Online Personals Watch

Friendster's Third Patent

PR NEWSWIRE -- Mar 15 -- Friendster (40 million members) was awarded a patent titled, "System and Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network"( U.S. Patent No. 7,188,153 B2). The third in a growing portfolio of patents granted to Friendster, highlighting the company's innovation in online social networking. Specifics disclosed in the patent include adding friends, personalizing your profile through arranging, ordering and classifying connections made in an online community, and managing these connections at will. Said VP Marketing, David Jones, "Friendster laid the groundwork upon which online social networking is built. This validates and protects our heritage as a pioneer." In July '06, Friendster was awarded its first U.S. patent illustrating and describing how people are connected in the context of an online social network titled, "A System, Method and Apparatus for Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks" ( U.S. Patent No. 7,069,308). In October 2006, Friendster received a second U.S. patent which discloses the process of enriching other user's profiles with text, video, pictures and additional content titled, "Method of Inducing Content Uploads in a Social Network" (U.S. Patent No. 7,117,254). FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Viacom Sues YouTube/Google for $1 Billion

REUTERS -- Mar 13 -- Viacom sued Google/YouTube for $1 billion on Tuesday for 'massive intentional copyright infringement.' NBC Universal and News Corp. have also criticized YouTube's copyright protection policies but stopped short of legal action. Viacom is seeking an injunction against further violations as well as damages. Google said it was confident that YouTube respects the copyrights at issue in the Viacom case.  The decision to sue Google followed "a great deal of unproductive negotiation," Viacom said. Viacom and peers like NBC Universal are also investing heavily in their own Internet video sites. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

Mark Brooks: Can someone peel the blinkers off Google's eyes. How is YouTube that different from Napster?  YouTube's best bet for survival is to be proactive in preventing copyrighted material from being uploaded.

Social Networking's Next Phase

NY TIMES -- Mar 2 -- Next week Cisco Systems plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net (8 employees). The deal will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube. A multitude of start-ups like Ning say that social networks will soon be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites. Those setting up Ning communities can pay $20 a month if they want the site free of ads. FULL ARTICLE @ NYTIMES

Mark Brooks: Ultimately, our profiles will be ubiquitous and social networks will be more personalised. We will each be members of many social networks. LinkedIn for business, MyChurch for our church group, Zaadz for our group of do-gooders, Facebook for college buddies (although that could change now that Facebook is open to the world) and Nuzizo for culture/fun. The internet world will more closely resemble the real world.  However, our reputations and credibility will be more visible and readily apparent from the social networks we reside on/in, the company we keep and the testimonials our friends, work associates, and ex-work associates leave for us. 

WorldFriends Networks Gets $2.5 Million Funding

PRESS RELEASE -- Mar 2 -- Shanghai-based Meta4 Group Ltd., which operates WorldFriends Networks, (private label multi-lingual personals sites, 200 sites, 1 million members, offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong), raised US$2.5 million in venture capital funding from industry veterans including the co-founders of Lavalife.com, Nicholas Paine and Bruce Croxon.  ~17 years ago, together with two other partners, they invented telephone personals, and grew Lavalife to US$90 million revenues.  Nicholas Paine is Meta4 Group's Executive Chairman.  Partner sites include: So-net (Japan), Eigotown (Japan), Japan Zone (Japan), Japan Guide (Japan) and China Times (Taiwan). FULL ARTICLE @ ADDPR

Mark Brooks: The Asian internet dating conference will be in Shanghai in May. Last year CEO's of Bharat Matrimony, YeeYoo, Baihe and other leading Asian sites were present. Small crowd, very high quality. I recommend attending it this year...and spending the ensuing weekend enjoying Shanghai. It's at the Four Points Sheraton in Shanghai, which is reasonably priced. Check out sidestep.com for the best pricing. 

Andreessen Gets into Social Networking - Ning.com

AP -- Feb 28 -- The Netscape Communications co-founder is trying to help Web surfers build online communities outside the walls of social networking leaders MySpace.com and Facebook.com. Ning.com is finally ready to make its big push with a free toolkit designed to make it easy to launch a social network with videos, photos, music, forums, personal profiles and blogs. Andreessen is convinced people dislike the big social networks' one-size-fits-all approach. "This is the next logical step (for social networks)," said Andreessen, 35, who is Ning's CTO and primary financier. Ning hopes to make money through advertising and fees for premium services. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Mark Brooks: Joe Suh's MyChurch.org helps churches set up their own social networks and Clarence Wootton's Collectivex.com also allows people to set up their own social networks for free or a small fee. The growth of social networks was fueled by 'connectors' with their extensive networks of friends. Some of those connectors will be growing a little bored with MySpace by now. It's last years night club. They want their own nightclub. So, Ning.com, MyChurch.org and CollectiveX should have a healthy future. They won't put MySpace out of business, however.

CommunityNext Final Panel Video

WEBPRO NEWS -- Feb 23 -- Guy Kawasaki moderated a panel of some innovative web community founders at the CommunityNext Conference, and the video is fascinating. It's not often I get a 1 hour video and watch it all the way through, but I've already watched this one twice.

1. Akash Garg of hi5
2. Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls
3. Max Levchin of Slide
4. James Hong of HotorNot
5. Markus Frind of PlentyofFish
6. Drew Curtis of Fark

Most of these guys said that marketing was of little value to them (gasp). They said the viral things that really made them successful was an accident. Sure you can come up with a great idea, but the real truth is that if your company is doing something cool, people will talk about it. SEE VIDEO @ WEBPRO NEWS

Online Personals Aussie Rankings

OPW -- Feb 27 -- Meir from Date.com had asked me about SNS rankings worldwide so here they are...  Here's the Alexa online personals rankings for Australia extracted from the Australian top 100. - Mark Brooks

Australian Alexa Rankings for Online Dating and Social Networking as at 2/26/07.

1. MySpace (5)
2. YouTube (7)
3. Bebo (17)
4. Flickr (22)
5. LiveJournal (41)
6. Friendster (44)
7. Photobucket (47)
8. Orkut (59)
9. Xanga (73)
10. Hi5 (88)

1. RSVP (34)
2. AdultFriendFinder (66)
3. AdultMatchMaker (69)
4. Red Hot Pie (94) 

LinkedIn and Imeem Tap Gomez

PR NEWSWIRE -- Feb 26 -- LinkedIn and imeem will leverage the Gomez ExperienceFirst(TM) network to test, monitor, manage and optimize the performance of their web sites worldwide. They join care2, JibJab, Piczo, Snapvine, Tagged and others. The Gomez ExperienceFirst network has 12,000 performance testing locations worldwide. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Interracialoasis.com Launches

NEWSWIRE -- Feb 13 -- Spiral Cities Marketing, LLC has closed its for-pay niche dating site ColorDates.com and launched social networking site Interracialoasis.com. Jon C. Coward, CEO, says, "I truly believe that the Interracial community is underserved on the Internet." The member base is being built from the ground up without a feeder database. "Every member on our site will be there because they believe in Interracial relationships and the way that we can strengthen the world through racial harmony." 

Mark Brooks: Said Amin of WorldSingles (Arablounge) quietly launched Nuzizo.com recently, in similar fashion. Users get to choose their home from various cities within the social network, work on their reputation score and spend 'zizos.'

Community Next Notes

OPW -- Feb 21 --  On Saturday 10th February I attended Community Next in Silicon Valley, CA. Here are a few keypoints I picked up from the day of speakers which included the founders of Dogster, Hi5, Mychurch, PlentyofFish, HotorNot, and Userplane. - Mark Brooks

People will gather online around 'social objects' i.e. pictures (Flickr), bookmarks (Delicious), friends (Friendster).

Loopt offers location based services on phones. Mark suggested that the mobile platform is more appealing than the PC because it's 'Always Available.'

Threadless makes $15 million a year from community designed tshirt sales. One of the secrets of their success is they listen to members and make changes quickly. Side projects include ExtraTasty, NakedandAngry and IParkLikeAnIdiot. Start your site with minimal rules and then add rules to the community later on. Be evolutionary. Make frequent small incremental changes. 

The Dogster Founders recommended choosing appropriate advertisers and building campaigns around them that truly engage users. Don't be deceptive, ever! Write your advertisers copy. Offer something special to users. 

Currently MyChurch has 2700 church groups signed up. There are more churches than schools in the U.S.A. (300k) and Americans donate $88 billion a year in tithings. There are 88k Christian groups on Y! groups, and 82k on MySpace. 

Danah Boyd was not a speaker but was quoted as follows... "Community is a garden, tend it well."

From the final panel:
The Suicide Girls name was inspired by a book written by the author of Fight Club. Presently, their fastest growing revenue generator is from merchandising. 

PlentyofFish contrasted executive opinion on the final panel on two points.  Markus believes that advertising is actually very important in building an online community.  Other speakers (HororNot, Fark, Hi5, Slide, Suicide Girls) did not.  Markus stated that 'passion' is not as important as 'cold hard analytics skills.' Other speakers believed that passion for the site was their primary success factor.

James Hong of HotorNot suggested that being an entrepreneur was like volunteering to be bipolar. 

Fark was started when Drew Curtis put up a photo for 18 months of a squirrel with big nuts. Fark nearly ended up as a curry recipe site, but Drew decided to focus it on to focus on listing 'things you're ashamed you laughed at.' He's still the sole employee and maxim sells advertising for the site now. 

Slide has 50 employees and is not profitable yet. It's founded by Paypal co-founder Max Levchin.

