Social Networking Journal

Bebo: Off To Another Market?

Bebo.com is struggling to regain its popularity with many new features, such as IM integration (users from AOL’s very own AIM can login to Bebo) as well as social aggregation via SocialThing and . It’s obvious that they’ll need to do much more than that to earn AOL back the $850million Bebo was bought for a little more than a year ago. Whatever AOL is up to, it’s certainly going to be interesting, but all signs tell (and told) that it will be another attempt to try merging AOL’s largest user base – the 30 million AIM users who

It looks like Bebo is aiming to attract new users from the oversaturated social networks by becoming sort of an all-in-one page. You can now check your mail, listen to music, watch videos, chat via AOL’s AIM, add widgets and let others see your Twitter/Facebook/MySpace updates – all in your profile. In short – all your internet social life up in one place. But one question remains – why should you use Bebo then? They can get practically the same at AOL, SocialThing, Profilactic, partly Yahoo and many others. But the social network part? It can be had anywhere, namely Facebook, which has already surpassed Bebo in its supposedly largest markets – the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Although it offers some unique features, the rest looks like a swift emulation with no soul, with an exception at Bebo’s music pages which allow you to add the songs to playlists, as well as the service clearly understands its scarce position in the market – if the visitors can’t go to Facebook just because they use Bebo, they won’t go to Bebo as far as they’re concerned. Bebo will continue to get fewer and fewer visitors each month, but some users will stay as a stable membership base, as the site can be valuable to some people. Some people. That clearly isn’t enough for AOL’s money.

Bebo witnessed an astonishing 50% growth rate during March 2009 when AOL launched the aforementioned merging of the accounts, but it just doesn’t stick, as the users from AIM visited Bebo because of the notifications they received, but simply didn’t know what they can do within the site. The site’s targeted to teens and students, but that doesn’t click with the number of visitors that Facebook or MySpace get.

While it’s interesting to see what Bebo will offer in the future, it looks as though they’re facing an uphill battle. AOL can literally see their cash burning when they look at the declining popularity of Bebo. Whatever Bebo will bring to the table, it has to be something really, really big if they still want to remain in the big market. The direction Bebo is going to is not firmly set in terms of conquering the market, and lost souls, as well as lost social networks, seldom find their way back home.

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Is Twitter Linking Profitable – How To Use Twitter For Link Building

Twitter isn’t a sacred monument from a SEO point of view. The main problem is that Twitter adds rel=”nofollow” to every link in your Tweets, which means that it won’t boost your sites’ PageRank, whether you want it or not. It’ll come to the search engines as a dead end that has no value at all. Now when that matter is settled, you might wonder – why should you read the rest of this article? Twitter CAN be used for link building and it’s always interesting to try new stuff, so please continue reading.

Because links are still links, and although they won’t help your search engine rankings, you can still profit from them. Aside from the obvious (the links will bring in traffic), there are other things that good links on Twitter can do for you. Link building should be that of your primary concern (aside from giving value to the Twitter community with interesting Tweets, that is).

Everyone would gladly go in more detail on how to gather a wall of followers that would be greater than the Great Wall of China, except for the simple fact that it’s too easy to write about. Just put up a search at Twitter for keywords of your niche, follow the people writing about them, write your own interesting stuff and voila – you now are a proud owner of a user base that’s quite targeted. If you’re picky enough, you can only follow people that have their own sites, because you only want to target them. Or not to, if the niche you’re targeting is quite small.

It’s easy to work once you have a user base. Most of the things you need to do are too obvious to mention. The key, the Rosetta Stone of Twitter link building is that you should never forget that you need to offer an awful lot of value in order to build links through Twitter. Most of the people on Twitter have more than just a blog, they have their own sites, maybe they’re from a government-related institution and they’ll link you just like that.

A smart thing to do is to set up a Twitter search to the address of your URL (although you may miss something because of the shortening services), write/get valuable content and wait for the links. Once you figure out the way that you’re getting that attention, you’ll soon be able to repeat the process with relative ease. Valuable content is crucial because if you want to build links, you will need someone to RT (retweet) your tweets with links in them.

