MySpace Ruled U.S. Social Nets In 2007

ALTHOUGH FACEBOOK GARNERED THE LION'S share of media attention, News Corp.'s MySpace ruled the U.S. social networking space in terms of sheer volume in 2007, according to new stats from Hitwise.

MySpace received more than three-quarters of all the social networking traffic in the U.S. last year, managing to stay atop the heap of 53 social media sites despite pressures from several state Attorneys General for possibly harboring sex offenders, and the Facebook juggernaut. Not surprisingly, Facebook took the number two spot--snagging nearly 13% of all social net traffic, followed by Bebo with about 1%.

But in December 2007, traffic to MySpace was actually down by 8% from the previous year. In contrast, traffic to Facebook was up by some 51%, Disney's Club Penguin climbed by 48%, and MyYearbook shot up by more than 400% year-over-year. Traffic to all of the social nets measured was up by 4%.

Facebook took the lead in terms of increased user engagement, as members spent an average of about 20 minutes on the site in December--up 100% from the previous year. Engagement on MySpace remained relatively flat at about 30 minutes, but Bebo took a slight lead with an average time of 30:30 minutes, a gain of 4%. BlackPlanet also scored high engagement marks, with users spending an average of 25 minutes on the site--a 13% lift from 2006.

Link to MediaPost Article

MySpace May Still Dominate in the U.S., But (Surprise!) Facebook is Catching Up Fast Worldwide

Here’s a little anti-spin on the Hitwise numbers that just came out showing that MySpace still rules social networking in the U.S. (See Duncan’s earlier post). Hitwise says that MySpace commands a 72 percent market share of visits to the top ten social networking sites, while Facebook has only gained a 16 percent market share. I find the way Hitwise discloses its data to be confusing—72 percent of what exactly? Why don’t they just tell us how many people they think visited the site? We can do our own math.

Any way you slice it, the numbers are surprising. Isn’t Facebook supposed to be on a rocket ride? So I decided to look at what comScore has to say on the matter of MySpace versus Facebook (not that they are perfect, but at least they give an actual estimate of how many people they think visited a particular site).

The numbers on comScore corroborate that Facebook is still lagging MySpace, but not by as much as Hitwise would have you think. In December, comScore reports that MySpace had 69 million unique visitors compared to 35 million for Facebook. That would give Facebook about half the market share of MySpace, not one fifth.

Maybe by”visits,” Hitwise means page views. Again, the comScore numbers confirm that MySpace is trouncing Facebook in the U.S. with 38 billion page views in December 2007, versus 13 billion for Facebook. Even so, that gives Facebook a third as much “market share” as MySpace. Of course, Hitwise data and comScore data are apples and oranges because they’ve been collected using different methods and different sources. I offer this more as a gut check.

Regardless of what data better reflects who is winning the social-networking race in the U.S., the real story is happening elsewhere. A peak at the global comScore numbers (as of November 2007) produces this doozy: Facebook has nearly caught up to MySpace with 93 million unique visitors worldwide versus MySpace’s 105 million. And in minutes spent on the site, it has actually surpassed MySpace with 21 billion minutes for Facebook versus 17 billion minutes for MySpace. (Although, it is still lagging in page views, 42 billion to 48 billion). The Web is a global game, and MySpace might be about to lose it.

Link to TechCrunch Article

Facebook Revamps Beacon Program Amid Protests

CONFRONTED WITH GROWING RESISTANCE TO its new ad program, Facebook late Thursday said it would no longer publish information about users' online purchases without their explicit consent.

The move comes nine days after activist organization MoveOn.org launched a protest group on Facebook demanding that the company revamp its three-week-old Beacon program, which tells members about their friends' purchases on other sites. MoveOn urged that Facebook not share such information without first obtaining users' affirmative agreement. By Thursday, more than 50,000 members had joined the MoveOn group, dubbed "Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy!"

Facebook capitulated to the protesters late Thursday, announcing that it would require users' opt-in consent to the Beacon program.

The social networking site said it will no longer post any information about people's shopping activity "without users proactively consenting." "We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice," the company said in a statement.

MoveOn spokesman Adam Green called Facebook's decision "a huge step in the right direction."

Previously, Facebook notified members about the Beacon program at the point-of-purchase and on the Facebook site, and allowed people to opt-out on either of those occasions. But if users didn't see those notices, or ignored them, the company shared information about their purchases by default.

It wasn't just users who had privacy concerns about that technique. Some of Facebook's advertisers also were retreating.

One major e-commerce player, Overstock.com, told OnlineMediaDaily it suspended the Beacon program on Nov. 21--the same day The Associated Press reported that one Facebook member was dismayed to learn that her boyfriend had been notified about a gift she purchased for him at Overstock.com. That was also the day influential Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li blogged about being "blindsided" when Facebook notified her friends that she had purchased a coffee table on Overstock.

The company said it wouldn't reinstate the Beacon program unless Facebook made changes to guarantee that users' information isn't shared without their explicit consent. "Our primary requirement is that the program allows customers to 'opt-in' as opposed to requiring them to 'opt-out' of participating," an Overstock spokesman said.

