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

Google CEO Announces Zynga Partnership

TECH CRUNCH - July 29 - When asked about Google’s partnership with Zynga, Mr. Schmidt said “we haven’t announced it” but “you can expect a partnership with Zynga” in the future. Expect Google Games to be announced sometime this year. And Zynga will be one of the main game engines populating it. And eventually one of these companies will admit that Google invested in Zynga, too. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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YouTube Bumps Video Limit To 15 Minutes

CNET NEWS - July 30 - Long-video makers can rejoice, as YouTube has extended the allotted time of user uploads from 10 to 15 minutes. When YouTube first launched in 2005, users could actually upload clips that were longer than 10 minutes, though without limits it was easy to upload full-length, copyrighted content. YouTube responded by creating the limit, as well as adding new account types like "director," "comedian," "musician," and "guru," which would require a few extra steps of registration, but remove the time limit altogether. The rest of the YouTube population simply got around the limits by splitting up shows into 10-minute chunks, which would work until YouTube's content filters flagged it as a violation. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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Is Geo-location The Future Of Social Media?

FAST COMPANY - July 29 - Despite research showing location based services are little-used and largely unknown, Foursquare's head of development sees big growth and innovation on the horizon. According to a report on location-based apps by Forrester Research 4% of online adults in the U.S. have ever used services like Foursquare and Gowalla, and that 84% of respondents were not even familiar with geo-location apps. Forrester recommends that major marketers should hold off on "check-in" services until they become more popular. Tristan Walker, head of business development for Foursquare, disagrees. More than 2.3M users now check-in roughly ~1M times per day. Moreover, while the report claimed 80% of location-based service users were male, Walker said Foursquare's male-female ratio was approaching 60-40, and moving "closer and closer toward parity." FULL ARTICLE @ FAST COMPANY

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Second Life Chugs Along

THE SOCIAL GRAF - July 29 - Second Life is a great case study in social media trends. And while it's hard to know what the future holds, Second Life does indeed appear to be surviving -- even thriving. From 2M in 2005, the total number of members soared to 18M this year, but only a small fraction of these are active users. Zooming in on active users, the numbers increased from ~25,000 in 2005 to ~700,000 in 2009-2010. Long story short: after five years it's clear that Second Life won't be competing with Facebook, which recently crossed the 500M mark. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

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Zynga Confirms Softbank Investment

TECH CRUNCH - July 28 - Zynga issued a press release tonight confirming the more than month-old news of an investment by Softbank – $150M – and are announcing a joint venture to “develop and distribute social games across Japan.” Zynga didn’t talk about the other $150M they took from Google in connection with a partnership over the new Google Games property. Zynga has raised $519M in venture capital. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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YouTube Banned In Russia Over Racist Video

MASHABLE - July 29 - Russia has demanded a Russian ISP block access to YouTube because the site hosted “Russia for Russians,” which was judged to be an extremist video. The court’s decision also applies to the Internet Archive and three online libraries, Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru, all of which were found to host writings by Adolf Hitler. With this ruling, Russian authorities join a long list of governments that have blocked access to YouTube at some point or another, including China, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. YouTube material has also been censored in the U.S. and U.K. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Facebook To Pay $10 Million Cash For Hot Potato

TECH CRUNCH - July 28 - Facebook is paying ~$10M in cash for Hot Potato, a social activity service. Employees will also be getting stock options which could prove to be very lucrative down the road. But investors aren’t getting any stock in Facebook. Hot Potato raised ~$1.4M in a single round of financing prior to the acquisition. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yahoo Could See 5% Upside From Social Networking

TREFIS - July 28 - Lately, Yahoo has been increasing its focus on social networking functionality, an area where it lags behind market leader Facebook. Trefis, the stock analysis startup, believes that Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Citizen Sports, integration with Facebook, and partnership with the popular social gaming site Zynga will boost traffic and user engagement levels. Trefis expects Yahoo’s monthly unique visitor tally to increase from 560m in 2009 to ~650m by the end of the Trefis forecast period. There could be an upside of 5% to the $18.64 Trefis price estimate for Yahoo’s stock if monthly unique visitors increase to 800M instead of the 650M that they forecast by 2016. FULL ARTICLE @ TREFIS

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SNS Reach A Higher Percentage Of Women Than Men Worldwide

PRESS RELEASE - July 28 - comScore released a global report on women’s online usage titled, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet, which provides an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user, highlighting key trends by Internet activity, worldwide region and digital channel. The report found that social networks reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8% of all women online visiting a social network in May 2010 versus 69.7% of men. Women spend 30% more time on SNS than men. FULL ARTICLE @ COMSCORE

itsmy Turns Into Mobile Social Game Developer

PRESS RELEASE - July 28 - itsmy, one of the first social networks for mobile phones, is now developing casual multiplayer games for the mobile customers of all social networks with focus on touchscreen devices. More than 50 free to play mobile social games have been developed over the past 12 months by itsmy and successfully launched in markets like US, UK, Spain, Italy and Germany within the own social network http://m.itsmy.com, which will be re-launched as pure and open mobile web gaming network in August 2010. FULL ARTICLE @ EFY TIMES

