According to eMarketer, 24% of the 34.3 million US child and teen Internet users will visit virtual worlds once a month in 2007. This will rise to 34% in 2008 and by 2011, 53% will do so. Emarketer

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation, an online brokerage company, said one of its databases was hacked into and the personal information for more than 6.3 million customers was stolen. The company found malicious code in one of its databases. DM News

According to the latest figures, 250,702 of the total purchased were standalone units, while 75,943 Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core bundles have also been snapped up. That’s a total of 326, 645 in just ten days. Next Gen

Compete introduced its Search Analytics solution to fill an unmet need for marketers at both large and small companies — the need for affordable and robust search tools that can have an immediate impact on online and overall business strategy. DM News

Users can also obtain an anonymous credit card with no name or account number on it, something that could cut the risk of identity theft, fraud and problems stemming from lost or stolen cards, Revolution said. Reuters

“We believe great advertising is interrupted all the time,” said John Lack, co-founder and chief executive of Firebrand. “We curate the best TV commercials and promotions -- connecting consumers directly with their favorite brands in an integrated environment.” New York Business

Facebook has overtaken News Corporation's MySpace site as the highest-traffic UK social networking site with 6.5m unique users last month, according to data published today by Nielsen//NetRatings. media.guardian.co.uk

Among the more than 120 arrests announced on Monday in what the authorities called the largest steroids crackdown in the nation’s history, five men charged in a Connecticut sting stood out not for what they were peddling, but for where they were suspected of doing it: on MySpace.com. NY Times

Democratic contender John Edwards will be first presidential candidate to dive head-first into a "presidential dialogue" jointly hosted by MySpace and MTV Thursday. Wired

David Burden, managing director of Daden Ltd, said: “This is an example of the power of Second Life, and virtual worlds in general, in providing a shared visualisation system....offering possibilities for both the consumer and for business operations and scientific research. Being able to walk around data, and view it with others, can bring out insight and analysis that would be impossible in 2D systems, or PC-based 3D systems." Flightglobal

NEWS: Disney to Launch MySpace Knockoff

Social Networks/Myspace/Disney/Laurie Sullivan
Found on: redherring.com

Looks like Mickey and the rest of the Mousketeers what to jump on the Myspace bandwagon.

Disney CEO, Robert Iger will unveil a new Disney web site on Jan. 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the new site will be full of web 2.0 standards like social networking, chat and video clips.



Red Herring post:

Similar to News Corp.’s MySpace, the site will feature social networking, chat and video clips, but will incorporate parental controls for web-crawling kids. The site also offers Disney Xtreme Digital, a broadband tool that allows web surfers to create custom profiles and personal pages and share them with others, as well as Mickey, Pluto and the gang.

Redesigning Disney.com with digital media has been a top priority for Iger, according to reports. Critics of the old Disney.com say the revamp couldn’t have come too soon. The old site was difficult to navigate and doesn’t live up to Disney’s standards.

Hot Feature: Search Your Hive (Or Other's Hives)

Social Networks/Social Shopping/Stylehive
Found on: Stylehive.com

Googled-powered search feature now on the hive? That's right, my favorite social shopping site Stylehive just keeps getting better and better... now I can find all the things I can't afford to buy.

Have you bookmarked something and had trouble finding it again? Now you can search your own Hive with Stylehive’s latest Google-powered search feature. Go to “My Bookmarks” and scroll down to the right you will find a search box where you can enter any search term and hit “enter”.

By default the search will return tags that are related to your search query. But, you can focus your search by clicking on a refinement to search only that type of content. The current search refinements cover your posts, wishlists, tags, and follows of your Hive.

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 network sites battle to befriend US teenagers

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Cyworld
Found on: FT.com

In the red corner, weighing in at 15,000,000 users, the site with Seoul by way of Korea, Cyworld (ding, ding, ding) and in the blue corner, weighing in at an amazing 130,000,000 users, the undisputed, social network heavy weight champion of the WORLD, the one, the only, Myspace (ding, ding, ding)!


FT post:

At seven years old, Cyworld is a veritable veteran in the world of social networking. A dominant force in South Korea, where up to 90 per cent of under 20s are believed to be Cyworld members, the website is now looking for eyeballs in other parts of the world.

