Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

There’s a very conclusive report over at TypePad about the benefits of adding Facebook’s ‘Like’ button to your web site. In short, it boosts traffic from Facebook by around 50%, which is not at all bad considering how easy it is to integrate into your design (check this instruction video at Social Networking Weblog to learn how).

The results are derived from an experiment in which roughly 1,500 TypePad bloggers installed the button (launched by FB last April) on their blogs and then recorded the ensuing boost in traffic. Full graphical data of the results can be found at either TypePad or Mashable.

Whatsmore, once TypePad added the like button as a post footer, bloggers saw a 200% boost in referrals from Facebook,…

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Never before has it been so easy to locate, share and discuss our favourite moments from an event such as the recently finished 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The reason for this, of course, is the amazing power of current social media as a tool for doing this – most notably in the form of viral videos, Youtube, Digg recommendations, Facebook ‘Likes’, blog pingbacks and so on (the list could go on for a few paragraphs no doubt).

So, with this in mind I decided that it would be nice to present some of the finest moments of World Cup 2010 which, in previous years, would probably have been lost without the aid of today’s social media. I guess this…

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Microsoft communications head Frank Shaw caused somewhat of a stir yesterday when he posted some highly telling statistics about the company – and its rivals – on the official Microsoft blog. Judging by the sheer volume of comment and debate that it has already attracted, I’d say he’s done a pretty good job of trying to set the various doubters straight – even if some of the stats are a little out-of-context.

As anyone following any sort of technology-orientated media sources in recent years will be aware, the likes of Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook tend to get about three to ten headlines (this is a blatant guess from me, let me know if you disagree) for every one Microsoft is…

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There’s been a few really top bits of reporting from Techcrunch over the past day or so concerning the developing spat between Mahalo CEO, Jason Calcanis, and Facebook. In short, Calcanis has been extremely public in recent weeks with his dissatisfaction over Facebook’s account termination policies and procedures, claiming that his data continued to be online even after his account deletion.

Facebook responded with some excuse about third-party sites keeping this data online, and re-iterated that they themselves had actually deleted the data. Anyway, with both parties basically calling eachother liars, Techcrunch thought they’d do some actual research rather than merely report the mud-slinging match – and hence tested Mahalo’s policy on account termination.

Surprise, surprise – it’s actually harder to quit…

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Four New York University students have raised over $200k to launch their privacy-conscious social network, Diaspora, intended as an alternative to Facebook for those becoming increasingly unhappy with the latter’s privacy policies. While it still very early days for Diaspora (they’re unlikely to overtake Facebook’s 500 million user mark any time soon), there can be no question that there certainly is a viable niche in the social network market for such a network as Diaspora – as their remarkably effective fund-raising efforts have shown (initial targets were a paltry $10k, exceeded 20 times over by the actual sum raised).

Furthermore, with the ‘Quit Facebook Day’ (organised by disaffected former users of the network) on May 31st seemingly attracting a reasonable number of…

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