7 posts tagged “bebo”

For those of you that disconnected during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year, etc…  Welcome back. Here’s a summary of the most interesting social media and mobile news I read in the last few weeks:

Apple:

• 1/6/09: At Macworld….
• Apple announced tiered pricing for songs on iTunes that allows record labels to charge higher amounts for more popular songs… Their new pricing scheme, which will launch in April will offer songs at 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29.  When I heard this, I couldn’t help but think of the old Taco Bell commercials of the early 1990s… “.59, .79, .99”  I know record labels need to make a buck, but I’m more inclined to pay $1.29 for a taco than I am for a new song on iTunes.
• On a happier note, songs will finally be DRM free and 256 Kbps AAC by the end of Q1. Today, iTunes store has 8 million DRM-free songs. By the end of March, they’ll have 10 million.  
• And, if you’ve got an iPhone 3G, you’ll be able to download songs directly to your iPhone over the 3G network, and the songs will sync between your computer and your phone….Ahhh… Finally!
• In FY 2008, Apple sold 9.7 million Macs, and Mac sales increased at two times the rate of the overall PC market.
• The new version of iPhoto within iLife will have facial recognition software, which allows you to pick photos of a specific friend from your album without a text tag.  And, iPhoto will be Facebook and Flickr compatible!
• 1/5/09: Steve Jobs told the world that his recent rapid weight loss is due to a hormone imbalance and not a return of pancreatic cancer.

Facebook:

• 1/2/09: Facebook sued Brazilian start-up Power.com for trademark and copyright infringement, violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, and unlawful competition.  Facebook’s complain states that Power.com “is offering a product that solicits, stores and uses Facebook login information to access information stored on Facebook computers without authorization and to display Facebook copyrighted material without permission.” You can read the NY Times article that describes the suit here.
  

Microsoft:

• 12/31/08: Proving that the “blue screen of death” is alive and well, Microsoft’s 2006 30GB model Zune experienced a massive failure on the last day of 2008, and users were not amused. The bug appears to have been fixed, though users are still unhappy about it.
  

Twitter:

• 1/5/09: Twitter was hacked over the weekend, and 33 high profile accounts were hijacked. There was also a separate phishing scam through the direct message capability.  You can learn more about it on Twitter’s blog.
  

UIQ:

• 1/5/09: Symbian partner, UIQ filed for bankruptcy.
  

Verizon:

• 1/5/09: BusinessWeek reports that “The $5.9 billion acquisition of cellular carrier Alltel Corp. by Verizon Wireless will close on Jan. 9”.  This will mean that Verizon trumps AT&T as the largest US mobile operator with ~ 78 million subscribers.
  

Xobni:
1/5/09: Xobni (inbox spelled backwards), the company behind a very cool outlook plug-in that turns your email inbox into a social network, announced $7M in Series B funding from new investor Cisco Systems and Xobni’s existing investors.

Layoffs:
1/6/09: Clearspring, which plays in the widget distribution space laid off 20% of its workforce in early December, and their President/COO, Jay Rappaport is leaving.

Misc. Social Media & Mobile News:

• I just learned about Twtpoll, which lets you poll your Twitter followers.  Looks like a great idea if you’re a brand that wants feedback from its community of users.
• 1/1/09: California passed a no-text messaging while driving rule, which became legal on Jan 1. I can’t help but wonder how it can be illegal to text while driving, and yet, it’s perfectly okay to fiddle with your radio, AC, or GPS.  Not that I’m advocating texting while driving. It just seems like an inane law, given the many distracting things you could be doing while driving.
• 1/3/09 The 1.0 version of a Firefox add-on called Power Twitter launched, allowing “search, search scoped to a specific user, status history peeking on mouseover, Facebook status updates, inline YouTube, Flickr, and TwitPic, url expansion, url translation to page titles, and open web update (news feed) mapping.”  It sounds interesting to me and gets good reviews, but I’ve heard a few complaints from people I follow on Twitter, so I’m waiting until the next release.
  
