Its not an excuse ! Its just the way the website works, there are bugs which need to be resolved. Web community has very intelligently named them: alpha, beta etc sites. In my opinion, its good to be upfront with your users. Today while browsing, I found excellent sketches created by Rob Cottingham.. made my day
Source: Noise to Signal
 

Tags: noiseto signal, funny, sketch, beta

I covered a few European social networks in my previous blog: multi-lingual social networks.

This blog covers two social networks I think very nicely represent the social web wave in France. Obviously there is Netvibes with its presence felt globally and over $16m in funding. Two social networks which grabbed my attention:

LinkedIn equivalent for France, viadeo is a popular social network for business people. Viadeo raised over $6.8m mainly to expand in Asia. The site is already available in German, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch 2m members. The profiles are sort of half way house between Ecademy and LinkedIn, and seem to target entrepreneurs, SMEs and larger enterprises. In the future it has the potential to go public like Xing the German business social network and the first web 2.0 company to go public. 

The other social network is targeted at younger audience, predominantly 13 to 24 year old. The social networks is targeted around French radio station specialising in rap and R&B and has more than 4.1m listeners daily. Social network is clearly a good fit with Skyrock’s strategy. In October 2007 it had over 14 million blogs in various languages, mainly French. The site’s design would remind you of Bebo, obviously both social networks aim at similar audience.

Tags: French, Social Network, Skyrock, Viadeo

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:

1. They have the option to browse in several languages
2. Their user base is very well distributed
3. Most of the social networks were developed outside the US

Hyves.net

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.

myHeritage

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

Yesterday (Saturday) our sister company, E3 Group celebrated its 10th year anniversary. E3 Group’s CEO, David Hill is on the board of Directors of Kwiqq and Jack Fairhall, Kwiqq’s CEO is the former managing director of E3 Group.

The show was fantastic with fireworks and live entertainment. The proceeds of the night were donated to two Sussex based Charities: Chestnut Tree House and Martlets Hospice. In total E3 Group raised over £18,000 for the charities.

Feather and Fireworks Ball

Tags: E3Group, Chestnut Tree House , Martlets Hospice, Feather, Fireworks

Enterprises in North America and Western Europe see Web 2.0 to be a priority for next year. They are expected to spend $5bn more in the next 5 years. The Telecommunication industry is well into it already! With all the major players: Motorola, LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson with their own social Networks

Content Providers

Nokia (Mosh) and Samsung (Samsung Mobile) chose to provide ringtones, videos, music, wallpaper etc. Whilst Nokia is free Samsung will setup you back £3.00- £4.50 per item. hmm

Music Rating

LG (rallyformusic) has gone down the route of rating new music. Seems the site is targeted unsigned bands! Well atleast you can download the music free. Nice !

LG is also going to release their YouTube Phones, so users can upload videos on YouTube

Blogging ?

Sony has gone the traditional route of blogging in Spanish. Centered around Sony Ericsson Open (Tennis if you are wondering !). The site is called Tennis Chic

Tap into other Social Networks

Motorola decided to empower users to upload stuff to other social networks using their mobile phone. Read More..

My favourite is Nokia’s free content social network.

Tags: Motorola, LG, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, social network, mobiles

Kwiqq has been commissioned by Finerday Ltd to build a social website for grandparents to keep in touch through email, text and video call. Sneak Preview

Finerday is working with Age Concern for the week long Silver Surfer Campaign. Finerday are also supported by the following partners:

At Kwiqq we are glad to be part of this truly unique opportunity. We feel this a good application of how social networking is useful for people from varied backgrounds. Our focus will be to make the site as usable for the target audience as possible. We are operating very closely with Finerday team and their expertise in working with older people to make the experience seamless for users.

Read more in

Tags: finerday, age concern, microsoft, sun, intel, social network

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to go to borders and this magazine caught my attention:

A magazine that allows you to learn how to use facebook on the web, mobile etc. The magazines gives you links to celebrity profiles on Facebook. How Cool NOT!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Facebook, Borders

Started in September 2006. MTV is now pulling the plug on its User Generated Channel Flux, 1st Feb 2008 onwards. Flux community controls what goes on MTV. The more views a user gets, the more chances to be seen on TV.

So people are encouraged to upload stuff which would interests others.

I’m still not sure why this decision was made, anyway the good news is that the Flux web community will be alive. MTV plans to integrate the UGC concept into its MTV branded music channel. So much more to come from MTV UK and Flux

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Flux, MTV UK, UGC

Earlier I blogged how social.im built a facebook chat which required users to download software. Today I discovered a Facebook chat which uses Ajax and is completely browser based.

FriendVox.com developed by London based Techlightenment, specializing in Facebook applications. These are the guys who built the Bob Dylan Application, Socialistics

Blogged with Flock

Tags: FriendVox.com, Techlightenment, social.im, Facebook Chat

To keep a close eye on social networking I often follow Social Networking/Web 2.0 blogs on the net. Thought I’ll share them with our readers:

So firstly I use Netvibes to follow all the RSS feeds from these sites. Simply because its easy to use and see all the stories on a single page to click and read.

On the go I use my blackberry to keep on top of things using m.netvibes.com

Blogs I read on a daily basis:

• Techcrunch: Micheal Arrington and his crews latest info on the Tech 2.0. Highly recommended. Its a fun blog
• Mashable: Peter Cashmore and his teams almost hourly review. Its kinda too much for me to follow at times. Although I admire the team for their dedication and amount of content they can generate.
• ReadWriteWeb: Another one to compete with the big Web 2.0 blogs
• Techcrunch UK: My favourite blog covering the UK and Europe scene
• Giga Om: Written by Om Malik and his team covering similar topics to the above blogs.

I used to follow: Blognation but obviously they have switched the website off

Weekly basis:

• Intruders TV: Nice website where you can see videos of entrepreneurs and companies. Its amazing to see people in talking about their website and you feel more connected.
• BBC News - Technology UK: Strangely enough some of the Techcrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb appears here a day or two later
• FT.com Technology: FT has an interesting take on news from a financial perspective: M&A, VCs etc
• Guy Kawasaki: A site where Kawasaki writes his view of ventures, appropriate bring a venture capitalist. Let me warn you its not really 2.0 but its fun. He is a funny guy and when ever I saw his videos he makes me laugh (in a nice way)

I also recommend: Snipperoo for anyone interested in Widgets.

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Tags: Blogs, Technology, Web 2.0, Social Networks