Tadinky Launches and Invites Members Suggestions

Tadinky.com, the latest lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, announced today the beta launch of it's new Wiki-style website, opening the door to innovative changes suggested by its members.

The social site's founders are hoping to avoid the mistakes of social giants such as MySpace, Friendster and Facebook that have "all had their limitations, as proven by disgruntled members, while refusing to implement any changes or ideas offered by their members." For their business 'their customers (users) are always right'. Thus, they have welcomed suggestions for improvement of the site. Sounds like a humble beginning, huh?

Tadinky is launched in beta form as a stripped-down version of a standard social networking website while awaiting the first qualified suggestion. The new website has the usual features of social networks such as profiles, photos, blog, email, instant messaging, etc. The site currently has 22 members, 6 friends, 2 blog entries and 1 comment. Unfortunately, it has no traffic rank yet from Alexa.

About Tadinky
Tadinky, a part of Dreamry, Inc., is the latest lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, networking with like-minded people, and creating changes that would have an immediate impact. By integrating web profiles, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, and member blogs, Tadinky has created a connected and responsive community. Tadinky will continue to evolve with new features and exciting changes.

Via: TheOpenPress

Silicon Space Launches Social Networking Solution

According to a press release on December 10, Silicon Space, LLC, experts in customer-facing software solutions that enable companies to grow their businesses, has announced its SocialSpace Business-to-Business (B-to-B) social networking solution. Optimized for enterprise environments, the SocialSpace solution will provide the services and expertise required to bring a social network community to market.

As we know of today, social networking applications provide a new forum for businesses to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration, solicit feedback from internal and external business partners and extend company reach to new channels. Thus, the SocialSpace platform has been designed to be integrated with a majority of the leading social network applications on the internet, including Facebook and MySpace, along with many other networks via the Google OpenSocial interface.

With the SocialSpace platform, Silicon Space partners with enterprises to develop a tailored B-to-B social networking solution based on a detailed analysis of their business model. Based on this analysis, SocialSpace deploys its solid technical platform, along with the launch marketing, moderation services, and long-term management of the community to ensure member engagement.

Via: Silicon Space

SocialCrunching Becomes Beta

I started this blog just 4 weeks ago and my experience with blogging about social networking has been very challenging. For one thing, there is always something related to social networking to blog about and even with other projects on my shoulders, this blog has been able to be relatively consistent with quality posts, decent traffic, and just a few readers.

At the moment, I've decided to concentrate on blogging about social network startups only, which I've been doing, except that the blog has covered so more information about existing social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, etc.

I've been reading Mashable and other social networking blogs and I've come to a conclusion that these blogs post practically anything that forms news around social networks and more. Thus, this blog SocialCrunch will now create a niche by posting gists, news and info about new social networks in any industry or field whether, music, fashion, sports, professions, etc, thus profiling them in relation to new and existing trends in the social media webspace.

I have called this new dimension the blog is exploring SocialCrunch Beta!:)

Open Web Awards 2007 by Mashable

Now that the first phase of the Open Web Awards by Mashable is officially over, speaking of the nominations, you can now vote for your favorite large social network.

From the results so far, you will notice that Netlog.com has more votes (37.8%), with Facebook following behind (23.7%) and Vois.com on third position (10.1%). LinkedIn grabs 8.9% while Myspace gets 6.2%. I would be following the voting process as the day goes by. You will be able to vote up until 11:59pm PST on Sunday, December 16th.

Please visit Mashable to vote for your favorite large social network!

Twitter Gets Banned in the United Arab Emirates

Twitter has joined the hallmark of social media sites banned by the United Arab Emirates due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates. With this ban, the UAE has decided that its residents shall tweet no more.

The disabling of social networks is becoming increasingly popular. According to Mashable, YouTube experiences country-wide bans with a fair degree of regularity (Beijing, Thailand, Morocco, Australia, and others). Also, MySpace and Facebook have gotten so big that they don't bother about the number of countries that ban them.

But whether or not these social media sites are banned or blocked, as the case may be, users would continue to be loyal to them.

Can Safe, Clean Online Communities Be Good Alternatives?

I recently wrote a post about a new social network called ConnectHit, launched on November 1 which claims to offer a safe, clean, fun alternative to popular sites such as Myspace and Facebook. But due to the huge attention that these popular social sites are gaining, it seems that little has been said about ConnectHit especially in the media.

After one month of launch, ConnectHit is having 12 members, 5 up from when I wrote the post on November 12. That's not really bad for a new social site. The site's got a user friendly interface and an interesting look. So what is really up? Is there a problem with the marketing? I'm hoping that David Zoffer, the founder of ConnectHit is asking these questions and more.

