It is a good day to be a social networking site. The second SN site of the day, aSmallWorld.com, has announced a multi-million dollar funding deal. aSmallWorld.com is a very exclusive social network. One can only join if they are invited by a member with a certain amount of network connections. Although they only have 130,000 members, aSmallWorld generates revenue through advertising. I imagine they are able to charge a decent premium considering their audience. According to Techcrunch, some famous members include Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton and James Blunt....

Hold on to your hats people. The Social Networking space is heating up even more with the recent announcement that Bebo has raised $15 Million in venture capital. This money should help their growth strategy in non - US markets. Bebo has over 20 million members and has a much higher growth rate in the UK then Myspace. This goes to show that there is still room in the Social Networking scene even with Myspace and Facebook. [tags]Social Networking, Bebo, Venture Capital, Myspace, Facebook, Brian Balfour[/tags]

In an effort to further monetize their site, Facebook has now added the ability for a member to use a photo in their flyer announcement. Flyers are tiny skyscraper ads that are targeted to specific schools. By adding photos, Facebook hopes to encourage people not to use the flyer feature strictly for advertising things as group meetings, student concerts, and fundraising activities but also spend money on personal announcements such as birthday wishes, congratulations, etc. Image via Okdork.com Photos can be added from your photo albums or profile pictures. In addition...

SiliconBeat has reported that original investors, Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark, have pumped another $3.1 million into Friendster. Friendster is expected to roll out with new features such as web chat and notification of new activity by friends in addition to making public profiles searchable by Google and Yahoo. Friendster has had a recent comeback in terms of traffic, but are these new updates to little to late? Most likely. But who knows, maybe the original social networking king will once again get in the innovative mindset and return to its throne. [tags]Social Networking,...

There is one site that is taking advantage of the recent announcement by congress that they are thinking about banning social networking sites. Essembly, an SN site for those interested in politics, has been placing ads such as the one to the right on SN sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The ads lead to a poll page that ultimately lead to their membership register page. This tatic is genius in my mind. I rarely click on ads, but this one caught my attention which lead me straight to their sign up page. I’m working on trying to get some numbers to see how...

As reported by Techcrunch, Friendster is rumored to be building a web chat client to integrate into their social networking platform. It is common knowledge that Friendster was the first well known SN to popularize the friend of a friend system. Ever since their early days they have been really struggling, losing a lot of members to Myspace and Facebook. I don’t know why Friendster is building a web chat client. It doesn’t seem to add any value to their social networking service. There are a ton of IM clients that dominate the market. The behavior...

Librarything.com’s blog has reported that Abebooks.com has bought a 40% stake in the social networking site. Librarything.com is an SN site that allows users to catalogue up to 200 books for free, and an unlimited amount with a $10 annual fee or $25 life time subscription. Librarything has 38,452 paid users, and many more free ones. Vertical Social Networks are huge right now, and I expect many more reports similar to this one to come within the next 6 months. [tags]Social Networking, Abebooks.com, LibraryThing, Vertical Social Networks, Brian Balfour[/tags]

News.com reports that Microsoft has started to think Social Networking when it comes to new social enterprise software. From the article: ” Today, workers in large companies have a tough time figuring out who of their colleagues knows what….he software can see if the information seeker and expert have any worker friends in common who might be able to make an introduction. Workers can also choose whether they want to be open to being contacted directly.” I think this has the potential to be a fantastic tool for large corporations, especially those with offices all over the country/world....

I recently came across an SN site called Gather. Gather’s business model is very interesting. They pay members to be active and contribute content on the site. From their website: “Gather will make money by displaying advertising to people who use Gather’s services. It just seems fair that we share our advertising revenue with you based on the quality and popularity of the content you contribute on Gather. We will also share some of our revenue with you if you choose to use the site actively, exploring content that others write, searching on Gather and...

As reported on John Cook’s Venture Blog, SN site Classmates.com isn’t doing nearly as well as other social networking sites. He states: “Classmates posted 12.9 million unique visitors in April — a 10 percent increase over the same period last year. That compares to the 38.3 million unique visitors at MySpace — the number one social networking site with a 367 percent gain in visitors — and the 12.5 million unique visitors at YouTube” An additional piece of information here that would make these numbers even worse for Classmates.com is the fact that they...