• 12/31: TechCrunch did a great piece on the Top Social Media Sites of 2008, which summarizes data from comScore.  Top Social Media Sites (ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore):

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)

• 12/31/08: TechCrunch has an interesting article on the rise of Y-Combinator, start-up Scribd.  Scribd allows users to post and share documents online.  TechCrunch reports: “According to the comScore numbers, it has more unique visitors worldwide than imeem and almost as many as Bebo, with 23.5 million visitors in November, 2008. (In the U.S., it had about 4 million visitors).”  And, Scribd grew “218 percent from November, 2007.   Pretty incredible stats for a company that initially only raised $300,000! “
• 12/31/08 The UK loves watching the TV show “Big Brother,” and rumor has it, they may be forced to live a frightening real-life version of it in the future.  The Guardian reports,

“The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.
A cabinet decision to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses.”

Even though the report hasn’t yet been published, critics of its rumored contents are speaking out against it including Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions.

• 12/31/08: Obama’s Change.gov site is getting great use.  According to TechCrunch, “more than 74,031 people have submitted more than 53,369 questions (and counting) for his administration and voted 3,122,015 times to prioritize the questions in a Digg-like fashion.”  You can see the top list of questions here.
  
• 12/30/08: Hitwise reported 3 interesting holiday social media trends in the UK:

1. “Facebook accounts for 1 in 22 UK Internet visits on Christmas Day”
2. "Video site YouTube received more UK Internet traffic than Microsoft Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) for the first time during Christmas week 2008.”
3.  “social networks accounted for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits during Christmas week.”

• 12/26/08: Amazon.com announced it’s best Christmas season ever with “6.3 million items ordered worldwide on the peak day, Dec. 15, which is a record-breaking 72.9 items per second.”
  
• 12/15/08: BusinessWeek reports that Palm will launch its new Nova OS at CES.  After several layoffs, many ups and downs over the years, I find it amusing that they decided to name it Nova (“no va” means “no go” in Spanish.)  Chevrolet learned how disastrous that name could be when it launched the Chevy Nova years ago.  I’m not sure if this was lost on Palm’s marketing team, if it was an inside joke, or if they knew about it and decided to buck tradition and go with the name anyway. I love Palm, and I’m keeping fingers crossed they find a way to make this work. I think it’ll be tough in to re-gain developers’ trust after several false starts in recent years.
  

I took a blogging break for Turkey, so this social media and mobile round-up includes the most interesting news in mobile and social media since November 21:

Apple:

• Apple is changing the App store to show a broader range of top apps in each category and separated free from paid apps.  Hopefully this will discourage developers from arbitrarily lowering prices of their apps to make them turn up closer to the top of the listings. 
  
• Apple gives developers the ability to deliver promo codes for their iPhone apps.
  
• iTunes App store results, 5 months in.
  

AOL:

• Bebo launched “Social Inbox” on December 10.  It “combines e-mail, social networking and media recommendations in one easy-to-use interface. “ 
  

Facebook:

• Facebook is reportedly running A/B tests on its sign-up process. I think this is great. Testing is a very important part of improving customer experience, and more companies should test UI regularly. Here’s more on the test.
  
• Facebook announced the 5 grand prize recipients of its fbFund of $225,000 each: GroupCard, Kontagent, Mousehunt, by HitGrab, WedSnap created the Weddingbook application, and  Wildfire
  
• TechCrunch interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg here.
  
• Facebook Connect is now generally available.  TechCrunch reports “Now any third party website that wants to pull personal data about visitors from Facebook - and send back activity reports to their news feeds - can do so by first filling out a self-service application.”
  
• Good article from NY Times. Facebook Connect attempts 2 turn around dismal performance of social media ads.
• Oodle will power the Facebook Market (classifieds)
  

FIM:

• MySpace launched its new MySpace Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer.  It enables: auto login, alerts, updates, Myspace Search by Google, quick links and user links from your browser.
  
• MySpace announced DataPortability Project  with new data portability standards.
  
• MySpace launches streaming mobile video.
  

Google:

• Mobile / Android:
• The Open Handset Alliance announced that the following 14 companies joined the Alliance: AKM Semiconductor Inc., ARM, ASUSTek Computer Inc., Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International Inc., Huawei Technologies, Omron Software Co. Ltd, Softbank Mobile Corporation, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba Corporation and Vodafone. 
  
• “Google's Android Open Handset Alliance Project unveiled the Android Dev Phone 1. The Android Dev Phone 1 is hardware and sim unlocked G1 in black with a special skin aimed at developers.  The Android Dev Phone 1 sells for $399 in 18 international markets. “
  
• The Phandroid blog speculates that Google will soon introduce Ringtones and Wallpapers to the Android Market.
  