Digital Matchmakers Get Down to Business

MIAMI HERALD -- Jan 16 -- The online dating industry needs to start stealing tricks from younger and nimbler websites. That seemed to be the message floating through the hallways at iDate, the annual conference of the Internet dating industry. 350 participants were at the iDate (and Social Networking Conference). Dating sites (think Yahoo Personals and Match.com) are seeing users poached by social networking sites. While those sites are not specifically designed to find a date, that is how they are being used, said Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane. ''Traditional online dating sites are feeling the pinch,'' he said. Of the Top 10 dating sites in the United States, seven saw a declining number of unique visitors throughout 2006, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. At the same time MySpace overtook Yahoo as the world's busiest website. But the poison is the antidote, said Jones. By stealing pickup lines from social networking competitors -- such as allowing users to link to their MySpace profile or upload slide-shows from sites such as Flicker and Rockyou -- the industry can woo back admirers. Just a few years ago, anyone with a server, a black book and the verve could launch an online dating site, said Mark Brooks, the publisher of Online Personals Watch. Now the market is crowded and competitive, and the only hope for newcomers is to generate heaps of buzz and tap unexplored niches. Or, as Brooks sums it up: "Word of mouth marketing and differentiate -- or die.'' Date.com CEO Meir Strahlberg said he didn't see any need for a radical reinvention to keep up with the MySpaces of the world. FULL ARTICLE @ MIAMI HERALD

Mark Brooks: iDate2007 was hands down the best internet dating conference yet. I felt there was more energy at this conference than last year. The halls were full of top level business schmoozing. The Royal Palm Hotel was more expensive but far more comfortable than last year. Worth the extra, and the location was perfect. It was walking distance to the convention center, and right on the beach. The convention center was a higher standard venue in many ways but we need to change the room orientation next year. Wide rooms work better than long rooms. The keynote presentations were packed out and the multi track system worked well. However, next year it would be great to have a distinct social networking track and a distinct internet dating track. That would encourage greater SNS participation and 500+ attendees. I think 75% of the attendees were dating focused this year. We'll see more social networking interest at the July conference in California. Your comments please...

YouTube Now 4th Biggest Web Property in World

READ/WRITE WEB -- Jan 10 -- On current Alexa figures YouTube is now ranked 4th in the world, behind only Yahoo, MSN and Google itself! I also checked out the comparisons on Compete and comScore. FULL ARTICLE @ READ/WRITE WEB

Mark Brooks: YouTube is wonderfully addictive. It's destined to reshape the media landscape. Expect to see more homespun hits springing from it, a la "Blair Witch Project."

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

Meez Avatars For Profiles

PR NEWSWIRE -- Jan 10 -- Meez has integrated Meez's 3D avatar services directly into their user communities. CBS SportsLine.com, Glam Media, Paltalk, YouthNoise, and DoSomething members can easily create their own unique and customized avatars. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Mark Brooks: Fun, and very cool. Love it! The Meez characters are engaging and allow an unbelievable amount of customization.

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

Mixi Strong in Japan

LA TIMES -- Dec 25 -- Mixi's highly specialized online shopping circles, 900,000 virtual communities are nurtured within the 6-million-strong empire of Mixi users. In Japan such communities have become so strongly linked to the real world in recent years that they now can affect the behavior of consumers at venues as diverse as pet shops and noodle bars.  MySpace is determined to muscle in on this scene. In November, MySpace announced a joint venture with Internet and telecommunications group Softbank in a move that should see a fully localized PC-based version of MySpace operating in Japan in March. Mixi is invitation-only and receives 750 million hits per month from PC users, and nearly 2 billion hits from Japanese accessing the service on their mobile phones. FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

YouTube Brings out Media Giants' Competitive Claws

HERALD TRIBUNE -- Dec 17 -- A handful of giant media companies, like NBC Universal, News Corp., Viacom and possibly CBS, are close to announcing a new Web site that will feature some of their best-known television programming and other clips in an attempt to build a business for distributing video on the Internet to rival YouTube. The new business could be announced as soon as this week. FULL ARTICLE @ HERLAD TRIBUNE

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

Social Networking Service for Non-Profits

PR WEB -- Dec 8 -- The Grameen Foundation blog will commemorate the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to encourage continued public support for microfinance and poverty eradication. Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank received the prize on Sunday in Oslo.  FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: The CEO of The Grameen Foundation blogged about the ceremony and experience.  Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish is helping the team of ex-Yahoo's create a social networking service for non-profits. The blog is the first step for this pre-launch company. I'm helping out. 

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

The Google/YouTube Come-On

BUSINESS WEEK -- Dec 1 -- Google and YouTube are dangling nine-figure sums in front of major programming and network players (Time Warner, News Corp, NBC). 'Don't sue us over copyrights. Take this (substantial) payment, and trust us to figure out how we'll all make serious money once we get advertising and revenue sharing worked out.' No publicly traded media company today is in a position simply to dismiss, say, $100 million. Such a sum far exceeds what any single broadcast network can extract from the online world--and drops straight to the bottom line. But taking the dough fortifies an already threatening rival. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK

Mark Brooks: Who will take the bait? One of these companies will surely take Google/YouTube's deal, and then YouTube will meet it's true potential. These are landmark, society morphing deals. TV will unify with the internet as wireless technologies mature. The wireless internet will become pervasive and everyone will watch TV on mobile phones, and SONOS type receivers at home within the next ten years.  Rhapsody partnered with SONOS to deliver music on demand. Movies and TV will be available on similar delivery systems shortly, I think. I'm intrigued with the battle between Netflix and Blockbuster. Blockbuster must realize it's brick and mortar stores are doomed. Netflix should also realize that 'movies-by-mail' will have a five year half life. What are the implications for online dating? Video on the net will become part of the paradigm of the masses. Video communications have been a long time coming but are perfect for the online dating experience. Webcams don't lie. Dating site users will demand seamless video and voice offerings. 

This post also appears on Social Networking Watch

Virtual Online Worlds

SF CHRONICLE -- Nov 9 -- For some users, losing ties to real life is the whole point of Second Life. But for others, the site is "a huge social network," with possibilities for offline business deals or potential face-to-face meetings. Catherine Smith, director of marketing at Linden Lab, said that Second Life's members wholly determine the workings of their virtual world, which leads to great socializing opportunities. There.com (500k subscribers) is a similar site. FULL ARTICLE @ SFGATE

Social-Networking Site Traffic

ONLINE MEDIA -- Nov 9 -- In September one in twenty U.S. Internet visits went to one of the top 20 social-networking websites - nearly double the share of visits compared with a year ago. MySpace led, receiving 82% of those visits among the top 20 social networking websites in September 2006. Other social networking sites with above-average growth in market share of visits over September 2005 were Bolt  (+ 271%), Bebo (+95%), Orkut (+63%), and Gaia Online (+41%). FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE MEDIA

Turning Social Network Traffic Into Dollars

CNET NEWS -- Oct 18 -- New technologies are on the horizon now to help social networks appeal to discerning advertisers. RelevanceNow, for example, is an Australian start-up with a technology it calls "social intelligence," an analytics tool that can size up members of a community via their psychographics, which classify attitudes, values, likes and dislikes. A social network could segment groups of people based on details they've divulged in their profiles. Paul Martino, the founding CTO of Tribe.net left to found a new ad-targeting company, Aggregate Knowledge, in 2005. Aggregate has developed algorithms to determine what are called "affinity clusters" of people and, based on the personality profiles of those people, targets ads. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

New Dating Reality Television Show From Fox

CORANTE -- Oct 17 -- My Dating Place, a local half-hour strip, will be tested on Fox-owned MyNetworkTV affiliate KUTP Phoenix starting late this year or early 2007. Would-be daters can apply on the station's Website.  FULL ARTICLE @ CORANTE

Former Facebook Engineer Spills Beans

GIGA OM BLOG -- Oct 17 -- Baloun is no master wordsmith, and he errs on the side of over-moralizing, but not without giving valuable glimpses into the inklings of greatness he felt while working as an engineer at Facebook2 from 2005 to 2006. The PDF book is $9 at fbbook.com. FULL ARTICLE @ GIGA OM BLOG

Mark Brooks: Looks like the site is down. Must be popular. If you pick up a copy, please post comments here.

Sequoia Reportedly Invests in SF Blog for Women

VENTURE BEAT BLOG -- Oct 16 -- Michael Moritz, venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital, and backer of Google and Yahoo, is apparently funding a blog company called Sugar Publishing (1.5 million uniques), which runs four popular blogs, including flagship PopSugar, that caters to young, hip women. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT BLOG

Mark Brooks: Hey, internet dating bus dev and trafficing managers...there's a nice target for you. The CEO is Brian Sugar. Properties include popsugar, fabsugar, and dearsugar. Ad rack rates run $4-$10 CPM  Ick! Try halving that for a decent 90 day ROI. My guess is you'd see ~10% 30 day ROI at the rack rates (with targeted, quality creatives) but you'd gain a valuable audience. Email contact is advertising@sugarpublishing.com. 

Does Posting Info Online Mean Giving Up Privacy?

K@W BLOG -- Oct 16 -- Faculty members at Wharton say people who access the Internet for sending email, writing blogs, and posting photos and information about themselves on social networking sites, do not realize how much of their personal privacy and identities they put at risk. The legal community has been debating for years whether it is more appropriate to view personal information as a form of property that is "owned" and therefore subject to property protections, or to look at personal information as a privacy right. The ownership model hasn't taken off. The legal system does a much better job protecting property interests rather than dignity interests, such as privacy. In a way, we're going back to the small town where everyone knows what everyone else is doing by virtue of internet. FULL ARTICLE @ KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON

LinkedIn's Service Provider "Recommendation" Feature

VENTURE BEAT BLOG -- Oct 16 -- LinkedIn, the social networking site for business professionals, has introduced a feature to let people find "recommended" service providers. This move takes LinkedIn, the Sequoia Capital-backed Palo Alto start-up, beyond its insular focus on the business networking set, and brings it closer to a Yellow Pages model — making it much more interesting. If you are searching for an attorney, for example, you can click on the "services" tab at LinkedIn, then select "attorney" and see if anyone in your network as recommended an attorney in the field you're looking for. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT

Mark Brooks: People are tired of advertising and are reaching out for 'friendly referrals.' We'll see more referral systems meshed into social networks. Trust follows the channels of social networks. Buy.com made an attempt in 2004 with yub.com but couldn't get viral traction. Connectors tend not to want to connect their friends to social networking sites that have clear and apparent commercial agendas.   

