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I was recently taking a look at which data is mandatory and which is optional when people sign up to some common social networking and file sharing websites.

The attached table summarises what I found.

We all sense that a website should collect only the data it needs, and that the more data it tries to collect the more it may turn off potential users (concerns of privacy, etc). But as business people we also have to balance this with the need to add value to user signups (i.e. more data to help us profile users and deliver to them info and offers that are relevant).

It seems like the amount of mandatory data varies between 2 and 6 items (from simple email and password, to things like zip code, town, gender, country, DOB, occupational status).

The marketeers want as much data as possible, the technicians and user advocates want less. One would think that well-known sites are probably able to ask for more data and people will still not be put off, but younger sites who do not yet have repuation may need a more softly softly approach to data collection. Perhaps one way to satisfy both user and business needs is to take only minimal (eg email and password) at signup, but then incentivise the user to add more info, not with monetary reward but perhaps by unlocking site features.

It seems everyone is opening up their platforms to allow external developers to write cool new user-grabbing-keeping features for their platforms. Most recent is MySpace, reported by Techcrunch here.

Bigtent just rased $5m, its a bit like Ning or CollectiveX in that its an online service where you dont need any software install to get started, just set it all up on line. Unlike Ning where you can just get started with a few clicks, Bigtent requires you to apply to them to get approval before you start (interesting - i wonder if that will be too big an obstacle for serious uptake).

It includes all the ‘usual’ social networking and community tools like profile, friends, messaging, plus calendars, events (with RSVPs), message boards, and more.

Very interesting interview with Mark Zuckerberg, from 60 Minutes.

Part 1 is here:

Part 2 is here:

Here’s a point of view to which I can subscribe, but for which I cannot take credit. Social networks will die. This was one of the assertions put to me by Sam Sethi of Blognation last week over a coffee. But how will they die, you ask? Let me elaborate.

Social networking is as old as time, ever since our primitive ancestors formed the first social circles we’ve been social networking. In fact the term wasn’t coined until 1954, but we’d been at it for thousands of years by then.

Social Networking Services (SNS) are characterized by the well-known sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, etc, etc (wikipedia’s growing list is here), and so far most of us, if we have wanted to develop our own computer-based social networks, have had no choice but to use one or more of these. But here is the rub, which one do you choose, most likely you’ll need to be in several because your friends are all on different ones. Personally I use Facebook and LinkedIn, the others I’ve just played with and its really just FB and LI that keep my attention and keep me investing time in updating my stuff. OK, so I also use Blogger, and that as a social media platform you might also say that blogger has some SN elements (but its not a SNS). Anyway I digress, back to the original point, why will these services die.

Well, lets look at what they do for us shall we. My SNS generally allows me to:
- create a network, or several distinct networks, of friends (the definition of ‘friends’ in today’s online social world tends to be wider than our parents may have employed)
- exchange messages and updates with those friends of groups of friends
- share content (photos, videos, music, stories, etc) with them
- get recommendations to and discover places, content and services that may interest me
- be entertained and engage in conversation, discussion, games, debate, abuse - yes even a little mutual abuse and poking is fun
- develop my personal and professional reputation
- find new potential employments
- get connected with new friends, who are friends of friends
- maintain contact with more distant friends despite separation of distance of time
- …

Now, consider if there is another way to do these things. Well, most of the information that I have to re-enter into my chosen SNS already exists in applications on my desktop, think about your email client (PIM) or your IM/VoIP client. Perhaps the only reason that SNS exist as separate services is that your existing tools have been slow to offer these features.

What will happen is that there will be a convergence of communications tools and SNS. Either we’ll all give up standalone email and IM/VoIP and do it all through SNS, which would mean that SNS need to adopt a set of open standards to allow messaging and exchange of data between them (perhaps OpenID and OpenSocial are a start). Or we’ll start to leave behind silo SNS as the social tools start to appear in our PIMs and IMs.

Of course you also have to consider that more and more of us are mobile these days, and the number is growing. I don’t really want to have to log in to a special website (especially multiple of them) to catch up with my friends, use a separate calendar for my meetings, use a separate email client for my email, and a separate IM client for my IM. I want it all to be right there on my Treo (or whatever mobile device you use). So far My Treo does all my appointments, all my email, and IM is just about doable. But it also already has all my contacts in, most of them already organized by category (or as a SNS may call them ‘networks’). So, how about a mobile app, with a PC/MAC based partner that gives me a larger UI (and replicates all my data) when I am sitting down.

