Top Social Networks Here and Abroad 2009

Last year I compiled a large list of popular social networks in the U.S. and around the world. Using recent data from Alexa, I’ve updated the list for June 2009.

What’s Changed Since Last Year

• Facebook, which had already beat MySpace globally, surpassed its rival in the U.S., and stole a lot of traffic from other global social networks.
• Twitter stormed into the Top 10, becoming the #3 social network in the U.S. and #7 globally.
• LinkedIn, Tagged, and Ning have doubled their global reach.
• Yahoo! 360, Live Spaces (by Microsoft), and imeem halved their global reach.
• Last year’s fastest growing social network, V Kontakte (Russia’s #1 website) moved from #6 to #5 on the Global Top 15.
• Last year I overlooked the extremely popular (in China) Baidu, and popular deviantART (in the U.S.).

“Global rank” and “U.S. rank” represent web traffic compared to every other website (not just social networking sites). “Reach” is the percentage of worldwide users who access the site. Numbers in green have improved since last year; red numbers have suffered.

TOP 10 SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN THE UNITED STATES

Now look how the rankings change when you include users outside the U.S.

TOP 15 SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES WORLDWIDE

KEEP READING »

Posted in Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with AdultFriendFinder, Alexa, Angola, Australia, Badoo, Baidu, Bebo, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, China, classmates, Cote d'Ivoire, Del.icio.us, deviantART, Ecuador, Facebook, Flickr, france, friendster, hi5, imeem, india, iran, Iraq, ireland, Italy, japan, Kazakhstan, LinkedIn, Live Spaces, livejournal, mertroFLOG, mexico, Microsoft, mixi, MySpace, Netherlands, netlog, new zealand, ning, orkut, Paraguay, Peru, portugal, romania, russia, skyrock, sonico, South Africa, Spain, switzerland, tagged, thailand, Twitter, ukraine, united kingdom, united states, v kontakte, Vietnam, yahoo, yahoo! 360

SocialReach - Reaching into your privacy

I’m engaged, so I see a lot of wedding services advertisements on Facebook. Film school ads pop up, because I was a film major. Some simply say, “Are you a 24-year-old male?” to grab my attention. These targeted ads don’t bother me because the advertisers don’t learn any of my personal data; they simply click a few checkboxes to drill down to my demographic. My data is aggregated and anonymous.

So while watching a video at TodaysBigThing.com, a strange image surprised me. Your standard “Test your IQ” ad appeared on the right, but it was REALLY targeted. The ad featured five of my Facebook friends’ profile pictures and names, but I wasn’t on Facebook (or even logged into Facebook). And what really creeped me out was that these aren’t simply five random people from my friend list; these are five of my closest friends!

Without clicking the link, I checked the source of the image: SocialReach.com, the “leading social monetization platform,” according to their website. They write, “For advertisers, we combine sophisticated behavioral and predictive technology that allows you to reach the right people with the right ads at exactly the right moment.”

I have no idea how SocialReach executed this kind of ad or if it falls within the accepted third-party use of Facebook user data. I’ve submitted the incident to Facebook and we’ll see what happens.
In the meantime, I have so many questions about this. I’m half weirded out and half impressed:

• How did they move this personal data outside of Facebook’s walls? Is that allowed? It reminds me of Beacon, Facebook’s attempt to take what we do outside Facebook and bring it in, as a form of internal advertising, but this is the opposite.
• I imagine the source of this must be a rogue Facebook app, which was granted access to my data, but which one? I don’t use many, or involve my friends in many.
• How was it smart enough to differentiate my closest, real friends from my other, assorted contacts? Maybe these are the people I share the most common Facebook friends with, but how would it know that?

Anyway, I’m baffled. We’ll see if Facebook knows what’s up.

Posted in Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with advertising, Beacon, Facebook, SocialReach

Social Media Revolution

It’s been a week since the Iranian government announced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide election victory over popular reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, which sparked lasting, national demonstrations. Protesters believe the election results are fraudulent, and see this moment as an opportunity for change, or perhaps revolution.

Certainly, if a revolution is possible, it has been aided by social media technology, which is embraced by Iran’s significant youth population. (“More than two-thirds of Iran’s population is less than 30 years old”!) The Iranian government has taken many steps to stop the spread of information, reportedly including media censorship and intimidation, blocking Internet and cell phone access, and even sending police to destroy civilian computer hardware. For those able to circumvent the government’s restrictions, social media has been crucial to keeping the lines of communication intact, both between Iranians, and to the rest of the world.

