Social Networking Sites: cada dia que passa mais interessantes

Como já foi repetido inúmeras vezes, são um fenómeno e chamam cada vez mais à atenção das grandes potências das TI. Onde é que a economia dos social networking sites nos irá levar?

O artigo
Riding the social networks wave
This wave hasn't crested - it really is the next big thing - but who knows where it will all lead? Can Microsoft and Yahoo jump in? Fortune's David Kirkpatrick explores the next phases.
By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
August 24 2007: 7:28 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- As MySpace hooks up with MTV (whose parent Viacom once tried to buy it) and Facebook makes the cover of Newsweek, it's clear that social networking is only getting hotter. (But couldn't Newsweek find Mark Zuckerberg anecdotes that hadn't already appeared in Fortune?)
The reason social networking matters is simple: people do things together, and this new software promises us the means to engage the social aspect of our lives in everything we do online. Among other things, shopping, consuming media, researching, planning our time, and of course communicating can all be done more efficiently if we have manageable information about what our friends are doing. It goes way beyond high school and college kids sharing photos and exchanging gossip.
Since Facebook's epochal May announcement that it was opening itself up and hosting applications created by all comers, the Palo Alto-based service has kept Silicon Valley mesmerized. Here's how much: This week I breakfasted with eggheady serial enterpreneur Scott Rafer, who sold his latest company MyBlogLog to Yahoo. Rafer's new project, still hush-hush, is a Facebook application. But his faith in the earthshakingness of Facebook apps is such that he actually said to me: "Now Google might as well not get into the apps business, and finally something will take a bit out of [Microsoft] Office."

in CNNMoney.com

Windows Live no seu telemóvel... Nokia

"A Internet está cada vez mais móvel" parece uma frase saída de um anúncio publicitário mas, perante a notícia de que o fabricante Nokia vai passar a disponibilizar software da Microsoft - nomeadamente e-mail e serviço de instant messaging - nos seus telemóveis multimédia, torna-se uma afirmação pertinente.

O artigo
Nokia to use Microsoft Windows on phones
Nokia multimedia phone users will be able to use Windows Live services including e-mail, instant messenger, contacts list and a blogging and picture sharing site.
August 22 2007: 7:29 PM EDT

SEATTLE/HELSINKI (Reuters) -- Leading mobile phone maker Nokia said Wednesday it would bring Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live suite of Web services, like e-mail and instant messaging, to many of its cell phones.
Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500), Yahoo Inc (Charts, Fortune 500). and Google Inc (Charts, Fortune 500). are competing for valuable real estate on a handset's main screen, so users can gain access to their online services without the extra step of going through the phone's Web browser.
Microsoft's services will integrate with Nokia's (Charts) existing programs allowing users to sync their Windows Live contacts list with the phone's address book or send and receive Hotmail e-mails within Nokia's messaging application.
Owners of Nokia's multimedia phones will be able to download a suite of Windows Live services that include e-mail, instant messenger, contacts list and a blogging and picture sharing site.
The Finnish phone maker plans to preload cheaper models with Microsoft's suite of services next year.
"In practice it would be as wide as possible," Nokia's Jari Pasanen, vice president for strategy and technology at multimedia business unit, told Reuters.

in CNNMoney.com

A economia no Facebook

Depois de uma análise à economia no Second Life, que tal uma aproximação ao mesmo fenómeno mas desta vez nos social networking sites, como o Facebook? Este SNS distingue-se por ter sido o primeiro a "abrir as portas" aos hackers para desenvolverem aplicações para os seus utilizadores e, com isso, ganharem dinheiro. No entanto, como é que um widget se pode tornar lucrativo?

O artigo
The Facebook economy
The No. 2 social network is fast evolving into a new kind of software platform - and the race is on to figure out how to turn users' every move into dollars for enterprising developers.

By Lindsay Blakely and Michael V. Copeland, Business 2.0 Magazine
August 23 2007: 7:31 AM EDT

Talk about a killer app. Two years ago Jia Shen and Lance Tokuda wrote, just for fun, a goofy Web application for MySpace that could turn anyone's photos into live-action slide shows. It succeeded - horribly. Within days of its launch, hordes of users at the then-superhot social network discovered the app, added it to their profiles, and communicated it to their friends. It spread like a case of Ebola at the Super Bowl. Within a month Shen and Tokuda had 100,000 users, and traffic was doubling every 24 hours.
The servers - those digital canaries in the mine shaft - crashed, and crashed again. "It was crazy," Shen says. "We were down 17 of the first 30 days." Then it got worse. With traffic peaking at 1.5 million users, server costs topped $20,000 a month. And there was no way to monetize their creation.
Still, they soldiered on for more than a year, keeping afloat with tens of thousands of dollars in loans while hoping to figure out a way to turn their enormous fan base into a brilliant business. It never happened - at least not on MySpace.
This spring, however, Shen and Tokuda spent a few days porting their MySpace hit over to Facebook. The upstart social network began as a hangout for high school and college students and last September allowed anyone to join.
Eight months later, Facebook did something MySpace still hasn't done: It opened up its network to developers and made it easy for them to make money from their applications. Which is exactly what Shen and Tokuda did when they rewrote their app and let it loose on Facebook.
Two months later, the duo had generated more than $200,000 in ad revenue. By late July they had 14 other apps up and running, with more than 22 million users. "When we started, we had no idea what we were doing," Shen says. "Now we have a whole suite of applications, and that's where our power is."
It's an increasingly common tale as the Facebook economy picks up steam. In just 10 weeks, hundreds of developers launched more than 2,500 new applications, triggering 139 million downloads. While a possible Facebook IPO or acquisition could change things overnight, for the moment it's a free-for-all.

in CNNMoney.com

A citação
"Netscape browsed the Web, Yahoo organized it, Google searched it, and now Facebook has made it social."
- Seth Goldstein, cofundador da pequena loja californiana SocialMedia, responsável criação de alguns widgets de sucesso no Facebook, como o FoodFight e o Happyhour.