• Google advertisers can now “show [their] desktop text and image ads on the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and other mobile devices with full (HTML) Internet browsers.”
  
• The Kogan Agora is the latest Android phone. It’s now available for pre-order and will be released Jan 29, 2009.
  
• Here’s an interesting summary of Android Market performance from MediaLets.
• HTC raised G1 sales forecasts for 2008 to 1 million devices.
  
• Chrome:
• Google’s new browser, Chrome, exited beta on December 11.
  
• Gmail:
• Gmail adds to-do list management (“tasks”) to its list of features.
  
• You can now SMS through Gmail’s new task manager. You can activate it here.
  
• Search:
• Google released zeitgeist 2008, a summary of the “big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008”.  The fastest rising global search terms? That’s right folks, it’s the ever frightening, “Sarah Palin” at #1 and “Jonas Brothers” at #10.  Obama falls in at #6.  In the UK, Google reports: “From BBC's iPlayer to Facebook to YouTube, many of the top searches in Britain this year have been for our favourite websites. We also see three web-savvy politicians come tops in searches”.  Check out all the stats here.  Very cool stuff.
  
• FriendConnect is now open for all websites.  As TechCrunch reports “Google Friend Connect is OpenSocial’s answer to Facebook Connect. It lets other websites accept a member’s OpenSocial OpenID username and password to log into their sites. More importantly, it also lets websites access users’ social data, which includes friend lists, profile information, feed messages, reviews, ratings and the like.”
  
• YouTube:
• YouTube launched an enhanced abuse and safety page.
  
• YouTube is tightening its standards on content.
  

Microsoft:

• CrunchGear speculates that Microsoft may announce a Zune Phone at CES 2009.
  

Motorola:

• MOTODEV’s Widget Developer Challenge underway. Be one of the first 100 unique submissions received by December 18, 2008, and win a $250 gift card to Amazon.com.  Click here to learn more.
• Motorola introduces Rokr EM35 with WebUI widgets & Windows Media support & music player with virtual surround sound.
  

Nokia:

• Nokia announced the N97, which looks like a very cool phone.
  
• Nokia announces “Point and Find” mobile image recognition technology. It allows users to point their camera phones at poster or billboard and get more information on what’s being advertised on their phones. I’ve seen technology like this before from companies like Pongr and Kooaba.  It’s great to see a big mobile OEM embrace it.  Check out a demo of Point and Find here.
  
• Nokia released a new email platform for Ovi. Check out the beta here.
  

Yahoo:

• Flickr launched a new mobile site, which allows video streaming.

Misc:

• Recent Layoffs:
• CBS Interactive: CBS Interactive laid off workers at LastFM, but rumor has it that CBS Interactive isn’t reporting the extent of layoffs across CBS Interactive.  CBS isn’t confirming the extent of the layoffs, but TechCrunch is speculating: “According to a source inside Cnet, the buzz is that the total number of employees asked to leave today was “275-ish.” A CBS spokesperson wouldn’t confirm that number. So take it as a rough estimate.”
  
•  Microblogging platform, Pownce, closes doors & founders including Digg's Kevin Rose join Six Apart

• Industry News:

• Mobile ad rates drop as inventory increases. Experts say mobile CPMs are ~$15 compared w/ ~$23 earlier this year.
• Blogging platform, Tumblr received $4.5M in series B investment from its Series A investors in a new round of funding this week.  They also announced that they’ll be releasing premium services. 
  
• VC firm, Accel Partners, announced two funds worth $1Billion.
  
• Industry Events:
• LeWeb08 took place in Paris December 9-10.  
• While I couldn’t make it to Paris, I enjoyed watching some of it on UStream.  
• The interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Product, was particularly good.
• In particular, the closing session on the main stage with the Gillmor Gang was entertaining.  I don’t see it up on the Gillmor Gang site yet, but fingers crossed they’ll post it when they’re back from Europe.   
• Seesmic founder and organizer of Le Web, Loic LeMeur apologizes for “organizational issues” at LeWeb08.
  
• Technology announcements:
• Hi5: Announced virtual gifts on December 10.
• Opera: The alpha of the Opera 10 browser is now available for free download.
  
• TechCrunch reports that “Netvibes Founder Building iPhone-Like Operating System For Netbooks” called Joliweb.
  
• TechCrunch reports that UStream is entering the race to dominate the live mobile broadcasting market (other players include Qik, Kyte, and FlixWagon).  See a video and analysis here.
  