All in all, link building through Twitter is not a waste of time only if you find professionals of your niche and build mutual relationships with them by connecting with them regularly. That way you will not only build good links from trusted sites, but you’ll also stay connected to the news of your niche. Don’t worry if links don’t come too well, because the main thing that Twitter accounts for sellers is the incredibly targeted traffic it brings.

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Is Myspace Losing It’s Edge?

Is Myspace having a difficult time losing it’s edge in the competitive vertical of social networking? It’s hard to say. MySpace has its share of users who simply won’t leave no matter what, because they’ve spent a lot of time to design their user pages, write journals and gather online friends. The crew of MySpace is continuing to add new features, but will their need to expand while keeping their remaining audience succeed? Only time will tell.

There’s definitely something that MySpace team has to do in order to stay alive.
Compete.com says that the arch nemesis of MySpace, Facebook, has already overcome MySpace in terms of traffic received. It happened somewhere around December 2008. However, MySpace didn’t witness any dramatic decrease in visitor numbers, as the monthly traffic has declined by only 8% since May 2008. The statistic is quite good for them, as Facebook has grown an astonishing 250% during the past year.

Statistics are nothing without proper interpretation.
Actually, these statistics show that MySpace is stagnating, nothing more and nothing less. The soaring numbers of Facebook users show that Facebook have targeted whole new audiences that MySpace couldn’t conquer without drastic changes to their site. Facebook is with a more flexible audience, as the pages of MySpace look plain ugly for the first time visitor.

User statistics also don’t mean anything, at least if the companies can’t profit from them.
The monetization of MySpace is clearly going better than the one of Facebook. The users just generate more cash than the ones at Facebook do. That’s the downturn of the popularity that the #1 Social Network in the world has – Facebook can’t target their users very well because of the tremendous age differences of members there. However, the main rival of MySpace has its advantages (e.g. a cleaner look) for attracting potential advertisers. Contrary, MySpace has no problems with its teen to twenties user base, because it’s easy to target. That is why they can cash in more, even from their shrinking user base.

What should be done?
MySpace has implemented a micro-blogging feature following what Facebook did. Well, you can disregard Twitter, but it’s bad for business if people find features that are offered on other sites and go to those sites, instead of putting up with what MySpace has. New features will be introduced undercover, in order to sustain the shrinking pool of MySpace users. It’s difficult to predict what some of these features might be.

MySpace is on a crossroad. One way, there is the golden crown of music that MySpace has successfully implemented, it still can be polished, and if they choose to do it, they’ll probably squeeze everything left out of the music niche that can possibly be taken.

The other way is taking risks to make MySpace more appealing to audiences other than teens trying to get in touch with the bands they like. Generally speaking, MySpace has to choose whether they want to fight Facebook or try to sustain their user base. It’d be interesting to see if they can do both, but only time will tell. Long gone are the days when MySpace first appeared and raised to heights no other Social Network can rise to again, they finally need to work with an attitude of a market shark, otherwise MySpace could be a fad that’s as popular as yesteryear’s parachute pants.

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Twitter Applications: A List Of Niche Twitter Apps You Should Use

Desktop applications are made for any social network that’s out there. There have been countless applications for MySpace (namely bots), Facebook, digg.com and others. Twitter is no exception for that, as there are countless applications available for Twitting and sharing your Tweets with everyone, available both as desktop and online applications. In this article, we’ll try to name the most prominent and outstanding Twitter applications, as well as offer you advice on which application should suit your needs.

Tweetdeck
The most popular Twitter client in the world, according to Compete.com.
Has a clean, web 2.0 look and the simplest installation in the world, thanks to Adobe AIR, also supports Facebook and many other sites. Perfect for the average Twitterer, but lacks the support of multiple accounts.