Sequoia Returns $480M on $11M Investment

GEEKFISHING BLOG -- Oct 11 -- Sequoia was among YouTube's first funders, providing $11.5 million in two rounds. Sequoia's take from the Google IPO: a $12.5 million investment in 1999 for 10% equity turned into roughly $4.7 billion. FULL ARTICLE @ GEEKFISHING BLOG

Mark Brooks: And how many success stories are there like this these days? For all the deals VC's do and the losses they take on other deals, these are the rock star deals. The main thing VC's are looking for is an incredible growth trajectory. There will be more social networks that show these trajectories. PlentyofFish seems to be the lone star for high growth trajectories in the internet dating sector right now. 

Dot-Com Boom Echoed in Deal to Buy YouTube

NY TIMES -- Oct 10 -- A profitless Web site started by three 20-somethings after a late-night dinner party is sold for more than a billion dollars, instantly turning dozens of its employees into paper millionaires. It happened yesterday. Google ($132B market cap) agreed yesterday to pay $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube. Users view 100 million short videos on the site every day. Google is expected to try to make money from YouTube by integrating the site with its search technology and search-based advertising program. News Corporation sent a letter to YouTube seeking to start talks but never received a response. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: And another raft of VC's will pump money into new social networks which will launch in 3-6 months.

YouTube Valuation Growth

SV BLOG -- Oct 10 -- Based on our rough calculations, YouTube was able to grow its valuation by $2.6 million every day since its launch in February 05. FULL ARTICLE @ SEARCH VIEWS BLOG

Mark Brooks: YouTube proves out a critical hypothesis. Online video, and TV, is here to stay. The users will be very likely to switch over to new competitors.

Indian Court Notice To Google's Orkut

SE WATCH BLOG -- Oct 10 -- The Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to issue notice to Google for the spread of hatred about India by a "We Hate India" community in Orkut that posted a picture a burning Indian flag. FULL ARTICLE @ SEARCH ENGINE WATCHL

CNET's Getting Its Groove

TECH CRUNCH BLOG -- Oct 9 -- CNET sure has been busy fixing up its community sites lately. In addition to recent updates to Consumating, Webshots, and Chow, the launch of AllYouCanUpload and the acquisition of UrbanBaby, CNET relaunched popular Tech news and community site TechRepublic
today.  FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH BLOG

Mark Brooks: I'll never forget reading about how jazzed the founder of Consummating was, after the acquisition by CNET. He was most jazzed that CNET allowed him to continue to wear his various facial piercings at work. Consumating, and engage.com, are two of my favorite, significantly departure from the norm, dating websites. 

Smalltown Launches Today

SILICON BEAT -- Oct 9 -- Smalltown aims offers comprehensive local business listings and gives each local community its own look, more so than other local social network/listing sites, such as Yelp, InsiderPages, Judy's Book or BackFence. Smalltown has started out by focusing on one small town in Silicon Valley: San Mateo. It will build out from there. When you search for guitars, you see the listings in a tab, but you also see the reviews in a separate tab. Smalltown received $3 million in venture capital from Formative Ventures.

Mark Brooks: Companies are emerging to improve on Yellow Pages local search and layer in user reviews and the 'friendly referral.' This could also play into the 'classifieds' and online personals space. The search for compatible singles is inherently 'local.' Once these sites reach critical mass you can be sure they'll offer some kind of personals option.

Google-YouTube Marriage?

VENTURE BEAT BLOG -- Oct 6 -- The WSJ reports that Google is in talks to acquire video-sharing site YouTube for roughly $1.6 billion.  But it cites only “a person familiar with the matter,” which is frustratingly vague. It would be just the sort of buzz YouTube would like to have circulating in order to get Yahoo and Microsoft pounding at its doors. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT BLOG

Yelp.com Friendly Referrals

TECHCRUNCH BLOG -- Oct 5 -- Yelp (1,5 million uniques/mo) took $10 million in Series B funding from Benchmark. Yelp specializes in local reviews and competes with Judy's Book which raised $8 million from Mobius, Ignition and Ackerley last year. FULL ARTICLE @ TECHCRUNCH BLOG

Mark Brooks: Yahoo is moving differentiating itself from Google by focusing on social search. Sites like Yelp and Judy's Book are trying to bottle the 'friendly referral' in essence. Online dating services such as Engage, and GreatBoyfriends are also trying to provide 'friendly referrals.' Successful unisons between internet dating sites and social networking are non-existent. Connectors won't connect when there is a real and apparent commercial agenda, which is why sites like Yub.com and FriendFinder's internet dating meets social networking (Q3/Q4 2003) services never took off. The best internet dating sites can hope for is getting feedback/testimonials from other users. 

YouTube Profitable

HIP MOJO BLOG -- Oct 4 -- YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley is looking to pull a Google on the $75 billion TV ad industry by introducing contextual ads. It currently sells its home page ads for $175,000 for 400,000 viewers. $5.25M a month for the home page. Its monthly bandwidth costs are rumoured to be in the region of $1 million each month. But, YouTube is far more of a legal risk than Napster ever was. FULL ARTICLE @ HIP MOJO BLOG

Mark Brooks: You can be sure YouTube is trying to get into bed with the Warner Brothers of the world.  The illusive 18-35 year old crowd will tune into the YouTubes of the world instead of TV eventually. Have you tried browsing YouTube for funny videos recently. It's addictive. There's something on everything, for everyone. Hmm, how about 'panda sneeze.'  Yup, here it is.

del.icio.us Plans To Become a Social Network

READ/WRITE BLOG -- Oct 4 --del.icio.us will essentially turn into a social network, with more focus on people instead of data. The CEO recently stated, "I want to help people connect with others within the system, either to people they already know or discovering new people and communities based on interest." FULL ARTICLE @ READ/WRITE WEB BLOG

Mark Brooks: Next - del.icio.us to offer personality profiling matchmaking based on bookmarks

Social Networking Silver Bullet

READ/WRITE WEB BLOG -- Oct 4 -- Social networks are becoming an important ingredient of all sorts of consumer experiences. Here are a few social networks worth keeping an eye on: LinkedIn - For business networking. CollectiveX - Team collaboration. Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) said CollectiveX is social networking "the way it should have been done in the first place." PeopleAggregator - A meta social network system which enables you to connect other social networking services together. Wetpaint - Free hosted websites. A combination of "wikis, blogs, and social networks." e.g. WikiFido. Multiply - Sharing your life, with privacy. Imeem - Allows sharing blogs, photos, audio, and video.

What we require is a system that connects all social networks.  i.e. Social groupware - like CollectiveX and PeopleAggregator. FULL ARTICLE @ READ/WRITE WEB BLOG

Mark Brooks: Social networking will follow the same trajectory as internet dating. More niche sites will emerge. Users will have a presence on mainstream sites and add personas on niche sites. 'Profile portability' is needed but has never happened for dating sites. The sites want to lock in their userbase.  Social networks, similarly, want to lock in their userbases. But they will take more heat from users for not allowing profiles to be ported to other sites. People like PeopleAggregator's founder (and Macromedia founder) Marc Canter have been pounding on the table for open networks and profile portability for a few years. Marc decided, if you can't join them, beat them, and developed PeopleAggregator independently.

Social Networking Site Valuations

WHARTON BLOG -- Oct 4 -- In January Facebook turned down a $750 million offer from Viacom and is now mulling over a $900 million offer from Yahoo. MySpace may be on pace to be worth $15 billion in three years? Even Google's $120 billion market cap may reflect some irrational exuberance. Its shares sell for ~55X earnings, triple the PE ratio of the average S & P 500 company. Using the 55x ratio, MySpace would need about $270 million in annual profit to justify a $15 billion value. It's expected to generate $200 million revenue this year. Facebook has nine million users and annual revenue of ~$50 million. At 55x earnings, it would need a $16 million profit to justify a $900 million price. FULL ARTICLE @ KNOWLEDGE WHARTON BLOG

Wal-Mart Shuts Down MySpace Clone

MARKETING VOX -- Oct 4 -- After just 10 weeks, Wal-Mart has pulled the plug on "The Hub," a social-networking site for teens that the nation's largest retailer had hoped would become a competitor for MySpace. An experiment gone awry. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

MySpace and Facebook Rivals are Growing

DAILY NEWS -- Oct 2 -- Piczo (teenage focus) is one of a raft of second-tier social-networking sites. XuQa is run by San Francisco startup iVentster, which lets users play games against their online friends and offers awards to the top scorers. Hi5 comes with a built-in music player. Last month, Piczo attracted 10.2 million uniques, compared with Facebook's 15.5 million (comScore). Instead of trying to get people to ditch their MySpace and Facebook accounts, they're persuading kids to sign up for a third or fourth social-networking site, along with the ones they already use. Funtigo shutting down in February 2004 and created a new page at funtigo.com/switch, which led to Piczo. The founder wrote back to ~100 of the teenagers who had emailed him earlier, telling them they could keep using the service if they switched to Piczo.  It was Piczo's first and only marketing push. FULL ARTICLE @ DAILY NEWS

Mark Brooks: Friendster started similarly, with a small group of avid core users. Bebo (BirthdayAlarm.com users) and MySpace (eUniverse) had more of a marketing push, and faster growth rates.