Top on the list of new targets is the US, the world’s biggest media market.

The American appetite for social networking appears to be just as robust as the Korean. Teenagers spend hours each day sending each other messages, pictures and videos. By some measures, more time is spent making and seeking entertainment on the internet than watching television – at the very least online chats are often done on laptops in front of the television.

Amazon's new Social Network webiste?

Social Networks/Website/Amazon/Askville
Found on: askville.com



Look who just launched a new website...I just received an email from our friends over at Amazon.com, inviting me to take a sneak peak at their new website "Askville.com".

Here's the email:

You're Invited!

As a valued Amazon customer, you've been specially picked to get an early look at a new website Amazon has just launched called Askville. Askville is a place where you can ask any question on any topic and get real answers from real people. It’s a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. It's new, and best of all, it's free!

Checkout the site's blog: Askville Blog

How soon is MingleNow?

Social Networks/Website/MingleNow
Found on: minglenow.com

Putting back the "social" in social network is the ultimate goal of the founders of new upstart social network site MingleNow. The site was built to connect members with the places they hang out offline, with other people who hang out there.

MingleNow post:

MingleNow was born out of a simple observation.

The founding team, Krishna, Gurbaksh, Dave, Lindsey and Dakota, are all extremely social people. Krishna was a successful club promoter. The rest of us have all spent way too much time in places with loud music and no natural light. It occurred to us that we had one group of friends through the clubs, bars and restaurants where we hung out and a different group of friends through the social networks we belong to.

That didn't seem right.

We set out to build the first social network that would connect you with the places you hang out offline, and the other people who hang out there.

Think about it. The places you like to go define you. MingleNow lets you meet other people who are attracted to the same places. You can also use MingleNow to discover places in other cities and areas that attract the type of people and have the type of vibe you're looking for. Finally, you can use the social calendar to organize your weekend without having to wade through a dozen calls, emails and IMs.

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.

NEWS: StumbleUpon offers auto discovery of online videos

Social Networks/Web Culture/Video/Eric Auchard
Found on: reuters.com

With over 1.6 million registered users, look who just jumped into the online video search frenzy.

Reuters post:

StumbleUpon, which helps Web users discover sites based on the ratings of users with similar tastes, on Wednesday said it was offering a way to create personalized channels for viewing online video.

Stumble Video provides a way to watch a stream of videos from popular video sites YouTube, Google Video and MySpace that are automatically matched to individual interests, the company said.

While online video search systems have proliferated over the past year, discovering what to watch typically depends on simple popularity rating systems or text searches that count on the user guessing what terms were used to label the video.

YouTube Explains the Mystery of Home Page Picks

Social Networks/Web Culture/YouTube/Mark Glaser
Found on: pbs.org

Mark Glaser's blog post tries to demystify the process YouTube uses to select which videos make it onto their home page.

He also questions the legitimacy of certain videos on YouTube's "Most Viewed" pages (not to mention censoring negative comments on it's videos.) and the techniques some marketers are using to promote their videos like hacking the system with programs to boost their view count.

MediaShift Post:

Mark Day, a friend of mine in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been trying to break into stand-up comedy for the past year. Recently, he got a big break by having one of his brief video comic bits — The Smiley Intervention — featured on the front page of YouTube . Not long after getting in the featured spot, his video shot up to 750,000 views, and he got hundreds of new subscribers to his YouTube channel, the home of his videos.

Day is a savvy marketing guy, so I wondered what he had done to win that slot. Did he contact YouTube to tout his videos? Did he pay for the featured slot? No and no. He attributed his success to finding topics that are timely — like George Bush’s backrub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel — and keeping his videos short and (bitter)sweet.

I reached out to a few folks who had videos featured on YouTube’s home page, and they all said they hadn’t contacted YouTube or paid for the slots. However, in one case, video director Brett Mazurek told me he had met with YouTube staff and shown them a trailer for his documentary on Ugandan hip-hop, which was featured on YouTube’s home page earlier this week.

NEWS: Scion Launches Broadband Site, Joins Second Life

News/Social Networks/Youth Trends/Betsy Spethmann
Found on: promomagazine.com

Back in 1999, Toyota Motor Corp launched a marketing plan called "Project Genesis", the plan was intended to attract more youthful buyers to the company's products.

