Marketing Pilgrim's "Social Media" Channel

Sponsor Marketing Pilgrim's Social Media Channel today! Get in front of some of the most influential readers in the Internet and social media marketing industry. Contact us today!
by
2 Comments

MySpace Platform to Rival Facebook’s?

posted on October 10, 2007

TechCrunch is sharing more developer platform rumors this week. Last month, Michael Arrington predicted a set of new APIs from Google which will lead to a “Google Platform,” analogous to Facebook’s (only more open, of course). Now he says that MySpace is planning its own developer platform.

The MySpace Platform would work very much like Facebook’s. As TechCrunch puts it, the platform:

will essentially be a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow third party developers to create applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Applications will need to be hosted on MySpace servers.

by
6 Comments

MySpace and Facebook – We Can Co-Exist

posted on October 10, 2007

Social networking is the buzz for online marketing but it’s getting more and more crowded and competitive all the time. MySpace is still one of the Internet’s biggest social-networking sites. They have 200 million registered profiles and 100 million unique users a month.

A poll conducted by eMarketer on March 2, 2007, showed that Facebook was ahead when in the 17-25 year old age bracket. Facebook was the most viewed site among all respondents. MySpace focuses on the 18-34 age group.

Facebook is getting new profiles at a rate of 150,000 a day. Worldwide Facebook is growing at a phenomenal rate:
Worldwide daily visits to MySpace and Facebook, according to Comscore (June 2007) :
MySpace: 28,786 72% growth
Facebook: 14,917 299% growth

by
4 Comments

eBay Builds Social Networking into Site

posted on October 10, 2007

Everyone wants a social network. Now eBay is creating online community with their new My Neighborhoods feature. eBay wants to facilitate more interaction between buyers and sellers. There are more than 600 neighborhoods already.

This is a smart way to add more user-generated content instead of just ecommerce to the site. It also gives the community more reasons to stay on the site. The most popular neighborhood is the one for coffee lovers with 146 members. The next popular neighborhood is about jewelry. People can post photos, reviews, and tips.

The interface is intuitive and has a much more web 2.0 feel to it. However, I keep thinking that the scrolling photos are a video. I hope they do add video, if even just to introduce the concept or the neighborhood. If your favorite topic isn’t there, you can request a new neighborhood. When you join a neighborhood, you’ll see a My Neighborhoods link show up in your My eBay section.

by
23 Comments

Video: Post-It Notes Waterfall by Eepybird

posted on October 9, 2007

At the WebTrends Engage conference Eepybird–the wacky guys behind the Diet Coke/Mentos experiments–provided a sneak-peak at their next experiment.

Watch what the guys can do with a few thousand Post-It notes.

Can’t see the video? Watch it here.

They plan to put together experiments with hundreds of thousands of the sticky colored notes.

You saw it here first!

Subscribe to Marketing Pilgrim and never miss another exclusive video!

by
13 Comments

Facebook Rumor: A New MySpace

posted on October 9, 2007

Facebook is working on a platform for bands that will be launched later this year. This was reported on paidContent.org. They said that the rumor was started yesterday morning.

According to the rumors, Facebook will offer more to bands than MySpace does. They will let bands and labels to create pages, and let them embed custom widgets to market their events and music.

Widgets are hot right now with popular widgets selling for thousands just weeks after they are launched. The most popular widget on Facebook is iLike. Sources say the widget will be like that plus there will also be an iTunes widget for listening to clips from songs. Later you’ll be able to buy music too. Instead of being busy and being flashy, the Facebook pages will be more no-nonsense. Facebook is contacting music labels to gather support for the service.

by
6 Comments

Google Buys Jaiku: GooKuTwo?

posted on October 9, 2007

Google and Jaiku = gooku(two)Less than two weeks after Google acquired Zingku, a mobile social network, they announce that Google has acquired Jaiku.

The name isn’t the only similarity between the two recent purchases. Like Zingku, Jaiku is designed to appeal to mobile users. As Jaiku states in the acquisition FAQ:

Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. Jaiku, Ltd. was founded in February, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland. The service was released on the Web in July 2006. Jaiku is based in Helsinki.

Oh. It’s like Twitter, then? Your Jaiku activity stream can include text messages, photos, events, recommendation, etc. So perhaps it’s Facebook+Twitter? (In case you’re wondering, Jyri is pronounced a little like “Yuri,” with the ‘r’ rolled. Except we don’t have the Finnish vowel ‘y’ in English. Well, rather than launch into a Finnish linguistics lesson, let’s focus, shall we?)

by
11 Comments

Best Traffic Source – Digg, Del.icio.us, or StumbleUpon?

posted on October 9, 2007

The New York Times ran a piece on the social networking site StumbleUpon yesterday. StumbleUpon has 3.5 million registered users. They start with the idea that StumbleUpon gives people recommended web sites based on their interests (sites they give a “thumbs up” to) and history of previously stumbled sites. They want to help you discover new sites that you will probably like.

According to Quantcast and the data I ran Alexa, traffic from StumbleUpon still lags behind Digg. However, in my experience it’s easier and quicker unless you get promoted to the home page or rank highly on the site. I wonder how the model skews these results.

Quantcast chart comparing unique visitors between del.icio.us, digg, and StumbleUpon.
Quantcast Chart - Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon