LinkedIn was the fastest-growing social networking site in April, with traffic increasing 361% to 8.7 million unique visitors from $1.9 million a year ago, according to comScore.

MySpace easily remained the category leader with $58.7 million users, but has only grown 3% since last year. No. 2 Facebook is up a healthy 56% over the last year to 22.5 million. AOL Hometown has seen the steepest fall-off in traffic, dropping 25% to 6.3 million in the last year.

Among blog sites, WordPress was the biggest gainer in April, growing 160% to 16.6 million visitors. Blogger held the top spot with more than 38.4 million, up 40% from a year ago. By contrast, traffic to Xanga.com has slipped 33% to 2.4 million.

–Mark Walsh

Source: publications.mediapost.com

Social networking has moved rapidly from teen-centric sites such as MySpace into the realm of business with career-networking sites like LinkedIn. Now the trend is picking up speed in the world of small business with sites like Moli.com.

This self-described social media/social commerce site has launched the Moli Small Business Center, which it said is designed as a destination where small businesses can go to collaborate with, learn from and market to their peers.

The company defines small business as a the owner/operator or business with fewer than 10 employees and Judy Balint, Moli’s president and COO (and one-half of the management team that created Etrade), estimated that there are 22 million such small businesses in the U.S., and a total of 40 million world wide.

Balint described Moli as a free, online social community designed for collaboration and e-commerce, a place where individuals and small business owners can create their own Web sites. It lets them manage multiple Web profiles from a single account to control their privacy and separate their social, business and family relationships.

The site offers tools and resources to help small business owners take their companies to the next level and, said Balint, still have time for their real life. Through a partnership with E-Myth, an expert in work/life integration, Moli offers E-Learning courses covering topics such as sales, marketing, accounting, HR, finance and operations.

“Moli combines rich functionality that lets people do more in one place in less time,” said Balint. “It lets us get offline and get things done in the real word. We’re not teenagers with hours to spend. Efficiency is key for us.”

Other resources available in Moli’s Small Business Center include a variety of forums, courtesy of a partnership with Yedda. In the community forum, members can connect, network, discuss issues and get advice and support. In the Ask the Experts forum, members can seek advice from retired business entrepreneurs.

The Small Business Center also offers a media album, calendar, blogs, RSS feeds and message boards along with audio and video clips and podcasts that contain content from both original and third-party sources.

“Business owners can’t afford to spend unproductive time searching aimlessly around the Web looking for the resources they need to better manage their businesses and improve the quality of their lives,” said Balint. “With the Moli Small Business Center, members have the most comprehensive set of resources and tools available to grow their businesses for long-term success.”

Web Pages, E-Commerce and SEO

According to Balint, small business owners often have a hard time driving traffic to their Web sites, if they even have one. “Building a Web site in a social networking environment let’s then focus on marketing and promoting their business instead of on SEO,” she said. She added that Moli does it for them because its building community for everyone.

A free Moli account includes a control panel, a private page where you can manage your separate business, personal and family Web pages. Balint said that Moli uses CoVibe technology that protects personally identifiable information and provides members with consumer data aggregation and analysis on the visitors to their sites.

Members can purchase reports from CoVibe that contain real-time stats on the visitors to their sites, including how many visitors, their sex and their age. Balint promises that none of the information is personally identifiable but meant as a way to let members know what kind of an audience is interested in them.

Reports cost between $3.99 and $7.99 depending on how many variables and the type of analysis you want to include.

Moli also includes online store resources to let you sell products on your site. Tools include audio and video, text, a proprietary, AJAX-based shopping cart, Google Checkout and PayPal. Balint claims you can set up an online store in 30 minutes without any programming.

The online store costs $3.99 per month, and Balint said there’s no limit to the number of products that you can sell, and that Moli does not take a cut of the transaction fee. Currently, the e-commerce function does not work with QuickBooks, but Balint said that integration with the popular accounting program is in the works.

Membership on Moli is free, and includes one personal URL and as many profile pages as you like. You can make profile pages private, public or hidden altogether, a capability that Balint said makes it easy for small businesses to create separate, hidden pages for vendors, clients, customers and employees.

Additional URLs cost $1.99 per year each. Currently, Balint said there are no storage limitations because the service is still young and they’re learning about the community’s usage patterns.

