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

comScore Releases March 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings

PRESS RELEASE - Apr 29 - More than 180M U.S. Internet users watched online video in March. YouTube delivered video to more than 135M viewers, reaching 3 out of every 4 online video viewers at an average of 96 videos per viewer. U.S. Internet users watched 31.2 billion videos in March, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 13.1 billion videos, representing 41.8% of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 1.1 billion videos, or 3.4% of all online videos viewed. Microsoft Sites ranked third.

Second Life Economy At Record High

READWRITE WEB - Apr 28 - Tom Hall, Chief Product Officer for SL owner Linden Labs, said user-to-user transactions spiked 30% over last year to $160M. Second Life uses a "virtual currency" - Linden Dollar. This is an in-game token currency that must be purchased with legitimate moneys and can be used to buy things inside the environment, or converted back into real-world lucre. The total sales on Xstreet, the Second Life marketplace, reached $2.3M, an 82% increase YOY and a 24% increase over the previous quarter. Total Linden Dollars exchanged on LindeX, the in-game currency exchange, totaled $31M, a 9% increase over the previous year, and monthly unique users with repeat logins peaked in March at 826,214, a 13% increase YOY and an all-time high. FULL ARTICLE @ READWRITE WEB

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Zoosk Hosts Speed Dating For Start-Ups And VCs

MARKETWIRE - Apr 28 - Zoosk, the social dating network, will be hosting the first VC & start-up speed dating session at Web 2.0 Expo on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 in San Francisco. Each start-up will get the chance to 'flirt' with up to four VCs during the matchmaking program and will be given three minutes of undivided attention each. To qualify, the company must be a start-up or entrepreneur looking for seed or additional funding. To participate in this event, RSVP by Friday, April 30, 2010 at: http://zooskdate.eventbrite.com/. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETWIRE

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

InTheRooms Partners With MDinfo.com

PR WEB - Apr 27 - InTheRooms partners with MDinfo.com to answer visitor’s questions on addiction and recovery. MDinfo.com is a health information resource that empowers visitors to post questions and receive responses from Health Experts in a variety of specialties. Those who visit MDinfo.com and have questions on addiction and recovery, will receive expertise from InTheRooms, the social network for those seeking help for addiction, are in recovery and/or for family, friends and allies. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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Zong: Facebook Deal And $15 Million In Funding

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 27 - Zong lets you pay for things, particularly virtual goods online, via direct billing to your mobile phone. Despite heavy competition from well-backed boku, the service has emerged as a leader in alternative payments. Facebook likes them so much they made them the mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits. Zong has now closed a new round of financing, its first as an independent company. Matrix Partners led the $15M round, and partner Dana Stadler joined Zong’s board of directors. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yammer Doubling Revenue Every Quarter

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 26 - Yammer now has 70,000 corporate clients, and 800,000+ total users. At least 1,000 of those companies are paying for the product, and Sacks says 10%-15% of users are converting to paid. 70% of Fortune 500 companies are using Yammer, according to CEO David Sacks. Paying customers include Cisco, Nationwide, AstraZeneca, Alcatel-Lucent, Sungard and Molson Coors. Revenue in 2009 was “seven figures.” Yammer’s revenue goal by end of year is to be at a $10M annual run rate. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Facebook On AIM Is A Hit: 1 Million Users

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 26 - In Feb AOL added the ability to message Facebook friends on AIM, giving Facebook users a nice stand alone client to chat with their Facebook friends. Since then, more than 1M people have used Facebook Connect on AIM to access that Facebook friends list and all of these were new installs of the AIM client. That’s about 5% of the total 21M monthly AIM users, according to Comscore. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Chatroulette: The Most Disturbing Internet Craze?

DAILY MAIL - Apr 26 - When writer Olivia Lichtenstein's daughter told her about a 'cool' new teen website, she decided to investigate. What she found was the most worrying internet craze to date. Chatroulette is the fast-growing, latest fad among teenagers - a quick and easy way to communicate online with people from all over the world. It works like roulette. Users log on, press a big button labelled 'Next' and it then randomly connects you to any one of a number of people across the world currently logged on. What may have started as the innocent game of a Moscow schoolboy has quickly become a potential tailor-made portal for perverts and paedophiles. It doesn't require you to log in or register (despite the fact that the site states it is for over-16s only) and all you need is a computer with a webcam. It's entirely free and once you've clicked a button to allow the site to access your webcam, your face appears in one of two boxes. Many of the people on this site are exhibitionists, some of them showed their faces - others angled the computer in such a way as to mask their identities and, all too often, to reveal their genitals. FULL ARTICLE @ DAILY MAIL 

