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

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The Top Viral Video Ad Campaign, Updated Feb 22, 2010

Brand: Google
Campaign: Parisian Love
Agency: In-House
Source: VisibleMeasures.com

Hulu Investor Injects $50 Million Into Baidu’s Online Video Venture

TECH CRUNCH - Feb 26 - Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50M into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant Baidu. The news comes 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users. According to eMarketer, China will have 518M Internet users in 2010. The size of the country’s online video market was ~162M yuan ($23.73M) in Q3 2009, according to Analysys International. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook to Take 30% Cut Of Developers’ Facebook Credits Revenues

MASHABLE - Feb 26 - Facebook will soon roll Facebook Credits out to even more application developers, so it has publicly announced that it will take 30% of the revenues earned for goods sold via Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits make up Facebook’s virtual currency; the currency became available to some users last Spring. Those users could buy gifts with it. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Grindr Craze Grows At Rapid Pace

PR NEWSWIRE - Feb 25 - Grindr, the all-male mobile location-based networking service reached its landmark 500,000th member. Since this social networking app launched in early 2009, ~2,000 new users have been signing up daily. The app, which runs on iPhone and iPod touch, uses location-based technology to deliver users' profiles, photos, and information within seconds. 30% of users check their Grindr daily; 44% check their accounts weekly. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Facebook Secures Patent For News Feed

MASHABLE - Feb 25 - Facebook now owns the patent for the news feed. Depending on what this patent actually covers, Facebook could use it to protect its intellectual property and force other companies with news feeds — e.g. MySpace, Google, and Twitter — to change or take down their technologies. Facebook pioneered news feed technology when it launched its News Feed feature back in 2006. While there was a lot of controversy about it back then, it is now a standard feature on multiple social networks. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Why A Virtual Goods Strategy On Valentine’s Day Will Boost Your Revenue

VIXIMO - Feb 23 - Valentine’s Day is the second biggest shopping holiday of the year, coming in second only to Christmas. The National Retail Federation estimated that, despite the recession, $14 billion would be spent on Valentine’s Day gifts in 2010.

Viximo, a virtual gift platform provider, surveyed 1,000 social networking and online dating users about their intent to purchase virtual gifts on February 14. 72% of respondents planned to send virtual goods as a gift on Valentine’s Day. 31% of people who planned to send a virtual gift on Valentine’s Day would be purchasing their first virtual good. Other findings were: Single people will send more virtual gifts than people in a relationship or marriage, and single men are likely to send 4% more virtual valentines than single women. 40% of respondents want to receive Kisses/Smiles on Valentine’s Day.

- Guest post by Brian Balfour, Founder & VP Product Marketing at Viximo

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

Chatroulette Offers Random Webcam Titillation

CNN - Feb 25 - On Chatroulette, a new and controversial site, every click lands you in a face-to-face video conversation with a random stranger. Use of the site has grown quickly since its launch in November. ~35,000 people are on Chatroulette at any given time, according to a traffic count published on the Web site's homepage. The large majority of the site's users are male and overwhelmingly young. Whether Chatroulette will be more than just a bizarre blip on the Internet pop-culture radar is still up for debate. Ostrow, of Mashable, believes advertisers would not want to be associated with the lewdness of the site. "I think it's certainly an interesting experiment and I can see kind of why it's catching on," he said. "On the other hand, I don't think it's something that is a sustainable business, obviously, when you look at the content that's on there." As of yet, the site has few rules. Users are supposed to be at least 16 years old, and they're not supposed to show pornography on the site. None of those restrictions, however, are clearly enforceable. The site is run by a 17-year-old high school student in Russia named Andrey Ternovskiy. FULL ARTICLE @ ABS CBN NEWS

hi5 Acquires Social Gaming Company Big Six

TECH CRUNCH - Feb 24 - hi5, one of the world’s most popular social networks, has been actively remodeling its site to cater to the gaming industry. Last fall, Hi5 launched a totally revamped site that places a much stronger emphasis on games and virtual currency, along with a new avatar system. Today, the company is furthering this strategy with the acquisition of social gaming developer Big Six. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The games section of hi5’s site accounts for around 1/3 of the site’s traffic, and direct user payments through the game already account for 15% of hi5’s revenue. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Hit With Class Action Lawsuit

