Social Networking Awards - The Top Social Networks of 2006

News/Social Networks/Awards/Peter Cashmore
Found on: mashable.com

Back in December, I blogged about the first annual Mashable "Social Networking Awards", the results are in and although there aren't a lot of surprises, there were a lot more smaller niche networks that made it onto the list then I thought there would be.

Mashable post:

For those who are interested, our picks were made by Mashable, Mashable Labs and Advantage Consulting Services, the team that oversees social network consulting for our clients, in addition to recommending the best partners and white label social networks. The ACS team also has a background in web development (they were behind the stats service CrazyEgg, for instance), but they don’t have any competing services in the social networking space. Our criteria were: Growth and Momentum; Design and Usability; Uniqueness/Innovation. There are two winners in each category, followed by the sites that are “Hot for 2007″ - a combination of your votes and our picks.

NEWS: Social Networking Awards - Nominations Open!

News/Social Networks/Awards/Peter Cashmore
Found on: mashable.com

With over 412K subscribed readers, Peter Cashmore is one of the most read and influential bloggers in the world. Peter's blog "Mashable.com" is primarily a blog dedicated to what Peter refers to as "social networking 2.o"; Mashable is a must read for anyone looking for news on the newest and most innovating social networking sites.

That said, Peter announced on Saturday, that Mashable along with sponsors "Photobucket" are now accepting nominations for the first annual Social Networking Awards -- congrats Peter!!

Mashable post:

I wanted to save this up for Monday, but we thought we’d give you some extra time over the weekend for nominations. First up, many thanks to Photobucket for offering to sponsor the Social Networking Awards 2006, which will run from now until the end of next week. The winners will be announced late on Thursday, December 21st (which for some of you will be Friday morning).

A few notes to begin. The Awards are not specifically for social networks launched in 2006 - there are sites launched years ago that have made big strides this year (StumbleUpon, for instance). Also note that networks certainly don’t need to be US-based, but they should be open to registration from anywhere in the world and should have an English version available. Obviously, the nominees don’t need to have been mentioned on Mashable, since I’m sure we’ve missed plenty of good ones. You can nominate your favorite sites in the following categories. To nominate a site, put the site name and category in the comments. Alternatively, you can write a post on your own blog and trackback or link to this post. You can nominate one site in each of the twelve categories. Voting will begin on Monday night and continue until Thursday night.

1. Large Scale

This is for social networks with more than 500,000 users. That would include MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, hi5, Piczo, Tagworld, Bebo, Tagged, Orkut, Xanga, Facebook and many more. How is a social network defined? At the very least, these sites should have profile pages with the ability to add friends. If you need inspiration, Wikipedia has a good list of large social networking sites. Since there isn’t a huge number of small-scale business networks (apart from Ecademy, perhaps), LinkedIn and Xing will be eligible. Ryze would probably make the cut, too.

2. Widgets and Add-ons

This category is for companies that provide tools for blogs and social networks. Examples include Stickam, Slide.com and MyBlogLog. Photo hosting sites like Imageshack are not in this category. However, avatar services like Meez are eligible. And since we don’t have a specific category for instant messaging, we’ll include Plugoo, MeeboMe and other IM tools that can be embedded in web pages.

FakeYourSpace Launches - Buy Sexy MySpace Friends

Social Networks/Web Culture/Peter Cashmore
Found on: Mashable.com

Peter is reporting the launch of a new service that allows unpopular people on certain social networks to buy "hot" friends -- could this be the beginning of the end?

Mashable.com post:

FakeYourSpace, which is edgy, and may not be completely worksafe, launches this week. The service has an extremely amusing aim: it allows unpopular people on MySpace, Facebook and Consumating to “buy” hot friends. For just $.99 per month, you can buy a good-looking friend who will leave 2 comments on your profile every week. You can choose from scores of semi-clad male or female friends, and “buy them” twice to double the number of comments they leave. Payments are made via Paypal, of course. Want to annoy your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend? Just ask your hot new friend to flirt with you in your MySpace comments. Alienated all your Facebook friends by being nasty to them? No problem - just buy some new ones! And there’s no risk of your real friends discovering the ruse, since all of FakeYourSpace’s profiles are set to private.