Twhirl
One of the most popular Twitter applications up-to-date. It is simple supports multiple accounts, searching for your replies, shortening URLs and much more. The only downturn it has is that you can’t view the complete profiles directly in the application, thus disallowing you to follow people you could want to follow through your friends’ profiles.

Splitweet
The application made exclusively for having multiple Twitter accounts. Has a nice, clean design. Although it’s for multiple accounts, it isn’t a device for an average spammer.

Qwitter
Qwitter is the simplest web-based Twitter application which notifies you via e-mail when someone stops following you. Easy to use and perfect if you’re worried about what impact your tweets can leave on your followers.

Monitter
Monitter allows you to dig through real-time trends on Twitter. It might come in handy for journalists, as Tweets are often long ahead of the traditional media.

Twitpic
Twitpic is an on-line picture sharing service for Twitter. Automatic posting via Twitpic is available in many Twitter desktop applications. Supports posting pictures with e-mails from your mobile phone.

Twitterholic
A webpage designed purely for Twitter statistics, namely, the count of your followers. For example, twitterholic.com shows that there currently are thirteen proud Twitters that have over a million followers. You can also check your ranking in the pretty clean page.

Twtpoll
Twtpoll.com offers the chance to create and manage polls to use through Twitter, Facebook and many other social media sites, a must have if you want to know what your audience thinks.

Topsy
Topsy is a fresh, Twitter powered search engine. It has a lot of potential, as it digs mostly through social media sites, thus providing only and only fresh content. If Topsy spreads out, we should likely get an answer from Google.

All the applications mentioned here is but a fraction of what the web is offering for fellow Twitters. There will be many other fresh and innovative applications, made exclusively for social media sites. In 2009, the web is starting to gain a form one could only dream about when the web first appeared in 1980s. User generated and user moderated content will leave a great scar on anyone in business, who doesn’t consider the demands and the tolerance of the public.

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The Reign Of Facebook: Will It Ever End?

Facebook can be called an internet phenomenon. Its rapid growth since it was introduced as a service made exclusively for Harvard students in 2004 is a spectacular example of a successful social media project. While its closest competitor, MySpace, is stagnating and struggling to sustain its user base, Facebook continues to attract new users. In this article, we’ll try to look to the reasons behind the tremendous success of Facebook.

Brief history:
Facebook was founded in February 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates – Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It received its first large investments 2005, while Facebook was still not available for the whole public. Facebook was opened to anyone aged 13 and above only in late 2006. It is currently valued somewhere between $1.3 and $10 billion and is the leading social network in the world with more than 200 million registered users.

Reasons for success:

The success of Facebook arguably comes from its appeal to the older demographic. The fact that there are very little customizations one can do with their Facebook page/profile may actually appear more attractive than the tuned-up user pages of MySpace, especially for older people who continue registering at Facebook at rapid rates. The company continues to receive a lot of free advertising both for its sudden popularity and the innovative features it adds to attract new users.

According to Google Trends, Facebook is much more popular than MySpace in every European country. The reason for this is probably the availability of Facebook in almost every language in Europe. Conquering the user base in the U.S. still remains a close battle, however, if MySpace don’t act soon, they’ll eventually lose the battle of the most popular social network in the U.S .

What needs to be done:

Facebook has a lot of areas to expand in, starting from the already-growing 35-54 year old segment, to the teen demographic which might migrate from MySpace. It also has a lot of potential in advertising alcohol, as the 21+ age group accounts for more than two thirds of overall Facebook population. The expansion of Facebook is international, for example, in Denmark, two thirds of the population is classified as active Facebook users.

While the company is busy gathering new users, there is a bigger problem Facebook has to face – how to monetize the traffic they receive? The idea of Facebook virtual gifts worth $1 didn’t work out, and although the company is earning quite a deal from advertising via Microsoft, there is a lot of work to do to make advertising more efficient. Perhaps the targeting of ads is missing something big, or maybe they just don’t want to push advertising in too early, as it could drive away potential users. We’ll certainly see a new strategy of monetization on Facebook in 2009, as it is nearing the physical limit of its users in most of Europe, Australia and other countries. Time will tell whether or not the popularity of Facebook will make it a great business power like Google, at least in social networking terms.

