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

How Big Is The Facebook Economy?

GUARDIAN.CO.UK - Mar 10 - Investors are pumping more and more money into web services that are heavily reliant on Facebook. Smartdate received $2.2m from investors to try and build its idea of using Facebook data as the basis of a matchmaking service. We know from a number of reports and internal estimates that Facebook itself is due to post somewhere upwards of $1bn in revenue for 2010. How many companies rely on Facebook to keep themselves going? The conservative estimate must stretch into several billions of dollars worth of business at least. Back in November, Electronic Arts bought social gaming site Playfish, in a deal worth ~$275m, meanwhile Zynga, another developer of popular games has already taken more than $200m of venture capital. Other companies making apps include Slide, Mindjolt and FriendFeed (bought by Facebook for ~$50m). FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

See all posts on Facebook       See all posts on Slide
See all posts on Playfish          See all posts on Mindjolt
See all posts on Zynga            See all posts on FriendFeed

This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.

Facebook Has FrienFeed Envy

READ WRITE WEB -- June 25 -- Facebook will add the ability to comment on items in the Mini-Feed, making it even more similar to FriendFeed. Users can now easily converse around friends' statuses, application stories, new friendships, videos, and most other stories on their profiles. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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See all posts on FriendFeed

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FriendFeed

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Companies Seeking Universal Logon Approaches

THE BOSTON GLOBE -- May 12 -- The Internet has fractured digital life, turning people into a piecemeal collection of user names, passwords and online personas. Now, a growing number of efforts aim to fix the problem of online identity, so that photos shared on one Web site or restaurant reviews written at another are no longer fragmented. OpenID, an effort supported by Microsoft and Yahoo, for instance, is creating a universal logon. Earlier this year, Yahoo began a public beta offering of the OpenID service, which allows a person to sign in to multiple Web sites using one login. Meebo allows people to unify their instant-messaging accounts, FriendFeed creates a single feed of the activities of friends scattered across the Internet, Plaxo started out trying to improve the digital address books people keep in various places, and TrustPlus attempts to solidify reputation. FULL ARTICLE @ STATESMAN.COM

One Place For Many Online Lives

BUSINESS WEEK -- Apr 10 -- With FriendFeed, subscribers can pull together on one Web page everything their friends and colleagues are doing on more than 30 Web sites. Each subscriber can search, sort, or comment on the information in his feed. The founders plan to sell advertising on the site, which is free to subscribers. They raised $5m in venture money in February. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESSWEEK

FriendFeed Gets $5M

MASHABLE -- Feb 25 -- FriendFeed, the social, shared feed reader, launches to the public. The company is also announcing a $5 million round of funding from Benchmark Capital as well as FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit, and Sanjeev Singh. FriendFeed enables users to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that their friends and family are sharing. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE