BragThis Boasts New Social Network

People in need of a place to boast about their sporting, work or other life achievements have a new social network to turn to, called BragThis.com.

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Social App Network Puts Your Face in Ads

SocialMedia, a Palo Alto, CA, based ad network for social applications, is among the firms experimenting with socially driven ad formats. This month it began offering a new unit that incorporates the faces -- and in some cases the names -- of people in a given ad recipient's network of friends and acquaintances.

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Cartier pretties up MySpace with ad campaign

When you think about "bling" on MySpace, you probably think about glitter text on profiles, or maybe Swarovski-studded Sidekicks, not Cartier jewelry. But that hasn't stopped the legendary luxury brand from launching a promotional campaign on News Corp.'s social network.

Starting Thursday, Cartier began featuring branded pages for its "Love by Cartier" product line for MySpace's English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese sites. They'll be online for a year, and will feature new music from 12 artists, including Phoenix, Grand National, and Lou Reed.

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Visa Helps Facebook Glean Small Business Ad Dollars

Credit card company Visa is giving small businesses a reason to try advertising on Facebook.

Visa is availing $100 in Facebook ad credits to the first 20,000 small businesses that download a Visa app, which enrolls them in its Facebook-based network.

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Jonas Brothers Dial Up Bebo with Nokia

The Jonas Brothers plan a private acoustic session to be broadcast live on their Bebo channel.

The broadcast will be filmed entirely through a Nokia N95 handset.

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Fox Creates Online Community For Viewers

Fox is pairing with social networking service Passenger to launch a private online community giving the network access to ongoing audience feedback on programming and marketing efforts. Made up of some 2,000 loyal Fox Network viewers invited to join, the community lets members preview new shows, interact with TV producers, post comments, engage in online discussions and participate in polls.

"What comes out of this community is that we're taking 2000 of our loyal viewers and giving them a seat at the table in the decision-making process," said Melva Benoit, senior vice president for audience intelligence and research strategy at Fox.

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Modeling The Real Market Value Of Social Networks

Michael Arrington wants to compare the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views to properly rank them.

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What’s Wrong with the White Label Social Networking Industry?

Jeremiah Owyang wants to know as he reviews the challenges expressed by the Online Community Unconference.

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Is "My Dow Network" a "Social Network"?

Dennis D. McDonald takes a look at a network thats predicated on the idea of generational knowledge transfer.

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Mac Daddy? Daddy Mac?

Apologies to Kriss Kross fans for making them jump, jump.

This is just McDonald's latest MySpace endeavor. Remix the Big Mac jingle for a chance to have it appear in a national ad.

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50 Most Bizarre Social Networks

No matter how weird, worthy, dull or deranged you are, there's a social network for you. CNET.uk takes a tour through 50 of them.

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This post brings back memories of Wired's six lamest social networks from a year ago.

Will Selling Goods be the Answer for Social Networks?

Asian social networks are monetizing their sites primarily through social goods. Why not in the US? Nick O'Neill of the Social Times thinks that Facebook’s new payment platform in combination with their Facebook Connect service is going to yet again transform the social web space.

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MySpace Might Have Friends, but It Wants Ad Money

With an eye toward monetization, MySpace is being redesigned with a new home page, which will be less cluttered and more hospitable to advertising. (The home page will also feature a “splash page” for an ad about the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight.”) The redesign, to be done by early fall, will include a new navigation bar, search tool and video player.

Here's an in-depth look courtesy of NY Times

Reality Check for Social Networks

U.S. visitor traffic for both MySpace and Facebook is beginning to show signs of maturing — and plateauing. The market has shifted its focus onto niche social networks, such as those dedicated to sports, music, automobiles and pets.

Rather than a service unto itself, social networking is becoming just another feature on many web services.

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Forrester Research: Steer clear of consumer-oriented social networks, except for more established players like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Ning. Instead, look to services such as Communispace that provide social tools to help bolster customer relations or customer service and cater to the more practical needs of corporations.

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Intel, LA Clippers Reach Fans At Virtual Watercooler

Watercooler is a year-and-a-half-old startup that targets the sports and media fans within five social networks: Hi5, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and AOL's Bebo. The Watercooler application includes a customizable profile widget, as well as over 700 microsites tailored to various sports teams, TV shows and other media properties. Users grab the widget from the third-party app sections within each social network.

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Facebook Catches Up To MySpace As They Do An About Face

Facebook isn't the only one getting a facelift. MySpace is doing something about its blotchy tan, poor dye job and double chin by giving itself a spacelift.

The redesign can't come soon enough for MySpace, which just saw Facebook catching up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors this April.

Sharp Box Changes Life

From Lowe Worldwide comes a Facebook campaign that involves a box, co-ordinated game play and prizes. The client that it's for remains unannounced, but too many hints point towards Sharp Aquos HDTV.

Hmm, Life Changing Idiot Box?

Life Changing Box

Adrants article

Microsoft Testing Prototype of Facebook-like Social Network

At the request of its SharePoint and Office product development teams, Microsoft's Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.