Now there is of course the alternate view, that my local apps will disappear and all this will migrate online. You know what? I actually don’t care which way it goes, and it almost doesn’t matter, what’s important is that we will see a convergence and we’ll tend to come down on one side or the other, but the notion of a SNS as distinct from other services will start to die - it will all just be about the natural way I communicate and organize myself with my friends.

Flux Launches Self Service Product; Full On Ning Competitor

Flux, a new social network joint venture between Viacom and SocialProject, had a limited launch in September.

The platform is the cornerstone of Viacom’s social network strategy. Instead of building independent networks for MTV and its hundreds of other brands, they’ve built a distributed platform that shares users, infrastructure and content, but allows for distinct branding and community building around each property (like Ning). And Flux isn’t just for Viacom - third parties are using it as well.

When Flux launched it had only a few hand picked non-Viacom partners. Today they are opening up the platform for anyone that wants to join.

Like Ning, it’s fairly easy to create a Flux social network. The look and feel can be customized via templates or by uploading your own CSS, and the network can be mapped to your domain name.

Once created any Flux member can join your network with a single click. Since Flux is already gaining users via their launched Viacom and other properties, this gives young communities a deeper pool of users to draw from. And the fact that new users do not need to create a new profile, friends list or login credentials gives them a greater incentive to join. User data is exportable, Flux says, if the partner creates a privacy policy stating that.

Partners have three integration choices:
- fShare, the basic integration, allows users to take content from the site and easily embed it into other social networks.
- Flux Lite allows partners to create a basic social network.
- Flux custom gives nearly full control over the look and feel and has additional features. Partners can choose any integration, it just takes a little more work to use the custom features. Flux will add new developer features over time as well. The chart to the right (click for larger view) shows the various options.

Flux partners can choose to show Flux ads on the site, or use their own. Flux says they are currently selling at a $1.50 CPM and will split that 50/50 with partners. If a partner chooses to display their own ads instead, they must split revenue with Flux 50/50 as well.

Flux v. Ning
Flux and Ning have very similar features and will compete for communities looking to build a social network (and there are lots of other choices as well). Ning has an established platform, lots of money, and 130,000 existing communities (including Playboy). Flux also has a great platform, and the leverage of all the Viacom properties to promote it. Ning sees the threat from Flux. CEO Gina Bianchini wrote a fiery point-by-point comparison of the two services earlier this week - Flux disputes some of the facts.

Ning is currently supporting Google’s Open Social platform. Flux says they will fully support Open Social beginning in January.

Via techcrunch

Six Apart has sold its hosting blogging platform LiveJournal, which it acquired in January 2005, to Moscow-headquarted SUP (pronounced “soup”), the company said this evening. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SUP previously acquired licensing rights in October 2006 permitting them to manage LiveJournal in Russia, where the platform dominates blogging culture.

“This allows Six Apart to focus on their remaining three brands (Vox, TypePad and MoveableType)” CEO Chris Alden told Michael Arrington at TechCrunch.

Since the 2005 acquisition, Live Journal has grown from 5 million to over 14 million accounts. But overall unique visitor and page view growth has been static for the last year. In October 2007 Comscore says LiveJournal had 13.8 million worldwide unique visitors generating 475 million page views. That’s up only slightly from the 11.1 million visitors and and 408 million page view per month a year ago.

Via techcrunch

A few weeks ago a friend emailed me an FT article about Facebook’s Beacon social advertising app/strategy. The feelings then were mixed: the promise to advertisers was great, but would users really be happy with the invasion of privacy.

Techcrunch explains it nicely

“Beacon is a social form of advertising that shares your purchases or other actions you take on an advertiser’s site with all your friends on Facebook through their News Feeds. What has privacy advocates up in arms, and advertisers skittish, about Beacon is the way it seems to be spying on you as you surf the Web and then, on top of that, reporting what you just did to everyone you know.

This objection was doubly true when Beacon was being forced down every Facebook member’s throat whether they wanted to be tracked this way or not. And it was the main reason that MoveOn.org made killing Beacon its Cause Du Jour. Since then, Facebook has addressed most of the initial concerns by wisely forcing people to deliberately and repeatedly choose to participate. But there are still some serious issues with the way the whole system works technologically.

