Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Does Twitter Prevent Suicide?

THE DAILY BEAST - Nov 30 - Twitter is best known as a place where teenagers, celebrities, and politicians blast banal chatter to the masses, but the site also is emerging as a potential tool in suicide prevention. In April, the actress Demi Moore was credited with saving a suicidal woman who tweeted her. “Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn’t waste time.” the woman wrote. Moore reposted the message to her own account and added, “Hope you are joking.” People who follow the actress decided to follow up, tracing the post to a woman in San Jose, CA, and alerting the police. This network effect is a new paradigm in suicide prevention, said Anara Guard, deputy director of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. “A cry for help is common, but now the effects are faster, broader, and more difficult to predict.” FULL ARTICLE @ THE DAILY BEAST

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YouTube To Promote Its Full-length TV Shows With Press And Bus Ads

GUARDIAN.CO.UK - Nov 30 - YouTube wants to draw attention to large array of professionally produced full-length programmes that can be viewed legally, with the consent of rights owners on its site for free, with advertising. The number of TV shows available on YouTube has increased markedly since the company signed a landmark deal with Channel 4 last month under which the two parties share revenues from the advertising around the programmes. The section contains ~5,000 videos, of which almost 4,000 are full-length programmes. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

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77% Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 28 - 77% of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 fans, according to an upcoming report by Sysomos, a social media monitoring and analytics firm. The vast bulk of fan pages have between 10 and 1,000 fans.  Only 4% have more than 10,000 fans, and 0.047% have more than a million fans. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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The Top Viral Video Ad Campaign, Updated Nov 24, 2009

Brand: Activision
Campaign: Tony Hawk Ride
Agency: Droga5 / Sharethrough
Source: VisibleMeasures.com

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Online Video Scores Another Big Month

CNET NEWS - Nov 25 - According to Comscore, more than 167M U.S.-based Web users watched video online during October. All told, they watched 28 billion videos. Google easily led the pack, servicing 38% of all videos Americans viewed online, with 99% of those videos watched on YouTube. In a distant second, Hulu delivered 856M videos, accounting for 3.1% of the market and setting a new record for monthly views. Microsoft came in third, with 451M videos viewed on its site. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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LinkedIn Hits 3 Million Members In The UK

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 25 - LinkedIn has hit a milestone in the UK, surpassing 3M registered users. LinkedIn could pursue an initial public offering at any time it wanted to, considering it’s been running at a profit for a couple of years already and still has massive growth potential. LinkedIn reached 45M registered users in Aug '09, and now counts ~53M members around the world. The company has raised over $100M to date. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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LinkedIn Opens Up API

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 23 - LinkedIn recently launched two-way integration with Twitter and also rolled out a plug-in to pull in your LinkedIn contacts within Microsoft Outlook. And today, LinkedIn is opening up its API to start letting developers make applications that tap into LinkedIn’s social network. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Twitter Valued At $1 Billion

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Nov 21 - Twitter, valued at $1 billion by venture capitalists, said it is generating sales of more than $4M a year and plans to build on that revenue with advertising. Twitter plans to start the ad business in early 2010. The current revenue comes from companies paying to use Twitter's data, such as Microsoft, displaying Twitter updates in its search results. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

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Cell Phones Drive Social Networks In Asia

PC WORLD - Nov 21 - More than 50% of respondents in China, India, South Korea and Thailand access social networks via mobile phones, according to a recent IDC survey report. In China and Thailand, 62% and 65% of the respective respondents use mobile phones to get news alerts and notifications, receive and reply to messages, upload photos, or update personal status and profiles on popular SNS. On the other hand, 19% and 25% of the respondents in Australia and Singapore, respectively, registered the lowest percentage of users who access mobile versions of SNS on a weekly basis. FULL ARTICLE @ PC WORLD

LinkedIn May Be Different From MySpace, But Not Its Ad Strategy

AD AGE - Nov 18 - While LinkedIn is trying to differentiate its audience from other social networks, its ad strategy looks awfully familiar. Today, the site announced it's launching Custom Groups in the hopes advertisers will create more robust presences on the site. The move is similar to the advertising programs that MySpace and Facebook have set up, in which they encourage brands to create pages and then use Facebook's advertising offerings to help drive awareness and membership. Already there are 400,000 groups on LinkedIn. FULL ARTICLE @ AD AGE

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The Top Viral Video Ad Campaign, Updated Nov 16, 2009

Brand: Volkswagen
Campaign: The Fun Theory
Agency: DDB
Source: VisibleMeasures.com

Twitter Launches In French

MASHABLE - Nov 19 - Twitter’s translation project is rolling along rather quickly now. Earlier in the month Twitter launched in Spanish, and as of today, Twitter is now available in French. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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eBay Completes Skype Sale

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 19 - eBay has completed the sale of Skype, valuing the company at $2.75 billion. The investor consortium who is the buying party and will control ~70% stake is a group led by Silver Lake Partners and includes Joltid (i.e. the company founded by Skype’s original founders) and “certain affiliated parties”, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook Becomes Third Most Popular Video Site

CNET NEWS - Nov 19 - Accordning to Nielsen's VideoCensus release Facebook is now the world's third most popular place to view video online. YouTube serviced over 6.6 billion streams. In a distant second, Hulu offered up over 632M video streams. But it was Facebook with over 217M streams in October that easily beat out Bing, Yahoo, and several other online sites. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS   

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MySpace Signs Agreement To Acquire iMeem

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 18 - MySpace will acquire most of the assets of iMeem for ~$1M in cash. $1M isn’t the “real” purchase price for the company. Some assets are being left behind, including millions of dollars in accounts receivable plus some other cash. All or most of these assets, plus the purchase price, will be used to pay off some of the debt iMeem has accumulated. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Burda Buys 25% Stake In XING

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 18 - German media giant Burda has purchased a 25.1% share in XING, the business social network that is biggest in Germany and competes with LinkedIn. The 1,323,041 shares were sold to Burda by Cinco Capital, the investment vehicle owned by the former XING co-founder Lars Hinrichs. Priced at €36.50 per share, the deal is therefore worth €48.3M. This makes Burda Digital the largest shareholder in XING. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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PalTalk Buys Vumber

PAID CONTENT - Nov 18 - Video-based chat service Paltalk has acquired Vumber, a service that provides “disposable” phone numbers. Terms weren’t disclosed. New York-based PalTalk began working with Vumber last February. Vumber’s service promises privacy and an additional layer of call-screening for people who use dating sites, online personals and chat-rooms. By tying up with Vumber, which forwards calls to users’ private phone numbers, PalTalk will be able to use the service to market its other offerings. FULL ARTICLE @ PAIDCONTENT.ORG

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