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PR-INSIDE -- July 30 -- WorldFriends Networks
launched its API enabling
third party website developers to create their own social Internet
services using their own brand, while leveraging WorldFriends Networks'
critical mass of registered users. In
a separate announcement today, WorldFriends Networks partners with Yahoo Japan. Users can easily register for and
login to WorldFriends by using their already existing Yahoo! Japan IDs. FULL ARTICLE @ PR-INSIDE
TECH CRUNCH -- July 30 -- Since last week, Labmeeting has been open to
anyone with a college e-mail account. Labmeeting is designed as a document management site that allows scientists
and students to easily upload all of those PDFs, organize them, search
them, and share them. Scientists can create groups, and invite other
members of their labs to create a common repository of papers that can
be accessed from anywhere. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
TECH CRUNCH -- July 30 -- Google has acquired Omnisio for an undisclosed amount, but we hear the deal is all cash and is in the $15m range. Omnisio lets users annotate videos, mash various clips up, and synchronize Slideshare presentations to videos. Omnisio users can extract sections of clips they find on the web (currently only those on YouTube, Google Video, or Blip.tv). They can then take those clips and stitch them together to form new, embeddable compilations. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
SNW -- July 30 -- So are these Crunchbase boxes useful to you, or an eyesore? Your
comments please. If you like them, we'll leave them. If you'd rather
we pull them, we will. - Mark Brooks
READ WRITE WEB -- July 30 -- SocialVibe, "an online popularity contest that turns corporate advertising into
money for charity", has raised more than
$100,000 for charitable causes. On the SocialVibe platform, members choose a brand to endorse and
then receive a SocialVibe badge which can be used on various social
networks like Facebook or MySpace as well as on blogs and personal web
sites. Through this sort of social media promotion, you can earn points
which are then transformed into donations to the charity of your
choosing. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
THE NATIONAL -- July 30 -- The
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) will instruct internet
service providers to unblock more than 1,000 websites that have removed
whatever content UAE censors had deemed offensive, according to TRA
officials. While
TRA officials were unable to specify which of the millions of
restricted websites would be unblocked, they include internet forums
and social networking sites whose administrators have decided to remove
the material that TRA officials had considered questionable or
offensive. FULL ARTICLE @ THE NATIONAL
Mark Brooks: Many dating and SNS are blocked in UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc). I considered traveling there recently (my dad has lived and worked in Abu Dhabi for 25+ years) until I realised I'd be blocked from doing my work effectively. Dubai is impressive in many ways, but seriously UNIMPRESSIVE with its overzealous blocking of mainstream SNS and dating sites. C'mon, Dubai, modernize. The Dubai Internet City runs off its own ISP which is far more open for people who work in the area.
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
INC.COM -- July 30 -- Bebo's founders talk about selling their
three-year-old company to AOL for a $850m and what they plan to do
next. After paying off their investors, Birch and his wife and
business partner, Xochi, pocketed more than $500m.
Q: How did the sale come about?
Michael: We'd been approached
by various companies, and we'd always said no. The combination of
AOL's strong presence in the U.S. and its product AIM made us think that AOL and
Bebo could feed off each other.
Q: Many people were surprised that AOL paid $850 million for Bebo. Were you?
Xochi: With our growth in the U.K. and
position in the U.S., we wouldn't have let the business go for less.
Q: Do you worry that some of Bebo's employees might feel that you sold too soon?
Xochi: I believe the employees
were happy with the deal and what they received from it.
Q: Why is Bebo big in Britain but not in the U.S.?
Michael: We entered a very competitive market in the
U.S., whereas only maybe 10% of our target market in the U.K.
was using social networks when we started.
Q: Did you worry about lagging too far behind Facebook and MySpace in the U.S. in terms of traffic?
Xochi: For us to go from
nowhere to where we are now, we think we hit our goals.
Q: This was your sixth business in nine years. Did those earlier businesses inspire Bebo?
Michael:
We definitely came away wiser from one venture to the next. Xochi and I
started doing websites in 1999. Three of them folded, and three were
successful. One of them was a social network Ringo,
which we sold in 2003 for a few million because we were having some
financial problems.
Xochi: It
was really a difficult time for us. We were broke.
Q: What was the biggest mistake you made with Bebo?
Xochi: We
were too slow to hire in the early days.
Q: What's next?
Michael: The current plan is to take a couple
of years off. I want to
contribute to a nonprofit venture in the U.K. and encourage more
entrepreneurship there. And I'll do more angel investing and advising.
Xochi: I'll do more angel investing, too.
Q: Have you bought any toys since the deal closed?
Xochi:
We bought a silver Mercedes-Benz S-Class AMG and a black Land Rover Defender.
FULL ARTICLE @ INC.COM
PRESS RELEASE -- July 30 -- Whrrl, the location-aware social networking and discovery service from Pelago, releaseed of a new Facebook app called "Been Here? Like it or Not?" The game is a fun way for Facebook users to show their friends that they know all of the best places in their town and across the country. "Been Here? Like it or Not?" uses a map interface populated with various categories of local establishments which users then rate. Users can also add the names of the friends who went to these places with them for future reference. FULL ARTICLE @ PR-INSIDE
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MARKET WATCH -- July 30 -- 40billion.com, the friends-and-family funding network for small-business entrepreneurs, officially launched today. The service enables entrepreneurs to raise capital through friends, family and others interested in helping the entrepreneur to succeed. Unlike traditional bank loans and other person-to-person lending services, 40billion.com does not require a credit report or minimum credit score and does not allow loan interest rates as high as 36%. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WATCH
READ WRITE WEB -- July 29 -- Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men. The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were LinkedIn and Perfspot. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
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See all posts on Hi5
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TECH CRUNCH -- July 29 -- myYearbook,
a social network for teenagers that launched in 2005, has raised $13m
in a Series B funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, US
Venture Partners, and First Round Capital. The new round brings the
company's total funding to $18.6m. The
site intends to use the money to further expand its feature set and
reach out to new members. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
READ WRITE WEB -- July 28 -- MySpace's classifieds section has been
re-launched and is now powered by Oodle. This partnership with MySpace
gives Oodle access to a large new
group of users. According to MySpace, its classifieds see about 1m
visits a month and with Oodle, its inventory is going to go up
to 500,000 new listings a day. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
THE CS MONITOR -- July 25 -- MySpace claims 73m users in the U.S. and Facebook has 37m, according to ComScore. "It's
been a huge disconnect between traffic to SNS and
revenue," says Debra Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer. "People are not
particularly interested in clicking on the ads," says Mr. Brooks, who
as editor of socialnetworkingwatch.com
has followed the online industry for a decade. "Advertising needs to
evolve, and social networks are forcing this change. People are really
tired of being assaulted by ads, but they still love to buy." Two social network sites in Asia – qq.com, with 300m users in China, and cyworld.com,
in South Korea – promote the buying and sending of on-screen items that
can decorate a user's own home page or be sent as a gift to a friend.
"It seems to be a distinctly Asian concept," Brooks says. Other ideas
include selling online games or charging for different levels of access
to a site. FULL ARTICLE @ THE CS MONITOR
See all posts on MySpace
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NEWSDAY -- July 29 -- Growth in sales for Verizon Wireless, which added 1.5m customers, was driven by broadband access, e-mail and messaging. Verizon Wireless customers sent or received nearly 70 billion SMS during the period. Service plans for sending text messages also have become less expensive. "The way that people communicate is evolving," an analyst at Jupiter Research said. FULL ARTICLE @ NEWSDAY
See all posts on Verizon
PRESS RELEASE -- July 28 -- SoberSocial.com launched its online
community for recovering alcoholics and addicts. The website features
chat rooms, a nationwide 12-step meeting
directory, blogs, custom profiles for all users, photo sharing, and
more. SoberSocial.com also welcomes the supportive family and friends
of
those in recovery. According to cdc.gov,
15% of Americans have engaged in binge drinking in the last 30 days,
and over 8% have taken illegal drugs in the last month.
Mark Brooks: SoberKiss.com is a dating site for recovering alcoholics and is part of the SuccessfulMatch.com network of relationship sites.
PRESS RELEASE -- July 28 -- GyPSii, the geo-mobility
social networking platform, has entered into a
multi-year worldwide agreement with Samsung. GyPSii will provide technology,
products, worldwide data centre infrastructure, and branding
rights to Samsung for a range of
Samsung products. GyPSii's leading mobility digital lifestyle
application will be bundled on Samsung's Omnia (SGH-i900)
and SGH-i780 as an embedded application. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WATCH
Mark Brooks: This is big news for LBS enabled social networking services.
NEW YORK TIMES -- July 27 -- 23% of online leisure travelers in the U.S. say they would use a good off-line agent if they could find one, according to Forrester Research. Sites like Zicasso, Tripology and Compete4yourseat.com offer free matchmaking services for vacationers in search of traditional agents. On the sites, travelers fill out forms describing the types of trip they're interested in. The sites send those requests to agents who specialize in that region or type of trip. Travelers then receive e-mail alerts with up to three itinerary proposals from competing agents. AdventureLink.com, for example, aims to connect travelers to adventure specialists. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
BELLINGHAM HERALD -- July 26 -- The first Social Media Conference will be Sept. 10-11 at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham. Featured speakers will focus presentations for small- to medium-size businesses about how they can benefit and generate revenue from social media marketing, which includes a broad range of applications, from Facebook and MySpace to other Internet forums, including blogs, music sharing, podcasting and vodcasting. FULL ARTICLE @ BELLINGHAM HERALD
TECH CRUNCH -- July 25 -- Facebook
is currently ranked as the 6th most popular free application on Apple's
App Store, and has been among the store's top applications since the
store's launch on July 10. We've asked MySpace for their corresponding numbers. Off hand, John
Faith, GM and VP of Mobile for MySpace was able to tell us that their
mobile WAP site sees 1.7m uniques a day. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
READ WRITE WEB -- July 25 -- Multiply is saying
that Facebook's new design is "the latest in a series of enhancements
that bear striking resemblance to innovations made by Multiply months
earlier." Multiply goes on to list 5 ways in which Facebook has copied
them in recent times including newsfeeds, blogging and photo printing
services. Multiply also noted that Facebook has filed suit against
German
social network StudiVZ for infringement on Facebook's "look,
feel, features, and services", so it feels it is a case of the pot
calling the kettle black. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
Mark Brooks: Everyone is copying everyone, and racing for an edge.
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