Online Video Sites Are Hot Targets

BUSINESS WEEK -- Oct 2 -- Mark Cuban, the tech entrepreneur and owner the Dallas Mavericks, said on Sept. 29 that anyone who buys YouTube, one of the most popular video sites, is a "moron." Analyst Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets argued that MySpace, the social networking site that generates a huge volume of video traffic, could be worth $15 billion in three years. News Corp. is now shifting more assets into the Internet. Members of the so-called Millennial generation, who were born starting around 1980, don't watch TV the way their parents did.  Research firm Frank N. Magid Associates said in a report Millennials spend 2.48 hours a day online, the same amount of time they spend watching TV, and about 2.2 hours a day listening to music. Sorting out the intellectual property rights issues of video on the Web is a thorny issue; what Cuban had in mind when he made his comments. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK

PlentyofFish Listed as Top Google Adsense Earner

Here are the top 5 Google Adsense Earners:
1) Markus Frind: PlentyOfFish.com - $300,000 per month
2) Kevin Rose: Digg.com - $250,000 per month
3) Jeremy Shoemaker: Internet Marketer - $140,000 per month
4) Jason Calacanis: Weblogs, Inc - $120,000 per month
5) David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard: FreeWebLayouts.net - $100,000 per month
FULL ARTICLE @ JOHN CHOW BLOG

Mark Brooks: Online dating sites really can make money with advertising. Markus has proven it. TRUE is offering contextual advertising now. 

Calling All Lonely Bloggers

OPW -- Oct 1 -- Just when you thought there were no more open niches left for dating sites, along comes Lonelybloggers.  See blog. It's prelaunch. LonelyBloggers, sounds daft...but, think about it. Who's most likely to spread the word about this site. (I think I just bit the lure). Their marketing could be viral (cheap) enough for them to make a few bucks. - Mark Brooks

CyWorld => Wallop

MARKET WATCH  -- Sep 28 -- On CyWorld, the Korean social network, about $125 million is spent annually on stuff to decorate the CyWorld communities. In the virtual-game market, about $900 million is spent by players sprucing up their virtual environment; castles, bigger castles, castles with moats. Consumers spent $2 billion in ringtones back in 2001. Today, about $7.4 billion is spent on personalized ringtones around the world. So, Wallop is a neat idea, with a lot of potential. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETWATCH.COM

Socializr Revealed

VESTED VENTURES -- Sep 13 -- On September 7 Gamma users gained access to Socializr. Socializr.com is a "free web service for sharing event and party information with your friends. Use Socializr to plan the ultimate social life!" It's a very clean and simple design with friends list, comments on friends/events, event invites w/RSVPs, photo posting/sharing for users and events, and forums. Organizations can have their own webpage for posting events. There is a link to "IM this event." I'm not too impressed as of now. I would have thought that $1.5 million in 2 rounds of funding and many months of development would have produced something better. It's Evite with social networking. Hopefully there's much more functionality that's going to differentiate this business better than the only interesting piece of this business, which is the the founder had previously created Friendster. Competitors: Evite, Upcoming.org (purchased by Yahoo), Renkoo, Skobee, Mollyguard, Eventful, Zvents, Google Calendars. FULL ARTICLE @ VESTED VENTURES

Mark Brooks: I worked with Jonathan in 2003.  Markslist.com (my domain) was the events center on Friendster for a while and we run a series of events called 'Friendster Exposed which pulled 300 attendees at a time.  He always had an interest in Evite-esque functionality. Jonathan moved from Silicon Valley to San Francisco and has been partying it up since he cashed out and left Friendster. He's more plugged in to the hipster network and should be able to do a great job seeding another social network. 

Will Microsoft's Spin-off Pack a Wallop?

BUSINESS WEEK -- Sep 27 -- Wallop was unveiled Sept. 26. It was spun off from Microsoft a year ago and has been in the works a full four years. Wallop looks more like a desktop than a Web page, and it's entirely based on Flash. Instead of listing friends, the site has a radar-like graphic that plots your connections based on how frequently you interact with a person. Wallop doesn't make money by selling ads. It collects small payments for clever, animated applications called "mods." For a fee of, say, 10 cents, you can get a cartoon of an angry bunny created by an independent Flash designer to jump around your page. The key isn't simply amassing users, but getting "cool" people to come to Wallop.  Everyone will want to be where the cool people are. The site is invitation-only now, and each person only gets a few invites to dole out. Wallop will be doing some grassroots promotions in cities including Los Angeles and New York to woo trendsetters. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK

Mark Brooks: Brilliant! They were wise to ditch the Microsoft pedigree. It wouldn't quite work for viral activation amongst the student population. (Microsoft is still kinda evil, compared with the likes of do good Google). South Korea's Cyworld has made a mint of graphical charms and mods. Will this concept convert to a Western audience. I think so. I worked on all-flash Mooble earlier this year. They are looking for more money to execute the plan I laid out. Namely, chase down Facebook. (Email trevorcoyne@ireland.com if interested)

Facebook's For Everyone

CNET NEWS -- Sep 27 -- As the site considers a hefty buyout by Yahoo and eyes new competitors in the college space, this week it joins the likes of Friendster and MySpace in losing the exclusivity that fed its popularity. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

Mark Brooks: I'm on Facebook now. Feel free to link up. Facebook has surely been eyeing MySpace's userbase for a long while. This is the next logical (short term sell the company) step for them. They need to continue showing exponential growth rates for the buyout. Makes sense, but undermines their integrity/focus/branding. They have to stay ahead technologically now, or they WILL lose their student base to other sites as they seek out the next great underground superhip next generation social network. Students will use more than one network, and might eventually shift their loyalty and focus if a site opens up and is significantly technologically ahead of Facebook.

Cingular and YouTube Promote Battle of the Bands

MARKETING VOX -- Sep 25 -- Cingular has teamed up with YouTube for an online promotion allowing independent musicians to submit videos that the YouTube community can then vote for. The four winning bands will appear on Good Morning America and receive airtime on Sirius. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

Mark Brooks: This is a marketing and PR double whammy.  Great idea.

It's a new day for Tribe.net

"A letter to the community from the employees of Tribe.net"

Thanks to recent management changes, we, the employees, are taking back the site and are happy to announce some real improvements ( based upon the tons of feedback you've given us).  For starters, we're going back to the original logo. Secondly, we've reduced the formerly huge masthead navigation down to a more appropriate size. We've also made it easier to navigate the site. How do you design a single useful home page experience for a diverse community that wants completely different things from tribe.net? Easy--you don't. You let your users do it. You can now add/remove stuff from your homepage. And yes, you can finally customize the layout of your homepage. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, keep an eye out for our upcoming Tribe REBOOT party.

Mark Brooks: Nice. Can Tribe be resurrected? The new old CEO Marc Pincus should know.

YouTube Selling?

BIZ REPORT -- Sep 22 -- The owners of YouTube want $1.5 billion (NY Post), high above what many executives are willing to pay. One "senior industry source" told the Post, "If they were willing to take $200 million to $300 million, I would buy it tomorrow."  Speculation rises about what media outlet or Internet company might buy them out. FULL ARTICLE @BIZ REPORT

A MySpace That Speaks Your Language

BUSINESS WEEK -- Sep 21 -- COO Court Cunningham says Community Connect is the third largest social networking company in the U.S. in terms of revenue. Community Connect's sites (BlackPlanet, MiGente, AsianAvenue) function like MySpace; users can create profiles and search for people by gender, age, and interests, as well as ethnicity. There are also chats, message boards, job listings, personals, and of course advertisements. Together, Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans make up about 33% of the total U.S. population (2005 U.S. Census). According to Forrester, 86% of Asian-Americans are online, 56% of African-Americans are online, and Latinos, at 45%, are currently undergoing the fastest online migration.  Community Connect will launch gay/lesbian Glee.com, by the end of 2006. Another Christian site is due January, 2007. Community Connect expects to earn $20+ million this year and has gone from 70 employees to 140 in the past year. 15% of revenues come from online personal subscriptions, 50% advertising, 35% from job postings. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Mark Brooks: The Community Connect team has worked for over a year to build a more scalable platform for launching new niche networks sites. It has proven itself with Black Planet and will loom over MySpace when it comes to profit rich targeted niche communities. Users will end up using three multiple sites; a generic site such as MySpace/Friendster, additional niche focused sites such as Fropper or MyChurch or BlackPlanet, and the latest 'in-thing' social network with more progressive functionality.

Konnects Launches 400+ Business Social Networks

PR NEWSWIRE -- Sep 19 -- Konnects launched online business networks for over 100 industries and 300 cities around the globe. Unlike other business social networks like Linkedin or OpenBC, each Konnects network functions separately, but users do not have to recreate their profiles as they join Konnects networks. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS-CON

YouTube To Share Ad Revenues?

BIZ REPORT -- Sep 19 -- YouTube is rolling out a technology designed to automatically spot copyrighted material that users upload without permission of media companies, and then to share ad revenue with those companies. This new system is set to be released in the next few months. The first entertainment company to embrace the system is Warner Music Group which will collect a percentage of the revenue from advertising appearing alongside them. FULL ARTICLE @ BIZ REPORT

Mark Brooks: Perhaps that will save YouTube from a barrage of suits. I wonder what that (sweetheart) percentage was for Warner Music Group? 

