I’ve recently been looking over the current stats for the way the global social networking pie is shared out right now (in terms of users – not other standards like monetization potential for example). Once again we see Facebook and Myspace ahead in countries like the US, UK, Canada etc with Bebo and Orkut also having considerable presence in other territories. I can’t help but notice also that while these social networks have enjoyed (or endured) fairly significant changes in their positioning in the past couple of years – one remains always roughly fixed in its modest but steadily growing position – LinkedIn.
Yes the social network – that kind of isn’t – at least in the sense that maybe we should…
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We’ve become used to all the standard ways of comparing the relative values and rankings of social networks, and the markers for monitoring their growth. Unique users has always been the most key factor, and useful as it was – it was also rather limited and actually sometimes told us very little. The data always felt slightly one-dimensional, as if there were more pieces to the jigsaw that we weren’t seeing – like a football score that only tells you one team’s result and not the others.
Which is why I’m delighted to read some fascinating posts over at Techcrunch about a new way of modelling the true value of social networks. The new system is based on a key principle –…
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Twitter has seen the development of a strange phenomenon in recent weeks, whereby thousands of user profile images have been ominously replaced by plain black squares. However this is not due to a a server error or code glitch, but is instead an act of co-ordinated protest against new proposals for internet regulation from the government of New Zealand.
The ‘blackout’ has also shown signs of spreading to other social networks like Bebo, Facebook and Myspace. Organised by the Creative Freedom Foundation, the action has had some impact already in causing the offending legislation to be delayed. Whether it can actually stop it remains yet to be seen, but the wider question really is – just how effective can such internet protest ever…
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The folks at Facebook have had a busy week. They began with announcing a forthcoming data portability product called Facebook Connect, (which marks the abandonment of their fundamental ‘walled garden’ approach to user data management) and then went on to ban Google’s own data portability service (Friend Connect) from their Facebook API, stating a violation of terms of use as the reason.
Some bloggers and commentators have been contemplating if this might mark a new phase in the development of social networking, with the earlier co-existence of the main players now giving way to a more open tug-of-war for market share. After all, new user uptake is slowing down, and one way for social networking sites to continue to grow will…
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