They may add storage limits in the future, with options to purchase more, but Balint said the basic storage offering would stay in line with the marketplace (i.e., Google currently offers more than 2 GB of free storage).

The company launched in January 2008 with 241,000 registered members. According to Balint, in April 2008, the site received 20.9 million unique visitors.Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com

Source: www.smallbusinesscomputing.com

Loss of productivity has been a major concern for business owners and companies all around the world. Employees have been known to spend working hours doing other things apart from work: socializing, gossiping, and the sort. With the advent of the Internet, a new time-waster could be a threat to productivity in businesses.

They are the famous online social networking websites: You know them- Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, and the likes of them.

Let me state categorically that I have no personal beef with social networking. As a matter of fact, I am a big fan and addict. I have an account on one of these sites where I spend at least twenty of my time everyday. I believe that Forums, bulletin boards and blogs on these networking sites are an excellent way to communicate business ideas, views, opinions and policies.

Facebook is a good site. It’s a beautiful thing that through facebook you could reunite with old friends, acquaintances and loved ones. You could also make new friends and build on already existing relationships. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg calls it a great social networking device through which company owners and employees can follow-up on business contacts and possibly seal business deals.

I beg to differ.

If truths must be told, Facebook is a big time-waster which eats seriously into the working time of millions of company employees all over the world. We all know that in many organizations round the world, many employees burn several minutes or even hours of working time socialising on Facebook. Instead of working, employees spend time accepting friend requests, event invitations, and loading a battalion of applications, most of which in the real sense are silly, pointless and irrelevant.

Last year in August, some of South Africa´s biggest companies blocked access to Facebook because it was slowing down productivity on the part of company staff. All companies may want to do the same thing. Alternatively, companies could limit access to Facebook and make the site accessible only during lunch-break hours.

While so-called internet marketing experts and employees may claim that such sites could be used as a huge business tool in connecting with other businesses and other potential customers, what ever happened to the KISS principle: Keep it simple stupid?

Facebook, Myspace and the likes make social networking complicated and time wasting with the battalion of applications friends request you to upload. In Facebook, for example, the numerous number of substantive features are redundant. You are constantly distracted by friends who are updating their profiles, giving you virtual drinks, chocolate, punches, hugs and kisses. You also feel an obligation to respond and so you send the same back to them. You are tempted to send wall posts as well, comment on pictures and poke some of your favourite people. By the time you are done with all that, you’ve wasted an hour or more, and you’ve got a pile of workload on your desk. In the long run, your productivity is derailed, and you end up postponing work until later.

Considering how much you have to do in managing your facebook life, you are better off on LinkedIn if you really need to connect to your workers through the web.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site which provides one with less distraction. Basically, it allows you to create and maintain a list of your professional contacts, and its purpose is strictly to network with your professional customers and potential ones. LinkedIn keeps it simple. There are no irrelevant features, applications and walls to consume your time. All its features are strictly for business purposes. The LinkedIn Groups feature for example, allows users to establish new business relationships by joining alumni, industry, or professional and other relevant groups mainly used for professional networking. Just what you need for business.

Facebook could be the best social networking site for maintaining and building and maintaining informal relationships. It’s also a great tool for wasting time at work. But if you are really bent on online business networking, why not stick to LinkedIn? You cannot go wrong that way.

Mfonobong Nsehe is a communications student at Daystar University

Source: americanchronicle.com

AOL has closed its US$850 million acquisition of Bebo, and the portal will use the social network as the basis for a new People Networks business unit.

Bebo Chief Executive Officer Joanna Shields will serve as executive vice president of AOL and president of the People Networks division, which will combine Bebo and AOL’s two chat platforms — AIM and ICQ. All told, the platforms will reach 80 million users worldwide, AOL said.

AOL is positioned to “capitalize on the exploding social media space,” said AOL CEO Randy Falco.

The move comes as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)   and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO)  continue their lengthy and complex mating dance — the two reportedly are mulling a partnership that stops short of an all-out merger and could have implications for that portal. Yahoo and Bebo have had an advertising  partnership in place since late 2007 through which Yahoo serves display ads to Bebo users in the UK and Ireland.