• New Start-up, “Give Real” encourages people to forget about giving virtual gifts in favor of giving “real drinks redeemable at any bar or restaurant.”  Check it out here and as an app on Facebook.
• Misc.
• Itsmy released a mobile social networking study of 15,000 active users. Results here.
  
• In her November 21 BoomTown blog Kara Swisher summarized the Astia Awards Dinner, which celebrated venture capital firms that support women-led companies. I’m not a fan of awards dinners so I wouldn’t normally mention one, except that for this one, Venture Capitalist, Tim Draper, who couldn’t make it to the event in person, sent in a very funny video of himself taking off a piece of clothing for every woman-led company he’s invested in.
  
• Vodafone buys European mobile location and navigation services company, Wayfinder.
  
• Sling.com, which, like Hulu, allows you to watch TV shows online, launched in beta.
  

Today, Reuters published an interesting article "Social Network Sites Tempt Investors"  talking about the liklihood of a flury of social networking IPOs.  The article is well worth a read for all of you social media fans out there.  According to the article, so called "Wall Street observers" believe that United Online Inc.'s recent registration for an IPO of its Classmates Media Corp. arm (i.e. Classmates.com) will  "test the IPO waters" for other social  networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

While I believe that the remainder of 2007 and early 2008 will bring more social networking IPOs than we've seen so far (not many), I don't believe that Classmates.com will be an accurate indicator of the success of future social networking IPOs.   Even if Classmates.com's IPO bombs, Facebook, LinkedIn IPO, and Bebo IPO have a strong liklihood of being successful IPOs.  To have a solid IPO, a social networking company will have to do more than just link people socially.  It will need to be a platform for relevancy, discovery, sharing, and search. 

When Google IPOed, it was successful, not just because it enabled search, but it provided a platform that wove together search, information, email, and more with relevant and targeted advertising.  Facebook will succeed with an IPO not because it is a social networking site but because it is a social networking platform that allows 3rd party developers to plug-in and users to benefit.  In other words, it is, in effect, a social media operating system.  LinkedIn and Bebo will have successful IPOs if they continue to grow their user base, expand their platform capabilities, and quickly develop a useful API for 3rd party developers.  However, to be clear, it will take a lot of effort, great skills, good timing, (and, perhaps, a miracle) for either Bebo or LinkedIn to have a more successful IPO than Facebook.

By engaging 3rd party developers so early, Facebook gained a clear lead over the competition, which will be hard for competitors to surpass.  By creating a social networking operating system, which allows entreprenurial developers to plug in, contribute to, and profit from a wider economy, Facebook has peaked the interests of investors - not only as a company in which to invest but as an economy in which to invest.  As I mentioned in my last post, VCs are expressing a strong interest in the players within the facebook 3rd party developer economy, and is easy to see why.  Facebook is creating a social media operating system that has the potential to revolutionize the web by changing the way people find and interact with content and applications.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble posted an interesting video trilogy on his blog in which he predicts that if they work together, Facebook,  Mahalo, and Techmeme will trounce Google in 4 years by providing superior SEO-free, reduced-noise, social search that does more than Google.  While I'd be seriously surprised if Google didn't have something up its sleeve to compete with the vision Scoble outlines and I don't think we'll see the end of SEO, I do think Scoble makes some good points in his vlogs.  His musings on the topic of social networking, social media, and search highlight a growing interest in social networking as a space and its potential to change the way we surf the net.
 

There is nothing more attractive to investors than strong possibilities and good ideas, and it's clear in the quickly growing and evolving space of social networking, there is a high concentration of both.  Which social networking companies will choose to ride the wave with an IPO remains to be seen, but I'm betting with Reuters in thinking the numbers will increase very soon.

Note: I'm not an investment advisor, and my blog posts do not constitute financial advice.

In case you were wondering why this blog went from daily to naught this week - One of my best friends was in town this week, visiting from England, so I took a break from blogging to play tour guide.  As of today, I’m back to blogging as usual.

If you’re wondering what’s next in the world of web 2.0, Business 2.0 magazine has some interesting ideas.  Of particular interest, check out their gallery of 25 Startups to Watch.  The following is the list (and some of my thoughts on each company):

• StumbleUpon: Great feature that allows you to find websites and videos you might like on-line based upon the recommendations of friends. Think of it sort of like Digg but for recommending websites and videos.  It enables you to find websites that you'll like based upon your personal networks and the preferences you set of people with similar tastes.  It is the perfect accompaniment to Stickis, which allows you to see the comments people in your network have posted on various websites.  I'd love to see Stikis and StumbleUpon link-up to offer an integrated service.
  
• Slide:  I've not tried Slide yet, but I've been hearing a lot of buzz about it in the geek circles in San Francisco. It lets you create slide shows of your personal photos which can be inserted into a blog, MySpace page, Sent out via RSS, or streamed to your desktop as a screensaver.  It is an interesting idea, but I suspect there will be a lot of competition in this space with photo sharing sites like Zooomr and Flickr and companies like SharpCast (computer, mobile and PC sync) and photo everywhere messaging concepts like NowThen.
  
• Bebo: Social network with 30 million users.  Bebo is especially big in the UK.  Aside from having the conventional greatness of other social networking sites, it takes privacy setting seriously (which I like) and has an on-line whiteboard facility, which is handy for sharing.
• Meebo: Let's you manage all of your IM clients from one site. I'll be interested to see how Meebo does against eBuddy, which is a "free web based messenger that enables you to chat with your MSN, Yahoo and AIM buddies" without downloading a separate client. eBuddy also works via mobile.
  
• Wikia: This site was co-founded by Angela Beesley and Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia, who I  recently talked about seeing speak at the Social Media Club meeting in San Francisco.
  
• Joost: I'm looking forward to seeing how Joost pans out.  It's an on-line video website which focuses on broadcast quality television - like IPTV on demand.  They've just signed a deal with Viacom, the output of which will be interesting to watch.  The on-line video space is getting crowded between Joost, YouTube, Revver, Grouper, BitTorrent and others.
  
• Dabble: Makes a tool for organizing videos into playlists and favorites.  Hmmm... Not sure how I feel about this one.  Think I'll stick with video search engines and recommendations I find in blogs until someone convinces me otherwise..
  
• Metacafe: This site is kind of like YouTube, but it pays users for page views. As I mentioned before, the on-line video space is really crowded. With YouTube saying they're going to find ways to pay users for involvement, I'm not sure how I feel about Metacafe's long-term prospects for success.  That said, they do claim 17 million monthly visitors, so they're off to a good start.
  
• Revision3: "A production studio for geek-oriented online shows."... Certainly a growing market full of opportunity!
  
• blip.tv: Platform for syndicating on-line shows... Looks like a hot market.
  
• fon.com: Now this looks interesting!  Fon.com is based in Spain and is attempting to build the world's first worldwide wi-fi network.  They're selling wireless routers for $30.  According to the description on Business 2.0, consumers "hook it up, register their node, and agree to share their broadband with other "Foneros" for free. Those who want to charge outsiders for access can do so, and Fon gets a cut. Likewise, if someone wants to pay $2 or $3 to use the Fon network for a day, Fon takes a share of that revenue. Just over a year old, Fon's network boasts more than 70,000 hotspots." This could be huge, especially given that wi-fi on mobile phones is a growing feature.
  
• Loopt: Loopt lets you see where your friends are anytime, using your GPS enabled mobile phone.  Boost Mobile has integrated Loopt into it's service offerings.  There are many interesting applications to social networking... Check out my previous posts on GPS to see what I mean.
  
• Mobio:  Mobio makes mobile applications and wigets.  They do quite a bit in the mobile location based service space. Mobio just launched at DEMO in January. I've not played with their app, but their demo looks an aweful lot like Microsoft Life's mobile beta. 
  
• Tiny: Tiny's Radar service is like Flickr but for mobile phones.  It lets users send photos from their mobile phones and have their friends comment on them. This sounds very similar to NowThen, only it's restricted to mobile phones.
  
• SoonR: This company lets you access information on your PC from your mobile phone. I saw a lot of solutions like this when I was at Palm. I'm not sure why Business 2.0 thinks this is such a big deal.  Win-Hand Anywhere, a strong competitor, has been around for years.  I'm not convinced that that remote PC access is the way forward. The problem with software like SoonR and Win-Hand Anywhere is that if your computer is off, you can't access your data. I prefer "server in the sky" applications like Avvenu, Orb, and GotoMyPC which allow you to access your information from anywhere (including your mobile phone). 
  
