Tuesday, February 17, 2009

SocialTimes.com

SocialTimes.com

MySpace Mobile Relaunches, Rapid Growth Worldwide

Posted: 16 Feb 2009 10:27 PM PST

Facebook may have overtaken MySpace here in the U.S. but MySpace mobile is reporting significant growth, at an even faster rate internationally than its U.S. growth. According to MySpace, the last six months has shown over 50% increase in mobile usage for the U.S., with an 80% increase in mobile usage in Europe. The Asian mobile market for MySpace has gone up 60% in that same time period.

So what’s with all the mobile growth? Smart phones like the Apple iPhone, and an increase in social media driven mobile applications make it easier to stay connected with friends and share media across social networks even when you’re on the go. To ramp up MySpace’s mobile efforts, the mainstream social network has announced the support in conjunction with the Palm and Nokia at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with more mobile announcements to come as co-founder Chris DeWolfe will be keynoting on Thursday.

With the inclusion of Palm and Nokia support, MySpace now covers that gamut of all smartphone platforms, including the iPhone, Android, RIM and Sidekick. This seems to be an important achievement for MySpace, as it continues to roll out its mobile efforts. Such mobile efforts are especially important for MySpace on an international level, given the demographics and mobile web usage in other countries including those in Asia.

To this end, MySpace is also launching an entirely new version of its mobile website later this week, with an improved interface and better user design. Also important with the new mobile version of MySpace–better opportunities for branding and advertisement.

Now, we’ve already learned that social networking is helping to drive larger adoption rates for mobile web usage, especially overseas. But MySpace’s new dedication towards branding and advertisement is a re-focused initiative that we haven’t seen largely with other versions of mainstream social networks. This is important, especially for networks like MySpace, which are seeing larger growth rates on their mobile sites with very distinct efforts on expanding their reach through mobile web usage. In order to continue to monetize these efforts, MySpace should be readily focused on bringing advertisements and branding options into their mobile version.

I think the time is ripe for MySpace and other social networks to place more attention on monetizing their mobile versions. We’ve seen some movement in this direction with third party developers making their own networks applicable to a social network as well as one’s mobile devices, broadening opportunities for advertisers seeking to target the social network’s demographic. But a concerted effort coming directly from the social networks themselves is something we’re likely to see more of in he coming year. With MySpace launching its new mobile version in 13 languages with 29 localized countries, it’s apparent that MySpace is hoping to continue to capitalize on its existing mobile presence.

This all comes days after MySpace’s involvement with the Symbian Foundation, which is looking to make the Symbian platform an open mobile platform for developers. While Facebook initially saw it traffic surpass MySpace in certain countries overseas, i looks as though MySpace is hoping to become dominate yet again in the global market with a heavy mobile push. and MySpace has been developing its mobile version for some years now, long before mobile devices readily supported integrated media sharing or social networking was well-received with users.

Tweeght Seeks the Meaning of Twitter

Posted: 16 Feb 2009 03:05 PM PST

-Tweeght Logo-Tweeght is a new site that is a lot like Twitter, but is focused on enriching people’s lives with tweets published through its site. But what does that really mean for you? Share quotes, thoughts, or ideas–something Plinky is also moving towards. Express how you feel about someone else’s thoughtful tweet by voting it up or down. Find out who the most influential Twitter users are by checking the leader board. In essence, Tweeght is Twitter plus Pownce (without the multimedia) plus Digg.

And instead of competing with Twitter by building out its own community, Tweeght has just leveraged an existing Twitter API in order to enable Twitter users to submit their contributions directly through Twitter (that includes mobile updates as well). This encourages users to participate by making it that much easier to contribute–just sign in with your existing Twitter credentials.

There are a number of actions you can take on Tweeght that let you take part in this ever-shifting Twitter community. You can reply to a tweet directly on Tweeght, or retweet it in the same manner. You can also vote a tweet up or down, which ultimately determines what the top tweets are and who the top users are on Tweeght.

The site also offers some basic info on Twitter users, which all appears to be taken from the profile section of that Twitterer. Seeing as Tweeght has leader boards and a People section, it’s easy enough to find users that you may be interested in following or interacting with, based on their contributions to Tweeght. And that’s the point.

Tweeght also encourages you to tag your tweets (i.e. #thought, #quote), which makes it even easier to collect all the thoughtful and meaningful tweets floating around out there. The hashtag tagging also makes it easier for you to contribute your thoughts, as this doesn’t require any specific interaction with the Tweeght site or service itself.

Looking around at Tweeght’s site, however, and I can’t help but wonder if the tagging isn’t a monetization option for Tweeght later on down the line. Every week Tweeght promotes a featured keyword, which refers to a book or a public figure.

This highly encourages interactive discussions of various topics, effectively building out Twitter and Tweeght’s community capabilities around given points of interest. But this could also become a sponsored option for Tweeght, where brands pay the service in order to promote their own book (or product, should Tweeght branch out) where they get to raise awareness and do some market research in the process.

-Tweeght Screenshot-

Twitter Remote is MyBlogLog for Twitter

Posted: 16 Feb 2009 10:10 AM PST

-Twitter Remote Screenshot-Twitter isn’t the most social site by nature, though it has some very social features that allow you to create some semblance of a community around your tweets and the tweets of your followers. But even with this inherent Twitter community it’s difficult to take that community outside of Twitter and use it to your benefit. An application called Twitter Remote displays which Twitter users have recently visited your blog or website. This essentially creates a MyBlogLog for Twitter-specific use.

The good thing about this application is that it comes with a widget that you can post on your blog or website. The widgets themselves are customizable in the basic dimensions. You’re able to change the color scheme, number of rows, and other parameters before placing it on your blog or website.

Visitors that are also Twitter users can login and share their presence on your website. It also lets them know the reach of your blog or website, and creates an instant extension of the Twitter community to your online publication. This is good for creating some cross-traffic between your blog and your Twitter account.

Those Twitter users that join Twitter Remote and visit sites that support its widget are also promoting their own Twitter profile, as each widget displays a link along with other basic information about that user.

You can send other Twitter Remote users reply tweets, pull up search results based on their username, or see their usage stats, powered by Twitter Counter (the company behind Twitter Remote). This of course creates a broadcast network for each participating Twitter user that signs up for Twitter Remote, even if they’re not using the widget on their own site.

If even more information (especially site-specific information) pertaining to each user could be incorporated into the Twitter Remote widget its networking and cross-promotional potential could become even greater. Layering in support for other sites and services, such as Facebook, could be useful as well. We’re actually surprised Facebook doesn’t have an option similar to this, though you can create one of your own using Facebook Connect, as we’ve done at AllFacebook and SocialTimes.

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