A Unique Approach

The close of the acquisition will enable AOL to focus on three business areas — its advertising network, publishing and people networks, Falco noted. He argued that AOL is making progress in all three areas, citing recent comScore data showing that the portal’s publishing network reached all-time highs in both unique visitors and page views earlier this spring.The question will be how well AOL can monetize Bebo’s fast-growing user base. AOL believes it is well-positioned to do that because of its Platform-A advertising unit and other content offerings.

For instance, Bebo has long set itself apart by offering ways for users to utilize music and other media — the platform is known for a variety of original, serial video programming. With the instant messaging platform and other tools, people will be able to connect more effectively with like-minded people across the Web, Shields said.

Bebo’s unique approach to video programming has caught the attention of advertisers, noted JupiterResearch analyst David Card.

Bebo’s KateModern program is hugely popular in the UK and has proven the value of creating content that is specifically designed for the Web, not television content repurposed for the Internet , Card told the E-Commerce Times.

“Bebo has been able to bring along an audience for its shows,” said Card. Perhaps more importantly, it has been able to secure sponsors, who buy non-traditional product placement and other sponsorship opportunities. The early successes could enable AOL to position Bebo as a rival to YouTube and perhaps one even better suited for monetization.

Integration, Amalgamation

Users will now be able to use a single sign-in or screen name for both AOL and Bebo, and the social network’s content will be cross-distributed over the broader AOL network. Other AOL acquisitions — including widget firm Goowy Media and question-and-answer service Yedda– will be folded into the People Networks division.

Bebo also features an Open Media Platform that has enabled traditional media companies to distribute their content to Bebo users and has been effective at persuading third-party developers to create applications for the platform, with more than 6,000 such plug-ins developed since the platform was opened up earlier this year.

Getting Bebo a higher profile in the U.S. will likely be a top priority for AOL, Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li told the E-Commerce Times.

“As a stand-alone social network, Bebo had no chance of competing against big boys like MySpace and Facebook,” she said. “But as an integrated part of the larger AOL content and ad network, it has amazing potential to play a role in how social networks develop.”

Looking Ahead

AOL may see a future where social networks are integrated into all parts of a user’s online activities and interactions, rather than standalone, walled-off sites, Li added.

Meanwhile, Facebook may become even more of a sought-after takeover target now, and even more so if the strategy of AOL proves successful, Li added. Microsoft already owns a 5 percent stake in that network and reportedly revisited an outright acquisition after Yahoo repeatedly rebuffed it.

“While there’s tremendous consumer uptake of social networking sites, marketers still haven’t figured out how to tap into all of that energy and enthusiasm,” she added. If AOL can point to a successful path for marketers, that could dramatically change the entire market.

Source:.technewsworld.com

• Filename, title, description.
  Same as above
• Video Files Metadata
  Same as above
• Keyword “video”
  Same as above
• Links and Backlinks
  Same as above
• Make good thumbnails, first and the last frames.
  A video thumbnail is what users view when they are deciding between which videos to watch. Different video search engines will grab thumbnails differently. Some will use the first frame while others will take a frame from somewhere in the middle. You will need to experiment with each site to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video.
• Branding
  The first and the last frames are perfect for branding. Place your logo there, as well as your URL and any other information you think is applicable.
• Uniqueness
  More than anything, make sure as well that your video is creative and unique. This is the best way to attract backlinks from people who want to share your video.

• Use social bookmarking sites and tools to assist in the visibility of your videos, add backlinks to your videos, and create traffic.
• Train editors to think like video searchers

Optimization in the Future:
As search engines are working to better determine the content and relevance of multimedia content, the methods that we use to optimize websites and in particular, videos, images, and audio in the future may be quite different. Currently optimization still relies upon including Meta data and keyword information in or surrounding the current content.

With search engines like Blinkx.com, who claim to rely more and more so on OCR (optical character recognition), voice/speech recognition, and image recognition, optimization of video content will likely be much more so about the quality of the video itself. For example, if Blinkx.com relies upon voice recognition as an example, it would be important to make certain that you are speaking clearly in the video so as to make the job of voice recognition easier for the search engines.

However, take a look at this interesting post from Danny S. on Search Engine Land. Danny explains that Blinkx and other still rely heavily on meta data for searching. Danny also reviews some tests that he conducted with video searches.

Source:reelseo.com

U.S.A.