Travelocity, although touted by Facebook as a launch advertiser, was troubled enough by the program that it had not started using it as of Thursday.

"We have examined the process to make sure that Facebook members using Travelocity are given opportunities to control whether information about their shopping on our site is published in their Facebook profile," a company spokesman said. "Ahead of our launch, we are watching the program closely to make sure this process is working properly."

This cautious statement marked a notable shift from three weeks ago, when the company's chief marketing officer Jeff Glueck boasted about the program. "Using Beacon, Travelocity users can now easily choose to spread the news of their latest vacation plans on Facebook as a complement to their activities on the Travelocity website," he said in a statement when the program launched.

Link to MediaPost Article

Facebook May Revamp Beacon

After pressure from MoveOn and members, the social network may change a policy on sharing info on users' Web buying and activities

In the wake of mounting criticism, Facebook executives are discussing changes to a controversial advertising tool that publicizes users' Web activities outside of the popular social network. Alterations to the recently introduced Beacon system could be announced as early as Nov. 29, BusinessWeek.com has learned.

Executives of the three-year-old company were in deep talks over proposed changes late into the afternoon on Nov. 28, according to a person familiar with the matter. At issue is the Beacon program, which alerts members' Facebook "friends" to purchases and other activities on third-party Web sites. A spokesperson for the company declined to discuss changes, reiterating an earlier statement: "Facebook is listening to feedback from its users and committed to evolving Beacon."

Too much disclosure

Critics say Beacon constitutes an invasion of privacy. They've clamored for the reversal of a feature that requires users to opt out of inclusion each time Facebook wants to send information and demanded that Facebook switch to an opt-in policy. A move to scale back Beacon may appease at least some of the more than 40,000 people who have signed a petition, begun Nov. 20 by public policy group MoveOn.org, that urged Facebook to turn off the system unless users explicitly say they want to share their actions. "It should have been an opt-in program to start out with," says Matt Flaschen, a Georgia Tech sophomore and Facebook member who signed MoveOn's petition. "If I want to go to a movie, why does everyone on my Facebook need to know about that?"

Even as Facebook mollifies disgruntled users, it risks rankling some of the partners that signed on in hopes of benefiting as members broadcast their purchases—say, from Blockbuster (BBI) or eBay (EBAY)—to a circle of friends. As part of the Beacon arrangement, partners pay for what Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has called "trusted referrals." The idea is that Facebook users will be more apt to patronize the sites and stores their friends are using. On Nov. 6, when he announced the system, Zuckerberg called trusted referrals the "holy grail" of advertising (BusinessWeek.com, 11/07/07).

"I Feel Duped"

Many users considered it more of an unholy alliance. One member complained of a spoiled Christmas after Facebook broadcast the person's purchases on Overstock.com (OSTK), a partner site. Other users said they were creeped out after friends learned of actions they never realized were forwarded to their Facebook lists.

Several people complained they weren't given the option not to share information publicly, or that pop-up notices on partner sites were too subtle to notice. Kim Garvey, a 21-year-old junior at Chicago's DePaul University, says she found out about Beacon after friends were alerted to a restaurant review she posted on Yelp. "I didn't see the little thing that popped up, and I didn't mean to tell everyone," Garvey says."For me, that was sort of uncomfortable." She adds that she was surprised Facebook "is willing to invade people's privacy."

On Nov. 27, Facebook tweaked its system to ensure that users were clearly notified, both on Facebook and on partner sites, that news of an off-Facebook activity would be sent to friends, unless the member explicitly declined to send that information. The change did little, however, to appease upset users, many of whom don't want Facebook to share information on their Web activity for advertising purposes—even if it's shared with people they’ve identified as friends. "I feel duped," says Frank Kruller, a Facebook member for seven months. "If I wanted to share something with my friends I'm pretty sure I could tell them myself."

Threatened mutiny

Any move that weakens Beacon's appeal to advertisers leaves Facebook under pressure to find other ways to lure marketers and justify the lofty $15 billion valuation bestowed by Microsoft (MSFT) in October, when it purchased a 5% stake for $240 million (BusinessWeek.com, 10/25/07). Users of social networks are typically less responsive to standard ad formats, such as the posterlike banner ads commonly seen on the Web, than to newer, more interactive or personalized advertisements. Some marketers say that when they place banner ads on Facebook, the so-called click-through rate, a measure of user responsiveness, is one-fifth the rate for the larger Web.

But many Facebook users insist that they, not marketers, should set the terms of how, and how much of, their information is shared for advertising purposes. Some threatened to move to other social networks or start their own blogs if Facebook takes that decision out of their hands. "I will set up my own blog," says Flaschen. "It is a little less convenient, but if [Facebook] can't understand the privacy implications of what they are doing then it's not worth it."

Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn, hopes other social networks that have their own Facebook-like feeds about users' actions—namely, News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace—take heed of such warnings. "We hope that this is opening a lot of people's eyes to the very real privacy concerns on the Internet," says Green. "The privacy interests of Internet users should get put before the wish list of corporate advertisers."

Link to BusinessWeek Article

Smiles, Everyone

Online hookup site MySpace is beginning to look a lot less like Facebook and a lot more like MTV.