Yahoo Launches Integrated Campaign

MBP -- Sep 18 -- Yahoo is launching a multimillion-dollar integrated marketing campaign in the U.S. and abroad. It's broadest push in a couple of years; TV, radio, movie-theater and online advertising. The push aims to underscore the role of Yahoo's homepage and other services in users' lives with a humorous take on life with and without Yahoo services.  Ads were created by Yahoo users from various film schools, airing on primetime TV Sept. 21. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA BUYER PLANNER

Universal Music Wants YouTube to Pay Up

MARKETING VOX -- Sep 15 -- Universal is claiming that YouTube owes the label tens of millions of dollars (source: NY Post). The news comes at a bad time for YouTube, as the online video site is considering offers from buyers, as well as a possible IPO in the future. Universal, Warner Music, EMI and SonyBMG, have all been in ongoing talks with YouTube about licensing arrangements. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

Social Networking Services at CTIA

MERCURY NEWS -- Sep 14 -- Standing next to buckets of chilled wine and beer, the FunkySexyCool.com girls certainly got the attention of executives attending the wireless convention this week. The Australian-born company sells a game in which users rate one another on whether they are funky, sexy or cool and has signed up 125,000 users, mainly aged 16 to 24, in Australia since launching a year ago. Niche social networking products have been everywhere at the conference. Juice Wireless allows users to take pictures or videos on their mobile phones and immediately upload them to a Web site or share them with other mobile phone users. Mapquest launched a service that finds addresses and provides turn-by-turn, voice-guided directions for subscribers, turning the mobile phone into a global positioning navigator for $10 a month, on a couple of high-end Sprint/Nextel phones. FULL ARTICLE @ MERCURY NEWS

TripConnect.com Secures $1 Million V.C. Funding

PR NEWSWIRE -- Sep 12 -- TripConnect, a social networking site for travel advice closed $1 million of first round funding led by Masthead Venture Partners and individual private investors. TripConnect helps people obtain travel advice from friends and family. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

Mark Brooks: WAYN.com is their main competition, and has a more compelling service. WAYN is unusual because of it's travel focus, and it's paid membership model...which is actually working quite well for them. 

Social Network for Students and Educators

PR NEWSWIRE -- Sep 12 -- Digication Spotlight targets the academic community, and presents an opportunity to showcase their work, expertise and personality to employers, colleges, grad schools, teachers and other students. e.g. Smithfield High School Art department. The Digication Suite opens the lines of communications by combining elements of social networking and learning management systems. Available for free to the first 1,000 users at any U.S. accredited institution. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS CON

Mark Brooks: Facebook has grown quickly. Academics want their own system for teaching and sharing information and making more serious connections online. I'll interview the CEO of Affinity Circles. They have been quietly working on in-house walled garden social networks for groups associated with universities. As Facebook's focus becomes diluted, the opportunity for new, high integrity, even more highly focused 'private' networks will open up. 

Online Match-Making with Virtual Dates

HBS WK -- Aug 28 -- Users of online dating sites often struggle to find love because the sites themselves make it more difficult than it needs to be. Enter 'Virtual Dates,' an online ice-breaker application from Jeana Frost of Boston University, Michael Norton of HBS, and Dan Ariely of MIT. Technology influences the tone and trajectory of relationships. The interface of online dating sites should be improved to help people filter better. "People spent hours and hours and hours a week online to generate one cup of coffee with one person. That's not a very good system," says Norton. What's more, users often found that the person they were meeting for the first time was not what they had expected. Virtual Dates: After two people find what looks like a good match, the couple meets over their computers for a five-minute Virtual Date ice-breaker that allows two people to communicate in real time using colors, words, and images. Couples may pick up more cues about each other than they would through a chat client. Online dating is not in the end so fundamentally different from regular dating, adds Norton. "It's the people who think it will be quite different from their regular experiences who end up being the most disappointed. FULL ARTICLE @ HBSWK

Mark Brooks: I met Professor Ariely in 2004 in Boston. He and his PhD students have performed some significant research with dating sites  to come to these conclusions. Dating sites should also consider introducing online games to help singles interact in different ways.

God's MySpace: MyChurch.org

CNET NEWS -- Sep 1 -- Unlike the beautiful and highly interactive Faces.com social network, MyChurch is more like Facebook -- it lets you go deep into a particular community, rather than broadcasting yourself to the world. Churches can pay extra for additional bandwidth, storage, and services. Users can invite all their MySpace contacts with one click, co-founder Joe Suh told me. What about MyMosque or MySynagogue? Suh has no immediate plans to reach out to other religions, but there are companies, like Simpatico Networks, that build social networks for different religious groups. PeopleAggregator lets any group set up its own online community. Also Alstrasoft, Small World Labs, SocialPlatform, and Sparta Social Networks. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

University Plans Psych Study of Social Networks

UNITED PRESS INT. -- Sep 1 -- Researchers at USF plan to conduct a study on the psychosocial effects of Internet social networks on youth. Suicide is the third most common cause of death among those 15 to 24. The team hopes that understanding how young people communicate about suicide online could help build prevention initiatives. FULL ARTICLE @ PHYSORG

Mark Brooks: ...and hopefully if social networks contribute or allay kids motivation to commit suicide. I'll contact them and see if I can get more info on this study.

YouTube Launches Colleges Service

NMA.CO.UK -- Sep 1 -- YouTube is going up against Facebook by launching Colleges on YouTube, offering students and staff closed networks through which they can contact each other and watch videos.  The service launched yesterday serving over 30 US colleges. FULL ARTICLE @ NMA.CO.UK

Mark Brooks: The student market is the largest hyper-viral 'niche' market around. Moms, is another great market. Minti, amongst others, serves that market well. 

Social Networks vs. Dating Sites

MARKET WATCH -- Aug 31 -- The popularity of free social networks, with MySpace having some 103 million members, does make you wonder why online dating sites are still charging. Back in 2000 a mere quarter of a million people logged on to dating site Match.com from home. Today, there are 3.2 million visiting Match from home each month, and 4.9 million, if you include those checking out their prospects at work.  Match generated $248 million last year and the run-rate is $312 million for this year. David Siminoff says Spark Networks will do ~$70 million in sales and estimates eHarmony generates $165 million and Yahoo Personals, $100 million. Just adding the big four makes $600 million. Chump change compared to the roughly $12 billion in advertising online. Love is in the niches. That's the view of Siminoff, who's restructured the operations at Spark Networks. Watch interview with David Siminoff.  Spark Networks has 26 different verticals.  Siminoff says the median time a marriage lasts is 6 years. "Liquidity in relationships has gone up a lot."  Maybe social networks draw from online dating sites, but in the end, the entire market of people dating has just gone up. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETWATCH

Pincus Back at Tribe's Helm; Pledges "New Direction"

SILICON BEAT -- Aug 28 -- Mark Pincus declared on the Tribe site: "...as of today jan and the board are gone. i've taken over tribe and you're going to see big changes fast like getting rid of this big stupid masthead and returning tribe to the users where it belongs."  Mark is the only board member, is in full control and will be taking Tribe in "a new direction." Tribe will focus on grownups. Before Mark came back into the picture a few months ago, Tribe's previous CEO Jan Gullet was trying to sell the company, but Tribe never got the deal it wanted. Investors at Friendster reportedly did the same, trying to sell for $18 million or so, before throwing the towel, restarting, and now doing quite well. FULL ARTICLE @ SILICON BEAT

Mark Brooks: Long time Friendster C-level and investor, Kent Lindstrom is turning around Friendster.  Mark will do the same with Tribe. Jonathan Abrams (Friendster CEO), meanwhile, is working on Socializr. 

Paltalk Social Network: Video, Voice, IM

PR WEB -- Aug 25 -- Paltalk (four million active members) launched Paltalk People 2.0, with video, voice and text chat. People 2.0 users can build video chat communities. The Paltalk Messenger is free and lets users chat with people on the People 2.0 site, existing Paltalkers, and friends on AOL, Yahoo and ICQ buddy lists. Since 1998 the company has grown to become one of the most popular online services with more than 42 million downloads accounting for eight billion voice minutes per year. Paltalk has 250 volunteer moderators making sure discussions are open and appropriate, and also operates web conferencing service HearMe. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

AirG Launches Latin Social Net

RED HERRING -- Aug 25 -- AirG opened a social network Friday aimed at the cell phones of Spanish-speaking young people in the U.S., Conexion Latina. FULL ARTICLE @ RED HERRING

Sony Pictures Buys Video-Sharing site, Grouper.com

USA TODAY -- Aug 23 -- Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today that they have acquired video sharing site Grouper.com, for $65 million, in an effort to compete with the online video boom. FULL ARTICLE @ USA TODAY

Mark Brooks: Guba, BitTorrent, YouTube and Revver are competitors.

