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.

Virtual magnate shares secrets of success

Web Culture/Second Life/Interview/Anshe Chung
Found on: cnet.com

Some people consider Ailin Graef also know by her Second Life avatar name, Anshe Chung the poster child of profitable Second Life businesses, while others consider her a modern day equivalent of a virtual land baron.

CNET post:

Since its public launch in 2003, the virtual world Second Life has become a haven for entrepreneurs. And while the number of people making a considerable profit is still relatively small, it is growing rapidly.

The poster child for profitable Second Life businesses is Ailin Graef--better known by her avatar's name, Anshe Chung--and Anshe Chung Studios, the business she runs with her husband, Guntram Graef.

Originally, the two ran the company from Germany, but earlier this year, they set up shop in Wuhan, a large city in China, and are now employing more than 30 people full-time at, she says, better than local average wages.

Last month, Ailin Graef issued a press release announcing that the company's total holdings, comprised mainly of virtual land in Second Life, were worth more than a million real-life dollars. For those who aren't familiar with the complex economies of virtual worlds, such a claim may seem incomprehensible.

Who's Lonely Now?

Web Culture/Myspace/YouTube
Found on: Popyourit!

Lonelygirl15 is a fictional video blog staring super cute New Zealand actress Jessica Lee Rose as the rebellious and sometimes silly Bree. The bedroom confessions of Lonelygirl15 has become one of the most viewed YouTube series to date and has garnered international attention.

Lonelygirl15's blurbs:

What can I say? Hmmm my name is Bree. I'm homeschooled, so I guess that makes me a freak. Not! I don't care about a lot of the same things people talk about on MySpace and YouTube, but I'm trying to learn :). A lot people requested that I come on here too...so here I am just trying to learn. Hope you like it :)

I copied most of this stuff from my YouTube profile because I'm lazy (urrrrghghghg)

Declared as the "Face of YouTube", Lonelygirl15 remains the site's quintessential form of self expression .

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.

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.