While we wait to see an increased traffic and membership strength from ConnectHit, an eye into another social network that also offers a safe, clean online community called our-social.com shows that the site is gaining popularity. I peeked into the site after I received a detailed profile from the social site's founder, Theresa Adams. The site's traffic by Alexa is increasing rapidly and it's forum currently has over 250 members.

Our-Social.com's goal is to provide a community free of profanity and pornographic material, a user friendly environment, a great place to meet friends and a place to share stuff with your friends and family.

In the meantime, I'll be following the trend of these safe, clean social networking alternatives and hoping that they really make great alternatives to the really popular sites .

Will Facebook 's Web Traffic Overtake Daunt Myspace?

Hmm, I bet Myspace didn't see this one coming. The leading social networking site has been striving to curb the threat of Facebook within the past months, but web traffic statistics now show Facebook has finally overtaken Myspace in daily page views and reach.

The Alexa’s new traffic statistics has made Facebook the sixth most viewed website worldwide, the spot previously held by Myspace. View the stats below:

The latest three months graph shows no substantial increase in Myspace’s traffic, while Facebook’s traffic consistently increased over the same period.

Recently, thousands of American Facebook members signed a petition to stop the new advertising program called Facebook Beacon, a behavioral tracking system which enables Facebook user's customers to share the actions they take on user's website with their Facebook friends. Some of the protest groups, however, paid Facebook to advertise on the site and therefore bring additional website traffic.

Though web traffic is one of the most important factors to determine the leading social networking site, other factors such as revenue conversion, membership size and level of active members play very important role. Currently with more than 50 million users, Facebook is still far behind Myspace with over 200 million users.

Whether Facebook will continue to gain its traffic momentum over Myspace is not the question. The real question is: Will Facebook eventually overtake Myspace's membership size?

Social Networks: Influenced by Race and Education?

With so many social networks today, it seems that their use and membership depends largely on one's social class, education, race or ethnic background.

In a startling finding, researchers from Northwestern University challenged the concept that everyone is 'equal' online. In a recent press release, they announced the details of their study that determined that ones social class, race, and the level of parents education are the strongest predictors of which social networking site someone will use. They also determined that the three most popular sites were MySpace.com, Facebook.com, and Xanga.com.

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Their concern is based on the fact that social networking sites could be creating a two-class system, those with more social connections and those students who do not have social connections.

According to the study, white college students tend to use Facebook. Hispanic college students tend to use MySpace, and Asian students (including Asian Americans) use Myspace less than any other social networking site. No preference was found for African American college students.

Top 10 U.S. Social Network and Blog Site Rankings for October

It's not surprising that MySpace tops the rankings of top U.S. social-networking sites again, with more than 58.8 million unique visitors in October, according to the custom lists of top U.S. social-networking sites and blogs compiled by Nielsen.

Ranked second among social-networking sites, Facebook increased the number of visitors to 19.5 million, up 125 percent compared to October 2006 record. MySpace visitors increased 19 percent year over year. (See table of top 10 social-networking sites for October)

Among blog sites, Google’s Blogger remains top blog site in rankings with 34.1 million visitors. Blogger increased its visitors with a significant 58 percent from the year-earlier period, reaching 34.1 million visitors. (See table of top 10 blog sites for Oct.)

More impressively, however, WordPress moved up the rankings to the No. 2 position, and accounted for 11.4 million visitors, up from 2.1 million last year.

Six Apart Type Pad, dropping to No. 3, also grew - 20 percent - to nearly 10.6 million visitors in October.

(See this table to make month-to-month [Sept. ‘07 vs. Oct. ‘07] comparisons for blog sites.)

Via: Media Buyer Planner

The Saga Continues at SagaZone for the Over-50's

Saga Zone, created by the insurance and holiday company Saga Group, is becoming the social website of choice for the over-50s. The new social network site which has been running in trial mode for four months, was launched in October and currently has more than 13,000 users.

Like other social networking sites, Saga Zone members can create their own profile pages, set up their blogs, contact friends or join in online discussions. Although there are no age limits on networks such as Facebook (with more than 50 million users) or MySpace (with more than 200 million users) - these sites are heavily populated by younger users.

A survey earlier this year by media regulator Ofcom found that older surfers make up a significant proportion of the internet population, and are much more likely to spend money online. Surfers over 50 account for nearly a third of all time spent online by British web users. According to Nielsen//NetRatings data from April 2007, Over 50s (who make up 41% of the UK population) now account for nearly 30% of all time spent on the internet as seen below.