• Turn: I don't know much about this but it looks very cool... According to the site: "Avertisers first enter the prices they're willing to pay for various results - $5 for a sales lead, say, or $50 to $60 for a completed transaction. Next, they upload their text-or graphics-based display ads. Turn's software then analyzes the ads using more than 60 variables - including content, brand strength, and keywords - and determines the right publishers to serve up the ads."
• admob:  Like Turn - Could be very useful to advertisers: "AdMob offers a place to buy ads for delivery to cell phones."  It seems to me that Millennial Advertising, which I talked about in my January 26th blog should also be on this list.
• Spot Runner: This looks like a great resource for small businesses. It's a "one-stop online shop for low-cost 30-second TV ads. Local businesses can browse a library of premade spots and personalize them for airing in their local markets."
• ViTrue:  This is a great idea. Though, I think they need to improve the way they explain their service on their website.  It looks a bit like parts of what I proposed as a potential monetization strategy for YouTube.
  
• SuccessFactors:  I met with these guys when I was working in London as a Management Consultant a few years ago. I evaluated their software and other eHR and performance management systems and found theirs to be the most intelligent and well designed. Definitely a company to watch if you're into enterprise systems.
  
• Janrain: Single sign which allows users to juggle multiple passwords for multiple website.  This is the alternative to open ID.
  
• Logoworks:  I've not used this site, which offers the ability to publish business cards, stationary, etc. for less than conventional on-line publishers, but I'm always interested in deals!
  
• Rearden Commerce:  I've been hearing a lot about Rearden recently.  They offer a "web-based "virtual personal assistant" application that smoothly integrates hotel and flight reservations, meetings, and other events into your daily agenda." They've got a strong user base with 150 companies and their 500,000 or so employees using the software.
• SimulScribe: This company has voice recognition software that converts voicemails to text.  Voice transcription software is a growing and hot marketplace. I know of at least one (stealth-mode) start-up working on the next generation of this type of software, which will can be leveraged for all sorts of things you haven't thought of.
  

Some other companies that weren't on the list, but I think are worth watching are:  Shozu (mobile 2.0), IMT Labs (the company behind Spleak, the chatbot), and Kiptronic (advertising platform for podcasters).

On a different note - If you're interested in technology (especially mobile), you might be interested in this, the new blog from my friend, Derek Snyder, from Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded team.  So far, he's talked about Windows Mobile 6, how to cancel your Verizon contract in less than 30 minutes with no penalty, how to get a free extra battery for your Blackjack, and more.

Thanks to technology and the Internet, the world is becoming increasingly transparent and accessible.  Social media is playing an important role in this transformation.  So far, most people seem to be responding to the power of social media favorably, and they’re using the power of social media for good.  However, there is a risk that the pendulum could shift in the other direction over time.  Below are the "5 Deadly Sins" of social media - pitfalls that proponents of social media should watch out for and proactively advocate against:

• Market saturation: There is a proliferation of social networking sites available – lots of sites are competing for users time.  Marketers are creating new social networking sites in record numbers to promote their products, and the number of traditional social networking sites (MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Gather, WAYN, CyWorld, etc.) are also growing.  Users often use different for the same purpose but to meet different people.  If the market becomes overly fragmented, it may become less useful and more burdensome to user.  I hope that a natural market consolidation will happen eventually, but in the meantime, the industry runs the risk of users “burning out” from having to juggle too many different websites, on-line “friends”, different profile inputting tools, and passwords.
• Exploitation of social media at the expense of others: Social media makes it easier than ever to share information on-line.  While, the power of information sharing is good, it can also be dangerous in the wrong hands, enabling: fraud, misrepresentation of identity, identity theft, sexual exploitation, and unethical sharing of corporate or government secrets.  I just read an interesting article on the security risk that social media presents to corporations.  The same is true for governments and individuals.  The “Star Wars Kid”  and Paris Hilton were two of the first people to learn a thing or two about that.
• Eradication of privacy: This one is closely linked to the bullet point above on exploitation, but I felt it deserved its own section because it goes beyond exploitation because what is considered private to one person, isn’t necessarily considered private to another.  The Washingtonienne case is a good example of this.  Another example is that anyone can get an aerial photograph of your house at Google Maps or go to Zillow to find out what your house is worth.  Add location based social media services and mobile phones into the mix, and tracking people's location becomes easy via services like Helio's Buddy Beacon and Dodgeball.  While these are great services and they offer opt-in privacy, it's scary to think what could happen if either service were hacked.  Alternatively, imagine the damage that would result if someone's location information got into the wrong hands or was commandeered by a "friend" turned stalker. 
  
