Why Do Polls Insist on Pushing Facebook’s Popularity and Treading on MySpace and Twitter?
Every Internet poll is abuzz today with how Facebook seems to be taking over the whole social network scene: they reportedly have more page visits than even Google. Two out of three social network visits on the Internet have been to Facebook: and these visits cannibalize MySpace’s share to arrive there. Twitter has posted impressive tenfold growth to show too. But their actual market share is in the low single digits still. But is this really true? How can Twitter, whose stranglehold on conversation space the world over seems total, be so limited in its popularity? It is possible that in the Internet traffic polling service that came out with these results, Hitwise, is not using the most reliable methods to record market share and growth.
Twitter, it so happens, is all about getting snatches of information; this lends itself very well to being used through an external interface, an API, a plug-in. People do not actually need to visit Twitter to be able to access it, and most take advantage of the external access facility. A study puts Twitter access through add-ons at ten times the number of accesses seen through browser visits. Polls like Hitwise, possibly only count visits through traditional Internet browsers. But there is another side to this; Facebook, even as it requires time to use, sometimes posts as much growth as Twitter, if measured month on month.
All of this brings us to this question: why do important news outlets ignore the need for accurate statistics. MySpace is being measured for its grave already even when it still has a reasonably loyal social networking market share of a third. Reports now suggest that MySpace is the domain of choice for the less fashionable, less influential parts of society. Twitter and Facebook on the other hand, could not to find more enthusiastic approval from the chic clique. Is it possible that news outlets just want to see that their favorites make it to the top? An interesting development is on its way here. MySpace is making bold moves to win back its audience by focusing on its music again. If the media supports this come-back move as enthusiastically as it follows the downfall, we would have a clue to how fair media reporting was.
Make Some Noise For Agriya’s Volume
Volume is back in the limelight again, the latest version of its premium audio sharing script Volume that is aimed at serving the music enthusiast community the way Rayzz video-sharing script props up the video-sharing community.The comparison with Rayzz is especially appropriate, it turns out. Earlier versions of Volume were built with the Joomla engine. As cost-effective and efficient as this was, the evident trend seen today on media sharing websites toward ever-rising bandwidth demands and intense traffic pressures points to a need for a new approach that will help Volume’s new customers stay ahead of the curve. Today’s Volume is built on the highly successful Rayzz framework.
With a new foundation come new features to help webmasters create and manage a better website experience. A Volume-designed website is easy to set up for even a novice website creator, especially so with Agriya’s dedicated support staff. But ease of use in this case comes with great customizable features too. The entire website is easily rearranged to individual needs, and compatibility with the Smarty templating system makes things very user-friendly. Today’s Volume automates the file uploading and job to a large extent. Multiple audio files are easily uploaded at the touch of a button with a batch file uploading feature. Associated audio metadata are automatically picked up in the process as well.
Sending newsletters, announcements and other forms of communication to the members of your music sharing website becomes easier too. An Artist Management section also allows the webmaster to keep tabs on the best-performing acts on the website.
Music sharing today is often just a setting for young people to conduct more meaningful social interaction in. The Volume script natively includes social networking features; website members are able to make playlists and comment on other people’s choices, and communicate by method of internal messaging and mailing. A popular music website is hopefully going to attract advertising interest from sponsors too. Volume’s new advertising management features help the webmaster remain open to the possibility of advertising revenue.
Agriya’s vice president of marketing, Sheerin Banu, sees the latest release of Volume filling an important need in the market. “In certain age groups, shared music exploration happens to be a more important way to bond than other forms of interaction”, says Ms. Banu. The more easily deployed a music sharing site is, as it will be with Volume, the more swiftly will audiences be able to react to shifting trends in music, she feels.
Find out more information about Volume.
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Everyone Knows Twitter is the Most Popular Social Medium – or do They?
For success in the world of social networking, exactly how aggressive do the marketing strategies employed have to be? Get this, the hub that seemingly captures the most news on every kind of medium, Twitter, gets less than 2% of all social network traffic today from US residents, according to statistics published on Experia. Twitter does grow with remarkable tenacity, posting a ten-fold growth this year; but where does that take it – to a grand total of less than 2%. So what does the scoreboard look like among the social network giants? Surely no one could have beaten Facebook and Twitter?As it turns out, Facebook is unbeaten in what is almost 60% of the market. We have all been regaled with news reports of the death knell of MySpace for about a year now – how they departed from their roots in music in attempting to become a major social networking hub, and were snubbed by users for turning their backs on their musical origins. MySpace actually is not doing badly at all; it finishes second with about a third of the market, though it’s user base has shrunk considerably. The surprise bronze medalist in the race is the relatively low-profile Tagged.