According to one security engineer’s analysis, Beacon partners transmit data to Facebook in bulk about members who visit their site. This is true even for those who opt out of Beacon by clicking on “No Thanks” when asked if the data can be shared with Facebook. The data is sent anyway.”

Here is a great article by Sam Sethi (Blognation) that just about sums it up from the users’ perspecive. Its all well and good having a great advertiser story, but if your users all dissappear your story counts for nowt.

A related article on Techcrunch is here

3rd Dec–> Its all kicking off!!! Here’s the latest from Mashable, more advertisers flee Facebook

4th Dec–> And more from Mashable here

“All it takes to make social networking a big hit on cell phones is the right kind of wireless network”

So says Dick Lynch, chief technology officer of Verizon (NYSE:VZ) Wireless, the US’s second-biggest mobile phone company.

Verizon just happens to be laying the ground work to launch a next-generation wireless broadband service in about 2010. That fourth-generation, or 4G, broadband network will be geared to social networkers, among others.

“What we see is the typical person today at Facebook or YouTube, or any social networking site, being the major wireless user of the future,” Lynch said.

Social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook have quickly gaining in popularity by letting users create online profiles, contact people and share video clips, music and photos.

Many analysts expect Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications VZ and U.K. based Vodafone, to bid for a substantial amount of radio spectrum in January’s government auction of airwaves. With the spectrum it gets then and other airwaves it has stockpiled, Verizon Wireless plans to roll out a 4G broadband network.

The 4G network will have much improved two-way data speeds, with plenty of bandwidth for video services, interactive gaming and other applications. The social networking generation will help drive already booming wireless data revenue even higher.

4G isn’t going to be about more voice services or more text messaging, it’s going to be about interactive applications and about customers that are far more comfortable with and demanding of interactive applications - people who believe interactivity is a right.

Verizon Wireless saw revenue from wireless data services jump 63% to $2 billion last quarter.

Just like other wireless firms, Verizon still garners most data revenue from text messaging and ring tones. Music and video downloads, photo messaging and Web-based information services has started to grow at a faster rate, though.

Market research firm Ipsos says that young social network users are much more likely than older wireless subscribers to download music or video to mobile phones.

Verizon isn’t the first wireless firm to eye social networkers. In fact, it might be late to the game, despite its ambitious 4G plans.

In 2006, No. 1 social networking site MySpace struck deals with the nation’s No. 1 wireless service provider AT&T /Cingular and with Helio. AT&T has deals with Facebook and a few other social networks as well. And AT&T is in the early stages of rolling out a mobile video-sharing service over its 3G network, so its users can share video with other AT&T wireless users. Helio offers phones preloaded with MySpace features that make it easy for subscribers to view profiles or post comments and photos, and Helio also offers a one-click video-posting service to YouTube.

In September, T-Mobile USA introduced new MySpace features for its popular Sidekick phone.

T-Mobile has yet to build a 3G network like Verizon or AT&T, but it has said it plans to target social networks and user-generated content when it rolls out 3G services over the next year or two.

Rather than develop their own social networking products, market research firm Ovum says most wireless firms have decided that it is best to work with popular sites like Facebook and MySpace.

John Fletcher, analyst at market research firm SNL Kagan, says social networking will give wireless service providers a data revenue a boost.

“Today data is hovering at about 20% of total service revenue,” he said. “But a big chunk of that is from business users on BlackBerry devices and laptop computers. Consumer data revenue is much lower.”

Lynch says Verizon’s 4G network will bring about big changes in portable consumer devices. He says consumer devices such as cameras will now come with built-in wireless chips, the same as laptop PCs.

Bebo, the UK’s biggest social networking site yesterday announced partnerships with a string of broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, ITN and CBS, in a move hailed as one of the most significant yet in marrying old and new media.

Traditional broadcasters hope that distributing and marketing their programmes to Bebo’s 40 million users will help them reconnect with the so-called “lost TV generation” of 13 to 24-year-olds who make up the social networking site’s core audience.

It will allow Bebo users to collect and curate clips from BBC programmes such as Doctor Who and EastEnders, behind-the-scenes MTV footage, ITN entertainment news and a host of other items within their own “Personal Video Profile”, displaying them on their homepage and sharing them with friends.