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

Thanks To Our Sponsors

The Top Viral Video Ad Campaign, Updated Apr 19, 2010

Brand: Evian
Campaign: Live Young
Agency: BETC Euro RSCG
Source: VisibleMeasures.com

Foursquare Approaches 1 Million Users

BIGMOUTH MEDIA - Apr 23 - Just over one year old, Foursquare has become popular with those living in large metropolises. The service tracks a user's movement via their mobile phones, recognising when a patron arrives, or 'checks in', to a local business or attraction. The website's run up to the 1M user mark was tweeted 21 April, with the company stating "We're closing in on 1M users! Current count is 969,775. FULL ARTICLE @ BIGMOUTH MEDIA

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Facebook And Microsoft Check-In With Foursquare

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 22 - It’s already been widely reported that Yahoo is seriously pursuing a Foursquare acquisition, but now we’re hearing that at least two other companies have been in talks recently with the location-based startup as well - Facebook and Microsoft. Facebook seems to have cooled on the idea of an outright acquisition. Microsoft, meanwhile, is likely still thinking about buying the company. With multiple bidders, the price is undoubtedly going up, probably north of $100M. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is The Point

NY TIMES (Front page) - Apr 23 - People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations. Mr. Brooks, a 38-year-old consultant for online dating sites, publishes his travel schedule on Dopplr. His DNA profile is available on 23andMe. And on Blippy, he makes public everything he spends with his Chase Mastercard, along with his spending at Netflix, iTunes and Amazon.com. “It’s very important to me to push out my character and hopefully my good reputation as far as possible, and that means being open,” he said, dismissing any privacy concerns by adding, “I simply have nothing to hide.” Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted ~125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11M from venture capitalists. “Ten years ago, people were afraid to buy stuff online. Now they’re sharing everything they buy,” said Barry Borsboom, a student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who this year created a site called Please Rob Me. The site collected and published Foursquare updates that indicated when people were out socializing and therefore away from their homes. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES. Also in Argentinas LA NACION, in SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS and DENVER POST.

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonals.

NY TIMES (Front page) - Apr 23 - People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations. Mr. Brooks, a 38-year-old consultant for online dating sites, publishes his travel schedule on Dopplr. His DNA profile is available on 23andMe. And on Blippy, he makes public everything he spends with his Chase Mastercard, along with his spending at Netflix, iTunes and Amazon.com. “It’s very important to me to push out my character and hopefully my good reputation as far as possible, and that means being open,” he said, dismissing any privacy concerns by adding, “I simply have nothing to hide.” Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted ~125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11M from venture capitalists. “Ten years ago, people were afraid to buy stuff online. Now they’re sharing everything they buy,” said Barry Borsboom, a student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who this year created a site called Please Rob Me. The site collected and published Foursquare updates that indicated when people were out socializing and therefore away from their homes. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES. Also in Argentinas LA NACION, in SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS and DENVER POST.

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This post also appears on OnlinePersonals.

Jibblar: Part Chatroulette, Minus Nudity

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 21 - Jibblar is a text-only, communal version of Chatroulette. It allows people in close proximity to anonymously contribute to a chat room. Jibblar grabs your location from the Firefox or iPhone browser and will only facilitate conversation with people in your immediate vicinity (0.5 kilometers). The only identifier is your location tag and a randomly assigned number that appears next to your chat. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Pandora Partners With Facebook For Social Music

MASHABLE - Apr 21 - Made possible by Facebook’s new Open Graph protocol, Pandora will be able to give you station suggestions based on bands or artists you’ve “liked” on Facebook and across the web. You’ll be able to see which of your friends likes similar music and check out what other music they like and have in their collections. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Facebook Closing In On 500 Million Visitors A Month

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 21 - Facebook is closing in on the 500M monthly unique visitors mark. The social network saw 484M unique visitors worldwide in March, 2010, according to comScore. That number is up 64% from a year ago, and up 22M from February, 2010. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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90% Of Content On Google Buzz Is Bots

READ WRITE WEB - Apr 20 - A new report from social media analytics service PostRank has found that 90% of the content published into Buzz is automated: 63% is piped in from Twitter and 27% is from automated RSS feeds. So does that mean that nobody participates in Buzz? The fact that 10% of content published is added manually might even be seen as an early success... maybe. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Tumblr Raises Another $5 Million In Funding

MASHABLE - Apr 20 - Tumblr, the popular mini-blog company, has announced another $5M from Spark and Union Square Ventures, nearly doubling the $5.2M raised in A and B rounds of financing. The company has been testing and optimizing various paid features for a while and hopes 2010 will bring it further down the road to profitability. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE