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...

One of the most successful niche social networks on the web is one that you would probably never guess. It’s not about sports, stocks, or business, but rather the subject of goth. VampireFreaks.com looks like a website you probably built in the 3rd grade, but before you knock it, check out the numbers. Vampirefreaks.com boasts over 710,000 members, with around 400,000 considered to be active users. Around 100,000 new users have signed up since mid September. The site receives around 150,000 unique visitors per day with 3 million page views. At the...

The popularity of social networking has created the mass awareness to open the door for a new opportunity in social networking; The Super Niche. A super niche goes beyond the topic niches such as an SN for sports, cars, or fashion and has even a more narrow focus. A super niche goes after a very small, but highly profitable crowd. Sermo.com, an online community for doctors is an example of this. From their site: “…physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly and in large numbers - challenge or corroborate each others opinions, accelerating the emergence...

Everyone is talking about how social networking site MyBlogLog has been acquired by Yahoo for a price tag of $10 million. It is great to see a smaller, niche social network being acquired. It definitely gives hope to a lot of the small social network owners out there. But I would like to point out one thing. MyBlogLog was in no way a “Myspace of…” which is why they were successful. They took the social networking model and designed it specifically for a certain niche (blogs) and therefore solved the real world problem of blog authors connecting...

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...

There is an online community for everyone…even Truckers. TruckerPassions.com says that it is: “for people with trucking in their blood, for people in the trucking industry, and for the ever popular, trucker groupies. While many mainstream online dating sites allow members to define their profession as Transportation related, or maybe even Trucking, very few go any deeper than that.” Ummmmmm do I need to even comment on this one? [tags]Social Networks, Social Networking, Truckers, Trucking, Social Media, Brian Balfour[/tags]

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...

Tonight I am speaking on a panel at the first ever Boston meeting of the Social Media Club. I’m definitely excited as there seem to be some good panelists who will be joining me. If you aren’t already coming to this meeting and are interested in how Social Media plays into marketing and PR of your company, make sure to sign up for the next one. I have been given the topic of how to integrate social media into product offerings. Obviously this is a huge subject, and one that can’t be completely covered in the limited time I will have. But I will be stressing three purposes...

Yes that is correct…me, Brian Balfour can see the future. In my last post about a company called Visible Path I talked about how they data mined a persons network by monitoring your email, instant messages, address book, etc. I summed up the post by saying: “So why haven’t they made any significant waves in the vast ocean of online social networks? Their software is only available to medium - large companies who are willing to pay big bucks to implement it. This is unfortunate because I could see this being very powerful if they opened it up...