The show writes itself. four cute girls fresh out of college move into an apartment in Los Angeles. In one episode a leggy brunette, Peyton, walks in on Violet while she's in her lacy underwear. Another time Violet rubs on lotion and takes a bubble bath. Later in the season Peyton makes out with a guy on the couch in front of her friends.

This is Roommates, a new faux reality show that is getting heavy promotion on MySpace. It has the distinction of being the first series conceived by, and exclusively for, the social networking Web site. Episodes are only three minutes. Plot is mostly nonexistent, and it seems to be a ripoff of MTV's The Hills, another show about young women living a reality-nonreality conundrum in L.A.

MySpace says Roommates is a hit, but that depends how you define "is" and "hit." The series' 19 shows have garnered a combined 3.7 million views, about half of what Katie Couric gets in one night. A typical YouTube hit gets 1 million views.

Hit or not, Roommates is making some waves for MySpace, owned by News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) MySpace is still the biggest in the business, with 72 million unique visitors in the U.S. in October, according to ComScore (nasdaq: SCOR - news - people ). Its home page is one of the most valuable on the Web, with 130 million page views each day, says MySpace. MySpace has been a great investment for Rupert Murdoch since his News Corp. swooped in with a $650 million deal for Intermix, the former parent of MySpace. This year MySpace is expected to earn News Corp. $200 million to $300 million before interest and taxes on $800 million in revenue.

But MySpace's user growth is slowing, those who go there are spending less time per visit, and rival networks such as Facebook are rising fast. And try as MySpace might to dominate Internet video, YouTube has pretty much walked off with the business (see chart).

"Everyone thinks YouTube is taking over TV on the Internet, but we had 51 million unique streamers [in June]," says MySpace Chief Christopher DeWolfe. But by September, that figure fell to 38 million. With growth slowing, DeWolfe is having to get creative--and that means going Hollywood and making his own content. "We have done dozens of new deals with Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ), Fox, NBC, the NBA and the NHL, and now we have our own content," he says. He sees Internet video becoming one of MySpace's primary revenue streams.

Social networks were supposed to be anti-Big Media, created by and for other members. And while most of what's on MySpace continues to be of the babies-eating-dog-food genre, it turns out that this isn't worth much to advertisers, nor are the couple hundred million member-profile pages plastered with photos of people showing off their abs. "Brands like P&G do not want to advertise on Web pages that have 14-year-old girls kissing each other," says Jared Pobre of Ideal Exposure, an ad firm in Irvine, Calif.

But show a commercial before or during a professionally produced video and you can bring in as much as $60 per thousand visitors in ad revenue. MySpace has aired a teen drama series from Michael Eisner's Web production company, edited-down versions of retro TV shows such as Starsky & Hutch and in November debuted Quarterlife, a prime-time-quality drama series.

YouTube and Facebook have avoided spending money on original content and instead stick to letting their users and other producers make stuff for them. Previous attempts by Internet companies to become production houses--even when run by former TV executives--have failed. In early 2005 Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) Media Group announced big plans to produce its own shows for the Web, to be spearheaded by former ABC Entertainment Television Group chairman Lloyd Braun. But Braun left under a cloud in late 2006, and Yahoo now produces almost no original content.

MySpace TV General Manager Jeffrey Berman insists he will not suffer the same fate: His bets are small, and he always tries to line up a sponsor first. "We're not going to do this if it means throwing millions of dollars down a hole," he says.

Online shows like Roommates can be made for $3,000. Per minute, that comes to 1% to 2% of what producers spend making prime-time shows for broadcast networks. MySpace is financing the 45 episodes, which are being made by Iron Sink Media, a producer in L.A. The show was profitable before the cameras rolled, thanks to an estimated $500,000 sponsorship from Ford. In one episode Sigourney buys a new car. Guess which brand? Viewers like girls more than ads. The episode in which Sigourney test-drives her Ford Focus has had 47,000 views so far. "The Exhibitionist," which features a half-naked girl, has had a million plays.

A year ago MySpace was unsure how to make money on its vault of videos. That changed in April when MySpace aired Prom Queen, an 80-episode (each a minute and a half) teen drama by Michael Eisner's new-media studio, Vuguru. The episodes, which aired on multiple sites, brought in an average 200,000 views apiece. Eisner's team sold product placements, proving that there was a way to make money advertising in online videos. A spinoff aired this summer.

MySpace TV became an official division in June under Berman, a former public defender from the D.C. suburbs. He has hired a handful of people from the TV industry, including folks from CNN, HBO and Scott Rudin Productions. They've already signed content deals with some veteran producers. MySpace distributes Sony's Minisode Network, which offers pared-down versions of old shows like Fantasy Island and What's Happening!! Honda (nyse: HMC - news - people ) is the sponsor.

Quarterlife is a show about coming of age in the blog era, by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the duo that created TV classics Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. Herskovitz and Zwick, who originally conceived the show for prime-time TV, put up at least $50,000 to shoot each eight-minute episode. MySpace gets to run it exclusively for the first 24 hours. Then it gets syndicated to quarterlife.com and a week later to multiple sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Imeem.

Berman would rather keep the content on his site and grab more of the ad revenue. In MySpace's Artist on Artist, celebrity actors, musicians and filmmakers interview one another, coincidentally around the time they release a new record or movie, as was the case when The Darjeeling Limited director Wes Anderson and actor Owen Wilson did the show. The program, like many others, was conceived by MySpace's marketing department and leaves a subtle "I think I've just been advertised to" aftertaste.

MySpace has also put on 100 free concerts, called Secret Shows. Dates and locations are shared only with "friends" of Secret Shows. Headlining bands have included the Killers and Gnarls Barkley. Secret Shows spawned a similar program for comedians called Secret Stand-Up. MySpace also streams live concerts on its site and has its own record label.

Social networking sites have worries other media companies do not, like trying to avoid their association in the public's mind with perverts. In September MySpace arranged for starlet Amanda Bynes to appear at a free, MySpace-hosted screening of her new film, Sydney White. MySpace invited members who had "friended" MySpace's Black Curtain Screenings online. Bynes, 21, stood in front of the theater against a MySpace banner and fielded questions from the audience, which was filled with young girls and some older men who sat in the rear. One girl asked Bynes, who has MySpace pages for her movie and clothing line, if she also had a personal MySpace page. "No," said Bynes. "Why not?" asked the girl. "My parents won't let me. For security reasons. I don't want to get stalked." MySpace's marketers groaned.

MySpace cofounder Thomas Anderson is dismissive of the utilitarian approach taken by its faster-growing rival Facebook, which focuses on the software and leaves content creation to thousands of developers who've made popular games and other diversions that keep people coming back. "They want to be an operating system. We want to be fun and cool and relevant to culture," he says. Anderson is considering a number of new ventures, including offering an online invite service and helping MySpacers share reviews of restaurants and clubs.

It's too early to rule on MySpace's ability to dominate popular culture. Meanwhile, another episode of Roommates tapes at a nondescript house in L.A.'s Studio City, and Jeffrey Berman and his staff of mostly oh-so-cool kids in their 20s sit around a table in Beverly Hills, discussing a dozen ideas, including a dating show, a hidden camera show and a spoof on cop dramas.

Link to Forbes Article

Facebook's hopes to enter the tangled web of China gain momentum

Facebook appears to have decided on acquisition as its preferred method of entering the booming Chinese market, after months of speculation about how the social networking website would tap the country’s rapid growth and avoid the pitfalls that have slowed earlier overseas venturers.

Facebook is reported to have offered $85 million (£41 million) to buy Zhanzuo.com, its largest Chinese counterpart, which has an estimated seven million active users and a popular base among students.

It would give Facebook a ready-made entry point to the largest internet market outside the United States.

A spokeswoman told The Times that Jack Zhang, Zhanzuo’s chief executive, and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, were acquainted but this did not mean that they intended to reach a deal – for the moment.

She added, however, that “there could be more information by the end of the month”.

Facebook already boasts more than 100,000 users of its English-language network in China and rumours of its local-language entry were fuelled with the company’s recent registration in China of the domain facebook.cn.

Entering the Chinese market carries risks for foreign companies.

The publicity that surrounded Yahoo!’s decision to comply with Chinese police demands to provide details of the e-mails of Shi Tao, a journalist later sentenced to ten years in jail on charges of leaking state secrets, has served as a warning to outside players.

Moreover, censorship and state monitoring of the internet provide a potential quagmire for would-be internet entrants.

Any attempt to search for the three T’s of Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square sets off alarm bells among China’s vigilant cyberspace police, likewise an attempt to find reference to the banned Falun Gong quasi-religious movement.

Most servers have barriers in place that tell a user to try another term in these cases.

Rebecca Mackinnon, an expert in new media at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, said that foreign firms may prefer to use a local partner who is more aware of where the line is drawn and how to avoid crossing it.

Ms MacKinnon said: “If the authorities see people organising a group with political aims not consistent with the Communist Party, then they will shut it down.

"The nightmare would be if someone organised a Falun Gong cell on their watch and the officials come in and close down your business.”

Tangos Chan, an internet analyst, thought that the entry of Facebook was only a question of time, but said: “There has been no successful foreign acquisition in China.”

It was too early, he added, to tell if the April launch of a Chinese-language Myspace had been a success.

Link to Times UK Article

Facebook, LinkedIn Biggest Social Network Movers

The latest social networking numbers don't jive with comScore's findings or the companies' own internal data, but nevertheless, October growth figures from Nielsen Online reaffirm what other traffic firms know: Facebook continues to outpace News Corp.'s MySpace in the growth department. Year-over-year, Facebook's October traffic surged 125 percent, from 8.6 to 19.5 million.

But that's still light-years away from MySpace's monster numbers: 58.8 million users for the month, up from 49.5 million a year earlier, representing 19 percent growth. Facebook added nearly 11 million users in October, only slightly more than MySpace, which added 9.3 million. You decide what's more important, a faster rate of growth or the actual numbers.

Other winners and losers on Nielsen's growth chart were Classmates.com, the sector's former No. 2, which actually lost 2 percent of its users over the last year, with 13.3 million, MSN's Windows Live Spaces, which added 2.4 million users to reach 10.3 million, AOL Hometown, which lost 1.4 million users, at 7.9 million, and finally, LinkedIn--surprisingly the sector's biggest mover--up a whopping 189 percent to 4.9 million. Last year at this time, the social network for professionals recorded just 1.7 million unique users. Disney's Club Penguin also receives an honorable mention for its 157 percent growth, which saw it move from 1.5 million to 3.9 million monthly uniques.

Read the whole story...

Link to MediaPost Article

Linked-In: Fastest-Growing Social Network

AMONG TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS, LINKED-IN was the fastest-growing over the last year, according to October ratings released Wednesday by Nielsen Online.

The site geared toward professional users drew 4.9 million visitors last month, up from 1.7 million a year ago.

Other fast-growing social networks included kiddie site Club Penguin, up 157% to 3.8 million users, and Facebook, more than doubling its audience to 19.5 million in the last year. MySpace remained the top social network with 58.8 million users, up 19% from 2006.

Blogger was the top blog-hosting service in October with 34 million users, followed by WordPress.com (11.4 million) and Six Apart (10.6 million.

Link to MediaPost Article

Google, Yahoo Plan Social Home Pages

Both Google and Yahoo aim to turn their email services into social networks. Both plan to introduce social features that keep people using their applications for longer. The idea is to turn iGoogle and MyYahoo into a more central hub that serves the triple purpose of being a personalized home page, an email inbox and a social networking profile.

So you can ignore Orkut, OpenSocial, Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360-baby steps in a broader plan-although these will one day be integrated with the new socialized home pages. Google was shorter on details about its plan, but Joe Kraus, the executive who runs the OpenSocial alliance, admits there are opportunities with iGoogle, which syncs with Gmail and Google Talk.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is calls its social home page drive "Inbox 2.0." Yahoo Mail will add features like more prominently displaying messages from those whom you communicate with more. It also plans to add personal profile pages, links to other profile pages (not necessarily Yahoo-based), a news feed-like feature called "vitality," birthday lists, etc. Inbox 2.0 will compile data from all Yahoo services-from Yahoo Music to Yahoo Shopping-to create user profiles.

Read the whole story...

Link to MediaPost Article

Bebo Strikes Revolutionary Content Deals

Bebo on Tuesday became the first social network to invite major media companies to make their content available to its 20 million-strong user base. The site's users can now legally post music and video files to their profile pages. The initiative, called Open, has an impressive list of launch partners, too: Viacom's MTV, CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, Yahoo Inc., Sony Pictures Entertainment Co.'s Crackle and JibJab Media Inc.

Bebo is the No. 3 social network on the Web, but its strategy of connecting users through entertainment--which now includes both original programming and traditional media content--encroaches more on the territory of No. 1 ranked MySpace than No. 2 ranked Facebook. MySpace distributes content from News Corp.'s own Fox Studios in addition to hosting Hulu.com. It also produces original content.

With Open, Bebo's partners will keep ad revenue gleaned from their own material; the social network benefits by keeping users at its site for longer. According to comScore, MySpace drew 107 million worldwide visitors in September, followed by Facebook with 73.5 million and Bebo with 19.7 million.

Read the whole story...

Link to MediaPost Article

The Old College Try: Who Will Give Students Their Facebook Back?

While Alice Mathias may have overplayed the frivolous uses of Facebook for college students in her article called The Fakebook Generation published in the Grey Lady a few weeks ago, she was certainly correct in saying that Facebook lost a certain je ne sais quoi for students when it opened up to the real world last fall.

So instead of trying to take this $15 billion animal head on, as one $222 billion beast is attempting to do, startups might be wise to try capturing the niche that Facebook has intentionally left behind. Of course, there are a handful of reasons to think there will never be another social network that catches on so quickly and so thoroughly with college students. Namely, Facebook itself, which still holds the attention of the vast majority of college students. Personally, I think any company that tries to create a social network for college students faces a very steep uphill battle. But you can’t blame them for trying.

Let’s say you did want to capitalize on students’ (growing?) discontent with the “mature” Facebook; what strategy would you follow? You’d probably want to take a few pages out of Facebook’s own, er, book by restricting membership to users with .edu email addresses, gradually opening up to elite schools, and keeping things stupidly simple. But you’d also have to provide something particularly unique, useful, or entertaining that tempts mainstream Facebook users to jump ship.

We’ve taken a look at the websites out there claiming that they are the next “it” social network for college students. And we’ve got to say: overall, we’re not terribly impressed. Only one stands out - a website called College Tonight - and this because of its novel attempt to bring social networking back into the real world. College Tonight is well-designed and has some features you won’t find in other social networks, such as an area for lost and found items at your school and a place to “drunk dial” with messages you can take back in the morning (if you’re up and out of bed in time). The company behind this site, which launches Monday, also has a set of undisclosed features in the works that tempt us into believing that they might actually appeal enough to college students to survive. We’ll have to write more about them later once we’re more informed.

The other decent site among the bunch is Carmun, a site that encourages students to help each other study. Students post questions they have about essays and tests the are studying for, and others hypothetically help them find the answers and information they need. While the site is attractive enough, I don’t see many students helping other students with the homework no one wants to do.

