BUSINESS WIRE — June 5 — ShoZu can now deliver new Facebook posts directly to the user’s mobiles as well as allow users to change their Facebook status from the ShoZu interface. ShoZu supports photo and video communities ranging from YouTube and Flickr to Photobucket, Google Picasa, Buzznet, Hyves, Kodak EasyShare Gallery and others. Other supported sites include personal blogging sites Google Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Vox, WordPress and MetaWeblog; online storage sites Box.net, Qipit and Ipernity; citizen-contributed news desks at CNN, the BBC, ITV, Scoopt and NowPublic; global social network Friendster; and the hit micro-blogging service Twitter. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE

CHRISTIAN NEWSWIRE — June 6 — HisHolySpace.com founder Jeff Broderick announced that he has sold the site to Christian.com Media Group and that the site would soon take on the name Christian.com. In the announcement Broderick indicates that he has also joined Christian.com Media Group and will still be helping administrate the site. FULL ARTICLE @ EARNED MEDIA

Social networking sites are on the rise in the UK and ad spending on such sites is expected to reach £285 million ($533 million) by 2012, according to eMarketer’s recently released “UK Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage” report - MarketingCharts writes.

Some 11 million people, or 30 percent of UK internet users, spent time at sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, eMarketer estimates. Those three sites account for the lion’s share of users in the UK.

Though social sites account for only a tiny portion of UK online ad spending (3.4 percent in 2008), social-network ad spend will rise 77 percent this year to £115 million ($225 million), eMarketer projects. Spending in 2012 will have increased 148 percent over 2008 levels

Social networks have been part of the UK internet landscape for several years, and the UK dominates social-network spending in Western Europe with 68 percent of the market.

eMarketer expects the UK social-network market to enjoy slightly greater ad-spending percentage gains than that of the US; the UK social-network ad market trails that of the US by one to two years.

“Though social network advertising is forecast to grow aggressively this year, it will only do so if social network operators can develop substantial metrics showing the value and performance of the advertising,” said Debra Aho Williamson, author of the report.

Source:www.marketingvox.com

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chief Executive

Steve Ballmer said Tuesday his company’s interest in Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) hinges on developments in online advertising.”The fundamental driver for us is we’re looking to accelerate our moves to get scale in online advertising,” Ballmer said.

“We do think software technology and the scale of user interactions will be an important part of the way the media and the advertising business shakes out in the future,” he added.

Ballmer predicted that the $550 billion annual advertising industry is “going to get turned on its head, basically, in the next 10 years” as media moves almost exclusively online.

Last month, Microsoft withdrew an offer to purchase Yahoo but the two companies are continuing to talk about possible partnerships.

Microsoft’s initial offer for Yahoo was $31 a share, or $44.6 billion. It boosted the bid to $33 a share before walking away when Yahoo’s co-founders

Jerry Yang and

David Filo said they wanted $37.
Ballmer spoke at the annual AeA Technology for Government Dinner.

-By

Fawn Johnson, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9263; fawn.johnson@dowjones.com

Greek social networking service wadja.com has been generating some interest recently, mostly because Facebook has apparently banned emails that contain any mention of the site - so they must be doing something right. Facebook said it’s because of spam, while Wadja thinks it might be more to do with their popularity in their home country.

The first version of the site rolled out in August 2006 funded by angel investors and 16 people work at the headquarters in Athens, Greece.

Managing director Alex Christoforou tells us more.

Alex Christoforou, managing director of Wadja.com

• Explain your business to my Mum.
“Wadja is a communication service that goes where you go. You can collect, organise, and manage your friends, photos, videos, and contacts in a way that can be accessed on your PC and mobile phone. Wadja can also help you connect via email, web or global SMS, for free, so you are always connected.”

• How do you make money?
“We don’t rely on the standard cost per click revenue models that power 99% of community-centred sites. Our revenue model is based on providing premium content to our users, partnerships with mobile operators, premium messaging services targeted at businesses and professionals, and a new message advertising platform based on friend-to-friend communication.”

• What’s your background?
“I was born and raised in the US, I have a degree in economics and masters in international business and management. I split my time between our offices in Cyprus and Athens.”

• How many users do you have now, and what’s your target within 12 months?
“We currently have 1.5m registered users. Our target is to surpass the 10m user mark, but more importantly to add value to our users through great communications, which also helps to grow our business.”

• Name your closest competitors.
“Many of our users also have connections with Hi5. We see many similarities in our international feel and language support, though I feel we are more European focused with a big tilt towards mobile.

• How are personalisation and recommendation part of your business?
“Focusing heavily on mobile communication means generating local buzz while growing usability on a global scale. Wadja was the first network to provide interface language while giving users the option to view other communities on a totally different country level. For example, you can set your Wadja profile language to Greek but view, browse, and search for friends located in the UK if that is where you live. It is simple but very personal. ”

• What’s your biggest challenge?
“Creating a social networking site that is fun, innovative and financially viable. That is, based on a business model not funded purely by sponsorship and banner ads.”

• Any weird business experiences so far?
“Just last week Facebook banned the word Wadja.com throughout the whole site. That was weird and quite amusing. Here is this big Silicon Valley social network banning the word Wadja, an outfit based in the Mediterranean, having fun connecting people.”

• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
“Not a bubble - a readjustment. People are questioning the financial viability of social networking. People are asking how these sites make money, but so far none of the big three or four networks have solved this issue, irrelevant of their astronomical valuations. We need to get back to basics and build open, useful services and tools, anchored in a business model not entirely dependent on serving traditional banner ads to visitors.”

• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
“Steve Jobs - always. He reinvents the industries he goes into with a precision and flair for design that is second to none. Eric Schmidt of Google is also great. He executes a plan better than any other.”

• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
“We are all about open, device independent messaging and media sharing, so really in five years I would like Wadja to be the service of choice for the mobile active generation.”

wadja.com

Source:blogs.guardian.co.uk

The European Parliament is to create its own social networking website at a cost of £3.2 million to taxpayers.

Creating and running the new service will cost more than £4,000 for each Euro-MP over the next 18 months, even though many already belong to free and popular networking sites such as Facebook or Bebo.

Despite the use of taxpayers’ cash, much of MyParl.eu will not be visible to the public, with its networking “restricted to parliamentarians”, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

Only parliamentarians and “civil society”, Brussels-speak for officially sanctioned NGOs and trade associations, will be able to use the site for comment and debate. “Myparl.eu offers you a unique online political forum with a social networking tool, enabling you to engage with other parliamentarians across the EU,” said the pilot site launched in Brussels on Thursday.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

INFORMATION WEEK — May 22 — Facebook will clean up users’ profile pages and improve organization now that the site has more than 20,000 applications. The new applications will be organized in one of four tabbed categories for easier navigation and access. The new design is also expected to give users more control over which details about themselves they want to highlight. FULL ARTICLE @ INFORMATION WEEK

FORBES — May 22 — Big phone carriers seem to be itching to get a ride on consumers’ enthusiasm for social networks. Comcast agreed to acquire online address book service Plaxo on May 14, for an undisclosed sum. On May 16, U.K.-based carrier Vodafone spent $49m on its first mobile Internet purchase: Zyb, a private Danish company, which, like Plaxo, helps users manage their contacts with social networking features. Most major carriers already have deals with large social networks. AT&T has offered a mobile version of MySpace since 2006 and also supports a mobile version of Facebook. Mobile-specific social networks like airG and MocoSpace say they have millions of users worldwide. And Nokia is pouring money into Ovi, its own brand of Internet service. FULL ARTICLE @ FORBES

SNW — May 22 — The Social Networking Conference in San Francisco July 10th-11th is shaing up very nicely. A very highly esteemed keynote speaker has been confirmed today and will be announced shortly. Hint: If it wasn’t for this man, the social networking industry probably would not exist. Watch this space. - Mark Brooks

Google Inc. extended its share of Internet searches in April to 61.6 percent, while Yahoo Inc. sites and the other major search engines saw slight declines between March and April, according to comScore’s April search rankings.

Google’s share of Internet searches rose 1.8 percent from March to April, from 59.8 percent in March to 61.6 percent.

Yahoo, meanwhile, the target a possible proxy fight and of a takeover bid by Microsoft earlier this month, saw its share decline 0.9 percent, from 21.3 percent to 20.4 percent of searches.

Following Yahoo were Microsoft Corp.’s sites, down to 9.1 percent of searches in April from 9.4 percent in March; AOL LLC, down to 4.6 percent from 4.8 percent; and Oakland-based Ask.com, down to 4.3 percent of searches from 4.7 percent in March.

Searches beyond the core domain, such as map searches and searches for user-generated videos, were not included in the numbers.

The rankings also reported that Americans conducted 10.6 billion searches on the core search engines, a 2 percent decline from March. More than 6.5 billion core searches were conducted on Google, followed by 2.2 billion on Yahoo sites and 961 million on Microsoft sites. AOL saw 491 million searches, and Ask.com saw 458 million, according to comScore.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)walked away earlier this month from its offer to buy Sunnyvale-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) for $33 a share, or about $47.5 billion. Yahoo said it would take a minimum of $37 a share.

Reports since have said Microsoft in considering other deals with Yahoo that would not be a complete takeover. The software giant is looking for ways to better compete with Mountain View-based Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Investor Carl Icahn has also begun a proxy battle to force a sale of Yahoo, and has compiled a slate of directors he wants to have take over at the company.

Source: www.bizjournals.com