List of Social Media Sites

SiteRapture is new social rating service for web applications and websites. They have released a new category with a list of social media websites. The list is designed like a catalogue, which enables to search for various kind of social networking sites.

Microblogging and Video Sharing with Gawkk

Gawkk is a well designed new microblogging service dedicated to video sharing with some great social networking features.

What makes the service really convenient is the player, which appears by a click on the title of a post. If done, a video player comes up just below the post and ready for viewing. At second a lot of social networking features are included. Below the posts, which are of typical length, there is a comment feature for discussions and a link to video rating. By another click a menu appears with several sharing codes for link sharing or to embed the video elsewhere.

To find videos there are a directory and channels and to find like minded people there is a profile directory at Gawkk.

Cool Stuff: Personal Analytics

Klout is a service, that describes itself as personal analytics. By this tool one may measure its influence on the internet or the social web. Especially this might be interesting for bloggers and others, that are active in the semi professional environment of the social web with its business opportunities for everyone. By taking it serious one is able to analyze its own strengthes and to maximize the influence in particular communicaiton channels. This might be a well foundation to get into business with professional marketers, who are seeking influencers to spread their messages.

Visit my Google Friend Connect

Business Thursday: I set up a Google Friend Connect community at an associated website, which can be visited here and like to share some experiences. Probably you have already heard about Google Friend Connect and others aggregated social networking services, which do enable social networking features at third party websites like aggregated access to these social networking features to users and to connect with others across the web. This kind of feature has been covered at this blog by the term immersive web. To be named other popular aggregators are Facebook Connect, MySpace Open Platform and last but not least the open source initiative OpenID.

Advantages of these service are the easy access to websites for users without submitting a broad range of data at every service visited and to have their friends with them. Especially to small publishers it is an opportunity to get community features on a website as developing an community is not an easy task. Further interesting opportunities by aggregated networks do arise to advertisers as describe at this article.

Actually I have started to use Google Friend Connect at one of my websites, FOLDEN.INFO. My experience for now is that it is easy to start using the service. This is done by an easy to use webbased configurator without programming scills. Beside a code just two files have to be put into the directory of a website and the service is ready to work. Another reason to recommend Google Friend Connect as a website feature are the various ways to join such a website community. This may happen by account data of popular services and by OpenID.

Next I will enrich the FOLDEN.INFO website by putting some information onto the directory pages from integrated blogs. To do this I have searched for a feed mashup tool yesterday. I wanted to try something new, but found my own site and within the site RSS Mix. This works fine and I may warmly recommend FOLDEN.INFO as a source for marketing, tools and up to date services. So have a look for Google Friend Connect on FOLDEN.INFO, you are welcome.

Twitter Client and Social Network Aggregator

PeopleBrowsr is a comfortable new social network aggregator and twitter client. The online service enables to follow friends at various networks and to make posts from within the webapp. What makes it a comfortable tool is the ability to arrange groups of people or interests within customizable seperate windows and across various networks. By this one may arrange particular windows for particular purposes like events, news or friends.

Actually PeopleBrowsr is still in alpha but public. Login is most easy by using Twitter user data, just an email address needs to be supplied.

New Study about Social Networking Trends

A new study about social networking has been released by Netpop Research. The results of this study do confirm a strong trend to social networking as the already mentioned study by Forrester Research does. There are some more findings in this study especially about shopping. The results do refer on on time spending. It has been found that there is less time with online entertainment and shopping to the advantage of social networking. The latter may wonder because of the shopping season. But there have always been shopping related statements, that people often spend time researching products at shopping sites and then spend their money offline. So the time shift probably is simply reasoned in social shopping sites with product comparisons and reviews.

The study concludes a need to rething advertising strategies and to be presented at social networking sites. There is an extract available at the following link with a presentation and further information on downloading the whole study:
93 Percent Growth in Social Networkers Reveals Need for New Approaches to Online Advertising

Co Browsing with Plista

A new co browsing application has been launched. The service is called Plista. As the other covered co browsing applications the tool enables to share interesting sources and to leave comments at third party websites. And there are a couple of further things this application can do. Plista makes recommendations in several ways. There are suggestions and a menu to navigate as well as matching with other people and their choice of websites. The latter feature may be used to find like minded people. Furthermore there are intelligent recommendations based on the user behaviour and made available by the self learning application. This is a similar feature like the just introduced newsfeed applications do offer. Last but not least it is a social networking applications to share sources and information with others, known and newly matched friends. The application is free.

Social Networking with Artificial Intelligence

TrueThinker enhances social networking with artificial intelligence. It is a knowledge management and networking tool for information gathering, storing and sharing. The webbased service offers a personalizable interface that is based on ajax. Artificial intelligence is used to assort the information and for search. Members are able to create public and private groups. The service is fee based and by this free of ads and targets private as well as business users. To try the service there is a free trial available.

