Social Networking

Facebook & Myspace Teaming Up?

What seems like a bizarre move, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, told The Telegraph, a British newspaper that Facebook and MySpace are in talks about teaming up and letting users share videos and music content.  This would also mean, that users could sign into their MySpace using their Facebook account information. 

Sandburg said to The Telegraph, “Facebook is focusing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focusing on more a content-led strategy. We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.” (more…)

Social Networking Steals $2.25 Billion From UK

A recent survey came of the UK and has estimated that the use of social networking sites by office workers during office hours is costing over $2,250,000,000 a year in England alone.  1,460 office workers who work for Morse, an IT services and technology company, were surveyed and found out that over half  used social networking sites for personal use during the working day.  Those that admitted to using those sites during the work day, also confessed that they spent an average of 40-50 minutes a week surfing the web during work time. 

If you break it down and said that one worker took 9-10 minutes everyday to check social networking sites while on the clock, by the end of the year, they would accumulated more or less than about a free week of paid vacation.  (more…)

New Facebook Feature May Help Businesses

Last week, we told you about some of the new changes coming to Facebook and now a new feature, which opened today, may be appealing to businesses who have profiles on the popular social networking site.  Facebook has said that nearly 2 billion items are shared each week through the site and the newly expanded share option will  include a live counter and analytics for shared items.  This means that when a user clicks the new share feature, they will be able to look at the number of views, shares, likes, and clicks to from that site. 

An unidentified spokesperson for Facebook, who spoke with Web Pro News said, “Share analytics bring new opportunities to show how content is being shared on Facebook, such as Techmeme for selecting top stories and bit.ly for analyzing URL traffic.  The new Share button is among the easiest Facebook Connect widgets to install and can be added to any website with just a few lines of code.” (more…)

Retailers Gearing Up For Holiday’s With Social Media

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released a survey this morning which stated that more online retailers are gearing up for the upcoming holiday season, and will be using social media too attract consumers.  This comes after the NRF reported on Tuesday, that they anticipate holiday shoppers to spend about 3.2% less than they spent last year, averaging about $682 a person.

The new survey said that over 47% of online retailers who were polled stated they would be increasing the use of their social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, realizing that shoppers are continuously on those sites, and that using these tools could be more effective.  Just over 60% said they have created or beefed up the companies Facebook page, while 59% have done that with Twitter.  And 66% of online retailers have added and improved on their company blog. (more…)

Microsoft’s Bing.com Teams Up With Twitter

Qi Lu, Microsoft’s Online Services President, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit today, that Microsoft’s new engine, Bing, has stuck a non-exclusive deal with Twitter.  The deal is an important one because it will be the first search engine to bring in real-time updates.  It is also important because there have been reports that Google, Bing’s biggest competitor, has been in talks with the social networking site, and hasn’t been able to come up with a contract.  Many Internet users are saying that this is a “big-blow” for Google.

Twitter updates have been available for search on Bing for quite awhile now, but today will be the first time, Bing users will be able search keywords and watch real-time tweets from Bing’s website.  Lu also said that this will open up many opportunities for future business deals among business’s world wide.    (more…)

Twitter’s Growth Slowing But Not For Long

Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, was one of highlighted opening sessions at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco, Tuesday.  And Williams, revealed that he believes Twitter’s future will be bright with some of the new changes coming to the site.  

John Battelle, from Federated Media Publishing, hosted the chat and tried to get Williams to spill Twitter’s marketing revenue model to see if the site would eventually turn into a revenue-churning business.  Although Williams wouldn’t really answer the question, he did go onto say, “It’s not like we are spending our days looking under couch cushions for the elusive revenue model. Obviously, we are thinking about it.” (more…)

Facebook Changes Coming Once Again

Just last year, Facebook users were up in arms about the new layout on their favorite social networking site.  Close to a million people signed a petition to bring back the old layout and now after a year of finally settling down and adjusted to the layout, Facebook has leaked out information that there are some new changes coming to their website.

One change that has already taken place within the past 24 hours, is the layout of Group pages.  For the longest time Group pages were a mirror image of one of the original Facebook profiles, just with different information.  Group pages now look like the current profile layout and fan pages.  According to Facebook’s blog this ultimately means ‘that groups will now have a Wall that summarizes all the recent activities of people within the group and a Publisher that enables members to share their content.’  It also means that group activities and what’s being posted on the group wall will now be posted to your news feed.  However, instead of getting posts from everyone from your groups, you will only be shown posts from your friends in the same group.  (more…)

Need New Friends? There’s An App For That

One of iTune’s top applications Loopt, has done it again.  The first live geographical based application, which allows you to check in and see where all your friends are at that moment has created a new social networking app.  LooptMix is a brand new application, and after a quick registration, allows you to meet others in your area. 

The new application has been a feature of the original Loopt application for quite some time now and has now decided it’s time to branch off on it’s own.  The app will allow users to connect with other people in their area with similar interests.  Let’s say for example, you and a group of friends are at the park and are about to play a game of basketball.  However, you are short a person or two.  Well now with LooptMix, you are able to log to see who is nearby and enjoys playing basketball.  You are then able to have a live stream chat from the app inviting them to come play or have any conversation. (more…)

Social Media Sets World Record

Over the weekend the social media world had the keyword #beatcancer tagged all over the web.  EVERYWHERE, an Atlana based Social Media Marketing firm had asked bloggers at BlogWorld, & the New Media Expo, which both took place in Las Vegas this past weekend, to put #beatcancer in their posts to spread awareness and raise money for cancer, which then started a trending topic on Twitter.  Radian6, who was the online monitoring company, announced this afternoon, that #BeatCancer broke the Guinness World Record for Most Widespread Social Network Message in 24 Hours. (more…)

Hollywood Banning Social Media

We have all had it happen at one time or another, where we post something that we shouldn’t have and later regret.  Although it hasn’t happened yet many film studios are working on banning the use of social media sites all together to the cast of their films, so that no details of projects will be released.

Dreamworks, which is known most specifically for their computer-animated films, is the first studio to announce that they are currently working on new contracts for Mike Myers & Cameron Diaz, who are scheduled to reprise their roles in the next Shriek saga, which will ban the use of social media sites.   The new contract will state that that the actors will be forbidden from posting any information on any Internet sites. (more…)