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

Posted on June 24, 2008 by marc meyer

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!

Myspace with over 72 million visitors per month.
Facebook with 22 million visitors
Bebo with 3.5 million
Tagged with 3.3 million
BlackPlanet with 1.9 million visitors
myYearbook with 2.89 million visitors
hi5 had 2.98 million visitors
Classmates had 11 million visitors
Friendster had 1.3 million visitors
Xanga had 3.7 million visitors
Orkut, intrestingly enough had 460,000, but was ranked 11th.
Asiantown came in at 147,949 visitors
Flixter had 3 million visitors
Migente had 1.2 million visitors
Reunion tracked 6.2 million visitors
Quepasa had 177,000 visitors
Tickle had 2.1 million
Piczo had 660,000 visitors
Multiply had 656,000 visitors and last but ceratinly not least and somewhat surprising is
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.

16 random negative Twitter-pinions

Posted on June 23, 2008 by marc meyer

Ok so Twitter has been up as of late, so maybe the above cartoon is not as applicable. But something that is, are people’s opinions or their general “take” on Twitter. Want to see some of the more creative answers to the question, do you Twitter? Interesting insight to say the least.

-“Personally, I don’t see the need to follow anyone that closely nor for anyone to follow me that closely. Nor do I want it either way”

-“Marc, call me a troglodyte, but I see no allure to this.”

-“, I don’t give a twitter if someone is looking at olives on isle four third shelf up. 😉 ”

-“Big Brother, anyone?? ”

-“No, I am not interested in what you had for lunch, nor do I share such information with those following me.”

-“I’ve tried it. It could become a black hole that you never get out of. It can suck up your time.”

-“Maybe it will become the new texting once devices catch up with the tech.”

– It’s a question of establishing followers that I find the least attractive aspect of Twitter — if you don’t have followers, you can become sort of psychotic, always talking to yourself in a tiny room with no one to listen to your persistent updates. ”

-” It seems pointless and just another time waster and login you have to try and remember”

-“The internets biggest waste of time ever!”

-“If Twitter is as I understand it, I’m not clear on how it is that any user types anything other than “I’m typing on Twitter”.

-“Either I need enlightenment or Twitter users need lives. Maybe second lives?”

-“Seems voyeuristic or reminiscent of horror and stalker flicks!”

-“It’s a time suck”

-“God bless. to each his/her own, and other sundry platitudes to that effect. But for me, nope. ”

-“I don’t know if it will ever become mainstream. But it does remind me of the way my teenagers use text messaging now. ”

To each his own I guess. I find it interesting that there is such a strong negative opinion, but even more interesting is that some of them may have not ever used it, either. What is your opinion of Twitter? Obviously, even if you have not used it before, you seem to have one. Mad shout out to geek and poke btw.

LinkedIn has got it’s act together

Posted on June 18, 2008 by marc meyer

Yep, LinkedIn does have its act together…Except for today, since they have been down for over 2 hours. But having said that, I’m sure the 23 million plus members will let them slide. Especially since it has now been valued at over $1billion! Watch this video and listen carefully. You may understand the thinking that goes into investing in some of the hottest social media companies out there today.

With 23 million members in 150 countries, more than half overseas, LinkedIn has said it could generate as much as $100 million in revenue this year from premium subscriptions, blue-chip advertisers, job listings and corporate services. It’s all part of a massive shift, dubbed Enterprise 2.0, as corporate America increasingly turns to the Web for software and services.

LinkedIn boasts that it averages a new user every two seconds. Research firm Nielsen Online reports that LinkedIn is pulling in 146% more unique visitors year over year.

In May, it was the fourth-most-popular social network, with 7.7 million U.S. visitors. Its audience stats are the kind that impress advertisers as well: The average user is 41 years old and makes about $110,000 a year.

How social networks might make money, virtual goods.

Posted on June 18, 2008 by marc meyer

Will selling goods be the answer for social networks?

Brian Oneill says that If you take a look at social networks in Asia, they are all monetizing their sites primarily through social goods. For instance, 51.com, which recently raised a $50 million round, earns 70 percent of their revenue through virtual goods.

I’ve written in the past about monetizing social nets and the challenges that the smaller players will face. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that if your revenue models are tied into advertisers, you may be looking at a light at the end of the tunnel attached to a train. So we talked about this over a year ago, and it’s been written about a lot back then, and still. So what has changed? Nothing.

Social Nets have to sell something other than subscriptions and ad space. So what is it? Virtual Goods,

Susan Wu, a principal at Charles River Ventures says that people spend real money on virtual objects for four major reasons:

Virtual objects aren’t really objects – they’re services

Virtual objects create real value for people

The cost of buying objects can be cheaper than “earning” them and lastly, and the most important,

You can make money off of virtual objects.