In future, broadcasters are also likely to use Bebo to premiere programmes before they are shown on television in an attempt to build up an early following.

One of their biggest challenges is to cut through the noise of competing channels and get viewers to sample their programmes.

Bebo’s president, Joanna Shields, said the announcement marked a new phase for social networking sites. “We’re revolutionising the way media companies can reach audiences online … particularly the hard-to-reach youth demographic,” she said.

As well as welcoming the world’s biggest media companies, she said the new platform would be open to niche broadcasters, giving them an opportunity to reach Bebo’s millions of users.

A fierce battle is taking place for the eyeballs of elusive younger consumers, who are increasingly turning their backs on traditional media. Advertisers are terrified of no longer being able to reach young audiences, while broadcasters and other traditional media owners are seeing mass audiences eroded.

Bebo, which unveiled a new look yesterday, also vowed to collaborate with broadcasters and independent producers to create more interactive drama and entertainment shows developed especially for the web, following its recent hit Kate Modern.

It claims to be the most popular social networking site in Britain, with 10.9 million users spending an average of 35 to 40 minutes a day on it. Globally, it is third to rivals MySpace, which rose to prominence in the UK thanks to its role in breaking several big music artists, and Facebook, which has an older user base and has been embraced by office workers around the world.

Bebo was founded in 2005 by British-born web entrepreneur Michael Birch with his wife, Xochi, and has steadfastly refused a number of offers to sell to established media players.

The BBC and Channel 4 will initially use the Bebo network to promote their shows using short clips. Because it allows them to embed their own “media players” within the website, they are also likely to show full-length programmes in future.

Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4, said it was “the start of an exciting partnership and the launch pad for future innovations around new formats and existing successful shows”. The broadcaster has already enjoyed some success by heavily promoting youth drama Skins through MySpace.

Shields, a former Google executive, said one of the key differences with Bebo’s offering to broadcasters was that it was not attempting to make any money from their content.

Instead, broadcasters retain control of the rights and can use their own technology, showing their own advertisements around their clips.

The power of online video was first demonstrated by the explosion in popularity of video-sharing site YouTube, much of which was driven by traditional broadcasts being made available illegally, as well as from user-generated content.

While some broadcasters, including the BBC, have done deals with the Google-owned YouTube to feature their shows on their own branded channels, others, including Viacom and the Premier League, have threatened it with legal action.

Broadcasters have for some time been working on how to deliver on-demand programming over the internet and mobile devices.

The BBC has launched a public trial of its long-mooted iPlayer, which offers any programme from the last seven days, while ITV and Channel 4 also offer similar catch-up services. Apple offers paid-for downloads of TV shows through iTunes, while NBC and News Corp recently launched a video site in the US.

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, has made reconnecting with younger viewers a main plank of his Creative Future plan designed to maintain support for the licence fee in an age of digital choice.

But broadcasters have only recently turned their attention to spreading their programmes throughout the web. Web 2.0 logic dictates that broadcasters will stand a better chance of continuing to reach mass audiences if they are able to scatter clips, programmes and other background material throughout the web to users who will no longer head for “destination sites” to watch it.

To this end, media companies have been engaged in a desperate race to sign deals with new TV-over-the-internet platforms such as Joost, while at the same time policing the web for pirate content.

Shields likened the typical Bebo profile to a teenager’s bedroom. It became an extension of their personality by hosting pictures and notes from friends and displaying their favourite bands and TV shows, she said.

She predicted the new deals would help mark it out from its rivals, describing Facebook as a functional BlackBerry equivalent and Bebo as a multimedia iPod Touch.

Bebo and other websites are now commissioning their own shows. Attempts at interactive online dramas are nothing new - US series The Spot was made in 1995 - but the popularity and marketing power of Bebo has arguably made them viable for the first time. Kate Modern, a thriller starring Ralf Little made by the team behind US YouTube phenomenon LonelyGirl 115, was watched 25m times in three months and allowed Bebo users to interact with the characters. It also featured sponsorship deals, such as one with Warner Music to put its act The Days into the storyline, and product placement of the kind that is banned on television. It will be followed by drama Sofia’s Diary, made by Sony, and The Gap Year, an Endemol “interactive online reality drama”, following six contestants travelling the globe.

Via Guardian Online (Owen Gibson, media correspondent)