Tag Archives: bebo

The top social networks this month, MySpace still dominates..

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You know, we don’t talk about MySpace the way we used to. At least I don’t. Perhaps because there are so many great social media stories out there since MySpace came on the scene. One thing though you cannot ignore is MySpace traffic.  the bottom line being that MySpace receives a massive amount of visits; In addition to receiving over 25% more visits-per-visitor a month than Facebook, the site jumped to 72 million unique visitors in June, generating over 1.3 billion total visits. That, my friends, is a lot of traffic.

With that being said, lets look at the numbers as compiled by our friends over at Compete these numbers might seem a little out of whack, but they base the rankings on amount of attention as well as traffic. Thats why some might appear to have more traffic than others. the bottom 10 have more of an ethnic diverse, niche like quality than the top 10 as well.

But given the rush to crank out a social networking group these days, being ranked anywhere in the top 20 is not such a bad thing. It may actually mean you’re making money!

  1. Myspace with over 72 million visitors per month.
  2. Facebook with 22 million visitors
  3. Bebo with 3.5 million
  4. Tagged with 3.3 million
  5. BlackPlanet with 1.9 million visitors
  6. myYearbook with 2.89 million visitors
  7. hi5 had 2.98 million visitors
  8. Classmates had 11 million visitors
  9. Friendster had 1.3 million visitors
  10. Xanga had 3.7 million visitors
  11. Orkut, intrestingly enough had 460,000, but was ranked 11th.
  12. Asiantown came in at 147,949 visitors
  13. Flixter had 3 million visitors
  14. Migente had 1.2 million visitors
  15. Reunion tracked 6.2 million visitors
  16. Quepasa had 177,000 visitors
  17. Tickle had 2.1 million
  18. Piczo had 660,000 visitors
  19. Multiply had 656,000 visitors and last but ceratinly not least and somewhat surprising is
  20. Linkedin at 1.4 million visitors

How many of you have been to these sites and have given them a test drive? Which user interface makes sense? Which do you see continuing to grow and which do not have a snowballs chance in hell? Personally, I may check out Multiply, the rest I am somewhat familiar with, with the exception of the hispanic sites. I am surprised as well by where Orkut is. With summer being a time when we spend more time outside than in, lets regroup in September and see where we’re at.

How important is uptime in Social networks?

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Apparently not too important to the folks at Bebo According to Royal Pingdom (great name by the way) which measures downtime using Pingdom’s uptime monitoring service.

Bebo’s downtime has increased significantly lately and has had by far the most downtime of the 14 social networks monitored for the survey. More than 12 hours of downtime in less than two months is a lot, and it could possibly be caused by the new open application platform that Bebo launched in December, allowing third-party developers access to its platform, Facebook style. It could be putting more strain on Bebo’s systems than they anticipated.

The two giants in the field, MySpace (with 25 minutes of downtime) and Facebook (with one hour and 35 minutes of downtime), can both be considered to be within acceptable limits, especially MySpace.

Social networks, just like any other websites, will occasionally suffer from downtime, either planned or unplanned. However, social networks have a different type of usage than most websites, with frequent visits from the same user and many page views per visit. Therefore downtime can often be even more noticeable and frustrating to social network users.

Below are the results of the survey.

Social Network Home page (monitored) Downtime in 2008 (until Feb 25)
Bebo www.bebo.com 12h 28m
Windows Live Spaces spaces.live.com 7h 25m
Friendster www.friendster.com 6h 0m
hi5 www.hi5.com 5h 5m
Reunion.com www.reunion.com 2h 55m
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com 4h 0m
Classmates.com www.classmates.com 2h 5m
Facebook www.facebook.com 1h 35m
Orkut www.orkut.com 1h 10m
Last.fm www.last.fm 1h 10m
Xanga www.xanga.com 45m
MySpace www.myspace.com 25m
LiveJournal www.livejournal.com 10m
Yahoo! 360 360.yahoo.com 5m

* According to Royal Pingdom: If a web page is not reachable, returns an error, or takes longer than 30 seconds to load, it is considered as down. Downtime is always confirmed from two geographically separate locations.