The rest of them are either really badly designed, ghost towns, gimmicks, or abandoned by their owners (plus, most don’t require .edu addresses to register so what’s the point?). Let’s take a look:

ConnectU - This site was created by the very same Harvard students currently in court with Facebook over whether or not Mark Zuckerberg stole their code. It’s poorly designed, not very functional, and doesn’t look like it’s been updated significantly for a long time.

CollegeHotList - An NYU project that has not yet launched…and probably will never launch (I’ve seen talk on the internet about it that dates back to early 2006).

PlayboyU - A social network built on Ning but branded by Playboy that has only 5,000-some members after launching on August 22. The whole thing feels like a gimmick, and many of the profiles appear to be fake (there’s no way that many attractive people signed up on their own). There’s very little value added by its association with Playboy.

CampusMatch - A romantically-themed college social network that dates back quite a few years and is almost certainly abandoned. It’s too bad too, because a college network with a focus on love/hooking up has a lot of potential.

CampusGrind - This one has a cluttered design and serves more as an information center for teens, with its advice columns, than a true social network.

CampusBug - A site overwhelmed by its sponsorships and overloaded with educational tools like a bibliography creator and flashcards.

CampusCentral - It’s not a good sign when the copyright at the bottom of your pages says 2005. This one’s a ghost town, and tailored to Canadian students, too.

CrushTV - This one’s filled mostly with video and photographic content provided by the site itself. While having videos of babes in bikinis will draw some eyeballs, don’t expect many college students to stay too long.

LifeAtCollege - Awful, awful design.

College.com - Packed with too many extraneous features like sections for news, academics, and greek life. Plus, who wants to rate their professors in their social network?

Uspot - Launched in early 2006…now says “We’ll be back shortly…” on homepage. Not good.

So there you have it. Now who’s going to step up to the plate and give college students an attractive alternative to Facebook? As you can see, you won’t have much competition aside from maybe College Tonight. So get on it, my collegiate friends.

Link to TechCrunch Article

FriendFeed To Aggregate Social Network Data Into A Single Feed

There has been an absolute flood of tech news this morning. Lost somewhere in the shuffle is the private beta launch of a new startup, founded by four ex-Googlers, called FriendFeed. And while it may not get a lot of attention today, keep an eye on them. I have a feeling it will be a very popular service.

It’s a simple product that, like a ton of sleepy competitors (see Spokeo, ProfileLinker, MyLifeBrand and the more recent Fuser) is trying to help people organize user data stored across a myriad of social networks.

But unlike those competitors, FriendFeed’s simple approach may be the way to win. Instead of layering another social network on top of all of the ones you already belong to, FriendFeed is taking the year old Facebook News Feed idea, which may be the single most important feature contributing to the success of Facebook Platform, and opening it up to all social networks.

When you sign up for FriendFeed, you tell it the social networks you belong to, widely defined (Facebook, Last.fm, Flickr, Netflix, Digg, etc.). It tracks what you are doing on those networks, aggregates it all and provides you and your friends with a personalized feed of the data.

That feed can be accessed on the FriendFeed site, or embedded via a widget into another website.

FriendFeed will be a social network itself, of course. But it may also allow niche social networks, focusing on just one thing like movies or music, to thrive while simultaneously allowing users to have a single feed to aggregate all that they are up to. That means Facebook and the other giants don’t have to be everything to everyone (or at least that people don’t have to use it that way).

The company was founded by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh. No word on funding, but the four were acting as entrepreneurs in residence at Benchmark Capital while creating the company.

Link to TechCrunch Article

Google Buys Social Mobile Provider Zingku

IN ANOTHER MOBILE MOVE, GOOGLE late last week acquired assets and technology from social mobile service provider Zingku. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zingku's services are free and, until now, have been offered through a private beta, which allows users to share cell phone photos with friends and family through texting, access online blog posts sent to their cell phones as text messages, and poll friends via text message.

Link to MediaPost Article

Publicis' Levy Blasts Facebook Deal, Warns Ad Dollars Don't Support Online Investments

CALLING MICROSOFT'S $240 MILLION INVESTMENT in Facebook "insane," and asserting that that there is not enough advertising budgets to support the rapid expansion of online advertising services, Publicis Chairman-CEO Maurice Levy warned that the industry was approaching the kind of hyper inflated economics that led to the so-called dot-com crash in 2000-01. In an address at this weekend's Monaco Media Forum Levy cautioned that the rapid run-up in the valuation of ad-supported online services may turn out to be fool's gold. "Everyone is seeing advertising as the manna. Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone," Levy asserted, according to a report in this morning's edition of the Financial Times. "It's exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought that because he had a website he'd get the valuation. Now everyone building a Web 2.0 operation believes he will receive the advertising."

Levy is a co-chair of the 2007 forum, which marks the second year of the international advertising summit organized by Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Levy was especially critical of the social networking craze and of the valuation generated by Microsoft's acquisition of 1% of Facebook, which he termed "unbalanced" relative to the potential advertising value of the social media marketplace.

He said the "bloom" was off the "Myspace rose," and that the exuberance driving investments in online social networks has yet to be proven by practical advertising models.