Microsoft Signs Ad Deal with Facebook

MARKETING VOX -- Aug 23 -- Using its online advertising platform, Microsoft will provide banner ads and sponsored links to Facebook, starting early fall and running through mid-2009. Microsoft launched adCenter in May to compete with Google and Yahoo. Earlier this month, Google struck a $900 million advertising deal MySpace. (Advertising group IPG took a 0.5 percent stake in Facebook earlier this year.) FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

Wiki-Based Social Network

TOP HOSTS NEWS -- Aug 22 -- Michal Frackowiak, a 28-year old Polish Web developer and PhD student launched Wikidot.com, a Wiki-based publishing platform and social network aimed mainly at advanced Internet users, content publishers and broadcasters. "We want to build a social network of users running their own sites. This distinguishes us from most Wiki or blog providers and takes us closer to social services like MySpace. FULL ARTICLE @ TOP HOSTS

YouTube Launches Brand Channels; Paris Hilton's Is First

MEDIA BUYER PLANNER -- Aug 22 -- YouTube today launched yet another attempt to generate ad revenue, allowing advertisers to promote their brands via customized channels on the site. Warner Brothers created the "Paris Hilton Channel" to promote Hilton's new music album "Paris," and includes a video ad produced by Hilton for her YouTube fans. Advertisers will be able to customize the look and feel of their channels once they meet pre-determined spending quotas. YouTube cofounder and CEO Chad Hurley is quoted as saying he hopes brand channels help build an ad platform that "both the community and advertisers" could embrace. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA BUYER PLANNER

Social Networkers Get Mobilised

THE AGE -- Aug 21 -- Mobile carriers are scurrying to package up live chat and picture sharing services into subscription packages. Australia's slow entry into the 3G mobile market, and the prohibitive cost of mobile data downloads has meant that such services here remain thin on the ground. Hutchison's 3 service was first to enter the 3G market in Australia and offers subscription-based social networking service, Kink Kommunity (owned by Perth company, Loop Wireless which is now owned by Adultshop).  New services that blend sophisticated multimedia and location-based services with social networking are beginning to make a mark in the US. Meetro allows people to find and and meet up with people located nearby and combes instant messaging, social networking and location based data. Rabble, combines mobile blogging with location data so subscribers in the area can check out restaurant or music reviews, and user generated photos and video. In Japan, a company called ImaHima has also broken new ground, with technology that can locate where friends are. FULL ARTICLE @ THE AGE

Gizmo (like Skype) to Launch on LiveJournal

OPW -- Aug 21 -- Clay Elliott, from Gizmoproject just informed me that their instant messaging and telephone service is launching on LiveJournal in the next couple of weeks. They also have a online version available at gizmoweb.com, although it's a little shakey on Firefox, btw. Gizmoproject is an alternative to Skype. - Mark Brooks

AOL Buys Userplane

WASHINGTON POST -- Aug 17 -- Shortly after AOL announced a dramatically new business plan that included laying off a quarter of its workforce, the company went on a small buying spree, purchasing GameDaily.com, which provides information about video games, and instant messaging firm Userplane.  AOL is trying to find ways to keep customers coming back to its Internet community while parent company Time Warner seeks ways to expand its Internet empire. AOL is trying to cut costs as it transitions from an Internet service provider to a Web portal that provides free services and draws revenue from online advertising. It will cut 5,000 positions over the next six months. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST

Mark Brooks: Userplane has a vast reach and has built great good will with myriad internet dating, social networking and online communities. That good will could translate into more deals and distribution opportunities for the new AOL.com.

Senior Citizen a Surprise YouTube Star

REUTERS -- Aug 14 -- A septuagenarian British widower's soft-spoken, humble manner has won the hearts of young YouTube users. "What I hope I will be able to do is to just to bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who has been there and done that and hopefully you will respond in some way by your comments." 100 million clips are watched every day on YouTube.  Videos, FULL ARTICLE @ AOL NEWS

Mark Brooks: YouTube is booming.  Users are getting their webcams hooked up and actually using them now.  It's time for online dating companies to more seriously consider the use of video for profile information, and webcams for video dating. Webcam dating solves the problems associated with users posting inaccurate/old photos.

AOL Acquires Userplane

USERPLANE -- Aug 14 -- One recent night before inking our first-round with a top VC - we were approached by AOL's CEO, Jon Miller…  Userplane will continue to support all communities small and large. Our business model will remain unchanged - startup-style. Any relationship between our network and AOL's will be completely optional. Expect to see an abundance of new features and innovation. For years, Userplane has been dreaming of federated identity and network interoperability with AIM.  AIM Interoperability will be an added feature for our clients in the near future! We are also going to be working with Open AIM to become a quick installation and robust A/V front-end for the AOL network. No pricing changes are planned at all. In fact, we're releasing an ad-supported package for our integrated clients as part of this transition. Our core data center will remain in LA but we will be expanding to Europe and Asia with AOL's greater resources. We're staying put in LA with the same team :) Soon we will be moving into larger offices down the road in Santa Monica… FULL ARTICLE @ USERPLANE

Mark Brooks: Congratulations to Mike Jones and the team. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! Talk about blazing a trail. AOL. Wow!

New Free Dating Service - Daft Name, Novel Approach

PR WEB -- Aug 8 -- Cheekymonkeydating allows users to publish personal contact details and incorporates Skype buttons. It's geared towards allowing people to contact each other directly. "I view the site more as a directory of people seeking dates than a traditional dating site," founder, David Thomas, commented. "Most online dating agencies get people to write their profiles which they will publish for free, then they charge them the earth for a subscription that allows them to send mail. Often the money will be wasted, because many of the people receiving the messages will not have paid a subscription fee, and therefore won't be able to reply." FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Internet dating sites need to capture the entire communications continuum. Email is old hat. Instant Messaging is where most dating site users are at now. But they really want to talk to each other, and see each other. Voice and video. How can internet dating sites capture the full communicatios spectrum? Is it viable, really? Your comments please...

Zorpia Plans to Launch 22 Social Networks Worldwide

PR NEWSWIRE -- Aug 9 -- The "Social Network Wars" have begun and Zorpia is on a quest for global domination. Today the company announced the launch of its new Chinese social networking site, Zorpia.cn. Zorpia's expansion into China is the first step in an aggressive global expansion plan of taking on 22 additional markets including the UK, Australia, Canada, India, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. "We see Zorpia.com as the first 'Global Social Network,'" founder Jeffrey Ng said.  In the past year, Zorpia.com has added more than three million registered users and receives 3.6 million page views daily.  Zorpia Ltd. is a privately owned company and is currently seeking venture capital.  Jeffrey Ng, (650) 331-7390. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS COM

Mark Brooks: Currently Zorpia has a 996 Alexa rank. They've been around a couple of years but morphed more recently into a social network. Cyworld, South Korea's monster social network, opened an office stateside but I've not seen too much of them. There's more to social networking than just opening up a site in a new country and hoping new users come. The sites need seeding with local 'connectors'.  That usually takes a local presence and network. There are numerous examples of sites that were borne in and did well in their respective countries.  Grono.net (Poland), Rate.ee (Estonia), Yonja (Turkey) LIST.  Orkut is over represented in Brazil. Friendster has a huge following in the Phillipines. MySpace is the biggest worldwide. 

Scam and Fraud Consulting Service

PR WEB -- Aug 8 -- Pendulum Communications new consulting service "Scam Vigilante" will focus exclusively on assisting online relationship providers. Said Greg Moore. "We confidentially, audit the entire operation of the site from the IT, customer service, security and web development departments and make defensive, restructuring, decisions based on our knowledge of how scammers from Russia and Africa are able to get onto dating sites to scam innocent people, even when these countries are blocked from registering."  Greg Moore - (718) 593-4533. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: If any of you use Greg's services, please comment on them here, or email me and I'll add a comment.

Mumsnet Libel Suit

CYBERSOC.COM -- Aug 8 -- Gina Ford instructed her solicitors to send a letter to the ISP hosting mumsnet, threatening to sue them for libel if they didn't cease hosting the community site for moms and expectant moms. Coverage of the story is going ballistic. Ford writes parenting books. Now her name has been in every major UK newspaper website and the story has reportedly run on TV. FULL ARTICLE @ CYBERSOC.COM

Mark Brooks: The site closed it's doors rather than deal with the suit. Shame.

The Biggest Social Networking Company You've Never Heard of

PR NEWSWIRE -- Aug 2 -- The first niche online social network, Community Connect continues to innovate online social networking with the re-launch of their properties: AsianAvenue, MiGente, and BlackPlanet.  16 million registered members and 500 million monthly page views. (Blackplanet has 14 million registrants).  Launched in 1997. Recently upgraded features on BlackPlanet and MiGente include: -- Enhanced photo management, User-generated news, Professional networking tools providing new ways, Video section, Free instant messaging, Improved Personal Page tools. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS.COM

Mark Brooks: Community Connects story is inspiration for entrepreneurs interested in developing niche dating and internet communities. Niches work. Choose carefully, shoot for the holes in the market and seed your word of mouth campaigns carefully. Community Connect spent NOTHING on advertising until 2006. Now they are becoming more aggressive as more competition springs up. Blackplanet is their mainstay community. They make money from advertising, jobs (Monster.com) and personals.

Gather.com to Launch Online, Cable Advertising Campaign

MARKETING VOX -- July 31 -- Boston-based Gather.com, which gives its writers a share of ad revenue, is launching its first major advertising campaign this week, running ads online and on cable networks. Three spots cover Iraq, the environment and immigration. Each begins with a black screen and audio, and ends with the tagline: "Join the conversation." In the "Iraq" ad, viewers will hear soldiers' voices, then an explosion, and will then see "Iraq" on the blank screen as the voiceover says, "Join the conversation at Gather.com." Gather.com is aimed at an older demographic. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

Mark Brooks: The thinking man (and womans) social network

Tech Companies Hope to Cash in on Web 2.0

STAR TELEGRAM -- July 23 -- Swahili for "hello," Jambo Networks is one of many companies trying to stand out in the increasingly crowded world of online social networking.  A kind of wireless matchmaker.  Jambo's software turns laptops and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices into a radar for nearby people who share common interests. Jambo.net is working on partnering with those sites and sharing in the revenue. Other location-based social networks include Meetro.com and Plazes.com and Dodgeball.com. A couple of Jambo deals will probably be announced this summer.  Jambo is raising venture funding and preparing to expand Jambo's capability to Bluetooth-enabled gadgets. FULL ARTICLE @ STAR TELEGRAM

Mark Brooks: Jambo wants to partner with the online dating industry...big time. Seems like the perfect match. But, who will move first. Someone (dating site/socialnetwork) has to push this service to critical mass, then it will be very valuable and useful. So far they've been demoing the technology at conventions.