A economia no Second Life

Publicado há cerca de um mês no jornal francês Le Monde, o artigo seguinte explica como algumas pessoas trocaram os seus empregos reais por tarefas virtuais no site Second Life ou como determinadas empresas pagaram fortunas por uma representação virtual neste mundo alternativo.

O artigo
Second Life, une seconde économie
LE MONDE 21.07.07 14h15 • Mis à jour le 21.07.07 14h19

Naomi Kraft a l'anatomie d'une Pamela Anderson. Pour quelques centimes d'euro la minute, elle fait une passe. Pour quelques euros, elle accepte même la sodomie. Naomi Kraft n'est pas une femme comme les autres, d'ailleurs c'est peut-être un homme. Officiellement, elle n'existe pas. Elle n'est pas non plus payée en vraie monnaie.
Bienvenue sur Second Life ! Un univers d'îles paradisiaques, de montagnes rose et bleu, de mer turquoise, d'immeubles, de boutiques et de restaurants ultradesign, de casinos... Un monde peuplé principalement de bimbos et de mâles musclés.
Second Life (SL) est un "monde persistant" où la vie ne s'arrête jamais, une simulation en trois dimensions de la vie réelle dans laquelle l'internaute mène une deuxième vie avec son "avatar", son personnage virtuel. Mi-juillet, ils étaient plus de 8,1 millions à résider dans Second Life, entreprise créée en 2003 par Linden Lab, une société californienne, créée par Philip Rosedal, économiste de formation. L'engouement est tel que Second Life recrute désormais plus de 800 000 internautes par mois. Au classement des pays les plus représentés, la France se situe derrière les Etats-Unis.
SL n'est pas un jeu comme les autres : pas besoin de tuer un maximum de monstres en un temps record, pas de Graal à trouver, aucune mission à remplir. La seule contrainte est de vivre une deuxième vie. Tout est possible : se balader, faire du sport, du shopping, l'amour, vendre des services et des biens, se marier, travailler, créer son entreprise.

in LeMonde.fr - Technologies

O fenómeno global dos social networking sites

Um estudo divulgado pela comScore em 31 de Julho revela que vários social networking sites, como o MySpace, o Facebook, o Orkut, o Bebo ou o Tagged, registaram um grande crescimento entre Junho de 2006 e Junho de 2007.

O press-release
Social Networking Goes Global
Major Social Networking Sites Substantially Expanded Their Global Visitor Base during Past Year

RESTON, VA, July 31, 2007 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the results of a study on the expansion of social networking across the globe, revealing that several major social networking sites have experienced dramatic growth during the past year.
Social networking behemoth MySpace.com attracted more than 114 million global visitors age 15 and older in June 2007, representing a 72-percent increase versus year ago. Facebook.com experienced even stronger growth during that same time frame, jumping 270 percent to 52.2 million visitors. Bebo.com (up 172 percent to 18.2 million visitors) and Tagged.com (up 774 percent to 13.2 million visitors) also increased by orders of magnitude.
“During the past year, social networking has really taken off globally,” said Bob Ivins, executive vice president of international markets. “Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis. It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global Internet.”

MySpace, Facebook Strong in North America; Bebo Grabs Hold in Europe
While attracting global users, specific social networks have a tendency to skew in popularity in different regions. For example, both MySpace.com (62 percent) and Facebook.com (68 percent) attract approximately two-thirds of their respective audiences from North America. That said, each has already amassed a large international visitor base and both appear poised to continue their global expansion. Bebo.com has a particularly strong grasp on Europe, attracting nearly 63 percent of its visitors from that region, while Orkut is firmly entrenched in Latin America (49 percent) and Asia-Pacific (43 percent). Friendster also attracts a significant proportion of its visitors (89 percent) from the Asia-Pacific region. Both Hi5.com and Tagged.com exhibit more balance in their respective visitor bases, drawing at least 8 percent from each of the five worldwide regions.

in comScore

2 em 1: Bebo + MSN Messenger

O social networking site Bebo estabeleceu uma parceria com a Microsoft para disponibilizar aos seus utilizador um serviço de Instant Messaging. A destacar a ideia de "duas janelas em uma" da presidente do ramo internacional do site, Joanna Shileds.

O artigo
Bebo to Add IM Powered by Microsoft
By JESSICA MINTZ
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; 8:27 AM

SEATTLE -- Social-networking site Bebo Inc. said Tuesday it will launch a Microsoft-powered instant-messaging program this fall.
The deal signals early, if niche, support for a Microsoft Corp. plan to build a business around letting other sites incorporate its Windows Live Web services.
The Bebo-branded IM will have limited compatibility with Microsoft's own services, consistent with a tendency for social-networking sites to build "walled" communities with restrictions on who can contact whom and how elsewhere online. IM services also have tended to operate independently, although those walls have started to come down.
Bebo members will be able to click a link to start an IM session with any other Bebo member, even if neither has a Windows Live ID, the sign-on used for Hotmail and other Microsoft services.
They'll also be able to exchange messages with Bebo friends who aren't logged on, but who are using Microsoft's regular Windows Live Messenger program.

in The Washington Post

A citação

"Why have two windows open when you can do everything in one environment?"
- Joanna Shields, presidente do ramo internacional do social networking site Bebo