Last year, the U.S. presidential election drove significant traffic to many social media sites, and likely played a large role in Twitter’s 202% growth and The Huffington Post’s 70% growth from May to November 2008. Iran’s election, though, is truly highlighting the power of these communication tools to shape politics, and some social media sites have changed the way they operate to accommodate this historic use of these channels:

• Twitter once again provides news value. While Iran’s media censorship (or perhaps our own ethnocentrism) has effectively kept the protests from commanding the U.S. 24/7 cable newscycle, defeated presidential candidate Mousavi reminded his supporters via Twitter that “One Person = One Broadcaster.” Simply search “#iranelection” on Twitter and you’ll find constant stream of Iranian news-sharing. (In fact, the #iranelection hashtag has consistently been one of the top trending topics for the past week.)
• HuffPo’s live-blog has all the latest news. Shining in the traditional media blackout is The Huffington Post, whose admirable Nico Pitney is live-blogging the updates from Iran. Where once viewers turned to CNN for the latest coverage of world-shaking events, an individual blogger is currently outperforming his traditional media colleagues by leaps and bounds. (I’ve been glued to this live blog daily to keep up.)
• The uprising begins to affect the way social media businesses operate. Twitter proprietor Biz Stone announced Monday that their scheduled maintenance would be moved to the middle of the night in Iran, to avoid excommunicating Iranian protesters.
• YouTube embraces its news role. Tuesday, YouTube reminded users that while they do not ordinarily allow graphic, violent videos, the videos coming out of Iran serve an important news service and will not be taken down. They’ve also collected some of the most important videos on their blog, Citizentube.
• Google provides translation aid. To better facilitate the open exchange of information across cultures, Google added Persian (Farsi) last night to their Google Translate tool.
• Facebook follows suit. Also last night, Facebook opened their Persian-version of their site.

It’s heartening to see as popular as the social media giants get, they still recognize their core values of open communication. For those of us in the business of social media, these kind of events bring legitimacy to social technologies that are often criticized as narcissistic or wastes of time. But more importantly, these technologies provide a true democratic playing field for individual voices to shape their societies. Especially when lives have been lost and many more are on the line, communication is vital.

Above photo by Shahram Sharif

Posted in Blogs, Micro-blogging, News, Social Networks, Video | Comments
Tagged with Citizentube, election, Facebook, Google Translate, iran, the huffington post, Twitter, YouTube

Tonight’s the night for Facebook usernames!

In just over 4 hours, Facebook will allow users and Page admins to choose unique usernames! What this means, like on many other social media sites, is that users can obtain much more desirable, convenient, easy-to-remember URLs. Gone are the days of http://facebook.com/people/Chad_Brunswick/92219538. Hello http://facebook.com/chadwick! (Or whatever.)

At 12:01 a.m. tonight, Eastern time (assuming no technical issues crop up), head on over to Facebook’s Username page to choose your one-time-only, permanent, non-reversible, non-exchangeable, non-transferable new username for your personal profile and also any Pages (not groups) you’re an admin for.

Hold up, though, before you go off brainstorming; there are some rules:

• Must be at least 5 alphanumeric characters (periods included, but not spaces or underscores as I understand it)
• Your profile must be older than 3 p.m. Eastern, Tuesday, June 9, 2009, to be eligible.
• Your Page must have been created on or before May 31, 2009, and have had at least 1,000 fans by then.
• You can’t use “generic” words, like “flowers” or “pizza.” Who knows how many of these have been blacklisted?
• Many trademarked names will also be blocked, and if you happen to pick one up, it will probably be taken away.
• Don’t make a spelling mistake/typo, because you’ll be stuck with it.

Good luck everyone! When Facebook becomes the sole form of communication in the near future, and we never venture out of our homes, you’ll wish you had the sweetest Facebook username ever!

Click here to choose a username! | Read the original Facebook blog post | Facebook Help Center: Usernames

Below the fold: Why the 1,000-fan rule for Pages is causing frustration.

KEEP READING »

Posted in Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with Facebook, Pages, username

45,025 comments! I’m so popular!

When hundreds of spam comments flood your blog everyday, that’s the kind of discouragement that will keep you, the author, from returning, let alone posting, very often. What’s worse is when spambots simultaneously attack your wiki site as well.