IPG, Facebook Finalize Agreement

MBP -- June 29 -- Agency holding company Interpublic Group has finalized an agreement with Facebook. IPG will receive prime advertising space as well as consumer research from the site. IPG will acquire less than .05 percent of Facebook as part of the deal.  IPG has committed $10 million in advertising to Facebook. In June, Student Monitor, a student market researc firm, reported that 71% of college students consider Facebook.com an "in" thing, compared with 58% for MySpace. Facebook tied for second place with beer; iPods were first. FULL ARTICLE @ MBP

PeopleAggregator in Alpha

OPW -- June 26 -- There's a new social network on the launch runway, worthy of a mention. Marc Canter (blog) is a visionary and a troublemaker and he's making his social networking move. Not sure why it took this long, but he's taken his sweet time to build something worthwhile. fyi, Marc was the founder of Macromedia.  I remember him most as the loud guy giving Jonathan Abrams (Friendster founder) and the rest of a social networking panel a hard time in 2003 at a Stanford Vlab panel presentation. He called for open standards, more user empowerment. Marc built PA on his own dime to allow people to connect their networks and identities in one place.  An advanced social network for an older group. Tags, photos, video, groups, networks, blogs...usable, clean, customizable...nice.  More fun than Linkedin (like there's any fun there), more serious than Myspace. I think I might have found a new home. - Mark Brooks

Free Sites vs American Singles, Social Networks

OPW -- June 26 -- Here's a little graph of Plentyoffish vs OKCupid vs Matchdoctor vs American Singles fyi. Plentyoffish is powering away. Here's Myspace vs Friendster vs Hi5 vs Facebook

Mark Brooks: Crazy outta control! Myspace is taking over the internet.

Private-Label Social Network Platform

RED ORBIT -- June 22 -- Now, businesses and organizations can create, customized, branded online social networks where members can link their personal spaces with friends and colleagues. Server hosted solution, starting at $195/month - Webcrossing Neigbors. FULL ARTICLE @ RED ORBIT

MOG Starts Test of Music-based Social Network

REUTERS -- June 20 -- MOG is Myspace for music junkies. The free site was started by former MTV marketing executive David Hyman with $1.4 million from private investors, requires users to download its application, MOG-O-MATIC, and catalogs the music on users' computer hard drives and monitors what they play the most. FULL ARTICEL @ YAHOO NEWS

Imbee.com Launches; Social Network for Kids

PR NEWSWIRE -- June 19 -- Industrious Kid Inc., developer of online destinations for children, has launched imbee.com; a new secure social networking and blogging destination for 8 to 14's. Imbee protects its members by keeping their personal online content private and secure behind a firewall, it cannot be accessed by Internet search engines, and Imbee allows parents to monitor, approve, and if necessary modify settings related to their child's activities. $3.95 per month for two kid members and one adult. Imbee.com was named the "official kids social networking destination" of Paramount Parks and will kick off its promotional tour on June 19th at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara, CA. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS-CON

Mark Brooks: Social networks for kids, social networks for christians, social networks for dog lovers. Here we go... Social networking is following the same trajectory as internet dating. When will we see the fulcrum I wonder? There are still some wide open opportunities for social networks.

How to Make 80 Million Friends and Influence People

THE GUARDIAN -- June 18 -- Michael Birch's (Bebo Founder) original internet plans were aimed at an older age group - thirtysomethings - but he soon learnt that social networking online depends on finding a focus based on more than age - a classroom, for instance, or a particular hobby. Teenagers are always the early adopters online because they have more time on their hands and less money - and social networks are free.' Bebo spread entirely by word of mouth in schools and colleges, to the point where his site now has 100 million page views every day. Bebo is just a refinement of Ringo, which Birch built in 2003 and sold not long after it reached 400,000 members. That grew out of BirthdayAlarm.com, a successful birthday reminder service using eCards that currently has 40 million users. The real reason Bebo has taken off so fast is because it can be mastered by a 12-year-old. Birch believes we are only at the beginning of things. Social networking sites 'are becoming much more of a utility over time rather than being a pure gimmick', he told the website Online Personals Watch. FULL ARTICLE@ THE GUARDIAN

Mark Brooks: The trick to starting a successful social network is... 1. target an active hive of users  2. get the initial userbase seeding right  3. get the site product mix right.  There will be more successful, targeted social networks in the future. There's still space in the market.

This Social Networking Site Means Business

YAHOO NEWS -- June 16 -- Konstantin Guericke says the site he co-founded, LinkedIn (6 million users since 2003), broke even last quarter. Whereas MySpace and most of the other social net sites depend on ad revenue, LinkedIn is going the subscription route.  "Businesses pay us because they want to find people," he said, "and people pay us because they want to be found."  If users want to contact someone from outside their original network, they must fork over some cash. $20 a month provides three contacts a month outside a person's immediate network. $200 a month allows 50 contacts a month. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

DoubleDate.com Launch

PR NEWSWIRE -- June 12 -- DoubleDate.com gives friends the opportunity to socialize in pairs; creating a more honest, less stressful and more relaxed environment for meeting new people. Safety in numbers. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS-CON

Mark Brooks: I like this concept, but will it take off? Depends if they can seed their database and get traction with the press.

Pentagon Sets its Sights on Social Networks

NEW SCIENTIST -- June 9 -- "I am continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves," says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. Websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop's dream. The Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons. FULL ARTICLE @ NEW SCIENTIST

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé

THE NEW YORK TIMES -- June 11 -- When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois. At Facebook the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts", shooting people and obsessive sex.  FULL ARTICLE @ IHT.COM

Mark Brooks: Doh!

YouthNoise Social Network for Social Change Raises $2.5m

PR NEWSWIRE -- June 8 -- YouthNoise, the (non-profit) social network for young people who want to create social change, raised $2.5m from a consortium of the Omidyar Network, the Surdna Foundation, Skyline Public Works and Virgin Mobile USA. Omidyar Network is a mission-based investment group committed to fostering individual self-empowerment on a global scale. Surdna Foundation is a family foundation that makes grants in the areas of environment, community revitalization, effective citizenry, the arts and the nonprofit sector. Skyline Public Works provides administrative and grant making support for non-profit that promote civic engagement.Youthnoise has 113,000 registered users from 170 countries, with 3 million page views per month. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Social Network for the Deaf

PR WEB -- June 5 -- TagDeaf was developed by Alex Chu, founder of the popular deaf forum at AllDeaf. It provides searchable information of interest to the deaf community. FULL ARTICLE @ PRWEB

Social Networking Websites Target NZ Teens in Turf Battle

STUFF -- June 4 -- Bebo.com is beating MySpace hands-down in New Zealand and giving it a run for its money in Britain. Other popular teen sites include WeeWorld.com, Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga.com and Orkut.com. Oldfriends.co.nz ranked at 8th position. Benchmark Capital just put $US15 million ($NZ24 million) into Bebo. Product placements on social networking sites which was too brash or uncool could risk destroying a community. The problem of getting younger teenagers to pay for online content – where they did not have access to parents' credit cards – can be solved by rolling out pre-paid credit cards. FULL ARTICLE @ STUFF

Old-School Network Tries New Ad Model

YAHOO NEWS -- May 30 -- Classmates (10 years old, 40 million members) will turn users favorites links into advertiser links. e.g. a visitor to a profile listing Shakira as a favorite artist could click on 'Shakira' to hear a song for free, courtesy of RealNetworks' Rhapsody, which sponsors the section. United Online bought Classmates.com for $100 million in October 2004. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

RateItAll Adsense Rev-Share with Members

PR WEB -- May 18 -- RateItAll.com social network and review community has leveraged the latest Google Adsense API to enable revenue sharing for its contributing members. Members earn cash for using adding listings, creating a profile with a photo, and referring new members. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Buy.com tried luring users/business in with a social network called yub.com, paying commission on sales to members. Nice try. However, 'connectors' won't connect en masse when there's a real and apparent commercial agenda.

MySpace Future Integration into Newspapers

MARKETING VOX -- May 26 -- News Corp. is expected to integrate MySpace with its newspaper properties. Murdoch, who was initially skeptical of the internet, now thinks online media operations are fundamental to the survival of publishing. News International publishes The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World. FULL ARTICLE @MARKETING VOX

Mark Brooks: OLD WAY: Pick up the newspaper in the morning. NEW (MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY) WAY: Check Yahoo/Google News, NY Times and CNET news and keyword based news alerts. Get daily news via email from favorite industry specific news services/blogs (e.g. OnlinePersonalsWatch.com). CONSEQUENCES: Newspapers acquire online media to quickly learn and retool for the new news way.

MySpace, Bebo Battle it Out

NETMIPERATIVE -- May 26 -- According to Nielsen//NetRatings, MySpace and Bebo, are the fifth- and sixth-biggest brands online in terms of total web page views for April. 33% of Bebo users visit MySpace. 25% of MySpace users visit Bebo. 69% of MySpace's audience is 18+ while the majority of Bebo users, 54%, are under 18. Both Bebo and MySpace have more than 1.2 million female users, but Bebo's smaller size means a greater percentage of its users are women. Bebo reports the higher number of page views and amount of time spent online, 1 hr 52 mins, per user each month. FULL ARTICLE @ NI

Jambo Brings Social Networking Into the Real World

NEW.COM -- May 26 -- Jambo tells you who in your network is nearby by checking to see if people you know are attached to the same Wi-Fi access point and then use Jambo's built-in instant-messaging client. Jambo is in testing on Windows Mobile phones and is working on supporting Symbian, RIM, and Palm OS. The Jambo technology is available for license to social networking sites. Other interesting experiments in finding Wi-Fi access point locations are SkyHook, Wigle, and Microsoft's own Location Finder (part of Windows Live Local). Social networking projects that track people and their locations include Dodgeball and Plazes. FULL ARTICLE @ NEWS

Friendster Raises $3.1 Million

SILICON BEAT -- May 25 -- Friendster's original investors Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark have reset the company's value, and invested $3.1 million (in what is called a recapitalization). Friendster will release some more online features and a revised home page. Friendster will give users a way to know when their friends have added new photos, written new blog postings or changed their profile and will also make its site searchable by Google and other search engines for those members that choose to make their profiles public. FULL ARTICLE @ SILICONBEAT

Mark Brooks: These tweaks may help tip a little more viral activity. Friendster has suffered from feature creep of late and needs a usability overhaul. 