I would suggest all those who are “thinking” of jumping into the social media tech start up game to read the full article by Susan, though it came out roughly a year ago to the day, it is now more relevant than ever before.

13 Random Links for Tuesday

Posted on June 17, 2008 by marc meyer

Sometimes when I’m stuck, I go back to see what I’ve bookmarked over the past few days and weeks. it’s an interesting compilation.

BuiltWith is a website analysis tool, providing technical analysis and SEO optimization information to further your website’s marketing, sales and navigation effectiveness. It seems pretty cool, though, if you want a really neat web tool check this one out website grader

Clay Shirky is a pretty interesting person who has a new book out that I have on my “got to get” list it’s called, Here comes everybody, I read an excerpt and it was really really good.

I have Mike Stopforth’s web site bookmarked, he’s is an entrepreneur, writer and speaker who heads up Cerebra, South Africa’s leading social media company, I thought it best to see what others across the world are doing with social media.

Check out Utterz when you get a chance. With Utterz, you can instantly share your news by creating a multi-media posting in voice, video, picture and text, right from your mobile phone, or online. It works with every phone, on every carrier, which is interesting.

I struck up a conversation with Paul Chaney a few weeks ago and this is his company Bizzuka, I added Paul to my 4 more social media experts post

Here is a great post on…alas.. Taking a class in social media.

I’m always on the lookout for a good solid analytics package other than Urchin, and this one was referred to me the other day, check out Mint.

And lastly, I’m talking with these people tomorrow Ecairn, I’m looking forward to giving it a test drive.

Social networking is hard work!

Posted on June 9, 2008 by marc meyer

Or is it? Does it make my life more fun? Is it eventful? I’m not as bad as Tom Foremski who had 37, 240 unread emails in his account when he wrote an article about it. all I can say is wtf? Tom… Slacker! But actually Tom’s dilemna probablly mirrors others.

Maybe this is me? Courtesy of Geek and Poke titled “I have no time, I have to be social.”

Sometimes I feel like it. Actually I feel guilt if I haven’t posted anything on the blog. But seriously, don’t you sometimes feel like you have to hit all of these social sites to a) check in and b) see whats up and c) to be dissapointed when nothing is happening? I’ve often blogged about social media saturation and in fact, asked it of my Linkedin brethren, but I had phrased the question a bit differently. It went something like this:

What do you think the formula should be for social media saturation? Have we reached it yet?

The question is really more about saturation levels in regards to how much more we can take, but the answers were more of a, has social media reached critical mass bent. In fact Jon Udell had a post titled, “Critical mass and social network fatigue” in which he wrote,

Increasingly I’ve begun to feel the same way about the various social networks. How many networks can one person join? How many different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal with?

He wrote that over a year ago, I wonder what he feels now. The social networking stratosphere has grown exponentially since then and the problem is…

There are wayyyy too many cool apps and new social networks out there to ignore and NOT join in the conversation! Right?

Andrew Chen writes about his view on social networking and going from zero to critical mass in which he says that there are quite a few variable involved in getting to the top, the most important being, users. So another question I would offer up is, What do new developers and entrepreneurs feel about joining such a crowded space where critical mass is imperative, cash is usually dependant on advertisers and their users are already inundated with other social nets that they are a part of????

I’m going to botrrow one more time from Andrew Chen in which he writes the following:

Does everyone remember Metcalfe’s Law? It was formulated by Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and co-founder of 3Com, who stated: The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).

I’m cool with that. My only problem is, I want to spread myself thin. Yes sometimes I exhale as I run through logins and pw’s, and I’m always on the lookout for something new and cool but… I’m actually not sure what I’m looking for, I’m constantly looking for IT, but it has not been developed yet. Most Social Net’s are for the most part a lot alike. And maybe thats why we are members of more than one, because the one is not the ONE. Maybe we’ll know when we get there, but for now it seems like most of us are willing to maintain out memberships in multiple social nets, even if it means working a bit to keep them updated and current.

11 things that Social Media is not

Posted on June 4, 2008 by marc meyer

I was ready to tell Geoff Livingston what social media wasn’t and then I had an acid flashback and I started ranting about something else completely unrelated. he was still waiting as of this post. Well. it’s not the first time, I left someone hanging or wandered off track. I’ll be lucky if I can keep this on point.

Thanks in part to Scoble we know that Social Media is not:

Newspapers.
Magazines.
Television.
Radio.
Books.
CDs.
DVDs.
A box of photos.
Physical, paper mail and catalogs.
Yellow Pages.