In the future for sure further services will embrace artificial intelligence to enhance social networking and other kind of services. This will enable further interactions between applications and fulfill automated tasks. To learn more about TrueThinker there are a couple of presentation available at the homepage.

Further information about artificial intelligence.

New Media Hub and Surf Board with innovative Interface

With Radus another service has launched offering a new kind of interface to experience and surf the web. It is a social network aggregator at the same time offering access to various social media networks including facilities to post from within the web application. Radus describes itself as a media hub and content discovery tool. This is a main feature of the homepage with up to date news and a side bar at the right to access various topics. The news section of course is customizable and beside popular sources news from most active users are displayed. What makes it useful for music and video is a playlist editor at the bottom of the right to create personlized playlists.

Social Networking enabled Music File Storage Service

There are a lot of file sharing services to choose from to store various kinds of files. The new SoundCloud file sharing service now is going beyond the common features by offering file hosting and integrated tools for social networking and music distribution. It might even become described as a media management platform. SoundCloud is dedicated to host music files by serving the needs of labels and other music professionals. Beside the basic file hosting SoundCloud is offering a couple of networking tools. These do range from messaging and sending music files by email up to a music player widget that can be used for social networking and to publish and play music at social media pages and websites. Another very interesting feature is a widget that enables others to upload music files to an own account to introduce themselves or for other purposes. Last but not least there is a developer api to create own applications.

Profile Name Check for Social Networking

Getting the right name to start social networking in a serious way might be a crucial task. This is due because of protected names and availability in general. Personally I always make a check using a search engine at least. usernamecheck.com is a new service to easily check for usernames used at a broad range of social media services by just one click. This is most useful as having a unique username that can be used across all networks will increase the visibility and may help to improve the reputation.

Video Social and Business Network

VidEngage.com is taking another approach to social networking using video by being a social network offering various video solutions. Basic to all is a profile page with social networking functions, This feature is called the Personal Video Network enabling video messaging and presentations. Presentations may be used for other integrated networking features. These do include resumes and dating, which are both essential parts of the homepage. Video conferencing is another available networking tool, It is a video chat similar to those of some personal broadcasting services like Stickam. Last but not least there is an ecommerce site with a store to buy and sell videos.

Myrl is live and connecting Virtual Worlds

Myrl is live now and offering an aggregated access to virtual reality worlds. It is an aggregator to manage several accounts of virtual reality worlds and much more. Myrl comes up with social networking capabilities and is leading the way to an immersive web of virtual worlds. They are already connecting about twenty virtual reality services. It seems that this is another and proprietary solutions for connected worlds beside the opengrid initiative. At least I have not found any information about it at their blog.

There are already a lot of things happening at this meta virtual reality portal and social network. There are group activities and people featured and there are business opportunities with virtual clothes and the like. I guess this is a must try like the opengrid access supplied by Syntronik is.

Website Navigation is a crucial Success Factor

Business Thursday: Did you know that website navigation is a crucial success factor? It is. A clear navigation is a necessary mean to make a website or blog a success. At this blog you find at least six different navigation tools, labels, lists and search boxes. A site search is always recommendable. In the following there are some search tools for blogs and websites and solutions for social networks.

Lijit is a customizable search, which is designed for blogs and sites of friends in the social graph. It is a nice tool to ease the access to the information supplied and to keep visitors connected. There are statistics to get aware which content is visited most. A graphic is introducing the way the search works. The search box becomes integrated as a widget.

The Quintura site search is my personal favorite as you may see at the right. The search index is customizable by submitting various sources. What I appreciate is the visualization by tags and by this the various ways to access the information. The search box is customizable, but needs some space to show all of the navigation features.

Rollyo is another customizable search engine. The way it works is easily described by the naming. Search Rolls are done by submitting sources and the search box again becomes embedded by a widget. Search Rolls may even become shared with others.

To ease the information access at social networks some particular business and publisher solutions have been launched suitable to the social sphere. At first there is Praized Media offering a complete solution with millions of data sets about local businesses. The solution is social networking enabled and has primarily a local focus. The second one is Sightix, which focusses on the social graph of social network members. Sightix enables people to search within their social neighborhood.

If you are interested in search engines have a look at the october revision at FOLDEN.INFO. There you may access a large list of new search engines and an article about search engine trends and marketing.

Social Networking and Search Perspective by using Social Graphs

This is a hint to a series of articles about the perspective of search and social search using social graphs. Social graphs describe the relationships within social networks and especially aggregated social network usage. An already existing application visualizing social network relationships is lifestreaming.