Yonja? Who?

OPW -- May 25 -- The world of social networking extends far beyond Myspace and Friendster. Case in point, Yonja, Turkey's leading social network, and Grono the leader in Poland, Yeeyoo, hot in China, Cyworld, South Korea's titan. Check out the Handy Little Lists on the left bar of OPW for more Popular Social Networks.

...Some more info on Yonja: Offices in San Francisco and Istanbul, launched Jan 2004, 2.2 million members, #2 most trafficked Turkish Website, ~600 million page views a month, 670,000 unique logins in last 30 days, profitable.  The Turkish market is the youngest and fastest growing population in Europe with more people between the ages of 7-14 than all EU countries combined. - Mark Brooks

Money-Making Woes for Chinese Dating Sites

IOL -- May 24 -- "How to make money is the problem for every Internet dating company in China," said Zhang Kuan, president of dating site Jiaoyou. Chinese men are increasingly moving from their home towns to large cities where they have a limited social network to find a mate, according to Jason Tian, CEO Baihe.  iResearch estimates the Chinese online dating market could reach $82-million (about R543-million) in 2008. The potential will hinge partly on a migration away from a free business model. "High quality services cannot be free," said Dr Song Li, CEO of SinoFriends. The solution, according to eFriendsNet.com (Yeeyoo.com) CEO, Marine Ma, is to blend social networking and Internet dating services. eFriendsNet (5 million users, $3m irevenue in 2005) charges a subscription fee for enhanced services such as the ability to chat with a potential date by mobile phone using a secure connection that protects both parties' identity. FULL ARTICLE @ IOL

Mark Brooks: Dr Li encouraged the Chinese dating industry to start charging for their services at the Asian internet dating convention. 

Bebo Secures Funding

NET IMPERATIVE -- May 22 -- Benchmark Capital (eBay, betfair, MySQL) has taken a stake in Bebo for $15m. Bebo will use the funding to expand the US team and open a London office, maintain its market leading position, and develop the business in its other core markets. Bebo is now the largest social networking site in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand and is also growing rapidly in the U.S., Australia and Canada, with 24m members and 2.5 billion monthly page views. FULL ARTICLE @ NET IMPERATIVE

AOL, Start-ups Emerge to Challenge MySpace

USA TODAY -- May 22 -- MySpace's user base quadrupled to nearly 80 million over the past year, with as many as 270,000 joining every day. CollectiveX launched this month as a network for professionals and other pre-organized groups. Famoodle started in April as a MySpace for families. Tagged and Varsity World are billing themselves as safe havens for teens. AOL's AIM Pages is building upon its IM user-base of 49 million. A Microsoft spinoff company plans to launch Wallop later this year. FULL ARTICLE @ USA TODAY

Mark Brooks: The social networking snowball keeps on rolling. 

Friendster Tries For A Comeback

YAHOO NEWS -- May 19 -- Friendster has new architecture and is preparing to launch an instant messaging service. With more than 27 million page views, the company nearly tripled performance and page views in about one month. The improved performance has also enabled increased advertising and revenue. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO NEWS

AOL Introduces Video Social Networking Site

TECH WEB NEWS -- May 16 -- AOL quietly rolled out a video social networking community on Monday; AOL UnCut. No one under 18 years of age can use the service. AOL will offer mobile device uploads to the site from with help from VideoEgg's video publishing technology. FULL ARTICLE @ SMALL BUSINESS PIPELINE

Spark Relaunches BlackSinglesConnection as BlackSingles

PR NEWSWIRE -- May 16 -- The new BlackSingles launches with over 250,000 active members and enhanced searching capabilities. Spark Networks operates ~25 online personals communities focused on religious, ethnic or special interest groups - JDate, AmericanSingles, Relationships, PrimeSingles. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Top 15 Social Networking Sites

COURIER POST ONLINE -- May 16 -- 1. MySpace 75.6% market share, 2. TheFaceBook 8.3%, 3. Xanga 7.3%, 4. MSN Spaces 1.8%, 5. Yahoo! 360 1.4%, 6. hi5 1.4%, 7. Tagged 1.3%, 8. Sconex 1.1%, 9. Bebo 0.7%, 10. Friendster 0.6%, 11. TagWorld 0.2%, 12. CrushSpot 0.2%, 13. Bolt 0.1%, 14. XuQa 0.1%, 15. VidLife 0.1%. FULL ARTICLE @ COURIER POST ONLINE

MyYearbook Growing Fast

ASBURY PARK PRESS -- May 16 -- MyYearbook was launched in 2005 by a brother and sister, ages 17 and 16. Within a week of their start date ~200 people from their school joined. They are adding ~4,000 members a day from all over the world and have 700,000+ users. In February, comScore Media Metrix reported myYearbook was growing ~43% a month in the 12-24 age group. MyYearbook's membership drive consists of word-of-mouth marketing and an affiliate program that allows users to refer new members for $1 for each registrant referred. In April an investor purchased a 10% stake for $1.5 million. FULL ARTICLE @ APP.COM

Mark Brooks: Piczo and Hi5 are also strong in the teen market.

MySpace Will Sell Videos

Myspace will start selling episodes of its Fox TV series 24 on MySpace.com starting next week for $1.99 per download. The online video market is expected to reach $1.7 billion in revenue by 2010, according to research firm IDC. FULL ARTICLE @ RED HERRING

Mark Brooks: Youtube is stealing some of Myspace's thunder. Nice move Myspace. 24 is a GREAT show btw! I always watch it on DVD to avoid the pesky ads every 5 mins at the end of each episode.

CollectiveX Serves Organized Groups

BUSINESS WIRE --May 15 -- New service combines secure communications and social networking for organized groups such as alumni associations and non-profits. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO.COM

Mark Brooks: Cool, I wondered when a social network would spring up to serve groups more effectively. I've been using www.goclubexe.com for a few years now for my club www.ace-club.com.

MySpace's Meteoric Growth Might be its Own Undoing

STAR TELEGRAM -- May 14 -- "It got too fake," 18 year old Summer Stoker said. "You have all these people saying they want to be your friend. It's just a waste of time." MySpace is the third most-visited Web site in the country after Yahoo and Google, according to Alexa. Some say MySpace's fast growth is destroying the site's sense of community, and a host of competitors hope to take advantage of the possible fallout. Why did Friendster fizzle? Friendster was slow to respond to what users wanted, such as the ability to incorporate media into their profile. Friendzy.com was an all-purpose social-networking site that attracted more than 50,000 members in six months. "We poured $600,000 into Friendzy without having a completed business plan," Chang said. "I was a little naive." Of the many networks still striving for a future, three appear to have arisen as potentially sustainable businesses. MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ STAR TELEGRAM

Mark Brooks: ...and Bebo, and hi5, and Piczo.  Ryze is doing ok.

Social Sites Mass Appeal

MEDIAWEEK -- May 12 -- The top 10 social-networking sites collectively grew 47% year over year, reaching 68.8 million users in April 2006, which represents 45% of all Web users, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA WEEK

Myspace Enters Public IM Fray

IM PLANET.COM -- May 11 -- Myspace announced it's MyspaceIM for Myspace members. The network is closed to users on other public IM networks. FULL ARTICLE @ IMP.COM

MySpace.com is Just so Last Year

WICHITA EAGLE -- May 11 -- FriendsOrEnemies is for pop-punk music lovers. FoE focuses on content generated by a few VIP members who keep journals on the site and has ~40,000 users. TagWorld gives users one gigabyte of storage and allows user-generated tags. A one-stop shop for all the online services people use; blogs, photos, video hosting...nearly 1.5 million users.  Buzznet has ~200,000 users. FULL ARTICLE @ WICHITA EAGLE

Mark Brooks: Social networks are sticky by design, but social networking users are fickle like nightclub revellers.

Social Networking Growth

PR NEWSWIRE -- May 11 -- Nielsen//NetRatings, announced that April's top 10 social networking sites collectively grew 47% year over year, increasing to 68.8 million uniques in April 2006, reaching 45% of active Web users. MySpace had 38.4 million uniques and 367% growth. Blogger, #2, had 18.5 million uniques, growing 80%, followed by Classmates with 12.9 million and 10% growth. Newcomer YouTube and the more established MSN Groups rounded out the top five, with 12.5 million and 10.6 million uniques. Top 10 advertisersfor April 2006 were; Vonage, GUS, United Online, Netflix, LowerMyBills, Verizon, Apollo Group, NexTag, E*Trade and Scottrade. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Congress Targets Social Network Sites

NEWS.COM -- May 11 -- A proposed federal law (Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA) would effectively require most schools and libraries to render Myspace and Facebook inaccessible to minors. "When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned," Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Reublican. Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is co-sponsoring the measure. FULL ARTICLE @ NEWS.COM

Mark Brooks: The mind will always drift to what is most interesting. Kids minds will always drift to Myspace/Facebook. However, this is meddlesome legislation...isn't it? Your comments please...