Social networking sites focus on building and managing online social networks for communities of users who share interests and activities. Social network services provide ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, and participation in discussion groups. Online social networks are evolving rapidly:the early 'horizontal' networks based on demographic affinity are now being augmented by networks based on 'vertical' interest areas such as news and music.
With Ad revenues falling, content owners are looking to develop alternate revenue streams more closely tied to their users' online behaviour. In a slowing worldwide economy, these initiatives are key to their survival until growth returns to the market. YouTube exemplifies the challenges that the sector as a whole faces in the coming months.
Michelle Wong, 26 April 2009
RockYou, the Californian social applications company has raised $17m right in midst of the credit crunch, which suggests that some VCs are not as spooked as others by the market conditions.
More »
03 November 2008
MySpace has launched it music store at long last with all the major record labels on board but it will only be available in the US to start with. The focus of the store will be on full-length audio streaming, with music downloads provided by Amazon MP3, so the service is not really a direct...
More »
25 September 2008
MyHeritage, the family tree site has acquired Kindo, a genealogy 2.0 site based in Putney, London, UK, which will also now become MyHeritage's London office.
More »
23 September 2008
A new generation of social networking sites, led by FriendFeed, is trying to challenge the model of social networking companies such as MySpace and Facebook. The new service started by the creators of Google Maps and Gmail, claims that it is at the heart of an anarchic counter movement of...
More »
19 September 2008