Link to MediaPost Article

Look Out, YouTube: Here Comes Bebo

CBS, MTV Set Up Channels on Social Net -- and Keep All the Resulting Ad Revenue

By Emma Hall

Published: November 13, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Bebo today unveiled its new vision for social networking -- and it looks a lot like an aggregated media destination. The venture, coined Open Media, is a platform of channels offering free content from major broadcasters as well as emerging media companies.

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Open Media was launched at simultaneous press conferences in New York and London. The extravagant London affair was attended by a couple hundred journalists and media watchers and featured live performances from jazz keyboard performer Jamie Cullum and up-and-coming singer-guitarist Remi Nicole.

Control the environment
Turner, CBS, MTV, BBC, Sky and a host of other broadcasters are creating individual channels using their own media players, which means they can retain control of the environment, the content and of their brands. Broadcasters will keep 100% of the revenues from advertising shown on their channels.

"This is about making Bebo more interesting and engaging and about the self-expression of our users," Joanna Shields, president of Bebo, said at the London launch.

The move makes Bebo more of an entertainment portal and differentiates it from rivals such as Facebook, which is viewed mainly as a communication forum. While MySpace is also more entertainment centric, it is known mostly for its strong music community. (Bebo has not yet signed up any record labels to Open Media, but Ms. Shields said bulking up the site's music offering is a matter of "when, not if.")

"The spectrum of social networking is evolving beyond utilities and applications," Ms. Shields said. "Bebo is a 'social media network' where culture and content come together and people use media and entertainment as a form of self-expression."

40 million users
Any media company can create a channel on Open Media through a "self-service" system and create the potential to expose free content to Bebo's 40 million users worldwide. If a company is not set up with its own online ad-sales or player technology, Bebo will step in with its own offering.

Bebo users can add video content to their own "personal video profile." Bebo claims this will create a turbo-driven word-of-mouth element that makes YouTube look like it's just scratching at the surface.

"This is not just another deal," said Casey Harwood, senior VP-digital media at Turner Europe. "Bebo is more of a community or a magazine and we are creating a new channel in its own right that will require its own channel manager."

Richard Cohen, commercial director of Premium TV, lauded the distributed nature of Bebo's entertainment offering. "The idea of trying to drive people to your own site is now defunct," he said. "You have to recognize where people are and want to be and capture their attention there, not dictate where they should be. Plus, this gives us the ability to monetize -- it's a natural extension to syndication."

Asked whether Bebo's audience would feel invaded by big brands and advertisers, Ms. Shields pointed out that you have to hit "explore" on the home page and then enter the "discovery" section to view Open Media content. "It's not forced on you; it's something you can discover at your own leisure," she said.

'We will tread carefully'
Said Turner's Mr. Harwood: "You can't antagonize the user because it's all about retention. We will have frequency capping and make sure that ads are relevant. We will tread carefully and won't change the environment."

One of the Open Media features Bebo touted is a content-discovery mechanism that matches users with people who share the same entertainment tastes. Users who choose a channel, program or band as a favorite can automatically receive online and mobile alerts when any new content is made available.

Bebo is the third-largest social networking site in the U.S. and the largest one in the U.K. It was founded in 2005 and claims its core of 16- to 24-year-olds spends 35.7 million collective hours on the site per month.

Link to AdAge Article

Yahoo To KickStart Social Networking Efforts

Yahoo is reported to be working on a new social networking service that matches college students to employers.

Yahoo Kickstart give users profile pages which are focused on the user’s resume, LinkedIn style, as opposed to a Facebook or MySpace profile. Corporations and wannabe employers are then provided with groups that users can join, but with a catch: to join a group you need an invite via a former student who works at that company. For those users who would prefer something a little more social, University pages are open to all students and include discussion forums, bulletins and events.

According to CNet, Yahoo Kickstart is currently a concept only and may or may not see the light of day, either as a stand alone product or as part of an existing Yahoo property such as 360.

Yahoo’s has been trying to deal itself in to the hot social networking space for some time, but with little or no success. The Yahoo 360 blogging come social networking product never took off and Yahoo failed to acquire Facebook. There were even rumors that Yahoo was trying to buy Bebo in May.

More recently Yahoo was rumored to be working on a social networking product by the name of Yahoo Mosh.

Link to TechCrunch Article

Is Orkut A Social Networking Heavyweight? Comscore Says Yes.

The upcoming Orkut redesign prompted us to check out Orkut’s page view numbers according to Comscore.

U.S. Comscore data shows, as expected, barely a blip from Orkut (Facebook shown for comparison). Orkut has 425 million monthly page views compared to 15 billion for Facebook:

But, wow, take a look at the worldwide Comscore numbers - Facebook doubles to 31 billion monthly page views, but Orkut jumps all the way up to 38 billion (we’ve also included some of the other big social networks for comparison in this chart):

Not that it adds much to the conversation, but Alexa agrees Orkut is bigger than Facebook in terms of page views.

Is this accurate? I don’t know. Compete barely shows Orkut as existing, let alone anywhere near Facebook’s traffic. But Orkut is famously popular in Brazil and other Non-U.S. countries. Perhaps, somehow, it is actually a social networking heavyweight.

