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

Battle Of Social Networks

VENTURE BEAT -- Sep 14 -- Orkut still dominates the Brazilian market: it attracted 22.7M unique visitors last month. The next closest competitor, Windows Live Profile, brought in had 8M visitors, according to Comscore. Facebook comes in at eighth place with 1.3M. Facebook’s claiming 100-200k new users a month at the moment. Facebook surpassed Orkut as the leader in Latin America as a whole in Feb '09. Facebook attracted 33.6M unique visitors compared to Orkut’s 24M in July. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT

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Windows Live Becomes Even More Social

READ WRITE WEB -- Apr 21 -- Windows Live received a major makeover last November, and part of this makeover included the ability to aggregate updates from third-party services like Flickr, Pandora, or Twitter. Today, Microsoft announced that its users will now also be able to import their updates from 20 additional partners, including Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug, and Facebook. In addition, users will soon be able to invite their friends on MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged to join their Windows Live network. In Europe, Microsoft Live has also teamed up with a number of popular local services like Hyves, Dailymotion.com, and Dada. According to both Compete and Quantcast, Windows Live has seen its traffic grow rapidly since it updated its services last November, and the addition of these new web activities will surely not hurt the site's traffic. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Microsoft Adds SNS Features To Windows Live

LA TIMES -- Nov 12 -- Microsoft is adding social networking features to its latest release of Windows Live. Microsoft has hundreds of millions of e-mail and instant-messaging users but, like Yahoo, it has yet to tap the underlying social networks that connect those users. Brian Hall, GM for Windows Live, says Microsoft is trying to create a central hub where people can interact easily, whether sharing photos or planning events. They can pull together contact lists, set up networks of people and create news feeds that feature Twitter updates, Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and other popular online activities. FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES BLOG

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Pingg—Invitations Done Right

TECH CRUNCH -- Feb 25 -- There is a dozen online invitation services — MyPunchBowl, Amiando, Invitastic, MadeIt, Socializr, iPartee, Renkoo, ImThere, Skobee, Zvents, Zoji, Windows Live Events. Now add Pingg. When you get an invite from Pingg, all the information is in your email. And you can RSVP from the email as well. The e-mails and Website are free. But you can also send out printed invites as postcards for $1.50 each (including postage) or send the invites in SMS ($1.50 for 20 messages). Pingg raised an $800,000 angel funding in March, 2007 led by the early-stage Actarus Funds. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH