YouthNoise, a social network for social change has raised $1.5 million in venture capital. The site currently has around 113,000 members with over 3 million page views per month. The round of funding was lead by Pierre Omidyar, founder of Ebay.  YouthNoise is non-profit.

The term social networking has become more main stream with the publicity of sites such as Myspace and Facebook. As a result large corporations are following suit wanting to jump on the social networking bandwagon even if they don’t know what it really is. To take advantage of this, a couple companies promoting an “all in one” social networking package have emerged. Web Crossing and Eventrobot.com are trying to find major players to integrate their social networking platform in with their online presence. For example, eventrobot’s most recent project...

A new music based social networking site, MOG, has been launched by former MTV marketing executive David Hyman with $1.4 million from private investors. MOG depends on you downloading their software which automatically tracks the music that you listen to on I-Tunes. Profiles are customizable and include other items such as concerts you plan on attending, favorite albums, etc. As Pete Cashmore of Mashable points out, this isn’t a new idea. Other sites such as Musio and Last.fm have been doing this for awhile. In addition, Red Hat has launched Music Radar as...

20 year old David Liu is the creator of new social networking site, FAQQLY.com. I recently had the chance to ask him a few questions about Faqqly’s unique take on social networking. Questions and answers are below. How old is the site? How did you get your idea? “A few years ago, I used to design websites for Hollywood actors. I kept noticing that they all had their own FAQ pages. After noticing all their FAQ pages, I thought to myself, “hey, I want my own FAQ page also.” And later on I thought, “Why can’t everyone have an FAQ?” I...

Unfortunately I recently got really sick and basically couldn’t function for around 5 days. A lot has happened in the past week in the social networking space so to get caught up I have listed of a few of the most notable things. Myspace Careers - Myspace in conjunction with SimplyHired, has launched Myspace Careers; a section of myspace dedicated to finding a job. This is a great move for SimplyHired as it will drive massive amounts of traffic through their listings, however, I don’t think it adds that much value to Myspace. It is just throwing one more feature...

Extremely sick. Hope to be back in action by Monday.

An article on CIO talks about the new MSN Spaces that includes social networking features. They are currently testing the site on its users in Australia and the Netherlands. The article talks about how it may receive competition from other Microsoft startup Wallop. The question is will they be able to leverage their already existing userbase to compete with Myspace? I also think that MSN Spaces has serious competition with the recently launched Vox. [tags]Social Networking, Social Network, MSN Spaces, Vox, Myspace, Brian Balfour[/tags]

My social networking project, Fanlete, has gone into private beta testing, and we have decided to release some more details. A couple months ago I realized that the only way for sports fans to interact on the internet are traditional forums, fantasy leagues, and betting (if you want to call it interaction). Fanlete is aimed to fill that void by being a social network for sports fans oriented around their favorite teams. While social networking is at the core of the site, we are focusing on unique interactive features that target sports fans. The one that I am the most excited about is the...

Due to the relentless (and over exaggerated) media coverage of the dangers of Myspace, there have been a few social networks that have launched with the selling point of being a safer social networking environment. One site, Imbee, will be launching this month, and is suppose to be for 8-14 year olds. The founder, Jeanette Symons, hopes to create a very safe social networking environment by involving parents. From an article on MTV.com: “Her site, which will debut in June and be geared toward 8- to 14-year-old kids, will allow parents to monitor their...

Yesterday I announced that Red Hat had launched a new open source social networking platform. Thanks to Bryan Clark, one of the Mug Shot Developers, I was able to get in to take a closer look. I was very indifferent with what I saw, but I am keeping a very positive outlook for Mugshot considering that they are in their infancy, and that I like the potential of what open source could bring to the table. In addition their goals for the future excite me (more on this later). While the team of Mugshot is trying to dispell themselves as “social networking,” they incorporate...