Link to TechCrunch Article

Facebook lets users choose to publicize themselves

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook, the social-network site that has enjoyed explosive growth in new members over the past three months, said it plans to let users tell the rest of the world how to find them on the site.

Starting later on Wednesday, Facebook will begin notifying members they have a choice over whether to keep their listings private or to allow Facebook to make their name and profile picture available when outsiders search the site.

The Palo Alto, California-based site has grown to 39 million members, up 62.5 percent from 24 million in late May.

By publicizing member profiles, Facebook could attract a new wave of users. Unlike most sites on the Web, Facebook has previously denied access by search services to information on the site.

But after notifying users over the next 30 days of its plans to open up basic profile listings of its members, Facebook plans to begin allowing sites like Google, Yahoo or others to "crawl," or index, its public member profiles.

Early next month, non-members of Facebook will be able to type the names of friends or acquaintances into a search box on Facebook's home page at http://www.facebook.com to see if they have public profiles on Facebook in order to contact them.

But the move could still prove controversial among some members who prize the privacy protections Facebook offers relative to more open sites. Many members have criticized Facebook policy changes.

A year ago, Facebook weathered a privacy storm among students disturbed by changes that exposed users' postings to their friends. More recent changes that drew in more adults have also provoked concern among the site's core student base that parents and authority figures can monitor their activity.

Link to Reuters Article

Take LonelyGirl, Ship Her to the U.K., Add Brands

Result: 'KateModern,' Online Show That Invites Marketers to Get Into the Drama

"KateModern," an online drama from the makers of "LonelyGirl15," is already a whole cyber-generation ahead of predecessor Bree and friends

The London-based show (the title is a play on the name of one of the city's art galleries, the Tate Modern) fully exploits the commercial opportunities of the internet, unlike Kate's more reserved forerunner, who found fame without sponsors in what now seems like a quaint, old-fashioned, unbranded world.

Microsoft Corp., Disney's Buena Vista International, France Telecom's Orange, plus Procter & Gamble's Gillette, Pantene and Tampax brands were all launch partners for "KateModern."

Backlash against backlash
Hewlett-Packard and Paramount also have signed up as sponsorship partners since the series began July 24 -- all a big contrast from "LonelyGirl15's" Thanksgiving episode, when branded items on the table were turned to face away from the camera because the show's producers thought the audience would disapprove of commercialism. In fact, there was a backlash against the backlash -- people liked Bree and wanted to know what brands she consumed and where she bought her clothes.

Three weeks into the show, Microsoft extended its partnership with Bebo, the U.K. social-networking site that hosts "KateModern" and premieres each episode (it is also shown on YouTube and LG15.com). "KateModern" is now available on MSN in the U.K., and Windows Live instant messaging has been integrated into the Bebo site.

In the first three weeks, "KateModern," a drama about a troubled young art student and her three closest friends, has registered 3 million views and is building an audience quickly -- the first episode was seen by just 23,000 people.

Audiences play an integral role in influencing the plot, and all the characters have their own social-networking profiles where they respond to e-mails and messages. Like "LonelyGirl15," "KateModern" integrates puzzles and clues into the storyline.

"KateModern" is being hailed as a new and sophisticated way for marketers to reach consumers via the internet. The product placement, for example, doesn't take itself too seriously: Disney's new movie, "Hallam Foe," is integrated into the drama's plotline via a cardboard cut-out of the lead character. One of Kate's friends, Gavin, fools around with it in his office, pretending to be Jamie Bell, the film's star.

Product placement opportunity
Mr. Bell also appears in person in an episode where one of Kate's friends runs away from him in a pub. It has been the most-watched episode so far, with 200,000 views. This is particularly significant in a country where product placement is still banned from TV.

Bebo's international-sales director, Mark Charkin, said, "With 'KateModern' we are trying to create a lot of dimensions for brands to relate to consumers. We can use the natural interactivity that is taking place as long as we do it well and remain authentic. It feels like we are defining the future."

For example, Gavin also downloads a "Hallam Foe" skin to his profile on Bebo, talks about the film on his own blog and links to the film's profile page.

Mike Jefferies, operations director at Tribal DDB, London, sees even bigger implications for show's success. "I like the way brand owners have got onboard. ... It's so bite-size and right for the platform," he said.

Link to AdAge Article

RockYou Partners with Like.com to Bring Shopping to Slideshows

Slideshow creator RockYou has partnered with visual shopping search engine Like.com.

The relationship brings comparison shopping to users seeking similar styles to those of their friends'.

The pairing brings a feature to RockYou that allows users to buy clothing similar to what friends are wearing, thanks to a Like "style drawer" that juts out from slideshows, reports TechCrunch.

Like is powered by an image recognition software that can "see" what people are wearing, then give complementing suggestions from a pool of fashion brands it has partnered with.

Though the new feature is limited to the RockYou site, it fetches a US$ 0.80 CPM, which the partners are sharing. TechCrunch says heavy negotiations stand in the way of bringing the style drawer feature to social networks like MySpace.

Link to Marketing VOX Article