Losing the will to continually sift through all the spam, I’ve neglected Media Socialist for four months, and devoid of human presence, the site has been rampant with lifeless, blog-sucking leeches. They made hundreds of link-filled edits to the Media Socialist Wiki, and left 45,025 (likely Cialis-selling) comments on the blog, hundreds of which passed through Akismet, WordPress‘ built-in spam filter. (And those numbers don’t include the hundreds, perhaps thousands I manually deleted.)

“Why me?” I cried. “The owner of an insignificant blog that no one reads?! Don’t these spammers realize there’s no one here to click their links?”

Fortunately, there’s a solution! And one week after it’s implementation, not one spam footprint on this blog or wiki. It’s like I lit a Citronella candle on the homepage!

Bad Behavior, created by Michael Hampton, is a PHP-based spam killer that appears to work very well. It’s a simple plug-in install for the blog, and a fairly simple upload to my MediaWiki-based wiki server. I’m just impressed that one solution fixed both my spam problems!

Posted in Blogs, Media Socialist, Wikis | Comments
Tagged with Akismet, Bad Behavior, MediaWiki, spam, wordpress

New Facebook design with real-time news feed

Once again, Mark Zuckerberg is rolling out another Facebook redesign…. and shockingly enough, it seems to mimmick Twitter even further!

Announced today through the Facebook Blog, the new changes are quite extensive and are definitely the largest we’ve seen since the creation of the news feed. The first update is the creation of a live-update news feed which updates in real-time as opposed to the feed that updates around every 15 minutes according to Facebook staff. I personally cannot wait for this change. I believe that through this update, they are trying to make Facebook a page which can be left open all day just like loyal Gmail and Twitter users are notorious for. 

The second main change is the creation of profiles for “public figures and organizations.” What this basically means is that the brand pages previously occupied by companies, celebrities and organizations will be transfered over to individual profile pages. As plan currently stand, status updates and user activity of these organizations will be included in your news feed alongside your friends. This move is quite interesting and it is clear that Facebook themselves are not clear on how to roll this out. Just 10 minutes ago, I logged on and smack dab on the top of my news feed is a poll question that reads: “When you “Become a Fan” of a celebrity on Facebook, do you want to see their updates in News Feed?” 

When I heard about the redesign, that was one of the first things that came to my mind. If they decide to implement organization’s updates into my friend news feed, there is no doubt that CNN (who I’m a fan of) will release update after update commenting on the hottest breaking news. After responding “Probably Not”, it became clear that the majority of Facebookers feel the same way as 45% responded “Probably Not,” 28% said “Depends on the Update,” and 16% replied “Not Sure.”

 It definitely seems that increased filtering options will definitely be necessary (as they’ve already implemented and are increasing them with this new update as well) To tell you the truth, I cannot wait. I am excited to see the hundreds of “give us the old facebook back! New Facebook is creepy!” groups to pop up with 100,000 members and then die out within a month. What are your thoughts/concerns about the roll-out of the new design? Comment your thoughts!

Posted in Media Socialist, News, Reviews, Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with 2009, CNN, creepy, Facebook, facebook redesign, gmail, in-feed, March 5th, mark zuckerberg, new, new facebook, news feed, Poll, redesign, status, status updates, Twitter

The Latest in Facebook Hubbub

From the historic outcry over the News Feed rollout, or the debacle that was Beacon, any time Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shares his thoughts on the Facebook Blog, there’s a 50/50 chance it’s because people in Facebookland are unhappy.

Most recently, Zuckerberg responded to controversy surrounding a change in Facebook’s terms of service (TOS). The old TOS stated that a user’s content no longer belongs to Facebook once that user terminates his or her account. Now, Facebook retains the rights to that content.

As the Consumerist points out, it sounds like Facebook is claiming a license to do whatever they want with your intellectual property, forever. But in Zuckerberg’s latest post, he clarifies that this is simply complex legalese to say, if you leave Facebook, the wall posts and messages, etc. you sent your friends will remain on Facebook.

KEEP READING »

Posted in Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with Facebook

Top URL Shorteners

Any constant Twitter user knows the value of a URL shortener, because some of the most fascinating links don’t conform to the 140-character restriction of many micro-blogging services. But some of the best URL shorteners are overshadowed by the titan, TinyURL.

Below I’ve compiled a list of the nine most popular URL shortening services, ordered by unique monthly visitors (data provided by Compete).

Each service results in a shorter URL anywhere from 17 to 25 characters, and I thought it was also interesting to note what countries of origin some of the domain suffixes come from. For instance, the very short moniker “is.gd,” required registration of the domain “is” with Grenada registrars.