Bebo
BlackPlanet (African-Americans)
Bolt (Music and Video)
Broadcaster (Video sharing and webcam chat)
CarDomain (Car lovers)
Care2 (Green living and activism)
Classmates (School, college, work and the military)
Dogears.net (US Universities)
Dogster (uh, dogs!?!)
Eons
Facebook
Flickr (pics)
Friendster
Graduates (School, College)
Golfspinner (Golfers)
Hi5
Joga (Soccer)
Kaneva (3D virtual world)
LibraryThing (Book Lovers)
eSpin (Teens)
Meetup
MiGente (Latinos)
MOG
MSN Spaces
MySpace
MyYearBook
Orkut
Piczo
Palopia (students)
Panjea (music, media player)
Passado
Reunion
Sconex
Tagworld
Takkle.com (Sport)
Travellerspoint (Travels)
Tribe
Vois
WAYN
Xianz (Christians)
Xuqa
Yahoo 360
Yelp
Zaadz (Change the World)
Zorpia
Doostang (Harvard, Stanford, MIT alumni)

Business Networks

CollectiveX (for groups)
Guanxi (China)
Ryze (USA)
Tianji (China)
Xing

Beyond USA

Arto.dk (Denmark)
ASmallWorld (Euro)
Cyworld (South Korea)
Epuls.pl (Poland)
EveryonesConnected (UK)
Faceparty (UK)
Face-Pic (UK)
Fropper (India)
Grono (Poland)
Hyves (Netherlands)
IRC Galleria (Finland)
iWiW (Hungary)
LunarStorm (Sweden)
Mixi (Japan)
Nexopia (Canada)
Passado (Euro)
Playahead (Sweden)
ProfileHeaven (UK)
Rate.ee (Estonia)
Studivz.net (Germany’s Facebook)
Yeeyoo (China)
Yeskee (China)
Yonja (Turkey)

Anti-Social Networks

Isolatr
Snubster

Myspace Add-ons

Blingboo
Coshed
Gotomyproile
Modmyprofile
Myspacehive
Zobbler

Mobile Social Networks

mosh.nokia.com

Microsoft has provided a brief statement this evening regarding the Yahoo deal. Good gosh, will this go on all year? This time it looks like they are pursuing a “transaction” which could mean a million different things. Perhaps an acquisition of the advertising arm of Yahoo and let Yahoo focus on the content and developer side of the business. Perhaps it’s the opposite where Microsoft will acquire the services and Yahoo will remain with the advertising components? My guess is that using the word transaction means Microsoft is looking to acquire some part of Yahoo’s offering. Looks like this story still hasn’t concluded nor will it anytime soon. If you held a gun to my head, I’d bet it’s the Yahoo-Google search advertising deal we’ve been hearing about lately - Microsoft wants to replace Google in the deal.Here’s the statement:

“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business.  Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!  Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties. 

“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”

Source: centernetworks.co

USA TODAY — May 12 — Facebook and MySpace are valued in the billions of dollars and are considered blueprints for how to build a website. Yet a deeper question lingers: How are they going to consistently produce profits to match their soaring valuations? With online ad spending booming into a nearly $50 billion market this year, there is plenty of money to be had.

MySpace

Since it scored a $900 million, three-year deal with Google in 2006, MySpace has been profitable. And it has given News Corp. a nice turn on its $650m acquisition in 2005. Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, expects MySpace to haul in $700m to $800m in revenue in 2008, mostly in advertising.

Facebook

Facebook hopes to double its revenue to $350m this year. The 70 million-member network has ramped up revenue with the sale of banner ads through an agreement with Microsoft.

LinkedIn

The business-contact site has built a booming business in five years through banner ads from the likes of Porsche and Microsoft; subscriptions; job postings charged to corporations and small-business owners; and corporate sales to Symantec, MTV and others. LinkedIn is developing other revenue streams, including research services to locate experts.

Bebo
Bebo has struck up marketing initiatives with advertisers such as Nike and Apple. That is a key reason it has been profitable the past 18 months.

Xing

Xing, a business-contact list service popular in Europe, says its revenue doubled in 2007 to $30m, from 2006 because of premium subscriptions, an e-commerce marketplace and banner ads.

ZenithOptimedia estimates online ad spending worldwide will soar 26.5% this year, to $47.7 billion. Total ad spending worldwide, by comparison, is expected to grow 4.6%, to $653.9 billion this year, says Universal McCann. FULL ARTICLE @ USA TODAY