Saga Zone is not the first attempt on the social networking craze among affluent older surfers. American website Eons launched last year with a focus on the baby boom generation. But despite raising £16m from investors Eons has struggled in the popularity stakes and was forced to lay off a third of its 72 staff last month.

Kaioo >> The First REAL Social Network?

If you've been to kaioo.com, you'll notice that the new social community claims to be the first REAL social community on the internet. Kaioo is a new social networking community with a simple site design like Facebook, but with a new approach to social networking.

Kaioo sees social networking as a non-profit, democratic and independent thing. Kaioo, like other social networks allow users to create their profiles, communicate with friends, upload pictures, post videos, etc

So what makes Kaioo the REAL social network?

The key difference is that kaioo donates all advertising revenues to charity, while the operating costs are covered by sponsors. Kaioo places only a limited amount of advertising on the site, so there is no disadvantage to using Kaioo compared to any other social networking site. Users can suggest charity projects and decide by voting which projects should be supported by Kaioo.

Kaioo's independence enables the german-based social network to guarantee its users that all user data will be treated confidentially and will not be passed on to any third parties.

With so much attention and criticism on users privacy on sites like myspace.com, etc Kaioo will have to convince users that their privacy will really be protected.

Social networking right from your email account?

As was reported today on CNNMoney.com, Yahoo! and Google will soon launch another exciting feature to allow their email users social network through their email accounts. The companies are trying to make accounts into personalized home pages to challenge current social networking such as MySpace and Facebook.

With a pre-existing e-mail account which already has a social graph that shows the connections you make while you e-mail your friends, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail users can now engage in social networking with their friends, colleagues, etc

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This innovation will come at a time when the social networking market is fighting for dominance with Myspace, as the leading social network in terms of user membership.

The question is: Will email users be attracted to Yahoo! and Google's new initiative or just stick to Myspace, Facebook and others?

Social Networks Overtake Web-based Emails in the UK

If you've been following the statistics of social networks recently , you'll find that social networks are starting to eat into the web-based email providers' dominance of the internet messaging market. That simply means that visits to social networks seems to have overtaking those of web-based email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, amongst others.

A recent survey by Hitwise, an online intelligence service revealed that for the first time last month, UK Internet visits to social networks overtook visits to web-based email services. In October, the top 25 social network sites including Myspace, Facebook, Bebo received 5.17% of all UK internet visits, compared to 4.98% for email services.




Well, we can say that this trend will increase in the coming months as the UK web-user population is choosing to communicate more with friends via social networks rather than email. And there's no doubt that these social networks also refer as much traffic to other websites as web-based email services.

Whatever happens, I think that social networks would continue to rely on the technologies and services of web-based email for their expansion. And users would still need these web-based emails to communicate.

ConnectHit to Compete with Facebook and MySpace?

Social networkers may now socialize on a safe, clean, new social network called ConnectHit. Hopefully. Launched on November 1, 2007, the social networking features of ConnectHit.com is described as free, clean, and safe to create one's own private community.

ConnectHit allows members (currently 7 members in the network) to share photos, blogs and interests with their growing network of friends. They can create and customize their profile pages, use chat rooms, instant messaging, create forums, quizzes, polls, and pictures.

Popular sites such as MySpace.com, Xanga.com and Facebook.com have been under heavy scrutiny and criticism more recently for the social risks they expose members to. However, ConnectHit.com plans to enter this arena as the safe, clean, fun alternative to these popular sites that are getting a lot of media attention these days.

But can ConnectHit stand the competition?

Google Launches 'OpenSocial' Platform

As first reported at TechCrunch, Google has announced a social networking platform called OpenSocial, which includes tools to allow developers to create applications that utilize personal and social data contained in participating social networks - the first step toward putting you back in control of your online relationships.

Google appears to be supplying the "social graph" - the map of relationships between people that makes it possible for you to see when your friends add applications, photos or new connections to their profiles - with tools to allow developers access to the social graph and other personal data on participating networks.

Several players in the social networking space such as Hi5, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Orkut, Ning Engage.com, Friendster, Hyves, imeem, MySpace, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING as well as widget developers RockYou, Slide, iLike and Flixster have all signed on to supply applications based on the platform. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is not on the list.

According to Mashable, Google finally released their open source container sample on November 9. After looking through it and the accompanying documentation, it definitely provides a good starting point for potential OpenSocial developers to begin forming the basis for their applications.