Multilingual social networks but unknown to us ?
June 26th, 2008
If you follow the big social networks (Facebook, Myspace etc) you will be forgiven to assume that, its them who have all the users. There are several other social network in English with millions of users who are not covered in the news as often.
Also check out Social Networks in the Far East where Facebook is relatively unknown.
5 networks I can guarantee would surprise you ! With millions of users and still undiscovered by the geek community in the Valley/London. Common theme through all these sites are:
- They have the option to browse in several languages
- Their user base is very well distributed
- Most of the social networks were developed outside the US
Number of Members: 7,000,000
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Created On: October 2004
The site doesn’t look like your typical Web 2.0 but has Dutch youth absolutely loving it. 70% of the users are Dutch. Think Bebo for Dutch speakers ! The site is so popular that the prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende built his profile on Hyves.
Number of Members: 23,697,081
Country of Origin: Israel
Created On: 2003
As the name suggests its a network for family members. The site has over 2,733,433 family trees. Wow!
bahu
Number of Members: 300,000
Country of Origin: France
Created On: April 2007
The site is built for students by students, the team spread around Europe. The site looks good and is well designed with a lot of focus on usability which is fantastic. Although if I’m honest I don’t see anything new on the profiles which I haven’t seen on other social networks. Saying that you don’t have to be very very unique to be successful.
Fotolog
Number of Members: 20 million (unique) users
Country of Origin: United States
Created On: May 2002
Fotolog is one of the oldest and largest sites for sharing pictures through online photo diaries or photo blogs. The site was acquired by a French company for Euro 65,800,000. The site is very different from photobucket, flickr, slide etc. I think photo diaries have their own space on the web.
HospitalityClub.org
Number of Members: 386,550
Country of Origin: Germany
Created On: 2000
This is one the sites which proves the fact you don’t have to look Web 2.0 to be community site. You don’t even need to add your logo on the website 
. It has a very interesting story worth a read
Tags: hyves, myHeritage, bahu, Fotolog, HospitalityClub, multilingual, social network
Social Networking in various continents
February 25th, 2008
Alex the good man just sent me this link in French. Check out the market share of Facebook globally. In Asia it doesn’t have any market share. The Asian market is the biggest in terms of size of internet users but not in terms of social networkers. Orkut is big in Asia and Latin America.
Although Facebook is the most popular social network in Africa. Clearly Social networking has not hit Africa as it has in North America
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Tags: SocialNetworking, Asia, Africa, North America
Real Growth potential in "Niche Social networks”
February 21st, 2008
Today BBC has an article about Facebook’s declining users.
Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December, according to data from Nielsen Online.
Rightly it doesn’t mean its the end of Facebook, its just a slump in 3 big social networks: Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. What I’m more interested is in what Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen Online had to say:
“However, real growth potential lies in the niche networks - those based on a particular lifestyle or interest, such as travel, music, wealth or business”
Smaller social networks like Windows Live Space, BBC Communities and Friend Reunited saw a rise in Jan 2008.
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Tags: Socialnetwork, Niche Networks, Facebook
Bebo now open for Developers
January 11th, 2008
Bebo has now opened its gates to the wider development community. Earlier I mentioned how Bebo would use Facebook’s platform, now it seems its adopting Facebook’s strategy to launch their product too.
Nothing wrong with it, its great that developers can build one tool and it would work for both platforms. Although we should consider the difference in demographics of Facebook and Bebo. Bebo typically attracts users below the age of 19 years whilst Facebook is used by older audience. So the apps could be very different but certainly the slideshows, superpokes etc all can be used on Bebo. Saying that I won’t be surprised if the popularity of apps vary on Bebo and Facebook.
Bebo’s Development toolkit:
There are already around 92 certified apps on Bebo. Pretty good, I think the next step is to try our 2wentysworld Facebook app on Bebo and see how it performs. I’ll keep users posted on how it performed on Bebo.
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Tags: Bebo, Facebook, 2wentys, Developers, open
Bebo Safer + more user friendly than Facebook ?
January 4th, 2008
Bebo, UK based social network primarily used by younger audience was named the safest and most user friendly social networking site. Leaving rival Facebook and MySpace behind.
The polls were conducted by Computing Which ? magazine. The company praised Bebo for the level of security and safety provided on the site.
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Tags: Bebo, secure, safe, computing which ?
New Social Media Facts on American teenagers!
December 20th, 2007
Pew Internet which produces reports that explore impact of internet on families and communities have just released some not so shocking facts about American teenagers. Atleast in my opinion I expected such results.
- According to the report 93% of teens use the internet. 64% of teens between 12-17 have participated in UGC activities.
- 55% of 12-17 year olds have Facebook or MySpace.
- 47% teens have uploaded photos
- 14% post online videos
This is more like news to me:
- Blogosphere: Girls lead the way in blogging with 35% teen girls blogging as oppose to 20% of teen boys. Quote: “Younger girl bloggers have grown at such a fast clip that they are now outspaceing even older boys”
- Boys post more videos on sites like YouTube. Report suggest that 19% of teen boys post videos as oppose to 10% teen girls.
- Awesome stats for someone looking to build social network for teenagers:
See how popular instant messenger is? Clearly teens prefer chatting on IM as oppose to social networking. I’m sure this phenomenon will change with the popularity of social networks. From listening to certain experts in the area I understand that teenagers are slow adopters but very trendy. As in, when social networking is in fashion (amongst teenagers), it should spread like wild fire.
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