“Why Tagged?” one may ask. What have they done? How could they have beaten Twitter? Twitter gets such glowing press and the best that Tagged got to do all year was to get negative press for an e-mail scam earlier this year and their hard sell tactics in getting memberships up. Perhaps all the hard-edged tactics have worked. Not only is this company getting sign-ups, it is also retaining those members with great page view statistics, time spent statistics, and financial profitability.
Twitter finishes last in the top four. Has there been a data error totaling up the numbers? How does all the great press Twitter receives about addictive tweeting not get it better rankings? It is possible, in fact that Twitter is merely a master at working the press.
Facebook: a source of information? Yes, but for who?
The increase of social networks in the world like Facebook or Myspace was, at the beginning of success, unverifiable. Now we can stand back and see the bad effects of these world networks. Some private information that is disclosed is not really protected. When we know that members of Facebook are estimated to be 45 millions in 2007, we can suppose the stake is sizable. More than 2 billion pictures are available on it.A lot of young people are regular members and aren’t aware of the possible danger. Some rules need to be edited and respected for the security of all users.
That’s why the European Union tries to create a legal framework. The goal is to avoid use of some private information like: “prohibits collection of personal information without consumers’ permission, forbids employers to read workers’ private e-mail, and doesn’t allow companies to share personal information on users without their permission.” Facebook is a big mine of information for sellers.
This initiative is a good beginning but terms of the chart are always vague and offer a lot of provision for flaws. It isn’t sure that users will be protected any better for the moment. However Facebook, MySpace and the like have to take interest to take notice this and regulate failures of their system.
So be careful, your life could be interesting to people other than just your friends, and that is not always a good thing.
Where did MySpace go wrong?
When MySpace hit the market in 2003, it was immensely popular and reached people all over the world. Seeing its popularity and market value, many other giants introduced their social networking sites with special features. As time passed, only social networks that offer special, user-friendly networking features have managed to stay alive.
Even with the highly competitive social networking world, MySpace managed to retain its first place. But last year Facebook became the world’s largest social networking site pushing MySpace to the second place despite it being the best-monetized social network. The number of Facebook users across the globe is now a mind boggling 110 million, and that of MySpace is 83 million.
It is not a sudden downfall for MySpace; just a setback. For the past few years, after the introduction of Facebook in 2004, Myspace has been facing drops in existing user accounts and new user registration count. The main reason for this setback is lack of R&D, and other notable problems faced by users, such as accessibility, phishing spam, child safety and censorship.
The MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, and most of the pages do not satisfy the W3C standards. It hence causes accessibility problems when software like screen readers are used.
MySpace is considered the hotbed for spyware. Even though MySpace is taking necessary steps for safety, it is not fully safe. This is the major reason for the migration of users to other networking sites. It doesn’t have any censorship to control posting or viewing of pornographic content either.MySpace makes revenue through advertisement. As the number of members reduces, the possibility of advertisers moving to other popular social network is more. Hence, it is the high time for the MySpace professionals to facilitate 2-way communication with their users and rework their site to meet market demands.
Here’s Your Cheque For $850m…
Imagine being given a cheque for $850m. Seriously, think about it for a second. The interest alone would net you a cool $29,750,000 every year in the US. Not sure about you, but I think that’s a serious chunk of change.
Let’s take another figure, say $225m. OK, given the choice between $850m and $225m it’s obvious which one you’d take, but forgive me if I bite the hand off the person who offers me $225m for my website.
So, what on Earth am I talking about here? Believe it or not, these are the latest figures for corporate take overs of Bebo and Digg respectively.
Bebo is a large social networking site that claims to have over 40m users worldwide. It is the 3rd largest social network after MySpace and Facebook (both of which were bought for $580m and $280m).
But large buyouts of this kind are not confined to the big players, in 2007 a facebook clone (literally down to the last detail!) called Studivz was bought out by a single investor for $132m. The unique thing about Studivz was that it was aimed at a niche (albeit a fairly broad niche). The niche was a social network for German speaking people.
So, like Studivz, how can you jump on this bandwagon of massive buyouts (and lets face it, I think we’d all be quite happy with a paltry $10m)? First off, target a niche – whether it be by country, region, language, interest, cause or whatever. The days of being able to start large generic social networks are over. It is the time of the niche social network.
Define your niche properly before you start, and you too could get a knock at your door with someone trying to offer you millions for your little piece of the web.
Interested in finding out how you can set up your own turnkey social networking software? Want to run a face like YouTube? Think you can make a better job of Facebook (let’s be honest, with the countless thousands of ‘apps’ now available, it’s becoming more like MySpace everyday)?
Come and check out Agriya’s Social Networking software, with turnkey prices starting at just $399.
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