Social networking has helped increase the amount of media sharing among individuals. Sites such as Flickr, Youtube, Purevolume, and blogger are all massive forms of media sharing. But as you look at the list of sites, media sharing is very segmented. For photos you go to Flickr, for videos you go to Youtube, for music and audio you go to Purevolume, etc. A few startups are trying to bring all of this together into one massive media sharing platform. I was able to speak with one of the founders at one such startup, Twango. From their site they describe themselves as: We recognize that people...

Facebook launched more to its facebook mobile platform. Some of the features that are being promoted are: Mobile Web Browsing facebook on your phone, with formatting to fit your mobile screen. Mobile Uploads Upload photos and notes straight from your phone Mobile Texts Send and receive Facebook messages, wall posts and pokes via text messages. Updating status and profile from your phone. They have had some of these features previously, but it looks like they are trying to push the mobile service a little harder. I believe social networking is going to move mobile especially with new devices...

Every blogger is throwing out their predictions for the year 2007, so I figured I might as well throw mine into the bunch. Here are some social networks that I think will be winners in 2007: Yelp: Yelp has one of the most active and dedicated user bases out of any community site on the web. The reviews and content on Yelp far surpasses the quality and usefulness of any other local review site on the web. In addition Yelp is one of the few social networks that is transfering online connections, to real world connections, through Yelp organized events for their members. Next time when you have...

Disclaimer: This information has not been confirmed by Facebook, only third party sources that I personally trust. Take this information with a grain of salt. Lately the blogosphere has been actively chatting about Facebook not interested in selling. Board member Peter Theil has been quoted as saying they believe Facebook is worth the equivalent to MTV, $8 Billion. In addition to these reports there have been rumors that Facebook is considering an IPO. This interested me to the point that I called up two close friends who work at seperate major Investment Banks. To my surprise, both of them...

I haven’t used Loopt.com service since I don’t have Boost Mobile phone, but from reading about the service it seems to have a lot of the elements of the next generation SN I have been talking about. Loopt is a GPS location based mobile social network available to Boost Mobile customers for $2.99 a month. From their website: “Loopt is a Palo Alto-based startup that has built a revolutionary “social mapping” service to change the way people use mobile phones to keep in touch with their friends. loopt uses GPS (and other location technology) to show you where your friends...

Many new founders of social networks, community, and Web 2.0 sites have seen the success of such sites as Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Craigslist, etc and are amazed at how quickly and relatively effortless they grew. I think this has lead to a mindset among social media entrepreneurs that if they build it, the site will grow itself. In addition, some might think the growth of those sites were just pure luck. In my opinion neither of these are true, and that there is some method to the madness of growing a community site. Growth can never be achieved 100% organically By organic growth, I...

How many posts have you read saying that a new social network might be the next Myspace? Probably at least 100. Which is why I’m not going to say that I think Virb.com is a myspace killer. I will say though that I am more excited about seeing the full launch of Virb then any other social network in a very very long time. Virb.com comes from Unborn Media, the founders of another incredible site, PureVolume.com. Unborn has done a fantastic job with design, usability, and quality of Purevolume which is why I think it blows any other music site away. The...

Disclaimer: I work for ZoomInfo.com, who is in a semi similar space as Wink.com’s people search. Take my opinion as you may. Wink.com launched a people search component to their social search engine today. The people search currently crawls Myspace, Bebo, and LinkedIN and claims to have over 100 million people in their database (Inaccurate number, see below). They have currently said that they will add one new network every two weeks in order of user demand. The latest social networking boom has seen hundreds of different social networks launch. With a larger portion of social networking...

It’s a form of the modern day gold rush. Recent data released by research firm eMarketer says that ad spending on social networks will reach $350 Million this year. Thats a pretty good number, but tiny compared to the $2.2 Billion forecast for 2010. Unfortunately these numbers will probably fuel the creation of even more poorly thought out social networks. For social networks to really make big bank, I think they need to provide methods beyond the standard banner ad. Users on social networks are engaged entirely in the content of the network. If companies...

Last night at the Social Media club meeting I had a couple of great conversations. One in particular about the college social networking space and the rise of Facebook and the needs it fulfills has changed. Since graduating from college back in December, I have found that it is a great way to stay in touch with college and high school friends I connected with during college. My guess is that if it was 10 - 15 years ago, and I had recently graduated, I would not be in touch with at least half of the people I am today. Why is this? Because a tool like Facebook (and...