Profiles & Privacy
2. Make Connections: Networks, Groups & Events
3. The Need for Feed: Your [Shared] Social Activity Stream
4. Share Your Content: Share & People-Tag Your Stories & Media
5. App to the Future: The Facebook Platform, APIs, & Applications
6. Pay to Play: Ad Networks, Sponsored Stories, & Paid Distribution
7. Show Me The Bunny: Gifts, Points, & Virtual Currency

Read full post here

Zingku,mobile social networking service,acquired by Google

Google acquired mobile social networking service,Zingku, for an undisclosed amount.

Currently, the Zingku site is closed for new registrations as the company moves to Google.

Zingku allows users to upload an image of themselves and add it to a magazine cover, a Most Wanted ad, a movie poster, a celebrity photo and lots more. And thanks to the “Post to MySpace button”, they can quickly post thier remixed photo to MySpace, Friendster, Windows Live Spaces and Xanga.

Friendship in the Social networks era

According to a research recently published by Dr Will Reader from Sheffield Hallam University online users say they have about the same number of close friends as the real-life average person. Another research published by by Professor Robin Dunbar at the Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group at Liverpool University has shown that the average person has a social network of around 150 friends, ranging from very close friends to casual acquaintances.
The conclusion from these two researches is that the average person has around 150 friends in real life , I really doubt these fact and I think that the average person has mach more online friends then real-life friends.
Making friends can be costly, according to behavioural ecologists. While it might not be a very romantic view of friendship, making new friends involves an investment by committing time and energy to another person in the hope that they will provide reciprocal benefits in the future.
Dr Reader and his colleagues wondered whether online networks are somehow reducing the investment necessary to make new friends by lowering the perceived risk.
Some 90 per cent of the online friends rated as ‘close’ have been met face-to-face, with the remaining 10 per cent likely to be friends of close friends, perceived as having many of the mutual friend’s attributes and therefore “low risk”.
According to Dr Reader, the importance placed on face-to-face encounters is a result of the necessity to base an investment on honest information.

Read more at: Science Daily

50 Cent's latest album “Curtis” exclusively on his MySpace

50 Cent premiered his latest album “Curtis” exclusively on his MySpace profile yesterday, letting all of his 900,000 “friends” get a first listen to the album before it’s released in stores. You have from now until Tuesday, when the album hits stores, to check out the album in its entirety here.
In conjunction, MySpace TV will also debut a series of five exclusive interviews with 50 Cent, each video at 10 minutes in length. What should be fun for fans is the feud going on between 50 Cent and Kanye West, who’s album is also being released on Tuesday, September 11th. MySpace looks to be happily fueling the rappers’ battling fire, as it’s offering this exclusive premier deal with 50 Cent while also featuring Kanye West as a guest curator on the MySpace Music Channel to promote his album as well.

Source : Mashable

DigFoot: A Directory Just For Social Networks

DigFoot is an upcoming site that is a directory for other social networks. The site is currently in private beta, and I got a chance to check it out.
Acting as a searchable directory, DigFoot has about 1,000 social networks indexed so far, and will be adding more. Users can help out to this end as well, by suggesting more sites to be added to the directory. From the homepage, you can start your search by choosing one or all of the four parameters by which you can search. Enter a site name if you know what you’re looking for and you’d just like more information, or select from three drop down menus that let you choose a category, a site type, and a primary language. Your search results will be displayed accordingly.
Each social network listed on DigFoot has its own profile page, which shows the name and a link to the network, as well as a basic description of the site that DigFoot has pulled from the About Us page. As a registered member you have the capability to add more site information, and leave a review. Each network can be added to your DigFoot bookmarks, which are displayed from your toolbar for easy access while navigating the site. Each bookmark has an edit link that takes you directly to the page where you can add more information about that network. Having a browser bookmarking tool for its own service would prove helpful as well.

Read full post

Bebo premieres new online drama

A new interactive drama series, ‘Sofia’s Diary’ from Sony Pictures Television International is to air on Bebo.com this Autumn.It’s a development that will help to keep it ahead of the competition as social networking sites battle for users.
Sofia will post daily video and text updates on her own Bebo profile and will engage directly with the Bebo community to offer users an interactive storytelling experience unlike any other.‘Sofia’s Diary’, is the second interactive drama series to be introduced by Bebo. It follows the success of the recently launched KateModern (bebo.com/katemodern), which attracted over 3 million views in its first eight weeks.

Read full article

Recent IDC Report: Social Network Sites are Popular But Not Profitable

Despite generating a hefty media buzz, social networking sites like MySpace.com and YouTube Inc. have not yet figured out how to use that publicity to generate significant advertising revenue, according to a report released last week by IDC.
The Framingham, Mass.-based research firm predicts that while the barriers keeping companies from advertising brands on sites featuring unfiltered user-generated content may eventually be solved by some social networks, others may never be able to attract significant advertising, the report noted.
YouTube, the report suggests, could earn substantial advertising revenue if it could figure out a way to acquire premium content from distribution deals with companies like Viacom Inc., NBC and Walt Disney Co. However, the report noted that Google so far declines to pay the sums required to purchase the content.
The report did note that MySpace generated US$125 million in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2006, but also added that the total amounts to only a fifth of what Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Online Services Business brought in during the same period.
Read full article: Pc world

Facebook Campaign Forces Bank to Reverse Charges

The International bank HSBC has reversed its policy and has refunded student customers as a direct result of a student campaign on Facebook.
With the plans to charge graduating students 9.9% APR on their overdrafts, many students were infuriated with the bank’s decision, stating that having a free overdraft to help them establish themselves with graduation and finding a job was the reason they signed on with HSBC in the first place. The National Union of Students has initiated a campaign on Facebook, threatening to boycott HSBC, and the bank listened. Interest charges for overdrafts up to £1,500 have been frozen, and any interest charged for the month of August will be refunded to students.

Read full post

Yahoo's new social job network: Kickstart

Yahoo is looking to change the game with their new social job network, Kickstart. They are currently conducting research surveys among college students to find out what they think of this new service.

Yahoo Kickstart connects college students with alumni at the companies that they are interested in. As you can see in the screenshot above, this student's "in" at Nike is an alumni named Dave Bottoms. Dave has expressed an interest in helping out students and connecting with alumni. He also knows one of your friends, went to your school, and shares a common interest with you. That's a really powerful networking tool. Presenting specific connections like this adds a whole new value to this job network.

As you might also expect, everyone who signs up with Yahoo Kickstart gets their own profile page, where you can build a mini resume and add a quotation to give the profile a more personal feel. Everything here is pretty standard for a social network, but there is a definite professional focus, much like LinkedIn. The personal profile isn't anything revolutionary, but it certainly gets the job done in this situation.

Source : Cnet