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How To Use Twitter Correctly

Well, that’s quite easy. Since Twitter is free to use and available in every country in the world, you can just register and post tweets, engage in superficial internet relationships which require little or no investment. However, there’s more than that in Twitter. In this article, we’ll try to have some insight on how to use the famous 140-character micro blogging service correctly, as well as introduce you to basic vocabulary every Twitter should know.

Before you start Tweeting, here’s the basic vocabulary of Twitter:

To ‘follow’ someone means to subscribe to another users’ tweets, or follow to subscribe from them. You may want to follow only followorthy users as they give you more valuable content than the others.
To Retweet or RT means to re-tweet tweets tweeted by other twitters, this can help you a lot, as it shows that you don’t care to put yourself in front of others.
You can also send Direct Messages (DM) to other users; they can only be seen by the users you send them to.

You now know the basic vocabulary of Twitter and chances are you didn’t even need that. And now, you’ve registered and now you want to post tweets. Your first tweet should usually say nothing more than a simple hello. When you have posted your first tweet, it’s now time to gather followers. You may want to find Twitters in your area at first, your friends or business partners. To do so, you can use Twitter’s own search engine.

Now you have followed some people, some are following you back, so your follower rate is growing steadily. What now? Engage in conversations. It’s easy. You can do it through the web or even get a fancy Twitter desktop application from the list at Twitter.com, as it is easier to track your replies and tweets with them. Also, using Twitter applications is a must if you plan on having more than one Twitter account.

How to formulate a tweet? For one, be briefer than the 140 character limit, as it makes the reader to actually read the tweet you’ve made – countless new tweets appear each second and the longest ones can actually be skipped by the average viewer.

Offering value to your followers or any outside reader is a must, if you want other Twitters to love you (retweeting and replying to your tweets equals love in Twitter). Be it an interesting link, or a personal reply, it can reach to your audience, as long as it’s interesting.

When all is said and done, all you need to do is post tweets. And gather followers. As for the gathering of followers, you need to consider one reason – why would you want to gather them? Will you twit purely for meeting people with shared interests, to advertise your business or something else? It’s entirely up to you; you’ll get followers no matter what you post. People will retweet your tweets from time to time, as long as you don’t come off as trying to take value (getting followers no matter what) from the other twitters.

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Is It Possible To Make Money With Youtube Videos?

Making money by putting videos up on YouTube isn’t a dream or a thing that only a man who has achieved enlightenment or other type of divine inspiration can do. It takes a lot of creativity to make a masterpiece, yet you don’t have to get hung up on that thought. YouTube offers a lot of competitive ways to get money from your pieces of media: starting from the official YouTube partnership which gives you money from the ad revenue of your videos, to affiliate marketing with the help of videos, as well as a few Black Hat methods that are still prominent and used in YouTube.

Believe it or not, some people earn six figures a year with YouTube. All they have to do is post funny videos on YouTube, producing a bomb from time to time. For example, Cory Williams, a famous YouTube comedian, claims to earn about $20,000 a month producing videos on YouTube, not to mention the money he earns from various sponsors. Video makers like him are creative and dare to the bone when they created the videos, but they are now living quite easy.

Does YouTube help the ordinary marketer make money?
It’s hard to say. One might think that an “O.K. to watch” video is all it takes, but it’s not. You have to put in many market practices to compete in YouTube. SEO for keywords and tags, NLP for explicit marketing, you name it. It’s extraordinary to see a marketer gain a short term YouTube success, because putting videos on YouTube as well as collecting a large number of subscribers is quite of a hassle. If your niche is popular, you may try to put up an amateur video, this will drive visitors to your site, at least I did.