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LinkedIn: Now Worth More Than $2 Billion

MASHABLE - July 28 - A new report suggests that LinkedIn’s value has surpassed the $2 billion mark, based on recent investments from outside investors. According to Bloomberg, hedge fund Tiger Global Management spent $20M to acquire approx 1% stake in the business social network. The hedge fund specifically paid $21.50 per share. That’s where the math comes in. According to SharesPost, an online marketplace for privately-held companies, LinkedIn has 105M shares outstanding. Multiply that by the $21.50 Tiger Global Management spent, and you arrive at a valuation of $2.26 billion. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Canada Is Taking Facebook To Court

TYEE - July 27 - Merchant Law Group, a Canadian firm with offices across the country and in the US, is asking Facebook to defend its revamped privacy policy. With over 500M users worldwide and over 15M in Canada, this may be the largest class action suit in the country’s history. The class-action suit centres on the site’s close monitoring of its users. “Facebook was already a very profitable venture,” says Merchant. “They decided they could become far more profitable through targeted advertising,” a move that required tracking users’ activity. This was accomplished using what Merchant refers to as “harvesters” – computer programs that collect information on users such as sex, geographic location, interests, age, and the like. These “harvesters” used to be blocked from accessing users’ private information. In November, Facebook “upgraded” its privacy settings. “The default” says Merchant, “unless you were willing to go through twenty-seven pages of privacy information and options – and few users were – was that your previously private information became semi-public.” Merchant’s class-action suit already has 800 individuals signed up. The legal action, levied against the social media giant for “improper handling of confidential information” and “privacy issues,” adds Canada to the growing list of countries dissatisfied with Facebook’s conduct: a number of U.S. states are considering taking Facebook to court, and prosecution is being considered in a number of European nations. FULL ARTICLE @ TYEE

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50% Of Employees Ignore Company Policy On Social Networking

VISAGEMOBILE - July 27 - According to Cisco’s 2010 mid-year security report ~ 50% of end-users ignore company policy on social media access and 27% said they knowingly alter settings on their corporate devices to access restricted apps. FULL ARTICLE @ VISAGEMOBILE

Playdom Acquired By Disney For Up To $763.2 Million

TECH CRUNCH - July 27 - Disney has acquired social gaming startup Playdom. The price – $563.2M plus an earn-out of up to $200M. Playdom’s last round of financing valued the company at $345 million, and the company has raised a total of around $76 million. In two and a half years of operation, Playdom has established itself as a pacesetter in building popular games for social networks. Through well-known titles like Social City, Sorority Life, Market Street and Bola, Playdom engages an estimated 42M active players each month. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Chatroulette Crosses Fingers In Hopes Of Investment

TECH CRUNCH - July 27 - Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy recently posted a detailing Chatroulette’s commitment to cleaning up its act. In battling the porn plague, Ternovskiy has resorted to tracking offending IP addresses and turning them into the police, among other things. Interest in Chatroulette has been high but investment has yet to come. However it’s not just the penises that marginalize the platform. Web video is a notoriously tough and unprofitable industry, and the actual tech behind Chatroulette is so simple to replicate that it’s hard to see any kind of exclusivity. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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In The Rooms Announces Global Online 12 Step Meeting Directory

PRESS RELEASE - July 27 - Today In The Rooms, the recovery community and social network for those in recovery from addiction or alcoholism and for family, friends and allies, announces the first ever global online 12 Step meeting directory. From now on, those looking for an Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, or Gamblers Anonymous meeting, in any area and location, can go to www.intherooms.com or http://meetings.intherooms.com to find meetings in their area or around the world. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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Survey: How Many Would Pay For Twitter? 0%

READ WRITE WEB - July 27 - A recent survey of ~2,000 people found that 0% of respondents would pay to use Twitter. The survey, conducted by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is part of its yearly "Digital Future" report, which looks at the overall state of the Internet in the U.S., from adoption to views on advertising and paywalls. As PaidContent's Joseph Tartakoff notes, Twitter has never said it has any plans to charge for the service. While the survey came up with nobody saying they would pay for the service, we have to imagine it was just missing the proper segment of the population. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Facebook Unveils New Safety Page

RED ORBIT - July 27 - Facebook, long the target of criticism over their user protection and safety policies, have unveiled a new page devoted solely to the safety issue. The new Facebook Safety Page was announced by Joe Sullivan, the company's senior counsel, in a blog post on Monday. By the end of the day, the page had over 2M "fans". "The Safety Page will highlight new initiatives to keep people on Facebook safe, valuable educational materials from Internet safety experts including the members of our Safety Advisory Board, and relevant news coverage". According to the AFP, "The launch of the Safety Page came in the wake of demands by privacy activists that Facebook give users of the booming social network more control over the use of their personal data." FULL ARTICLE @ RED ORBIT

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