TECH CRUNCH - Feb 24 - Two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, have filed a class action lawsuit alleging unfair business practices by local business review and rating website operator Yelp. A veterinary hospital in Long Beach, CA requested that Yelp remove a negative review from the website, which was allegedly refused, after which its sales representatives repeatedly contacted the hospital demanding payments of ~$300 per month in exchange for hiding or deleting the review. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Eastern Europeans Embrace Online Content And Social Networking

IAB - Feb 24 - IAB Europe’s extensive survey of the online behaviour and attitudes of 32,000 people in 16 markets reveals some striking differences – and similarities – in the way Europeans are using the web. 52% of all internet users surveyed had updated or viewed a profile on a social network in the last month. As with web entertainment, the Eastern Europeans lead the way here - with 59% having viewed or updated a profile in the last month. At 65% participation is highest in Hungary, followed by Romania at 61% and Poland at 56%. 57% of all European internet users have purchased a product or service online in the last 12 months, and 74% say they research information on products and services online at least once a week. FULL ARTICLE @ IAB

Yahoo Strikes A Twitter Deal

TECH CRUNCH - Feb 23 - Yahoo and Twitter have reached an agreement to share data between their properties. Yahoo is only a few months behind Google and Microsoft (Bing) doing the same thing. This partnership includes three primary elements:
1. People will be able to access their personal Twitter feeds across Yahoo!’s many products and properties, including the homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, and others, letting them check in on what’s happening with the people and things they care about while on Yahoo!.
 2. People will be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo! in their Twitter stream.
3. Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! media properties like News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports will include real-time public Twitter updates across a variety of topics.
FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Currensee Raises $8 Million

 TECH CRUNCH - Feb 23 - Currensee has raised $8M in Series B funding led by prior backer Northbridge Venture Partners and joined by new investor Egan-Managed Capital. Currensee allows members of its trader network to see each other’s trades and positions, strategies and performance in real-time, enabling them to make more informed decisions. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Twitter Hits 50 Million Tweets Per Day

MASHABLE - Feb 23 - Twitter reveals that users now send out more than 50M tweets per day. That means every second, 600 tweets fly through Twitter’s network. In 2007, ~5,000 tweets were sent per day. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Social Media Use Up 82% Worldwide

CNN MONEY - Feb 21 - According to The Nielsen Company, time spent on social networking sites by internet users worldwide has increased from 3 hours per month to 5.5 hours per month. This is an impressive 82% increase. Nielsen also concluded that people spend the most Internet time overall on social networks and blogs, and that social web sites such as Facebook are now the most common homepages for users. "This Nielsen report establishes social media as a trend that is not only here to stay, but one that is growing at a mind-boggling magnitude," stated Bloggerwave Director Ulrik Thomsen. FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY

FarmVille Surpasses 80 Million Users

MASHABLE - Feb 21 - FarmVille, the massively popular Facebook game, surpassed 80M monthly active users this week (source: AppData). Facebook has ~400M users in total. FarmVille’s daily active user count is currently 29.7M — that’s ~30M people using FarmVille every day. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Research Shows Massive Mobile Internet Growth

MOBILE BEYOND - Feb 16 - Morgan Stanley recently released a presentation of its December 2009 Mobile Internet Report which combines both “hard” and “soft” research into one comprehensive document.

Here is a list of highlights from this report:

• The mobile Internet is growing faster than the desktop Internet did due to converging technologies and social adoption trends, among other factors

• Mobile Internet devices could reach 10 billion units in 2010

• Ever increasing demand for wireless data puts a heavy load on current mobile networks

• Apple will continue to be a market leader and trend setter in the mobile device space

• 3G subscriber penetration exceeds 20% in 2010 (the “sweet spot”) and grows to over 40% by 2014, concentrated in developed nations. U.S. has overtaken Japan in 3G user base.

• It is projected that more users will connect to the Internet with wireless devices than desktop PC’s within five years.

• Mobile phones are now all about data as voice usage drops: 70% voice for an average cell phone, 45% voice for the iPhone.

• User-paid premium content is driving the mobile Internet. $37 billion was spent in 2008 for digital content

FULL ARTICLE @ MOBILE BEYOND

The Top Viral Video Ad Campaign, Updated Feb 18, 2010

Brand: Doritos
Campaign: Crash The Super Bowl 2010
Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Source: VisibleMeasures.com