Tag: Social networking
Friendster set to sell for £60 million
Founded in 2002, it was one of the earliest popular social networks, and has over 100 million active users.
Facebook term "unfriend" added to New Oxford American dictionary
If you've ever suffered the crushing heartbreak of being cast asunder by an online friend, you're probably pretty familiar with the term "unfriend".
Microsoft and LinkedIn announce partnership
It's an important move for LinkedIn, with integration to a native Windows program offering huge exposure to the network.
LinkedIn announces integration deal with Twitter
LinkedIn, the social networking site aimed mostly it seems at young professionals touting for work, has announced a partnership with microblogging platform Twitter. As a result of the deal, members will now be able to share status updates between their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
The integration of the two networks through the Tweets app allows members of LinkedIn to automatically share their updates on the professional network with their Twitter followers. They can also select Twitter status updates to share with their LinkedIn network by adding the #in hashtag to tweets on the microblogging site. LinkedIn members will be able to track and manage their Twitter feed from within their LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 51 million members, including 11 million in Europe and almost 3 million in the UK. However it seems that many people who have LinkedIn profiles spend very little time updating their status or their profile. LinkedIn will no doubt be hoping that the Twitter integration will make their service a little more dynamic. The new service will be available in the next
For more information check out the LinkedIn blog at: http://blog.linkedin.com/
People get bored with Twitter quicker than they do with Facebook, says research
Apparently over 40% of respondents who said they had tried Twitter only used it once or twice before getting bored. That's four times the number of people who give up on Facebook. It does suggest that these are people who have heard of Twitter, felt like they needed to give it a go, but have no real idea how to use it.
Twitter users into sex more than Facebook users
There’s a great feature on Ad Age http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=137792 about what your favourite social network says about you. It features the results of a survey by Anderson Analytics and is designed to help brands identify
users’ surfing habits and interests.
MySpace looking shaky as 'restructuring' begins
MySpace is ditching two thirds of their international staff and closing down at least four of their offices in a global restructuring strategy. The move will see 300 jobs lost outside of the US, leaving London, Berlin, and Sydney as the regional hubs and Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden and Spain offices all ominously “under review”.
MySpace chief executive officer Owen Van Natta said:
“As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace’s staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today’s proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy.”
Half of MySpace’s traffic comes from outside the US but it’s in America where the network has been strongest, only being surpassed by Facebook a few weeks ago. A smaller wage bill isn’t going to help growing traffic any but it’s clear that the once darling of the web 2.0 world needs to start trimming the fat as their power continues to wain.
I’d still like to think that MySpace has its place – in the music world if nowhere else – but I’m sure it’ll see numbers tumble a long way before it levels out again.
Facebook builds a door into the walled garden
Facebook has long been criticised for being a ‘walled garden’ where users can frolic freely with their data on the site but do absolutely nothing with it elsewhere. That should be changing this afternoon as the site opens up far more useful data to its users.
External developers will now, crucially, be able to extract real-time information from the site and use it to build services on their own websites. For example, someone could build a site that tracks ‘trending’ words in status updates and wall posts, much like Twitter’s ‘trending topics’ function.
It’s a little trickier to open up than something like Twitter, thanks to the intricate privacy settings that each user is able to set. It’s likely that at first it’ll simply take anyone out who’s got any kind of privacy set other than the default, but that’ll probably evolve over time.
(via Guardian)
UK government considering monitoring social networks
You know those horribly intrusive laws invading people’s online privacy in the name of a greater security for all? The ones that insist that every ISP must hold user communication data for 12 months? Well, the Home Office security minister Vernon Coaker reckons those laws don’t go far enough, because they don’t cover social networking and instant messaging websites.
Facebook changes terms of service, outcry ensues
A couple of weeks ago, Facebook changed its terms of service so that users won’t be able to delete their data if they leave the site. The blogosphere immediately erupted with criticism and it prompted a blog post from Mark Zuckerberg himself on who owns the data.
Facebook had been criticized for allowing a situation where someone could take a photo of you, upload it to the site, and then neither of you would be able to stop Facebook from using it for whatever purposes they like. You essentially waive all rights to the data.
Zuckerberg’s response to concerns is basically ‘chill out – we’re not going to take the piss here’. He doesn’t apologize, or even offer to soften the language – just asks users to trust the company. But how can users trust a company slowly eroding their rights?
Sure, odds are that Facebook isn’t going to suddenly abuse millions of people’s personal info, but if that’s the case, then why not retain the original language? Facebook has a history of communicating changes badly, and this is just another in a long line of screwups that include the profile redesign and the “Beacon” fiasco.
