Archive for May, 2009

As social networking websites become the biggest online repository of photographs, Cambridge University computer scientists warn that deleted photos may continue to exist within a social network, even if they’ve been erased. The study discovered that many networks fail to delete images, instead hiding them from the user, which makes the photo appear to have been removed from the system. The study said the worst culprits were Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and LiveJournal. The best performing websites included Flickr, Photobucket and Google’s social networking site Orkut.

YouTube, Google’s video site has removed hundreds of sexually explicit videos, which were uploaded under names of famous teenage celebrities like Hannah Montana. Many began with footage of children’s videos before porn appeared on the screen. It is believed to have been a planned attack.

A senior Yahoo executive has hinted that the portal is keen to beef up its social networking offering. Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer and executive VP for products, said that the current climate made it a good time to consider acquisitions at a Reuters conference. Balogh indicated that Yahoo needed to consider the next wave of social networking products and said it was also under-represented in the area of smartphone apps. Bloggers have suggested that Yahoo might be interested in AOL’s Bebo, although it may prefer a smaller company with a lower profile.

MySpace has launched a series of measurement advertiser tools to demonstrate the value of online product placement with its video series like Live and Lost. The detailed report will measure ten different variables including visibility, brand fit and character match. It is hoping the research will encourage advertisers to rebook and attract new partners by offering richer post-campaign information than the number of times a piece of content has been played.

Facebook has angered some users by locking them out of genuine accounts in its efforts to purge the social network of fake accounts. This has accidentally disabled the accounts of some real people with unusual names without warning. To make sure people can’t set up accounts with fake names, the site has a long, constantly updated “blacklist” of names that people can’t use. A group of members with Native American last names have set up a 3,200-strong group called, ‘Facebook: don’t discriminate against Native surnames!!’

Spotify, the music streaming service, is planning to make it easier for users to share their favourite songs online. Spotify’s users, who are members of Facebook, will be able to link their accounts and share playlists with friends. Technology is also being developed to enable users create and share music through their own radio stations. Both the Facebook and the radio station app will be part of Spotify’s premium subscription package where users pay £9.99 to stream music without ads.

The businesses running on Facebook may soon become bigger than Facebook itself. As the social network is expected to bring in around $500m in revenues in 2009, Ad Age has estimated the collective revenue of Facebook application developers to be between $300m-500m. For example, Zynga, the top developer on Facebook with over 41m users makes most revenue from the sale of chips for its Texas HoldEm Poker or weapons in Mafia Wars.

Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone has said it is developing a variety of tools to help generate revenue but that it is still not considering an advertiser-funded approach. The social network could sell up-to-the-minute information on relevant conversations to brands, it is also investigating ‘lightweight analytics’, an official directory of the micro-blogger’s corporate users as well as serving local businesses better.

Wolfram Alpha, the semantic search engine that has been mooted as a potential Google killer, has launched this week. Founded by mathematician Stephen Wolfram, the search engine occupies a space between Google and Wikipedia. Wolfram Alpha is able to offer more precise search answers, than conventional search engines answering questions on currency conversions, shoe sizes and comparing stock prices.

Hedge fund traders are going to get their own social network, like Facebook. Called Hedgehogs, the new site is the brain-child of two ex-HSBC bankers, who believe the recession has created more of a need for a community site for traders and other investment bankers. Hedgehogs is currently in beta and will go live this summer. In time, the founders said, they would like the site to act as a trading platform too.