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Valleywag
data portability
Posts Tagged “
Social Networks
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Google's Friend Connect bad news for Marc Andreessen
By offering a suite of tools for websites to add a social network layer, Google isn't challenging established players like Facebook and MySpace, but instead sites offering customizable, turnkey social networks. In other words, look out, Marc Andreessen: Larry and Sergey just declared themselves the Microsoft to Ning's Netscape. [News.com]
data portability
politics
To save "the children," Facebook tries press releases
At the direction of 49 state attorneys general, Facebook has adopted even more provisions to restrict interactions between adults and teenagers. Along the changes are automatic reviews of any age-changes made to underage user profiles, and the deletion of links to "pornographic materials." Even though most young people approached for sex by adults on social networks are already onto their date-of-birth deception, Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly's pledge to make Facebook safer for The Children makes for a good press op. Will the new rules make any difference, and how are they going to be implemented? We've asked Facebook how many engineers report to Kelly, but until they get back to us, it's safe to guess exactly none.
social networks
Researchers say the kids are alright
Mandatory age checks aimed at verifying users may not do much to protect children on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and other social networks. A task force on the behavior of teens on social networks found that the majority of young people who've actually had sex with adults they met online did so without any sort of deception. Does this mean that men in their fifties no longer have to go about pretending they like Hannah Montana if they want the affections of the underaged? No, it just means they're already onto you, dude. (Photo by generated)
widgets
MySpace charges $50,000 to $100,000 to feature apps
For the past two days, only applications from Max Levchin's Slide have appeared in MySpace's featured application page. Smaller developers asked why, the Social Times reports, and found out it's because Slide pays. On the order of around $50,000 to $100,000 per week, these developers say. Facebook does not charge application makers to feature them, ranking apps instead on user activity and feedback. The Social Times notes that MySpace's Sponsored App program could keep small developers from gaining popularity on MySpace. Whatever it takes to keep Vampires and Zombies at bay, we say.
social networks
Egyptian girl disappears for 16 days after creating Facebook group
Eygptian woman Esraa Abdel-Fattah created the Facebook group "6 April: A Nationwide Strike." On April 7, she disappeared for 16 days. After her mother bought an ad in the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Yom pleading for her daughter's release, the government finally obliged. But Abdel-Fattah learned her lesson. "I have not heard about any coming strike nor do I want to hear about it," she told Al-Ahram, a weekly paper. Her uncle, the weekly also reports, said Abdel-Fattah agreed to get rid of her computer. The Egyptian government is now said to be deciding between blocking Facebook entirely or continuing to use it to spy on its citizens.
social networks
Chinese Facebook clone Xiaonei raises more funding than Facebook
Masayoshi Son is the kingmaker of the Asian Internet. His latest coronation: Xiaonei, a Chinese social network whose name translates to "on campus" and whose look and feel closely mirrors Facebook's. Son's Softbank and other investors have put $430 million into Xiaonei's parent, Oak Pacific Interactive, in a deal which values OPI at more than $1 billion. This has to worry executives at Facebook, which has raised less money — albeit while selling far less of the company to investors than Xiaonei has. More »
online advertising
LinkedIn's CPM rates lower than reported $75, but still impressive
Seems comments made by Kevin Eyres, managing director of European operations for LinkedIn, were optimistic in pegging ad rates at a $75 CPM. To a degree. A customer who's bought advertising on LinkedIn wrote in to let us know that last fall they negotiated a campaign to run ads against the social network's "premium content" for a $12 CPM, $3 less than the listed $15 rate. The company is now charging $45 for that same inventory, they report. A quick look at the rate card shows that the $45 price point is for vertical banner ads targetted to IT and small business professionals. Custom targeting goes as high as $76.50 per thousand impressions. Good thing to know that you can bargain down those rates 20 percent. And it's still an order of magnitude more than any other social network has been able to charge. While Facebook charges less than a dollar for slutty come-ons, LinkedIn keeps it strictly SFW. After the jump, what the company refuses to allow in ads on the site. More »
social networks
Ready to update your Yahoo profile?
Yahoo is not building a social network, EVP Jeff Weiner promised EconSM conference-goers yesterday. "The world doesn't need another social network," he said. What the world needs instead, Weiner explained, is a network of social exchanges over the Yahoo platform. Specifically, it needs Yahoo to combine its "25 different profile experiences" into a single user profile and for Yahoo to monitor "the social exchanges" between users and then "monetize that intention." To us, that sounds like a social network. But it's not, Weiner assures us. Good thing he's familiar with bombs.
LinkedIn earning $50-$75 CPMs?
Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, reported that LinkedIn commands $50-$75 per thousand impressions on its advertising, in discussing plans for the social network's expansion into the U.K .and the continent. That figure, if Eyres is not being overoptimistic, puts LinkedIn in the same range that high-end business publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal command for their websites, and orders of magnitude higher than the rates seen on consumer social networks like Facebook and MySpace. [The Industry Standard]
Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, reported that LinkedIn commands $50-$75 per thousand impressions on its advertising, in discussing plans for the social network's expansion into the U.K .and the continent. That figure, if Eyres is not being overoptimistic, puts LinkedIn in the same range that high-end business publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal command for their websites, and orders of magnitude higher than the rates seen on consumer social networks like Facebook and MySpace. [The Industry Standard]
journalist math
ABC News grossly overestimates Twitter's reach
ABC News's thesis that "Everyone Is 'Tweeting'" is quickly disproven — in the latest article on Twitter from ABC News. It begins with the obligatory anecdote about James Buck, the Berkeley student briefly jailed in Egypt:[W]ith help from the Egyptian bloggers who received the message and alerted his university and the U.S. Embassy, Buck walked out of the police station a free man. His translator Mohammad was left behind.Mohammed Maree, who made the mistake of getting anywhere near a protest with a cocksure Berkeley J-schooler, is still in jail. And I doubt Buck's continued tweets will be much help in freeing him. Because hardly anyone outside San Francisco's self-involved startup circles uses Twitter, and an email or text message would have been just as effective at saving Buck while leaving Maree stuck in a cell. (Photo by James Buck)
social networks
Labor complaint against Uloop could set new precedent for Web unionization drives
Are employees who even mention the word "union" on employer-organized internal message boards protected under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935? "This is kind of a new frontier, a gray area," Austin Garrido told me in a conference call with fellow former Uloop employee Sarah Doolittle last week. He and Doolittle claim they were fired after discussing unionization efforts at the college-focused social network. As their complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board continues to be investigated, one thing it could hinge on is if discussion about forming unions online is protected in the same way that posting a flyer in the company break room or chit-chat amongst coworkers on a shop floor. "It's something that really hasn't been considered in the past," Doolittle added. And what about third-party employee networks on sites like Facebook? More »
6:00 PM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Jackson West
979 views,
7 comments
Latest by It'stheRooo: @giddieup: In your plans for world domination, I do hope you've included your status as sole employee in your sole proprietorship in your -- also sole, I'm sure -- acquisition exit strategy. more »
social networks
Dunder Mifflin Infinity promises fewer pedophiles in version 2.0
Since she landed the job last summer, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has subpoenaed social networks JuicyCampus and MySpace over problems related to sex offenders and other offensive material. Maybe Pennsylvania's governor should go after fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin? In the following clip from NBC's on-going verité series about the company's Scranton branch, Dunder Mifflin Infinity project manager Ryan Bailey Howard explains that yes, the company's online paper store — also a social network — experienced some difficulties with pedophiles, but that police have dealt with the matter. He also explains to staff that the paper company's need for social networking features on its online store will become obvious in version "two dot oh." More »
social networks
Labor complaint filed over Uloop firings
Uloop's Cal Poly campus representatives Austin Garrido and Sarah Doolittle, pictured here in their company shirts, have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after being fired by the student social network. The dismissal came only minutes after posting a message on the company's internal site expressing an interest in forming a union after discovering their paychecks were two dollars an hour lighter thanks to an unannounced pay cut, reports school newspaper The Poly Post. It is illegal in the United States to take action against employees for discussing union organizing efforts. I've asked Uloop and the reps for comment. (Via SFist)
breakdowns
Ning fires VP of operations two days before major outage
Here's how things usually work: Have a major outage, then fire your operations guy. At Marc Andreessen's Ning, the social-network Web host best known for its porn sites, things run a bit differently. On Monday, CEO Gina Bianchini fired VP of operations Alexei Rodriguez. On Wednesday, the company saw all of Ning's networks go offline. We hear Rodriguez failed to deliver a promised upgrade to Ning's systems that would have avoided the problem; the outage was coincidental but almost inevitable, given Rodriguez's omission. The larger problem for Ning: No one seems to care that it was down. When you offer porn and still no one complains that they can't get to it, you have a problem which goes much deeper than database configurations.
social networks
Facebook's "Guide to Viral Marketing," minus 7,433 words
What's in Facebook's "Insider's Guide to Viral Marketing?" "Really nothing compelling," social media marketer Alisa Leonard tells us. "They basically expanded their online step by step business page sign up process and made understanding [Facebook] pages idiot proof (read: CMO-proof)." The reason why Facebook is pushing Facebook Pages: They're a key advertising feature whose launch was obscured by the privacy fracas over Beacon last fall. What would really have made it friendly to chief marketing officers: Trimming it down from 7,533 words. We've embedded the whole thing below, but first, read a 100-word version that could fit in your Facebook News Feed. More »
social networks
Mechanical Zoo's social search will swaddle you in warm, safe groupthink
Searching the Internet has a downside: With 1.3 billion people in the world moving an estimated 627 petabytes of information a day, it's all too easy to encounter different cultures, unique perspectives, unfamiliar worldviews and opinions strikingly different than your own. Such heterogeny of tastes and classes and backgrounds is troubling, I know. Never fear, the ex-Googlers are here! Former Google News product lead Nathan "Zip" Stoll, former Google biz-dev manager Max "Blue Lightning" Ventilla and former Google security engineer Fritz "The Cracker" Schneider and friends pilot stealth startup Mechanical Zoo. More »
journalist math
