Social Sites May Find Monetization Difficult
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A new study by Parks Associates indicates that attempts at monetizing social networking sites may backfire, leaving providers with few options to generate revenue from their users.
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Where traditional Web sites provide content to visitors, social networking sites tend to offer sets of tools that allow "the consumers to become the content," a lead Parks Associates analyst told BetaNews this afternoon.
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Social networks have made fortunes setting up Web sites that allow people to post profiles and trade messages. Now, the rank and file are getting the chance to make some cash from their contacts.
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By Jordan Robertson  SAN JOSE, Calif. - So far, when it comes to making money, the online  video explosion is mostly about potential.
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New music sharing network allows users to amass points by referring buyers.
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For years Internet merchants have poured millions of dollars into new technologies to make their sites easier to use. So why arenât online customers happier?
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The rise of social networks such as Facebook and wireless gadgets such as the iPhone has set off a small stampede of companies hoping to build on or replicate their success. Many are counting on advertising to pay the bills.
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As more and more retailers try to cash in on the online music scene, things are becoming increasingly befuddling for consumers -- especially for consumers who stray from the Apple iPod fold.
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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are exploring ways to make it harder for individuals to function on the Internet black market, which has a pronounced reputation-economy component that may probe an Achilles heel.
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What social web services do you get the most out of? And which ones are just a waste of venture capital? We want to know. In Monkey Bites.
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Social network firms reveal tools and technologies that aim to make the sites more than places to keep in touch.
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Many Web developers these days feel a sleep-depriving mix of unbridled enthusiasm and nagging concern over Facebook's social-network platform.
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Google fourth-quarter financial results indicate that making a fortune on social ads may not be as easy as poking a friend.
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Belatedly recognizing the importance of social networking as an online service and advertising vehicle, Google this week will unleash its strongest response yet to the rising threat and skyrocketing popularity of MySpace and Facebook.On Thursday, Google will announce OpenSocial, an initiative with a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) at its core that is designed &quot;to spread social applications across the Web,&quot; the company said.These common APIs have been designed to let developers create social networking applications that will run on multiple Web sites, simplifying the making and distribution of these programs.Partners supporting OpenSocial include various well-known software developers and social networking sites: Oracle, Salesforce.com, Hi5, iLike, LinkedIn, Slide, Ning, Friendster, and Plaxo. Neither Facebook nor MySpace is on the list of partners at press time.The move is also no doubt intended to dilute the massive&#160;success Facebook has had in attracting external developers&#160;since it opened up its Web site platform to third-party applications in May.About 7,000 such applications have been built for Facebook so far, helping to make the social networking site more attractive to people and thus boosting its usage.&#160;MySpace recently announced it would follow Facebook&#39;s example.By allowing developers to write an application once and have it work in multiple social networking sites, the OpenSocial initiative could, in theory, water down the appeal of Facebook&#39;s ballooning applications catalogue.Once considered a fad of interest mostly to teens and young adults, social networks have significantly broadened their demographic appeal, attracting many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.Along the way, social networking sites have been created for other purposes beyond entertainment and staying in touch with friends. For example, there are social networks tailored for specific occupations, such as doctors, and interests, such as sports.Google has had a social networking site named Orkut for several years, but it doesn&#39;t seem to have merited much attention from the company until recently, and only after the popularity and potential of this type of site became evident.Google was reportedly locked in a battle with Microsoft&#160;over which one would be chosen by Facebook to buy a stake in the social networking company and earn a deal to provide advertising to it.Microsoft eventually won, buying a 1.6 percent stake that values Facebook at an eye-popping $15 billion, although the social networking company reportedly will have revenue of just $150 million this year.With about 300 employees now, Facebook expects to have about 700 a year from now, its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said. About 250,000 new users register every day at Facebook, which was founded in 2004.In June, MySpace had 114.1 million unique visitors worldwide, ranking first among social networking sites, followed by Facebook with 52.2 million, according to comScore. Hi5 ranked third with 28.2 million, while Friendster was fourth with 24.7 million. Orkut rounded out the top 5 with 24.1 million.More information about OpenSocial and resources for developers will be available in this Web site later this week. There will also be a developer sandbox.
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(InfoWorld) - Web 2.0 has come to search engine optimization. Or rather, search engine optimizers have discovered Web 2.0. That's according to experts who spoke on Monday at the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle. "We all go to Google and Yahoo and MSN and Ask.com and make them work for us, that's our job," said Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, an SEO (search engine optimization) consulting company. "Our job is now extended into this new realm." Fishkin and others said that they're carefully using social networking sites to improve traffic to their customers' sites and build their brands. By attracting more traffic and links, sites can improve their search rankings. Some of the social networking sites Fishkin likes to use are YouTube, Wikipedia, Yelp, MySpace, Flickr, and Technorati. Other sites, such as Digg, Del.icio.us, TechCrunch, and Reddit, can also be used to boost brands and awareness through viral marketing, he said. "Social media marketing is about going out to Web 2.0-style sites and approaching them with the mentality of 'I'm going to contribute to this community,'" Fishkin said. That's an important distinction because marketers that use Web 2.0 sites in ways that counter the community's accepted use can run into trouble. "If you break these rules, users get nasty," said Neil Patel, author of the Pronet Advertising blog andÂ CTO at ACS, a search engine optimization company. "They'll keep pestering you and really ruin your life." For instance, a company that submits lots of its own content, creates multiple accounts in order to vote repeatedly, adds biased content, and asks friends for votes will run afoul of most communities, he said. But Patel also had advice for how marketers make the sites work for them. For instance, he recommends working hard to grow your "friends" list. If a marketer submits content and a lot of people vote on it, that marketer should add those people to their friends list. "Or, if you vote on stories and others vote on the same, they probably have similar interests" and could also be added as friends, he said. Also, becoming a top user on one site can translate onto others. Patel is well known on Digg, and when he goes onto Netscape, people there recognize him and then "show me love," he said. MySpace can also be a good outlet to build a brand and improve a company's online presence, said Cindy Krum, senior SEO analyst at Blue Moon Works. Companies can have MySpace profiles for different brands or products or even for specific people at the company who may be well known. Videos, coupons for free stuff, games, and podcasts are all good content for attracting people to MySpace pages, she said. "It's especially powerful because [social networking sites] allow users to publicly affiliate themselves with a brand in a way that is highly visible to their peer set," she said. While some companies may think that their target customer doesn't fit with the demographic of people using many of these social networking sites, the experts say participating in the sites is still worth it. "It's a jump-off point," said Todd Malicoat, an Internet marketing consultant at Stuntdubl, an SEO consulting company. "It may not be my audience at Digg, but if they like what I have to say, it will get to Techmeme, and then I'll get in front of the demographic I really want to go after." They all agreed that social networking sites can really improve a company's online reputation, but only if used carefully. Patel's ultimate words of wisdom: "Do what is ethical, don't jeopardize your brand, think long term."
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NEW YORK It&#39;ll come as no surprise to even the most casual industry observer that many marketers are shifting more of their ad dollars online. And perhaps even less surprising is that there are significant obstacles preventing an even greater flow of dollars to the Web.
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Social networking site offers profiles to search engines and gives users chance to opt out.