Are you curious about the numbers? A while ago, there was a video that focused on a game that was recently released. The site gave the public what the public wants – exploits to the maps the game had, shown on uploaded videos, along with other unfair methods that were considered ‘player griefing’. The four videos got viewed about 5,000 times and about 500 hundred came to visit from each. That day, the CPM at the site the users were redirected to was at $3.21, so the earnings were at about $4-5 from the four videos uploaded on the same day. It takes about 40 minutes to make the video, and they are really a long-term investment. Keep in mind that the video wasn’t promoted in any way.

So what does this all tell you? Well, for one, it is possible to earn money directly through YouTube. It is also possible to just get plain traffic from YouTube, or convert sales with advertising videos. The golden age of YouTube won’t be gone that fast – there are 20 hours of new video uploaded at the popular video sharing website each minute. Furthermore, the team of YouTube is constantly thinking about new marketing methods and improvements that can be more appealing to the producers of videos.

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Twitter vs. Instant Messaging

Twitter has certainly been a bomb in the internet and the micro blogging platform it offers is getting more and more popular each day. It continues to break into new markets, and, at least it looks so, is starting to bite its share off of Instant Messaging clients as AIM has recently dropped 2 million users, leaving it with 28 million. Whether or not AIM lost its users to Twitter exclusively, remains to be seen, however, there certainly are a lot of advantages that Twitter offers against IM’s like GTalk, MSN, AIM and Skype. Another question rises – will Twitter manage to overcome its shortcomings against them?

The use of Twitter was incorporated in various Instant Messaging services back when Twitter started in 2006. The IM support was discontinued as Twitter gained some degree of popularity without the aid of Instant Messengers. Twitter has a lot more to offer than IM services. For example, new people to talk to. Your contact list in IM might be restrictive if you want to meet new people with shared interests. Twitter has no such restrictions – you can talk to anyone you like to talk and probably someone who you just couldn’t reach via IM.

One of the reasons why the use of Twitter has risen is the extensive availability of Twitter desktop applications. They offer almost the same degree of customization as IM’s do and usually allow the user to use other social networking sites with them. For example, Tweetdeck, a Twitter desktop application, also supports receiving Facebook updates, and will add the support of other applications in near future. The sense of a desktop application also gives the feel of an IM, so the user gets comfortable with the new service early. It’s arguable whether or not the Twitter applications will gain more popularity, but the applications are something that a casual IM user would probably be more interested in than posting from the web.

There are, however, some exclusive things that Instant Messaging services offer, like a real-time chat. Twitter conversations can long for days, with one party withdrawing from the conversation whenever they like to, and recover them whenever they like to, which is quite unsuitable for any kind of business, except for working at the post. Also, Twitter will probably never have Voice over Internet Protocol support like the instant messengers do, but the most important thing is the word “instant” in “instant messenger”

What it comes down to is this – whatever you may be using Twitter for, remember that it’s just a tool for tweeting aka microblogging. And altogether, microblogging means that Twitter is somewhere between blogging, instant messaging and social networks. People used IM’s for the sake of meeting new people and creating superficial relationships just because there wasn’t anything else available. But now there is, and it looks like that the IM’s are going to lose at least some of their users to Twitter – how much – it’s entirely up to the current trends of the users.

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How Is Hi5 Doing In Social Media?

Hi5 is a social network, created in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi, an entrepreneur of Indian descent. The site follows the criteria of those of any social media, has a neat, clean design and is mostly used by Hispanic people. As of 2009, they claim to have over 60 million active users. It is currently ranked as the 26th most popular site on the web by Alexa. There is, however, a question – will hi5 sustain their growth in the countries they’re active in, or they’ll surrender their share of the market to other, larger social networks like Facebook?

Hi5’s current market:
Hi5 is popular in Latin America and some countries in Europe e.g. Romania and Portugal. It is also quite popular in Asia, namely Thailand. The use of hi5.com is falling in the U.S. and other Facebook-migrating countries. However, it will sustain at least some of their user pool in the U.S. since immigrants will continue to use the service. The site is popular among people who share the love for hip-hop and reggae, so it’s quite easy for them to target their advertising.

