To go through, sign-up for, and review the major players in the world of social networking is a major undertaking, and it seemed to only make sense to start with the golden child of the group, MySpace. Since it’s release in 2005, MySpace has been the biggest thing on the Internet. With it’s sale to News Corp. for $580 million, MySpace became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, websites sold since the bubble burst in the late 90’s, and has continued its unprecedented growth since then. Despite it’s obvious appeal to the masses, MySpace is hardly the answer to everyone’s online needs, and although users are drawn to the site, it seems quite obvious they would be just as quick to jump onto the next big thing. I hope you enjoy our MySpace page and our review of the site.
AIMSpace Clarification
Well, I hope I wasn’t one of the folks “raving” about AOL about to launch a “MySpace Killer,” but I did email SiliconBeat about the news. There is a small post about it on Catchup Friday by Matt Marshall, and more importantly, there is a link to AOL’s Ted Leonsis clarifying the situation. Ted makes a couple interesting points, and I find the whole post to be very political. I’m curious how many users AIM actually has - Ted says 43 million, but AOL’s Press Center gives a number of “63 million active users.” But what’s a 20 million difference in the scheme of things.
The way the project is being downplayed is interesting - in another post on the subject, Tina Sharkey, AOL’s Senior Vice President of Network and Community Programming, made comments similar to those of Mr. Leonsis. AOLTimeWarner has to consider News Corp.’s MySpace to be a threat, and anything that AOL develops that is anything close to MySpace has to be done in a way that can take on MySpace head-on. I purposely didn’t comment on whether “AIMSpace” could be a “MySpace Killer” in my post yesterday. To me, it was more important to discuss the reason why AIMSpace has the potential to be a threat rather than commenting on whether or not it actually is or will be.
Review: MySpace
April 21st, 2006
Click-fraud
I tried to post a comment about click-fraud earlier today on a SiliconBeat post, and in a rush to get to lunch, took out a chunk that I thought wasn’t important, only to realize when I got back that my post made no sense. Instead of re-posting, I decided I’d comment about it a little more here.
Besides the recent column by Mike Langberg in the Mercury News about click-fraud, there is also the announcement at the beginning of the month about Yahoo! being implicated in Spyware click-fraud. My post was in response to a post by Niki Scevak, and went as follows:
Although Niki makes some good points, if there is a general fear or concern about online advertising, it will only work against the Web 2.0 movement. Web 2.0 companies looking to take advantage of PPC ads won’t get the ads they need, because there are no assurances of the legitimacy of the ad clicks. It will be a case where a handfull wreck it for the masses.
AIMSpace
April 20th, 2006
Although it’s still somewhat of a rumour, AOLTimeWarner is the largest company in the Entertainment industry and the 40th ranked company on the Fortune 500. If there is a rumour that they will be releasing a “MySpace Killer,” it simply can’t be ignored. AOL has made a couple different moves to capitlize on the ever-growing power of the social networking niche, first opening up AIM to harness the power of their userbase, and then using that to help launch “AIMSpace.” Business 2.0 has a short article about the project, and has linked to a post on downloadsquad.com by Armughan Javaid, Program Manager in AOL Technologies’ Open Services group, that seems to confirm the soon-to-be-released website will allow non-AIM members to join.
One of the points I like to stress in talking about social networking websites, and really any website or business that tries to slide into such a crowded market, is what will make them different or give them an advantage over those already established. With AIMSpace, it is quite obvious. AIM has an active userbase of over 63 million, and by creating their own website from scratch, many of the downfalls/shortcomings of MySpace can be avoided - programming in Web2.0 and integrating popular AOL features are the two that first come to mind. There are several questions that come to mind when thinking about social networking websites, as I mention in my Un-Social Networking post, at least there is an angle to be worked by AIM - or 63 million different angles to work.
Facebook not for sale
April 19th, 2006
After gaining a lot of press over the rumoured $2Billion purchase price, Facebook announces that not only was it never really for sale, it has just raised $25Million in VC funding. Although this may confirm the company is no longer for sale, one must now question the source of the initial sale rumour. Was it merely a tactic to gain some publicity before looking or during negotiations for funding? We may never know. But a better question to ask might be why invest in another Social Networking website?
Yahoo!’s purchase of Meedio
April 19th, 2006
Initially, I had thought of ignoring the purchase of Meedio by Yahoo!, but having relooked at the purchase, it’s difficult to ignore the significance of the move. Earlier, I made a post about the shift in media and how networks like ABC and Fox are looking at increasing their exposure on the Internet. One of the comments made by Robert Young in his post on gigaom.com was about Google and Yahoo!, who were likely counting on becoming major distributors of Hollywood media, and where was this going to leave them. It seems Yahoo! has quickly answered.
Is the Blog-sky Falling?
April 17th, 2006
As a spin-off of some April Fool’s blog posts (Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Debbie Weil to name a few), Debbie made a prediction for 2006 (My prediction). Although I can’t totally discredit what she’s saying, that given the “power” of the blogosphere, posters and readers will have to be careful about the validity of information in blogs, I also can’t completely agree with it. The example she gives is obviously a good one, regarding Kryptonite bike locks and the blog post on Endgadget. But I have a couple different points to make about the post.
The Shift in Media
April 17th, 2006
A post on gigaom.com by Robert Young bring up an interesting point about the future of media content. In the last few years, several major companies have made moves to take control of the mainstream media content, and now, it seems, the major TV networks are making their own moves. Major TV networks like ABC and Fox (both mentioned in the article) have increased their web presence, providing their shows with ads/commercials on their websites. In the near future, we could see a very big shift in the production and distribution of media content and the creation of two very separate “poles” - commercial and independent media.
Un-Social Networking?
April 14th, 2006
Silent Rob and I recently started an ambitious project to review many of the major social networking sites in the next few weeks. Part of it is strictly personal interest, but there is a certain “research” aspect of it as well. Of course the point of a social networking website is to make contacts. At this point, net-friends and dating/hooking-up seem to be the majority of contacts that come from these sites, and it does become important to wonder, can these sites ever create real-world, business or industry contacts, or does it really take away from being social and actually meeting people.
One of my first thoughts was of Meetup. A different spin on a social networking site, Meetup actually arranges real meetings - quite an amazing concept on the web. It seems the site has been around for about four years and has a couple million members, but I think it has an interesting angle to work.
Google Calendars
April 13th, 2006
Google has finally released their Google Calendar application. After signing in and quickly navigating through the program, it is obvious that it is a beta version. Some of the bugs are so significant, that I even wonder why it was released - the add an item feature is fairly weak (you can’t save some updates!), and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make a recurring event (like a weekly practice). Regardless, there are two main points that I’d like to make about the release.