Some URL shorteners are more feature-laden than others, so I marked them with these abbreviations:

• C = Custom. Service allows you to provide a custom sequence at the end of the shortened link, rather than an arbitrary/random assortment of numbers and letters.
• P = Private. You can protect links with a password, so only a select few can access the content.
• T = Tracking. Site provides tracking data about link traffic: who, when, how many (etc.) people click your link. (Some sites require login/registration to access tracking data.)
• A = Autocopy. A simple, but great feature. Once a short URL has been created, it’s automatically copied to your clipboard, so you’re ready to paste it. (SnipURL doubles this, by also auto-pasting your clipboard into their page to begin.)
• D = Directory. If a user adds something to the end of the short URL, the service adds it to the end of the destination URL. (If blog.mediasocialist… links to blog.mediasocialist.com, then blog.mediasocialist.com/2009/02/12/top-url-shortenerstop-url-shorte… links to this blog post.) Great for shortening a really long root directory.
• S = Search. The service lets you search through links users have shortened. Can be a nice gague of what’s popular online.

*Includes traffic from snipr.com and snurl.com.

Most important to note, there are several great URL shorteners other than TinyURL. Most are shorter, offer tracking capabilities, and some have additional features.

For me, brevity and beauty are key, so tr.im is my new favorite. It shaves six characters off a TinyURL link, and has a really cleverly appropriate name, along with a pretty web design. It also allows you to post directly to Twitter from their page, and track link traffic without logging in (although you can also create an account).

If you’re less concerned with absolute minimal characters used, SnipURL (also Snipr and Snurl) offers the most features of the top URL shorteners, and is definitely worth a look.

Perhaps the coolest thing I’ve run into in the last couple of days, though, is a feature that reverses what these shortening services do. Sometimes it’s annoying to not know where a shortened URL will take you until after you click it. In fact, URL shorteners can be a great way to spread malicious links. “Long URL Please” is an extension for Firefox that automatically replaces most short URLs with their final destination. That way, we can all take advantage of short URLs in our microblogs, but have the convenience of knowing whether or not a link is worth clicking.

Posted in Micro-blogging, Reviews | Comments
Tagged with bit.ly, budurl, cli.gs, Compete, is.gd, Long URL Please, snipurl, tiny.cc, tinyurl, tr.im, tweetburner, Twitter, twurl

MySpace Kicks Out Sex Offenders

With Facebook nipping at the heels of MySpace for U.S. web traffic, what’s MySpace’s solution? Kick out 90,000 registered users!

Fortunately, according to CNN, those 90,000 banned users were also convicted sex offenders. This revelation is thanks to the Connecticut attorney general, who subpoenaed MySpace’s user files to check for sex-offender crossover.

MySpace said, “As the first and only social networking site to use state of the art technology to identify and remove registered sex offenders from its site, MySpace is proud of its leadership position and hopes that Facebook follows our lead in providing their members with the same protections. As part of our longstanding partnership with law enforcement and state attorneys general, we will continue to readily provide information on these removed offenders for their investigations.”

Two funny things:

1. They make a point of mentioning Facebook, the social network which must still be full of sexual predators.
2. Their “longstanding partnership with law enforcement” began with MySpace initially refusing to comply with the Connecticut attorney general’s subpoena.

Posted in Social Networks | Comments
Tagged with Facebook, MySpace

Small Businesses’ Online Marketing Plans Call For More Social Network Spending

eMarketer posted a study today focusing on online marketing budget allocation of small businesses and not surprisingly, social networking has the highest budget increase over all other methods. 25% of small businesses say that they plan on spending “More” money on social networking while only 5% plan on spending “Less.” 

All areas except for online video, podcasting and mobile device marketing show increases in budget spending, which is quite impressive seeing as how the economic downturn definitely plays a role in the livelihood of small businesses. What shocks me is that blogging ranks over search engine marketing. Although I am a strong proponent of blogs and feel that they have a great deal of influence in the modern interactive community, I am amazed that small business owners are “adventurous” enough to enter an arena of marketing whose metrics aren’t nearly as precise as an SEO effort. Small business owners are known for being risky and unique, so it makes sense that they are willing to enter less “ROI numbers” based marketing and more personalized efforts.

eMarketer Small Business Online Marketing Budget

Posted in Blogs, Media Socialist, Search Engines | Comments
Tagged with budget allocation, eMarketer, small business marketing, Social Networking