The Public Perception of Social Networks

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Unless you have been living under a rock….

I’ve been using that statement a lot lately and it seems to be very appropriate these days given the state of all things technology related. between the iphone, MySpace, Facebook, Android, Open Social, and all things in between, it is a great time to be a digital consumer. Or is it?

You know when AOL first came on the scene, Everyone had the same thought. What is this going to do to the way we communicate? What will AOL do to the social fabric of our lives. That is the exact thing happening in the social networking world. If you would like to stand and admit that you too had an AOL account at one time, it’s ok. We’ll pause.

Ironically AOL was the beginning of true social networking, through AIM. And if you really want to know the truth, AOL’s phenomenal growth wasn’t based around internet access. It was the ability to chat with others. To communicate with others. THAT is social networking. Finding people with similar interests that you could connect with. The real difference now, are the tools that are available to the common user to create and enhance their social networking experience or communicating experience. Social networks have become social media sites as well.  There is now a distinction between the 2. There is a social media type site and  social networking type sites. The tools now available allow users to share more than just words. Its now photos, music and video. Those are social media sites. Like Youtube or Flikr. Nothing new there right?

Because of this, social networking sites are the most frequented websites on the web. In fact according to Hitwise, the demo of 18-24 users hit Facebook more than they visit porn sites! So now instead of what is construed as a one way relationship with a porn site for instance, is passed up because now this demographic can go to Facebook and have a better overall user experience. Amazing when you think about it. Content isnt’t king, porn isn’t king. Social networking is king!

But what is the overall public perception of social networks?  That seems to be changing as well. The perception for some is, “I’ve heard about them, but I just don’t know enough.”. While others have jumped in with both feet. and some have dipped toes in the water. This is perception can be blamed on the media, marketers, and word of mouth.

Depending on the demographic, and this is no surprise as your 15-24 age group are always going to be the early adopters, the social networking experience is going to be different in regards to perception and usage, for each and every group. However this is changing as well as users realize that there is more out there besides Facebook and Myspace. Check this blog for older posts about the top rated social sites in business, video, and music. To read an interesting and no to surprising article about class distinction in social networks,  read this article by dannah boyd.

 the bottom line about social networks is that people are finding their people, their packs, their groups. Just like they did on the playground as children, it is now taking place with social networks. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. You see, the public perception of social networks right now is skewed, because THEY DON”T ENOUGH to make an educational, much less personal decision on whether to use them yet. So they base their opinion on their perception. It is changing though and rather quickly as statistics show that one of the fastest rising demographic of users on Facebook are the 35+ group. And of course as a side note, you know this is going to piss off the 18-24’s who will now have to latch onto something that is cooler.

But public perception of social networks is still skewed across the following words and statements:  Uncertainty, a time drain, a resource drain, zero value proposition, spam extenders, virus friendly, a place for stalkers to thrive etc etc. In fact, The blog Switched reports that according to a new study by an employment law firm, approximately $264 million U.S. dollars are lost in man hours because of Facebook.

The thing to understand here is that like any relationship, you get out of it what you put into it. Whether that is online or offline. The only way you are going to see whether a social network is for you is to take one for a test drive. It doesnt neccessarily have to be MySpace or Facebook, though those two are not bad starting points, but the only way to find out is to jump in.

It may enhance your computing experience or it may be a detriment. It totally depends on what you want to to achieve. Is it for business? Then there are a lot of purely social networks geared toward business and building relationships that will fit your needs. Start with Linkedin.

Just remember, in the end, you’ll get out of it, what you put into it. Just don’t base your opinion on what you have read or heard from someone else. What DO YOU think their perception is? What was your perception before you tried them out? What were your expectations? What are your expectations now?

The top 10 hottest Social Networking Widgets

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 Comscore released the November 2007 U.S. rankings of the top web widgets. For those of you who do not completely understand what a widget is, it’s essentially independent objects or an object that can be embedded or downloaded onto another site and can be used as a tool, have automatic content updates, or are or can be interactive. Though they go by the name of “widget”, Facebook calls them “applications” and Google calls them “gadgets.”

In November 2007, nearly 148 million U.S. Internet users viewed widgets, representing 81 percent of the total audience. MySpace.com widgets had the widest audience, reaching more than 57 million Internet users, while Slide.com ranked second with 39.2 million viewers. Google.com has the sixth widest widget-viewing audience with more than 19 million viewers.

What’s the “skinny” on what widget usage means to the lay person? Simply put, it means that widget usage can be computed as eyeballs on the site, which also means that if the widget is cool, you can bet others will go to get the widget. The widget is essentially another form of advertising. If they have your widget, that means they came to your site or heard of your widget from someone else. Word of mouth, Seth Godin, word of mouth!

Having said that, take a look at these November numbers.

Comscore Widgets

Obviously MySpace is the dominant player here but look at the others on the list. Slide for example is the largest personal media network in the world, reaching 144 million unique global viewers each month and more than 30 percent of the U.S. Internet audience. They help people express themselves and tell stories through personalized photos and videos created on Slide.com and viewed anywhere on the web or desktop.

Slide’s products — including Slideshows, FunWall and SuperPoke! — are popular on top social networking and blog platforms, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Tagged and Blogger. Slide is also the leading developer on Facebook with more than 84 million applications installed and the most active users than any other developer.

Clearspring though is NOT a social network. Clearspring is the leading provider of cross-platform widget services. Their goal is to make it easy to use content and services from across the Internet to weave personalized experiences. Clearspring is the leading enterprise-class widget syndication platform. With our out-of-the-box syndication solution you can quickly repackage your existing content and services as viral widgets and syndicate them across multiple platforms.

RockYou is a leading provider of applications and widgets on the web. RockYou widgets include photo slideshows, glitter text, customized Facebook applications and voicemail accessories that are simple to use and enable people to frequently refresh their online style. RockYou has over 35 million users, serving over 180 million widget views per day in more than 200 countries. RockYou applications are customized for easy integration across all social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Tagged and hi5. RockYou’s cost-effective, results-focused advertising platform is the largest Ad Network on Facebook and the most dynamic method for rapidly acquiring Facebook application users. New applications can reach over 100k users in 24 hours, spanning a suite of applications across multiple publishing partners

Photobucket Owned by News Corp is the most popular site on the Internet for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos, and graphics.  Photobucket, According to Comscore is: 

  • 24.1 Million unique site visitors/month in the US, and 34.6 Million unique site visitors/month worldwide.
  • #1 most popular Photos site in the US.
  • #3 most popular Entertainment/Multimedia site in the US.
  • #7 most popular Entertainment/Multimedia site in the world.
  • #24 in Top 50 Sites in the US and
  • #47 Top 100 Global Sites

The next one is BunnyHerolabs, bunnyhero pets bebo app the pets have been available on bebo for a while now as “widgets,” but now bunnyhero pets are available as an application on bebo’s new application platform.

What this means for bebo users is now when they adopt a pet on bebo, they can add the “bunnyhero pets” application. With the new application, they are able edit their pets after they’ve added them to their profile, like changing their pet’s name and color.

Next are the Musicplaylist.us and myplaylist.org widgets, which are a no brainer in the land of “can’t-miss” and “must-have”, widgets. And lastly if you ever wondered where all of the kitschy graphics on the MySpace pages was coming from, look no further than, and the name seems awfully apropos, BlingBlob.com. BlingyBlob.com, for us uninitiated, is the hottest source for FREE high quality graphics, animations, Flash and much more for your MySpace page, personal site, or blog. Makes you giddy, doesn’t it?

Look for music, video and image sharing widgets to continue to evolve to an extent that perhaps one day they become part of someone’s v-card or email signature, along with the location of their MySpace, FB or Linkedin pages.