• Opportunistic litigation: Lawsuits like those filed earlier this week against News Corp. pose a strong threat to the health of social media.  If cases like these succeed, the rulings will send a dangerous message to the public: “You’re not responsible for your own safety or the safety of your children.  Someone else is.”  Unjustified lawsuits also stifle technical innovation and have the potential to strangle social media with excessive amounts of red tape.
• Opaque Marketing: Marketers are becoming more sophisticated about the ways that they use social media to their advantage.  It is already difficult to avoid pop-ups and other advertisements on-line.  And, with some social media sites, it difficult to tell what is advertising versus what is genuine, unbiased opinion.  Take, for example, bloggers who get paid by companies to evangelize products (I don’t, but a lot do).  Advertising on social media sites isn’t nearly as transparent as it should be, and social media runs the risk of being tarnished by overzealous marketers.

1/22/07 UPDATE: Thanks everyone for your insightful comments.  I just read a great article by Mark Zielinski, a UK-based security engineer.  The article talks about the threat that social media poses to corporate security.  In the article, Mark talks about how employees use their work computers to check their social networking pages and that this poses a threat to corporate networks.  Unsurprisingly, employees checking social media sites rather than doing work probably, has an impact on productivity - even more so than personal email. With these two points in mind, I'd like to add "Bringing Down the Corporation" as the 6th deadly sin of Social Media.

Mashable in conjunction with PhotoBucket is hosting "The Social Networking Awards" and is asking you to vote on your favorite mainstream social networking site. The nominees are:

• MySpace
• Friendster
• Multiply
• hi5
• Piczo
• Tagworld
• Bebo
• Tagged
• Orkut
• Xanga
• Facebook
• Facebox
• LinkedIn
• Vox

To vote, click HERE. 

I voted for Vox because I use it so often, but each of the nominees has its strengths.  As I look at the list, I keep thinking that the old phrase "It's not where you are but who you're with" is as true in social networking as it is in life.  While I've experimented with a lot of the above sites, I've wound up using Vox and LinkedIn because these are the two sites that I find the most useful for interacting with people who share similar interests.

On a different note - I'm looking for new material for this blog - including new social media sites/services to review.  If you have ideas (topics of interest, products, services, etc.), I'd love to hear them. Email me at: socialmediablog@gmail.com. 

Coming up in next week's socialmedia blog a review of Brent Hoberman's new baby - a social networking site for world travelers.

With the volume of information available on social media sites increasing rapidly, the need for effective search tools is greater than ever before.  Users need ways to sift through the "garbage" on the Internet to find information that is relevant to their search - both on topic and in the desired format. 

Search engines are evolving, making the process of finding information easier and ensuring that results are more useful.  The upsurge in information generated through sites specializing in social media is making the need for search engine evolution even more important. 

Here are a few sites that are making the search for information on social media sites easier:

• Wink.com: Claims to be the first "social search engine" that "allows people to search across multiple social networks and find other people with similar interests."  The site searches across social networking sites including: MySpace, Bebo and LinkedIn, and it claims to contain "over 100 million profiles".  Search across social networks for interests, locations, screen names, names, etc.  Wink looks for information that other people have ranked as useful/relevant.  Users can  re-rank search results, bookmark sites they want to remember, and block results that aren't relevant.  Users can also create "Collections" of the  most relevant sites on a particular topic and assign privacy settings to those "collections," making collections available to the public, to designated groups of people, or keeping them private.  Collections labeled as "public" then turn up in the search results. 
  
• Eurekster's Swicki: Eurekster explains what a swicki is far better than I ever could, "Swicki is a natural extension of personal publishing on the web. Just as you can create a webpage, blog, or podcast, now you can publish a community powered search engine, tailored to produce only the targeted search results that you and your community want!  A swicki shows a buzz cloud of what is hot in your community and makes it easy to find the best content, news and info on the web."
• Google Blog Search, Technorati, Blogpulse, and IceRocket are great resources for searching for information contained within blogs.
• ClipBlast, Blinkx, and Google Video are all great sites for searching video.  Internet TV Search Engine is a Swicki that does what it says on the tin.
  

If you're interested in Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization, check out the following article (and the links within it): SMO: The Next Phase Of SEO.

If you have a favorite search engine for social media, that you'd like to recomend, send a comment!