Timesquare, an enterprise social network to be used by business, was launched internally in January and has already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.

With a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook's (in which Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about an employee.

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LearnHub Relaunches Its Social Learning Network

Online education has been booming recently, with new entries coming from startups eduFire and the upcoming Grockit (shouldn't it be Grok and not Grock?), among others. One of the newest is LearnHub, a startup that launched last March that has undergone a major redesign as it vies for a top spot in this space.

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Coca-Cola Launches CokeTag Facebook Application With Olympic Tie-In

In their words: The CokeTag application empowers anyone to promote themselves and their interests with a do-it-yourself, portable application.

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The Secret World of Sam King

Bebo announced that the social network's next original series will revolve around a Universal Music employee who secretly founds his own record label out of the company mail room.

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Why Some Facebook Applications Thrive, and Why Some Don't.

Here's a look at a few that have either succeeded or failed, and why.

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‘Lifestreaming’ Challenges Social Network Hierachy

A new generation of social networking sites is gaining support in Silicon Valley, challenging the established models of leaders MySpace and Facebook.

FriendFeed, a service founded by the creators of Google Maps and Gmail, is at the head of an anarchic counter movement of “lifestreaming”, where users themselves aggregate and order their online social activities from multiple sources.

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Verizon Moving Its Branded Social Network to a Facebook Page

Verizon is moving its Verizon Community social network from its website over to its Facebook page. Verizon Community, which let users write blogs, post photos, and discuss in forums, will close.

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Like Verizon and Conde Nast, Monster is shutting down their social network.

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Where's Waldo? On Social Nets Like Everyone Else

Waldo has been spotted online: MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

"We're building the Waldo online eco-system," said Nicole Blake, svp-marketing at Classic Media/Entertainment Rights, New York.

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Facebook Now Lets Users Vote on Ads

Facebook quietly added the ability for users to vote up or down on ads recently.

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Samsung, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo: A Social Networking Barbershop Quartet?

Samsung has teamed up with Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to offer four bands the chance to have their music featured in an ad campaign for its F400 handset. In an app created by Techlightenment - which launched simultaneously across the three sites as well as at www.f400share.com - hopefuls can upload a short clip of music for others to listen to and vote for their favourite. The winning clip will become the sound-track on the F400’s radio and online ad campaign, which launches in the summer.

f400 site
f400 MySpace
f400 Facebook
f400 Bebo

MySpace Stops Selling Advertising to Applications

MySpace is no longer charging for application promotion. Now, their editors are picking their favorites to showcase instead.

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A Social Network for Perez Hilton Groupies?

Buzznet, the social network whose CEO told CNET News.com in April that he'd like to build "the next Viacom," has launched a sister site: Celebuzz, a community for enthusiasts of celebrity news and gossip.

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Marketers, Don't Just Blindly Follow Latest Media Trends

Greg Andersen, director of engagement planning for North America at BBH, goes on to say: "Why, 'because all the cool kids are doing it' isn't a good excuse for running to nontraditional media."

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The Fork in the Road for Social Media

Social networking is at a major fork in the road. Down one road is adding more features to a walled garden and opening up just enough, so that users seldom need to leave. Most sites are going down this yellow brick road and the prize is clearly a big one. But they may end up back in Kansas. Down the other road, lies a future of being the primary repository for your connections (aka the social graph), but with this data available via open APIs to anybody who needs it. That is a utility type model, and as with any utility, it can be hugely valuable at scale.

Deciding which path to take is a real decision. A botched choice will likely end in failure, albeit via a long, slow decline.

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Gigya Releases Gigya Socialize Beta

Widget and social technologies company Gigya released the beta of Gigya Socialize, a technology that gives Web site owners the ability to grow both traffic and engagement by adding social features.

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Thinking Outside of the Facebook

Other social networking companies are making their mark, including MocoSpace, FunkySexyCool and ShoZu.

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How to Effectively Buy Into Facebook

Interactive media strategist Tessa Wegert on how advertisers find success on this site.

Part 1: Facebook Pages

Part 2: Social Ads

Hyatt Wants You To Yatt About Travel

The Hyatt created their own social network where Hyatt Gold Passport members share their insider tips on worldwide travel.

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Facebook's New Profile Design is All About Tabs

CNET takes a look on Facebooks impending profile redesign.

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So does All Things Digital:

Stampede! Facebook Opens Its Profile Doors

Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign

Jeremiah Owyang examines a Dell green marketing effort on Facebook, discusses results, and explains what Dell could have done better.

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Marketing Pushback Hitting the Social Networks

Four guidelines for best practices as defined by Dan Evans.

Practice Transparency

Integrate Channels

Identify Your Brand

Define and Measure Success

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The Greening of Social Networks

Here's a quick look at companies who are socially green marketing themselves.

Brita Filter For Good

Sunchips Get Green

Silk Green Caps for Green Energy

Sun Microsystems OpenEco community

Yokohama Tires Ecotreadsetters community