To this day, it is still considered to be one of Toyota's worst flops.

Who would have ever guessed that this failed attempt to attract the gen x demo would become the catalyst to one of today's edgiest and innovating brands - the Scion.



Promo Magazine post:

Toyota's edgy Scion brand is launching two online ventures that extend its strategy of marketing through entertainment.

Scion has formed its own online network, Scion Broadband, with five "channels" of content. And, separately, Scion has cut a deal to place its cars in the virtual world of Second Life, an online society.

Scion is well known for using online, event and entertainment marketing in lieu of traditional media advertising. The four-year-old brand has a reputation for sponsoring emerging artists, especially in music, fine arts and animation.

Helio prepping next-gen MySpace Mobile

Social Networks/Myspace/Youth Trends/Mobile/Helio
Found: engadgetmobile.com

With Helio's exclusivity clause with Myspace about to be history you can bet the house that other carriers are chomping at the bit to get a piece of the Myspace pie.



Engadget.com post:

MySpace, Helio. Helio, MySpace. They just sorta sound right together, do they not? MySpace has been one of Helio's major pushes from day one, even going so far as to let MySpace members forgo the typical contract when signing up for service. Problem is, Helio is about to lose its exclusivity clause with MySpace, and you can bet your bottom dollar other carriers are rearing to get in on that lucrative demographic. No worries, Helio fans -- the funky lil' MVNO has another ace up its sleeve. The next generation of MySpace Mobile will be coming to Helio handsets shortly as a no-cost download, and it looks to be a pretty comprehensive revamp (and more importantly for Helio, it's a Helio exclusive).

What is Swivel?

Social Networks/Web Culture/Data/Swivel
Found on: swivel.com

If you've ever wondered what the subscriber growth rate of Second Life is compared to that of War of Warcraft, you have to checkout this new data crunching, web analytic, graphs and pie chart mecca.

It's a website called Swivel.com...read on.

Swivel.com post:

Swivel lets you explore data and share your insights with others. Swivel has data about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and more.

Swivel is full of good stuff. We think of it like this:

Explore popular data or obscure data. Search for it or have fun cruising all the colorful graphs, data sets and opinions.

Compare gas prices to presidential approval ratings or UFO sightings to iPod sales. You might find a crazy coincidence or something more.

Share your insights by posting a graph to your blog or emailing a link to your friends and coworkers.

Upload the information you care about, describe it, pick a color scheme and even pick a cool photo to bring it to life.

If you're curious about data, Swivel is the place for you.

Shout out to my boy sB! for turning me on to this site.

Youtube Video: PS3 vs. Wii Commercial

Social Networks/Web Culture/Youtube/Video
Found on: Youtube.com

Commercial comparing the PS3 to the Wii, like the PC and Mac ads.

Tags PS3 Wii Nintendo G4



Youtube Stats (as of this post):

Views: 61,112
Comments: 212
Favorited: 278 times

Some of my favorite comments:

swishieelove

i thought this commercial was so simple it was brilliant. The "hot chick" represents the wii as a cheap, affordable, easy system who's main purpose is FUN. While the PS3 tries way too hard to get all fancy that it is simply too fat and complicated.

stryker1138

And the Xbox 360 would be an Angelina Jolie or a Carmen Electra

fridaysindetroit

"I'm large and in charge . . ." Hahaha. Good commercial.

NEWS: MySpace, Apple in patch snafu

News/Social Networks/Myspace/Joris Evers
Found on: CNET.com

In response to the worm attack that hit MySpace over the weekend, the social networking site has made available a security update. Here's where it gets really, really lame: Myspace users are being told to go to a generic MySpace.com page via a message that appears on their home page from Tom (one of the co-founders) -- what gives?

CNET post:

Where do you go to get security updates for QuickTime? Apple Computer, you say? Wrong! This week, the answer would be MySpace.com. After a worm attack hit the social-networking Web site, Apple provided MySpace with a fix for the media player, which was distributed on the MySpace site.

Both companies demonstrated how not to deliver a patch, say CNET News.com's Joris Evers and CNET.com's Robert Vamosi in this week's Security Bites podcast. It's especially bad since the MySpace worm attack, while not the first, is another sign that attackers are looking to exploit such Web 2.0 sites.