List of successes:
Hi5.com offers many translated versions of their site, as the site’s popular used in many different countries. They happened to quickly tap into markets of which other sites weren’t conscious with their translated versions. Hi5 music is quite developed, with the same features MySpace music offers, but their music is more targeted to their members, simply because many of them share the same taste.
They’ve adopted OpenSocial applications to a degree other sites can only dream of – more than half of their members are said to use third-party developer apps to use with hi5.com.

List of downsides:
They are known to advertise via unsolicited bulk mail aka spam and there have been reports of phishing e-mails appearing as hi5.com friend requests.
Hi5.com is getting fewer and fewer visitors each month. More and more people are turning to more popular sites like Facebook and other sites with more members than hi5, but it is arguable whether or not it’s the fault of hi5. Although subject to some innovations, they added their own IM service within the site a few months after Facebook did and generally are slower to add new features.

It looks like hi5.com has a few years to live, after that it’s only downhill. Although there is a chance that the social networking can make a comeback, they’ve have lost about 20 million users during the last year and now claim to have some 60 million active members. 60 million is still a lot, but competition is fierce in the social networking vertical and the reign of Facebook could cause hi5.com to lose a lot of visitors to Facebook in the future. The site will probably sustain the markets it has conquered, while losing in those they haven’t, but in short, it seems like it’s an uphill battle for hi5.com to compete with the larger sites. However, if they decide to fight, we might witness some innovative features added, so it is worthwhile to follow the activities of the social networking website.

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A Beginners Guide: 7 Smart Ways of Getting Followers at Twitter

Gathering followers at Twitter is essential, because if you’re using Twitter for business (or would like to do so in the future), you have to have a great deal of followers who’ll account for your traffic, sales and general popularity. In this article, we’ll try to have a look on how to gather a great deal of followers on Twitter, how to keep them, and introspect the new trends of Twitter following.
I’ve collected seven quick and smart ways to boost the number of your followers and would like to share them with you.

1. Work on your profile.
It’s the only thing that your potential followers can see. Customize it; make it beautiful, it’ll work and attract followers. At least if your profile is beautiful.

2. Participate in Twitter games/trends.
My profile recently got quite of an attention (read: followers) because I submitted some entries to #twitterfilms. Put yourself on the line with stuff like this. Once you have a load of followers, you may also start games yourself. It’ll get you even more followers.

3. Off-Twitter relations which drive traffic to your Twitter.
This should be the first on the list, but for some reason, it scares people away quite a lot. It isn’t hard to add a link to your Twitter at your e-mail and forum signatures, is it? People who have a load of followers weren’t made famous exclusively by Twitter.

4. Start a contest.
“God, this is overused”. Well yes, it is, but it’s also effective. There are a lot of things you can make contests about even without prize money or material prizes. You can offer links from your site, free e-books or exclusive content. Anything works, as long as it is valuable.

5. “Retweet, Retweet!”
Keep your eyes open for something funny, retweet it first by using the RT button. How does it help you? You’ll gain value in the eyes of the person you tweeted, and if you offer something valuable in the future, it’s more likely that the person that you retweeted will retweet your message too!

6. Be intelligent and open to discussions.
There isn’t anything much to add here, is there? That’s a crucial rule for gathering Twitter followers. Make your Twitter more about other people, only then you’ll get noticed yourself.

7. Follow people in your niche.
It’s a more targeted audience, it’s a smarter audience and audience that will listen more to what you say.

Twitter is mostly NOT about content. It’s about making other people feel evaluated by you, your tweets, and a great deal of the followers you’ll receive is from your online reputation. While you may get a lot of followers explicitly through Twitter, there will probably be a lot of problems in sustaining the growth of the numbers. Here is a zen of Twitter – Twitter is merely a reflection of the outside world, and your popularity on the outside world reflects the one on you’ll have on Twitter. It is, however possible to get some results by Twittering directly, but they won’t be as big as they ought to be.

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