SN Spotlight: Ning

This is interesting- Create your own Social Network!

MySpace Desperation

MySpace was a fairly popular network in the US and other places around the world.  In the US it is known as the old school social network that has fallen off the face of the earth (unless you are a sex predator, struggling band, or under the age of 13).

For years, MySpace has been competing to catch up with Facebook.  They have revamped the site, changing things like the layout and logo (which is now My_______.). 

However, they have now reached an all time low. Rather than continue to fail and compete, they have joined their enemy.  MySpace now has a 'mashup' feature with Facebook.

What is this?

Facebook  users are now able to transfer their likes and interests to their MySpace account when they sign into Facebook from their MySpace page. From here, they will get a stream of content based on their likes and interests making it more of a source of enterainment rather than a social network.

Regardless of whether this new 'mashup' is successful or not, it is not bringing in new users, only potentially attempting to keep the final existing users.

While I was never allowed to have a MySpace when I was younger, I created an account (look at me now mom!) to check out this 'mashup' feature.  I wasn't too impressed, it catered to my likes, showing the music, movies, and other various things attached to my Facebook profile, but wasn't something I would log onto everyday for social entertainment. 

New Friends

Due to an extremely busy schedule with school, work, the holidays, interviews, and extra projects my blog posts have been lacking severely.

However, good news is to come from this.

I signed into the spam email account I created for this blog (Didn't want to clog up my email with all the SN emails I would be getting from my various accounts) and I had... oh, over 80 new messages.

Turns out, my accounts were finally a bit more active then when I started.  I had friend requests lined up, people from around the world viewing my site, notifications involving people waiting to chat, sharing links, and best of all, 3 personal messages. 

Two of these messages were from people on Badoo and one from Hi5.  The messages basically were about how they saw my blog (which I strategically posted on all my profiles in hopes of more viewers) and that it was a cool idea and design.  One message also asked me to view her blog, lookville.com, a blog about fashion. 

While my blog and social network accounts are not going viral, at least I'm making a few friends along the way!

RockMelt

This is not a social network, but it is integrating all social networks together!

RockMelt is a new web browser.  For those of you who don't know, a browser is the thing that comes up and displays the sites you look at.  It kinda holds them.  Its where you hit the back button or type www. google.com, etc.  Example Browsers are Safari or Internet Explorer.

This new browser RockMelt is so new and exciting, it is changing everything.  You have to be invited, but its so easy to get an invite, just go to www.rockmelt.com and ask for one (you must have a Facebook to sign up) but in a few days check again and it will let you download it.


So whats so fun about this new browser? Along the right side of your screen it will allow you to put little App like buttons, and clicking on them you can see/update or post without actually going to the page.  On the left side it is similar, but with your friends, you can chat, post to their wall, or share the site your currently browsing without leaving it or opening a new tab. 

Facebook and twitter gives you real time updates, and most blogs, video sites, email accounts will let you put an app on the side. 

Convenience is the word for this new browser, and while many say it will be a big distraction, it can also be a really big help too.  It's only a distraction if you let it be one.
Watch the video to see for yourself, and don't forget to get the invite!

Spotlight: Badoo in London

Badoo is unique.  When I first created the Badoo page, I was very excited because it was finally something new! It didn't have the usual, find your friends, here is your profile, (yawn), same old boring stuff. 

Rather than focusing on showing yourself off to your friends, it had a big focus on meeting other people.  The main page is called people nearby.  Here you can meet new people, searching by city and narrowing by miles.  Along the top of the page is the spotlight, a row of random people, their pictures, names, and current status.   

The simple global navigation allows to navigate to the people nearby, encounters, messages, and profile.  The encounters is a page that brings up a random person and says do you want to meet them? Yes, Maybe, No?

Additionally, a feature I liked was the popularity scale (although my popularity was 'Very Low'.  This scale determines how popular you are by visitors, people that wanted to meet you, people you want to meet, mutual attractions, friends, and favorites. 

The more I clicked around on this site, I began to see how this site could be similar to a dating network, because of the emphasis on meeting people.

When I tried to increase my popularity, that's when I discovered all of the restrictions on the site.  Many of the available features required money or a pay pal account, which was a huge disappointment.  Another way to get around the restrictions is one big fee is to buy super powers, which cost 9 dollars. 

If it weren't for the monetary restrictions on this site, it may have become my new favorite social network... still a never cool, unique, yet simple site that provided a fun, positive experience.

Fighting Domination

While Facebook captures 100 countries out of 127 popularity, there are several sites still fighting for a spot. 
This map shows the top social networks by country, and the majorty of the sites here are language based for the specific country, which is perhas why Facebook is not as popular there.

As you can see there are 6 sites on this map I have already explored, and many others I have yet to discover.

Spotlight: Hi5

Hi5.com

This network was pretty average, allowing users to create a profile, post pictures, comments, etc., etc.  you know the drill.

The layout was also pretty plain; white background, black and blue text, but spiced up a bit with all the game and quiz taking options.

Aside from all this boring, usual stuff though, I did find some unique features.

This network felt more childish to me than the other networks I came across, mostly because of the features.  For example, for some features you needed to have a certain number of coins, and I found that was one of the main things on your profile; How many coins you have. 

Well I had 0, being new to the site, which was no fun.  I learned that you can buy coins, or play games, or 'download' certain applications to gain more coins. 

The other thing that made the site feel immature was the huge game features on it.  It almost felt like more of a gaming network than social network (but maybe that's because I had no friends to be social with). 

Making an 'Avatar' for yourself was a main option as soon as you created your profile, but I didn't find that many people actually created an Avatar when I was browsing for friends. 

After requesting a few random people to be friends, I logged on an hour later and got really excited because it said I had 11 Friend Suggestions.   Thinking this was like friend requests, I thought these people wanted to be my friend, so I selected add friend for all of them.  However, I found out it was actually just a suggestion.  Hi5 was saying since you want to be Hanna's friend then do you want to add Mark as a friend too? Needless to say, I was very disappointed after figuring this out.

One thing I noticed, this site had the most diverse users, with the exception of Skyrock, that I have seen yet.  It seemed like people from a number of countries were on this network rather than focused in one part of the world.

This could be a result of the Google Translation feature on every page.  This was awesome for me because if I stumbled across a profile or page that was in another language, I hit the google translation button it reloaded the page in English for me!

 Before the translation

Give this button a push

And Voila (no pun intended)

So it doesn't translate exact, but not everyone is perfect!  It works well enough to get an idea of what they're saying.

 Giving 'fives' to friends was something I could related to with the Facebook 'poke' feature, but other than that, this site had an overwhelming amount of games and restrictions because of my zero coins, broke, balance and lack of friends once again.