But we all spend so much time explaining to each other and anyone willing to listen, what social media is, perhaps if we turn it around and tell people what it is not, then maybe that will help define it better. If anything, it will be a fun excersise in twisting everyone’s interpretation of what it is. So here are 11 more.

1-Social media is not about the above mentioned entities now being able to talk with us. It’s not about mass media. It’s more about the audience finding it’s voice. Hell, those guys, the old school, they are some of the most resistant adopters of anything that remotely resembles social media. They are stuck in their one to many, cul-de-sac marketing ways.

Brainstorm: Cul-de-sac marketing-The marketing efforts go in the same way as they come out with exhaust fumes in their vapor trail, and within that trail are the buyers of their marketing elixir. Their schtick.

2-Social media is not up to them, it is up to you and your voice

3-Social media depends on but is not predicated on many to many, and 4-is not one to one, but it can be. But it certainly is better than one to one and wait. It’s one to one, realtime. 5-Social media is not closed to anyone. It’s blind to race, creed and color, social status etc. All it cares about is your ability to communicate. The rest, the particulars, have a way of sorting themselves out. 6-Social media is not calm, sedate, unresponsive, or static. It disprupts. It’s in your face. 7-Social media is not passive. 8-Social media is not laryngitis. 9-Social media is not just for kids. It’s for Gen X, Gen Y, Gen C, and the Boomers. 10-Social media is not mainstream, yet. And finally, thanks Brian Solis 11-Social media is not the final frontier of marketing

Please feel free to add to the list of what social media is not. I could only come up with 11 thus far. Hook me up.

What is our personal saturation level for social media?

Posted on June 2, 2008 by marc meyer

Could there be a point down the road where we all just get burned out on whichever social network we are a part of? Doing a search on any posts that point to or mention social media saturation brings up very little, with the exception of the aformentioned link by Illuminea. With that being said, Jeff Nolan in his blog noted that We now log an average of 9.7 hours each day consuming media. Some experts say we’re at the saturation point. Interestingly enough, he mentioned that in August of 2007! One year removed almost, I would have to say that that number has definitely increased. There are close to 2000 social networks, its growing by the day, microblogging is coming on hard and our mobile devices are now like an extra appendage!

So 9.7 hous per day covers media in general, not neccessarily social media but all media. Because there are so many forms of media that we as a public devour, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we all sit around and toss in the towel and say, That’s it, I’m saturated. I’m done with my Ipod, my laptop, my cell phone and the television and movies. Hell, we could get finite and include, newspapers, magazines, kindles, and tin cans with strings, but I digress.

You see, here’s the thing. Jude Yew talked about how managing 13,000 friends might get difficult, but when does it just become a pain in the ass to manage x amount of SNS’s (social networking sites) and x amount of profiles and x amount of friends. When does it cease to be fun? When does it cease to be about Networking for the benefit of your business? Case in point, there’s a guy on LinkedIn and Ning for instance whom I won’t name who links and networks with whatever is moving. It smells like an MLM but my point is it’s no longer networking it’s something else. Perhaps its his way to build a database with the guise of “Linking” I don’t know. But if thats what happens or is happening then networking and linking to people all of a sudden become water downed. As Yew further writes:

I think that this brings up an interesting issue with how poorly the PR/Marketing/advertising industry understands how Social Networking sites work. We’ve seen the large migration of teen users from sites like friendster and myspace to facebook in the past year. One of the oft cited reasons was that the teens were tired of being hounded, not just by fake profiles (which is also a PR/marketing type issue), but by advertisers.

At one point in time I used to have a MySpace account but after being hit up by every hooker like name that ever existed,i.e. Domino, Ashley, Sindy, and Nicole, I decided that I didn’t need “that” type of friend. So I bailed. But, what if every SNS begins to buckle under the pressure of letting advertisers trying to link and network and make friends with its database of actual users?

2 things happen. Real actual users are going to leave in droves and real actual users are going to be wary of any subsequent social network they join. Amazingly enough, isn’t that what is occuring now? Everyone is a member of anywhere from 2 to 5 social networks? Why? Because one is bullshit or turned into just a jive network, whereas another delivers x but not Y. So we use them until more come along and we use them and we may or may not discard the old ones and before you know it, we’re saturated.

So now what? How do we manage our profiles and our memberships and keep it at a palatable level? Or even better, how many of you just abandon that profile or membership without deleting the information? I’d bet, depending on your age, that most of you don’t bother. The worlds advertisers thank you.

So what will happen to all things social network related when we do reach our saturation level? What is everyone’s personal saturation level? Let’s see if we can come up with some type of formula shall we? I’ve posed the question to some members of the Linkedin community, I will follow up with another post on those answers.