Thanks to Martin Burns for pointing me to this company. Visible Path is one of the many companies trying to capitalize on corporate social networking. From their website: “Visible Path transforms the way large companies leverage relationship capital to drive top-line revenue growth. The Visible Path platform applies the science of social network analysis to allow professionals to access the entire enterprise’s trusted relationship network without invading privacy or compromising relationships.” There is one aspect of their technology that I find very unique and...

I find this hilarious…I think that means I’m a big dork. http://www.collegehumor.com/update:1706078ÂÂ

It only takes a two second look of Xiaonei.com homepage to realize that the founder had no qualms copying every aspect of facebook, even down to its design. Looks like it paid off though. Oak Pacific Interactive, a Chinese internet company, has announced that it acquired Xiaonei.com for an undisclosed amount and will integrate its Xiaonei’s 1 million members with its already existing social network. Eventhough I don’t condone this type of action, Facebook had it coming. On numerous occasions Zuckerberg and his PR staff have said they are not interested...

I’ve received some emails lately on why I haven’t been blogging much lately. A part of it is because I am short on time with my new job and side projects. But yesterday I unfortunately also realized that I have been finding it harder and harder to find topics and new social networks to write about. Why? Because it seems as if the social networking space is declining in quality new sites, in exchange for high numbers. The boom of social networking has cluttered the space with hundreds, if not thousands, of poor quality social networks. The thinking...

I know this post isn’t specifically about social networking, but I know a lot of my readers are entrepreneurs or involved in a startup. I found the following list from Paul Graham titled “The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups” to be a must read for any entrepreneur. I couldn’t agree more with this list. In fact, I definitely made a few of them with my first company. Most notably “Hiring Bad Programmers” and “Slowness in Launching.” [tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Brian Balfour[/tags]

Have you ever saw a commercial or advertisement, laughed to yourself, and thought “What the hell were they thinking?” That is what I thought when I saw OpenBC’s promo video for their new re-branded site Xing (See Video Here). If you can manage to sit through the painful three minute experience, please tell me how this video is going to help Xing sign up more members? Not only does the video tell you absolutely nothing about the sites features, but it just repeats meaningless statements followed by a person crossing their two index fingers in the formation of an...

With the unbelievable boom over the past year, online social networking has received a lot of doubtful criticisms among the media. Yes, some social networks may be just a fad and yes, there will be a fair amount that will fail. But let me make one statement clear: Online social networking is here to stay. In fact, I will go as far to say that I believe at one point in the future, a person’s entire internet experience will have some underlying social network influencing it. My belief can be explained in two reasons: Everything (and I mean everything) on the internet is...

Looks like founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has another hater to add to the list, and this time it is more then one of his million members complaining about the new changes to the site. Aaron Greenspan, an ex Harvard classmate of Zuckerberg’s has written an open letter mocking Zuckerberg and calling him out for stealing features from a site Greenspan had made pre-facebook. In addition, Greenspan has decided to relaunch his project from 3 years ago in the form of CommonRoom.com not only as a Facebook killer, but a be all end all to the regular internet. I think Pete Cashmore...

According to the Wall Street Journal and “people close to the matter,” Facebook is in in serious talks with Yahoo to sell itself for an amount around $1 Billion. $1 Billion sounds ridiculous, but it is much more sane then the previously reported $2 Billion dollar amount floating around a few months ago. In my opinion it is a good time for Facebook to sell (best time would have been 1 or 2 months ago). They have tapped the college market to its fullest extent and is now trying to sustain their growth by opening up the site to anyone. This move could dilute the...

College social networking site, Xuqa, recently launched a new version of the site which they have deemed as Xuqa 2.0. From their site, Xuqa 2.0 is: “A giant online reality game played for fame and fortune between you, your friends, and 1,000,000 other players.” For those of you that are really unfamiliar with the site, Xuqa combines all of the social networking basics (Friend list, customizable profiles, etc.) with a competitive element of gaining a certain level status (1 -10) based on your fame (profile views) and inter-site fortune (peanuts). I don’t really want to get caught...