Social Graph Search Engines Part I
Social Graph Search Engines Part II
Social Graph Search Engines Part III

The Social Shopping Business

Business Thursday: Social shopping enriches the shopping experience of consumers and offers some business opportunities. The opportunities to users are another way to find products and especially product recommendations and product reviews made by others. Depending of the features of a social shopping site members can take notes about desired products to bookmark and reseach items, discuss product features with others or share experiences. At some services there are product ratings and ratings for deals.

There are a couple of business opportunitis offered by social shopping sites. Some do share advertising revenue, some pay for reviews like it happens with paid posting at blogging and others do supply commerce widgets or even whole shops.

Favorite Thingz enables everyone to put a widget on a page with personal favorites. The items may be promoted at the web and social media services. Revenue becomes generated by selling a featured item.

Rate it all, Rasba and SharedReviews.com are shopping communities that do not require an own homepage to earn money. Rate it all is about reviews and does share the advertising revenue generated by activities. Rasba and SharedReviews.com both are social networking sites to discover new products and share them. Rasba pays, if an item is sold by the profile page, SharedReviews.com again shares the advertising revenue as well as possible commissions with the community.

The most comfortable solutions to participate in social shopping are own shops. Shop It and uSuggest are supplying customizable shopping sites or stores. Both are offering widgets to spread the products across the social web.

Social shopping sites are as social as the social web is. A strategy to get involved with own products is to encourage users to write reviews or to place a product widget at an own page or blog to facilitate a viral marketing effect. A solution to sell own products and to participate in social commerce is offered by Terapad.com. It is a shop solution equipped with blogging and social media marketing tools.

Click the following to find further social shopping pages.

Vertical Microblogging Service for Media and Convergence

Vertical services always arise where there is something popular or a proven concept and where a particular topic might be of interest to a particular group. This now happens to microblogging. Just a couple of days there has been the release of Yammer with a microblogging enterprise solution.

blippr is a microblogging service for all kind of media, books, games, movies and music. They got a modern social networking approach by integrated up to date services like lifestreaming to follow posts of others and by enabling discussions. Furthermore profiles may become connected with other social media services. Other features are for voting and to organize information about media.

Another trend is to merge microblogging with other social networking features like Dwigger does for voting of Twitter posts.

A service with a strong social networking emphasis is Weplug. Whereas post are still limited to 160 characters, there are a lot of social networking means integrated. At the homepage there is are typical news ratings with popular and upcoming messages. People may organize in groups for discussions and there are lifestreams for following.

Utterz, now Utterli, is completely multimedia enabled service, where people can send in text and audio messages, photos and videos. It is a real comfortable service with groups for discussions. By widgets messages may even become posted to webpages. Utterz is primarily made to communicate by mobile phones, but has a web interface, too.

Something fascinating about microblogging and the social networking scene is the speed of development. It is remarkable that within the social web there already happens media convergence between these new media services. Click the following to find more microblogging services.

Making own Online Games

Online games are popular and especially casual games played by nearly everyone. At Sploder everyone can play free games or make their own games by drag and drop. After creation the games are stored within the community and may become shared or published at an own page. Additionally there are weekly contests and most popular games are featured at the homepage. It is a place to find and share something new and extraordinary.

Atmosphir is a similar service actually in private beta that has been introduced at the TechCrunch 50 Conference, a place for start ups. Atmosphir is a software to easily produce games without comprehensive development knowledge. At a social network people will be able to exchange ideas, collaborate and play.

An interesting and most different approach to online games has playce, too in private beta modus and introduced at the same conference. They take a step that I personally already have awaited, because of the real world maps meanwhile available everywhere. They will make a virtual representation of the real world and make this a playground.

mixxt, a free hosted Social Networking Solution

mixxt is another hosted social media software for private and business usage. People and professionals may build their own community and public social network or stay in closed groups.

The mixxt solution by its design and tools is primarily dedicated to discussions and networking, collaboration and conferencing. There are tools like event calendar, forums and wikis and an ecommerce facility to promote events and sell tickets. The design of the communities is customizable and enabled to upload and share media. mixxt is a free service.

Dwigger is voting for Tweets

Dwigger is a new tool to vote and discuss posts submitted to Twitter, the Tweets. It is rather a service than a tool as Tweets need to become submitted to Dwigger. Nevertheless it is already a success as it is populated and by actually above 700 diggs a top story at Digg, where obviously not only the D is coming from. Members can submit their own or noteworthy posts by others to the service and start a conversation beyond the reply option offered by Twitter. Furthermore it might be another way to increase the reputation as Twitter profiles are integrated and to get new social networking contacts. Especially for the latter and for brief fast news I do appreciate Twitter myself (twitter.com/emediablogger).

What else Dwigger is offering are some integrated research tools to find country specific top stories and people. At Hit List there is a real time search to find up to date posts with a submission function.

As there are permanently new tools upcoming for Twitter here is a related source with a comprehensive coverage: EverythingTwitter.com